Weed & Dolphins latest song (toke?) "High" might have you craving Burgers

AP Track Review

From Wikipedia:

Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, formerly known by its Russian name Byelorussia or Belorussia, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe bordered by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital and most populous city is Minsk. Wikipedia

Capital: Minsk

Population: 9.508 million (2017) World Bank

President: Alexander Lukashenko

Plan a trip

Belarus travel guide

14 h 50 min flight

Points of interest: Mir Castle Complex, Nesvizh Radziwiłł Castle, and Weed & Dolphins

Oh yes, I wanted to start off this track review with some pertinent / basic facts about Belarus because I, am personally, woefully, inadequate when it comes to geography and it is nothing to be ashamed of (maybe a little). American Pancake (compared to other blogs) may consistently pay attention to music from every far corner and crevice of the globe and, damn, I guess I am proud of that fact. The band Weed & Dophins are, in fact, based out of Balarus and besides having an exquisitely trippy name they do have that sound, that sound that has come to be known as the "Burger Records" sound, not because the now iconic OC label invented the sound but because they surely cultivated it and made it more of a national, globally thing. I don't think that anyone would dispute that fact and as much as Dolphins might be part of that thing, surely California weed is definitely part of that thing. 

The song High catapults forth with the kind of yelpy, driving psyche post punk sound that brings to minds bands like The Oh Sees, the Cosmonauts, New Candys and The Vacant Lots with a sense of pure intoxicated lunacy stirred in as well. It is all fun and in the pop sense, dangerous, which is always a good thing.  

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Robb Donker

THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

A few years ago a bunch of friends climbed into a local canalization system to have some fun, drink beers and make photos. But what they found deep in the tunnels turned their whole lives inside out and changed all their plans. To explain their strange behaviour and their sudden regular disappearances from home they teamed up in a band under the name Weed & Dolphins and started to rehearse as a live act for their vocalist’s one-man-band home project.

In 2016 they released a bunch of their early singles such as ‘Like that’, ‘Secrets’, ‘Seaside’ on vk.com and started getting themselves into local gigs while reaching their first international audience through Instagram. In the beginning of 2017 the project dropped it’s debut LP – ‘Islandkid cassette’. The album was released on cassettes and tagged as ‘cloud-punk’ by Belarusian biggest art and music magazine 34mag. ‘Islandkid cassette’ summed up the sound and the aesthetics of Weed & Dolphins music of that period. It was a compilation of home recorded playful pop songs with gloomy lyrics behind childish guitar melodies and freaky synths. The production on the album was based on clashing the 80-90’s post-punk/grunge type arrangements with chopped-n-screwed rap refrains, monotonous spoken word verses and trippy vocal melodies.

The independent Belarusian music guide Experty.by described it as “something between sequenced freak-punk of Atom and His Package and lazy dream-pop of Beach Fossils”. Due to the DIY way of releasing the album and lack of promotion, major blog appearances and management ‘Islandkid cassette’ didn’t get much international attention as a record. At the same time putting the album on cassette tapes allowed to spread it among retro DIY aesthetic lovers, while positioning the project as an active live band capable of bringing the actual album sound on stage gave Weed & Dolphins a chance to start getting on shows and events outside their home country.

In late 2017 and during 2018 W&D did a number of gigs and festivals in Russia, Ukraine, Slovenia, Serbia, Estonia, Lithuania and Hungary with appearances at Ment Ljubljana, What’s next in Music?, Budapest Showcase Hub. In January 2019 Weed & Dolphins performed two showcases at Eurosonic Noorderslag in Groningen, Netherlands.