December 11, 2007
Le Diamant Brut: Shantel & The Soldier Thread
What’s the Deal: Finally, some club music that doesn’t make you want to club yourself for being so easily convinced into going “clubbing.” In case you missed them on NPR’s All Songs Considered, which everyone should be listening to, Shantel & Bucovina Club Orkestar is comprised of German electronica master Shantel and an ensemble of Balkan sounds. The result of this mix of electronic beats and the music of Southern and Eastern Europe is something intriguing and undeniably infectious. Hey, Beirut set to a dance beat, how could they go wrong?
“Mahalageasca” from Bucovina Club Vol. 1 combines various horn mixtures and folky percussion with an electronica beat that ends up way more Balkan than electronica and even features a horn solo where the beats fade away. With light singing in a European language in background, the track flows up and down and surges with a sea of sounds both old and new.
Something Interesting: Shantel’s remix of Mahala Rai Banda’s "Mahalageasca" was used on the Borat soundtrack.
Other Tracks Worth Checking Out: “Borino Oro”
Shantel Official
Shantel MySpace
What’s the Deal: If you grabbed equal fist-fulls of Explosions in the Sky, The Postal Service and the dreamy melodicism of Homesick For Space and mashed it all up, you’d have the hypnotic and ambient cure-all salve for apathy that is The Soldier Thread. Their sound is as moody and provocative as the title of their first release, a 5-song EP called Fevers and Fireworks released earlier this year, suggests. Mixing these equally evoking words that don’t necessarily fit is a great attention-getter and says, “Lookout! Strong emotions ahead!”
“Spin” launches right into an Explosions-esque state of instrumental dreaminess where resonating guitar pings whirl about with chiming keys and a humming viola. A brief, breathy chorus comes in before the end singing, “close your eyes and spin” just before the layered sounds crash in the end. Then, on “The Silver” you half expect Ben Gibbard's voice to appear in the track’s Postal Service-like beginnings with synthetic beats and light keys that give way to a gorgeous cross-gender harmony and guitar whale songs.
Something Interesting: Impressively, they have made it to the quarter finals in the Hot Pursuit, a contest seeking hot up-and-coming acts launched by Spin magazine and Music Nation.
Other Tracks Worth Checking Out: “A Drug Like This” and “Fevers And Fireworks”
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Love The Soldier Thread - so glad to see them reviewed! They were fantastic opening for Alpha Rev on Friday.