New Music – Page 158 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 17: The Royal Arctic Institute

The Royal Arctic Institute, photo courtesy the artists

The Royal Arctic Institute recently released its first release in its current five-piece edition. From Catnip To Coma was recorded and produced by James McNew of Yo La Tengo fame at the Neumann Leather Factory in Hoboken, New Jersey. The EP was released on February 4, 2022 through Alread Dead Tapes and Records. The band’s members are veterans of underground and alternative rock going back to the 1980s: drummer Lyle Hysen (Das Damen, Arthur Lee), guitarists John Leon (Roky Erickson, Summer Wardrobe, Abra Moore) and Lynn Wright (And The Wiremen, Bee And Flower, Shilpa Ray), bassist David Motamed (Das Damen, Two Dollar Guitar, Arthur Lee, Townes Van Zandt), and keyboardist Carl Baggaley (Headbrain, Gramercy Arms). Hysen and Leon formed the group in 2016 with original bassist Gerard Smith recording two albums before dissolving and reforming as a quintet in 2020 just in time for the SARS-COV-2 global pandemic. But the music was fairly different from the music for which the musicians were more well-known in years past and its mix of surf rock, intricate instrumentation and hypnotic rhythms might be compared to psychedelic rock with a cinematic feel almost like sound design written as organic music that envelops you in layers of gorgeous melodies that suggest a narrative even in its all instrumental passages.

We had the opportunity to speak with Hysen and Leon about the project and their long history in music and what lead them to the path on which they’re currently carrying on making music that’s meaningful but maybe not yet finding the large audience it deserves. Listen on Bandcamp and follow The Royal Arctic Institute at the links below and maybe even buy a cassette of the new EP from Already Dead Tapes linked below as well.

The Royal Arctic Institute on Instagram

The Royal Arctic Institute on Facebook

The Royal Arctic Institute on Twitter

The Royal Arctic Institute on Bandcamp

alreadydeadtapes.com

AJ Lambert’s Psychedelic Video For “When You’ve No Eyes” is an Imaginative Presentation of a Song About Cutting Through Our Collective Illusions

AJ Lambert isn’t exactly leaning on her lineage for her musical career as the daughter of Nancy Sinatra and granddaughter of Frank Sinatra. Not when you’re releasing a song called “When You’ve No Eyes” with a self-directed music video like something straight out of a low budget, psychedelic science fiction movie. Animated lightning strikes in the sky at the beginning and credits for the video roll like it’s the end part of a movie with aesthetics resonant with the 2017 film The Florida Project. Bubbles float through the sky, streaking bolts of fire, purple clusters of clouds, a bouncing red bit of fluid and a turning object like an interdimensional satellite floats as an observer over this human drama with no humans visible unless the remains of human civilization count along with the graffiti on walls. The song itself is a heartfelt pop Americana with Lambert’s impassioned, breathy, slightly husky vocals about the illusions people try to perpetrate on one another when dropping these pretenses are really necessary for life and indeed the world to move forward in a more valid direction that nourishes rather than evades being real and living in the here and now. Watch the video for “When You’ve No Eyes” on YouTube and connect with Lambert on Spotify.

Khazali’s “Dance on the Rain” is a Poetic Portrait of Acceptance of a Break-Up

The lush, pulsing, hazy melody of Khazali’s “Dance on the Rain” immediately takes you back to the early days of chillwave when that music was new and felt fresh and like something borrowed from a dream. But Khazali’s song has obviously learned from production methods and aesthetics that have come along since while embracing the sounds of analog synth in the mix as bright touches of a handful of notes cut through that haze and along with the staccato guitar work provide a framework within which the singer’s ghostly yet soulful vocals can drift along in an easy manner depicted in the evocative music video. It all sounds chill and introspective and it is but Khazali’s words in spare stanzas paint us the portrait of the end of the cycle of a break-up in unmistakable terms and where regret and pain has turned to acceptance but not without a touch of sadness. Watch the video for “Dance on the Rain” on YouTube and connect with Khazali on Instagram linked below.

