New Music – Page 43 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Callummm Transmutes a Shower Holder Into an Object of Hypnotic Psychological Resonance for Ambient Track “Shower Bath”

Callummm found shower holder in his dad’s garden a few years ago and as though he had discovered an ancient artifact of unknown origin with powers of spiritual resonance he discovered once he bowed it and found it had multiple possibilities as a sound source. Perhaps the most sublime so far has become the track titled, appropriately enough, “Shower Bath.” In the music video we see Callummm carrying the item around on a walk through the street with streaks of color streaming down the field of vision as though the frequencies are opening a perceptual door to another world. The hypnotic and radiant tones have a slow shimmer that while repetitive has an undeniably compelling quality that holds your attention like an ambient piece built upon iterative frequency shifts in an endless feedback loop that yields other frequencies that distort off each other so that the sounds when layered produce an effect like your brain went on a journey inexplicable in mere words but which feels curiously satisfying in the end. Watch the video for “Shower Bath” on YouTube and follow Callummm at the links provided.

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Retail Drugs’ New Album i love you so! Is a Collection of Tender and Ragged Lo-Fi Indie Rock Portraits of Confessional Vulnerability

Retail Drugs, photo courtesy the artists

Retail Drugs is a recording project of Jake Brooks from Laveda and it dropped an album on August 2, 2024 called i love you so! These songs are almost like an alternate reality version of the kind of music Brooks does in Laveda. They feel wonderfully and charmingly rough hewn like home demos recorded to cassette with the blown out sonics left in, the distortion overwhelming the mic a little. But the vulnerability is still there and though Brooks’ vocals are behind the mix a little you can feel the raw sincerity in them especially when the heated white noise of clears in moments. Like the words sung are saying things that while heartfelt might sound to you a little too real. But on a song like “Stairs” the music is instantly reminiscent of 2000s and early 2010s bands like Times New Viking, Tyvek, No Age, Eat Skull and artists on the Siltbreeze imprint generally and how the intentionality of that kind of unvarnished sound is part of the point of the music. It would be difficult to co-opt and mass market yet has an undeniable appeal to people who can hear through it all the attempt to capture unfiltered emotion and offer that up as an experience that anyone open to it can find relatable. The relative sprawl of “Net” is intimate and gorgeous in its fragile delicacy and even its “imperfections” lend its expressions of radical vulnerability the evocative power of a confessional letter one intends for someone important in your life but which you can never bring yourself to deliver. But the album doesn’t stay lurking in the fog of overwhelming feelings and distorted atmospheres. “Sea (Fade Away)” is a more lo-fi acoustic pop song that unexpectedly veers into a moody bit of warping and bending slowcore. Did Brooks just use a 4-track to record these songs? If not he did a good job of faking it and thus giving the album’s nine songs a freshness and purity that comes from going into making music for the joy of it and not aiming for a specific audience and letting one’s creativity and instincts be the guide. A lot of music is put in the world as “lo-fi” but it’s just poorly recorded music. Brooks seems to have tapped into the creative potential of that sensibility in itself and turning the limitations into a virtue. Listen to i love you so! on Spotify and follow Retail Drugs on Instagram.

SUUNS Conjure a Sense of the Otherworldly Epic on Indie Art Rock Single “Overture”

The minimal kick drum beat that runs through the first part of “Overture” by SUUNS is like a faint heartbeat underneath the glittering synth figure. The vocals sound like they’re reading from a mix of an existential diary and mystical poetry as they sing lines like “Blink twice. Your eyes are full of heaven. Cross with me to the other side” and “Do yo hear my voice? Do you hear my dreams?” And it all builds to moments of sublime exultation mid-song with orchestrated pulses of sound and high pitched dissonant distortion like the song is overheating and ready to burst right before the end when the song enigmatically ends with the line “We bummed a ride on dead end streets and lost our way on the road to Mecca, free.” It all sounds like something promising something even more glorious ahead, a resolution to the mysterious imagery and poetry of the rest of the song and yet it’s a piece that sits in the middle of the Canadian group’s new album The Breaks (out September 6, 2024 via Joyful Noise Recordings on CD, red vinyl and for digital download and streaming). But that’s long been one of the band’s appeals of nearly surreal lyrics, unconventional sonics arranged into a coherent song that appeal to fans of left field indie rock and the avant-garde both. But more than anything for this record it piques the interest to hear what else SUNNS has been crafting since the release of its 2021 album The Witness and thus the title is fitting for the song itself and where it fits in the context of a record. Listen to “Overture” on Spotify and follow SUUNS at the links below.

