Song Post – Page 35 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Olivia D. Jones Crafts a Tone Poem of Resistance to Oppressive Social Conditioning on “:: virago ::”

Olivia D. Jones uses what sound like discordant drones to establish a sense of the otherworldly at the outset of “:: virago ::” shot through with spiraling, distorted bursts of electronic noise. When her voice comes in with a chorus of herself in various forms from melodic voicing and those not so harmonic it is in words about the determination of a woman in resisting traditional culture and the law when it attempts to circumscribe her will. It’s one of four songs on the new EP ::m x m:: which explores themes of identity, parenting, human rights and the role of women in communities. Fans of Laurel Halo and Pauline Oliveros will appreciate Jones’ creativity in the use of tone and composition to put the mind into a space open to reorienting established cognitive paradigms through unconventional songwriting. Listen to “:: virago ::” on Bandcamp and follow Jones at the link below.

Olivia D. Jones on Distrokid

Straight White Teeth’s Urgent Yet Tender Indiepop Ballad “yml” Glows With the Warmth of Heartfelt Affection

Straight White Teeth, photo courtesy the artist

Straight White Teeth brings to its song “yml” the kind of tender and earnest sensibility that graced some of the better underground indiepop of the 2000s like Microphones, Wolf Colonel and Transistor Radio Sound. The letters may or may not stand for the lyric “You’re my love” in the chorus but the use of those letters in the title is emblematic of the gentle quality of this song that’s a poignantly endearing declaration of affection for a loved one that is heartfelt and quietly passionate in a way that suggests maybe to make a bigger production would introduce a level of extravagant dishonesty that might embarrass. Within the song’s lyrics are words revealing a level of vulnerability and sensitivity that really anchors the sentiments and the lush yet spare arrangements. An energetic and at times borderline atonal piano melody runs throughout that works like a rhythmic feature over which the introspective vocals float and in the choruses echoes ever so slightly in a touch of reverb. It’s an exercise in songwriting economy without short changing what is clearly a sincere statement of love felt to the core. Listen to “yml” on Soundcloud and follow Straight White Teeth at the links provided.

Straight White Teeth on TikTok

Straight White Teeth on Bandcamp

Straight White Teeth on Instagram

The Instrumental Synth Pop of Ambicture’s “Lyudmi” Glows With an Introspective Hopefulness

Icy synths and a minimalist splash of percussion draws us into Ambicture’s single “Lyudmi” before ethereal guitar rings out through the soundscape. Hazy notes intone in the background and like lights in the fog. But the guitars come back in after fading out a moment with some fortifying distortion accompanied by a brief wave of gritty synth tone. There are no lyrics to give the song a narrative context but the moods it evokes are those of fond memories and warm yearning for a reunion with one’s beloved. It’s like a song one would expect to hear in one of the more recent existential, science fiction horror films like something from Brandon Cronenberg film or Anthony Scott Burns. And like some of the music from those movies there is a hopefulness in the introspective moods that has an instant emotional resonance. Listen to “Lyudmi” on Spotify and follow Ambicture on the project’s website.

Madebit’s Synth Pop Dance Song “Island Vibes” Creates a Sense of Those Special Vacation Times All the Time

Madebit’s use of expanding bubbles of tone and layers of sequenced melodies in Island Vibes initially gives “Island Vibes” a wistful tone like it suggests a feeling of missing some good times on an island and of saying goodbye for the season to a beachside resort, the kind that’s a little rustic and open to most people regularly because it’s not a tourist destination so much as just a cool place to which the people in a nearby community avail themselves to get away for a weekend or a holiday. The kind of low key relaxation offered is the energy that runs through the song. Musically it balances a pop song for a dance party and an experiment in establishing a mood with a blend of collaged electronic moods and a subtle rhythm track that nevertheless keeps up a brisk but not urgent pace. In the background we hear the sound of an occasional breeze and in the end the sounds of tides coming in. What is most interesting and unexpected overall is the sly borrowing of the staccato arpeggio of electronic melody from influential 1972 version of Gershon Kingsley’s synth song “Popcorn Song” as done by Hot Butter. Out of the typical context it just adds a layer of playfulness to the track that gives a tonal coloring to the line about “Island Vibes on another level now” so that the best of that feeling can go with you wherever and isn’t limited by the end of a season or vacation or some other temporal inconvenience. Listen to “Island Vibes” on YouTube and follow Madebit at the links below. The new Madebit album An Alien Among Us is due out later in 2023.

