New Music – Page 272 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Take a Late Night Journey with “Cause I Grew Up” by biskuwi

biskuwi_CauseIGrewUp_crop — biskuwi “Cause I Grew Up” cover (cropped)

“Cause I Grew Up” from Swedish deep house/techno artist biskuwi sounds like a new take on the late night chill vibe of Tangerine Dream’s “Love on a Real Train.” The suggestion of movement and a dream-like tranquility permeates the track with tones pulsing and fading like the lights of the train, of empty stations lit by the green-white light passing by giving the mind a hypnotic environment in which one’s imagination can roam to where it will. Halfway through the song tones become stronger as the journey intensifies and your anticipation of reaching your destination increases as well and the smooth, metronomic beat rouses you from your reverie into a fresh state of mind. Take some more musical journeys with biskuwi at the links below after listening to “Cause I Grew Up” for yourself.

soundcloud.com/biskuwi
open.spotify.com/artist/2wdY7YDYVddKtVbbgh1fCT
facebook.com/biskuwi.official

“Miranda” is Lesibu Grand’s Retro-Futurist Pop Song About Navigating Self-Doubt and Our Over-Connected World

LesibuGrand4_crop — Lesibu Grand, photo courtesy the artist

“Miranda” by Atlanta’s Lesibu Grand (pronounced Le-SEE-boo Grand) makes no bones about taking its sonic cues from Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde-period Pixies. Its distorted guitar lead surfing along a melodic wave when not accenting the rhythm with a tasty, crunchy riff may remind some listeners of another alternative rock era contemporary, Liz Phair. The song employs tones of nostalgia conjuring that mythical America of innocence and middle class normalcy that ended on television with The Brady Bunch but it’s a nice contrast to a song about personal uncertainty and navigating the modern world where it’s too easy to snoop in on everyone’s lives and the effect that has on you policing yourself in situations where it stifles your natural self and opt for being some mediated version of self all the time and how that impacts having real relationships with people and leading an authentic life. With synths bubbling outward from the song and the melody expanding into outer space, “Miranda” sounds retro-futurist in a wonderfully unconventional way as the B-52’s did a few decades back. Tyler-Simone Molton’s vocals strike the perfect balance of wistful and soulful and helps turn what might be considered by some a kitschy throwback song of a sort into something compellingly thoughtful. Listen to the song below and to delve further into the group’s background and material check out the links provided afterward.

open.spotify.com/artist/143g7Fw0exfVHhk6arwjgN
facebook.com/lesibugrandmusic
instagram.com/lesibugrand

Plastic Mermaids’ Claymation Video for “Taxonomy” Is a Symbol for Adaptation and Resistance in Authoritarian Times

The claymation video for Plastic Mermaids’ “Taxonomy” is a nice touch for a song about the ways in which cultural forces try to shape our identities completely through the categories that grease the wheels of commerce and social control and get us to accept a load of, well, shit as what what we desire because it’s what offered. You know, try to fit your personality and hopes and dreams into an easily filed away set of parameters that serve your masters and take what you’re given and like it. Heady stuff for a triumphant-sounding pop song but it seems as though the subtext of the song is one of exploding the myth of meaningful choices in all aspects of our lives as defined by the dictates of the dull and uninspired market economy that’s been turning the world to a trash heap for decades. Using the claymation format is brilliant as clay will fit into wherever it’s pushed but it can also take on whatever form suits it. It is not a rebel song, it is “Taxonomy” from the band’s latest album Suddenly Everyone Explodes. Check out the band’s other imaginative music videos for songs of other evocative flavors and degrees of cheek at any of the links following the video for “Taxonomy.”

http://www.plasticmermaids.com/
http://www.facebook.com/plasticmermaids

Trentemøller’s “Sleeper” is Music For Spaceports

Trentemoller1_crop — Trentemøller, photo courtesy the artist

On “Sleeper,” Trentemøller has crafted a soundtrack for what feels like dream gliding on waves of clouds away from the sunset over the ocean in twilight. The gentle pulsing tones in the beginning launch your mind into a state of tranquility and away from the demands and distractions of modern life into a realm of contemplation of enjoying being and not have to answer for anything for the duration of the song as ethereal swells of luminous tones draw your attention toward an elevated state of emotion and then set down in soothing well of calming white noise like the wind of your consciousness attaining the deepest rest. The artist’s most recent album was a fantastic example of how post-punk can evolve into something more experimental, “Sleeper” is an expansion on his earlier, purely electronic work and one of the more truly emotionally transporting pieces of music I’ve heard this year. Eno wrote Music For Airports and brilliantly captured the unreality of those places. This is music for spaceports.

trentemoller.com
open.spotify.com/artist/4O71i7ke5iIBX6RNSFoZbS
trentemoller.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/trentemoller
instagram.com/trentemoeller

With “Feeling You” Adesha Shows How You Can Remain Cool In the Face of Relationship Uncertainty

Adesha1_sm — Adesha, photo courtesy the artist

“Feeling You” by Adesha from her latest EP Things to Consider is the rare kind of love song that expresses the complexities of daring to love, the yearning, the doubts and the fear that the same depth of feeling isn’t reciprocated with the poetry and assurance of someone who knows herself well. The bright, lush tone of the beat with the detailed but subtle percussion and finely accented synth swells bring to the song a smooth nostalgic tone like a 90s hip-hop and soul artist like Erykah Badu with a more Dilla style lo-fi ambient production. It’s the kind of song to make you feel comfotable with your uncertainties, to quell the anxiety that can botch good decision-making and to enjoy the moment even if you don’t know where everything in a relationship is going to go because you’ll land okay. Listen for yourself below and follow Adesha’s goings on at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/adeshamusic
twitter.com/Adeshamusic
instagram.com/adeshamusic

