New Music – Page 2 – Queen City Sounds and Art

HeroLover’s 16-Bit Ambient IDM Single “The Ideal” is a Pleasantly Otherworldly Break From Information Overload

HeroLover released its debut full length album Tokyote on September 12, 2026. It’s an album saturated with creative ideas for production and songwriting with live instruments and samples that sounds like an update of where some 90s electronic music might have gone had it not taken the paths it did in the 2000s and 2010s. With lead single “The Ideal” the duo showcase its vibrant fusion of organic sounds with the percussion and imaginative production yet it has a feel and sound like something intentionally created with older technology like they chopped up and processed vocals and dropped them into the stream of sound to haunt what sounds like music for an abandoned mall the kind that Lola would have run inside of to get to another part of a large city. If The Crystal Method was less aggressive in some of its songs and threaded in 16-bit aesthetics and ambient IDM it might sound something like “The Ideal.” Whatever the inspirations, sources, influences and methods, it’s a song that is somehow soothing and stimulating at once and feels like a vacation from the bombardment of worthless data we get everyday if we plug into social media and the bullshit generator of a fascist regime. We could all use a break. Listen to “The Ideal” on YouTube and follow HeroLover at the links below.

HeroLover on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S6E20: Glenn Morrow

Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help, photo by Mike Sansevere

Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help released its new album Our Final Album – Vol. 1 July 17, 2026 on 12” vinyl, CD, digital download and streaming via the great indie label Bar/None which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2026. Band leader Morrow was in the first group, “a,” to play the storied underground rock club Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey when it opened its doors in the late 70s and reformed some of his old bands to play the closing night of the club on July 31, 2013. And thus the current band was formed from veterans of the Hoboken scene. The new record may bring to mind comparisons to Scott Walker, Elvis Costello, The Dream Syndicate and even the New York Dolls with exquisite songwriting and energized yet focused performances. Like power pop polished ever so slightly and informed by literary storytelling. It’s a record that has the moods of transitional seasons and because of that it feels like it’s in motion into the future while reassessing the past. The band makes expert use of melody and dissonance and creative rhythms at times incorporating musical ideas from Bossa Nova. Morrow was once a partner in Bar/None but handed over the reigns to Emmy Black in early 2026 but that gives him more time to focus on music that allows him and the band to create songs that can only come from a lifetime of development beyond the early impulses of adolescence.

Listen to our interview with Glenn Morrow on Bandcamp and follow Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help at the links below.

Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help on Instagram

Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help on Facebook

The Artist Ren’s Reluctant Breakup Song “Doin’ Fine” Infuses a Will to Leave a Co-Dependent Relationship With Tuneful Sardonic Humor

The Artist Ren, photo courtesy the artist

“Doin’ Fine” by The Artist Ren definitely taps into 90s alt rock sounds but rather than fuzzy rock it’s the expressive accents in the rhythms. And the insightful sardonic humor and pointed emotional commentary on a relationship that is clearly broken but our narrator finds she can’t leave. Could be the song is about codependent habits and how one rationalizes discomfort and dissatisfaction while joking about wanting an intervention in the line “Why can’t someone interfere?” It’s an upbeat song with an infectious melody but the words have some real bite. Fans of Soccer Mommy and Chastity Belt will appreciate the contrast of pop hooks and poetic, melancholic words. Listen to “Doin’ Fine” on YouTube and follow The Artist Ren at the links provided.

The Artist Ren on Jango.com

The Artist Ren on TikTok

The Artist Ren on Instagram

The Artist Ren on Bandcamp

Sova Coaxes Us Into Taking Our Experiences On Our Own Analog Terms on Modern Classical Ambient Song “Hymn for Slowing”

In the visualizer video for Sova’s “Hymn for Slowing” we get to see a visual representation of the inside of the piano at work striking the moody and melancholic side of the song as saxophone wafts in to provide a touch of vivid brightness as if to accent what the piano textures are doing. One feels the presence and analog, tactile quality of the piano even as the recording is both lightly processed because the granular detail of the piano hammers striking the strings and the physical resonance of those strings with the slight distortion coming through. It all lets you know a human being was involved in making this music and putting those emotions and thoughts into the elegant composition that challenges the listener to not be so caught up in the everyday world demanding we all do everything faster and more efficiently because many things are done better and experienced with more respect for our natural human emotional states when we can take our time and not try to fit it all into arbitrarily monetizable fragments. Watch the video for “Hymn for Slowing” on YouTube and follow Sova at the links below. The new album Alight! released September 4, 2026 on Hout Records.

