Galapaghost – Our Lost Generation EP
self-released 2009
[tags: folk, indie folk, indie rock, ukulele, ep, 2009]
Listen while reading:
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Ever heard of ukel-indie rock? Me neither. But Casey Chandler from New York, recording under the moniker Galapaghost, just describes his own music as being ukel-indie rock. You guess it, the main reason for this is the inclusion of the ukulele. But I don’t want to discuss if the term is very usefull, because I will still refer to the music as indie folk with indie pop/rock influences.
Casey just finished recording his first EP, Our Lost Generation, and the result is nothing to sneeze at. The title track is a blend of typically folk characteristics, indie folk like vocals and indie rock like electric guitar play. The whole song is straight forward even though the vocals are more reserved and calm. You can call this specific sound one half of the EP including the mentioned title track and Smile. On the other hand you got tunes like Goodnight Moon and Virginia that are more contemporary folk/indie folk tracks with spare instrumentation and less indie flavor. The remaining two songs You’re All I Need and Summer Daze are somewhere in the middle of this but maybe a bit more attracted to the calm side of the release.
What I really like about Casey’s music is his voice that really sounds unique and has a great range of expressing different feelings and timbres. In combination with the ukulele, the sound of Galapaghost is indeed special and not the same as everything else. And even I, who don’t like changes or experiments, think the addition of the ukulele to indie folk/indie pop/rock is something profitable that adds a nice new quality to this kind of music. But what I think is not the best addition to music, are the noise parts as well as the drum rhythms in Smile, because the strength of Galapaghost clearly lies in the calm ukulele driven indie folk genre and not so much in the Smile like indie rock/pop tracks.
If you like the music of Galapaghost and you want the mp3s or a physical copy, you have to e-mail Casey personally, because the release is not available anywhere else at the moment. To contact him just use Galapaghost’s MySpace site.
[...] you remember Galapaghost? We wrote about his debut EP Our Lost Generation earlier (click here to read it) and a few days ago he contacted me again and submitted his new EP called Neptunes. I think it save [...]