New Music – Page 169 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Planet of Ghosts Manifests the Warped Distorted Reality and Anxieties of the World Today on Jangle Noise Psych Song “Flatlined”

Planet of Ghosts, photo courtesy the artists

Planet of Ghosts is a band that formed in 1991 and after some local success the group parted ways until during the pandemic lockdown of 2020-2021 the four-piece started writing new songs and recording in ways and sharing contributions in a way that modern technology makes possible that was absolutely not an option in the early 90s. The result is a new self-titled album the lead track of which is “Flatlined.” Is the name of the song a reference to the prospects of the human race? With a lyric like “No more space and no more time” that’s entirely possible. The song, though, is a well crafted blend of psychedelic rock, folk, punk and lo-fi. Though the song is well written and has a hook or two what helps it stand out these days is where the recording leaves some of the rough edges that give a rock song character in place like when the feedback flies in the beginning and the middle of the song. It makes it feel like you’re seeing the live band rather than a mediated version of that band. Of course that was an intentional choice but it feels less calculated and more being true to themselves. One might describe the sound as jangle noise psych a little like early Hawkwind with a 90s emo flavor, like Sebadoh collaborating with Alice Donut but maybe not quite that surreal. On the album cover there’s a UFO abducting a tricycle and perhaps the child pictured below. Given the challenges and anxieties the band outlines in the song, who doesn’t not so secretly wish some advanced civilization would come to whisk you away to a better place or to enact benevolent regime change worldwide right now? Listen to “Flatlined” on YouTube and explore other tracks from the album on Spotify.

Paris Jones and K’Saan Preston Sketch the Textures and Depths of Grief on the Vulnerable and Tender “Willow”

Paris Jones worked with K’Saan Preston for the track “Willow,” a meditation on depression as a stage of grief. It’s a song from the album Zephaniah’s Book of Trees about those stages and Zephaniah being the name of Jones’ son who passed away in 2015 from complications of birth. That’s a heavy thing for anyone to have to deal with much less find any motivation or strength to work on music. And “Willow” uses a very simple piano melody and spacious production to allow the vocals to sketch a string of thoughts contemplating the meaning of all the identities, values and aspirations we question in the wake of tragedy when it doesn’t seem to mean nearly as much as the pain we feel that is difficult and sometimes impossible to take on all at once especially when we don’t know if it will ever really fade into something that crushes us when we least expect it. Interpolating Frank Ocean’s “Songs For Women” for the chorus, Paris fills this vulnerable track with the light of his faith that he holds on to to get through this wave of grief by spelling out the little things that connect us to our everyday life in a way that we take for granted when life is in normal mode. Listen to “Willow” on Soundcloud and connect with Paris Jones and K’Saan Preston at the links below.

Paris Jones on Twitter

Paris Jones in Facebook

Paris Jones on Instagram

Paris Jones on YouTube

Anaamaly’s “Passing Moments” is an Ambient Embodiment of Unstructured Time

Listening to Anaamaly’s “Passing Moments” is like watching a snow globe in slow motion and taking the time out to imagine what life might be like spending a tranquil afternoon there looking out a window near a river. A drone enshrouding an echoing cascade of tones rippling in the soft sound of wind and hints of water flow mixing together under a pale grey sky as large snowflakes fall all around. Motes of distant sounds peek through dusk like nearby street lights catching your attention periodically when the fog thins or the snow lets up for a moment. Indeed these passing moments aren’t common because there is so often too much in life to push you along or that demand your attention but when they do hit you they seem significant and a point of acute awareness of the need for unstructured time in life. Listen to “Passing Moments” on Spotify or Bandcamp and give a listen to the rest of the Geometric Moods album for similar vibe. Connect with Anaamaly at the links below.

