>There’s probably a point, in minimalist music, where the line between ‘minimal’ and ‘mainly silence with very occasional noise’ gets blurred, bent and fiddled with. At it’s finest, this type of music brings light to your soul and aerates your mind, if that isn’t too flowery a description (it is); at worst, its open-ended nature allows for pretentiousness of the very highest caliber. John Cale has a lot to answer for.

Still, the idea of putting very little noise into a song in an age when bands are dumbly making their songs literally as LOUD as is possible, is both refreshing and an example of going against the grain – both virtues that ANBAD loves to bits.

So welcome Today’s New Band, Vic Mars, apparently from Nagoya, and apparently from the school of less=more, which pleases me no end. Vic’s songs are a little blips of sound, from a few seconds long to just a couple of minutes, glimpses of other-worldly calmness.

Tristwch is vinyl fuzz with near-discernible sounds growing organically from it. The Fountain, lush and orchestral, is still soft and absent enough to hold your thoughts. Clouds In Your Sunglasses takes a simple, sweet sound and runs with it, over and over; as smooth and slights as In is burbling and fractured.

What is great about Vic Mars‘ music is that it lets you into the mindset of the musician in a way that say, Shake It by moron-o-pop band Metro Station doesn’t. Delicious. Listen here!