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Chon’s “Roses” is a Love Song Rooted in Humility, Affection and Sensitivity

In the spare performance video for “Roses,” Chon (pronounced “Chern”) is cast in black and white with just the songwriter and acoustic guitar in frame though we hear other instrumentation like an electric guitar and a touch of synth. What shines most is Chon’s delicate energy as a vocalist. It’s a bit different from her former life as the lead vocalist in Vietnamese Nü Metal band Bodies On the Floor but the weight of emotion remains and even through the subtle layers of melody and texture, Chon’s voice is an apt vehicle for lyrics that are romantic in tone and reflect a personal insight into the essence of another person that can only come from knowing oneself unguardedly with a compassionate sense of self-awareness that the cruelty of the world often comes from internalizing its trauma and interpreting it back out. But with this song we hear a songwriter for whom a rote pronouncement of love is a shallow platitude and “Roses” comes off more like extending a humble insight with care, affection and sensitivity. There may be a folk element with the song but its musical alchemy transcends genre specificity. Watch the video for “Roses” on YouTube and listen to more Chon on Spotify.

“Martial Meditations” by narducci is a Cinematic Soundscape of Sultry, Late Night Jazz Lounge Moods

Somehow narducci has used what sounds like a rainstick, some sultry late night jazz saxophone processed for maximum foggy moodiness and minimal synth drones with spoken word in Japanese interspersed with non-verbal soulful vocals to craft a different kind of cinematic song. It has a duskiness that sounds like something that one might expect to hear in the opening sequences of an animated version of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. It works as a song in itself with an arc of emotional resolve from reverie to acceptance but something about its arrangement suggests strongly as a companion to a visual narrative in which each complements and enriches the effectiveness of both. Maybe at some point narducci will find a way to make “Martial Meditations” into a short film or get it expertly placed onto a soundtrack but for now you can listen to the song on YouTube and follow narducci at the links provided.

narducci on Instagram

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Oldest Sea Builds a Cosmic Scaffolding Out of a State of Emotional Void With the Colossal and Transcendent Black Metal Track “Consecration”

The stately and desolate riffing that Oldest Sea uses to introduce “Consecration” sounds like something you’d hope to hear from a band with a name like that and a song title with that resonance of language. It’s crackling distortion sculpting and hanging dynamics in the classic transcendental black metal vein. But when the vocals come in they are ghostly yet emotionally rich. The lyrics seem to take a feeling of emptiness and of being at a low point and turning that into something transcendent and climbing the lurching steps of the crushing guitar chords and finely accenting drums to a different place outside of that void that you know you’ll find yourself in once again but also knowing you can build a ladder out of it with seemingly nothing at all if you can imbue it with a meaning that comes from a place beyond your immediate psychological state. Fortunate are the people who have never been in a place in their head where you feel like you have nothing left, the product of a slow or even quick descent into depression and what once sustained you seems beyond reach and maybe something so seemingly unlikely like a heavy and cosmically melodic black metal song feels like a scaffolding to a space where one’s connection to at least that emotional uplift eases a sense of meaning and positive emotional sensation into your brain. Listen to “Consecration” on Spotify and follow Oldest Sea on Instagram.

Bug Facer Sculpted a Contorted and Agonized Colossus of Loss and Hopeless Desolation in the Seething Noise Rock of “Horsefly”

The white noise in the background certainly helps make Bug Facer’s “Horsefly” sound creepier with minimal guitar line and processional drumming. Like an even more haunted Slint song until a little over a minute in the distorted vocals and noisy guitar escalation crashes in. At that point the caustic desperation is palpable and what once was a fairly chill if unsettling song turns into one that sustains a seething and tortured expression of loss that crosses over into nihilistic passages that are so raw and emotionally fragmented it would be thrilling if it didn’t contain and embody so much psychic anguish. But then in the outro the song waxes back into a weary acceptance, a lull in the waves of agony you feel when you feel like you’ve been left all alone with nothing to live for, a state that seems impossible to overcome but this song seems proof that there are ways to channel that feeling into the kind of art that seems to help in spite of its horrifying power. Listen to “Horsefly” on Spotify and follow Bug Facer at the links below.

Bug Facer on Facebook

Bug Facer on Instagram

ABBATIA’s Low Key Terrifying Video for “World Wide Web” is a Glimpse Into the Macabre Industrial Rap Horrors of Its New Album Red Room

There’s something extra bleak and haunting about a strip mall on a dark night and the music video for ABBATIA’s “World Wide Web” begins there. Then we see a demented figure shaping features in clay on his own head as the band’s crew seems to be on web cam and security footage interspersed with scenes of horror like we’re getting a trip through parts of the dark web accompanied by throbbing, industrial hip-hop beats and rapping that is both frantic and sepulchral in a way that is at times so intense it borders on the humorous. That is if the whole video and didn’t feel like a gnarly segment of the V/H/S franchise with music that is a fascinating collage of mashups that defy narrow classification. It’s in the hip-hop vein but you’d have to be into the more avant-garde or experimental end of that music to find something comparable. Maybe Ho99o9, Dälek or Death Grips but it’s not much like any of those, just the level of genre bending and inventive soundscaping that is more focused on creating a harrowing and menacing mood informed by a sense of the absurd rather than where it fits on a spectrum of musical style. Watch the video for “World Wide Web” on YouTube and follow ABBATIA at the links below. The group’s new album, the appropriately titled Red Room, dropped on November 11, 2022.

