It’s been quite a few months eh? I wilted a little bit over the weekend gone by. The first couple of months housebound enabled me to get stuck into my writing without distraction. Page by page, day by day, lockdown was passing by and my mind wasn’t idle. This weekend was different. I felt restless and a little bit fed up for the first time in weeks – there are only so many daily walks around the same lake one can endure. As much as I love a swans company, I’m starting to crave human interactions again.
Tonight, I decided to write up another crate digging list. When times get tough, a good crate dig really nurses me back to health. There have been some absolute whoppers passing through the inbox recently and I’ve managed to pick out five stunners from the list.
This week we feature music from LONA / AMOA / Philipp Stolberg / Harry Nathan / VANNA
LONA / Gloamer
Bristol brotherly duo LONA kick off this weeks list with their lovely little downtempo tune Gloamer. This is the perfect track to warm you up for what’s to come. It’s slow, progressive and quite minimal really. It builds in tempo gradually with a superb Asian sounding vocal sample rippling around in the forefront.
Lorcan and Naoise Thompson are the brains behind this ambient operation – Gloamer is a electronic music treat! This is such good music for train-gazing – the wavy melodies and the changing percussion elements make this an intriguing listen throughout. The brothers are dab hands when it comes to downtempo and have a big future on this evidence.
Harry Nathan / Harriet Tubman
Who the hell is Harriet Tubman and what is he doing in the electronic music genre? That is the question on everybody’s lips these days it seems. Well, maybe it’s just Harry Nathan that’s asking! I originally heard this tune via Indie Shuffle’s creator Jason Grishkoff in a bloggers chat room (yes, it exists). Rarely, people post a tune into a bloggers chat room as we are all inundated with music already. When one does get linked into the group, it usually means it’s ridiculously good. Harry Nathan’s single called Harriet Tubman was linked in, it is the absolute gravy, baby.
This is a weirdly experimental deep house groover! It’s a strange one, comprised of conversational snippets from his neighbour and a grimy under-bass growl. I fell in love with this from the moment I heard it. It’s finally gotten its well deserved share.
AMOA / Back
Andrea Thoma is the vocalist here – her voice is as crisp as a well cooked sweet potato fry. The luscious tone of her vocals are accompanied by some extremely melancholic synths and a bunch of weirdly infectious clinks and clacks, a great mix of electronic music instruments you could say. This is experimental, this is downtempo, this is super dreamy.
The tune was sent in by her label, alongside a super short bio. It was one short and snappy sentence : ‘Let your mind dissolve in the atmosphere’. I did, although I think my mind dissolved a few years ago. If I still had my mind, this song would have dissolved it. You catch my drift –
Philipp Stolberg / Reaching You
Something a little heavier on the electronic music scene here from German producer Philipp Stolberg. His sound takes influence from the Keinemusik label which is certainly a good thing. A couple of years ago, I was utterly obsessed with everything that came out of there. Adam Port, Rampa and &ME are eternal legends in my book. Reaching You is a superb single from Philipp Stolberg that is every way as good as the aforementioned. His sizzling progressive acid house rhythm, the distorted vocals and the modulated synth-work, make this a hugely enthralling experience.
The acid elements in this actually reminds me a bit of Maceo Plex – the good stuff he played in the Boiler Room in Berlin. I’ve seen Plex three times and he never really cut the mustard live sadly. Stolberg has just released a full length album titled Sparks. If you like what you are hearing, please check out the full album here.
VANNA / Let Me Fall
We stop off in Israel for our final tune this week. I’m really happy with the quality of all the tunes here, it could well be my favourite crate dig yet. We close it out with the atmospheric sound waves of VANNA and her wavy electronic production Let Me Fall. Like Isola’s track Splinter, a couple of weeks ago, this is perfect for television. This is the type of tune that would be in the running for a James Bond movie soundtrack placing but would ultimately be pushed aside in favour of a more mainstream name (like Adele) at the last minute.
This is a high level tune, the production is A grade and VANNA’s vocals are sublime. Hopefully you will all agree too – I take great pride in unearthing work like this. I am only one solitary voice and opinion but I’m fairly certain that people would absolutely fall in love with this tune if they heard it. Hopefully a couple of you have stuck around long enough here to give it a chance. It is worth it, next level stuff.
Compiling a list like this tonight makes all those hard hours of listening through submissions worth it. Thanks for sending, thanks for reading and checking out the tunes. I’m looking forward to next weeks edition already.
About ‘The Sound Sniffer’
The Sound Sniffer is a music blog which is still only a baby – Founded and run by Kevin Coakley in early 2019. He is a music writer and ghostwriter. ‘The Sound Sniffer’ also runs gigs and showcases in London since Oct 2019. The showcases are picked from artists we find in our submissions inbox.