New Music – Page 228 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Ocean Pleasant Encourages Us to Cultivate and Trust Our Intuitive Flashes on “Premonition”

OceanPleasant1_crop — Ocean Pleasant, photo courtesy the artist

In the background of Ocean Pleasant’s “Premonition” synths swell like a combination of memories and visions of the future. This while the soulful vocals and textured yet hypnotic beat keeps you focused in the moment. Inspired in part by the scent of a candle left behind by an old roommate, the song is about our minds’ ability to comprehend information that isn’t fully processed by our conscious thoughts and that information comes to us through intuitions and flashes of insight that eventually do manifest in our lives and conscious understanding. But that if we arrest our Western culture-trained instincts for only valuing and thus only perceiving strictly materially empirical information we can utilize these ways of understanding to our benefit and to the enrichment of our lives individually and collectively. The way the song is structured reflects the way perceived time ebbs and flows not unpredictably but inconsistently if we analyze it outside of the experience of it, but on the experiential level those ebbs and flows are natural and make sense and have a consistency that transcends the limitations of linear logic. Fans of Lorde will enjoy how Ocean Pleasant combines dynamic, lush soundscapes written as a downtempo pop song, imbuing it with emotional richness and authenticity. Listen to “Premonition” on Spotify and follow Ocean Pleasant at the links below.

open.spotify.com/artist/0iuRGz34JJ1RFFY3Fn2Df3
twitter.com/OceanPleasant
facebook.com/OceanPleasant
instagram.com/oceanpleasant/

“Commonplace” by tummyache is the Soundtrack to Losing Your Sense of Self and Place and Ultimately Your Composure

Tummycache3_lg — tummyache, photo courtesy the artist

Something about the expert blend of the electronic and the analog and the natural sounds and the subtle production on tummyache’s new single “Commonplace” that help to highlight the experience of the conflicting emotions and confusion in sorting out the way life doesn’t give us signposts or a manual to the inherent meaning of it all. In part of the song Soren Bryce sings about how getting her name on her birthday was the first thing that belonged to her and that speaks directly to how one’s mooring in one’s own life can be that tenuous that’s its the one tenuous connection to your identity of which you can be fairly certain. As the song progresses it escalates into noisier, swirling chaos and frustrated screaming before ending with an abrupt fade. One gets the feeling from the song that part of having meaning in life is to feel special and not commonplace and part of that is having an identity and knowing your place in things, or at least a sense of such. As grow into adulthood the social boundaries become less distinct and our connections to people perhaps less firm and so we impose rituals to reconstruct these grounding associations even if they don’t make sense until we can no longer lie to ourselves and we begin to ask who we really are if we haven’t spent a good deal of our lives building that. And even if you do there will probably come a time when you realize it’s all coming apart and your sense of meaning in life erodes as well. This song captures being there in the moment of crisis from the initial sense that something is off to the psychic cacophony that comes from losing your sense of self and place. Listen to “Commonplace” on Soundcloud and follow tummyache on her YouTube channel linked below.

youtu.be/oebs-qdEj5U

Cat Casual & The Final Word Deconstruct Modern Retro Rock Impulses to Dissolve the Lines Between Post-Punk, Psychedelia and Power Pop on its New Single “Asphalt”

CatCasualAndTheFinalWord1_lg — Cat Casual & The Final Word, photo courtesy the artist

Cat Casual & The Final Word’s “Asphalt” sounds like an artifact from the early 80s when the music world hadn’t completely sorted out where the line between post-punk, psychedelia, New Wave and power pop lay. The urgent, clipped rhythm guitar riff, tripped out keyboard work, William Benton’s impassioned vocals and serpentine and fiery guitar solo at the end sound like the band has deconstructed the modern instinct for tapping into music’s past not to cop a classic aesthetic so much as to create something different inspired by music from a time before everything popular in the mainstream was somewhat a product of mediated tastes. This gives the song and the band’s sound in general a certain freshness along with an air of the classic. Listen on YouTube as well as watch the performance video and follow Cat Casual & The Final Word at the links below.

soundcloud.com/william-benton-1
catcasual.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/william_benton
facebook.com/catcasual
instagram.com/catcasual

CHAD’s “Leonard Nimoy” is a Wistful Breakup Song Acknowledging How It’s Better to Hurt and Feel Than to Pretend You Feel Nothing

