“Alta Ripa” comes in like a slow moving snowstorm late at night. Ben Lukas Boysen’s arrangements of harmonic drones roil languidly and blanket the soundscape with cool, subtle layers that drift and flow, conveying a sense of settling in. The harmonies linger and dissolve into the generated mood. It’s like hearing distant horns signaling a time of rest and reflection in some distant future when the world is at rest and able to indulge some extended periods of inactivity imposed by the onset of winter at least for a night or a two. The sound can wax melancholic but ultimately it is one of ease into a headspace of peace. Listen to “Alta Ripa” on YouTube and follow Ben Lukas Boysen at the links below.
The melodic shimmer opening Baldemar’s “Vampire Thoughts” lets you know you’re in for a song that is filled with mixed emotions, some nostalgic, some bittersweet, some melancholic, others regretful. The song is about the kinds of thoughts that leech the exuberance out of life while delving into how these thoughts and patterns of mind we might have roots in our experiences and a habit of dwelling on the moments that sink deep into our psyches. Though the song has a lo-fi production aspect it suits the mood of the song perfectly as it sounds like something out of daydreams and flights of self-reflective fancy that help you through dark times and personal doldrums to get where you may need to land in the end once you’ve process the tangle of emotions and the thoughts that reinforce them. It’s a striking piece of music on working through your heart’s turmoil to get back to yourself authentically. Listen to “Vampire Thoughts” on Spotify and follow Baldemar at the links below.
Luna Honey from Philadelphia recently issued its latest work of musical alchemy with the November 22, 2024 release of the album Bound. Since its 2017 inception the group has been impossible to tag with a narrow genre designation not for lack of creative coherence but because it draws on disparate roots of influence and experiments with sound sources and organic and electronic production. But fans of the likes of late-80s and beyond Swans, Dead Can Dance and Live Skull will find a similar resonance in Luna Honey’s facility with channeling personal darkness into beautifully transcendent and cathartic pieces of music. The band’s sound is not limited to notions of post-punk, noise rock, tribal industrial, its albums span a range of tones and moods to serve a creative vision and impulse to make music that goes beyond mere entertainment and diversion from everyday life to get at something deeper. Luna Honey singer/guitarist Maura Pond collaborated long distance with former Swans guitarist Norman Westberg on the 2023 Luna Honey album Aftermath which was a meditation on and expression of loss and grief. Bound despite, or perhaps because of, its title feels like a reckoning, a coming to terms with, a struggling against arbitrary and artificial limitations and definitions that circumscribe and limit our lives. Pond’s expressive, ritualistic and at times operatic vocals and the controlled maelstrom of sounds like standard music forms stretched and twisted against standard tonality and structure make for a memorable listening experience.
Listen to our interview with Maura Pond of Luna Honey on Bandcamp and follow the band at the links below.
TV Guy Productions’ “And Just Like That” sounds like Brian Weinberg was tapping into whatever frequencies in the cosmos the Butthole Surfers were when they wrote “Pepper.” The pounding percussion and the immediate shifting between distorted and more dreamlike vocals and the spoken word and the singing, it has parallels. But there is more overt synth in the TV Guy Productions song and ghostly chimes near mid-song to signal when things get more demented again with Weinberg’s pronouncements of being confused and lost and reveling in it rather than despairing. It lends the song an appealing touch of madness in the face of endless mundane demands Weinberg lists in various parts of the song and who can’t relate to wanting to upend the pressure of all of that? In this song Weinberg reclaims a bit of freedom from everyday life that you can indulge in alongside with him. Listen to “And Just Like That” on Spotify and follow TV Guy Productions on Instagram.
“Relief (Remix by Dionisaf” by Zen Lemon is from the first release of a compilation of remixes from artists on the Ambient Cat imprint. As per the label’s output so far the already immersive original is given a treatment that more or less transforms the song into something new. The original mix of “Relief” is flowing with saturated tones and a more in the foreground composition. This remix draws out the drifting background tones and emphasizes the sense of being at the edge of a body of water with a harmonic fog that courses through the track with the energy of a soothing enigma in that it gets into your ears and like the title of the song suggests works a sonic alchemy that puts the heart at rest and focuses the mind on casting off sources of anxiety without having to exert an ounce of effort. More cohesive tones resonate and fade in a rhythm that comforts without the crutch of language to effect its calming resonance. Listen to “Relief (Remix by Dionisaf)” on Zen Lemon on Spotify.
