Beginning with a faint yet steady tribal percussion beat that sounds like someone air drumming with pencils in class, Peaking Light’s lead single “Amazing and Wonderful” is a laid back journey of a song that isn’t afraid to get lost in itself.

Peaking Lights describe themselves as “Dub Pop Psych” music, which makes sense the further you listen to “Amazing and Wonderful.” Peaking Lights is made up of two members named “A.C.I.D.” (Aaron Coyes and Indra Dunis), which helps illuminate where Peaking Lights find their inspiration.

The song features endless layers of looping synthesizer samples and abstract guitar riffs that never compete with one another, but complement each other and stand out on their own. The vocals sound spaced out and distant, floating above every instrument while calmly narrating what it is they find so amazing and wonderful. The song is reminiscent of the organ driven psych rock of Iron Butterfly, while also sounding like a Black Mother Super Rainbow song strung out on some Xanax.

Amazing and Wonderful by Peaking Lights

Peaking Lights will bring their psychedelic vibrations to The Mill this Tuesday night, along with Wet Hair, as part of the KRUI Low Frequency series. The show starts at 9pm, and admission is free.

The post Track of the Week: “Amazing and Wonderful” by Peaking Lights appeared first on KRUI Radio.

“I Am Not” is the first single off the first EP by the newly formed folk duo Bard and Mustache. As far as debuts go, “I Am Not” is a lot of things. Right off the back, lead singer Erin Murphy claims that she is not a “song bird,” and she is also, “unable to put you asleep.” While a musician’s ability to put someone to sleep is not always considered a compliment, with their soothing vocals and comforting cello, it’s easy to argue with Murphy that she is perfectly capable of providing an elegant soundtrack to drift you off into your dreams.

With a steady acoustic guitar blanketed by Greg Bortnichak’s cello consistency throughout the song, there’s multiple times where the cello stands out alone, flickering back and forth like a candlelight in the darkness of Murphy’s lyrics and vocals.

There’s a point at around 3:40 into the song where everything pauses for a moment, and just as Murphy sings, “Your dreams are the ocean,” Bortnichak’s cello accompanies these dreams, sounding like a whale singing off in the distance of this ocean they’ve created.
Then everything concludes together in dramatic fashion, cello, guitar, vocals building up and racing together towards the end, where Murphy concludes the song by stating, “It’s dark and I cannot swim.”

We can only hope that Bard and Mustache do not drown in their own sound and continue making haunting, beautiful songs such as “I Am Not” totally is.

Bard and Mustache will play this Thursday at Public Space One at 9 PM with openers Utopia Park. The cost is $3.

Hear here:

I Am Not by Bardandmustache

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