Armlock make music for having your head in the clouds. On their new album, Seashell Angel Lucky Charm, the Australian duo of Simon Lam and Hamish Mitchell take you through a steady ascension into heavenly sonic realms. The band’s second proper release, and first for Run For Cover Records, SeashellAngel Lucky Charmtaps onto the songwriters’ roots in experimental electronic roots and filters them through an indie rock lens, drawing the listener in close with crystal clear guitars, tight rhythms, warmharmonies, and sparse arrangements that leave room for character and eccentricities. The result is an album of inventively minimal music that does a lot with a little.

Friends for 14 years, Lam (vocals and guitar) and Mitchell (guitar and keyboards) have been in their fairshare of musical projects together and apart. The two met studying jazz at Monash University in Melbourne, eventually discovering a shared love of electronic music. After a handful of electronic anddance outlets (I’lls, Couture, Kllo) Armlock came together through the band’s natural camaraderie and comfort with collaboration, and the two began incorporating guitar into the music they were making for thefirst time. Capable of recording and engineering the whole project themselves, the pair never needed tobe precious with studio time. Instead they preferred venturing down songwriting rabbit holes, chasingdown a feeling and layering ideas at their home studios, unsure where a song would ultimately land.“There’s no real distinction between writing, demoing, and final production, it’s all done at the same time,” says Lam. “It’s a workflow that is much more common in electronic music and how we started makin gmusic together.