STATE OF SOUND is a feature on The Sights and Sounds where we select new electronically focused bands/artists (Soundcloud/Facebook followers < 3000) and bring their best songs to light. Getting traction on blogs can be a pain in the ass if you don’t already have traction in, but we happen to think there’s a whole sea of bands waiting to be discovered. Selection for these weekly Sunday ‘Soundcasts’ is highly selective on quality only, as we want to help select the next set of blogosphere buzz bands.  So we hope you’ll share this list with your friends to give these artists the exposure they deserve and return each week for a new set.

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YNGCULT- “SIDES OF WAR & GOHM'” As the end of 2013 circled the drain in the world and in my whiskey tumbler, I shot my last swig back and made a conscious decision: I was going to go to fucking war, and YNGCULT’s ‘Sides of War’ was my rallying, anthem cry. I’d sat there that night,  and realized I was fatigued by my tendency to run into friendly fire between the battling parts of myself, critically, if not nearly mortally wounding me. My problem was my brain rode roughshod over my heart, and facing the blistering domineering nature of it all, just packed up and said ‘fuck off’. I needed to go to war against my own coldness with myself, my ability to self-combust in glorious fashion into a fiery ball as if my heart and brain were flint and steel and their rubbing would ignite a  fire in the dry tinder of me.  And so, feeling completely safe within the expansive world of YNGCULT’s beautiful synths, I declared war. And I’ve been fighting that siege since.

I didn’t know if I’d hear much from YNGCULT, as bands are apt to hit your heart and disappear these days, but recently ‘GOHM’ made it to my ears and I realized how far I’d come. When you give into life, after a period of dancing like a death spirit, it’s amazing how many of your deeply held opinions held. It’s little steps that feel the most dramatic, as you can sense in the band’s tensely constructed songs.  If ‘Sides of War’ was a tenuous first step for YNGCULT’s music into exploring themes of letting go, ‘GOHM’ feels like a deeply real dive into the ‘seduction of life’,  replete with all the swirling moments of being simultaneously ‘lost and found’. You can practically feel your guts shake in the anticipation of it all.  YNGCULT is a must-listen band to any fan of dark, icy synthpop.
Follow YNGCULT on Facebook and Soundcloud.

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PAPERTWIN- “ALKALINE & ARCO” ‘The black sea, it changed me’ Those moments when you can never go back. I don’t think you always recognize them, but there are those minutes that feel like minutiae in the moment but come back to be tremendous turning points. Maybe if I’d stayed asleep instead of letting him in at 4am.  If I hadn’t gone to that party I didn’t know anyone at. If only I’d asked them what they gave me.  Still, once you’ve been submersed in those moments, those emotions,  there is as the cliche fucks with us: no going back.  And the inconceivability of return leaves your mind not even a shred of hope to tread backwards, so you just try to swim out of the legacies of these moments. Still crawling onto  your new land, these feelings color your interactions with a palpable  swirling loss and a hopeful grab to reconstruct all the pieces that fell apart little earthquake by little aftershock.

That intensity, that dichotomy of old and new life, is what Papertwin power punch you with on ‘Alkaline’ and ‘Arco’. Still, it doesn’t deluge you, instead slowly lapping you to shore like a lifeguard. Papertwin is a criminally underheard band. Like an amalgam of Thieves Like Us, Chromatics and Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, they corner the market on those nighttimes cityscape anthems that you just need in order to calm the qualm of darkness shouts within your mind.

Follow Papertwin on Facebook / Soundcloud.

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WONDERFUL HUMANS- “EDGE OF THE NIGHT” So, we”ve on this here STATE OF SOUND  finally danced on our busted soul legs, breathing through water logged lungs our way out of the darkness. Well, sort of. We’re not going to make it to the “Edge Of The Night” alone, and I don’t think they’re going to settle with carrying broken pieces of you into the maelstrom of their love that will get you there. Well, maybe they’re masochistic, but they’re still wonderful humans nonetheless. Who are these people? Those that have seen you around, can bore into that steel box of a heart you have, and still be pulled by your allure. Not because you’re dark and mysterious, or because tragedy gets them off, but because they know the journey through the rest of the night can be a bombastic, high-flying, high-sounding launch into the boundaries of fuck knows where. If only you’re the kind of person that will put trust in others that immediately begin leaving marks on your life, from the moment they meet you, leaving lipstick on your cigarette. Any fans of Little Daylight should check out Wonderful Humans. So go and:

Follow Wonderful Humans on Soundcloud / Facebook.

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