New Music – Page 28 – Queen City Sounds and Art

snapir & Ænie’s Modular Synth Composition “2110: Ash Grey” Evokes a Sense of a Post-Civilization Future

snapir & Ænie, image courtesy the artists

The backdrop sound of white noise fog sets the stage for “2110: Ash Grey” the single from snapir & Ænie’s new album Egression (released February 26, 2025). As the track progresses droplets of electronic clicks, hovering tones, distorted flares of horn-like sounds and an almost improvisational rhythm that flows through, touches of disintegrating melody emerging from harmonic drones work together to create in the mind something like the music from a world as projected onto the future by 1960s and 1970s science fiction writers and filmmakers. But this one feels more alien and more dystopian in the way of Andrei Tarkovsky where that future isn’t so sparkling, epic or dramatic, but more low key where people explore the nature of their dreams and aspirations while being wary of achieving them because they’ve so long been accustomed to diminished expectations. There is a tension and a sense of wonder that bleeds through those internalized defenses against transcendence. This song has that kind of energy of existential examination and working one’s way through a murky future where the mysteries may turn out to be completely nothing you might have imagined. Taking shape with the composers’ collaboration utilizing a Serge Modular System synthesizer it’s an environmental ambient piece with real texture and a warped library music vibe that utilizes the uniquely haunting tones and possibilities of one of the classic 1970s synths with consistently fascinating results. Listen to “2110: Ash Grey” on Spotify and follow snapir & Ænie on Instagram.

Joan Arnau Pàmies’ Downtempo Techno Jazz Single “Esperança” is a Stirring Piece on Resistance Through Vulnerability

Joan Arnau Pàmies, photo by Iolanda Sebe

Catalonian composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Joan Arnau Pàmies is set to release his new album Guidelines/Fonaments on April 4, 2025 via his Protomaterial Records imprint. Lead single “Esperança” is a masterclass in layered, minimal rhythms, textures and tone. Moody and faintly luminous piano melody serves as an emotional context in which guest vocalist Martina Perpinyà’s introspective and expressive delivers lines about persevering against what seem like discouraging forces and in spite of one’s fatigue and malaise, in spite of one’s perceptions of what you thought you were struggling for and to accept changing circumstances without losing sight of what’s most important. It seems like a particularly poignant song in these times especially since the song isn’t premised on being tough. It is a quiet and downtempo piece like a bit of abstract acid jazz. But in taking that form it shows how the will to persevere can look and sound like grace and the embrace of one’s human limitations as a source of strength and resistance because it is attainable to just about everyone. Listen to “Esperança” on YouTube and follow Joan Arnau Pàmies at the links below.

pamies.info

Joan Arnau Pàmies on Instagram

Joan Arnau Pàmies on Bandcamp

Yspai Bit’s Sophisti-Post-Punk Single “Emptiness” is an Elegant Self-Persuasion to Breaking the Barriers of Traditional Culture

Yspai Bit imbues its song “Emptiness” with a yearning for a life with more vitality and meaning. Musically it’s a fusion of melancholic post-punk and synth pop in a style that resonates with later period Body of Light and The Blue Nile. The subtle flourishes that carry the song have an almost orchestral feel with the guitar dropping in lightly yet elegantly and both electronic drums and synths working in tandem with the rhythm of the lyrics. The activity of the city nightlife outside the narrator’s windows is depicted as chaotic yet alluring, seemingly perilous but offering a fulfillment to the yearning we hear in the song that itself the narrator knows is a narrative intended to keep him from violating some unwritten rule and transgressing past an outmoded system of morals and repressive traditional culture that presents itself as the only meaningful set of values and ethos. We hear in the song the narrator talking himself into crossing that line because in an unspoken way he knows what he’s been told is just manufactured tales and perspectives intended to keep people in their place. It’s not obviously a subversive song but sometimes subversion looks and sounds like something that is a conversation with self dissolving arbitrary and internalized notions of how the world and the self need to be. Listen to “Emptiness” on Spotify and follow Yspai Bit from Tatarstan, Russia at the links below. Lyrics in English provided below the links.

Yspai Bit on Yappy

Yspai Bit on TikTok

Yspai Bit on Instagram

“Emptiness” lyrics in English

Simply because a friend has gone away.
I don’t want to live in the present moment,
Exchanging life for the emptiness of fleeting details.
The city outside the window roars with chaos,
Drenched in the vivid glow of its lights.

Chorus
Hands are yearning to break the glass,
This void has trapped me; it won’t pass.
To dive in sin, the city’s night,
And shed the shell that feels so trite.

