It’s an absolute pleasure to be part of your music discovery, as we do our best to bring you the bucket-loads of wonderful cutting-edge music that we uncover each year, proudly acting as your music filtration service for the busy global market of new artists. However, there’s a few snags that we often have to overcome in order to complete the process.
A commonly asked question when we are interviewed is “who recommends music to The Recommender?“. The honest answer is that we have a multitude of avenues to our market, from scouting online and in the real world, to the billion PR emails we receive, but with there being so much new music around the world – mostly made up of utter rubbish – the filtering takes up a lot of time.
One other tricky facet is that we don’t simply list the music on this blog, preferring instead to be as informative as we possibly can about each artist in our editorial, as it’s normally a blog’s voice that allows it to be distinctive from other blogs. Sadly, when you are searching for music at it’s inception, there’s often not that much information readily available that we can pass on to you. On the odd occasion it’s even harder though, as an artist deliberately holds any biographical facts back to allow their initial music to get the focus.
We were recently sent Pinemarten by a PR contact, but when we enquired about their identity we were told that the artist wants to remain “hidden behind the music“. It doesn’t do wonders for any supposed relationship between the critic and the musician if they refuse to (virtually) shake your hand, somewhat leaving us (virtually) hanging. At least, on this occasion, the music was good enough to qualify for today’s coverage.
We know Pinemarten is male; if for no other reason than he looks like he’s drawn a beard on the stick man that adorns his Facebook profile. We also know that he’s from Chesterfield and he’s been producing tracks since the end of last year and popping them up on his Soundcloud. He forges a wonderful style of dreamy pop music that’s Scandinavian to the touch, all synthetic and breezy. Whether it’s his well-selected remixes of Recommender favourites, Museum Of Bellas Artes and Sun Glitters, or his stripped down rework of Madonna’s True Blue, which takes her line “your the one I’m dreaming of” very literally, as he delivers the song through a new misty dimension. All of these, alongside his original work, have his signature patterns of pedestrian beats and cloudy synths throughout.
His sound isn’t altogether that distinctive from talented artists such as Chad Valley, Southern Shores, or CFCF, but it sometimes lacks as much momentum as they do, as it’s taken the more ethereal, stoned path that finds at it’s end the likes of Washed Out. Both of his self-penned releases to date, Bay and Home, arrived earlier this year, with a third full release apparently due in September. Every one of the available tunes hit you like a warming sunbeam and although the vocals are occasionally too misted there’s an enjoyable throb that carries them along.
The song title’s, such as Tea & Toast, or Cuppa Soup, suggest a taste for the simple things in life, which marries well with the uncomplicated approach to music making (and blogger relations!). The lesson for him should be that hiding one’s identity doesn’t necessarily take anything away from the music, but the lesson for us music bloggers is that it’s still OK to fall for the music first. It’s like the opposite of looking for love on the Internet – where you line up a date based on their biographical details and a (hopefully accurate) photograph – but although in this case we had nothing to go on but their tempting taste in music, we can thankfully confirm that this first date has gone swimmingly well and we look forward to the next one. You never know, on the second date they might even tell us their name! (MB)
PINEMARTEN – NEVER FAR AWAY
PINEMARTEN – ALL TO MYSELF
PINEMARTEN – 3 WISHES
