The Grapevine’s New Music Picks: Bríet, russian.girls and Kaśka Paluch

This week: a new track and video out today from Bríet, russian.girls give out the dark and moody and Kaśka Paluch blends progressive house, archive folk and Icelandic storms.

These little beauties—and so many more brought to you by The Grapevine over the past twelve months—are available in our New Music Picks 2021-22 playlist.

Bríet – Cold Feet

Bríet knocks it out of the park again with this sparse, fragile song about failed love. The entire first half of the song is just vocals, accompanied by the subtlest of keyboards, which gently move to the fore as the song progresses.

Beautiful, chilling, and heartbreaking (albeit with an undertone of resolve), this is the kind of breakup song you put on while wrapped in a blanket trying to convince yourself that you did the right thing, no matter how awful it feels. ASF

russian.girls – Hundrað í Hættunni

And so to russian.girls; an act that has been on the Reykjavík scene for at least seven years, but which has succeeded in keeping itself shrouded in mystery.

We can tell you that Guðlaugur Halldór Einarsson, a former member of recent Grapevine cover stars Skrattar, conceived the act to host his solo muso activity. But as you might imagine, the band’s name as an internet search term only throws up multiple opportunities to “Meet Lonely Leningrad Ladies!” That’s probably a cheeky joke on the part of the artist, (and perhaps now is a good time to clear that browser history).

But maybe you don’t need all the tedious background fed to you by an overzealous journalist, so here’s the skinny. This is moody, sparse and magnificent, with a dark video to match. Watch it. JP.

Kaśka Paluch – The Moon (Tunglið Glotti Gult Og Bleikt)

The Moon (Tunglið glotti gult og bleikt) by Kaśka Paluch / Noise From Iceland Reykjavík musician and sound artist Kaśka Paluch has been documenting Iceland’s natural sounds for a couple of years now. Inspired by a conversation with a blind tourist when working as a tour guide, Kaśka took on the task of creating an audio map of the country consisting of location recordings made as she travelled. These formed the basis of ‘Noise From Iceland’, last year’s album in which Kaśka produced dance music to blend with the audio she had captured in the field.

This intriguing piece develops that idea; basing itself on a late-nineties-style progressive house track, it incorporates both the sounds of an Icelandic storm and an archive recording of an old Icelandic folk song. Eclectic, diverse, and very good. JP

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