New Music – Page 113 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E35: Mark Bingham

Mark Bingham got an early start in the music business when he was signed with Elektra Records at the age of 17 in 1966 and released a single on Warner Bros. before returning to his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana to attend university. At the time he started Bar-B-Q Records and in 1975 he relocated to New York City and started the band Social Climbers but also got involved in recording some of the city’s more adventurous artists like Glenn Branca, MX-80 and in particular Bush Tetra’s 1980 single “Too Many Creeps.” Bingham moved to New Orleans in 1982 and started The Boiler Room recording studio and in 2001 opened Piety Street Recording but ended operations with the studio in 2013. Across his decades as a producer, musician (studio, live), composer and recording engineer, Bingham has worked with R.E.M., Ed Sanders, John Scholfield, Flat Duo Jets, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull, Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, Korn, Dr. John, Pretty Lights, Dave Matthews and countless others but is perhaps less known for his eclectic and vast body of work that is his own music. So from 2022-2023 Nouveau Electric Records is releasing Bingham’s collected work in 22 albums. The series began with the release of Mushroom Crowd and Goo Seneck on Friday, November 18, 2022 with albums released every two months through September 2023 including the recently issues William Blake in Bakersfield.

Listen to our interview with Mark Bingham on Bandcamp and please visit Bingham’s own Bandcamp below for more information on the producer and the aforementioned series of releases.

Lucas Thijs Elicits a Sense of Breaking Mundane Life Limitations on “Waterhole Web”

Lucas Thijs evokes a sense of the cosmic from the very beginning of “Waterhole Web” before the song launches into its main piano melody splashed with a halo of sounds: side melodies that echo and fade, textural swells and glitches of white noise that serve as informal percussion and filigree of dramatic 80s rock guitar. But the song gives us some breathing room from the way it takes us in its embrace for passages that feel like what it must be like to be able to float into space through a column of starlight. Forget hardware, this technology as manifested in the music requires no equipment bur rather an unlocked inborn ability to transcend normal laws of physics and our own human limitations. And the song and its spiraling drift of blissful sounds embodies the impulse to that kind of liberation from everyday limitations. Listen to “Waterhole Web” on Spotify and follow Lucas Thijs at the links below.

Lucas Thijs on Instagram

Lucas Thijs LinkTree

Chromadescent’s “Saturate” is Like the Bright and Warm Sound of Summer in Winter

Chromadescent, photo courtesy the artist

Chromadescent’s “Saturate” is brimming with shimmery sounds that swirl together with bell tones giving it solidity and rhythm before the saturated synth, piano and more vivid rhythmic and textural elements enter and transform the song into something that has an expansive fluidity. But over halfway through the it drifts into the ether once again anchored by a distant piano melody, percussive accents and lingering notes like being immersed in a virtual world where EDM, IDM, flamenco co-inform each other in a fully synthesized style. It has an energy like a modern version of Balearic Beat – incredibly calming but stimulating to the imagination in elevated emotional resonances. It’s a song that sounds like summer in the winter. Listen to “Saturate” on Spotify and follow Chromadescent at the links provided.

Chromadescent on TikTok

Chromadescent on Facebook

Chromadescent YouTube

Chromadescent Instagram

Bad Flamingo’s “Devil and the Deep Blue” Channels Private Anxiety Into Moodily Transformative Americana Art Rock

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo has crafted a typically unpredictable song with “Devil and the Deep Blue” beginning with a brooding bass line lead and the most minimal of guitar accents. Then the vocals come in sounding very focused within a narrow yet expressive range compared to some of the duo’s songs of years past but within the style of its more recent songs. It just makes it feel like the words are being given to us in confidence with a direct focus. Later in the song acoustic guitar and electric come in to give some sonic shading and detail with the electric ringing out like a briefly echoing thunderclap before the song returns to its simple, rhythmic elements that are more percussive than melodic giving the song a bit of a 1980s Tom Waits flavor circa the weirder end of Swordfishtrombones. It shouldn’t work but it does and breaks standard songwriting forms. At times the song is reminiscent of the sort of thing Barry Adamson was doing on his 1996 opus Oedipus Schmoedipus through inverting jazz tropes to make something that sounds like it isn’t beholden to anyone else’s established style while remaining accessible and with a vibe of hushed immediacy. The song seems to be about one of anxiety and urgency but coping through channeling the nervous energy away in almost tribal, ritualistic rhythms. Listen to “Devil and the Deep Blue” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

