Category: New Music

Hanna Ojala’s “(I have no clue, so I will) Listen & Learn” is an Engrossing Sonic Exploration of the Social and Psychological Underpinnings of Institutionalized Inequality

Hanna Ojala “(I have no clue, so I will) Listen & Learn” cover

“(I have no clue, so I will) Listen & Learn” is Finnish artist Hanna Ojala’s most ambitious composition to date. She drew partially on Pond5: The Public Domain Project for source material not only in sampling sound and video footage for her own short film made for the piece but as a kind of aesthetic template through which to explore methods of social control from the past and how there is an eerie resonance for the present. One imagines one hears Ojala’s own voice reading from scientific abstracts but maybe it’s her commentary on the metaphysical underpinnings of human existence and how we treat identity as a justification for social stratification processed and placed in the soundscape with the quality of an old record while a simple melody runs through and ambient, atmospheric sounds and a bit from an old blues singer lamenting the human condition for so many as imposed by a racist society. The effect is reminiscent of the soundtrack work Eurythmics did for the film 1984. It is imbued with the spirit of a future art project intended to convey the alien qualities of an old civilization informed by prejudices that will seem completely irrational decades and centuries hence. The footage of the American Civil Rights movement, scientific experiments, some on children, and now outdated technology enhance this unique critique of how society has rationalized its mistreatment of a minority group and, in the end, of the society entirely as that mistreatment has consequences for all. And yet, as the title of the work suggests, Ojala has no pretense of a full understanding or appreciation of the experiences presented, rather, she has created the audio and the video as a vehicle for understanding for herself and for anyone else willing to go along for its 22 minute, 2 second duration. But the journey is fascinating and worth taking and reminiscent of old industrial culture projects that created their art as a medium of comprehension as well. Fans of Chris & Cosey and Future Sound of London will appreciate not only Ojala’s aim for the song but also her cinematic production of the audio and the musical rhythm of the sampled video. Watch that video for “(I have no clue, so I will) Listen & Learn” on YouTube and connect with Ojala at the links below.

https://soundcloud.com/h_mo
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOciWsXO_7cDSrveFlwSmkA

Rx27’s “Hell of a Time” is the Sound of a Glorious Disregard For Decorum When There’s Life to Be Living

Rx27, photo courtesy the artists

The title of Rx27’s single “Hell of a Time” encapsulates the core of the song that contrasts the concept of Hell as a symbol for extremes and the joy that the expression that is that title implies. The group’s gritty glam flavor unifies the imagery and the emotional resonances of Heaven and Hell perhaps in the Romantic sense, but certainly after the manner of bands like The Cramps and The Gun Club that embraced camp and melodrama as a state of mind, of being, that accepted the dark side of the psyche as well as an earthly transcendence of mortal limitations through the ecstasy of rock and roll. That reconciliation of opposites could be heard in the music of Lou Reed for whom the ultimate state of being, as has been observed by various critics, was “alright.” Not too dark, not too light, but a way of life and being that is attainable and sustainable but allows for a full range of authentic experiences. Joie Blaney and Ms. Maxine MurrDerr trade lines about leaving behind a life of only mundane experiences like X gone pop punk and sounding like the embodiment of a disregard for a stultifying decorum when there’s vital life to be living. Listen to “Hell of a Time” on YouTube and connect with Rx27 at the links below.

https://www.therx27.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFX258qE-EJzVgNZX4Dbbyw
https://twitter.com/therx27
https://www.facebook.com/therx27
https://www.instagram.com/rx27_official

“Mummycore” Band I, Doris Returns With “Wonderwomen,” a Song That Reminds us to Cut Ourselves Some Slack When We Don’t Live up to Unrealistic, Superheroic Expectations

I, Doris, photo courtesy the artists

“Mummycore” band I, Doris returns with a song and video called “Wonderwomen,” which is a DIY live action comic book treatment everyday challenges women all over the world face. You know, the mundane tasks that too often aren’t expected to be fulfilled by men like getting the kids to school after keeping after them to get all the little things done like basic hygiene and homework, then putting up with heaps of nonsense from power tripping bosses who are essentially useless middle management types who would crack under the pressure they put upon others. But if you’re a woman you’ve been conditioned to take on the blame for maybe not taking on all this work and completing it in some imaginary perfect fashion. I, Doris say a big p’shaw to that and not internalize a narrative of failure because “You’re doing fine.” That the band performs the song in a sort of camp, new wave punk version of the theme song to the American TV series Wonder Woman that ran from 1975-1979 and starring Lynda Carter is just a fantastically irreverent bonus. That the members of the band appear in the video as women who could be someone you run into walking down the street, in the school, in your crap job that everyone hates, at the grocery store or anywhere but wearing super hero costumes really turns the idea of women needing to give themselves more of a hassle or accept such from anyone else than necessary on its head. So many things in life don’t require your full attention and effort and this song is about cutting yourself a break for not giving it your all with everything all the time because that’s the path to self-destruction. If that messaging isn’t a form of radical feminism that anyone can get behind, it’s difficult to say what is.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCV4ZyptMho4MKJNYjcD8mA
https://idoris.bandcamp.com
https://twitter.com/justsomedoris
https://www.facebook.com/IDoris
https://www.instagram.com/idorisband

