Queen City Sounds Podcast – Page 21 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 38: White Hills

Since 2003 White Hills from New York City has been making psychedelic rock that has evolved in consistently interesting ways across a prolific career. The core duo of Dave W and Ego Sensation have incorporated elements of krautrock, space rock, metal, ambient soundscaping, post-punk into their sound so that the project’s body of work is eclectic yet coherent with a palette of mind-expanding sonics and rhythms that have separated the band from most other artists that might fall under the psych umbrella. For White Hills it’s not just a sound adopted from influences, it’s an outlook on the possibilities of the psychological impact of the music on both the members of the band and those who take in one of its records or attend a performance. Each record has been made with an approach that gives it its own sonic identity so that while the band’s sound may be fluidly evolving it has built into its aesthetic a drive to not get stuck in a rut. Now after nearly 20 years as a band White Hills has established its own imprint Heads On Fire Industries with its first physical release being that for a double vinyl of The Revenge Of Heads On Fire which is a reworking and re-imagining of the 2007 album Heads On Fire for which several more songs were recorded during the sessions with an album in mind with that music included but due to a disagreement with one of the parties involved with the record some of the songs were left out. So with some refinements added to complete the recordings left on the cutting room floor, as it were, really on an old, thought dead/defunct hard drive, White Hills presents the album as it was meant to be heard in its originally conceived form and with its themes of transformation and self-inspiration seeming as relevant now as it was at the time of original release. The vinyl edition of the record is available for pre-order (releases, assuming things go as planned, on September 16, 2022) on the band’s Bandcamp page linked below where you can find other links related with White Hills currently on tour with Telekinetic Yeti.

See White Hills with Telekinetic Yeti and Hashtronaut at Globe Hall on Sunday, August 7, 2022 and listen to our interview, apologies for the usual mobile phone connection issues, on Bandcamp also linked below.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 37: Felix Bechtolsheimer of Curse of Lono

Felix Bechtolsheimer of Curse of Lono, photo courtesy the artist

Curse of Lono is an alternative rock band based in London, UK that formed in 2015 when former Hey Negrita members Felix Bechtolsheimer and Neil Findlay continued making music together after their former band’s split. Curse of Lono borrowed its name from the rare 1983 Hunter S. Thompson book of the same name and its songs have been informed by a literary sensibility and exquisitely soulful moods. The group’s new album People In Cars (Submarine Cat Records) is named after Mike Mandel’s 2017 photo book featuring people through the windows of cars in a Los Angeles intersection in 1970. The aesthetic of the photos parallels that of the songs with their late night, weary, existential folk blues like one might hear in the late 1980s and early 90s albums of Leonard Cohen. There is a noir quality to the songs and its themes of menace, depression and personal dissolution resonate like Ed Brubaker’s Reckless series. A version of the new album was recorded in June 2020 with each band member (guitarist Joe Hazell, drummer Neil Findlay, keyboardist Dani Ruiz Hernandez and bassist Charis Anderson) recording their parts individually. But Bechtolsheimer had lost his father that April and he began writing more songs for the album and delved deeper into his psyche and re-recorded the songs in stripped down form with Bayston pedal steel player Joe Harvey-Whyte and Boxed In drummer Liam Hutton in the first part of 2021. The resulting album is a vibrant and introspective piece of work like many long nights driving alone and leaving oneself exposed to the raw side of one’s feelings and tapping into their insight that can be covered over in everyday life.

Listen to our interview with Felix Bechtolsheimer on Bandcamp linked below and follow Curse of Lono at the links below.

