Don’t know anything about either artist, and I have to say, the Orpan | Oliver side is what really caught my attention at first. The 3 songs here are dark, slow, sparse, and feature haunting female vocals along with plodding, distorted drum machine beats and guitars. It reminds me of To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie, therefore I absolutely love it. First track “Haunting + Heart” is the shortest track and has the least going on, just a pulse and some delayed vocals, but it’s no less hypnotic than the longer and louder tracks. The vocals in “Cherry Belly” sort of sound like if Hope Sandoval was trapped in a room and slowly going crazy; the double-tracked background vocals are what push it into the paranoid zone. “Stray Birds” uses the harshest drum machine sound of the three tracks, and has the least vocals, but the way they’re used is the most frightening of them all. Some really remarkable, earcatching tracks, and fortunately there’s some more releases by Orphan | Oliver, as well as Orphan solo, up on Bandcamp.
Listening back to the Lafidki side, and it’s quite decent as well. The three tracks here combine sparkly delay-heavy synth patterns with distortion and beats. “Siegfried and Artemis is Diane” first uses some post-rocky drum loops, then pumps up the distortion and 4/4 dance beats, while the synths slowly lose their grip from the beat. “I’m The Matador And You’re The Basket Ball Player” has a tense, crunchy rhythmic loop, but doesn’t really end up turning into beats. “Phant Phoenix”, however, has both the brightest synth patterns and the biggest beats, doing some sort of amplified tropical rhythm along with starry, crystalline synths. Basically, it sounds like staring up at the stars and zoning out while dancing for a few minutes.
Dumpster Diving Lab / Steak Au Zoo / Jozik Records / Heia Sun / Neh-Owh Records
