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Queen Kwong Creates a Vivid Portrait of the Emotionally Stunted Wannabe Musician Male We Have All Suffered Ungladly on “Sad Man”

Queen Kwong really nailed an archetype of a man of stunted development trying to maintain a veneer of cool in the lyrics of her song “Sad Man” from her ambitious pop noir album Couples Only. But the video for the song has Johnnny Knoxville of Jackass fame playing the part of a figure like Havey Keitel circa Bad Lietenant. The lurid and gritty scenes while Kwong’s vibrant and dusky voice and haunted keyboard melody with Christian-Death-circa-Only-Theatre-of-Pain-esque guitar histrionics trace the edges of angst and agony on screen. Kwong herself plays a nun that serves as the conscience and reminder to Knoxville’s character of who he once was before he allowed himself to hurtle down a path of self-hating self-destructive hedonism and corruption. It’s all a powerful combination that anyone that has been part of any music scene in any city of size recognizes immediately but the specificity of Los Angeles is something we’ve all seen in movies and heard stories about for years except Queen Kwong puts the spotlight on the so not glamorous but much more common story of lack of success and clinging on to a myth and image of fake rock and roll romanticism rather than make an honest go of it with integrity. Watch the video for “Sad Man” on YouTube and follow Queen Kwong at the links below where you can also give a listen to the rest of Couples Only.

“VALE” is mirrored fatality’s Futuristic, Mystical Deconstruction of Late Capitalism’s Unraveling of a Sustainable World

mirrored fatality, photo courtesy the artists

The layers of image and sound represented in mirrored fatality’s “VALE” is the kind of glitch collage style mashup that pushes aesthetic boundaries. There’s no formal structure but that of the project’s own. It is a recursive flow of textures, tones and raw noise assembled as a reflection of the constant barrage of information to which we’re subjected daily. Except mirrored fatality in the video presentation of the track gives context of the erosion of our infrastructure and eco-system through neglect and the hubris of late stage capitalism. To someone conditioned completely to seek out only sound art in the form of conventional music might see and hear this stuff and think it’s just shy of random recordings of abstract internet memes placed together and that might in some ways not be far off the mark but it misses the point entirely. But people who have been tuned into what labels like Orange Milk and other forward thinking labels have been releasing in the realm of glitch-infused electronic music and artists like Giant Claw, Darren Keen, Goo Age and Andy Loeb will find that mirrored fatality’s aesthetics and arrangements not to mention the visual style much to their liking as the duo deconstructs the dubious virtues of our post-industrial society partly by creating music beyond the conventionally accepted zones of creative endeavor. Watch the video for “VALE” on YouTube and follow mirrored fatality on Bandcamp.

“Jangle med,” the solo offering from Orions Belte Drummer Kim Åge Furuhaug is a Refreshing Exercise in Free Jazz Lounge

Kim Åge Furuhaug, photo courtesy the artist

Orions Belte drummer Kim Åge Furuhaug puts in his solo offering in the band’s forthcoming set of solo albums from each member of the band (due November 18, 2022) with the lead single “Jangle med.” The song drifts along like a mellow boat trip down a tranquil stretch of river. Lap steel guitar stretches out a tone languidly as brushed drums trace a rhythm. Then piano runs replace the guitar in an offhand jazz style both urgent and following a simple chordal structure, in the background subtle upright bass thrums and provides a through line as orchestrated sounds swell and sax notes flutter and harp-like sounds chime in the middle distance. It sounds like a late 60s jam session but with modern instrumental choices in the palette but with the same freshness of improvisational composition that gave that music and this a compelling spontaneity of spirit that keeps you hooked until the end to see where the song ends up. Listen to “Jangle med” on Spotify and follow Norwegian avant-pop trio Orions Belte at the links below.

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Orions Belte on Instagram

Ways Of Seeing Captures an Adult Sense of Heartbreak on the Hazy and Nostalgic “Walk Through The Crowd”

Ways of Seeing, photo courtesy the artist

The waves of repeating sound that course through Ways of Seeing’s “Walk Through The Crowd” flow like the ripple of memory that echoes through your mind when you’re reflecting on significant periods of your life. The touch of sultry saxophone in the song, the minimal percussion and impressionistic guitar work alongside the introspective vocals makes for a song that has a deep sense of nostalgia and regret accented by bell tones. One imagines a music video for the song in sepia tones and soft imagery. In the end it’s a sad song about letting go of cherished memories that bring you pain so that you can live in the present with what time’s left for you in this life. It’s a complex emotional expression and a depiction of heartbreak one doesn’t often hear in popular music outside of maybe something by The Church or another band that has managed to get well into adulthood and written music from an adult perspective and the giving life to the experiences that don’t fit neatly into the adolescent framing of a great deal of rock and pop. Listen to “Walk Through The Crowd” on Spotify and follow Ways Of Seeing on Soundcloud.

Live Show Review: Puscifer at Mission Ballroom 7/6/22

Puscifer at Mission Ballroom 7/6/22, photo by Tom Murphy

Puscifer’s most recent tour felt like more than a bit of rock and roll theater performance art. From the press photos of the band dressed up like parallel dimension Watchmen futuristic noir superheros replicated for the live show to Maynard James Keenan performing in character in more than one role to the stage sets and interludes between songs it was a full production from its early public announcements and intentional and conceptual aesthetics and execution. Chances are much of this was planned all along when Existential Reckoning was planned for the roll out in 2020 before the pandemic put all the brakes on anyone doing any shows much less a full fledged tour on every logistical level. It’s easy to imagine Maynard and the rest of the band having these ideas ready but this live show had the energy of pent-up exuberance let loose so that while not rough around the edges, there was an intensity that felt real and not an act in spite of the performance art aspect of the show.

Of course the show included what seemed like the whole Existential Reckoning album in its entirety and set up as a concept performance with Keenan and Carina Round on the ground level of the stage and on an upper area for various songs and for the final sequences of the show. It all felt like a futuristic rock and new wave glam rock fusion with sly social commentary. For most of the show the band forbade people in the audience from taking photos and such as perhaps an attempt to keep the focus on the show and its content and, well, the reason we all showed up to see the art rock glory of the band giving an exuberant performance informed by humor and intelligence. But what stood out most in some ways were the regular interludes in which the music took a pause and the video screens were filled with the image of Keenan as a mutant hybrid parody of Max Headroom and a conspiracy theorist TV show host and unleashing some of the most cartoonish and ridiculous examples of the kind of rhetoric you might expect and done so with a surreal glee that was the perfect break from the rest of the show. And yes, the concert in general had a level of stagecraft and content one doesn’t often see outside of a Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead gig so Puscifer in delivering arguably the best record of its career thus far did so with a riveting live show and the mix of humor and bombast you’d hope to experience.

Ark White and Lisa Ojda Collaborate on the Psychedelic and Haunted Music Video for Freak Folk Art Pop Single “Crave”

The cinemaography by Lisa Ojda for Ark White’s “Crave” music video is something right out of an A24 psychedelic horror movie. And the song itself is like a freak folk, art rock inflected pop song that sounds like something written in that frame of consciousness between sleep and being awake, the hypnogogic state. The guitar line goes off track and trails off now and then while maintaining an informal rhythm, the vocals have a touch of effects on them to give them a slight, short echo and synths sweep and swell in the background for most of the song except to mark transitions of mood and theme as the narrator of the song tries to make sense of a relationship that has turned from nurturing and loving with a deep connection to something that has dissolved leaving at least one of the people involved feeling adrift in the heart. Musically the song is reminiscent of Current 93 and Crushed Velvet Apocalypse period The Legendary Pink Dots in its mysteriousness, vulnerability and mystical/existential pondering. Watch the video for “Crave” on YouTube and follow Ark White on Spotify.

Easy Sleeper’s Jangle Pop “Dream Prison” is a Gentle But Serious Declaration of Personal Liberation Within

Easy Sleeper, photo courtesy the artists

Easy Sleeper couches “Dream Prison” in an energetically delicate melodies. The jangly/twee guitar sounds work together in a fascinating way in which the rhythm line of the guitar is intertwined with the lead in mutually supportive dynamics allowing the vocals to shine across the whole song while leaving the space in the last third of the song for the bass to accent the fiery and warping twin guitar solos. The interplay throughout the song is subtle but evocative and even though the lyrics seem like a gentle but serious declaration of personal liberation beginning with freeing one’s own psyche of the thoughts and internalized narratives that keep you from living as full a life as you can the structure and emotional coloring of the song makes that process seem easily attainable. The lead vocals are Andy Partridge-esque and the music reminiscent of Nonsuch period XTC while resonating with the style of current jangle shoegazers like Moodlighting, DIIV and Letting Up Despite Great Faults. Listen to “Dream Prison” on YouTube and follow Easy Sleeper at the links below.

