Hi ho, Shamble the Frog here!
Wakka Wakka!
Other catchphrase!
I’m back, and with a whole new bag of Shamble-itis to cough all over you. Get your hyper-Shamblic needles ready, prepare a dose of Pod-ium nitrate, and let Doctor Havelock bend you over and have a good look at what he’s dealing with.
Actually, full disclosure – I’m a bit ill. My face is full of liquid, my arms have stopped working and I’ve found myself driven into an insatiable rage by the blue shells in Mario Kart Wii (we’ve just got ours set up again for some three-player dukin’ with James, who you may remember from previous episodes…)
As a result I’m in need of some serious aural healing. Where best to turn other than the well-perfumed name of Parsley* Sound?
…
Well they’re not at the tip of everyone’s tongues, admittedly, but they’re bloody wonderful. Loosely described as a ‘psych-pop duo’ from London, Parsley Sound – aka Preston Mead and Danny Sargassa – released their debut album, Parsley Sounds in 2003. It’s a layered, lo-fi, dreamy treat, with hidden samples littered around like little musical nuggets to discover.
Much like some of my other heroes The Avalanches or Lemon Jelly, the twosome have an amazing ear for pairing disparate and warped snippets of other songs, combined with their own instrumental lines and often pitch-shifted vocals. You can hear this at play beautifully in one of their highlights, ‘Twilight Mushroom’, which was the first of theirs I was introduced to via the lovely radio medium of Lauren Laverne and 6Music. A chance encounter on one of her late weekday morning indie-a-thons, and I was hooked – to the point when I had to religiously track down the band in question. I fell in love with the rest of the album and its hushed, fuzzy but ever-so-precise vibe, as heard on another track from the album, ‘Platonic Rate’.
Unfortunately, the guys don’t seem to do much by the way of new music any more. A new LP called Picnic on Mars materialised on Soundcloud almost 10 years after Parsley Sound’s first was released, published without the aid of a label. Their Facebook page is sporadically updated, there’s no website to look at and their only appearances online recently has been on Caribou’s 1000-song playlist entitled ‘a musical history of my life’.
Anyway, Shamblechums, for you today I present the opener to Parsley Sounds, instructively called ‘Ease Yourself and Glide’. If you’re having a day you’d like to get away from, a week from which you’d like a quick sojourn, or just a five minute day-kip, pop it on, ease yourself and, for goodness sake, glide as much as you can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlrXFk6RjDk
Many loves, hugs and other drugs,
Dr Laurence Havelock, MD.
*if any Shamblefans appreciate this video link then let me know, I would like to be your friend.
