San Diego quintet For The Win have seamlessly blended harmonic vocals and soaring, explosive instrumentals, in their upcoming album, Heavy Thoughts. The band’s second full-length will be released on April 14th via Artery Recordings. Teaming up with producers Sebastian Rizo and Emmy-nominated Brian Grider, For The Win have written an emotionally raw album, complete with booming vocals and melodic, yet heavy, instrumentalism. Drawing from recent life experiences and years of touring, the band reflects upon the tumultuous nature of life and relationships of all sorts.

After releasing their debut album More Than You Know in 2014, the band toured the world with bands like Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, I See Stars, A Skylit Drive, A Loss For Words, No Bragging Rights, Abandoned By Bears, Conveyer, Being As An Ocean, and Capsize.

Two years since their last release and over 200k Spotify plays later, For The Win recently released their singles ‘Crash and Burn’ and ‘Dancing Shoes’, the band’s strongest and most personal songs yet.

Cotton Wolf are the union of Welsh super producer Llion Robertson and classically-trained composer Seb Goldfinch. They release their debut nine-track album Life In Analogue  on 28th April through Cardiff label Bubblewrap Collective both digitally and on vinyl. This follows the critical success of their three remarkable EPs, Moxa, Cloud City and Catapelt. The pair’s return comes after two years of painstaking studio preparation.

With Life In Analogue, Cottonwolf have forged “a symphony to the conflicted love of man and machine absorbed by digitisation and a soundtrack to modern living. Actively resisting the threat of digital post-production techniques that risk deleting human presence from music entirely, Life In Analogue seeks to outlive modern trends by setting warm, human hands upon the cold levers of contemporary, electronic music.”

Cotton Wolf’s use of the Welsh language is unapologetic and ‘Lliwiau’ (translation: Colours) employs an entirely Welsh vocal, which settles in at centre stage. All around the breathless, yet commanding vocal are strokes of scant, flickering instrumentation that brings a sense of cavernous depth to the music and fully reveals the duo’s mastery of deft minimalism.

The title track, ‘Life In Analogue’ is warped, pulsing and riven with subtle motifs that denote it as a track central to the record. Familiar touch points exist in a simple, recurring eight-note melody, which could be lifted from a blueprint used by electro pop pioneers of the ‘70s and ‘80s, a vital element of what pushed machine music into the mainstream.

Have a listen for yourself here