The Sweet Snob

One of my favorite albums last year was the Indie Rock band The Morning Benders’ album Big Echo.

Evidently, Chris Chu, the singer was born in Japan and was excited to play their first scheduled show in Japan, which was cancelled due to the whole Japanese earthquake / tsunami / nuclear disaster / are you sure this isn’t a movie / total unholy clusterfuck with tens of thousands dead.  So, they were moved to create an EP and donate the proceeds to disaster relief.

The EP was enough to get me to get off my lazy white-privilege butt and donate a little money (and buy the EP) which I have had the pleasure of listening to several times this morning.  I guess I could describe it as a great set of chillwave-style remixes of some of the songs on Big Echo, and a couple of original songs.  If you’re a huge fan of Big Echo but have pretty much listened it to death, then it’s a really welcome reprisal of these songs.

If you don’t have any idea what chillwave is, I think it’s best described as elements of downtempo-hip-hop, and spacy crystalline synthy sounds… and often gentle voices.  It’s not for everyone, but it’s good makeout music.

I haven’t been able to really digest the two new songs: Better in Blue and Little Riot, but I liked them on first listen and they fit in well with the dreamy feeling of the EP as a whole.

So, have a listen to my favorite remix so far… totally worth checking out on headphones, a remix of Cold War by the band Star Slinger, who I’ve never heard of before but really do the song right:

Then, go ahead and donate and get the album. It’s for a good cause.