“Caring About Something Utterly Useless” is FLeUR second album, out in February on Bosco Rec. The music of the experimental duo, formed by the Turin-based Enrico Dutto and Francesco Lurgo – the latter moved to Milan long ago – focuses on the dialogue between electronic programming and the human warmth of the hands playing guitars and keyboards, which blend together to the point where the two components become symbiotic and their respective edges merge, so that the digital sounds turn into breaths and the electric walls raised by the strings become synthetic roars. The seven songs on the record become a coherent whole thanks to the production of Emilio Pozzolini, member of port-royal (small, great heroes of Italian dreamy electronics).

Phantom Handshakes is a lo-fi, dream pop collaboration between Federica Tassano (Sooner, Mônetre) and Matt Sklar (Exiles) based in Brooklyn, NY. They had a mini album out in 2020, Be Estranged, a collection of 7 tracks ranging from jangly indie pop to shoegazey post-punk recorded at home during April and May of 2020 (mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering in Chicago) and their upcoming full-length, No More Summer Songs, will be out tomorrow, April 30th on Z Tapes. The whole new album was created in true DIY fashion by the duo from their respective homes in Brooklyn and Manhattan from August until November 2020. No More Summer Songs has been previously introduced by a pair of tracks of shimmering lo-fi dreampop, Cricket Song and No Better Plan.

John Myrtle, originally from Birmingham but now London-based, had his debut EP out back in 2019: “Here’s John Myrtle” is a journey across love, heartbreak and loneliness, made of jangly acoustic pop at its best. Influenced by “’90s Liverpool music scene, ’70s Jazz, C86 bands and Sarah Records”, John signed for Sad Club Records and his debut album, Myrtle Soup – “an exploration of love and identity, diffused within the difficult and lonely period of writing during lockdown, packaged together as a homely bowl of soup” – is due in early June.
There are a couple of singles out yet, both exciting! “Get Her Off My Mind” is 60’s inspired and warm, filled with the upbeat hope and optimism of new love, while the new “How Can You Tell If You Love Her?”, is an infectious indie-pop anthem embracing his own anxieties surrounding love.