Song Post – Page 36 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Stargurl’s “Floral Hotline” is a Chill and Tranquil Journey Into the Depths of the Night Time of Dreams

Stargurl sets a scene of chill tranquility and dreamlike introspection with the opening section of “Floral Hotline.” The sound of wind flowing as a backdrop and intermittent tones like stars in the night or the twinkling of distant city lights. String synths stream in dusky resonance. At the halfway point a gently echoing saturated melody drifts through the mix like a buried emotional memory surfacing but still amorphous and mysterious as it takes form in the mists of the subconscious and dissolving back into that fog. The song is like an extended dream sequence soundtrack from a lost section of the film Monsters (2010) and Stargurl’s chosen tones more the night time counterpart to John Hopkins’ own sunny electronic sequences. Listen to “Floral Hotline” on Spotify and follow Stargurl on Instagram.

Neil Foster Evokes the Hushed Energy of the World After Sunset on “Nightfall”

With the gradual replacement of sunlight with the shadowy low light and darkness of the night sky, Neil Foster arranges layers of airy drones and streams of melodic tone on “Nightfall.” What is gradual becomes an engulfing flow of cool sounds and echoing winks of single note arpeggios dotting the soundscape and rays of subdued sonic luminosity streaming through the murk like rays of moonlight. The cover image for the single shows hills shaded and billowy, gray clouds partially masking the setting sun. The song embodies the kind of hush immediately after the sun sets and before full moonrise and depending on the time of the year when the evening can seem darkest. But Foster also conveys the underlying activity that continues well after daylight takes a break before the next morning but with a sometimes subdued energy as diurnal activity transitions to the nocturnal. Foster’s composition maintains a sense of liminal wonder and tranquility that one doesn’t regularly hear in the realm of music and the track begins as it ends with a subtle fade out into what comes next. Listen to “Nightfall” on Spotify and follow Neil Foster at the links below.

Neil Foster on Facebook

Neil Foster on Bandcamp

Neil Foster on Instagram

Vague Lanes Craft a Spacious Sense of Emotional Suspension and Release on “We’ll Always Have Never”

The sharp, edgy and lingering guitar work at the beginning of “We’ll Always Have Never” by Vague Lanes is anchored by a subtle but moody bass line and propelled by the accents of percussion. It’s a dynamic that gives the song great sense of space and brooding atmospheres. When the vocals come in they sound like someone suspended in that space and when all the music more or less tops you can almost feel the source of the voice fall off a cliff into the splashes of rhythm and tone and the flow of synth melody that carries you until the end. The song somehow brings together the intimacy of a lo-fi recording with the detail of a full studio recording and its’ particular flavor of post-punk has more in common with early Skinny Puppy and Fields of the Nephilim at once than modern darkwave in its expert use of electronics and live instrumentation in crafting an emotive aural experience. Listen to “We’ll Always Have Never” on Bandcamp and follow the Swiss band at the links provided. The new album Foundation and Divergence released on December 24, 2022 on digital, CD and vinyl formats available through the Bandcamp link.

Vague Lanes on Instagram

vaguelanes.com

Guram Tsagareishvili Captures That Liminal Moment of Catharsis at the Intersection of Despair and Hope on “Gzajvaredinze”

“Gzajvaredinze” by Guram Tsagareishvili has some charm and energy in its post-punk style with the urgent, almost pointillist guitar lead over spare drum machine. But the distorted vocals and parallel melodic, more elaborate guitar lead opens the song up emotionally and musically while honoring mixed and intense feelings of melancholic catharsis. The title is Georgian for “At the Crossroads” and the songwriter offers a tidbit of its inspiration being how “everything happened at the crossroads” including a breakup and a promise “the next song would be called ‘Crossroads’ and it would be the best thing I’d ever write.” Certainly this song expresses a mood of being at a point where everything has crashed in on you and you have nowhere to go but forward in any direction that seems right in that moment. With any luck there’s plenty more to come and further creative achievements but this song should appeal to fans of French Police, Haunt Me and Molchat Doma. Listen to “Gzajvaredinze” on Spotify and follow Guram Tsagareishvili at the links below.

Guram Tsagareishvili on Facebook

Guram Tsagareishvili on Instagram

The Acoustic Version of Vox Rea’s “Julia” Showcases the Band’s Gift for Evoking Raw Emotional Intimacy

The acoustic version of Vox Rea’s “Julia” highlights the delicate textures and raw emotional intimacy of its tight vocal harmonies. But those harmonies like the expressive guitar work expands and blossoms with a dynamic unpredictability in emotional swells like a specific sense memory of someone coming to you suddenly. It’s a complete rework of the more rock-oriented original. The urgency is maintained but here that energy is much more immediate in a different way with everything but the essence of the feelings underlying the original stripped away and given the space for a direct expression. Both versions are so different from each other with neither outshining the other, just fascinating interpretations and manifestations of the inspirations behind the songwriting. Listen to the acoustic version of “Julia” by Vox Rea on Spotify and follow the group, slated to perform at Treefort Music Fest in March (22-26), at the links below.

voxrea.com

Vox Rea on Instagram

Detective Larsson Strokes a Tone of Warm Romantic Affection on Dream Folk Single “Lisberg”

Detective Larsson, photo courtesy the artists

From the opening guitar riff and haze of synth of “Liseberg” there is a mood of a deep dive into an emotional memory. Detective Larsson in using guitar and strings to bolster the warmly introspective vocals truly evokes an intimate tone of romantic affection that lingers well after the song ends and through the ending in which the artists left a touch of post-song guitar sound the way you’d hear if you were there to witness the song live. And that air of spontaneity is what keeps the energy fresh and sincere. There is a bit of Swedish folk music flavor on the track perhaps brought to the table by singer Amanda Larsson who is from Skövde, Sweden, but it also resonates with other folk traditions and it is that enigmatic yet welcoming aspect of the song that sets it apart from something that might easily be placed in a specific subgenre of pop or folk or rock. Listen to “Lisberg” on Bandcamp and follow Detective Larsson at the links below.