Curse of Lono on Instagram

Curse of Lono on Facebook

Curse of Lono on Twitter

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 36: Chuck Wright

Chuck Wright performing with Quiet Riot, photo courtesy Chuck Wright

Chuck Wright is perhaps most well known as the long time bass player in heavy metal band Quiet Riot and he performed background vocals on all of and bass on “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” and “Don’t Wanna Let You Go” on the band’s breakthrough 1983 album Metal Health. Throughout the 80s Wright played in prominent hard rock bands like Giuffria and House of Lords and rejoined Quiet Riot in 1986, playing with the band on and off on studio recordings and in the live band until 2021. During that entire time Wright’s skill as a bass player and producer brought him to a wide variety of musical projects including seven film scores like that for the 1997 action fantasy film Kull the Conqueror. Since 2015 he has headed Ultimate Jam Night at the Whisky a Go Go which has featured up to several dozen professional musicians a week (barring of course pandemic limitations). So decades into his career Wright has finally released his debut solo album Sheltering Sky. For the record Wright has brought to bear his eclectic sensibilities and styles in cinematic fashion for a set of songs that incorporate hard rock, progressive/art rock, jazz fusion and more experimental musical ideas including those for his fascinating cover of Björk’s “Army of Me.” Over 30 guest performers grace the record including members of Tesla, Dream Theater, Great White, Asia, Jefferson Starship, Allen Hinds and Toshi Yanagi but there is a coherence of creative vision that Wright was able to assemble in a way that challenged his multifaceted skills and creativity rather than simply putting out a record that seems to have rested on the laurels of his musical past.

Listen to our interview with Chuck Wright on Bandcamp below. Sheltering Sky came out on Cleopatra Records and for more information on Wright, his releases and his career please visit his website, both linked below.

www.chuckwright.com

www.CleopatraRecords.com

Chuck Wright on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 35: J. Niimi of Man’s Body

Man’s Body is a band based in both Los Angeles and Chicago. The “soft punk” band recently released its second full-length album A Set Of Steak Knives on NocturnalSol (a division of Heyday Media Group) which was recorded at KooPin in Queens, NY, Kingsize Sound Labs in Chicago, IL and Grandma’s Warehouse in Los Angeles, CA representing perhaps the sensibilities, influences and roots of the music. The music is an eclectic form of what might be called power pop but with the kind of post-punk that has vivid moods and strong atmospheric elements and the loud-quiet dynamics that are often attributed to Pixies but which can be traced to Mission of Burma. Whatever influences the group has absorbed Man’s Body has its own sound born of its members’ various backgrounds. Greg Franco came up in the Hollywood punk and underground rock world of that city having formed The Blasphemous Yellow with his brother at age 16 and played shows with bands like Psi Com (which included a pre-Jane’s Addiction Perry Farrell) and Tex & The Horseheads (which included Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club fame in its early incarnations). J. Niimi has been in and around the Chicago music scene since the late 80s as a multi-instrumentalist, a songwriter, a luthier and as a music journalist. The two met when Niimi’s band Ashtray Boy played one night in Los Angeles and the two hit it off as friends and a year later Franco’s band Rough Church played at Schubas in Chicago where Niimi was invited to fill in on drums. From there the emergent band Man’s Body would go on to record the Found EP at Steve Albini’s studio Electrical Audio and two full length albums. A Set Of Steak Knives and its lush production and evocative and imaginative songwriting is proof that though Niimi and Franco live in different parts of the country that their creative chemistry is yielding a compelling body of work.

Listen to our interview with Niimi on Bandcamp linked below and to listen to A Set Of Steak Knives visit the NocturnalSol Bandcamp page also linked below where you can also order a limited vinyl edition of the record.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 34: John Baumgartner of The Trypes

