A sound analogous to streaming fog brings us into Stephen Roddy’s song “Darkness Visible.” Distorted synths sketch the sonic landscape while a steady beat, high energy drones and simple electronic arpeggios serve as a path through this fraught world where a sense of menace hover all around. It should be the soundtrack for a challenge phase in a horror video game given its mixed aesthetic of dark ambient, 16-bit composition and driving dynamics but works outside of any context but its own as a song that conveys a sense of vague urgency in response to an unseen threat or the paranoid thoughts that enter your mind when you’re on alert walking through a place you’ve been told is or know can be dangerous. Listen to “Darkness Visible” on Spotify and follow Irish electronic musician Stephen Roddy at the links provided.
The video treatment for Stockholm-based synth/dream pop band Miynt’s song “Of the sun” looks like a fan video for a Boards of Canada song. Except that it’s winter shots in Sweden, part performance with presumably the singer of the group wandering around the city offering observations and poetic statements in affectionate tones like “I wanted you to see that you knew you saw light in my eyes.” There’s a playfulness to the track that makes it irresistible when paired with its going off any standard pop songwriting trajectory with experimental tonal flourishes like the processing on the vocals to allow it to ring out and echo in perfect sync with the song’s wide-ranging dynamic centered around its eccentric set of melodies. At times it sounds like a hybrid of dream pop, and psychedelic funk and disco especially with that finely accented bass line. The guitar lead switches between that warping chorus and what sounds like a bit borrowed slightly from Level 42’s 1985 hit “Something About You.” Maybe that’s the hint of jazz and funk in the song but it really fits in with the warm tone to the song in nice contrast to the aesthetic of the music video. And watch that video for the song on YouTube, follow Miynt at the links below and look for the group’s debut LP Lonely Beach due out in May 2022.
Letting Up Despite Great Faults, photo courtesy the artists
The exquisite guitar riff that runs through most of “She Spins” by Austin, TX-based shoegaze/dream pop band Letting Up Despite Great Faults is irresistible in its stirring emotional winds. The song though gorgeous and uplifting contrasts with its themes of anxiety and resigned realization that never quite settles in one’s mind. It speaks to the kind of relationship, or a place in one, where you’re never sure of your standing with the other person and the passive-aggressive, gaslighty emotional games that take up entirely too much space in your psyche and erode one’s sense of self and having a feeling of comfort, value and acceptance in that relationship is elusive at best, seemingly impossible most of them time when you pay attention to the dynamics of your bond, such as it is, and recognize the dysfunction even if you’re not quite sure why you don’t break things off. The song in its entirely appealing, ethereal surges of contemplative mood articulates that liminal moment when you recognize abuse for what it is and that will ultimately lead to not wanting that in your life anymore no matter what the benefits of that relationship might be. It is in that sense a song of personal liberation before you take the steps to make that a reality. Listen to “She Spins” on YouTube and follow Letting Up Despite Great Faults at the links below. The band’s 2022 album IV released on March 4, 2022 and is available digitally and on physical media through the Bandcamp link. Fans of Slowdive and Beach Fossils do not sleep on this band.
It seems entirely appropriate that Grocer is in the dark dimly lit by occasional flashlight illumination focusing on parts of members of the band for the video for “Pick A Way.” In writing the song the band found a way to make start and stop dynamics work without sounding like they’re stumbling over each other while conveying a deep sense of existential stasis with a burst of guitar noise splaying out and churning back in among the other sounds while the rhythm section maintains the meditative beat. It’s like listening to a much more introspective early Preoccupations song with the willingness to take straight forward sounds and rhythms and deconstruct them mid-song while maintaining forward motion without collapsing. Which is a bit like an analog to the state of mind described in the song where maybe you’re living a life where there were expectations based on what you’ve been told implicitly by culture and maybe even aligning with the trajectory of your life until it isn’t and you’re left wondering where to focus your energies, what direction to go when there’s really nothing there for you and you have to try to figure something out in an economic, social and political world that is in disarray and turmoil and basically collapsed but not yet recognizing it and with no leaders or movements to suggest a path out of the slow moving quagmire to doomsday. It’s an unusual song yet what better music to help clarify where you might be at by expressing similar feelings with such clarity of mood? Maybe, as with many psychological states of stasis and emotional paralysis, it is best to pick some route of action in life and go with that rather than flail while the world burns. Watch the video for “Pick A Way” on YouTube, connect with Grocer at the links below and look out for the band’s forthcoming LP Numbers Game due out 5/6/22.
“An Opening” is the second to last track of MAYSUN’s 2022 album Wanderlust II. One might expect an opening to be necessary for progress to begin but in the larger context of the composer’s work and of the album in particular, a great deal of exploration in the processing of everyday sounds into musical components to create an emotional resonance with that transformation and recontextualization it is often the experiments that produce new elements that lead to new realizations and understandings that wouldn’t have manifested so readily. In aggregate this very organic mode of learning through creative work often yields new vistas and plateau’s of aesthetic that aid in progressing one’s own growth as an artist. “An Opening” sounds like a journey through a passage to a new mode of exploration founded on the most recent round of exploring pure tone and methodology as a vehicle for self-comprehension and of the expanding possibilities of one’s art. Perhaps this is the meaning of the word “wanderlust” in the title—each iteration of delving into ideas and setting ideas into motion serving as phenomenon that sparks and lures one into the realms of creative work in an eternal dynamic in which boredom is not an option or really even part of the cognitive framework. Musically it shines as much as it evokes a mood and an effervescent texture. It is energetic whereas other tracks of the album really express the melancholy and mystery of the process and of expanding one’s mind on the personal and artistic level as a unified process. Listen to “An Opening” on Soundcloud and follow MAYSUN at the links provided.
“Max Normal” by Aerial2k employs multiple layers of synth and other electronic sounds to craft a song that sounds like the soundtrack to a time lapse construction across years of a suburban neighborhood. Is the title of the song meant to be someone’s name? An opinion/observation offered. Either way one can hear the steady pace of the percussion while tones carry on as if manifesting tiny bits of the buildings and other features of the neighborhood to be while highlighting how strange yet aspirational that sort of project might be while also calling into question how “normal” it is even though such communities are held up as the epitome of “normal” both in the positive sense and in the connotation more pejorative. The track itself, though, feels meditative like taking some time out to build an ideal community one can go back to in order for relaxation away from the hustle of work life, one’s own private haven and sanctuary, which was one of the goals of early suburbs and who can blame anyone for wanting that. These days it all doesn’t mean much with the changing ways people work and drastically increasing income inequality and the complete erosion of a meaningful middle class. So in some sense this song is a sort of sonic cultural archaeology that manifests a type of utopia and the best aspects of these strange social and economic phenomena of the suburb before the world definitely took a turn for the worse thus the source of its curiously soothing aesthetic. Listen to “Max Normal” on YouTube and follow Aerial2k at the links below.
Vessels to Motherland tap into a similar creative and sonic space as Art of Noise did in the 80s with a pure blend of archaic, textural sounds and modern electronic and avant-garde aesthetics. With its track “shenandora,” Vessels to Motherland created what sounds like a dialogue, a play written for cybernetic organisms in their natural mode of communication. Percussive sounds establish patterns and electronic tones weave intricate call and response dynamics that by the end of the song sounds a bit like foreboding dance music that dissolves into calm, repeating resonances that pulse with the satiation that intelligences that do not suffer the limitations of analog, organic life and its cycle of processes into which fatigue and sleep are built. