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Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E20: The Siren Project

The Siren Project, image courtesy the artists

The Siren Project is a downtempo/dream pop/post-punk band that started in Denver in 1998 and quickly became a staple in the local Goth and alternative rock scenes for several years. When the cultural infrastructure around the Goth scene began to dissolve and being a band perceived as making music in that style and the social connections surrounding it didn’t quite line up with the ascendance of mid-2000s indie rock in Denver, The Siren Project most often performed at events and club nights that catered to the subculture. And during the course of life events that sometimes put being more active on hold the band remained the enduring duo of vocalist Malgorzata Wacht and producer/synthesist Alex Seminara throughout the 2010s and now 2020s. In 2016 The Siren Project released its debut album Denouement. The record included songs dating back to the group’s earliest days and featured the contributions of various collaborators and yet at its heart was the sense of yearning and connection, of a romance with life and its meaning. Wacht’s powerful and expressive vocals and the lush and dreamlike melodies conveyed a very European sensibility that one hears in bands that influenced the duo’s early creative efforts like Clan of Xymox, Depeche Mode, Dead Can Dance and The Cure. Yet The Siren Project very much as its own sound that has set itself apart from its peers in the older Goth scene of Denver and of today. These days the style might best fall under the umbrella of darkwave seeing as its songwriting style and aesthetic has had less in common with industrial and EBM and more with modern acts like Boy Harsher, KANGA and Kaelan Mikla.

Listen to our interview with Wacht and Seminara on Bandcamp and follow The Siren Project at the links below. The band has a live show opening for Goth industrial legends Seraphim Shock at The Oriental Theater on Friday, September 1, 2023 with Faces Under the Mirror, hosted by Sid Pink and DJ sets from DJ Slave 1. For more information on the band and its goings on as well as to listen to the music please visit the links below.

thesirenprojectmusic.com

The Siren Project on Facebook

The Siren Project on YouTube

Wombo’s “Thread” is a Warmly Moody Avant-Post-Punk Song About Emotional Self-Protection

Louisville, Kentucky’s Wombo dropped its latest release the Slab EP via Fire Talk Records on June 9, 2023. The second single “Thread” and its companion music video showcase the more tender side of the band’s songwriting. Originally written by singer Sydney Chadwick on piano the song has morphed into something no less minimalist in musical quality but driven by spare percussion, melodic bass lines and Chadwick’s vocals sounding like they’re coming from a secret place and revealing personal secrets, not tentatively, but as though feeling safe enough to be so vulnerable to speak those words out loud about having to protect oneself emotionally through subtle acts of subterfuge. The music video itself looks like something filmed clandestinely to perhaps release to a public someday but maybe leaked quietly online for those more savvy and clued into the vibe to find. Musically it’s a slight departure from the beautifully dissonant tonality of earlier releases from the band yet in line with its seeming willingness to go off established maps of expectation in crafting music that gets past those filters. Watch the video for “Thread” on YouTube and follow Wombo at the links below.

Wombo on Facebook

Wombo on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S3E19: hackedepicciotto

hackedepicciotto, photo by Errefotografia

Alexander Hacke and Danielle De Picciotto have been composing music together as hackedepicciotto for over twenty years. Based out of Berlin the two met in the 1980s in the same musical and art circles that included the influential industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten with which Hacke has been a member since 1981. De Picciotto was one of the founders of Love Parade in 1989, a traveling electronic music festival in Berlin dedicated to peace and international understanding and both musicians have been members of foundational post-punk band Crime and the City Solution since 2012. De Picciotto is an internationally recognized author and visual artist and creator of two graphic memoirs We Are Gypsies Now (2013) and Die Heitere Kunst der Rebellion (2020). Separately and together the artists have been involved in film making, cinematic scoring, multi-media presentations as well as finely crafted albums under the current collective moniker since 2016 (previous releases as Alexander Hacke & Danielle De Picciotto). The latest is Keepsakes released July 28, 2023 the duo’s second record on Mute. The album was recorded at the studio Auditorium Novecento in Napoli, Italy where Enrico Caruso and Ennio Morricone both recorded. De Picciotto and Hacke took advantage of the use of tubular bells and a grand piano in the studio and an array of other on hand instrumentation to craft songs in celebration of friendship and the lives of various friends with music that is as orchestral as it is intimate, imbued with subtle and surprising textures within its expressive melodies and experiments in sound and songwriting. It is arguably the duo’s finest record to date in an already remarkable career catalog.

Listen to our interview with hackedepicciotto on Bandcamp and follow the project at the links below and perhaps catch them at their always compelling live shows. Keepsakes is currently available on digital, CD and vinyl through one of the link portals below.

hackedepicciotto.de

danielledepicciotto.com

hacke.org

To purchase Keepsakes through Mute Records

V V Brown’s “Twisted” is a Neo Soul Song of Resistance to Cultural Appropriation and Commodification

V V Brown taps into a classic neo soul sound for “Twisted,” a thoughtful yet forceful examination of the ways a creative and social culture can be co-opted and exploited for profit without the people who make up the organic, human community of people in which that culture germinates benefiting directly. Brown’s voice sounds like its coming from another time and traveling through a hall of images and memories while a repeating phantom of processed vocals passes her by to a rhythm outside of the standard 4/4 time of pop music, rather, something more behind or ahead of that beat, dragging behind ever so slightly at times like a Dilla production. It altogether keeps you riveted on Brown’s commentary about the commodification of black and other indigenous cultures as something to fetishize and sell back to that community and to people who think that by buying in they’re participants. It’s a process as old as the model of colonialism and its endless trivializing the culture, spirituality, beliefs and art of the colonized so that it can be turned into yet another product. But in Brown’s words and lyrics you hear a spirit of resistance to this pattern and a reclamation of the dignity of the authentic culture as something you are rather than giving it up as something for sale. It’s the kind of creative subversion of the dominant paradigm that has been part of popular musical styles for decades and even centuries. V V Bown, with “Twisted,” just gives it her own brand of soulful cool. Listen to “Twisted” on Spotify and follow V V Brown at the links below.

V V Brown on Facebook

V V Brown on Instagram

Good Lee and Marya Stark Make a Case for the Alchemical Power of Forgiveness on the Downtempo Pop Song “Turn to Roses”

“Turn to Roses” has a soft production and meditative rhythms that suggests the dawning of something within. Songwriter Good Lee tapped Starling Arrow vocalist/musician Marya Stark to perform the vocals for the song from the August 4, 2023 album A World Within to give it a gentle but melodiously evocative touch. Stark’s turn at singing the song took her out of her usual context in a more folk vein and sat perfectly in a downtempo pop song about forgiveness and the power of growing beyond the accidental hurts and offenses we can visit upon those we love and have loved. The line “all our arrows turn to roses” points to the almost emotionally alchemical process of that path out of holding onto one’s aggrievement and into a place of grace and to remember the things that brought you together rather than the misunderstandings and conflicts that drove you apart. The song is reminiscent of early 90s New Age-inflected pop music but with a modern production sensibility that lends the ethereal tonality a warmth it might not otherwise possess. Listen to “Turn to Roses” on Spotify and connect with Good Lee at the links below.

Good Lee on TikTok

Good Lee on Facebook

Good Lee on Bandcamp

Good Lee on Instagram

locirecords.com

Maddy Briggs Manifests the Zen-like State of Full Body Solitude on Ultra Tranquil Ambient Drone Track “At Bay”

Maddy Briggs utilized a live organ recording through Max/MSP to craft a single take, live performance, debut EP titled Late Night Swim which released on June 13, 2023. This method gives the ambient/drone composition a dreamlike unity that lives completely up to the title of the whole piece. The third section “At Bay” has an organic almost iterative tonal shimmer like the moonlight and pool lights dancing on the surface of the water and illuminating its depths. The first half of the track has an effervescence that is like the immediate sensory quality of entering that environment and the second half the meditative tranquility of taking in the sheer, uninterrupted peacefulness of the experience with the brighter tones coming to the fore as one is able to absorb the unique quality of light and how it and being immersed in the water can drive away daytime psychological concerns and one is able to enjoy what it is to be a human living in the world unburdened by the near constant presence of other stimuli that we take for granted even if we don’t consciously clock their impact on our psyche. The rest of the EP embodies different facets of being able to truly indulge the therapeutic quality of a full body experience of a Zen-like state. Listen to “At Bay”and the rest of Late Night Swim on Spotify and follow Maddy Briggs at the links below.

