Blue Hawaii :: Untogether, Together

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By Adrienne Yeung

Blue Hawaii are Alex “Agor” Cowan and Raphelle Standell-Preston, who live in Montreal and play electronic music. If their sound can be described as dream pop, then their first full length album Untogether is a dream neither nightmare nor sweet, but introspective and amorphous. It’s a dream lit by strobe light, where people from your past flicker in and out of the narrative of your subconscious. Untogether sounds like the kind of dream which you wake up from, lie still, and think about.

Instrumentalist Agor and vocalist Raph wrote Untogether in physically separate spaces – and the sound of many songs are likewise disjointed, drifting, pensive, and fragile. Stylus was curious about Blue Hawaii’s songwriting process, so on a spring day in Winnipeg, drinking coffee and wearing three sweaters, we called Agor (who at the time was in San Francisco record store “Amoeba” watching label-mate Doldrums play an in-store show) to chat. Continue reading “Blue Hawaii :: Untogether, Together”

Tonstartssbandht Starts Shit

TONSTARTSSBANDHT- Hotel For Gods – (SIDE B) from Spencer Gilley on Vimeo.

Tired of life’s daily drags, its brumal breath on the back of your neck? Doing fine and want to be doing even finer still? TONSTARTSSBANDHT! Become enraptured in the music of these Floridian born brothers gone Montreal. The bros, Andy and Edwin White, also play in High Rise II and Superbud. With MC5 vigour Tonstartssbandht are kickin’ out extensive BJM style jams – psychedelic noise pop if you want to try to pin them – they’re one of those duos who “don’t give a fuck about genres or movements.”

This video for “Hotel for Gods” came out not long ago and was shot the same day as their interview on CKUT. Relish in your perceptions for a while. All filmed in the lowest quality: so colourful and homey mmm.

Scratch that! Just follow this link to side A, “Sinkhole Storm and Sandwich” and imbibe in the whole record! Recorded live on a four-track, each in one take. Available on Arbutus. Play ‘em and get lost, lost, lost.