Neuigkeit vom 22.11.2023Alex van Pelt (FRA) + Mock Media (CAN)

French multi-instrumentalist Alex Van Pelt started making music fifteen years ago when he was still a teenager, in bands such as Coming Soon, Mont Analogue, or as a guitarist and keyboardist for Adam Green, Norma, Ryder the Eagle, Sierra Manhattan or François Virot. Now he’s grown up, and shows what he’s made of as a solo artist and a songwriter. After two albums, Tum Tum (2019) and Global Crush (2021), in which he mapped a rich and sensitive musical landscape out of DIY synths and post-romantic songs, he expands his own original world with his new opus, Off The Clock (out in september 2023).  Here, Alex refines his style : Off the Clock is deliberately stripped down, wandering further into introspective territory. The kind of albums that invite you to slow down and contemplate, as the entire universe keeps on speeding. Detuned guitar-ballads warped in synthetic city sounds (Sincerely, Breathe In Breathe Out, Rat Race), pop hits with hooks (Complicated, Strike, Lascaux), soft rock songs that will make you wanna jump in your car and cruise (What If, Dig Dig Dig), plus a few detours via his teenage roots folk songs (Fuzzy Night, Orpheus Summer Fling) : you’ll find all of these, and more, in this meticulously shaped soundscape of an album. In trying to get rid of the references and everything superfluous, Alex Van Pelt unfolds an intimate, deeply personal pop music.

Mock Media, Canada’s new supergroup, contains members: Evan Aasen, Garnet Aronyk Muhammad, Austin Boylan and Bennett Smith. Mock Media originates in Vernon, British Columbia, a small farming town surrounded by blue lakes and majestic mountain ranges. Such wholesome beginnings naturally sparked a heady wanderlust and DIY-spirit within its founding members. Mock Media’s debut LP Mock Media II – out November 17 on Meat Machine captures this firebrand four piece’s head-on plunge into enthralling existential contradictions: songs that explore the darkest corners of humanity, yet come out at the other end with the unwavering joy that marked their genesis. It’s an album of sneaky eclecticism: the high-wired punk rock stylings serve as Mock Media’s framework to clad their agog explorations into pop, electronic and world folk music.