Reindeer Flotilla – Queen City Sounds and Art

Reindeer Flotilla, photo courtesy the artists

With its new EP Studio City (out May 12, 2026), Reindeer Flotilla seem to have fused an inspirations from 80s synth pop and Animal Collective. This is especially effective on lead single “Chef’s Knife” where the band seems to have written a song about how one can take the poor treatment of others one has chosen to endure or had imposed upon you by a situation that may have been necessary and use that to focus one’s capacity to process and handle the static that comes your way. The way the band crafts pacing with tone and layers of rhythmic and percussive sounds and pairs it with a melancholic melody really draws you in and keeps you in the song and its evolving moods and shifts in tone through to the end. It hits the ears like something from another era but the production is fully modern in a more sound design mode with expert placing of and processing of electronic and analog sources. Listen to “Chef’s Knife” on Spotify and follow Los Angeles-based group Reindeer Flotilla at the links below.

reindeerflotillaband.com

Reindeer Flotilla on Facebook

Reindeer Flotilla on Instagram

Reindeer Flotilla’s new album Radio Silence LP will be out in early 2025 but for now you can see the video for “Today” and it’s vintage nature documentary visuals and lush guitar and synth interplay. Musically it’s reminiscent of mid-to-late 80s Talk Talk before that band went fully into pioneering post-rock. The processed guitar sound has that flare and edge favored inf that era and the vocals landing somewhere between soulful New Wave and a jazz fusion sensibility. The song has a cinematic quality that recalls the aesthetics of a previous decade when art rock bands were on mainstream radio and Michael Mann and Jonathan Demme films featured cutting edge left field rock. And yet there’s an immediacy to the energy of the songwriting and production that grounds it in the present befitting the title. Watch the video for “Today” on YouTube and follow Reindeer Flotilla at the links below.