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Vince Nudo’s “Everyone Here Reminds Me of You” is a Stirring, Cinematic Piece of Transcendent Ambient Soundscaping

Vince Nudo recently released his soundtrack album to the documentary film Mary Heilmann: Waves, Roads & Hallucinations on July 26, 2024 as the first release on hs own record label Doom to Bloom. The gorgeously sprawling concluding track “Everyone Here Reminds Me of You” builds with layers of harmonic loops and threads of drone that flow through and add an inflection of mood that create a rich soundscape that is minimal in its sonic signature but constantly evolving, drawing you further into a narrative suggested by the title. The arpeggiated figure that runs throughout the piece is hypnotic and anchors each element that build the song to an increasingly rich and dramatic cinematic mood that sounds like something from a Michael Mann film. Think Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” or Kronos Quartet’s contributions to the soundtrack of Heat as well. It has a similar quality of entering into a heightened dream state with its blend of tranquility and sense of transcending normal worldly boundaries. Listen to “Everyone Here Reminds Me of You” on Spotify and follow Nudo at the links below. Some may know Nudo for his work as the drummer in Kurt Vile’s backing band The Violators as his time as the drummer and founding member of Priestess but it’s clear his efforts in sound design and experimental music while not on the road have been fruitful as well.

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The Otherworldly Tones and Textures of Franco Esteve’s “Weirdly Bent” May Linger on the Edges Your Daydreams

Franco Esteve, photo courtesy the artist

Puerto Rican composer and multi-instrumentalist Franco Esteve has gifted us with a song that sounds like music from a reality a quantum shift away from our own in “Weirdly Bent.” Esteve utilizes processed organic sounds and pure electronics in a seemingly intuitive flow of tones and textures that float in space and drift where they will and resonate with stimulating yet calming frequencies. It is incredibly easy to get lost in the music Esteve has created with the track in the vein of the likes of “Deep Blue Day” by Brian Eno but perhaps more like something that has had brushes of influence from 90s IDM like Aphex Twin or Lifeforms-period The Future Sound of London; perhaps Esteve got into Vladislav Delay’s experiments in tonal textural flow. Whatever the roots and inspirations, “Weirdly Bent” lingers with you in its benevolently haunting beauty and unconventional use of melody and harmony as it truly lives up to its name. Listen to the song on Spotify and follow Franco Esteve at the links below.

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8mm’s Smoldering Downtempo Single “Over and Over” is Like a Mantra to Soothe One’s Lingering Heartache

The minimal piano intro with a hovering harmonic drone at the beginning of 8mm’s “Over and Over” creates a slight sense of anticipation for what’s to come. The project comprised of producer/mixer Sean Beavan (Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, No Doubt, A Perfect Circle), vocalist Juliette Beavan and guitarist composer Jonathan Radtke (Filter, Kill Hannah) offers this time out a song that feels like late night musings in a smoldering downtempo jazz mode cast in streams of tone that ring out and linger like the sentiments expressed in the song. It seems to be about a relationship in which one person has been waiting around too long for commitment from the other person after an initial spark the embers of which persist beyond any reasonable hope. It would sound foolish as the line “A melody a fool believes” suggests but it’s not an uncommon experience for anyone that feels fully and deeply even for people and things in their lives that disappoint them. There is something beautiful in the brooding tragedy of the song whose looping lines of “Over and over and over and over” is like a self-soothing mantra to get oneself through the periods when the heartache seems to haunt you the most. Listen to “Over and Over” on Spotify and follow 8mm at the links below. The band’s new album Black Cat releases on September 13, 2024 on digital download, streaming and limited edition colored vinyl.

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Parallel’s “Death or Oblivion” Blurs the Line Between Post-Punk and Shoegaze in a Contemplative Expression of Faint Hope in the Face of Existential Dread

The guitar tones and interplay in Parallel’s “Death or Oblivion” is refreshingly distinct and clear in the realm of where post-punk and shoegaze blur the stylistic line. Though the vocals are understated and slightly hazy in the mix they sit well in the mix offering a poetic commentary on the connection between the ravages of climate change and existential dread in the face of a seemingly doomed future. The arcs of descending melody anchored by pulsing yet crisp bass lines and widely expressive percussion enhance a contemplative mood yet one driven by an urge to express what’s in one’s head as a means of giving it explicable form in a way that inspires emotional movement rather than getting stuck in a pit of psychological stasis of being overwhelmed. There is a bit of Seventeen Seconds-period The Cure in the dynamics of the outro and fans of The Chameleons will appreciate the deep clarity in the song’s tonal mix. Listen to “Death or Oblivion” no Spotify and follow Oakland’s Parallel at the links below. The group’s new mini-album Flooded released via Cherub Dream Records July 10, 2024 on streaming, download, cassette and vinyl.