Hanna Ojala’s “In this Dusk” is a Poetic Meditation on Engendering a Head Space of Radical Awareness and Vulnerability

Hanna Ojala, “In this Dusk” cover

Hanna Ojala ses the lyrical poetry of “In this Dusk” to the sound of water lapping at the show, gentle wind chimes and birdsong. To call it a mere song would be improper as it doesn’t follow any conventional songwriting conventions, its poetic meter is as organic and free as the assembled field recordings, intuitive in its cadences. As usual, Ojala’s vocals invite you into a private world the likes of which perhaps you have experienced or need to experience wherein you allow your being to flow through experiences rather than try to control them. The Western mind is trained to try to control and to dominate rather than understand things on their own terms and to let go and gain comprehension of the world around us by taking things in unobtrusively so that we may learn and reflect without taking and without needing to outwardly transform until the time comes when action must be made. The lyrics with the sounds is like an audio meditation to put oneself in a frame of mind to be open to the hidden secrets of the world that are invisible to us when we impose meaning based purely on conditioned prior knowledge rather than observe things for what they are whether they are external quantities or aspects of ourselves. It’s a song that seems to aim at a kind of mystical experience through radical awareness of the world on its own terms, of other people and of our own subjective experience thereof and our lenses of interpretation. Watch the video for “In This Dusk” on YouTube and connect with Hanna Ojala at the links below.

https://soundcloud.com/h_mo
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOciWsXO_7cDSrveFlwSmkA

Felix Martin’s Remix of Sparkling’s Indie Rock Track “I Want To See Everything” Transforms a Warm Indie Rock Song Into a Techno Banger

Sparkling, photo by Ecoute Cherie

Sparkling turned over its song “I Want To See Everything,” the title track to its debut album to Hot Chip’s Felix Martin for a remix that expands and completely transforms the original. Whereas the original song is an upbeat pop song in German and French with a winsome moment of synth infused reverie in the middle, Martin takes that aspect of the song and renders the rest of the song in its tonal colors while adding synth lines and emphasizes the techno possibilities inherent to the song along with vocoder and isolated guitar lines that intone a chord and sound like they’re melting slowly in the wind of the momentum of the song. The warm indie rock song becomes something more ethereal yet Martin somehow preserves the emotional warmth and earnest quality of the song that made the original so appealing. It’s like a retrofuturist treatment that wouldn’t have been out of place on a playlist for The Hacienda or one of the clubs that would have welcomed Daft Punk or Air in their respective early days. Listen to the Felix Martin remix of “I Want To See Everything” on Soundcloud and connect with Sparkling at the links provided.

https://www.facebook.com/Sparklingofficial
https://www.instagram.com/sparkling_official
https://www.youtube.com/user/Sparklingofficial

K.I.N.G. the MC Reminds Us to Keep Our Eyes on the Prize Even During Life’s Bleakest Passages on “Napoleon Hill”

K.I.N.G. the MC, photo courtesy the artist

K.I.N.G. the MC says that during the creation of his 2020 album The Good. The Bad. The Ugly. II he went through some of the toughest times of his life losing family and friends and even his home. The track list reads like one man’s spiritual struggle with the forces of darkness from within and without. The track “Napoleon Hill” invokes the famous author of the 1937 self-help classic Think and Grow Rich as he lists the seemingly endless string of challenges hitting him that could sink his ship but in a fashion similar to the way Bad Brains channeled Hill’s message he uses that “positive mental attitude” to keep his efforts and aspirations focused in order to not stay stuck in a mindset of defeat and despair. Bookending the track with spectral drones and grainy footage frames the situation realistically to perhaps put the dreams and the need for them and their pursuit in proper context as a way of implementing a flexible plan to reach a goal without losing sight of all the good that can come from it. Could be a song merely born of desperation but comes off as a song of striving and grinding and hope. Watch the music video for “Napoleon Hill” on YouTube and connect with K.I.N.G. the MC at the links below.

https://campsite.bio/kingthemc
https://soundcloud.com/kingthemc
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwDBhAWIdTv6RclRJHlgRRA
https://kingthemc.bandcamp.com/releases
https://twitter.com/kingthemc_
https://www.instagram.com/kingthemc

HEARTATTRACKS Captures a Zen State of Hyper Awareness on “Isolated Arrest”

HEARTATTRACKS, photo courtesy the artist

“Isolated Arrest” by multimedia artist HEARTATTRACKS (with guest vocals from Kim Little aka Hnymlk) folds together some hip-hop production with glitchy IDM and ambient music. The vocals center the tonal flow of the song when they come in like a vortex of illumination. The effect is a bit like what might have happened had William Orbit and Future Sound of London come up after the advent of trap beats. The song conveys a sense of the exotic and the alien while also establishing a calming influence with its high pitched background arpeggio and softened, accenting percussion. The song evokes images of the dreams of a calm jungle in the morning with the myriad of stimuli washing gently over you that will recede into the ambient soundscape once your conscious mind fully takes hold. It is a soundtrack to hyper awareness without being overwhelmed by what you perceive. Listen to “Isolated Arrest” on Spotify and connect with HEARTTRACKS at the links below.