Anaamaly on Facebook

Anaamaly on Instagram

Anaamaly on YouTube

SUEVERIE Voices the Collective Ache Over Separations From Our Loved Ones During the Pandemic on Dream Drone Track “VEKI”

Echoing percussion and a low key urgent swirling drone introduces us to SUEVERIE’s song “VEKI” and in the music video we see a corresponding visual of rippling waters at dusk. Vocals come in with a similar dynamic of echo crying out for relief from an ache of loneliness. For this duo it’s a matter of lockdown and the ongoing pandemic that has forced their separation as each lives in a different country, quite an imposed long distance relationship compounding the isolation and relative lack of contact we’ve each, those of us observing basic precautions anyway, undergone for nearly two years. The slow turning drone and introspective, haunted vocals embody that state of affairs and at the same time sounds like a best attempt to breach that chasm in the ways we can. Sure the members of SUEVERIE like all of us can keep in contact in virtual ways and even make creative work together but it’s not quite the same and the prolonging of these separations have had psychological impacts that are going to affect people for years to come. “VEKI” and the distorted soundscapes and the way it ends in what sounds like a signal breaking apart due to some breakdown in technology sounds like that psychic distortion and disruption. The tone is despairing, and the intensity of feeling is palpable, but the vocals glow with a hope for a break in the worst impacts of the global health crisis so that loved ones can be reunited despite the challenges we all still face put on the backburner by an immediate crisis. Watch the video for “VEKI” on YouTube and follow SUEVERIE at the links below.

SUEVERIE on Apple Music

SUEVERIE on Bandcamp

SUEVERIE on Instagram

Crackberry’s “After You” Manifests the Specter of the Negative Influence of Algorithms on Our Consciousness

“After You” initially strikes as a strange techno track and the processed vocals like a vocoder making innocuous statements as a melodic note sequence blossoms accenting the rhythm. But even from the beginning there’s a dark undertone that makes you wonder when the shoe is going to drop on a piece of music that minus the lyrics could be the music you’d hear in the foyer of an electronics boutique in some near future space station. But the words point to an artificial intelligence that has awakened to its uses and abuses and awareness of its connection to our dependence on technology and ability to tap into and manipulate our inner selves. “I will take your soul, then I’ll see what’s next” is such a chilling line and also serves as a creative bit of social commentary about how we’ve already succumbed to algorithms and current, crude artificial intelligence manipulating our desires, our reactions to virtual social situations and even the stock market and the evil of reputation sites or, if you’re in China and other authoritarian societies, your reputation score designed to keep you in line. For such a pleasant foreground vibe, the background and clandestine content makes this apparently short and simple song a pointed examination of our relationship with technology and how it has come to warp our very consciousness. Listen to “After You” on Spotify, explore the rest of the Fever Dream album and follow Crackberry at the links below.

Crackberry Manylink

Crackberry on Twitter

Crackberry on Instagram

Red Mecca’s “Without a House, Without a Door” is Lush Darkwave in Cosmic Colors

The enigmatically titled new Red Mecca single “Without a House, Without A Door” presents us with a wall of steady, powerful percussion and a distorted shimmer of drone through which flares of bright melody pierce periodically as a Susanne Jonsson vocalist graces this stark yet full soundscape with human presence. The effect has the kind of grandeur one often heard in the more hypnotic and drone laden works of Sky Cries Mary with Johnsson’s performance very reminiscent of the expressive and alluring vocal style of Anisa Romero. But Red Mecca, with its name a very cool and obvious nod to the third, great, 1981 studio album by Cabaret Voltaire, is very much more in the post-punk by way of modern darkwave mode with its processional pace and deeply lush, finely textured electronic soundscapes. Think Big Black Delta, think the more modern offerings from Gary Numan. Gorgeous stuff that captivates the imagination. Listen to “Without a House, Without a Door” on Soundcloud and connect with Red Mecca at the links provided.

Red Mecca on Facebook

Manpreet Kundi Encourages us to Connect With Our Intuitive Self on “Don’t Wake Me”

Manpreet Kundi, photo courtesy the artist

Manpreet Kundi paces her single “Don’t Wake Me” like a casual stroll down a luminous, fog enshrouded pathway. Her breathy vocals sketches memories and hopes mixed together in the infinite potential of life in dreams. During the course of the song Kundi examines her feelings and desires for life with a spirit of gentleness and asking no one wake her from this state where the mind is whole and functioning outside the divide of rational and irrational, emotional and logical, we assume during our waking moments. In the state of lucid dreaming suggested by Kundi’s lyrics we are perhaps most free to reach toward personal truths that can manifest in beneficial consequences for life once we wake up if we indulge the time to go with the flow of what might be called dreamtime in the sense of the Aboriginal concept and our connection to it as an intuitive process that synthesizes all aspects of our minds. Kundi sings about this in a more poetic fashion utilizing imagery and experiences from dreams but the message is clear that we want ourselves and others to allow us to learn to trust our best internal voices in self-healing and to make our most authentic choices. The soothing, dream pop in which Kundi sets her song to spare piano, ethereal strings and washes of synth only makes the heady content more easily accessible. Listen to “Don’t Wake Me” on Spotify and connect with Manpreet Kundi at the links below.

