Being a former member of Black Dice and hanging out with DFA dudes is not exactly a prerequisite to make the kind of strong, straightforward folk that Sebastian Blanck makes—but he's doing it, so why question it? It's the kind of stuff that's timeless. There's nothing here that couldn't have been done in the last thirty years, but no one did it. Instead it just sounds right. A cursory look at his website (and, um, also ours) shows that Blanck seems to enjoy spending lots of time near water playing his guitar and documenting the meticulous work that goes into completing his songs. Again, just seems like the right move for this dude. But these demos (we only know they are demos because that's how they're labeled), they sound fully formed to us—you can hear every guitar string being touched on "Empire of the Free" and there are angelic backing voices rising out of nowhere on "Black Sanded Beach." If these are demos, our only thought is that Blanck is going to pull the ultimate prank and the final versions will be harsh noise. Until that happens (it will never happen) we're going to put these on repeat and get psyched for fire pits and frozen over lakes.
Download: Sebastian Blanck, "Empire of the Free"
Download: Sebastian Blanck, "Black Sanded Beach"