SELON RECLINER

Artist Information

Biography

Building on the low-lit interior sounds of their 2006 debut REST ROOM, Selon Recliner have just released their 2nd album, THE ORCHID DOOR. Working from scratch with Producer Dave Holmes the band have explored a steeper landscape, exiting the REST ROOM & wandering the exteriors of their imaginations.

The Orchid Door gets it's first review...

The second album from Auckland band Selon Recliner is an atmospheric and sparse experience – Portishead meets The Straw People is the sound, with dark and brooding mood. Belinda Bradley’s vocals are smooth and complimented with plenty of lush harmonies. The album is the perfect soundtrack for not being in a hurry, and the songs blend perfectly into one another. The subtle instrumentation paints a cloudy canvas for the vocals to weave their way across. Swan is a dramatic slice of music fit for a movie with Celtic influenced strings. Walk Like That wakes things up with an angry & hypnotic organ line that pushes things into an entirely different space with a faster driving tempo. The drums & bass enter the forefront only occasionally, and never at the expense of the dynamics, keeping things well restrained throughout. The production is slick and for the genre they sit in, this is an international quality recording with class.
****
Stu Edwards
Waikato Times
Music Channels







Selon Recliner formed in 2004 to create music that leant towards the cinematic & evocative. A band packed with song writing & visual arts talent, it was a cocktail waiting to be mixed, a lounge suite of crushed velvet sound waiting to be slept on.

A few seasons passed as songs & demos piled up on the sideboard, and the songs were encouraged out in the form of live show with great flourish. Steady recording took the band underground during the winter of 2005; they emerged again with the release of their debut album REST ROOM in April 2006. It was received enthusiastically with the album being dubbed “Moody, Dark Pop” by reviewers. It collected a couple of international awards, a handful of nominations, charted on a swag of College Radio stations in North America, and picked up licensing deals to MTV, USA along with several other American Production Networks. The sofa had been slept on and the REST ROOM had exhausted its occupancy… it was time to create another space… THE ORCHID DOOR.

Instrumentation

Lead vox - Belinda Bradley

Guitars – Guy Wishart

Guitars - Roy Godwin

Backing vox – Darlene Te Young

Electronica – Perry Bradley

Bass – Vernon Rive

Drums – Michael Te Young

Discography

REST ROOM (full length album)
DEBUT ALBUM: REST ROOM, released May 2006
Radio play, New Zealand/ North America/ Canadian college radio. North American Underground Radio. Web radio play, podcasts etc. 2 Music vids on national
music TV New Zealand.

THE ORCHID DOOR
Released April 27 2009. Physical release in new Zealand, Digital release Worldwide.
First single "Lonely Girl", Student radio airplay around NZ.
Lonely Girl Video airplay on 3 NZ TV Music Stations.
Lonely Girl Video selected to air on Music Mix USA .
2nd single "Swan" radio play Student radio around NZ.
"Swan" Video completed and about to be released to NZ Music TV.

Links

• Selon Recliner Official Website
• Selon Recliner @ myspace

Audio

• Swan
  Listen  
• Fish Pond
  Listen  
• Outside
  Listen  
• Lonely Girl
  Listen  
• before You Fall
  Listen  
• Walk Like That
  Listen  
• Everyone Moves Away
  Listen  
• Ugly
  Listen  
• Single File
  Listen  
• If I Called You Now
  Listen  
• Firebird
  Listen  
• Keeps Getting Better
  Listen  

Lyrics

• Before You Fall
• Single File
• Ugly
• Makes no sense
• This Was For You
• Want to Love You
• Lonely Girl
• Lonely Girl
• Swan

Video

Swan

Photo Gallery

Press

• MUSIC FIT FOR A MOVIE [+ Show ]
  

  The second album from Auckland band Selon Recliner is an atmospheric and sparse experience – Portish...The second album from Auckland band Selon Recliner is an atmospheric and sparse experience – Portishead meets The Straw People is the sound, with dark and brooding mood. Belinda Bradley’s vocals are smooth and complimented with plenty of lush harmonies. The album is the perfect soundtrack for not being in a hurry, and the songs blend perfectly into one another. The subtle instrumentation paints a cloudy canvas for the vocals to weave their way across. Swan is a dramatic slice of music fit for a movie with Celtic influenced strings. Walk Like That wakes things up with an angry & hypnotic organ line that pushes things into an entirely different space with a faster driving tempo. The drums & bass enter the forefront only occasionally, and never at the expense of the dynamics, keeping things well restrained throughout. The production is slick and for the genre they sit in, this is an international quality recording with class.
  ****
  Stu Edwards
  Waikato Times
  Music Channels