The Trypes is an experimental, psychedelic folk band that began in 1982 in Haledon, New Jersey. It’s instrumentation began with an eclectic mix of sounds and textures so that its music was difficult to narrow down to an established genre. Fans of Savage Republic (who were contemporaries) and Stereolab will find something to like in The Trypes’ unconventional use of rhythm and composition at times seeming to favor compound time signatures and textural atmospheric elements. Its brand of folk and psychedelia sounded like it had tapped into a bit of the minimalist post-punk of the early 80s like Young Marble Giants and the more avant-garde Swell Maps whose own use of noise collage has some resonance with what you hear in a song by The Trypes. Around the mid-80s Glenn Mercer and Bill Million of influential post-punk band Feelies joined The Trypes for a time when their own band was on hiatus adding to some of this group’s artistic legacy. In 2012 Acute Records released the collection Music fore Neighbors which collected the group’s 1984 EP The Explorer’s Hold as well as unreleased demos and a compilation track not so easy to come by. But now in 2022 that compilation has been reissued on Pravda Records to celebrate the band’s 40 year anniversary and now includes songs from a 1984 showcase at the Bottom Line in New York and two tracks recorded when the original Trypes performed a reunion show in 2017. The CD is available now with a gatefold vinyl to be issued later in 2022. This interview was conducted with founding keyboard player John Baumgartner and delves into the group’s early days in New Jersey and its development and for many rediscovery.

Listen to the interview with Baumgarnter on Bandcamp linked below and for more information on The Trypes and to order the CD/download of Music For Neighbors visit the links below.

The Trypes on Facebook

Pravda Records

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 33: Green Typewriters

Green Typewriters, photo by Tom Murphy, 2022

Green Typewriters formed in 2007 out of songwriting sessions between Gioja and Jared Lacy. The couple had met in New York when Jared was visiting a cousin and the two hit it off immediately. Gioja had grown up in Orlando, Florida and had moved away to get away from had felt like a narrow social circle with limited life choices at the time. The band named itself after an Olivia Tremor Control reference and its own songs came out of a similar love of transporting sounds and recording experiments and like OTC those songs ended up being as much pop as psychedelia. Green Typewriters became a bit of a fixture in Denver’s indie underground in the late 2000s and early 2010s before going on hiatus while Gioja attended mortuary school and Jared pursued graduate studies in philosophy and religion. Though the project has been around for fifteen years it had never had much in the way of official releases minus some burned CDs the band would give away at shows. So it’s 2022 EP The Solar Anus (named after the parodic essay by Georges Bataille) marks its first official release and on cassette with artwork by Wendy Danger York. The album was produced and engineered by long time DIY/underground musician Zach Bauer who some may know for his fine recording skills but others more so for his numerous experimental bands like the punk noise outfit Zombie Zombie, the doom metal-esque The Outer Neon, psychedelic post-punk group Wicked Phoenix and Can tribute band Future Days. Those who regularly attended shows at Rhinoceropolis may have witnessed Zach as a member of Spellcaster’s Rock and Roll Time Travel Committee. What is less known is Bauer’s gift for writing and recording artistically ambitious pop songs, a skill he brought to bear in helping Green Typewriters realize making fifteen years of songwriting into a coherent and vibrant set of songs.

Listen to our candid interview with Gioja and Jared on Bandcamp linked below. Green Typewriters will perform at Enigma Bazaar celebrating the release of The Solar Anus on Saturday, July 16, 2022 with Falcon’s Eye. To connect with the band visit it’s LinkTree for the appropriate avenues.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 32: Oliver Holloway of Knuckle Pups

Knuckle Pups at 1010 Workshop October 18, 2021, photo by Tom Murphy

Knuckle Pups is a rock band with roots in the DIY and indie underground scene in Denver. Its music has a bit of that solid pop song craft, accessibility and a touch of the experimental infused with punk spirit. Singer and guitarist Oliver Holloway was born in and grew up in Denver and attended Jefferson County Open School as well as coming up in the Universalist Unitarian Church which gave him a foundation in pursuing his creative and intellectual interests in a supportive environment. Out if high school he became involved in the local DIY scene of house shows and spaces like Monkey Mania and Blast-O-Mat. His then band The Fainting Fansies were charged with the kind of amateur exuberance one would hope from a folk-punk band but also strong songwriting. Holloway followed that band with Henry Sugar which had a similar degree of exuberant performance but more informed by emo. Mega Gem came along shortly after that with its blend of punk and orchestral arrangements in a pop format and unlike most musical bands out of Denver at the time and now. Along the way Holloway toured the country and connected with DIY and activist communities broadly including the members of folk punk legends Defiance, Ohio and Ian Vanek of Japanther and Howardian. Hollowway still subscribes to the communitarian spirit of DIY music and culture as a core component of his approach to being in bands. Knuckle Pups is releasing its debut full-length TV Ready which combines the disparate influences of the members of the band with a unified vision of making music that is brimming with emotional authenticity, sensitively observed lyrics and strong vocal harmonies. Its eclectic aesthetic fortifies the effectiveness of the music and reflects the aforementioned punk and DIY ethos by drawing upon the collective strengths of the members of the band and embraces any perceived flaws and rough edges as part a unique creative work.

Listen to our broad ranging interview with Holloway on Bandcamp linked below. Knuckle Pups will perform at Mercury Café in celebration of the release of the album with home made CDs and t-shirts on Friday, July 15, 2022 with Jeff Cormack of South of France and Earth to Luna. To further explore the world of Knuckle Pups music and to find out about shows and to connect with the band follow the group’s LinkTree.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 31: Ivan Nahem

Ritual Tension (Ivan Nahem center), photo from Bandcamp

Ivan Nahem’s career in music reads like a who’s who of early New York post-punk and No Wave. He was in a band called Carnival Crash with Norman Westberg before the latter joined Swans. Nahem himself performed on the Swans albums Greed and Holy Money while he was a member of industrial post-punk outfit Ritual Tension from 1983 until its dissolution in 1990. The group’s confrontational energy, tribal percussion style and noisy, caustic guitar sound and deranged-sounding vocals was akin to the likes of, naturally, Swans but also Scratch Acid and Flipper. Once Ritual Noise parted company Nahem stopped being as actively involved in making music. But In 2016 Nahem and his brother Andrew started working on remixing their early song “All Wound Up.” A year later Nahem was asked by Gregg Bielski to put spoken word vocals to his tracks and the project came to be called ex->tension. But in the end Ritual Tension reunited in 2017 and continues to this day. 2022 finds Nahem releasing a new solo album Crawling Through Grass with collaborations from Bielski, his brother Andrew, Westberg, Mark C (of Live Skull), Jon Friend (Campfire Flies), Jadwiga Taba (Nac/Hut Report) and Nahem’s wife Helen. The new album is a true fusion of post-punk, musique concrète, ambient, folk, tape collage and what might be described as New Age meditation music all born out of Nahem’s yoga practice and interest in Eastern philosophy and sounds like music made in a remote monastery dedicated to universal tranquility. For Nahem it probably seems natural and intuitive to go in that musical direction but for those more familiar with his 1980s output it’s a fascinating contrast of styles and yet both seem aimed at a catharsis and transcendent experience and attaining a deep interconnectedness with others and within oneself.

Listen to our interview with Ivan Nahem below, give a listen to Crawling Through Grass and connect with Nahem at the links provided.

onaboutnow.com

Ivan Nahem on Facebook

Ivan Nahem on Instagram

Ritual Tension on Instagram

Arguably Records on Bandcamp

Ritual Tension on Facebook

Carnival Crash on Facebook

Ritual Tension on YouTube

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 30: Gus Englehorn

Gus Englehorn is a songwriter who now resides in Quebec City, Canada. He grew up in Alaska and Hawaii with parents whose lifestyle meant jobs in both states and as a youth got into snowboarding and turned it into a career. During that stretch of his life Englehorn became exposed to genuine underground and otherwise non-mainstream music partly through skateboarding and snowboarding videos which often showcase cutting edge artists. Though Englehorn didn’t fully grow up playing music he started picking up guitar toward the end of his tenure as a professional snowboarder and he realized at one point that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life in such a physically demanding sport and around a decade ago he started to make the transition into more creative endeavors. While many people who come to music later in life than usual often latch on to a musical style of their younger years or something more trendy at that time. Englehorn instead leaned into his creative instincts and personality and has produced a body of work striking for its uniqueness and creativity. The songwriter’s first album Death & Transfiguration released in January 2020 right before the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, possibly the worst time to release and promote a new album in recent memory. The record nevertheless had the hallmarks of what has made Englehorn’s music stand out. Though it could be considered a truly idiosyncratic indie pop that fans of Half Japanese and Daniel Johnston might appreciate, Englehorn is clearly tapping into some musical ideas of the 90s but stripped back the sonic excess to allow the songs to hit with a charming vulnerability in its unusual character studies and stories that should form the basis of a future, more benevolent Harmony Korine film.