Maddy Briggs on Bandcamp

Maddy Briggs on Instagram

maddybriggs.com.au

The Parade’s Downtempo Pop Debut Single “I’m a Dreamer” is a Gorgeously Languid Song About Casual Summertime Romance

“I’m a Dreamer” is the debut single by dream pop band The Parade from Stockholm, Sweden. Its introspective melodies and gentle rhythms and melodious vocals are reminiscent of Saint Etienne and in moments the keyboard work like something you’d expect out of an early 90s downtempo group but a production style more like club music you’d hope to hear these days. Given the music video and footage like a raiding of thrift stores for VHS tapes and repurposing and editing them to give a deep sense of late summer, night time revelry. And this song is seemingly about a casual, summertime romance that might turn into something more but doesn’t have to evolve beyond something mutually entered into for the good times for now. Watch the video for “I’m a Dreamer” on YouTube and follow The Parade at the links provided.

The Parade on Instagram

Streaming Links to Listen to “I’m a Dreamer”

Von Pearl’s Ethereal and Intimate “Here” is an Ode to Emotional Resilience and Being Present

Von Pearl’s voice is vulnerable in its declaration of resilience in “Here.” She seems to be floating in a realm of tonal bubbles in the beginning of the song, a bright and vivid point in indistinct darkness. Then hand percussion comes in to beat out a simple beat and updrafts of melody soar with Von Pearl’s emotional outpouring, traced by violin figures. The song has an arc from a place where it seems like someone tried to undermine confidence but getting through that time and coming into one’s own and learning the truth of the situation and one’s own power makes it more challenging to keep that destructive and toxic situation going as it was and later in the song Von Pearl sings of being someone who can be an example to anyone that feels the need to live that way by shining a light of how it’s better to live with honesty and integrity and being present. The music is a lovely mix of the organic and the transcendent and humanized completely by the intimacy of Von Pearl’s delivery thus making an emotionally complex subject accessible. Listen to “Here” on Spotify and follow Von Pearl at the links below.

Von Pearl on Instagram

Von Pearl on TikTok

Von Pearl on Facebook

Von Pearl on Twitter

Rare Monk Dreams of a Life Free of the Destructive Grind Culture of Modern Life on Psychedelic Pop Single “Missing Forever”

“Missing Forever” is a song in which Rare Monk utilizes the language of distorted and hazy, psychedelic folk pop, an ideal format really, to articulate a feeling most everyone living under late capitalism has experienced deeply at some point. In the music video we see what looks like Super 8 footage of a trip to a more or less endless expanse of nature in the wooded mountains with two humans and their dog, camping equipment ready for more than a mere vacation. Playing cards, clear waters, sun dappled skies. Great soaring melodies, ebullient and roaring song dynamics and propulsive, expressive rhythms that stretches the song beyond any specific subgenre and into pure mood, one of joyful liberation. The lyrics are a playful, day dream that evolves into a plan of escape sort of thing about needing some peace, needing a holiday, unlimited time and yes quitting one’s job and “go missing forever.” Even if that’s not ultimately realistic or viable for most of us and certainly not long term you can’t help but entertain such ideas because they are outside the thinking of a culture that insists you work yourself to death to be a “real” person and crave being “productive” all the time and for what? To not be able to afford housing, to pay too much for food and transportation and to have to have a subscription to everything, the complete erosion of public spaces and the encroachment upon the public sphere by oligarch bootlickers? That’s no kind of life. Forget quiet quitting, even a day or a week of a general strike would derail the system that keeps us down but until some kind of revolution seems possible there’s no harm in dreaming about turning off, tuning out and dropping out to “go missing forever.” Watch the video for “Missing Forever” on YouTube and follow Portland, Oregon’s Rare Monk at the links below. The song is from the forthcoming Coronation EP due out later in 2023.

Rare Monk on Facebook

Rare Monk on Bandcamp

Rare Monk on Instagram

raremonk.com

Lennie Rayen’s Visually Stunning Video for “A Fruit” Pulls You in For the Song’s Poetic Exploration of the Nature of Perception

The fantastical music video for Lennie Rayen’s “A Fruit,” the first single from her upcoming EP, as filmed and edited by Dylan Locke, embodies the lyrics of the song in an manner immersively cinematic. The short song and its lush melodies and moodily ethereal vocals is about perception and how ours can be challenging to bridge our own worlds with each other in the specifics of our cognition and interpretation of not only sensory stimuli but of course of those more psychological/emotional. The song is one minute fifty-one seconds long but conveys much with its engaging and spare melody and the immediacy of Rayen’s voice. When paired with the dazzling colors and dreamlike imagery like an 80s fantasy anime come to life it pulls you in and invites revisiting to take in the rich details both musical and visual. Watch the video for “A Fruit” on YouTube and follow Lennie Rayen at the links provided.

Lennie Rayen on Instagram