Bad Flamingo on Facebook

Bad Flamingo on Instagram

Bad Flamingo YouTube

badflamingomusic.com

OR/ANA’s “Burned Down” is a Moody Dream Pop Song About Personal Transformation Through Devastation

OR/ANA’s “Burned Down” has a simple structure and not a lot in the way of lyrics but what is there is layered and arranged in such a way that gives the song an atmospheric spaciousness and depth of mood laid out like a cinematic listening experience. A distorted synth tone pulses urgently as melodic sparkles stream in the backdrop of your hearing as vocalist sings about how “everything is falling apart” but “what a beautiful farewell.” And the first what we might call act or chapter of the song is like a mantra to this concept. Of familiar structures and habits coming apart to make way for something new even if it can feel scary and unmooring at first. Then near the midpoint of the song the distorted pulse drops away and we are carried off into a billowy field of ethereal sound that yield’s a second chorus of “I’m so down, everything’s burned down” like a statement to self of acceptance of change while mourning what was lost. In the last roughly third of the song the elements from the first third return but in a form that sounds in an urgent kind of disarray and as the final set of lyrics with “All you see in flames, running after me” and “there’s a fire in my house and it burns down.” This suggests the way in which we can see the chaos and discord affecting other people as things going south and bemoaning it but when it comes to your own situation how does one deal with societal and world events when they can no longer be abstracted with a kind of dissociation. Perhaps it’s not a metaphor for the uneven impacts of inequality, climate change, social upheaval, a global pandemic, environmental destruction in pursuit of short term profits and the effects on health and society but it works for that too. OR/ANA gives that experience a gorgeously affecting soundscape here without hitting you over the head with obvious symbolism in casting it in personal terms like a journey of growth and transformation that can apply deeply personally or far beyond one’s immediate experience. Listen to “Burned Down” on YouTube and follow OR/ANA at the links below. The Expansion EP was released in 2022 and can be heard on Spotify.

OR/ANA on TikTok

OR/ANA on Instagram

Father Baker’s “The Downhill Chill” is a Hip-Hop Poem and Mantra of Resistance to Complacency

Father Baker imbues “The Downhill Chill” with an air of bravado in the face of resignation in bracing for the inevitable turn of fortune in one’s life, especially in the long term and the limited time we all have in life to attempt to do something meaningful or at least truly desirable with our lives while we can. The production by CEE GEE and Camouflage Monk of Griselda Records loops a haunting guitar part and swells of strings and a hypnotic beat really cloaks the track in a sense of menace and anxiety. And yet Father Baker’s refrain of “chill the fuck out and breathe” is like a mantra out of focusing on inevitable cycles that you see coming when “all the shit flows downhill.” The sample that closes out the song wherein a speaker talks about the social conditioning we receive in life and how individuality, and really creativity and imagination, are discouraged and often beaten out of people in various ways and that most people “don’t have enough so you become watchers of game shows and things like that.” This song appears to be an attempt to at least remind the artist and listeners that it doesn’t have to be that way even when headed into middle age and beyond and that awareness is one of the first steps to change and establishing better habits of mind. Fans of Anticon projects like Deep Puddle Dynamics and early Atmosphere or the likes of cLOUDDEAD or Hymie’s Basement will find much to enjoy here. Listen to “The Downhill Chill” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the recently released Towers EP and follow Father Baker at the links below.