Madebit on TikTok

Madebit on Instagram

Lucas Thijs Elicits a Sense of Breaking Mundane Life Limitations on “Waterhole Web”

Lucas Thijs evokes a sense of the cosmic from the very beginning of “Waterhole Web” before the song launches into its main piano melody splashed with a halo of sounds: side melodies that echo and fade, textural swells and glitches of white noise that serve as informal percussion and filigree of dramatic 80s rock guitar. But the song gives us some breathing room from the way it takes us in its embrace for passages that feel like what it must be like to be able to float into space through a column of starlight. Forget hardware, this technology as manifested in the music requires no equipment bur rather an unlocked inborn ability to transcend normal laws of physics and our own human limitations. And the song and its spiraling drift of blissful sounds embodies the impulse to that kind of liberation from everyday limitations. Listen to “Waterhole Web” on Spotify and follow Lucas Thijs at the links below.

Lucas Thijs on Instagram

Lucas Thijs LinkTree

Chromadescent’s “Saturate” is Like the Bright and Warm Sound of Summer in Winter

Chromadescent, photo courtesy the artist

Chromadescent’s “Saturate” is brimming with shimmery sounds that swirl together with bell tones giving it solidity and rhythm before the saturated synth, piano and more vivid rhythmic and textural elements enter and transform the song into something that has an expansive fluidity. But over halfway through the it drifts into the ether once again anchored by a distant piano melody, percussive accents and lingering notes like being immersed in a virtual world where EDM, IDM, flamenco co-inform each other in a fully synthesized style. It has an energy like a modern version of Balearic Beat – incredibly calming but stimulating to the imagination in elevated emotional resonances. It’s a song that sounds like summer in the winter. Listen to “Saturate” on Spotify and follow Chromadescent at the links provided.

Chromadescent on TikTok

Chromadescent on Facebook

Chromadescent YouTube

Chromadescent Instagram

Bad Flamingo’s “Devil and the Deep Blue” Channels Private Anxiety Into Moodily Transformative Americana Art Rock

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo has crafted a typically unpredictable song with “Devil and the Deep Blue” beginning with a brooding bass line lead and the most minimal of guitar accents. Then the vocals come in sounding very focused within a narrow yet expressive range compared to some of the duo’s songs of years past but within the style of its more recent songs. It just makes it feel like the words are being given to us in confidence with a direct focus. Later in the song acoustic guitar and electric come in to give some sonic shading and detail with the electric ringing out like a briefly echoing thunderclap before the song returns to its simple, rhythmic elements that are more percussive than melodic giving the song a bit of a 1980s Tom Waits flavor circa the weirder end of Swordfishtrombones. It shouldn’t work but it does and breaks standard songwriting forms. At times the song is reminiscent of the sort of thing Barry Adamson was doing on his 1996 opus Oedipus Schmoedipus through inverting jazz tropes to make something that sounds like it isn’t beholden to anyone else’s established style while remaining accessible and with a vibe of hushed immediacy. The song seems to be about one of anxiety and urgency but coping through channeling the nervous energy away in almost tribal, ritualistic rhythms. Listen to “Devil and the Deep Blue” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

Bad Flamingo on Facebook

Bad Flamingo on Instagram

Bad Flamingo YouTube

badflamingomusic.com

OR/ANA’s “Burned Down” is a Moody Dream Pop Song About Personal Transformation Through Devastation

