Sunday, May 22, 2011

College


Something that I've been listening to for the past 6 months or so (in addition to all the Hum, Seam, Shellac, and Arab Strap I've comfortably retreated into) is the output of Nantes, France's Valerie Collective, the dude who goes by the nom de guerre College in particular.

The schtick of the label/collective is rehashed '80s imagery paired with repetitive monophonic synthesizers. All the bands show up on each other's records. In contrast to some of the other bands on the label, College is mostly instrumental. Their latest record, Northern Council, is a completely instrumental concept record of bright, step-sequenced tones and grim foreboding.

I was able to find their whole Secret Diary record up for streaming on Grooveshark, so I'm plugging that in here. I had a harder time finding streaming tracks off of Northern Council. You can't swing a dead cat without coming up with DL links for that record, though, and it's easy to get on iTunes, so I'll leave industrious afficionados of the finer tunes to do what they do best with a search string and a dream.

I can't get the nice embedded widget to embed, so here's the link to the songs on Secret Diary on Grooveshark:
http://grooveshark.com/playlist/College+Secret+Diary/54067540?src=5

2 comments:

DC said...

This is great. Why you holding out for 6 months homie?!!

Igor said...

You know, you hear something, you like it, but then 2 weeks later it drops out of rotation and you never speak of it again. I hate making recommendations I regret, so I buffer it a little. By the time I realize that something is essential listening sometimes a little time has passed. Glad you like it, though. There's good stuff all over this label.