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David Baron Envisions a More Benevolent Future in Analog Synth Piece “City of Nerves” From His New Album ARP 2500

Record producer, film composer, musician, arranger and engineer David Baron has amassed a large collection of vintage synthesizers housed in his Sun Mountain studio on top of a mountain overlooking Ashokan Reservoir just south of Woodstock, New York. One of his prized synths is the ARP 2500 used by the likes of Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin, Bowie, Faust and Vangelis and perhaps most dramatically utilized in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the device with which scientists communicated with the aliens. On November 17, 2023 Baron released his album The ARP 2500 via Here & Now Recordings and a perhaps beautifully subtle and evocative employment of the synth is on the track “City of Nerves.” Perhaps echoing the sentiments of Ray Kurzweil, Baron says the song is a product of his thinking about how AI will impact the future and that someday he believes “a city will exist using the best of technology and biology to make for a better life for all.” The song begins with some burbling electronic tone and then a smoothly unfolding melody as layers of rhythmic and finely textured sound converge to establish a mood that is progressive with gentle forward momentum and soothing at once as a reflection of an electro-neural infrastructure that might unobtrusively provide the network of services that benefit all without the harsh demands and consequences of the economic arrangements and environment ravaging energy technologies of today. One can hope. But Baron’s song is a welcome alternative to the dark and bleak vision of the future of a lot of art which, to be fair, is extrapolating on current trend. Baron’s piece is more of the hopeful, Utopian ilk and if one can imagine it, it may even be possible. Listen to “City of Nerves” on YouTube and follow David Baron at the links below.

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Sina Bathaie’s Hypnotic, Electro-Acoustic Downtempo Track “Tehran” Fuses the Traditional With and Ultra-Modern

The rapid pulsing low end moody oud figure of the beginning of “Tehran” by Sina Bathaie sets the stage for a musical journey rendered in direct human experience in the music video for the song. Saba Zameni provides some soulful vocals to draw us further into the song hitting a broad range of tones and gesturing in dramatic fashion in the video as Bathaie strums and plucks the oud over the developing soundscape, a calmer interlude to introduce some fine baglama lines to expand the tones and textures of the song. It’s somehow both lively and vital and hypnotic in its weaving of rhythms like the songwriter is drawing upon the rich cultural history of the title of the song from the more traditional instrumentation as well as modern production techniques that lend the song comprised of largely acoustic sources a resonance like a downtempo house track. It is a brilliant fusion of aesthetics that transcends narrow categories. Watch the video for “Tehran” on YouTube and follow Sina Bathaie at the links below. His Tehran EP was released via Windcatcher Records on November 16, 2023.

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Culture Pig Unleashes a Fractured Burst of Industrial Powerviolence on “Resurrection Machine” From Its New Self-Titled EP

Culture Pig started playing shows again in 2022 after a bit of a hiatus and on November 6, 2023 released its self-titled EP. The song “Resurrection Machin” is like listening to entire neighborhoods of broken sidewalks. It’s fractured structure, rapid starts and stops, its drill swell progressions, bursts of caustic noise, gouging guitar riffs that spiral into nervous catharsis is like if The Jesus Lizard was into powerviolence. Like the band got deeply into that early hardcore-adjacent Mr. Bungle music. It’s like industrial grindcore without the blast beats, it’s drumming more like something you’d hear in a weird thrash song. It’s noise rock hardcore without the tough guy stance. It is hard-edged and ragged yet lean and focused in its execution of its performance. So yes, if you’re into Amphetamine Reptile bands or the more raw and savage end of the Touch nd Go catalog, this is for you. Listen to “Resurrection Machine” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the EP as well and follow Denver’s Culture Pig on Instagram.

Donzii Playfully Deconstructs a Song About Lust and the Yearning For Real Connection in the Video For No Wave Post-punk Funk Single “Penetrate”

Jenna Balfe and Dennis Fuller of Donzii seem smeared in green makeup and in in green wigs in the video for the group’s new single, the title track to its new EP (which landed on November 10, 2023). The duo frolic about a stage and at one point what looks like a giant phallus of the kind used in Japanese fertility festivals is wheeled into view and used as a cartoonishly large pole to dance around and then later we see experiments of various kinds performed on the object tipped over on its side. It fits a song that seems to be about near insatiable desire but delivered by Balfe in a way that seems disinterested and playful at once. In typical Donzii fashion the No Wave funk bass lines and tropical disco rhythms amid ghostly synths and guitar work give the song a quality that is a deconstruction of expectations and building toward something more subversive. It’s frankly a welcome new direction for one of the most original bands in the larger world of modern post-punk where thin guitar tones and bedroom production rules the underground. Donzii, as usual, gives us more in the music and in its presentation thereof with the video directed by Trulee Hall. Watch that video on YouTube and follow Miami’s post-punk luminaries Donzii at the links below.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E50: Julian St. Nightmare

