GARDENS & VILLA
Harmonic presents
GARDENS & VILLA
(Secretly Canadian)
+ very special guests HALVES
TIMES: ROI match 7.45, Halves 9.30, Gardens & Villa 10.15
Tickets €12 including booking fee available from www.tickets.ie, www.ticketmaster.ie & Ticketmaster outlets nationwide. Republic of Ireland customers: 0818 719 300/Northern Ireland customers: 0844 277 4455/International customer: 00353 1 456 9569
“Ideal for summertime strolls through a cemetery, Black Hills (from G&V’s self-titled debut album) pits vibraphone chimes against an icy synth pulse overtop an unnervingly steady beat. And while ‘Black Hills’ presents magisterial images of mountains, seas, and high tides, its environment feels tensely claustrophobic, with Chris Lynch’s elastic, androgynous voice projecting serenity and severity in equal measure. It’s the sort of song you could easily imagine Beach House coming up with, were they to follow-up the lushness of Teen Dream with something more sinister.” – Pitchfork
Video for Black Hills:
“With production assistance from label mate Richard Swift, this Santa Barbara quintet turns in an exciting debut.” – Pop Matters
“Your eyes circle the room searching for the source of that scent. There she is, standing in the corner of the room, legs long like flowering stems, hair blooming like orange blossom petals– she’s that forbidden fruit. The funk-lite sound of Santa Barbara’s Gardens & Villa gives you the courage of a couple Long Island Iced Teas. With a casual grin splashed across your face and that tipsy bass line in your head, you dance your way across the room, ready to take her home. “Orange Blossom” is as erotic as anything from Sebastien Tellier, but Gardens & Villa’s take on sexual synth-pop is harmless, drunken fun rather than carnal desire. It’s bombastic, blasé funk that can set the mood for any house party hook-up.” –Yours Truly
In the year of the saxophone, Santa Barbara’s Gardens & Villa give us the flute. And along the way, Gardens & Villa effectively wipe clear the vaseline from the murky bedroom funk of recent days. G&V bang out instant classics — each crystal clear and immaculate, but no less sweeping or languid. Their debut is a youthful exploration of just how opulent and pop starkness can go. It also leaves an impression of California in a similar way to Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series or the pool party scene from The Graduate, always sensed more than stated outright.
Gardens & Villa channel all the taut pop precisions of 90s Britpop of bands like Blur (borrowed from the 60s anyhow), and send it through an 80s synth filter, both undeniably coastal and modern. It’s Spoon’s Kill The Moonlight lost in a daydream, but with that same hungry energy. Gardens & Villa may simultaneously pull from Gary Numan, The Kinks and odder prog within one composition. And like a fine sweet tea, it’s made just that right kind of sugary — though even the most upbeat tunes have an undercurrent of the bittersweet and the lost at heart.
In 2010, Gardens & Villa travelled to Oregon to record their debut with visionary, vibemaster and labelmate Richard Swift. Together, they put some sand in the sheets of new wave (“Black Hills”) and pop some translucent funk (“Orange Blossom”). There’s also a level of effortless class maintained across the whole set. Each and every lush little gem explores the wonderful mystery between intuition and proficiency, between tension and repose.
Gardens & Villa are Chris Lynch, Adam Rasmussen, Levi Hayden, Shane McKillop and Dusty Ineman.
http://www.gardensandvilla.com
http://gardensandvilla.bandcamp.com
HALVES
It Goes, It Goes (Forever & Ever) is the haunting, ambitious and spine-tingling debut album from Irish trio Brian Cash, Elis Czerniak & Tim Czerniak, collectively known as HALVES. The record was nominated for the 2010 Choice Music Prize.
The Irish Times Album Of The Week “a debut that works from its first moment to its last&hellipmusic that belongs to the witching hour” ****
The Irish Independent “hauntingly brilliant” ****
Recorded in the legendary Hotel2Tango studios in Montreal (housed in a former alarm factory beside a freight railroad) and tracked over two sunny weeks in August of 2009, It Goes, It Goes (Forever & Ever) was created with the use of the studio’s vast collection of instruments, amps, organs, effects (most of which dated from 1930’s-1980’s). Eleven songs were recorded live, in one large room on 2″ reel-to-reel tape by Efrim Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor), Howard Bilerman and Radwan Moumneh.
Video for Darling, You’ll Meet Your Maker:
One of Ireland’s most intriguing acts, Halves blend a vast range of instruments, acoustic and electronic, to create an evocative, cinematic live experience. Their three releases to date have met with universal critical success, as well as earning them ardent fans from Tokyo to Seattle. Their live show is truly captivating; a mix of synched visuals, strings, brass, and electronics, anchored by soaring guitars and live drums. In 2009 Halves made their debut TV performance, topping the viewers’ choice poll on RTE’s ‘Other Voices’ series. More recently the band played four shows at the SXSW Music Festival in Austin Texas to great response and have also played Eurosonic, Canadian Music Week and London Calling. Halves have supported British Sea Power, 65 Days Of Static, Dungen and The Middle East, and were voted as having produced one of the finest Irish releases of 2007 with their first EP by influential Irish blogger Nialler9.
TICKETS:
€12 incl booking fee available from WAV Tickets [Lo-Call 1890 200 078], Tickets.ie & Ticketmaster.