New Music Review 001

Ani Carpenter

First of all the album has fab artwork. The front design is of a sort of woman made from boobs and faces and legs and flowers, a collage of shapes and colours. I actually hadn’t heard of Little Dragon until a few weeks ago when I saw the video for ‘Twice’, which reminded me of the video for ‘Bedshaped’ by Keane and I quite liked them. Made up of Swedish vocalist Yukimi Nagano and some close friends from high school, they are how you would expect a modern group from that hemisphere to sound, kind of Sigur Ros; dreamy and atmospheric. Although I wouldn’t say they’re atmospheric in the Sigur Ros extent, they definitely have that dreamy, hallucinogenic depth, especially on tracks like ‘Feather’ and ‘A New’, which I thought made a good album intro. However, they replace the heaviness with electro vibes and synths a-plenty. It’s cool and very 80’s sounding. One of the best things, I think, is Nagano’s voice. She’s a bit Gwen Stefani-esque and it really compliments the synths and electronic vibe to the album. Read on >>>>>

 
‘My Step’ is another great track and it sounds like something you would find on ‘GTA: Vice City’, and everyone loves that so this must be cool? J Some said on YouTube that ‘Blinking Pigs’ made them want to run. Now, I’ve listened to it and, I can see where they’re coming from. It’s nothing like Godskitchen or Pendulum (old stuff!) or, I dunno, whatever it is that I work out to but it does have a strong beat and a nice melody to which one could dance. Worth listening to. My opinion of ‘Little Dragon’ is that, I like them. They’re a quirky, original-ish band from Sweden, always a plus, with some good chillout songs. And I like to chillout. There are also tracks that you may wanna put on at a disco for an 80’s feel, and I do like the 80’s. It’s not the stuff I’d rave about but I would give them a thumbs up and anyone who likes dreamy, synth-y songs with a retro vibe, it’d be right up your street. It’s quite clever really, in how they’ve produced their electro-pop, synthetic sound. Nagano said she wanted to convey man’s reliance on machines in their sound by making music with computers and effects. Quite poetic, if you think about it. It’s deep. Also ‘Twice’, that I mentioned earlier, seems quite big. It was apparently on ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ and there are remixes and stuff of it. YouTube it.

Written by Ani Carpenter

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