Cool Band Alert - herbal tea

Moonshine daydream

Welcome to Bandcamp Notes, a free music discovery newsletter published by Bandcamp.

Playlist of the week: An eclectic mix of jam bands, Afro-funk, psychedelic soul, and lo-fi jazz on “Robert’s Real Birthday Playlist” by Wileycheese. Happy birthday, Robert.

Labels to Follow: Portland, Oregon’s Fluff & Gravy for contemporary Americana, London’s Laced for the best in game music, Arlington, Virginia’s Teen Beat for Gen X stuff.

Name: herbal tea
From: Bristol, UK
Members: Helena Walker
RIYL: Maria Somerville, Grouper, Elaine Howley, Beach House, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
The Gist: Grouper at the gates of dawn

The rising tides of ambient and experimental electronics have brought up with them a particularly trippy style of modern folk, one that mixes sonic manipulation and old-fashioned songcraft for music that’s equal parts J. Mitchell and J. Spaceman, if they were home recorders with a 4-track and maybe two instruments, one of them definitely a synth. On dazzling debut Hear as the Mirror Echoes, the diminutively named herbal tea, aka Helena Walker, blends the slow-burn psych of fellow space travelers (and Bristolians) Flying Saucer Attack and Movietone with the searching interiority of the singer-songwriter tradition (Sharon Van Etten is named as an influence, as is Sparklehorse) for music that exemplifies ambient pop at its loveliest, as structured and singable as it is apt to dissolve into glimmering pools of sweet sound. Working with longtime collaborater Henry C Sharpe, Walker softly sculpts and manipulates her indie folk songs with reverb, delay, dissonance, and distortion until they begin wafting into each other like clouds, languid and languishing, her voice either eerily submerged or layered into an epic angelic choir. And yet the record’s spectral dreaminess isn’t done to excess nor is it used to create distance from the listener—Walker is a romantic and her music cultivates intimacy, its pearly luminescence a reflection of the beauty she sees reflected around and within her. Hear as the mirror echoes, indeed.

Hear as the Mirror Echoes is out August 29 on Orindal Records. Pre-order it.

Dig this record and want more like it?

Bristol psych, get to know it, get to love it; Chamber-folk is entering a new era of delicate experimentalism—here are some highlights; a live release from the Galaxie 500’s archives is a dream pop Rosetta Stone—read George Grella’s review or pick up a copy from the band; the work of Polish ambient musician Antonina Nowacka is a must-listen for lovers of beautiful, place-based instrumental music; a guide to Argentina’s active ambient scene is full of gems, so is this in-depth look at criminally underheard shoegaze cuts; cult tape label DD. Records documented lo-fi home recording artists in 1980s Japan, Jon Dale tells the story.

Listening Party Picks, August 28th–September 3rd

Come hang in the chat with artists celebrating their record release this week on Bandcamp.

Aug 29: Bill Orcutt, Steve Shelley & Ethan Miller for Orcutt Shelley Miller. RSVP.
Aug 29: james K for Friend. RSVP.
Aug 31: Dave Douglas for Alloy. RSVP.
Aug 31: Third Kind Records and Blank Thomas for Blurred Out. RSVP.
Sept 2: citrine for line of sight. RSVP.
Sept 2: The Shell for The Shell. RSVP.
Sept 3: Rian Treanor & Cara Tolmie for Body Lapse. RSVP.
Sept 3: Ivy for Traces of You. RSVP.
Sept 3: Fire-Toolz, “Private Angel Message 10-Minute-41-Second Listening Bash.” RSVP.
Sept 3: Soundway Records for Got To Be Me. RSVP.
Sept 3: Chip Wickham for The Eternal Now. RSVP.

To see the full calendar, go here.