Khazali on Instagram

First Frontier Strikes a Strong Chord of Romantic Heartache and Psychological Honesty on the Emotionally Raw “Insist”

First Frontier covers a lot of emotional territory on the single “Insist” from its forthcoming EP Just Matter (out March 18, 2022). Hailing from Birmingham, UK, First Frontier on this song sounds like a bit like an American indiepop band. The yearning tones of the guitar as the song begins may make you think you’re in for an indie rock song like many we’ve heard in recent years but it also has an unvarnished quality that feels more honest and earnest. And the lyrics tracing the contours of a relationship in which two people are intimately aware of their own shortcomings as articulated in poetic detail. The line “There’s a weakness in my head/More an enemy instead/And it takes me from the light/To the dark side/When I’m lonely in this bed/I see why some people let/Jagged whispers lead them straight to the wrong life” contains so much psychological insight, searing honesty and compassion it really makes the song a standout. But even when the song waxes more romantic it’s never, ever corny or hackneyed, it brims over with a heartbreaking poignancy that you don’t hear in nearly enough pop music and the spare instrumentation with the fragile male and female vocals giving the song a tender authenticity is hard to beat. Listen to “Insist” on Bandcamp and follow First Frontier at the links below.

firstfrontiermusic.com

First Frontier on Twitter

First Frontier on Facebook

First Frontier on Instagram

First Frontier on YouTube

Jori Larres’ “Counterpoints” is a Musical Analog to Interstellar Quantum Travel

Finnish composer Jori Larres uses rapidly shimmering, distorted synths to introduce us to his song “Counterpoints” as if a tonal transportation system to a higher dimension where the minimal percussion gives shape to passageways in the song once the ethereal effervescence clears away. The song feels like an elevated stroll with elongated notes lighting the path ahead in a world of pure light and benevolent, resonating energies that have a form emerging from the intersection of opposed elements of sound. A call and response dynamic that creates the vibration and interactions from which solidity forms. Later in the song we, the listners, emerge from the that busy yet comforting soundscape into a place of utter peace and silence. And in retrospect it feels like the musical analog of directly experiencing a future form of quantum travel that feels like a slow transcendence as we are converted to energy and then back into solid form not unlike the way the transporters on Star Trek effect their function. Probably not Larres’ inspiration for the track and yet it is a kind of nourishing array of sounds in which you are washed taking in their vibrations. Listen to “Counterpoints” on YouTube, connect with multimedia artist and musician Jori Larres at the links provided and give a listen to the recently released album Intervals from which the single was taken.

Jori Larres on Apple Music

Jori Larres on Facebook

Jori Larres on Instagram

Paperbark Reveals the Secret Wonder of Everyday Spaces on What Was Left Behind

What Was Left Behind finds Paperbark creating a subtle depth of sonic focus with layers of sound conveying a textural sensibility like tape hiss to run through and over the main tonal experiments run across the album. The title track has what sounds like a distant organ echoing from a giant room somewhere deep inside an abandoned building like a ghost of music emerging as a reminder of a history often glossed over and forgotten. “Open Memory” sounds like another song from this setting with the sound of coins or metallic stones dropping in the middle distance, the percussive sound of which cuts through every so slightly through an evolving drone that develops into a more active sonic figure like a constantly resonating sound interweaving with a shining and repeating sound like plugging in a mysterious radio signal into a device to replicate that pattern as a series of noises brimming forth with a calmingly indistinct quality, true ambient without being an identifiable environmental source. Across the album Paperbark seems to have tapped into a forgotten side of neglected places and finding an abstract narrative that reveals the deeper emotional resonance of the place as on “Bring Up The Scars” where a repeating white noise washes over a pulsing sound figure that shifts in activity as if a inanimate object was revealing its history to anyone that will listen and at least have the ears and imagination to translate those tales in a form accessible if not verbal. Paperbark infuses each track with this imaginative interpretation of the essence of what seems like an otherwise neglected place or one not seen as extraordinary to most people but within which the musician has found a multitude of meanings and invites the listener to find these resonances of energy and ambient knowledge and wonder of everyday places for themselves. Listen to What Was Left Behind on the Constellation Tatsu Bandcamp.

BONG-747 Soundtracks the Life of a Futuristic Taxi Driver on the Present time mix of “Big Brother” as remixed by iY?

The Present time mix remixed by iY? of “Big Brother” puts the focus on rhythmic elements of the track and the more ethereal atmospheric elements where synth lines seem to streak by. Sonically it sounds like what it might be like to fly a vehicle in some future where hearing the ambient traffic chatter is a part of life for someone shuttling passengers to and from high rise buildings and distant home or recreational destinations. Samples of radio talk sit side by side bright but hazy melodies and a tonal percussive features that track the passage of time and lend a backdrop of urgency and low key menace. At points it comes off a bit like an unlikely but entirely possible collaboration between Brian Eno, The Crystal Method and Oneohtrix Point Never with the physicality and sense of texture of the first, the gift for dark yet playful moods of the second and the way the latter is able to craft emotional sonic vistas with layered movement. Listen to the track on YouTube and connect with BONG-747 at the links provided.

