simianthinker

A Deep Sense of Tranquility and Contentment Pervades elshuffles’ Ambient Techno Track “months of electronic dreams”

An immediate sense of warmth and granular tone sets the mood from the beginning of elshuffles’ “months of electronic dreams.” White noise, tape hiss, however it was accomplished lends an analog quality to a track that goes on to provide impressionistic, minimal techno melodies and percussive arpeggios over an abstractly melodic drone that pulses in the background and settles down into a flowing wash at points. And all along there’s a sense of movement that pulls the song out of the earlier, dreamlike haze into passages of tranquil clarity. The title of the song suggests the vibe in general of compressing those feelings into a song just over four minutes long but in the dream state time is an illusion and one can experience it all in capsule or in the expanded sense of consciousness and retain the little joys and deep sense of peace the song offers beginning to end. Listen to “months of electronic dreams” on Spotify.

With “Latent Misanthropy” The White Mare Gives Voice to the Collective Neglect of Archaic Technology

The White Mare, photo courtesy the artist

“Latent Misanthropy” sounds as thought The White Mare has taken the sample of a radio transmission and channeled in various sound sources by tapping into alternative frequencies to craft a haunted work of ambient noise. Swelling, off harmonic drones, white noise, crackling textural sounds, distant alarms, what could be a modem polling for connection, distorted percussive bursts pulsing relentlessly in the end. Maybe in the crafting of the piece field recordings were brought to bear and processed but the net effect is a composition that is both low key anxiety inducing and thrilling in its sustained building of suspense. If archaic communication devices could come into a collective consciousness and communicate the displeasure at their neglect it might sound like this. Listen to “Latent Misanthropy” on Spotify where you can hear the rest of the album The Splitsville Project VII (released May 8, 2023) and follow Australian noise artist The White Mare on Instagram.

NanaBcool’s Entrancingly Contemplative Interpretation of Lloyd’s “Get It Shawty” Expands Upon the Atmospheric Elegance of the Original

Ghanaian/American singer-songwriter, rapper and dancer NanaBcool released his latest full length album Good Luck, Vol. 1 in February 2023 and displayed a talent for pairing his lushly produced soulful vocal style with music to match. Stylistically the artist doesn’t fit neatly into a narrow category with his songs reminiscent in their richly eclectic range of Prince and P.M. Dawn. So with the follow-up single, an introspective and coolly luminous cover of Lloyd’s 2007 hit “Get It Shawty,” it’s no surprise to hear NanaBcool bringing a deft interpretation that expands on the atmospheric possibilities of the original with an expansive and cavernous production and ethereal guitar, the vocal lines drawn out giving it a contemplative quality almost like this cover is a sequel reflecting on an earlier time in life and both the consequences and romance of that earlier time in life. Listen to “Get It Shawty” on Spotify and follow NanaBcool at the links provided.

NanaBcool on Facebook

NanaBcool on Twitter

NanaBcool on Instagram

NanaBcool on Apple Music

Fricky Tenderly Considers How to Approach a Potential Romance on Reggaeton-Inflected IDM Hip-Hop Single “Häntextra”

Sounds echo and rattle away in dub fashion in Fricky’s “Häntextra” (“Extra Happened” in English) lending the song the feel of both an IDM track and with the vocal style an alternative hip-hop song. But style aside the song has the feel of a heightened dream reality and it feels like it’s in hyperkinetic motion and constantly on the verge of collapse like someone trying to get their footing and the low key excitement of that. There is a tenderness to the song and its Swedish lyrics seem to hint at a narrator who is infatuated with a woman with whom he seems hesitant to broach his interest and talks himself into it throughout the song though he seems reluctant to impose himself on her in case the interest isn’t mutual. The question of the best thing to do remains unresolved by the end of the song and often that’s how these situations turn out in your mind and in life itself. The song is part of Fricky’s new album Horizon Inn which seems to reconcile sounds like the aforementioned with what appears to be the influence of the hyperpop end of Bad Bunny and that reggaeton vibe and production aesthetic. Listen to “Häntextra” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the album and follow Swedish artist Fricky at the links provided.

Fricky on Facebook

Fricky on YouTube

Fricky on Instagram

Lala Salama Imbue Its Shoegaze Single “Summer Love” With a Rush of Excitement and Emotional Intoxication Befitting the Title

“Summer Love” from Helsinki-based band Lala Salama begins in a hazy reverie and then kicks into urgent, warping surges of guitar and ethereal vocals in a kind of interplay of the tranquil and the passionate. At times it’s reminiscent of The Flaming Lips’ “Race For The Prize” in its pacing and tonal palette but in terms of its dynamic twists and turns more akin to the likes of the avant-pop aspects of Asobi Seksu circa its 2006 album Citrus and more contemporaneously Blushing’s exquisite melodic whorls and uplifting rhythms. Listen to “Summer Love” on YouTube and connect with Lala Salama at the links below. Look out for Lala Salama’s album All That Plazz forthcoming in 2023.

Lala Salama on Facebook

Lala Salama on Instagram

Dominic Sen’s “Prayer” is Like a Luminously Melodic Modern New Age Pop Casting of Hopeful Intentions Into the Universe

Dominic Sen’s luminously melodic single “Prayer” from the album Apparition (released) June 9, 2023 embodies the nature of prayer itself rather than a statement on its efficacy or lack thereof. An intention cast into the universe or to a divine being without a guarantee of fulfillment of the wish. And in the song the vocals seem to spiral outward and float on a spiraling drift of tone over shuffling, textural percussion like New Age music for a cosmic waiting room in an elevator to any number of life outcomes in some kind of strange virtual reality RPG. The song ends as it started without full resolution which is a little like life itself. But the song itself has its gorgeously beautiful aspects and sustains a hopeful spirit like something that might have been a proper sequel to something from Enya’s 1991 album Shepherd Moons. Watch the lyric video to “Prayer” on YouTube and follow Dominic Sen at the links provided.

