Flights of Helios - Star//Crows

Are you absolutely bloody shattered and can't wait to crawl into your bed? I am. It's not even approaching duvet time yet. If you're feeling tiredfractiousmondayesque then what you need is some lovely music to make it all better and, would you Adam and believe it - I've got JUST the thing.

First of all, a speshul announcement. Over the next week or two thegeneral is running a series of posts in conjunction with PinDrop Publicity. You can have a look at their interwebspage HERE. I've been lucky enough to be sent four absolutely cracking acts to share with you - each of them very different, so hopefully there will be something to suit the musical tastes of anyone who reads these pages. Unless you only like Val Doonican. Then you're possibly a bit fucked.

Anyway, tonight I'd like to share with you the first of these acts and we're starting on a right big high, so we are.

Flights of Helios. There we are, straight in...first of all the necessaries. Here's the link to their bandcamp page so you can check their music out for yourself:

flightsofhelios.bandcamp.com/

The band describe themselves as "ambient cosmic folk drone pop" and yep, that's really pretty apt. These two songs are pretty glorious and kind of provide a nice backdrop to a chilled out evening if you've been feeling a bit brittle and worn out.

The first track "Stars" is an ethereal stonker. The vocals and harmonies work so well together - there's a nice feeling of space, of dream like trippinesss to it as well. It's nicely paced and you feel like your shoulders are going to drop when you listen to it, like you can breathe properly and shut your eyes. I often feel that on here I don't cover enough electronica - and it's a genre of music I really adore. This kind of nicely addresses that.

The second track "Crows" follows in a similar vein, of the two tracks, it's got a slightly more insistent percussive element to it, an industrial feel - kind of like a mellowed out Cabaret Voltaire. Half way through it picks up pace and turns into something a bit more unexpected, it opens out, it gets noisy, frantic and becomes a harder soundscape. A nice contrast to the opener.

Of course, you know what I'm going to say - you need to give these guys your support. If you buy this single from bandcamp they'll put the proceeds towards creating their debut album and I think that's a great thing that really should be encouraged. So, Flights of Helios, I insist you put them on your to-listen-to-list. Go go go.