Myriad’s Veil draws you in instantly with the ethereal tones and grounded beat at the beginning of “Hollow.” The drifting harmonics and sultry bass line paired with a minimal beat lends the song a downtempo mood but the way the duo layers the electronic drones is psychedelic in a way that bypasses what we’ve come to expect out of psychedelic rock the past decade and a half. Myriad’s Veil truly offers you a peek into more transcendent emotional colorings in the music with a depth of composition and masterful use of space that is both minimalist and highly detailed. Yet the song doesn’t weigh down your mind, it isn’t heavy, it conveys an expansive spirit in its introspective moods and its synth melodies while intertwining feel loose and refreshing. Listen to “Hollow” on Spotify and follow Myriad’s Veil on Bandcamp.
Applesauce Tears lure us into “Faded and Braided” with a processional and melodic introduction before the tones sparkle some and it sounds like something out of late 1960s existential drama. It’s expansive and enigmatic, alluring in its intertwining of orchestral arrangements and classical sensibilities. If not for some of the attention to modern production techniques and mixing one might be excused for thinking it’s a long lost, psychedelicized art rock instrumental and when the vocals come in after the three minute mark like Black Mountain indulging more of its gift for soundscaping outside the realm of heavy music. It has the dusky and transporting mood one expects out of a Sofia Coppola film soundtrack imbued with a sense of wonder and romance with shades of mystery. Listen to “Faded and Braided” on Spotify and follow Applesauce Tears at its website.
Chris Greene Quartet released its eleventh album Conversance on October 19, 2024 on LP, CD, digital download and streaming via respected indie rock label Pravda Records marking it as the first jazz album issued by the imprint. Greene and his band based out of Chicago is a saxophonist whose talents have contributed to recordings by Windy City luminaries such as Steve Dawson and Nora O’Connor and he has performed with the likes of Common and Andrew Bird. Greene’s post-bop style incorporates ideas from funk and hip-hop but the methods and sounds are in that jazz ensemble vein in which each member of the band contributes in synergistic ways toward dynamic and energetic arrangements that establish an immediate and flowing mood. The new album reveals not just the Quartet’s musical creativity and prowess but also its knowledge of the history and legacy of the artforms that inform its aesthetic and craft.
Listen to our interview with Chris Greene on Bandcamp and follow the band leader and his band at the links provided.
Kerry Jones of Death Doula, photo courtesy the artist
Death Doula is a band based on Portland, Oregon that released its debut Love Spells on October 11, 2024. Its music might be described as shoegaze but its tones are a little darker waxing into the territory of moodier post-punk and its textures more complex and prominent. The band’s guitar work is a little noisier and at times more angular than the typical shoegaze band and its lyrics more rooted in a kind of poetic lyricism rather than standard pop songcraft. Vocalist Kerry Jones’ vocals are versatile yet elemental in expression with words seemingly informed by a perspective that looks beyond the surface level of everyday experiences. Death Doula’s sound bridges the ethereal and the heavier end of atmospheric music and infuses it with an expansive emotional intensity that lends the music an unexpected power. The albums was recorded with Adam Lee at Jackpot Studios in Portland and its noisy and uplifting maelstrom of creative ideas and colorful soundscapes defies easy categorization but fans of brooding yet noisy post-punk, Helium and the more mystically-minded shoegaze and space rock bands like Space Team Electra and Sky Cries Mary will find great kinship across the record’s nine tracks.
Listen to our interview with Kerry Jones on Bandcamp and follow Death Doula at the links below.
Belgian composer Alice Hebborn’s debut album Saisons is due out December 6 via Western Vinyl. The single “Saisons – Mouvement 6” is an immersive example of Hebborn’s gift for fusing tone, texture and rhythm as though sculpting it all out of an act of pure imagination trying to manifest a concept where the experience of each isn’t separated out as it might be in a more conventional musical mode. In that way Hebborn’s seemingly intuitive performance of the music is reminiscent of the work of Philip Glass and how his own best work seems to wed classical notions of tone and a more organic structure with rhythms drifting where the atmospheric emotional resonance guides it. In the case of this piece the piano, the electronics, the percussive sounds flow like a river and a journey along that river at once with dense sonics and atmospheres until the end where a calm spaciousness takes the place of layers of motion as though the energy of the earlier part of the song is finding its evening out of excitement into quiescence. Listen to “Saisons – Mouvement 6” on YouTube and follow Alice Hebborn at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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