“Very Body” is half of the new Lore City EP Under Way (available now digitally and on black 7” vinyl via the project’s Bandcamp linked below). We hear in the distance a hovering sound like distant aircraft passing by in the night. The resonance of distortion in the tone streams through the track as a background tone creates a sense of space. The feeling it conveys is not unlike seeing light over a horizon at night and feeling the sensation of a deep thrum felt in the body from the vibration of unseen machinery like a large engine too far to fully make out but close enough to create an ambient sensation and an aural effect both calming and mysterious not unlike becoming aware of the sounds of a nearby urban airport. Fans of The Sight Below will appreciate the tactile quality of the modulated drones here and how it indeed has an undeniable physical presence in the hearing of its orchestrated tones. Listen to “Very Body” on YouTube and follow Lore City from Portland, Oregon at the links below.
Kakuyon delivers a nuanced song about being present in your life with “Tomorrow.” The line “I’m thinking of tomorrow/And living for today” juxtaposed with words about how tomorrow can feel vague and like a distant future if you’ve not taken care of things in your life today, forever on a rat race of emotional paralysis. “Living for today cause it feels good to feel” points toward being present in your feelings instead of putting them on hold and in a perpetual state of an abstract experience that you think about rather than directly experience. The introspective vocals and melancholic, shimmery, synth lines hazy with a touch of distortion suggests a state of reflective reverie and acceptance. The sound is a blend of hip-hop, R&B and dream pop reminiscent of the evocative work of George Lewis Jr. as Twin Shadow. But Kakuyon sets the music to a trap beat that uses that electronic percussion to suggest a delicacy befitting the subject of the song. Listen to “Tomorrow” on Spotify and follow Kakuyon at the links provided.
Director Matthew Marino’s choice to bring the projected physical film analog quality to his treatment of the music video for S.C.A.B.’s single “Why Do I Dream of You” perfect expresses the song’s wash of nostalgic atmospherics. The pairing of circular, looping, guitar melody with expressively soaring vocals that shift from the earnest to the ethereal syncs so well with scenes from New York City and lyrics that place the bittersweet lyrics in a context rich with a sense of place that hits strongly at the end of the song as it fades out and we hear what sounds like a fragment of a journal written in the late night hours in a moment of vulnerability as a letter to someone expressing feelings maybe now usually buried and on the verge of saying he misses the person being addressed but struggling with finding the right way to say it and not botch the effort with clumsy or ill-considered sentiments. Fans of the aesthetically multidimensional guitar rock of Beach Fossils, Preoccupations and Parquet Courts will appreciate the way S.C.A.B. stretches out and winds the melodic path of this song. Watch the video for “Why Do I Dream of You” no YouTube and connect with the group at the links below.
With some scratches thrown in for texture, Koresma’s “Waves” sounds like someone put an old improbably techno remix of a Cocteau Twins song on the turntable. But with summery, vivid guitar melody over the top and pitch shifted vocal samples bubbling up and fading out quickly. Synth shimmers at an even and rapid pace like a slow moving flicker of tone. All over an evolving percussive beat in an IDM vein. The mix conveys a sense of panning channels giving ample room for the elements to drift and occupy various spaces in your field of hearing. But the lead female-sounding vocals sit center intone with an ethereal, introspective quality, contemplating the movement of waves as the tide comes in as a pattern that reflects eternal cycles and a sense of universal stability in a world that can seem to have gone awry especially with quickly escalating climate change. Listen to “Waves” on Spotify and follow Koresma at the links below.
The music video for Obi Blanche’s single “kry4m3” has the quality of a cursed film or Uncanny Valley territory. In black and white we see a figure walking through a rather large diorama of a city in partial ruins, a giant strolling through the abandoned remnants of human civilization with figures set out taking a break from reconstructing a society. It’s an apt metaphor for a song about heartbreak and perhaps exploring ways to reconcile. We see teeth speaking the lyrics sung in both male and female vocals. A woman in a long black coat is scene walking among the same diorama and toward the last part of the song the two figures walk by each other seemingly unaware of the presence of each other, a model for the disconnect we hear in the song whose refrain is “I cry because I want you to feel better, I don’t cry for me.” The hovering tones, hazy drones and spare percussion create a truly otherworldly atmosphere like the action of this healing separately before the hint of coming back together in the end is possible. The aforementioned lyric is like a mantra and a reminder of a path to returning to a more normal frame of mind and hearing it from both voices is a subtle way of conveying the time for suffering in silence over some slight that isn’t a dealbreaker in the end has ended. The female figure who we see crying in earlier parts of the video is shown smiling and looking into the camera rather than looking forward to where she’s walking, an unmistakable symbol of how the mood has changed and the hypnotic tenor of the song fades out. Watch the video for “kry4m3,” made by Obi Blanche and Isotta Acquati with art direction from the latter, on YouTube and follow Obi Blanche at the links below.