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Sova on Instagram

Sova on Bandcamp

Chicago-Based Psychedelic Jazz Supergroup Yr Knives Reconciles Desperation and Catharsis on “Fear&Trimbling”

Yr Knives is a new project from Chicago-based composer and arranger Paul Karner along with Andrew Trim (Hanami and Retroflector), Brian J. Sulpizio (Health&Beauty), Douglas McCombs (Tortoise, Eleventh Dream Day) and Quin Kirchner. The writing for the forthcoming album Begin Yr Singing (out October 30, 2026 via Western Vinyl) began in 2022 with Karner, Trim and Sulpizio across various sessions before sharing the music with McCombs and Kirchner who helped to complete the pieces. Lead single “Fear&Trimbling” utilizes single guitar lines to trace feelings of anxiety while a more discordant line expresses the discordant, nervous energy as the rhythm somehow both keeps an even beat but sounds like it starts and stops to accent a state of mind that is a little scattered and trying to make sense of internal psychological turmoil as exacerbated by external emotional stimuli. The song pairs harried intensity with a will to unraveling or channeling off that mood into paradoxically labyrinthine structure and distorted minimalism. It sounds both frantic and cathartic like a modern embodiment of the more avant work of the likes of free jazz rebels Sonny Sharrock and Albert Ayler. Watch the retro-psychedelic music video for “Fear&Trimbling” on YouTube and follow Yr Knives at the links provided.

yrknives4u.com

Yr Knives on Instagram

Western Vinyl on Twitter

Western Vinyl on Bandcamp

Queen City Sounds Podcast S6E19: Bob Bert

Bob Bert finally released his debut solo album Beach Bongo Bloodbath on June 12, 2026 via Bar/None on 12” vinyl LP, CD, digital download and streaming. Bert is perhaps best known as an in demand drummer since the early 80s and as a member of Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore and many other outfits since that time including more recently Lydia Lunch Retrovirus and Jon Spencer’s HITmakers. His CV is indeed one of the most storied in modern left field music. The record feels like a piece of schlock science fiction cinema with interludes and reworks of classic songs to fit the mood of the album. Where else are you going to hear a beat-driven version of “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain, a surreal percussion heavy cover of “Love Comes in Spurts” originally performed by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, a spectral, haunted garage interpretation of Modern Lovers’ “Pablo Picasso,” a Tiki bar New Wave rework of The Barbarians’ “Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl?” like something that should have come out on K Records. The album closes with possibly the best version of “Foggy Notion” by The Velvet Underground not performed by the original artists. It’s the kind of experimental pop record we would hope to hear but pretty much never get from an artist who has added so much to his other bands as a percussionist but on Beach Bongo Bloodbath, Bob Bert showcases his versatility as a player as well as his broad, creative imagination.

Listen to our interview with Bob Bert on Bandcamp and follow Bob Bert at the links below.

Bob Bert on Instagram

Abe Seiferth’s Analog Synth Infused Ambient Song “Vibrometry” is the Sound of a More Tranquil and Nurturing Future

There is a great sense of space and playfulness to Abe Seiferth’s “Vibrometry” from his new album Halo (out August 19, 2026 via Noble Circuit Records). A spare and overlapping rhythm with a melodic, wide-ranging sequence in vibrant, lightly distorted tones cycles through with touches of modulation in the higher frequency register that provides an evolving texture and a sense that the song isn’t simply a programmed piece that runs without variation. The song also evolves while maintaining a sense of uplift established from the beginning. Fans of Norm Chambers particularly 2012’s Soft Terminal will appreciate how the song sounds like a future time when we’ve shed inherently destructive technologies and social constructs and have the psychological and physical space and sense of wholeness to explore further the subtle grandeur of the universe and the possibilities of the human imagination. With modular synths employed there is an analog quality to the sound that conveys a tranquil energy throughout with an almost tactile gentleness. Listen to “Vibrometry” on YouTube and follow Abe Seiferth on Spotify.