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Easy Sleeper Puts an Upbeat Spin on the Introspective Melodies of Jangle-y Post-punk Single “Feeling Good All the Time”

Easy Sleeper, photo courtesy the artists

Easy Sleeper lays out “Feeling Good All the Time” in what feels like a collage of memory with effective uses of starts and stops. This suits what seems to be the themes of the song which are learning to appreciate the good things and the people in your life and be in the moment and to enjoy life’s little joys without coming to see them as ends I themselves. Musically the sparkling, jangly guitar work and the sometimes charmingly, intentionally rough vocals nearly shouted in moments provide the kind of contrast one hears in a Protomartyr song except that Easy Sleeper favors more ethereal melodies that lend the song an introspective quality that culminates in the beautifully orchestrated tonal bends and swirl to echo at the end of the song. Thus, what could be a paradoxically effervescent, melancholic song ends with an upbeat flourish. Listen to “Feeling Good All the Time” on Spotify and follow Easy Sleeper at the links provided. The group’s new album A Sacred Way of Living releases August 30, 2024.

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Margo Scout’s Shimmery Dream Pop Single “Otters” is a Song About Setting Boundaries and Not Getting Lost in Others or Yourself

Margo Scout’s shimmery guitar work on “Otters” is like something you’d hear off a late 80s Cocteau Twins record—faintly luminous, transporting and impressionistic in arrangement. But it is joined by flecks of tonal percussion over the more expressive rhythms. All in support of Scout’s melodiously breathy vocals intoning introspectively about habits of codependency in a relationship and learning to set the boundaries for oneself not only to protect oneself from the behavior of others but also as a means of living a psychologically independent life. The concluding line of the song “Gotta learn to breathe by yourself, I can’t be your only hope” spells out the dynamic Scout has explored throughout the song and the way it can be easy, in pursuit of love and showing love blurring those lines of self in unhealthy ways that be harmful to everyone involved. It’s a hard lesson but Scout expresses it in such lush and gentle tones that the song doesn’t hit as stark and harsh, rather delivered with an affectionate spirit. The title of the song and the subsequent imagery also suggests a playfulness that may not be obvious at first and in that the song conveys that we’re learning a lot of this as we go and we can be kind in our mistake making. Listen to “Otter” on Spotify and follow Margo Scout at the links below.

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Tom O C Wilson Coaxes Us Out of a Patch of Emotional Stasis With the Moody Synth Pop Single “Until I’m Out”

Tom O C Wilson, photo courtesy the artist

Tom O C Wilson expertly infuses his single “Until I’m Out” with saturated synth tones and low end so that it immediately has a sonic presence that immerses you in a reflective mood. David Brewis’ lead vocals on the track are reminiscent of a more melancholic Iva Davis of Icehouse and altogether the song feels like a series of sketches of taking a stroll in the mind to take stock of one’s relationship with oneself. Wilson pairs well streams of moody melody with couplets on how your thoughts can revert into a pattern of isolation when it has become a habit. That slow creep of anxiety that reinforces those habits when you can be just a little too stuck in your own head until you find yourself having to be outside of that pattern and your mind is forced into a different mode. Maybe the song isn’t about being depressed and the little things that can nudge you out of it and how sometimes you have to trick yourself into almost unknowingly to be away from what feel like immediate comforts and stimulate your mind beyond what might be described as a feedback loop. But the song with its sounds of moody comfort instantly dissolves anxiousness and the splashes of piano and other bright tones, the lyric “As I’m starting to hear the light” in the beginning of the song captures the impulse to a more engaged mode of living well, make the prospect of moving out of a state of suspended inertia seem inevitable and desirable. What makes the song seem especially effective is how it invokes feelings of nostalgia and musical styles of another era but employs them in a way that looks to the future with an apparent knowledge that often one needs to coax oneself into better head spaces. Music it’s like an update of an 80s synth pop song as envisioned by one of the classic art rock composers and because of that it’s a refreshingly original listen. Listen to “Until I’m Out” on Spotify and follow Tom O C Wilson at the links below.