Father Baker on Facebook

Father Baker on Instagram

fatherbakerknows.com

The Audio/Visual Dept.’s Cathartically Ambient “Healing Happening” Soothes the Jagged Places in the Mind

“Healing Happening” is the fourth track from The Audio/ Video Dept.’s latest album …it all felt so real (which dropped December 9, 2022). Though part of a larger larger project involving saturated tones and elegant use of space and musical texture the song stands on its own as an expression of the release of fixed energy into a billowing flow. Chimes, metal and wood, sound in the entrancing swirl like a slow moving frequency that works out the stubborn jagged spaces in your psyche that sit there as bad habits of mind upon which one’s ability to move on to greater fulfillment can get snared. The sound sounds also like a great and gentle untanglement. It’s echoing ripples and expansive dynamic is not merely tranquil, it flows into and out of the mind leaving clarity in its wake. Listen to “Healing Happening” on Spotify and follow The Audio/Visual Dept. at the links below.

The Audio/Visual Dept. at Instagram

The Audio/Visual Dept. on Apple Music

Stargurl’s “Floral Hotline” is a Chill and Tranquil Journey Into the Depths of the Night Time of Dreams

Stargurl sets a scene of chill tranquility and dreamlike introspection with the opening section of “Floral Hotline.” The sound of wind flowing as a backdrop and intermittent tones like stars in the night or the twinkling of distant city lights. String synths stream in dusky resonance. At the halfway point a gently echoing saturated melody drifts through the mix like a buried emotional memory surfacing but still amorphous and mysterious as it takes form in the mists of the subconscious and dissolving back into that fog. The song is like an extended dream sequence soundtrack from a lost section of the film Monsters (2010) and Stargurl’s chosen tones more the night time counterpart to John Hopkins’ own sunny electronic sequences. Listen to “Floral Hotline” on Spotify and follow Stargurl on Instagram.

Neil Foster Evokes the Hushed Energy of the World After Sunset on “Nightfall”

With the gradual replacement of sunlight with the shadowy low light and darkness of the night sky, Neil Foster arranges layers of airy drones and streams of melodic tone on “Nightfall.” What is gradual becomes an engulfing flow of cool sounds and echoing winks of single note arpeggios dotting the soundscape and rays of subdued sonic luminosity streaming through the murk like rays of moonlight. The cover image for the single shows hills shaded and billowy, gray clouds partially masking the setting sun. The song embodies the kind of hush immediately after the sun sets and before full moonrise and depending on the time of the year when the evening can seem darkest. But Foster also conveys the underlying activity that continues well after daylight takes a break before the next morning but with a sometimes subdued energy as diurnal activity transitions to the nocturnal. Foster’s composition maintains a sense of liminal wonder and tranquility that one doesn’t regularly hear in the realm of music and the track begins as it ends with a subtle fade out into what comes next. Listen to “Nightfall” on Spotify and follow Neil Foster at the links below.

Neil Foster on Facebook

Neil Foster on Bandcamp

Neil Foster on Instagram

Vague Lanes Craft a Spacious Sense of Emotional Suspension and Release on “We’ll Always Have Never”

The sharp, edgy and lingering guitar work at the beginning of “We’ll Always Have Never” by Vague Lanes is anchored by a subtle but moody bass line and propelled by the accents of percussion. It’s a dynamic that gives the song great sense of space and brooding atmospheres. When the vocals come in they sound like someone suspended in that space and when all the music more or less tops you can almost feel the source of the voice fall off a cliff into the splashes of rhythm and tone and the flow of synth melody that carries you until the end. The song somehow brings together the intimacy of a lo-fi recording with the detail of a full studio recording and its’ particular flavor of post-punk has more in common with early Skinny Puppy and Fields of the Nephilim at once than modern darkwave in its expert use of electronics and live instrumentation in crafting an emotive aural experience. Listen to “We’ll Always Have Never” on Bandcamp and follow the Swiss band at the links provided. The new album Foundation and Divergence released on December 24, 2022 on digital, CD and vinyl formats available through the Bandcamp link.

Vague Lanes on Instagram

vaguelanes.com