Slung Kicks Out a Hefty Portion of the Turmoil of Family Trauma With the Infectious Fire of “Laughter”

Slung charges right into the opening moments of “Laughter” including a hearty yell from vocalist Katie Oldham. Initially it resonates with the same thrill as “Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins. But Oldham’s vocals switch seemingly effortlessly between breathy melodies and punk aggression with the band doing the same. And as the song progresses the guitar work veers off any 90s rock comparisons with a more ethereal atmospheric flair. In the music video the band is dressed up like they came out of some rock and soul review act of the 50s and 60s and demonstrating an exuberant joy in the music that’s as infectious as the song itself while indulging in what has to be described as a cake fight during the mid-song breakdown. But all the fun and hijnks makes the song’s message of finding a way to confront the reality of difficult relationships while juggling the fact that you may not get what you want or need out of them and find your own catharsis move on as best you can sometimes with a chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Writing an aggressive song with undeniable hooks is certainly one method that has worked for many and “Laughter” is an earworm. Watch the music video on YouTube and follow Slung at the links below. The group’s debut album In Ways will be released May 2, 2025 via Fat Dracula. A UK tour kicks off the same day as the album release.

Slung on Facebook

Slung on Instagram

Gen’s Moody, Ambient Techno Single “It’s Too Late” Is a Song About Being Gentle With Yourself In Letting Go of Bad Situations

The darkly hazy tone that swirls slowly in the background of Gen’s single “It’s Too Late” immediately establishes a dreamlike atmosphere. The minimal percussion in the foreground gently anchors the song as the vocals deliver words in clear tones an acknowledgment of how its past time to return to a person, a situation, a headspace that may have felt comfortable for awhile but one’s personal development and lived experience has revealed as no longer the place one wants to be or should be even if there are aspects of it that would offer the “normality” of familiarity. But sometimes you just know “There’s no going back” even if you’re tempted to and in the lines “It’s too late, Don’t cry” there is the reminder that sometimes even giving up things bad for us can hurt even if that’s a wasted emotion. The song feels like a stirring fusion of 90s downtempo and the more ambient end of deep house perfect for a late night techno set. Listen to “It’s Too Late” on Spotify and follow Gen at the links below.

Gen on Twitter

Gen on TikTok

Gen on Instagram

Ceremony Shadows Have Crafted the Perfect Industrial Dance Song of Personal Empowerment and Body Autonomy With “Reclaim”

Ceremony Shadows, photo courtesy the artists

The attention to rhythmic and tonal detail in the production of Ceremony Shadows’ “Reclaim” helps to draw the listener into its message of empowering bodily autonomy, an all too relevant and poignant subject these days. The track could broadly be considered darkwave but its sonic richness and immersive, cinematic sound is reminiscent of Front Line Assembly particularly in the male vocals. But also more modern masters of industrial techno like Spike Hellis and Boy Harsher with the beautiful clarity and percussive quality of the synth lines and programmed drums. You feel like you’re there in the song experiencing it directly because the production creates such a sense of space an emotional resonance. Listening to the song feels like hearing the subversive danger of industrial music anew and the song while not aggressive fortifies a sense of personal empowerment that begins within and can expand and connect with like-minded others. It should be a darkwave/Goth dance club/night hit if it isn’t already. Listen to “Reclaim” on Spotify and follow Portland, Oregon’s Ceremony Shadows at the links below.

Ceremony Shadows on Facebook

Ceremony Shadows on Instagram

Ceremony Shadows on Bandcamp

eremony Shadows on YouTube

Cat Ridgeway’s Exuberant Yet Gutting “Sprinter” is a Song About Depression and the Loss of a Friend

The title track to Cat Ridgeway’s new album Sprinter expertly uses low and quiet dynamics to reflect how many things in your life can come at you in overwhelming blasts. If you’re mentally healthy you can weather that experience with some degree of success. But if you’re not doing so well you can ignore all the warning signs piling up under the belief you can outrun the momentum of accumulating stressors that aren’t going to go away if you don’t attend to them. The song is about a friend Ridgeway lost to despair and the line about “Still got that damn check engine light” as a metaphor for red flags in your mental health is memorable and poignant. The distorted guitar in that 90s alternative rock vein adds a dramatic flair to the song but Ridgeway’s songwriting isn’t a throwback and when the song hits the tender and tranquil outro the note struck is one of a deep sadness and sense of loss. For all the song’s early exuberance reflecting the sort of best face forward pantomime of confidence makes the ending all the more impactful. Ridgeway’s words of reaching self-awareness after the terrible fact and experiencing a gutting guilt too late to do anything other than compound the hurting linger with you long after the song is over. Watch the video for “Sprinter” on YouTube and follow Cat Ridgeway at the links below.