• LOVE & NO REGRETS [+ Show ]
  

  Recliner Rest Room Album Review © Danny Brown suite 101 Apr 19, 2007 With "Rest Room", New ...Recliner
  Rest Room Album Review
  © Danny Brown
  suite 101
  Apr 19, 2007
  
  
  With "Rest Room", New Zealand indie band Recliner offer a hypnotic mix of sombre tones and lighter musical interludes that seduces on first listen and doesn't let go.
  
  Love And No Regrets
  The sign of a good album is that you can happily listen to it again; the sign of a great album is that it comes to an end all too soon, and you immediately want to listen to it again. With Rest Room, New Zealand band Recliner have given us an album that unequivocally falls into the latter camp.
  With a hint of Shakespeare's Sister mixed with how Marilyn Manson might sound if he sung a lullaby, Rest Room is a collection of dark, moodily atmospheric songs that dig deep into your psyche without you even realising it – then when you do, it's too late; you're already hooked.
  Opening track Ugly (He Says That He Loves You) is a prime example of what Recliner is all about. A bitter love song with no irony whatsoever, it's a slow-burning respite to a rival in love, with almost whispered vocals from Belinda. So venomous is the attack on her rival, you wonder how this incandescently beautiful singer can possess such vitriol.
  Finding Beauty In Destruction
  There's a touch of classic Kate Bush on next track Single File, with its breathy vocals and backing soft howls. This is impressive stuff; dark, yet melodic, almost like love itself – one minute wonderful, the next lying all around you in tatters, and a contrast that Recliner bring to each song on this album.
  Indeed, never have a band and an album name been so apt – there's such a relaxing, hypnotic feel to Rest Room that Recliner is exactly what springs to mind here; pull yourself up your most comfortable sofa, press play, and let the music sweep over you, as is evident on Makes No Sense, its deep bass pulsating you to somewhere deep inside your soul.
  From Out Of The Shadows
  Yet as dark as Recliner's music is, there are lighter moments. True, with its offbeat drumming and almost joyously happy chorus, is proof that this New Zealand collective can sit in a positive light just as much as they can in the shadows.
  This is the same with For You, quite possibly a summer anthem in waiting. With guitars and keyboard combining with sublime bass, it's a wonderfully infectious track that demands to be played at top volume while driving a convertible on a bright summer's day.
  With radio stations beginning to wake up to the delights Recliner have to offer, and the sheer depth in song writing and musicianship skills they possess, it's a fairly safe bet that New Zealand may have just found itself another band to join Crowded House in the Hall of Fame.
  
  

• WELL CRAFTED , EVOCATIVE SONGS [+ Show ]
  

  SMOKE CD’S REVIEW Auckland seven-piece Recliner have been slowly but surely making a name for the...SMOKE CD’S REVIEW
  
  Auckland seven-piece Recliner have been slowly but surely making a name for themselves since forming in 2003, and impressed many an ear and eye with their debut single and video 'This Was For You' in 2004.
  With not one but two beautiful and talented female singers (Belinda Bradley and Darlene Te Young), you could be mistaken for thinking that the band are merely a record company invention, selling image over quality. But no, the band come across as a tight, cohesive whole. The songs are well crafted, evocative, and with a dynamic range that is light-years above the sort of 'commercial-radio friendly' dross that seems to be the flavour of the day from so many other adult-orientated bands.
  
  In fact, the sonic layering on display throughout the album is nearly as much of a highlight as the sultry vocals of the two singers. The beats and sounds of tracks like 'Ugly' and 'Surround Me' are reminiscent of the Bristol trip hop bands Massive Attack and Portishead. Other times (and sometimes even at the same time) it's like Bradley and Te Young are channeling a slightly-less-quirky Kate Bush over a background of synths, distorted-beyond-recognition guitars and the occasional string section. Throw in a couple of tunes that allow the band to go into full riff-rock mode ('Something She Said' features a chorus that could have come straight off the Shihad 'how-to-rock' handbook), and you've got an album packed full of great songs.
  