Julian St. Nightmare (L-R: Sergio Castorena, Genevieve Fulton and Tan Garren), photo by Tom Murphy

Anyone that has been paying attention to the Denver music underground beyond a very superficial for the past two years has at least heard about Julian St. Nightmare. Its five members are a force with a bit of a mystique to their live performances and its music rooted in post-punk, darkwave, surf and garage rock, synthpop, shoegaze and the various styles of music most prominent in their collective youth in the 2000s and 2010s. The group formed in 2018 among friends including current members Chico Arellanes (guitar, bass, vocals) and Rudy Morales (guitar, vocals) who by July of that year invited Genevieve Fulton into the band knowing them from shows and their interest in being in a band only to discover that Fulton had a talent for keyboards, singing and guitar. Before the group could really get off the ground the pandemic hit. Yet in that first year of the pandemic Sergio Castorena (guitar, vocals) of Los Narwhals came into the fold as did drummer Tan Garren, both adding unique musical gifts and perspective that expanded the band’s sonic palette and performance style.

Julian St. Nightmare has since 2021 been a staple of the DIY and small club scene in Denver earning the respect of its peers. Opening slots for French darkwave pioneers Martin Dupont, Chicago post-punk luminaries French Police and NYC dark synthpop duo Tempers, Julian St. Nightmare seemed like peers of the more well-known acts. The band’s most recent shows revealed a broader sonic palette with a boosted confidence in its own powers and its show in July 2023 with now defunct shoegaze band Dream of Industry and EBM solo project Sell Farm made its own inclinations toward creative soundscaping more prominent. There is as yet no Julian St. Nightmare album but its songs can be found on the various streaming platforms and there is a new single due out by late winter or spring with production by Fulton. Alas, it is around that time that the quintet will call it quits with one final show in the works ending a run of one of the most interesting, engaging and powerful of modern bands out of the broad milieu of post-punk and darkwave precisely because it never adhered to the limitations of genre.

Listen to our interview with Castorena, Fulton, Garren on Bandcamp and follow Julian St. Nightmare at the links provided. You can catch the band’s likely second to last show on Friday, December 15, 2023 at Lost Lake on a bill with Cathedral Bells and Hex Cassette. Doors 7 p.m., show 8 p.m., $15.

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Amelia Coburn’s Psychedelic Folk Single “See Saw” Evokes the Eerie Surreal Quality of the Traveling Carnival

Amelia Coburn, photo courtesy the artist

Amelia Coburn taps into a sensibility of Vaudeville with her single “See Saw.” A simple, repeated guitar/ukulele figure repeats as she spins a darkly folkloric tale of life in a traveling carnival with some nods to Mikhail Bulgakov’s 1967 masterpiece The Master and Margarita, novel not published not even in Bulgakov’s home country of the Soviet Union until well after his death in 1940 censored for its supernatural elements and religious themes and for its satire of Soviet society and culture. Coburn’s sing-song-y vocals and Eastern European folk pop sound draws on a similar otherworldliness in crafting the mysterious imagery of the song which informs Michael Sreenan’s music video with its puppet theater stage props and dolls all in black and white. At the end of the video we see Coburn resisting being put into a travel case and something in the visuals and the old-timey sound of the song recalls the dark mysticism that seems to permeate a great deal of German Expressionist cinema. The clarity of the melody reminded Coburn of he production on “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” by the Beatles who took inspiration from the traveling circuses in establishing the mood, the tenor of their own composition. Watch the video for “See Saw” on YouTube and follow Amelia Coburn at the links below.