BONG-747 on Facebook

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 16: hackedepicciotto on The Silver Threshold

hackedepicciotto at Mutiny Information Cafe in 2015, photo by Tom Murphy

Daniel de Picciotto and Alexander Hacke have been pivotal figures in experimental music in their home city of Berlin going back decades. Hacke has long been a member of pioneering industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten and de Picciotto was a co-founder of traveling electronic music festival the Love Parade. Both have also been members of influential post-punk band Crime & the City Solution. These creative endeavors would be enough to secure their place in music history but anyone involved in the world of art and creative work knows you cannot rest on your laurels forever and de Picciotto and Hacke have both worked in film scoring, various musical projects and in the case of de Picciotto a writer of both a memoir (The Beauty of Transgression published in 2011 about de Picciotto’s early years in Berlin) and graphic novels (We Are Gypsies Now: A Graphic Diary from 2015 about the travails of trying to find a place to settle as artists when Berlin seemed to begin to be unaffordable; Die heitere Kunst der Rebellion – in English The Cheerful Art of Rebellion published in German in 2021 covering her Berlin years 1987-1995). Hacke and Picciotto have also released solo albums all worth exploring including de Picciotto’s affecting 2021 LP The Element of Love.

Several years back Hacke and de Picciotto established hackedepicciotto as a vehicle for their musical collaboration and their multimedia shows as touring artists has consistently brought fascinating narratives and visceral performances to cities around the world. In 2021 the respected Mute Records label released the latest hackedepicciotto album The Silver Threshold. The album is a showcase for what the project has been steeped in for years while also a fine example of pushing aesthetics and exploring sonic and thematic possibilities across eleven tracks, each a marvel of expanding stylistic experiments while commenting on having lived and traveled across continents and truly conjuring a sense of place and time while using sense memory and psychological states and sharp cultural observations as raw material for composition.

I recently had a chance to discuss The Silver Threshold with hackedepicciotto in depth through the use of modern technology to bridge the gap between Berlin and Colorado. Our conversation about symbolism, themes, the challenges of modern culture for creative life and more with any luck flowed well even for the listener as much as it felt to on my end. And if fortune favors us further hackedepicciotto will get to tour more extensively in the year ahead to bring this unique album and their other work to life in their inimitable and always engaging manner. Listen to the interview on Bandcamp and check out The Silver Threshold and other hackedepicciotto also on Bandcamp linked directly below as is the project’s website.

hackedepicciotto.de

Nobody Ever Does Takes Us on a Cosmic Journey to Inner Tranquility on Ambient Psychedelic Track “Rustig Aan”

Nobody Ever Does, photo courtesy the artists

Nobody Ever Does might look like a vagabond version of Jellyfish and one might expect a different flavor of psychedelia from “Rustig Aan.” But what emerges across it’s lush and gorgeous sprawl of sound nearly nine minutes long is a downtempo and meditative listening experience akin to a mellower Bardo Pond without the passages of raw noise. Measured, hypnotic percussion, streaming synths sparkle, ethereal female vocals stream melodic poetry as if cast adrift on the ocean of subconscious thought. In the background voices speak like distant radio signals echoing announcements barely discernible. Bell tones and languorous guitar work throughout give the whole thing which seems so casually and unhurriedly cosmic an organic grounding reminiscent of Sky Cries Mary’s more abstract sonic explorations of inner space for a net effect of utter tranquility. Listen to “Rustig Aan” on YouTube, follow Nobody Ever Does at the links below and listen to the rest of the album Settle Down album from which “Rustig Aan” is drawn out now on Spotify.

Nobody Ever Does on Instagram

Nobody Ever Does on TikTok

Sonomancer Conjures the Ghosts of Modern Techno-Anxiety in the Beautifully Disturbing Video for “Digital Graves”

Sonomancer’s video for “Digital Graves” is strongly reminiscent of a Junji Ito manga if he and Inio Asano collaborated on a science fiction horror story about deep regret and the way the digital aspect of human relationships were the vector of cosmic horror. Like a generative disillusion and self-and-mutual alienation reflected in the song with its slow moving synth swells like a warning siren and ambient distorted electronic sounds and cycling sounds that are inescapable and crawling from all sides as a reminder that you’re never alone and always connected in this artificial way. Martha Goddard’s vocals are the beacon of humanity in the song expressing the regrets and misgivings of the specific ways we store our memories digitally through photos and videos or means of staying in contact and how what in another era might have been private is often exposed to too many people and which can be lost when technology glitches, fails or is discontinued in general. The song builds into a gentle and subtle industrial techno track with organic percussive textures that seem to compliment perfectly the shifting and disturbingly beautiful imagery of the video. It is indeed a track for our current era with the aesthetics to match. Watch the video for “Digital Graves” on YouTube and follow Sonomancer at the links below.

Sonomancer on Instagram