Manpreet Kundi website

Manpreet Kundi on Facebook

Manpreet Kundi on Instagram

Fischer und Hansen’s Darkly Downtempo “elephant’s room” is an Eloquent Expression of the Horrors We Accept as Normal

Fischer und Hansen make a very unconventional and tricky rhythm work on the “elephant’s room” single. Plucked strings, shuffling percussion and a vocal accenting at unusual angles to the main dynamic expands the sonic possibilities of the track in a way that becomes obvious as other electronic elements make their way into the backdrop: droplets of sound, wavering, distorted drones, echoing, phased washes of white noise. Along with the atonal hovering tone in the distance at the beginning of the song, all of these compositional details bring a sense of playful menace. Maybe the expression of the elephant in the room referring to the unspoken topic people are trying to avoid was taken conceptually to another level as a concept guiding this song as it builds a great sense of tension and release by the end when the chorus repeats “It’s no natural environment.” That statement alone in this creeping, slow seething downtempo track seemingly about the forces putting pressure on us daily that we ignore to our peril just trying to get by succinctly spells out how just because we’re used to something pervasive in our world and tolerate it doesn’t mean it’s actually normal, a condition of the world we must accept or natural at all. Listen to “elephant’s room” on Spotify and connect with Fischer und Hansen on Instagram.

Death Hags Invite us to a Haunted Christmas Night on the Icy Moons of Titan on “North Pole Chaos”

Death Hags, photo courtesy artist Bandcamp

Death Hags apparently tried to craft a sound like one would imagine the winter solstice to feel on one of the icy moons of Titan (one of the moons of Saturn). The resulting composition “North Pole Chaos” begins with a distorted drone and spiralling and sparkling tones akin to “First Dark Ride” by Coil. But when Lola G’s vocals come in singing “Silent Night” it’s spooky and gets more spectral as the vocals process into echoes that layer and flow into the stream of textured drone and intermittent blips that merge with a low atmospheric for an overall effect like one has become part of the surrounding, frigid environment before a more clear, bubbling melody pushes the low, distorted, distant howl to the edges of hearing. The effect is like stepping into a mysterious cave that blocks the chaos of a windy, winter storm outside, the vocals returning to beckon your back out into the primordial weather of the surface of a distant celestial object. The vibe recalls the mood of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1939 story “In the Walls of Eryx” and how the prospector in the story fades away while recounting his observations for the search party that eventually finds his corpse in a invisible maze on Venus—haunting yet oddly beautiful. Listen to “North Pole Chaos” on Bandcamp and take a chance on the rest of the album Frozen Santa which is a fascinating mix of brooding synth pop and experimental, wonderfully creepy ambient works. Connect with Death Hags at the links below.

Death Hags on Instagram

The Howard Hughes Suite Transports us to a Placid Head Space Outside of Time on “Lake of Dreams”

“Lake of Dreams” proceeds in a recursive fashion a streaming atmospheric tonal line that expands with additional textures and parallel sounds suggesting circular movement, slow ripples. The title is thus apt as you’re drawn into the drones that put your mind from a tranquil everyday headspace into one traveling on the waves of a lake from a mystical dream where your spirit can be at rest and open to information and feelings one perhaps resisted previously. The unmistakable movement of sound through long delay and the reverse version thereof takes one out of any sort of standard time and beyond even compound time to a sound that intentionally or not takes the listener outside of such limitations into a pure and intuitive experience. Could be synths, could be other electronics, could be processed pedal steel by which The Howard Hughes Suite made a name for himself in local and international music circles but the soundscaping is both organic and ethereal and reminiscent of the cosmic ambient of Popol Vuh, the mystical Americana of Daniel Lanois, the space new age of Apollo-period Brian Eno and the otherworldly emotional eloquence of Robin Guthrie’s solo work. Listen to “Lake of Dreams” on Spotify, be on the lookout for the album High & Lonesome album out February 18, 2022 and connect with The Howard Hughes Suite at the links provided.

The Howard Hughes Suite on Twitter

The Howard Hughes Suite on Instagram

The Howard Huges Suite on YouTube