When you do your end of year lists, or take stock in what releases you enjoyed during the course of the year, you realize that you missed a boatload of albums and trying to rank albums is kind of foolish based on the notion that it’s humanly impossible to listen to every record that was released in the year without losing your sanity. Hello Seahorse! hail from the burgeoning scene in Mexico City (aka Chilangolandia) and based on the recommendation from a friend, I’ve been obsessing over what sounds like the Spanish equivalent of Metric, but with more fiery passion and beats borrowed from OMD . Hello Seahorse!’s “Bestia” was released last year by Nacional Records last year and I posted a remix done by Julieta Venegas. I didn’t think much of it at the time and dismissed the band because I hadn’t listened to the original version. Huge mistake! Several months later, and multiple spins, the album resonates stronger with each listen. Their strong-suit comes on the lower tempo songs where vocalist Lo Blondo (AKA Vanil’la Face and Dnis) is able to accentuate her soft voice over the plush synth stylings from Oro de Neta. You can purchase their album here and according to their Twitter page, the group is hard at work on their followup album!
It amazes me how much bands like Hello Seahorse were ignored by the majority of blogs and online music publications!
The album was in Spanish, and typically those get ignored by 90% of the blogosphere .