Midwinter plains

Long-distance skiing:
cutting new tracks, exhaustion.
Also, elation.

The midsummer heat brings forth nostalgia for coolth and winter light. Last year I posted about Boreal Network's track Cloud Map, but turning down the brightness seems key to long term resonance. As a brief look at my Last.fm profile confirms, another track from Aviation Weather turned out to be the long term stayer. Cole Johnson has been rather prolific since this album. I mentioned Bikehigh USA 2 a while back, a new EP Phase With The Moon is in the pipeline, and there are four other releases in between! If you liked Paramnesic's Last Breath or The Night Before, this lives in the same nostalgica territory.

Boreal Network: Wetland

Dazzled by sunlight

It's not complicated: dance!
Do it now, do it.

Oxford's Space Heroes of the People tap into the Soviet-nostalgia of their name. Track names such as "Cosmodrome", "Motorway to Moscow", and "Steam Driven" evoke a slightly rusty but perfectly functional sort of proto-steampunk. The link between Soviet tech and the glories of the freewheeling DIY spirit was perhaps first made in the English language by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson in their 1983 story "Red Star, Winter Orbit". (Let's not worry here about the less glorious aspects of living in such a society.)

On this deeply happy track from the 2007 EP "Motorway to Moscow", minimal electronica meets New Romantic pop sensibilities. The hooks are simpler than most lullabies, and the approach is certainly sparser than others fishing in the same waters, such as MGMT. The strong use of repetition hammers home the singalong tune. This skips us right past irritation and over into fascination with the blocks of sound from which the song is constructed. In low earth orbit, you must dance with Colonel Korolev!
Space Heroes of the People: Shiny Shiny