Sin Cos Tan used an AI to generate the video for its song “Endless” and the resultant animated visuals are like a rapidly flowing mix of imagery somewhere between manga and MC Escher but in full color. It just looks so illustrative and otherworldly it suits the song well. The measured pace of the song allows its sounds to soar, welling up with heartbreak. The dual vocals seem to dance in tandem with an uplifting rhythm and soft synth tones, a bell tone carrying the melody. The net effect is a little like an retrofuturist update of the video for the song “Take On Me” by A-ha (1985) but with a modern synth pop sound that draws on a sense of nostalgia to enrich its emotional impact. You hear in the lyrics those dreaded words “It’s time we talk, I promise it won’t take long” that inevitably lead to the breakup, one that leaves you confused and cast adrift like it’s never going to end. The lyrics “endless coming down” and “broken coming down” expresses that feeling so well, the way it can feel like being pushed into a dissociative coping state that puts you in a spiral of experiencing that moment of heartbreak over and over again until the ache of the experience is exhausted. And yet the sound of the song is one that seems hopeful because at least there is an ending and the bittersweet agony can last only as long as a song if you want it to. Watch the video for “Endless” on YouTube and follow the Finnish synth pop band Sin Cos Tan on Spotify.
The Legendary Pink Dots 2022, photo courtesy Randall Frazier
The Legendary Pink Dots have left an indelible imprint on the worlds of psychedelic rock, post-punk, Gothic rock, the avant-garde, noise, ambient, industrial, synth pop and electronic music since its inception in1980. Fronted by Edward Ka-Spel, the Pink Dots have evolved through various lineups and shifting musical styles exploring musical and non-directly musical ideas for over four decades now leaving in the wake of that path of experimentation and rich a prolific body of work all worth a listen. From the late 80s through the early 90s there was a sea change in the band’s music as its membership expanded and its songwriting style shifted toward the kinds of lush atmospherics and dreamlike melodies and textures of 1990’s Crushed Velvet Apocalypse and even more fully on the 1991 album The Maria Dimension (now released in a 3 CD extended edition). That era of the band reached wider audiences and established The Legendary Pink Dots as a cult band with a wide international following from the alternative rock era to this day. Its enigmatic yet colorful and highly emotionally charged story songs provide a kind of parallel narrative to established cultural paradigms, sagely commenting on the prevailing culture in which we all live and which we all navigate and offering insight into civilizational themes and expressing deeply personal reactions to and thoughts on he lived human experience. The group’s highly imaginative and creative music never abstracts feelings but finds a way to make the complicated and difficult explicable. The live shows are a cathartic celebration of life and dreaming and seeking and finding deeper meaning set to sonically rich and transporting soundscapes. In 2022 the Pink Dots released its latest album The Museum of Human Happiness on Metropolis Records and following that, welcomed long time booster, publicist, tour manager and friend Randall Frazier of Denver space rock/ambient band Orbit Service into the current lineup alongside Ka-Spel, long time multi-instrumentalist Erik Drost and live engineer/producer Joep Hendrikx.
Listen to our interview with Edward Ka-Spel on Bandcamp and follow the further adventures of The Legendary Pink Dots at the links provided. Catch the band currently on tour in North America including two dates in Denver: Saturday November 19, 2022 at the Mercury Café with Orbit Service and The Drood and Sunday November 20, 2022 at the Mercury as well with Dead Voices on Air and Edward Ka-Spel doing a solo performance featuring Tom Hagerman of DeVotchKa.