J.PERIOD Pays Tribute to Hip-Hop Culture and Legends in the Richly Creative Content of the Song/Video “The Legend of Globetrottin’”

In song and short film for J.PERIOD’s “The Legend of Globetrottin’” is an animated comic book and live action featurette that charmingly relates the tale of one of the greatest basketball matches in history between Masego and J.PERIOD. But it’s more than that, of course. It begins in a record store where crate diggers are looking for solid wax to sample when they think they spot DJ Jazzy Jeff and indeed in puppet form it is the legendary DJ. The song deftly samples sounds of a basketball game and various MCs taking verses in classic hip-hop style telling the story and the jazz samples and unconventional beats like a nod to one of DJ Jazzy Jeff’s collaborators years ago in J. Dilla. This rich fusion of elements, style and presentation really speaks directly to hip-hop culture as a significant creative subculture of American and global culture but in tying it with comics it layers storytelling styles and elements in a way that is highly accessible and experimental at once resonant with what Dmitri Jackson did with his 2018 comic collection Blackwax Boulevard: Five Years, What a Surprise (2012-2017) Watch the video for “The Legend of Globetrottin’” on YouTube and follow J.PERIOD at the links below.

J.PERIOD on Facebook

J.PERIOD on Twitter

J.PERIOD on Instagram

J.PERIOD on Apple Music

Six by Seven Transforms Supercaan’s “Zoetrope” Into a Gripping and Unsettling Soundscape From a Dark Dimension

The Six by Seven remix of Supercaan’s “Zoetrope” maintains the introspective mood of the original but highlights the otherworldly aspects of the track and its textures. It is slower, spookier and given a similarly black and white video treatment by Simon Peecock as well the song becomes an unsettling dip into a bleak mirror image of the song like Six by Seven turned the vibe inside out and stretched the breezy pop sound of the single to its limits. Lars Von Trier did not direct the video, Swans did not do the remix but that intensity and emotional menace and desperation runs through the remix and the video seems to be coming to us from the same sinister alternate dimension from which we hear the sounds of the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Suspended tones and vocals that echo in the distance and hit us up intimately close. It’s disorienting and compelling at once and completely spins “Zoetrope” into a song that is basically unrecognizable from the source material which is what some of us want from a remix worth our time. Watch the video for “Zoetrope [Six by Seven remix]” on YouTube and follow Supercaan at the links below.

Supercaan on Facebook

Supercaan on Bandcamp

Supercaan on Instagram

supercaan.com

1st Base Runner’s Darkly Urgent “Night Stalker” Resonates With a Cinematic Menace

1st Base Runner, photo courtesy the artist

The title track of 1st Base Runner’s Night Stalker EP is a little like getting into the head of an obsessive in a focused episode. The nearly whispered only words in the song “I will follow if you leave me” are like a mantra that establishes a constant emotional image, like a rhythmic element in itself. This over percussion like a drum stick hitting an oil drums with the reverberation processed out. Later a tonally sharp, ascending arpeggio suggests urgency and in the last third of the song, full-fledged, bright drones convey a sense of pursuit like the person whose words we hear is closing in on his prey whether a person who has wronged him, or who holds the promise of some kind of psychological fulfillment or a goal, a dream that is slipping away if life is allowed to pass by. There is a sense of low key desperation underlying this industrial and synth driven track and one that implies it’s a section of a larger narrative and just like on the EP this is the penultimate chapter with the climax of the story on the horizon. Listen to “Night Stalker” on Spotify and connect with 1st Base Runner at the links provided.

1st Base Runner on TikTok

1st Base Runner on Facebook

1st Base Runner on Instagram

1stbaserunner.com

Springworks’ Collage Pop Experiment “Catastrophe Just” Is Like the Mutant Offspring of Kiwi Rock and Musique Concrète

Springworks dropped on us “Catastrophe Just,” a song that sounds like it was assembled from a sped up sample of a 1980s New Wave pop song, perhaps something from the Flying Nun imprint due to the slightly outre melody and rhythm, taped from the radio dropped into a field recording of a busy restaurant from the perspective of the dish pit lending a unique, almost pointillist texture and percussive element that was never meant to be used that way but somehow also works so that the rhythm of that and the melodic sample synergize to create something new and truly unusual yet undeniably accessible. That it ends on the sounds of people talking from a crowded room gives it a haunted quality as well but without the spookiness. Not much like it and though lo-fi the concept is not, rather it’s arrangement taps into that sonic resonance to mutually recontextualize and create something that isn’t hypnogogic pop or experimental post-punk or anything like that but its own hybrid style which we don’t hear nearly enough. Listen to “Catastrophe Just” on Spotify and follow Springworks at the links below.