Alice Gold Invokes Trust in Times of Chaos on Folk Pop Single “BOTH HANDS”

Alice Gold returns with lead single “BOTH HANDS” from her forthcoming album Faultlines. The album comes some fifteen years after her previous record Seven Rainbows (2011) . But it doesn’t appear the intervening years have diminished Gold’s ability to project a compelling vulnerability and the new song couched in a spare acoustic guitar figure accompanying Gold singing with an expansive confidence about a willingness to trust and accept help when life seems to be falling apart and being overwhelmed by thoughts of where we have fallen short of our ideal sense of self. It would be easy to let go and succumb to a run of tragic thinking but it is also easy to trust in forces and people one doesn’t fully understand that offer enough to weather what seems like too much to handle and the understanding that not everything is under your control and because of that you can tap into parts of your life and the people in it from whom you hadn’t foreseen receiving aid and comfort. Fans of Joni Mitchell’s more pop songwriting will appreciate Gold’s command of conveying complex emotions in songs that seem simple but on closer listen have more complexity than is obvious. Listen to “BOTH HANDS” on Spotify and follow Alice Gold on Instagram.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S6E18: Hypnolovewheel

Hypnolovewheel, photo courtesy the artists

Hypnolovewheel formed in 1986 in Long Island, New York. The group sound threaded together elements of psych, garage rock and power pop but essential a post-punk band in the left field mode that emerged in New York in the 80s. By the time the group split in around the mid-90s it left behind a body of work that was difficult to narrowly categorize but which made an impression on anyone that heard that music. A staple of college radio if you heard them you might think they were in the same realm of music as Flaming Lips, Archers of Loaf and Alice Donut though distinctly different from all of them. Pick out any of the band’s seven releases and you’ll find a record that should have been more well loved by the alternative music audience for its expert songcraft and willingness to experiment with lyrics not short on irony and humor. The classic lineup of the band included guitarists Dave Ramirez and Stephen Hunking with bassist Dan Cuddy and drummer Peter Walsh. All had been veterans of the local underground scene and the first three members of garage rock outfit Plastic Device.

In 2026 Hypnolovewheel is beginning to reissue all of its records since getting rights to their music back and beginning with the reissue of its career spanning compilation Parallel Universe. The tracks were selected by no other than James McNew of Yo La Tengo and remastered by Kurt Bloch (Fastbacks, Young Fresh Fellows). Originally released in a limited edition vinyl the record is now more widely available as of June 19. 2026. A quick listen to the compilation reveals that Hypnolovewheel was making the kind of noise pop music that would in the 21st century be called indie rock and precursors to that music.

Listen to our interview with bassist Dan Cuddy and follow Hypnolovewheel at the links below.

Hypnolovewheel on Instagram

Signal-23’s “Torchrite” Has the Dramatic Flourishes and Expansive Processional Mood of Epic Science Fiction

Signal-23 seem to channel a touch of the percussive, low end heavy pulse of Clark or earlier Weval on “Torchrite” from EP2 (out August 28, 2026). It has a processional and darkly triumphant feel. The descending scale that climbs back down on the next iteration with more dramatic flourishes that land on outwardly expansive, distorted drones. In a little over two minutes the song conjures a sense of the epic and the enigmatic like music for a science fiction classic that has yet to be rendered in a widely accessible cinematic form. Like something based on an Ursula K. LeGuin novel or Iain M. Banks. Something with grandeur that stirs the imagination as the song’s vibrant tones, finely accented rhythms and creatively colored melodies. Listen to “Torchrite” on Spotify and follow Signal-23 at the links below.

Signal-23 on Instagram

Signal-23 on Bandcamp