Jeremy Winter’s “Construct” Encourages Us to Make a Room Of Our Own in Our Lives to Blossom and Thrive

JeremyWinter_Construct_crop — Jeremy Winter, “Construct” cover (cropped)

The shimmering Casio-esque synths in Jeremy Winter’s “Construct” strike a nostalgic, melancholy tone as buoyed gently by accented low end. But the romance of the song is in the honoring of the very real need of all people to have an emotional, often physical as well, space in order to be able to develop in a healthy way undistracted by the pull of others on your psyche and a world that demands you be on for machinations that have little to do with your internal life and identity. We’re encouraged to construct our lives to adapt to arbitrary standards all the time and in this song Winter encourages himself and others to awaken to what we really want and need and to make the space to discover what that is and in doing so maybe it’s possible to have genuine and positive relationships and engagements with the world on mutual terms without burying ourselves in the process. For fans of Neon Indian, Future Islands and John Maus. Listen below and follow Winter’s work further at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/jeremywinter69
instagram.com/jeremywinter69

The Video for Blocktreat’s “Slow Burn” Is A Synergistic Companion to the Song’s Headlong Rush Into Uncertainty and Wishfulness

Blocktreat1_crop — Blocktreat, photo courtesy the artist

The music video for Blocktreat’s “Slow Burn” allows the lo-fi experimental electro-post-punk song to convey the mixed and shifting feelings of a new relationship in words and the pulsing insistence of the anxiety of the early stages thereof. Is this right? What’s really going on? The sense of wandering in the dark landscape of uncertainty, the attractions and the surprises difficult to fully interpret like a dream sequence, like the dog walking in seemingly out of nowhere and the splashes of color to represent the memories that stay with us and the washed out, almost black and white, other visuals that stand in for the things we’d like to forget or which don’t seem as significant in the moment. It’s like a surreal, short, borderline supernatural horror short where the horror feared in the bottom of your heart never fully manifests but tugs at your psyche all the same along with the excitement and hopefulness, which Brandon Hoffman expresses well with the song that has a quality as raw and seemingly unrefined as the footage, as our experiences and memories themselves can be. The song is taken from Blocktreat’s latest album After Dark and after checking out the video you can further explore Blocktreat’s music through the links following.

blocktreat.ca
soundcloud.com/blocktreat
twitter.com/Blocktreat
facebook.com/Blocktreat

Doc Fell & Co.’s “End of the Line” is the Perfect Modern Truck Driving Country Ballad

DocFellAndCo2_crop — Doc Fell & Co., photo courtesy the artist

Ever since at least the time C.W. McCall making his body of truck driving songs immortal with his 1976 hit “Convoy,” various musicians have tried their hand at the same but mostly succeeded at articulating life on the road in a band. But Doc Fell & Co. with “End of the Line” have written a song that might be a great accompaniment on a road trip but lively enough to make hundreds of miles delivering loads from town to town for weeks and months at a time living out the cab of your truck at times and spending nights in the curious world of truck stops and maybe “jack-knifing in Denver” in winter. In short, the song captures the essence and appeal of that life but also how it can fool you into thinking it can go on forever and time and culture stand still. The song has an undeniable energy without being too rambunctious and the jaunty pedal steel tastefully frames it all in the sonic mythology of one important strand of country music. Check out the song and the rest of the band’s excellent full-length Heaven, Hell or Oklahoma and follow the band at the links below.

itunes.apple.com/us/artist/docfell-co/897663254
soundcloud.com/docfellmusic
open.spotify.com/artist/3V4weWUahUQaSyRfdQbThf
facebook.com/docfellmusic

Grand Commander’s “Animal Attack” and the Horror of the Social Media Culture of the Spectacle

GrandCommander1_CigaineroArtistry — Grand Commander, photo by Cigainero Artistry

“Animal Attack,” the fifth single from Dallas-based multi-genre band Grand Commander, is sort of a futuristic prog funk song that is reminiscent of an idiosyncratic fusion of Trans Am, The Rapture and mid-80s Peter Gabriel. The song is about the lengths some people will go to in our social media obsessed age to garner attention despite how twisted, destructive and misguided those actions might be, so long as it’s “documented” and goes viral with the ephemeral reward of dubious fame only to be ditched off when the next new, warped and demented, action trends sometimes inspiring the discarded “content creator” to do something more drastic. The song is catchy enough with a tasty bass line throughout but clearly songwriter Sam Damask is rightfully repulsed by this dynamic in society and rather than write/record some overblown, borderline nihilistic blog/vlog post about his horror at it all, he wrote a song to help us process and put in its proper place this most modern of phenomena. Listen below and follow Grand Commander’s work at the links underneath the song.

grandcommander.bandcamp.com/releases
facebook.com/GCommander
instagram.com/grandcommandermusic

Melanie Jay’s “WannaBe”Dispels the Voices In Our Lives and in Our Heads Telling Us What We Can and Should Be

MelanieJay1_crop — Melanie Jay, photo courtesy the artist

Don’t be fooled by the introduction to Melanie Jay’s “WannaBe.” Yes, it is a kind of indie pop song that begins with a sound that may be familiar in form but it quickly becomes a flow of recursive echoes out of a chorus that spirals off into the distance before coming back like Jay is singing with herself in the round and it resolves into the sound of an answering machine with the beep to the message trailing off in some delay or reverb. But it all suits the theme of the song in which the narrator contemplates the intricacies of identity and desire and feeling lost in a sea of voices, one’s own and those of the messages we receive each day from different sources telling us what we should be and what we should want. Jay exorcises it all into the wisp of a ghost that may haunt us again but with a diminishing capacity to do so. A truly unusual pop song that works because it uses classic form in a completely original and experimental way. Take a deeper dive into Jay’s work at melaniejay.bandcamp.com.