catridgeway.com

Cat Ridgeway on Twitter

Cat Ridgeway on Facebook

Cat Ridgeway on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E02: Michigan Rattlers

Michigan Rattlers, photo courtesy the artists

Michigan Rattlers is a band of lifelong friends who have been in bands together since they were in their early teens and started recording their songs in 2016 under their current name. The band’s first two albums offered beautifully pastoral Americana about everyday life, articulating the aspirations of yearnings that would be recognizable instantly to anyone that has spent more than a few months contemplating what it is you really want and what you have and what you value. The 2024 album Waving From A Sea is a creative leap forward for the band with more atmospheric elements and a songwriting style more in line with the kind of power pop one heard in the late 70s or in a more modern era with the likes of The War on Drugs. The songs tie the feelings to a strong sense of place both physically and psychologically at a time when you’re re-orienting your life and finding the anchors in your psyche that remind you of the contexts that have helped shape you and the boundaries you have moved beyond.

Listen to our interview with singer Graham Young on Bandcamp and follow Michigan Rattlers at the links below. Michigan Rattlers are currently on tour with a stop at Meow Wolf in Denver on Thursday, February 20, 2025 with Elias Hix, doors 7pm.

michiganrattlers.com

Michigan Rattlers on Facebook

Michigan Rattlers on Apple Music

Michigan Rattlers on Bands In Town

Queen City Sounds Podcast S5E01: The Velveteers

The Velveteers, photo by Jason Thomas Geering

The Velveteers are a rock trio from Boulder, Colorado that has blossomed from humble origins playing house shows and DIY venues in the mid-2010s after forming in 2014 to touring internationally with the likes of Great Van Fleet and Black Keys. Dan Auerbach of the latter took a liking to the band and produced and released the 2021 debut full-length Nightmare Daydream on his Easy Eye Sound imprint. That record demonstrated that the group had moved beyond some of its more blues rock/garage rock early days into something with more musical depth and with something to say regarding the vagaries of society, identity, self-image and sexism. A little over three years later The Velveteers are releasing their second album A Million Knives which reveals the band’s further explorations into integrating an electronic music aesthetic and songwriting into its core sound of vulnerable pop songs charged with raw emotional power. The themes of the record involve the complexities of navigating relationships and one’s aspirations. Underlying it all are elements of heartbreak of all varieties—the interpersonal, the kind when one’s expectations and dreams find reality lacking from the world and from oneself and the sort stemming from disappointment. But as the album makes it obvious, finding the will and energy to pull yourself back from that brink. Following an album release show on February 14, 2025, expect to find The Velveteers undertaking a tour throughout the American West, Texas and states connected to Colorado.

Listen to our interview with Demi Demitro of The Velveteers on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below. Catch The Velveteers live for the album release show at the Hi-Dive on Friday, February 14, 2025 with Cherry Spit and Diva Cup. Doors 7pm, show 8pm.

thevelveteers.com

The Velveteers on Instagram

Pink Must’s “Morphe Sun” is a Psychedelic IDM Pop Song That Beckons You Along With Its Otherworldly and Organic Flow

Pink Must is set to release its self-titled debut album on February 28, 2025 via the Dutch label 15 love. The single “Morphe Sun” reflects the process in which More Eaze and Lynne Avery engaged in part of the songwriting with Avery sending a recording to Eaze and the latter cutting the track up and reassembling it and sending it back before writing the next section of the song. It has jangly, melty guitar sounds and a processed sound like a 90s IDM track done on 4-track but with modern production techniques. Think like a turn of the century Boards of Canada track or early Black Moth Superrainbow through the lens of lo-fi pop. It has an otherworldly feel but imbued with an intimate emotional resonance. Perhaps a bit of the cut-up technique as applied to music as a sort of remix of a song whose previous form doesn’t exist. The touch of vocal processing just adds to the sense of the strange and left field in a way that is inviting in line with the song’s organic flow of rhythm and texture directed by an idiosyncratic sensibility that doesn’t demand being taken on its own terms as already establishing that connection with you immediately if you’re open to sounds that aren’t standard pop fare. Listen to “Morphe Sun” on Spotify and follow Brooklyn’s Pink Must on Instagram.