“Hana Mash Hu Al Yaman” by A-WA and its music video may speak specifically to the experience of Yemenite immigrants to Israel but its presentation deftly humanizes the plight of so many immigrants around the world. With an eclectic sound that combines the beat-making of hip-hop with traditional Yemenite music and its lively chordal structures and compound time. The video and song was inspired by the story of the trio’s great grandmother who was brought to Israel in 1949 during Operation Magic Carpet. The group (Tair, Liron and Tagel Haim) took the story and cast in call and response fashion as with “America” from West Side Story which itself humanized real tension and conflict using creativity and ace dance moves. A-WA made a big splash with its song “Habib Galbi” in 2016 (from the album of the same name) which is the first song in Arabic to ever reach number one in the Israeli pop charts. On May 31, 2019 the group released its sophomore album BAYTI FI RASI and you can give a listen to that here.
Category: New Music
“Ember” From Bahraini Songwriter Ala Ghawas is a Masterpiece of Elegance and Restraint
Ala Ghawas is a prolific and acclaimed songwriter in his home country of Bahrain. Rather than perhaps more traditional Bahraini music, Ghawas has garnered attention for his finely crafted indie folk. With his latest series of singles, the Ghawas has been exploring the use of dissonance and well-placed minor progressions in a style of music that tends to play it a little safer. “Ember,” reminiscent of Our Endless Numbered Days-period Iron & Wine. Ghawas’ use of minimalist elements to orchestrate an emotional musical figure is similarly sophisticated and his turns of phrase poetic and vivid. At first listen you might think it’s like some other chamber folk songs you’ve heard and it is in many ways but repeated listens reveal layers of composition that reward your attention with the details and emotional coloring. Listen below to “Ember” and more.
Luke & Sarah-Rose’s “F*ck You” is a Chant to Purge Personal Darkness
Australian duo Luke & Sarah-Rose are on the verge of releasing their new album and the single “Fuck You” gives you a taste of the way the songwriters are able to turn deep personal pain and frustration into a luminous and quietly cathartic melody that shimmers with an inner light. It sounds like Sarah-Rose is setting the demons that haunt her mind loose upon the water like lantern-motes of the psyche and bidding them goodbye. Rather than a simple resolution this aspect of the song and its flower-like rosette of a chant-like structure suggests an intentional process that draws upon the intuition to guide it. At times in this way it recalls the emotional delicacy and power of Tori Amos because the latter doesn’t dishonor her own life and struggles nor those of her listeners with glib pseudo-wisdom. At others like The Kills without the hard rock but the psychological insight and intensity well in place.
Take a Late Night Journey with “Cause I Grew Up” by biskuwi
“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
“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
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
“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
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.
The Video for Blocktreat’s “Slow Burn” Is A Synergistic Companion to the Song’s Headlong Rush Into Uncertainty and Wishfulness
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
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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