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Crystal Shipsss

Yay

Written by: PP on 27/08/2012 03:33:35

Every now and then I like to take journeys far outside my usual genres to widen my frame of reference and to experience new approaches to making music. One of these trips was very recently spent in the land of Crystal Shipsss, the latest project from the multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter Jacob Faurholt, whose debut album "Yay" certainly took me into an entirely new dimension musically. Basically, "Yay" is essentially a lo-fi indie-pop record, but with garage undertones and fuzzy guitars providing a sense of warmth to the music, and dreamy falsetto vocals laid on top that are probably inspired by the likes of Portugal. The Man (at least their more experimental material).

Throw in a batch of psychedelic drugs and you're in a colourful land of noise rock meets singer-songwriter meets indie meets psychedelic rock, a weird concatenation of sounds that floats and lingers high above the clouds on one hand, but at the same time tries to dig into earth itself, with the space in the middle missing almost entirely. It's strange thing to explain on virtual paper, but Faurholt in Crystal Shipsss manages to combine the raw feeling of the garage production while also dabbling in silky soft atmospheres simultaneously. It should sound like the two were just copy/pasted on top of each other, but somehow each part complements the other and the result is a surprisingly coherent and intriguing sound. It's definitely super, super hipster in every possible meaning of the word, which I guess isn't surprising considering the author is from the Danish indie/experimental scene and says things like "I have been fascinated with the artistic energy of Berlin since I first visited in 1999" et cetera. But in the end "Yay" is an enjoyably soft listen and easy on the ears despite its inherent experimentalism, so I'll go ahead and give it a good rating without necessarily having any frame of reference within its own genre or how it ranks against its peers.

Download: Uh huh, Smile
For the fans of: Jacob Faurholt projects, Sam Gray Singing, lo-fi indie
Listen: Bandcamp

Release date 11.06.2012
Raw Onion Records / Three Ring Records