Pentecostal Party - Let’s Storm Heaven - Single Review

Dawn Bothwell’s project Pentecostal Party is born of her interest “in the type of euphoric high you experience in groups of people worshiping together: an experience that is both solitary and collective.”

   

This tape-recorded version of Let’s Storm Heaven off-sets two layers; a creeping pulse established with a prominent hi-hat and light analogue synth on the surface, whilst the ear is more and more drawn to what lurks in the depths, the yearning and relentless army of voices plotting beneath.

Music can be loved for an infinite amount of reasons, but the behaviour that I find particularly special about Pentecostal Party’s music is the way it unlocks depths through deceptively simple, minimalist structure.

Small synth lines and repeated phrases map the contours of her songs, but as a listener you are compelled to imagine the terrain. The music’s majesty reveals itself like a magic-eye picture, or faces forming in tree-bark.

[2016.03.12] for NARC Magazine.

Ditte Elly - Had Me From The Start - Single Review

Taken from her recent debut album, the song Had Me From The Start reflects the lighter and brighter side of Elly’s writing.

The choice to double-track her lead vocal in unison throughout the recording removes a deeper vulnerability that could sadden the mood of this track, but here, the love being described is one that has been invited-in to consume the narrators’ heart; a celebration! This joyous expression is further emphasised with a chorus of backing vocals finding ever more energy throughout the song; like springtime bringing more and more colour with flowers.   

Elly modestly explains “I just really enjoy singing it, so I hope people enjoy listening and want to tap their feet along.”

Though written three years ago, the gleeful spirit, in Elly’s strummed classical guitar and Adam Kent’s spritely electronic sounds, marries the optimism around this blossoming time in Elly’s life as a songwriter.

[2016.03.12] for NARC Magazine