(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 140: Silent Forum

Silent Forum

Four piece Silent Forum are from Cardiff (but now splitting their time between Cardiff, London, Bristol and Barcelona). Silent Forum’s sound isn’t straightforward. It’s a textured, technicoloured trip that separates it from punk’s three chords or post-punk’s monochrome doom. Rejecting both geographical and musical pigeonholing, they had their first album, Everything Solved At Once out on Libertino Records in 2019 (after Sanctuary+, a very limited edition cassete, was out the year before, summarising their previous five years’ working their way up). Avoiding cliched break-up or party tracks, Silent Forum’s debut album was in part themed around a disgruntled office worker, with an awareness of the tongue-in-cheek humour in juxtaposing corporate life lyrics with jagged punk numbers. Silent Forum have a special magic whereby their music has echoes of every seminal band you ever loved across every pioneering and forever fresh genre of the last 4 decades, yet crammed into edgy, enthralling, infectious songs with a fervent originality and unrivalled energy. 
Now the band is back with its new album Domestic Majestic which will be out on Libertino Records on February 23rd, preceded by four exciting singles.

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(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 139: Podcasts

Podcasts

Podcasts formed in Oslo in late 2018, bringing together four work colleagues – Ellis Jones (Trust Fund), Kyle Devine, Tore Størvold and Emil Kraugerud – who just happened to have a music rehearsal room in their basement.
Their first demo recordings were released as a double single (‘Dragging The Lake’ / ‘First Things First’) in September 2019 on Oslo’s Snertingdal Records. Their debut album was recorded in Oslo in late 2019, and was almost complete before Covid hit, during which time half the band moved away from Oslo. The band finally reunited in May 2023 to put the finishing touches on their record. Podcasts (the album), which came out on Prefect Records in August 2023, consists of 11 mostly short, mostly fast songs, drawing on the band members’ diverse musical backgrounds, but centered safely within the realm of indie rock. Some songs sound like they contain three or more little compositions, but that’s probably just the sound of Podcasts.

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(Make Me A) TRISTE© Mixtape Episode 138: Nino Gvilia

Nino Gvilia (©Luce Berta)

Born in Poti, near Lake Paliastomi in Georgia, Nino Gvilia is a singer-songwriter whose lyrics range between ecology and politics, bodies and love. Her songs are influenced by folk and minimalism and make use of magnetic tapes, field recordings, vocal samples of contemporary thinkers and an array of weird instruments and vintage textures, drawing an intense dreamlike atmosphere. Nino Gvilia has just released her debut digital EP Nicole via Hive Mind Records (UK) that will be followed by Overwhelmed by the Unexplained, respectively side A and side B of a vinyl that will see the light of day on March 8th 2024. The project started getting noticed by radio stations and webzines since the BBC played the single Nicole during the Late Junction programme. But, despite this… Nino Gvilia does not exist. She is a fictional character composing, answering interviews and living in mockumentaries, invented and performed by sound artist Giulia Deval to reflect on question such as: is it still possible to convey sentimental and political content through songs? How does this need relate to the saturation of the mainstream and its mechanisms?

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