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Photo-Interview #30: Jeshua

Poule d’Or’s prized photo-interview series celebrates its 30th edition today! Jeshua here out of Glasgow up in Scotland has been busy making some great music for years, combining warm and full riffs with a healthy dose of dreamy reverb. He released a wonderful debut album in 2021 and now announced new material for this calendar year.

The first single is cautiously titled Innocent and provides a neat companion to both evening walks and morning routines this time of the year, streamlining and developing his sound. Now, we here at Team Poule don’t know anything about the making of music or the structures and processes of songwriting, but this new track sounds absolutely marvelous, so pull out the proper headphones for this one.

You can find the track on the official Team Poule Spotify playlist and also more conveniently attached below. So hit play, and dive into the visual worlds of Jeshua.

Also – if you happen to be in the Glasgow metropolitan area on May 8, catch him live at Audio Glasgow in support of James Walsh of Starsailor.

Where did it all begin? [continue reading…]

If you love living dangerously, both on and off the punky dancefloor, while profiting of some prime Canadian collateral, this might be something for you. Montreal’s own La Sécurité offer a nuanced brand of indie rock vibes while staying close (and safe) to the neat and crisp disco extravaganzas. The group released a cute raw album titled Stay Safe last summer via Mothland and are busy touring this side of the Atlantic, with Berlin, Hamburg, London, Manchester, Paris, Brussels, and so on, this April through June – the list does not end.

Team Poule luckily has got two pairs of tickets for their Hamburg gig at Goldener Salon, on the 2nd of May. All you need to do to win a pair, is send an email stating your name to win-big@pouledor.com before Tuesday, April 30, 12 pm CET sharp. It also doesn’t hurt to follow Team Poule on Instagram. The winners will be drawn at random and notified immediately.

 

Main man and certified electrician Flavien Berger is finally taking his luscious tunes on the road again – playing Hamburg and Berlin next month. After two albums Léviathan and Contre-Temps, he released the final part of his trilogy of electrically fused singer songwriter pop last fall: Dans cent ans. It was however dans this an that he released yet another sweet collection of songs that meander quite freely under the loose title contrebande 02 – le disque de l’été, off which the phenomenal Beta is attached below.

So, get ready for an eclectic show, when he plays Hamburg’s Bahnhof Pauli on Monday April 8, and Columbia Theater in Berlin, April 9. Team Poule has got its plumy extremities on two pairs of tickets for the occasions, with a face value of 27 euros each, no less. All you need to do to win a pair of those, is send an email stating your name and desired location to win-big@pouledor.com before Friday, April 5, 12 pm CET sharp.

It also doesn’t hurt to follow Team Poule on Instagram. The winners will be drawn at random and notified immediately.

Photo credit above go to Inès Ziouna and Inès only.

At some point in your extended lifetime as a music blog, you think you have heard it all, you are Neo in the Matrix, you know what’s coming next. And then boom a group like YĪN YĪN came along, in 2019, by way of Maastricht in the Netherlands, and challenge your very point of view, showing you how little and small your perceived window into the world really is.

The quartet produces a wild and juicy mix of all sorts of influences across the globe, from Japanese folk to Indonesian psychedelic, East African percussion and Tuareg guitars. They pick up whatever they can use, and prism it together into a fresh, new chunk of original sounds. YĪN YĪN just released their brilliant third studio album Mount Matsu and are currently touring the most relevant parts of Europe.

This week they pass through Germany, playing Leipzig on Tuesday March 12, Berlin on Wednesday March 13, Hamburg on Thursday March 14 before closing it all in Cologne (15) and Mannheim (16). Attached below is the phenomenal single Tokyo Disko. The album Mount Matsu is out on Glitterbeat Records, now.

Title photo by Jonas Loelmann, and Jonas Loelmann only.

In the early days of this website, chillwave was the genre of the moment and a co-founder and master of this movement is Brothertiger right here. With more than a decade of musical production experience under his drum pads and a Team Poule supporter from day one, it is great to learn that he and the fine folks over at Bandwerk Music have strung together an impressive line of shows in the UK and EU, starting at the end of January.

Brothertiger released a fine self-titled album at the end of 2022 that sounds both 2009 and 2024 at the same time. A smooth, timeless piece of recording that connects both old and new. Find the marvellous track Arizona attached below.

The tour will kick off in Edinburgh as he starts to make his way through London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin and many many more. Find all dates, nicely listed in order of appearance, here.

The unstoppable growth of streaming services continues to put the beloved music release format of the album at risk of extinction. And maybe it’s time to re-think what a collection of songs can be or want to be or who actually wants to listen to a full album, from first to last song. But quoting the genius who is Rick Rubin: the audience comes last. And so we here at Poule headquarters keep staying true to ourselves in celebrating those artists with a desire to release a coherent collection of songs, with a particular track listing and arch – thereby finding their audience in Team Poule.

The popular year-end lists of 2023 included a lot of new favorites, from Lana del Rey, El Michels Affair & Black Thought, Youth Lagoon, Sufjan Stevens, Sofia Kourtesis, Animal Collective, PAINT, the road trip album by billy woods / Kenny Segal, Nourished by Time‘s great debut, and of course that Andre 3000 record we did not know we needed, same goes for Fontaines DC’s Grian Chatten‘s solo debut.

There were still a few more records that did not make the great best-of-lists elsewhere that still deserve a shout as they left a lasting impression and change of perspective on our 2023 and will surely continue to shine. In no particular order:

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