OR/ANA’s “Burned Down” has a simple structure and not a lot in the way of lyrics but what is there is layered and arranged in such a way that gives the song an atmospheric spaciousness and depth of mood laid out like a cinematic listening experience. A distorted synth tone pulses urgently as melodic sparkles stream in the backdrop of your hearing as vocalist sings about how “everything is falling apart” but “what a beautiful farewell.” And the first what we might call act or chapter of the song is like a mantra to this concept. Of familiar structures and habits coming apart to make way for something new even if it can feel scary and unmooring at first. Then near the midpoint of the song the distorted pulse drops away and we are carried off into a billowy field of ethereal sound that yield’s a second chorus of “I’m so down, everything’s burned down” like a statement to self of acceptance of change while mourning what was lost. In the last roughly third of the song the elements from the first third return but in a form that sounds in an urgent kind of disarray and as the final set of lyrics with “All you see in flames, running after me” and “there’s a fire in my house and it burns down.” This suggests the way in which we can see the chaos and discord affecting other people as things going south and bemoaning it but when it comes to your own situation how does one deal with societal and world events when they can no longer be abstracted with a kind of dissociation. Perhaps it’s not a metaphor for the uneven impacts of inequality, climate change, social upheaval, a global pandemic, environmental destruction in pursuit of short term profits and the effects on health and society but it works for that too. OR/ANA gives that experience a gorgeously affecting soundscape here without hitting you over the head with obvious symbolism in casting it in personal terms like a journey of growth and transformation that can apply deeply personally or far beyond one’s immediate experience. Listen to “Burned Down” on YouTube and follow OR/ANA at the links below. The Expansion EP was released in 2022 and can be heard on Spotify.

OR/ANA on TikTok

OR/ANA on Instagram

Father Baker’s “The Downhill Chill” is a Hip-Hop Poem and Mantra of Resistance to Complacency

Father Baker imbues “The Downhill Chill” with an air of bravado in the face of resignation in bracing for the inevitable turn of fortune in one’s life, especially in the long term and the limited time we all have in life to attempt to do something meaningful or at least truly desirable with our lives while we can. The production by CEE GEE and Camouflage Monk of Griselda Records loops a haunting guitar part and swells of strings and a hypnotic beat really cloaks the track in a sense of menace and anxiety. And yet Father Baker’s refrain of “chill the fuck out and breathe” is like a mantra out of focusing on inevitable cycles that you see coming when “all the shit flows downhill.” The sample that closes out the song wherein a speaker talks about the social conditioning we receive in life and how individuality, and really creativity and imagination, are discouraged and often beaten out of people in various ways and that most people “don’t have enough so you become watchers of game shows and things like that.” This song appears to be an attempt to at least remind the artist and listeners that it doesn’t have to be that way even when headed into middle age and beyond and that awareness is one of the first steps to change and establishing better habits of mind. Fans of Anticon projects like Deep Puddle Dynamics and early Atmosphere or the likes of cLOUDDEAD or Hymie’s Basement will find much to enjoy here. Listen to “The Downhill Chill” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the recently released Towers EP and follow Father Baker at the links below.

Father Baker on Facebook

Father Baker on Instagram

fatherbakerknows.com

The Audio/Visual Dept.’s Cathartically Ambient “Healing Happening” Soothes the Jagged Places in the Mind

“Healing Happening” is the fourth track from The Audio/ Video Dept.’s latest album …it all felt so real (which dropped December 9, 2022). Though part of a larger larger project involving saturated tones and elegant use of space and musical texture the song stands on its own as an expression of the release of fixed energy into a billowing flow. Chimes, metal and wood, sound in the entrancing swirl like a slow moving frequency that works out the stubborn jagged spaces in your psyche that sit there as bad habits of mind upon which one’s ability to move on to greater fulfillment can get snared. The sound sounds also like a great and gentle untanglement. It’s echoing ripples and expansive dynamic is not merely tranquil, it flows into and out of the mind leaving clarity in its wake. Listen to “Healing Happening” on Spotify and follow The Audio/Visual Dept. at the links below.

The Audio/Visual Dept. at Instagram

The Audio/Visual Dept. on Apple Music