New Populous With Short Stories - "Only Hope"

Download: Populous With Short Stories - "Only Hope"

Now that Ben Gibbard has joked about how the next Postal Service album is the indie Chinese Democracy, we listeners will have to get our introspective, electro indie-pop somewhere else. Enter Populous, the nom-de-bleep-blip of Andrea Mangia, a Berlin-based laptop producer with a knack for the laid back IDM, and Short Stories, known for more electronically-minded, but more conventional songwriter fare.

Together, they make up the imaginatively titled Populous with Short Stories. Their collaborative release, Drawn In Basic, will see physical release on Sept. 30th. In the meantime, you can check out their first leaked song, "Only Hope", at the top of the post. Unfortunately, the track is easily the most weak on the album, having listened to all of Basic in the most ideal way possible: on a car drive in the midst of a heavy, rainy storm. The ambient soundscapes and mellow vocals complemented the drops of the rain almost to the point where I couldn't figure out whether the music was the soundtrack to the storm, or vice versa. Either way, it was a great listening experience. Drawn in Basic will be reviewed more in depth come record release time, but do check out "Only Hope" at the top of the post.

(Jonathan Graef)