• RECLINE IN YOUR OWN "REST ROOM" [+ Show ]
  

  music .net.nz Recline in your own 'Rest Room' Candor is the intermittent light on the key to the...music .net.nz
  Recline in your own 'Rest Room'
  
  Candor is the intermittent light on the key to the 'Rest Room'. As the door opens, a rush of scent from candles sweeps through and the dim lighting draws in with magnetism. The new album from Recliner is written with precision and professionalism - an incredible achievement for their debut. It is almost hard to believe that the group only formed in 2004. The elegance will skim into your CD player on that relaxing Saturday at home. It is the ultimate sidekick for an unperturbed evening. Recliner are a cocktail of many genres. They create their own alternative, smooth rock sound, one that is impressively crafted to compliment their seven piece’s style of performance. There is honesty in all of their songs. Perfection takes work and crafting, however this album which reaches some level of perfection has left no scars of concentrated mechanics, and allows the songs to solely flow to its audience - exactly what a good song should do. It truly reflects the night atmosphere that it was created in, and almost transports to another location.??'Rest Room' weaves romantically by way of Belinda Bradley’s serene vocals, glossed over with Darlene Te Young’s harmonies. Their voices are a perfect echo setting the scene for the rest of the band to reflect the shadowy atmosphere without flaw. There is an unproblematic rhythm throughout the ten tracks. This, and the fact that there is no moment in the album that flays without warning, lets the album respire in its simplicity. This does not mean the album falls into the predictable. The album actually speaks with the vulnerability of the modern world of love and life, with no concealment. The first track 'Ugly (He Says That He Loves You)' is a strong introduction, and creeps in the general theme of the entire album. The songs saunter past the untainted, to the forbidden and the obsessive. But as melancholic as it seems, the gloom takes a weightless approach. Rather than launching into the depressive, it in fact permits the meaning of their music to be uplifting as it soothes more than it disconcerts. 'Surround Me', with a harsher resonance, contrasts with a track such as 'What She Wants' which lightly blooms. The sweetness of 'For You', a pleasant song and 'Want To Love You', which is hauntingly gentle, round out the album with elegance.??Recliner have set themselves up with a solid future with this debut album. It is definitely on the way to being a ‘best of’ album for this year. 'Rest Room' which was released in the April of 2006 will be the glow in the amber light of a lamp warming up those bitter Winter nights.
  
  
  

• MOODY, ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRONICA [+ Show ]
  

  City Mix magazine July 2006 Recliner – REST ROOM (CRIMPOLENE). Recliner is a new; Auckland ...City Mix magazine
  
  July 2006
  
  Recliner – REST ROOM
  
  (CRIMPOLENE). Recliner is a new; Auckland based band, featuring guitarist Guy Wishart (a former Silver Scroll winner) and vocalist Belinda Bradley, whose seductive voice is the centrepiece of this collection of moody, atmospheric electronica. The 7-piece band lays down a bed of layered sounds while Bradley & backing singer Darlene Te Young purr evocatively over the top. Wishart gets in a few fuzzy licks on songs like “want to love you” and “surround me”, but the highlight is “inside”, a relaxing warm track that seems tailor made to accompany some rd wine on a cold Auckland winters night.
  

• UNDERBELLY OF GUITAR NOISE [+ Show ]
  

  "Grown up seductive pop...with an underbelly of guitar noise... They've written a stunning New Zeala..."Grown up seductive pop...with an underbelly of guitar noise... They've written a stunning New Zealand pop album...exquisitely done"
  
  NEWSTALK ZB - Phil Yule?
  

• POIGNANT KEYS & GENTLE BEATS [+ Show ]
  

  “Recliner's songs have a dark, hypnotic beauty that breeze along on mellow atmospheric guitars, poig...“Recliner's songs have a dark, hypnotic beauty that breeze along on mellow atmospheric guitars, poignant keys and gentle beats…
  
  …a luxuriously-produced, tastefully decorated trip-pop album for the post-Portishead generation…
  
  The recording quality cannot be faulted. Everything from the jagged guitars to the ambling drums and warm synths is expertly captured to give a haunting, dreamy effect…”
  
  NZ HERALD Rebecca Barry
  
  

Setlist

Selon Recliner play a 1 hour show of original music... multi media, with projected visuals.

Example set list below

something she said

True

for you

Single file

inside

Gone

makes no sense

Want 2 luv u

what she wants

Surround me

Ugly

Basic Requirements

Calendar