Sinking Heart, by Minitonka

Sinking Heart

by Minitonka

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Gargantua, Witch House 66, Head-Up Displays, Ghosts, Sinking Heart, The New Crossroads, Slurred Words, Volume 2: Detrimental Connotations, the lore of place, and 9 more. , and , .

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	1.	A Distant Taste 06:02
	2.	Key Fool 04:32
	3.	Anticipatory Nostalgia (The Hangout) 03:46
	4.	Rise and Shine 04:44

about

Outré Slacker Rock from Reykjavik, Iceland

February 2022
12” record, audio cassette, and digital
dogtunnelrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sinking-heart
Dog Tunnel Records, London (UK)

Sinking Heart
by Minitonka

This enigmatic debut from Icelandic Indie-folk duo Minitonka is ‘mostly about depression’, admits singer Van Sveins, ‘but in a dark humour way’. ‘It’s nostalgic self-help, for when things go so bad you wet yourself… but full of hope!’ As anyone familiar with Iceland’s biggest international hit film will know, slacker culture is king here, and resonances of ‘101 Reykjavik’ abound in this compelling debut. The overall tone is a languid slacker rock sound, but at the odder and more experimental fringes of the scene.

Rise and Shine opts for the left-field option of slow march beats in a 3/4-waltz tempo underlying a grungy bass and electric organ melody, before the whole vibe is suddenly transformed as great slabs of synth lurch out of the track, as cool and vast as an Icelandic glacier. ‘Don’t you wish you could switch bodies…’, mumbles a catatonic Sveins, by way of explanation, ‘and pretend to be someone that functions normally?’

The curiously titled Anticipatory Nostalgia (The Hangout) sets a sweet and dreamy acoustic mood that trawls the yearning sensations of a lazy, blissed out evening, ‘We turn around and watch the sun go down. While we’re sitting on the doorstep. Just hanging around’.

A Distant Taste introduces a tiny ancient drum machine and a pallet of compressed hard synthesized instruments for a dislocated and repetitive mood. Iceland is a place of wild beauty and soaring landscapes, but downtown Reykjavik can be a slow grind for some residents, a claustrophobic sameness exacerbated by the small population and given a dream-like unreality by the endless bright-light daytimes of summer and the rare glimpses of sun that break up the long dark winters.

Key Fool is another upbeat number, and the most chart-friendly of the selection, musically closer to the familiar languid slacker rock sound, and lyrically intriguing. Before we can quite fathom this one there comes another outré move as the track softens into a ‘50s style backing chorus, cooing ‘bam-bom, bam-bom, bam-bom’, and a drawling closer, ‘I saw you, in Da Tai Oeng Fly. Go and get a trip to Hawaii, get high … it ain’t my business. It ain’t my problem’.

The band
Van Sveins recalls his early life in Iceland, a time of ‘running wild’ with step-cousin (and now bandmate) Garðar Ingi Jakobson. The pair spent the volcanic island’s lurching seasons ‘skating and setting stuff on fire’, and later a year in Oslo ‘working in fast food joints’. Their ambitions for rock stardom are refreshingly modest ‘to get played on WFMU’, and to channel their outsider urges into music. Sveins is also in post-production for his own first short film.

The recording
Recorded to analogue tape in Jakobson’s basement studio and mixed and mastered in Dog Tunnel’s fully analogue London studio, Sinking Heart makes full use of vintage effects, including an echo voice treatment and plate reverb that were a hallmark of the original slacker rock sound. Dog Tunnel’s physical releases are mastered in-house to cassette and 12” discs (cut on Dog Tunnel’s own valve-driven, studio-quality RCA lathe from the rock n’ roll-era), and are also available for digital streaming and download.

Order from:
dogtunnelrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sinking-heart

Contact details
Dog Tunnel Records - for interviews, downloads or hosted streams, plus press quality photos, and all inquiries concerning this release.
twitter.com/dog_tunnel
dan@dog-tunnel.uk

credits

released February 10, 2022

license

about

Dog Tunnel Records London, UK

Analogue recording and production in SE1, London, UK.

Handmade records, cut on an RCA 70C lathe from the 1940s.

If you want to release with us get in touch, all genres considered, but only projects we like accepted. ... more