https://soundcloud.com/heartattracks
https://www.facebook.com/heartattracks
https://www.instagram.com/heartattracks

The Jerry Cans’ Electrifying and Rousing “Swell (My Brother)” Highlights a Need For Societal Action to Address Mental Health Issues With Compassion and Integrity Now

The Jerry Cans, photo courtesy the artists

Mental health issues used to be talked about in patronizing tones with a hint of moral failings and thus deserved pain and suffering and deprivation in some fashion but these days the public dialogue has shifted slightly with widespread information on how widespread it is and how the nature of these ailments has been misrepresented, misreported and pushed off into the realm of things other people have to deal with. The frustration at the gap between people suffering from these issues and the way they are administered is infused in The Jerry Cans’ single “Swell (My Brother).” It’s an uplifting, electrifyingly melodic song with rousing choruses and horns, percussion, keyboards and guitar coming together in a panoramic orchestral arrangement like The Polyphonic Spree with a bit more punk in the equation. The group, from Iqualuit, Nunavit, Canada, offers no pat answers or patronizing sentiments about how it’s all going to be alright. Rather, the choruses brim with compassion and questions demanding some kind of answer from society at large, a society that has chosen, and it is a choice to prioritize some concerns and not others, to try to not approach addressing root causes and offering real aid to those suffering. In the chorus the lines, “How long must we keep on dying? How long can we keep on dying?” leaves the question open regarding when will enough be enough for the issue to reach the policy making level or the action level in a national dialogue beyond empty sympathy. And yet the song doesn’t strike dire tones, just a passionate one calling for human action now. At a time when mental health issues are exploited for marketing purposes and employed by corporate propaganda to signal their supposed moral character, the song strikes an especially sincere and vital note. Listen to “Swell (My Brother)” on Spotify, connect with The Jerry Cans at the links below and check out the rest of the band’s new album Echoes which was released on May 15, 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCchGda0RiqbCeNWIVkja2QA
https://soundcloud.com/thejerrycans

Buggie Gives a Silver Lining to the End of Western Civilization as We Know It on “Westend”

Buggie, still from the video for “Westend”

Pulsing low end rumble pushes Buggie’s song “Westend” along as Gretchen King almost reads the story of the current dissolution of the world order as we knew it and the desperate attempts to save it. Whether that be with “corporate saviors” or clinging to the utterly discredited neoliberal order with its distractions in entertainment, social media and dead end jobs held out as our only options as a way to perpetuate an economic model that hasn’t been sustainable in even the most powerful countries for four decades. Buggie points out that it seems like the last legs of resisting the inevitable. The almost industrial percussion wedded with King’s pondering but cautionary vocals convey the hard reality before us but inject it with a hint of whimsical flavor as if to suggest that maybe this end of things as we know it is a positive because it’s already been crashing in on itself since the turn of the century and maybe we’re already ready for something new even if it seems scary. Fans of Holly Herndon and Hiro Kone will greatly appreciate the production and soundscaping and the conceptual nature as well as the social critique of the song. Listen to “Westend” on Soundcloud, watch a short clip of the stop motion music video on Instagram and connect with Buggie at the links provided.



https://soundcloud.com/buggieclub
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7R6_w1l6B-_V6EQS3qLA2A
https://www.facebook.com/buggieclub
https://www.instagram.com/buggieclub

Alex the Astronaut Tells a Tale of Learning to Trust Your Abilities in Unfamiliar Situations on “Lost”

Alex the Astronaut, photo courtesy the artist

Australian singer and songwriter Alex the Astronaut (Alex Lynn) is set to release her debut album The Theory of Absolutely Nothing out on Nettwerk on August 21, 2020. And if the lead single “Lost” is any indication, there are plenty of emotionally vibrant stories to be heard on the record. Her pacing of the lyrics and the urgency of the vocals coupled with the orchestral arrangements really highlight a sense of uncertainty, excitement and vulnerability when you find yourself in unfamiliar territory and everything you assumed to be true about your situation fall by the wayside and you have to navigate in the moment. But instead of being overwhelmed by fear and anxiety you find a way to go with it and learn and find your way without established protocols and a proper way to go about things because oftentimes the most interesting place to find yourself in life is when there is no map and you have to trust yourself to help establish a path for yourself and others. Fans of 80s jangle rock and will appreciate the well-crafted tunefulness of the song and those of Kimya Dawson’s unvarnished, emotional openness will find something to savor in Lynn’s willingness to risk going off the rails while managing to not quite do so. Listen to “Lost” on Soundcloud and connect with Alex the Astronaut at the links provided.

https://twitter.com/AtheAstronaut
https://www.facebook.com/alextheastronaut
https://www.instagram.com/alex.the.astronaut