Split

Bird of the Year and Raccoon Rally arrogate themselves - quite rightly! - to smash familiar split-listening habits by jumbling up their dreamy, eyeclose-inducing and road trip-provoking songs. Thereby they create a varied selection of harmonically complementary songs. While Bird of the Year, consisting of Thomas Baumgartner, Mario Zangl und Nora Köhler, indeed like to set a foot in noisy, shoegazy effect-jungles, Raccoon Rally, that is solo composer Tom Gal, enchants with an extra dose of fluffiness over his melancholic melodies. On their Split LP, they marvellously manage the balancing act between tranquil gloom and happy, peppy niceness.
Both bands have the ambition, on stage as well as on vinyl, to sound as true as possible. For the album, they held things in DIY manner, by putting their oar in every step from recording to the artwork. The outcome is a hi-heart lo-fi album, making you close your eyes, sway to and fro and wallow in dreams.