new kelley polar? oh me oh my.

2008 is set to be an even better year for good music than 2007, dear reader. i know it sounds slightly implausible, but i’m quite sure it’s going to be the musical equivalent of a grande annee viticole. so you want proof? okay.

• new magnetic fields, distortion, out next week. and yes, it’s good.
• new beach house, devotion, out in a month or so. it’s painstakingly gorgeous and expansive.
• new stereolab, out sometime this year. hey, that’s a major event right? (riiight.) laetitia sadier’s side project monade will also come up with a new album, monstre cosmic, soonish.
• new of montreal, skeletal lamping, out in fall.
• new broadcast, probably out in fall.
• new my bloody valentine, quite possibly, although you never know with that fat pillpopper shields and his demonic hordes of pitch-perfect shoegaze.
• new hot chip, made in the dark, out in february, or at least i think so. infectuous synth pads galore!

AND. kelley polar, my favourite revelation of 2005 (check love songs of the hanging gardens out if you haven’t already), is returning in march with yet another set of staggering, scintillant space disco symphonies, seductively titled i need you to hold on while the sky is falling. whoooa!

via fact magazine:

polar about the new album:

i wanted it to be like the audio equivalent of one of those mythical sci-fi movies where there are hundreds of special effects shots per minute, juicy and transporting. … much of the time i am singing like i am in some psychotic space musical.

polar about his classical ensemble, the kelley polar quartet:

siggi got deported back to iceland, i can’t say why because of the pending legal stuff, and max got a job with the northern sinfonia over there in england as principal bassist, and now he has a serious alcohol problem. elise suffered a crisis of conscience which was well-deserved, and joined the seminary permanently.

who said classical musicians weren’t able to rock? okay, one last one: polar about his bandmate claire de lune:

she was originally from alsace, i believe, but the rest of her family disappeared during a rather ill-advised camping expedition in late 70s algeria. she was mostly raised by bedouins in the tassili n’ajjer, until one night, around a desert campfire, she was discovered by a visiting raï singer and brought back to paris…but the big city was too much of a culture shock, and so she had a nervous breakdown, convinced she was a refugee from the moon, born of a long-forgotten lunar aristocracy.

so, i’m officially excited about new releases now. none of the above-mentioned indie mammoths could achieve what kelley ‘one ten-track album’ polar just pulled off. wheeee!

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in other news, i’m going ever so slightly bonkers about my classical chinese and korean exams. to quote stephin merritt: should i freak out/should i seek out/something i could keep? (and concentrate on religion and chinese philosophy?) quite possibly the case, stephin dear.