CHAD1_crop — CHAD, photo courtesy the artists

In calling its new single “Leonard Nimoy,” CHAD from Portland, Oregon casts an interesting image. Most people who know who Leonard Nimoy is sees him as Mr. Spock from Star Trek, a character who seems devoid of emotions played by a highly emotional human. But even in the Star Trek universe the Vulcans have merely tightly controlled their emotions through social engineering to avoid the violent conflicts of their distant past. This song is about the desire to have that kind of control but how as a real human you can’t fully escape your feelings and at times we feel like we’re controlled by them. In the context of certain relationships this emotional conflict takes on the metaphor of a storm when weather systems come together. Musically its like a baroque kind of pop the likes of which you might hear on a Chromatics record or something Julee Cruise might do if she’d come up through listening to 90s indie pop. Although melancholic and wistful the song is brimming with regret that things can’t and won’t work out, giving the tone of the song an emotional complexity that isn’t obvious. Listen to “Leonard Nimoy” on Soundcloud and follow CHAD at the links provided.

flickr.com/photos/182875374@N02
soundcloud.com/user-50930665/i-got-time-1/s-gmoMm
open.spotify.com/artist/6TUDlfW5apORSxKCm4AJ7i
youtube.com/channel/UCE9-JEN6gDDfkPuCJNHBnnA
chad.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/wearechad
instagram.com/wearechad

Molina’s New Synth Pop Single “Parásito” Navigates a Compelling Path Between Heaviness and Ecstacy

Molina1_crop — Molina, photo courtesy the artist

Dutch pop songwriter Molina’s first Spanish language track “Parásito” uses the metaphor of a parasite for the type of love so consuming and, frankly, co-dependent that it is not unlike the consuming relationship between a parasite and its host, unable to live without the other and either or seeking to be perpetually connected for its nourishment. The cadence of Spanish lends itself well to the unconventional structure and rhythms of the song as well as its dramatic emotional and tonal flourishes. The guitar against the more menacing synth passages gives the song an airiness and a heft in equal measure at times reminiscent of Grimes or Zola Jesus and the ability of both artists to make experimental music that comes across as pop unless you break down what’s going on. In that way, Molina here is able to inject ideas into the song that expand your own expectations for what an accessible song might sound like. Listen to “Parásito” on Soundcloud and follow Molina at the links provided.

corpusmolina.com
corpusmolina.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/molinamarble
instagram.com/rebbemolina

SigObrilllAndo’s Folk Inflected IDM Track “True Mental” is a Beautiful Place to Get Lost

SigOBrilllAndo2_crop — SigObrillAndo, image courtesy the artists

Somehow SigObrilllAndo mixed traditional Chilean folk music written with an electronic music structure and aesthetic in mind and IDM. Watch the music video, which seems to be liquids captured or emulated to provide an analog to the way the music flows into your mind, bubbles about and swirls and draws you into its textured beats and swirls of melody, vocal, electronic and organic. Low end drones blend in but remain separate from the effervescent melodic synth line which is distinct from the abstract vocals and the dynamic and loop of a gentle guitar arpeggio. Utterly entrancing, fans of Seefeel and Slowdive in its less rock moments will find this song’s slow moving, soothing wave a beautiful place to get lost for several minutes that feel like a single minute. The track comes from the project’s album Cosmic Zoo and you can listen to it now along with watch the rather colorful, in the literal sense, video on YouTube.

Calista Kazuko Outplays the Devil in Cards on the Brooding and Orchestral “Lady Cherry”

CalistaKazuko1_crop — Calista Kazuko, photo courtesy the artist

Calista Kazuko takes on the forces of darkness in the video treatment of her song “Lady Cherry.” The video, made by Philip Reinking and Thomas Linton casts Kazuko as a kind of benevolent trickster combination of Carmen Mirandam, Kate Bush and Carla Bozulich. Yeah, sure, the Satan in the video looks typically spooky and menacing in classic fashion but visually abstracted in an interesting way reminiscent of the way the horned one is depicted at the end of The Witch. The song is a brooding but uplifting song about the power women can have if they embrace the native combination of intelligence, intuition and moxy everyone can summon forth, especially when called to the occasion such as playing cards with The Devil and one’s eternal soul is on the line. In the end of course Lady Cherry is triumphant and she roasts Satan with her fiery breath, unrevealed until the fateful moment late in the game. The track is the third single from Calista Kazuko’s album Empress. Watch the video on YouTube and follow Calista Kazuko at the links below.