With that first album and its 2022 follow up, Dungeon Master, Englehorn has performed the music with his partner in life and drummer Estée Preda who also does the artwork for both records. Her visual style akin to children’s mythical storybooks and manga both is a perfect analog of the music within. Dungeon Master finds the duo exploring the inclusion of synths and an even more surreal sensibility in the lyrics and blending of musical elements. The album sounds like a great collection of stories you’d want to see as a Jim Jarmusch anthology film. Fortunately music videos for “Exercise Your Demons” and “Tarantula” at a minimum exist and both reveal even more layers of the wonderful yet highly accessible weirdness of this album. We had a chance to speak with the charming and engaging Englehorn about his life and his art and with any luck we’ll see a more extensive set of live shows in the near future. Apologies for not getting this posted in time to let people know about Estée Preda’s art show in May 2022.

Listen to the interview below on Bandcamp and to get a copy of Dungeon Master or Death & Transfiguration digitally you can visit the artist’s own Bandcamp and for the physical media (cassette/CD/vinyl) you can visit Secret City Records.

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 29: Everclear

Everclear is a band that emerged in Portland, Oregon in 1991 in time for the first wave of alternative rock that decade. Main songwriter and frontman Art Alexakis had grown up in southern California and relocated to San Francisco for a time in the late 80s with his first wife where he established his music imprint Shindig Records. None of his musical projects at the time broke through and to get a fresh start, having not so then long ago got off drugs and newly a father, he moved to Portland, Oregon with his family where his wife had family and an important support system that makes life in a new city easier. Alexakis had a solo project turned band in Colorfinger and some songs he wrote during that period would make it into his next band’s repertoire. With Everclear, Alexakis would use his tumultuous life, challenging youth and great personal loss as the subject matter for especially raw and affecting songs. Everclear’s debut album 1993’s World of Noise was raw and real and recorded for a few hundred dollars. 2022 sees the remaster of the album for digital in June and for vinyl in the fall 2022 and its songwriting strikes as still relevant, poignant and powerful. By the time of the 1995 follow up Alexakis and company had a major label contract and a budget so that the resultant record Sparkle and Fade had much more professional production but the songwriter’s knack for pairing meaningful and deeply personal lyrics with solid hooks rooted in classic pop songcraft and Alexakis’ own eclectic background as an artist whose appreciation for country music melodies informed some of the most memorable songs of the decade including “Santa Monica,” “Father of Mine,” “I Will Buy You A New Life” and “Everything to Everyone.” After three platinum albums throughout the latter half of the 90s the musical landscape had changed some even if Everclear kept writing quality material and the band disappeared from the world of mainstream music.

In 2014 Everclear announced its Summerland tour which brought together alternative rock bands popular in the mid-to-late 90s. Though a bit of a nostalgia tour it also proved there was still an appetite for that music even if it wasn’t dominating the commercial charts. All through the ups and downs of popularity Alexakis has been an insightful observer of humanity and culture with a pragmatic streak born of being a music industry veteran who has always had to advocate for himself and who has long advocated for other artists and humanitarian causes. In his music you hear the words of someone who projects vulnerability and sensitivity backed with a grit and strength that was necessary to make a life in rock and roll. Look for his autobiography in the coming years where you can read a plethora of a great stories from a colorful and eventful life.

Catch Everclear on Sunday, June 12, 2022 with Fastball and The Nixons at Ogden Theatre and listen to our interview with the engaging and witty Alexakis on the latest episode of the Queen City Sounds Podcast on Bandcamp linked below.