ABBATIA on TikTok

ABBATIA on Instagram

Uèle Lamore Soundtracks the Next Generation of Surreal B-Movies With the Upbeat and Playful “Something About Us”

Uèle Lamore’s music video for “Something About Us” gives the song with its gritty yet playful instrumental music in fuzzed out post-punk style melodies its proper contextualization. Throughout the video we are treated to a running string of possible genre tags that are as varied as the music’s fairly genre-less quality itself. It could fit in a weird video game about time travel and culture swapping. It could work for a fun-loving ninja movie starring Sho Kosugi and get him out of retirement for one more movie, a surreal sequel to the nonsensically supernatural Ninja III: The Domination. Maybe a film about cowboys who all gathered together to create a commune after having spent time in the worlds of Sergio Leone films and Jodorowsky’s El Topo having given up on a life of violence and opting for one where they preserve their legacy through elaborate musicals. Anyone made a sequel to Knight Riders? Lamore has you covered here and offering the concept of “low budget Riders of Rohan” but with the idea of cosplay being a thing these days it could work out. However this song might be placed or enjoyed it has a decided trickster experimental pop quality that can shapeshift into any setting. Watch the video for “Something About Us” on YouTube and connect with Lamore at the links below.

Uèle Lamore on Facebook

Uèle Lamore on Bandcamp

Uèle Lamore on Instagram

Mako Bron Celebrates the Will to Exit a Life Situation With Vigor on Synth Pop Song “Hit the Road”

Mako Bron takes us on a bit of a musical time travel trip on “Hit the Road.” Its infectious hooks and beautiful synth melody at times is reminiscent of early Berlin and how that band didn’t quite fit in with the world of late 70s/early 80s synth pop while helping to define it. The use of horns in the mix hits similar emotional resonances as James but this is no retro song. It resonates with the same spirit of that music with the tones, the components of the songwriting and the way Bron harmonizes with the background vocals and the manner in which all the melodic elements come together in the chorus to really drive home a message of personal liberation. It’s a song that expresses a strong desire to be free of a situation and a relationship that feels stifling and no longer feels like something that fortifies life and sometimes that simply means you have to get away geographically to reinforce the emotional departure. This song celebrates that impulse with great spirit. Listen to “Hit the Road” on Spotify and follow Australian songwriter Mako Bron at the links below.

Mako Bron on Facebook

Mako Bron on Instagram

The Album Leaf Brings Us Along on a Drifting Journey to Elevated States of Tranquility on “Future Falling”

The Album Leaf, photo courtesy the artist

“Future Falling” is like listening to the slow evolution of an artist having eased into a new plateau. The Album Leaf has long perfected the background of slow shimmer and hypnotic, repeated, sequenced melody while tones with real physicality of sound carry a melody with a slow blossom of elements that flow and invite you along for a drift into tranquil spaces. You could spend a lot of time sorting out the rich array of elements that create this atmosphere like the ways bell tones are processed, the striking of strings, the layered streams of synth and the orchestration of it all but the mood of slow elevation and acceptance of a peaceful mode of being is the end point of the song as it lets you off with the gentlest of touches at the end of the journey. Listen to “Future Falling” with its prismatic visualizer on YouTube and follow The Album Leaf at the links provided.

The Album Leaf on TikTok

The Album Leaf on Facebook

The Album Leaf on Instagram

thealbumleaf.com

Blue Lupin Joyously Burns the Bridge With a Duplicitous Former Lover on “Surface of the Sun”

Blue Lupin aka Joanna Wolfe employs gritty atmospherics in her song “Surface of the Sun” so that it’s dream-like reverie has an appropriate tinge of discomfort. In the video treatment directed by Joseph Daly we see Wolfe walking around a park at points but mostly pointing a camera at the camera filming her, an inversion of the kind of gaze and dynamic we usually see in a music video. And the song about a lover who no one in her life really meets or sees and who never brings her into their life and wanting to exit the relationship, or perhaps the charade of one is more accurate, is a succinct examination of perception and comprehension and how we apply and choose to apply that when we feel like we have a special connection with someone and how breaking things off can feel like an act of self-liberation rather than lingering heartache. The song cast in expansive, distorted dream pop certain feels like a celebration that overcomes initial feelings of self-disappointment because who wants to spend too much time mourning someone who merely wasted our time? Watch the video for “Surface of the Sun” on YouTube and follow Blue Lupin at the links below.

Blue Lupin on TikTok

Blue Lupin on Twitter

Blue Lupin on Instagram

“Fruit Flies” by elison is a Dream Pop Song About Finally Letting Go the Detritus of Your Life with a Loving Exuberance

Elison delves into the darker side of nostalgia on “Fruit Flies.” It has a sound like an AM radio pop song appropriate to this self-aware consideration of how we can romanticize a time that wasn’t so good for or to us but the hindsight of adulthood brings some clarity to the those memories and how trying to live up to them can poison the present with habits of feeling. “Get drunk on the memories,” Marissa Kephart sings in the chorus as swirling glittery guitar tones sweep by, ending the line with “Spin out of control.” It’s a statement about how one can get stuck in the past while some people are able to say goodbye to another part of their life and the ways of being that no longer seem relevant but we’re all shaped by how we’ve been and it’s easy to engage in self-judgment and get stuck with those memories as a kind of personal, perpetual cudgel and re-litigate and repeat patterns to try to get things right to think doing so will give us an illusory sense of control. The exuberance of the melody and its lightness contrasts with lines like “I still haven’t taken out my trash” and “Body molding from the inside” as an impetus to clean one’s house for the New Year and a new you and this song sounds like the will to do so at last. Listen to “Fruit Flies” on Spotify and follow elison at the links provided.

elison no Instagram

elison on YouTube