calistakazuko.com
soundcloud.com/calistakazuko
youtube.com/CalistaKazukoMusic
twitter.com/CalistaKazuko
facebook.com/CalistaKazuko
instagram.com/CalistaKazuko

Lämmerfyr’s Progressive Ambient Track “Magnetized” Conjures Visions of a Chil and Inspiring Future Without the Meaningless Grind of Today

Lammerfyr2_crop — Lämmerfyr, photo courtesy the artist

“Magnetized” sounds like Lämmerfyr hung out with a bunch of A.I. technicians all summer and talked about the software architecture to give a generation of manufactured beings a dream life with all the intense math and meticulous yet intuitive programming discussed, generative memory algorithms utilizing storage techniques patterned after quantum mechanics concepts in a holographic matrix and DNA mapping. As the summer gave rapidly to cooler weather, in this scenario, Lämmerfyr composed the kind of chill progressive trance, pulsing yet drifting dance music these A.I.s might vibe to while coming together in their cybernetic version of dreamtime plotting a brighter future. While none of this is clearly true and spurious on the conceptual level, not to mention probably scientifically unsound, “Magnetized” conjures visions of a future where we all have plenty of time to be and to explore and enjoy life free of the angst and anomy of the dystopian present. Listen to “Magnetized” on Soundcloud and follow Lämmerfyr on Spotify.

open.spotify.com/artist/65x0M6q6OR8ZbP3u8XErl7

Harry Nathan’s Charming Depiction of the Sweetness and Humor of a New Relationship in his “Alright” Single is Captured Perfectly in Odeya Rush’s Sandwiches in Love Video

HarryNathan3_sm — Harry Nathan, photo courtesy the artist

The strings holding up the sandwich and the croissant falling in love in Harry Nathan’s video for his song “Alright” and the disco ball with the seemingly in camera visual effects could be a dealbreaker for some people like many relationships where superficiality is a main factor. But unless your sense of humor and the absurd is completely broken you have to have a chuckle at video writer and director Odeya Rush’s choice to pixellate the “naughty” bits after the sandwich and the croissant have done the deed and are laying together nakedly in post-coital bliss, the croissant smoking. Is the sandwich a Reuben or a Monte Cristo? Who can say. But the croissant seems solidly chocolate. Whatever the real details the video highlights the single, a wistful and simple synth pop song from Nathan’s latest release, the To the Limit EP. Though relatively short at two minutes forty, “Alright” conveys much about the hopefulness of a new relationship and a little bit of the absurdity of aspects of it as depicted perfectly by Rush. Listen to the single on Soundcloud, watch the video on YouTube and follow Nathan at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/harrynathan
open.spotify.com/artist/2Sr0UVpJdu6joEkH10koQ9
youtube.com/harrynathan
twitter.com/harrynathan_
facebook.com/harrynathan
instagram.com/harrynathan_

Dan Sadin is Willing to be a Fool for the Real Deal on “Sucker”

DanSadin2_crop — Dan Sadin, image courtesy the artist

On “Sucker” Dan Sadin sounds like he’s channeling one of those 80s power pop songs that sounds so earnest and tuneful but hides a depth of perspective that strikes you suddenly as you’re listening. This song is a combination of brashness and introspection. It’s about a deep yearning for something authentic to the point of maybe being vulnerable and maybe a little too open to it. But when you know something is real maybe you shouldn’t resist it and Sadin’s song captures that desire for real connection to something sincere and honest. Our culture has gotten a little too oriented toward performative behaviors and personae with how our lives are sculpted and presented, social media, online dating profiles etc., but everyone knows there’s a level of pretense that doesn’t work in the end because we all have to live in the real world and if everything’s basically bullshit how can we get through this life? Sadin goes a step further and declares how he’s needing something real so bad that he’s willing to be a fool, a sucker, for it. The song is a little bit Eddie Money, a little bit Springsteen, a little bit Plimsouls and gloriously not aiming for a distancing cool. Listen to “Sucker” on Soundcloud.