Easy Sleeper on TikTok

Easy Sleeper on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E13: ABANDONS

ABANDONS is an experimental rock trio from Denver comprised of guitarist Brenton Dwyer, bassist Nate Colbert and drummer Sam Mowat. The group met through Craigslist ads and coalesced to start writing their first instrumental tracks in 2019 before looking to play shows. It was an odd time in the Denver underground scene with not as robust an infrastructure for bands not playing fairly established styles of music to perform for a potential audience as there had been in years past and then of course the 2020 pandemic hit. During the long period when no responsible person that wasn’t desperate wasn’t playing shows ABANDONS recorded a live EP at Mutiny Information Café on August 29, 2020. The recording is the group’s sole available release on Bandcamp and the entire performance was released on YouTube. ABANDONS hadn’t played many shows in general before 2022 due to the obvious restrictions but the band quickly found like-minded artists in the local post-rock and art rock community such as exists in the current phase of the Denver music scene. Projects like New Standards Men, Brother Saturn, Only Echoes, Moon Pussy and Almanac Man are some of the peers, none of which sound remotely alike, with whom ABANDONS has found some kinship. Its own mostly instrumental, music rooted in improvisation is cinematic, takes strands of post-rock structure, noise rock intensity and its own flavor or vibrantly emotional soundscape-y compositions.

Listen to our interview with ABANDONS on Bandcamp, check out the live video and the EP linked below and follow the project on Instagram and Facebook.

Lo Artiz’s Ambient Hip-Hop Track “Softly Pt. 1” is a Free Verse Map of Inner Thoughts Going Into Action

Lo Artiz’s “Softly Pt. 1” single sounds like something in a constant state of flux, breaking down, rebuilding, gently. Its lush arrangement of textural percussion and processed tones that sound like they’re lingering and melting off her strong yet whispery vocals. It all sounds like you’re getting to spend some time taking a casual walk through another person’s dreams as the mind processes streams of thought as motes of feeling and ideas swirl around and drift off to take on a life of their own for a bright, flickering moment before resolving into other shapes and notions and emotions. Her words come off like free verse existential poetry assembling thoughts to properly frame and consider while engaging with the will to take action on this constellation of interconnected thought patterns. It’s a gorgeous map of inner space the likes of which one doesn’t often hear. Listen to “Softly Pt. 1” on Spotify and follow Lo Artiz at the links provided.

Lo Artiz on TikTok

Lo Artiz on Facebook

Lo Artiz on YouTube

Lo Artiz on Instagram

loartiz.com

Lo Artiz on Bandcamp

Kris Cherry’s “Salamander Song” is an Immersive Psych Folk Allegory About Racism and Bigotry

“Salamander Song” sounds like a nature preserve in the beginning. But then Kris Cherry’s song introduces an acoustic guitar that carries a real percussive and expressive rhythm as the song goes on with spare percussion often only a shaker and with backing vocals augmenting Cherry’s luminous singing. The song is like a psych folk ballad about the “salamander man” who lived among the community but had webbed feet and scaly skin and was shunned by almost the rest of the society depicted in the song because people feared his appearance even though he was soft of voice and had a “heart of gold.” He tries to assimilate but is rejected and humiliated at every turn and when he tries to secure employment merely to survive he is denied even that and he has to resort to theft to simply eat and barely get by. In terms of the dreamlike quality of the song it’s reminiscent of the kind of thing Harry Nilsson was doing on the 1971 concept album The Point! But here the obvious inference one can make is that the tale of the “salamander man” is an allegory for racism and the way it imposes limitations on so many and others them so that they have no choice sometimes but choose to operate outside society’s established rules and often on its edges and beyond its boundaries to simply survive much less thrive. This them Cherry carries on to his remarkable new experimental folk album, the cosmically gorgeous Wonderworld out now where his use of field recordings and evocative atmospherics is entrancing. Listen to “Salamander Song” and the rest of Wonderworld on Spotify and follow Kris Cherry at the links below.

Kris Cherry on Twitter

Kris Cherry on YouTube

Kris Cherry on Instagram