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Head Full of Stars Urges Us to Reconnect With Our Sources of Inspiration on Space Rock Anthem “Touch the Stars Again”

Head Full of Stars, photo courtesy the artist

Introducing “Touch the Stars Again” is the sound of some vehicle taking off in the distance. Which suits this song by Head Full of Stars as it’s space and glam rock sounds serve well a message in the song encouraging the listener to reach for their sources of inspiration and beyond the mundane everyday existence that tends to define our lives. The expansive and psychedelic melodies and words reminding us that we too quickly forgot what it’s like to be connected with the energies that make us recognize there’s more to life than we often think and we can be excited for something, have something to look forward to than simply being a consumer drone, more than a cog in someone else’s machine, if we can reconnect with a genuine sense of our passions that can hide behind the clouds of compromised visions and the overburdened demands of “real life” if we go too long without daring to live as humans excited by something beautiful and benevolent and real and not mediated by a way of living we’ve all allowed to dominate the existence of everyone and everything on the planet. Fans of the likes of Spiritualized, a more pop end of Hawkwind and, heck, a band songwriter William Bernhard was in the spectacular space rock/psych folk group Sky Cries Mary will appreciate the way Head Full of Stars infuses its guitar work with a noisy and heady psychedelia and rediscovered enthusiasm. Listen to “Touch the Stars Again” on Spotify and follow Head Full of Stars at the links below.

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“Flust Etterklang” is Haav’s Zen-like, Impressionistic Adaptation of Inge Weatherhead Breinstein’s Cosmic Ambient Jazz Song “Flust”

“Flust Etterklang” is Haav’s adaptation of the Inge Weatherhead Breistein track “Flust” from his album Skogskammer. Original sound sources such as the layers of saxophone and modular synth stream into further reaches of abstract tone as a singular flow of sonic experience. Haav weaves in field recordings from metalic sculptures and the local coastal surroundings and slows them down so that even the noise of birds and water has the audio equivalent of an image slightly out of phase. The compound effect puts one in a mood of taking in the minute details of the environment around you and getting lost in its myriad details as interconnected phenomena of existence of which oneself is merely a part. The best ambient music has that effect of inducing a Zen-like state and Haav’s treatment of “Flust” and transforming it into “Flust Etterklang” has taken a fantastic cosmic jazz-like composition and given it a deeply impressionistic filter. Listen to “Flust Etterklang” on Spotify and follow Haav on Instagram.

Razor Braids’ “She” is a Delicate Anthem to Staying Present When Meeting Someone Special

Razor Braids, photo by Justin Bruschardt

Brooklyn’s Razor Braids wrote a tender anthem to remember to be in the moment in situations in which your energy might be derailed by thoughts about your past and overthinking the future. In particular when you meet someone special who takes you by surprise with their attention and interest. There is an awareness in the lyrics of the tendency of many people to throw a wrench into something that could be good by succumbing to anxiety over not wanting to mess up an important connection with thoughts of assuming you’re going to make the same old mistakes or that you’re limited by them all the time or new types of errors and offenses one might commit. But really if you can stay in the moment it’ll be okay. The music is loosely in the realm of indie rock or punk the way say bands on the Kill Rock Stars or K Records labels might be in the 90s with punk spirit and ethos but an embrace of vulnerability and gentleness of spirit as a virtue and an aspect of being a complete person. The music video, directed by Razor Braids bassist and vocalist Hollye Bynum, shows a party in which women are mingling and having a good time and not stressing what someone might think is wrong with them, rather, being in the moment as suggested by the song and enjoying genuine connection with one another. The song was apparently written as a queer anthem given the lyrics and the presentation of the song but really anyone that claims they’ve never felt a twinge or much more than a twinge of anxiety in social situations especially in meeting someone special is probably not being completely honest. The immediacy of this Razor Braids song and its inviting spirit makes it accessible for anyone. Watch the video for “She” on YouTube and follow Razor Braids at the links provided.

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Saapato Orchestrates an Irresistible Sense of Luminous Tranquility on Ambient Track “Fool’s Empyrean”

“Fool’s Empyrean” finds Saapato layering processed field recordings to give a tangible sense of place whether walking in a field, through a forest, walking near a river or a larger body of water. And it is through these sense memories across the track’s nearly ten minutes that we are transported, floating in our minds through these landscapes all at once like translucent sets of memories while a distant and evolving drone and slow arcing tones like abstracted pedal steel tones courses through it all like the sonic equivalent of an amalgam of a light wind leisurely guiding clouds crossing the sun. Intonations of a whispery electronic flute marks time later in the song while whorls of lightly distorted and shimmery guitar sounds blossom and fade. Intermittent bird sounds peek through the incandescent musical haze in an masterfully unhurried composition that induces a psychically cleansing sense of rest from beginning to end and swept away in the end with an increase in the flow of white noise and luminous electronic chimes trailing off into the distance like a slow moving train. Listen to “Fool’s Empyrean” on Spotify and follow Saapato at the links below. Saapato’s new album, the aptly titled Somewhere Else, dropped on November 3, 2023.

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