Fantasmes

Experimental indie rock can take many forms and they’re not always from where you think. Take Fantasmes, for example. Based out of Puerto Rico, you’d maybe guess they’d have more of a regional influence… and if you guessed those influences were psychedelic experimentalism, you’d be correct. Fantasmes create music best suited to a more chill attitude with their latest, Redness Moon. What makes them even more impressive is their modest make-up, consisting of duo Mario Negron and Darío Morales. - Violent Success

If you like Tame Impala, you will like Fantasmes. Scratch that. If you like purple haze, if you like kissing, if you like the warmth of sun on your skin and the scratch of grass beneath your toes, you will like Fantasmes. The Puerto Rican psych team does all their ‘60s predecessors proud on “Redness Moon,” a swampy, reverb-heavy ride into dusk, billowing with lazy riffs, desert drums and hypnotic festival vox. Ready yourself for their upcoming album of the same name, out September 4 on Last Bummer. Trust us: you’re going to like it. A lot. - Hillary Kaylor for RCRD LBL

What’s most interesting about Puerto Rico/NYC based band Fantasmes' latest album “Redness Moon” is not necessarily the obvious, but rather what is happening “underneath.” “Cloud Prepositions” emerges through a slow, purposeful, rising groove. Droning background pulses underscore prominent tambourine percussion, tubular-belled guitars and eno-esque treated keyboards. The vocals are muted and obscure, creating mood over storytelling. The title track “Redness Moon” (video below) is more defined, with its driving drums and layered arpeggiated guitar chords. The tom toms rumble like beat keepers on 15th century warships, adding a tense quality to this already mysterious soundscape. “Play It Wrong” keeps the vocals just as vague, but adds a harsher electric guitar to the mix. Distant conversational vocals are just out of earshot, adding to the mysterious nature. This allows the percussion to move forward, sharing prime sonic real estate with aggressively struck guitar chords. “Dance in the Shadows” slows it down again, with gentle acoustic guitar leading the way. Vocal lyrics become clearer, with the line “I should be there” as a repeated refrain. “Passages” brings back the trippy drone, slow building guitar chords and masked spoken word vocals. It is beatless, but again trance-enducing and meditative. A clearly defined rhythm initially drives “Monsters’ Mother” until that too abruptly lurches into a Doors-like humming trance and erratic drum-centric passage. A third movement closes out the track via a fuller (but rhythmically different) driving, with moaned vocal amd guitar-flailing raveup. “Let it Repeat” presents the kind of twisted toy piano plings and chimes over ominous humming that you might hear in a horror movie. That half-a-minute contribution serves as a segway into “Today is Still.” Surprisingly the lyrics can be made out here with the line “there are days like these I’m sure I’m never coming home” setting the stage. Ancient Chinese bell percussion clang and ping over bright guitar picking, creating an atmospheric tour-de-force. - Dave Cromwell for The Deli Magazine NYC

Fantasmes is Mario Negron and Dario Morales—a washed out, psychedelic indie-rock duo. Coming from the secluded beaches of Puerto Rico, their sound is a dreamy haze of droning guitars and pulsating sonic grooves. Reminiscent of the days of yore, this duo has been compared to acts like the Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth with their winding, hypnotic moods. With Redness Moon, which is being released on September 4th through Last Bummer Records, the album is complex and spellbinding in its lush movement of rippling rises and falls that envelops the listener in a transcendental sonic journey. - Anthem Magazine

The winds carry the salty tang of the ocean, the sun riding high in the slate blue sky. Sand blows around your feet on the hot beach as you carry your board to the water. Waves crash a distance from the shore, surfers carve their way through and in front of the waves as the swells crash and again meld with the azure ocean water. Along the breeze you catch sounds of children’s laughter mixing with the clucking of the seagulls until you can’t tell the difference between bird and child. You wade into the sandy water and soon make your way past the waves until you reach your destination. The water is heavy yet clear, you can see the bottom but it is deceptive as the current is strong. Back on the beach someone is pounding on a drum, or is it your heart or the pounding of the waves on the shore? A wave passes: it wasn’t the right one. Another. Another. Your heart begins to pound from the exertion of failing to catch that wave. Then the breeze seems to take away all sound but that of the movement of the water. It’s time. You paddle to the left towards a swell and just when you think you’ve missed the curl, you drop in.

The music of Puerto Rican duo Mario Negron and Dario Morales brings to mind the beach and the waves, the sun and the moon, of dancing blissfully under the stars around a crackling campfire, of picnicking in the mountains, surrounded by trees and smells and nature. Negron and Morales also delve into the landscape of the mind using effects to tweak our brains such as the monologue buried under the heavy blues stomp of Play It Wrong or the hard picked acoustic guitar swirls of Today Is Still, bells and there and gone wind instruments. Fantasmes are just as interested in creating a shade from the sun mellow mood as they are an urban neon in the night, dark alleys and blues club feel as heard on the dirty grind of Monster’s Mother and the aforementioned Play It Wrong. But the real mind-blower is Redness Moon‘s closing track(s) Tell Me/Nothing Is Wrong as Negron and Morales build a woozy, smoky atmosphere with a circularly plucked electric guitar, light and echoing vocals, tambourine and bassy fills. Three minutes in the proceedings get evil and dangerous with scary ambience as the instruments drop out and spine-chilling sounds creep in. As even more frightening elements join in, just when you’re thinking of turning on the lights and turning off the music, a strummed acoustic guitar segues in, Negron’s soothing voice wafts over your troubled psych and you breath a sigh of relief as the album fades away on a peaceful breeze. - Bret Miller for Highwire Magazine

Puerto Rico’s Fantasmes are releasing their full length album “Redness Moon” and their equally named single has a new video out, that is full of psychedelic sci-fi deliciousness. Reminding me of a perfect blend of personal favorites Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth, this band is a future classic. Make way. - bigstereo.com

Fantasmes formed between Mario Negrón and Darío Morales a few years after meeting one another at high school where they lived in Puerto Rico. Mario released an EP on his own, The Reveller, and soon asked Darío to join the band. After they began working together, however, Mario battled bouts of depression while bandmate Darío relocated to Spain. Just two years ago, in 2010, the men united once again and released a second EP while playing select performances in New York City. Currently the duo has released their first LP, Redness Moon, written in a studio in Puerto Rico they call “Casa Fantasmes” — a secluded space where they wrote and recorded the album. Fantasmes projects a sound that’s easily recognizable: 60's psychedelia. Slow drum beats and guitar riffs with whirling vocals that are reminiscent of The Shins or The Beatles. - Rachele Friedland for lostinasupermarket.com