Video Of The Day SKI SAIGON
The greatest news of the week to put a smile on the faces of all the most refined indie-pop music lovers is the brand new entry from the French independent label, based in Brest, Too Good To Be True, built on the ashes of the beloved and regretted beko disques.
The Breton label, between 2011 and 2018, delivered several little precious gems with an endearing and melodic sound that ranged between the most dreamy and introspective 80s new wave /post-punk, Sarah Records-tinged 90s jangly hazy melancholic pastels, sunburnt summery dream-pop and sophisticated bright electropop.
The first release, due out March 4, 2021, will be the debut album, “Sees the Albatross”, by London-based indie pop /dream pop band Ski Saigon, featuring former members of former Beko affiliated Mooncreatures, a full-length LP and a couple of singles around 2014-15.
When sailors see albatrosses as they sail the Great South seas, it is usually interpreted as a sign of good fortune. On their debut album “Sees the Albatross”, the band imagines polar exploration, dreams of Himalayan peaks, deep waters and turquoise seas. Ski Saigon creates a delightful, slightly retro, jangly universe that recalls the heyday of the international pop in the 1980s and 1990s. We are reminded of those bands inspired by Young Marble Giants or the misunderstood outsiders at Sarah Records.
The group’s first single, titled “It’s Already Tomorrow”, following the 2016’s 6-track “Brings the Storm Cloud EP”, via Art is Hard Records, is accompanied by a vintage DIY music video.
A foreboding airy synth haze looms over sparkling guitar strings glistening and lingering hypnotically, amid low throbbing bass lines and steady off-tempo beats, forming surreal atmospheres of nostalgia and romance around aloof spoken-word vocals, delivering an enigmatic narrative, while ominous, authoritarian voice samples evoke paranoid fear.
Esoteric lyrics reference the natural elements of lighting, the sea, and a star to map an abstract journey encrypted in metaphysical metaphors and subconscious dreams.
Color filters and negative light photography draw unseen dimensions across footage of natural elements to create an eerie sense of sinister deception and darkness. Ominous editing techniques convince the mind’s eye of imagination that hidden danger lurks amid a bustling cityscape, tropical foliage, and snow-peaked mountains in the form of shape-shifting faces, desiccated treetops, and an icy avalanche while a vintage map of Europa-Asia injects creepy smoke clouds with menacing memories left dangling like tattered flags.
Ski Saigon’s debut album “Sees the Albatross” is due to be released on March 4, 2021. It can now be preordered on CD + 8-page booklet printed in risography by Super Banco, Brest and on Digital [TooGood01 / I Éditions Autonomes]
Ski Saigon’s debut album “Sees the Albatross” is due to be released on March 4, 2021. It can now be preordered on CD + 8-page booklet printed in risograph by Super Banco, Brest and on Digital via Too Good To Be True Bandcamp.
Keep up with Ski Saigon / Too Good To Be True:
