Neu Gems

: GEMS
Based: Washington DC
Listen: Soundcloud.com/gems-band
Similar to: Howling Bells, Beach House

Try holing yourself up in a studio and emerging with a series of introductory tracks as good as GEMS’ initial efforts. You can read all the studio manuals you want, raid the library for every production trick in the book. That doesn’t mean you’ll write tracks as fully realised as ‘Void Moon’, ‘Heavy Lines’ or ‘Golden Years’.

The remarkable thing about GEMS’ is this Washington DC duo are labelling the latter two pieces as ‘demos’. They spent time this past summer in a beach house on the Outer Banks. Cutting off all ties can often bring clarity. Turning off Twitter, logging out of email and even putting the phone on silent: Those actions are often all that’s required to spur on creativity. But a whole month in isolation can drive you insane. Fortunately for GEMS they returned with not only an acceptable level of sanity, but also a divine collection of songs; eye-opening and wondrous.