Dominic Sen on TikTok

Dominic Sen on Facebook

Dominic Sen on Twitter

Dominic Sen on Instagram

dominicsen.com

AUTORHYTHM’s Entrancing Layers of Synth on “Substantia Nigra” and the Songs for the Nervous System album are Like the Soundtrack to a Lost Utopian Science Fiction Epic

AUTORHYTHM/Joakim Forsgren, photo by Mohamed Mire

AUTORHYTHM’s “Substantia Nigra” from the project’s latest album Songs For the Nervous System (2023) is driven by a low cycling pulse as rhythm as it seems points in a network flash and flare in tones and percussive textures as the track builds to a distorted melody that bubbles with an urgency like an entire network of a factory coming online or a deep space colony in great sleeper ships activating a series of protocols to bring its cargo out of stasis in order to explore the possibilities of a new world and hopefully not exploit it and extract it to extinction with outmoded habits of human civilization. Halfway through the song’s near eleven minutes the tenor changes and low crackling white noise enters the field of hearing and a distant metallic beeping like a signal coming through the intergalactic haze. A sound like a dopplering alarm ascends and drops down back into the earlier theme of the distorted melody. It’s like the soundtrack to science fiction film or novel about a real sense of wonder at the unknown and not one that frames scientific discovery and exploration as an act of extending archaic notions of conquest but rather as mutually beneficial comprehension and an authentic attempt at expanding knowledge. Listen to “Substantia Nigra” on Spotify and follow AUTORHYTHM at the links below. Fans of Mort Garson’s Journey to the Moon and Beyond and other works of the great synthesizer pioneer will find a great deal to appreciate here.

AUTORHYTHM on Facebook

AUTORHYTHM on Bandcamp

AUTORHYTHM on Instagram

Georg Óskar’s Video For Melancholic Downtempo Breakcore Song “I’m a Failure” is a Portrait of a Rebounding Life in a State of Collapse

The video treatment for Georg Óskar by Andy Heck Boyd serves the shuffling downtempo song well. Its washed out colors with all the warm colors seemingly keyed out or de-emphasized highlight the figure slumped on the ground seemingly helpless while lyrics about being a failure and how everyone knows it and life keeps delivering losses and how that can get one into a cycle of thinking one is a failure, “a big, big failure.” The video looks like some bleak footage of life in the 1970s like some Super 8 documentation of a life that has tedium of debased existence and melted expectations. Yet the processed bell tones carrying the melody and even the eccentric vocals suggest the quality of irony and sitting in the feelings of lingering defeat as a way of working through them without setting unrealistic expectations. Its a piece of music that provides an example of morose downtempo breakcore that is too energetic to get trapped in a down mood. Watch the video for “I’m a Failure” on YouTube and follow Norwegian composer Georg Óskar at the links below.

Georg Óskar on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E08: Ghost Canyon Fest

Ghost Canyon Fest organizers (L-R: Brian Dooley, Cory Hager, Jeremy Brashaw and Sean Dove), photo by Tom Murphy

Ghost Canyon Fest is “A Boundary-Pushing DIY Music Festival” that runs August 11-13 across three venues. The event germinated as an idea among friends in the bands New Standards Men, Moon Pussy and Almanac Man who attended and/or performed at events like PRF BBQ, Caterwaul and No Coast and felt there was enough interest and enough mutual connections among bands well outside of Denver to hold a viable, like-minded festival in the Mile High City. In year’s past Denver hosted multiple festivals of strongly focused curation like Goldrush Festival, Transistor Festival, Denver Noise Fest, DAD Fest , Ultra Metal and in Boulder Communikey among others but left field sounds are largely not included in most other festivals in Denver. Ghost Canyon Fest in its inaugural year of 2023 goes to some length to shine a light on those sounds in a more high profile way including a mention in a recent issue of The Wire as a festival of note. If you go, expect to see stars of local and non-local noise rock, post-metal, noise and experimental dance and drone including BIG|BRAVE, Quits, Masma Dream World, Big’N, Church Fire, Pleasure Venom and of course the projects of the event organizers. For a full list and a schedule of events please and to purchase passes for the weekend or single nights visit the Ghost Canyon Fest website. At the site you can link to curated playlists created by various artists performing that weekend. This interview includes a conversation with Jeremy Brashaw (New Standards Men), Cory Hager (Moon Pussy), Sean Dove (Almanac Man) and Brian Dooley (Almanac Man).

Listen to our interview with the organizers on Bandcamp and look for our interviews with various artists performing at Ghost Canyon Fest in the coming weeks.

Ghost Canyon Fest website

Laura Wolf’s “Homebody” is an Avant Indie Pop Collage on Taking the Time Out of Everyday Life

Laura Wolf seems to have channeled her background in classical music into creating truly unique pop songs for her latest album, Shelf Life (out June 2, 2023 via Whatever’s Clever). A particularly striking and poignant example of this is the single “Homebody” and the stop motion collage video by Renata Zeiguer that seems like the perfect cognate of the way Wolf has assembled and orchestrated samples of sound, loops, processed noises, strings, guitar, electronic noises creating various textures and white noise as drone to create a sense of the private and the intimate one hears in Wolf’s vocals. It sounds and with the video looks like a group of snapshots of childhood projected into the adult mind and adult concerns but filtered through a childlike sense of play and aesthetic lens. It’s a song about being stuck and the self-imposed urgency to move on yet an impulse to enjoy the moment of not having to deal, for a while, with the demands of your everyday life and the song embodies that liminal moment in a delightful and captivating way. Watch the video for “Homebody” on YouTube and follow Laura Wolf at the links below.