Lori Goldston expertly elicits a textural tone to bring us into the open spaces of “We Miss You and Wish You Well.” The video by transgender filmmaker Clyde Peterson gives us shots of clouds in real time and views from above snow enshrouded mountains as if from a plane taking off from the winter climate for parts as yet determined. Goldston’s string work on the cello feels like both the ties that bind us to the environs we know and the pull to new places and experiences. The ascending lines soar and level out with the music trailing off and returning with greater force and energy only to float off into the distance again. In the last minute of the song Goldston’s bowing brings forth a sound of conflicting forces reflecting feelings similarly at odds within one’s own mind but in the end settling into the tranquility of acceptance of a decision made. The title of the song says much for the instrumental piece and as part of the new album High and Low, with the “High” part of the album being a series of solo improvised pieces as memorials for Goldston’s friend and Canadian artist-musician the late Geneviève Elverum it expresses well the fragile intensity and delicacy of feeling and the inner turmoil that can strike you when you think on your friend again in bursts that seem manageable if you don’t allow yourself to be crushed by the immensity of it all at once but how that never quite works out. But Goldston tries and gives that expression of heavy emotion some grace and elegance in the execution. Watch the video for “We Miss You and Wish You Well” on YouTube and follow Goldston at the links provided. High and Low is available now via SofaBurn.
No Age is a noise rock/art punk duo based in Los Angeles, California. Drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt and guitarist/vocalist Randy Randall had been in a band called Wives from 2001-2005 that had been a staple of the underground/DIY music world at the time. But Spunt and Randall scrapped the name and took their then musical ideas and recast their efforts as No Age with their first shows under the new moniker in early 2006 with their second show at the legendary DIY space The Smell in April of that year. From the beginning there was a refreshing lack of pretension and exuberance in the sound of No Age. Like a fusion of The Ramones at its most raw and the lo-fi experimentation and tape collage aesthetic of The Microphones. Within the often grainy and charmingly unvarnished early recordings one could hear a joyfulness and embrace of lived experiences that could contain and express a broad range of emotions and ideas in a manner often spirited and tender. There was always an element of vulnerability to No Age’s version of punk that transformed the music into something immediately accessible, like an unspoken invitation into a shared experience of thoughts and feelings it’s easy to think of going through alone and in isolation. No Age as artists and as a band have always approached its music and its operation as a band with a community spirit and that underlying ethos is something one an hear and feel in all of its albums and at its live performances. The group’s 2007 debut full length compilation of its early EPs and singles Weirdo Rippers (FatCat) is a fantastic introduction to the core No Age sound with a title that captures what you’re in for hearing, that is to say exciting music for people who embrace being different from mainstream expectation. From 2008-2013 No Age was signed to SubPop which helped to push the band to wider audiences. The most recent No Age album People Helping People (Drag City, 2022) is one of its most daring to date and bringing into the mix more fully the musique concrète element heard from its beginnings with gorgeously dream-like tape collages set alongside its signature vital rock songs. It may be the most fully realized No Age album to date and sonically among its most arresting.
Listen to our wide ranging interview with Randy Randall of No Age on Bandcamp and connect with the group at the links below. No Age performs at the Hi-Dive on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 with John Wiese and New Standards Men.
Masma Dream World is the solo project of multi-disciplinary artist Devi Mambouka that incorporates elements of Butoh, drone, theta frequency and ambient music. In 2020 the debut Masma Dream World album Play at Night (now out no Northern Spy) but likely didn’t get a proper airing to a wide public because November 2020 was in one of the depths of the ongoing pandemic. The record is a mesmerizing listen that taps into parts of your brain that feel like a direct connection to the subconscious and one’s ancient ancestors. The use of percussion and unconventional tonalities and shamanic vocals creates a real moment throughout the recording as Mambouka makes sacred psychological space with the music opening a path to a mindset that exists outside the usual and unrelenting considerations of narrow materialism and demands on time at every moment from multiple sources. The music is a journey into a headspace that is always there for you to access but which can seem blocked from your conscious mind by habits of living that prioritize the needs of a corrosive economic system rather than what fortifies your life for real and that of everyone else and the rest of the world generally. It’s a therapeutic listen that exists outside the bounds of musical convention.
Listen to our interview with Devi Mambouka on Bandcamp and connect with the artist at the links below. Masma Dream World is currently on tour with an appearance in Fort Collins on November 15, 2022 with Kenyan-Ugandan industrial grindcore duo DUMA, Knife Band and at The Coast.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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