American Cream Band – Twin (track by track)

American Cream Band was formed around thirteen years ago by Twin Cities musician Nathan Nelson. Its music emerged from improvised live performances that were later transformed into exhilarating, fully immersive studio albums. The band’s first three records, along with several singles and EPs, were released on labels such as Moon Glyph and Medium Sound. Presents, released in 2023, marked the first collaboration between Nelson’s collective and the esteemed label Quindi Records from Florence, Italy. With Twin, released on June 6, American Cream Band delivers what may well be its masterpiece to date. Built around the concept of duality, the album thrives on contrasts: movement and reflection, tension and release, masculine and feminine energies, all intertwined through the magnetic vocal interplay between Nathan Nelson and the outstanding Liz Buhmann. Drawing on krautrock, post-punk, funk, psychedelia, and art-pop, Twin balances bold experimentation with an immediate and infectious sense of groove. Tracks such as Don’t Burn the House Down and Ethical Vampire showcase the band’s dynamic, improvisational spirit, while the more contemplative moments reveal a sensitivity and subtlety that enrich the album’s overall vision. What makes Twin so compelling is its ability to reconcile opposites without sacrificing momentum or cohesion. Sonically rich, boldly expressive, and deeply collaborative, the album feels both expansive and focused: a celebration of connection, creativity, and collective energy in uncertain times. The illegitimate offspring of a collective sexual congress between early Talking Heads and The B-52s, American Cream Band channels a raw yet sophisticated energy that feels strangely out of time. Their music seems to belong to an era when optimism still outweighed disillusionment. In that sense, Twin may be the antidote we desperately need to escape the darkness and hopelessness that this filthy world has thrown us into.

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(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 250: Julian Never

Julian Never

Julian Elorduy has been making music since he was fifteen, moving from the noise-soaked chaos of Mayyors to the jangling indie-pop of Fine Steps and, later, the more solitary reflections of Pious Fiction as Julian Never. With this first solo work, Elorduy demonstrates an indomitable creative spirit and an uncommon courage in subverting the genres from which he avowedly draws inspiration. Pious Fiction is a work that expresses great love for the past, but not subjugation to it. His new album, Everyday is Purgation, released in February via Mt. St. Mtn. Records, “awakens on the other side of a Dark Night of the Soul drawing on the writings of mystic, St. John of the Cross, stripping away comforting narratives in order to see what remains with a clearer, more ascetic eye”. It’s Julian at his most exposed, shaped equally by the underground that raised him and the melodic pop that continues to haunt him.

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Lightning In A Twilight Hour – Every Flame a Sunset (Single Version) – Ghost Pavilion Dub (Single premiere)

There’s always been something elusive about Bobby Wratten’s work. Since his days with The Field Mice and Sarah Records, he has consistently avoided overexposure, allowing fragments of emotion, memory and atmosphere to emerge only through his music. With LIGHTNING IN A TWILIGHT HOUR, that instinct for disappearance and suggestion has deepened even further, and Every Flame a Sunset stands among the project’s most emotionally resonant pieces. Originally featured on the extraordinary Colours Yet To Be Named, the song now returns in a new reworked and remixed version: a meditation on absence, survival, grief and the invisible traces left behind by a lost generation. Yet far from surrendering completely to fate, Every Flame a Sunset is marked by a fierce melancholy, by an invincible and quiet resilience. As with the finest moments on Colours Yet To Be Named, the song seems to exist in an unstable emotional space, suspended between melody and abandon. Wratten and producer Ian Catt shape sound like memory itself: blurred at the edges, fragile, impossible to fully hold onto. What remains is not an outcry, a lament, but a slow-burning bulwark of resistance. Accompanying the song is Ghost Pavilion Dub, a minimal and deeply atmospheric track recorded during the album sessions. Its nocturnal, reflective feel veers into more abstract territory, showcasing, once again, Bobby Wratten’s uncanny ability to conjure beauty through the most measured and delicate means. TRISTE© is honoured to present this exclusive premiere.

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Few Border – Lost And Found (track by track)

Few Border’s proper debut album, Lost And Found (released once again on Subjangle just months after the EP collection, In The Twilight, and the new EP The Fire Within) is the natural culmination of Olivier Boutry’s quietly enchanting DIY universe: a record where jangly guitars shimmer, delicate bells sparkle, keyboards caress, and even the occasional fake trumpet somehow manages to convey genuine emotional weight. Drawing from the timeless lineage of Sarah Records, C86, Creation-era indie pop, and the wistful romance of bands like The Smiths and The Red, Pinks And Purples, flirting with the dream pop of more recent bands like Pale Spectres and Swiss Portrait, and not forgetting lessons of New Order and the modern (light)post-punk of Motorama, Boutry crafts songs that are intimate and communicative, nostalgic, but somehow, jubilant and strikingly fresh. There’s a beautifully homemade quality to the album: crystal-clear melodies drift through hazy arrangements like postcards from forgotten shores and late-evening train rides. Every track carries the warmth of its solitary creator completely immersed in his own world, proving once again that Few Border’s greatest strength is Olivier’s instinct for balancing melancholy with sweetness. Lost And Found is dream-pop for people who still believe guitars can sparkle and sadness can feel comforting. A heartfelt, luminous debut full of charm, longing, and timeless indie-pop magic.

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(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 249: A Lilac Decline

Cecilia Danell – A Lilac Decline

A Lilac Decline is the anagrammatic musical pseudonym of visual artist Cecilia Danell. Originally from Sweden but resident in Ireland for two decades, her debut  album The Mountain Rages (Rusted Rail, 2017) was recorded via one microphone on borrowed and found instruments. Whilst there were flashes of electricity on her debut, her follow-up Shelter From the Shadows (2020) found A Lilac Decline going electric, Telecaster in hand, as her sophomore album was shot through with glimmering and shimmering six string serenades. A Lilac Decline’s third album, Eternity Bores Me was released on May 1st 2026, while her label Rusted Rail entered its 20th year of releasing music. Having blossomed into a fully fledged three piece band centred around songwriter Cecilia Danell and rounded out by bassist/producer Keith Wallace (Loner Deluxe) and Brian Kelly (So Cow) on drums, the new album finds A Lilac Decline further evolving their shoegaze and dream pop stylings whilst also displaying flashes of their handmade and homespun indie-folk roots.

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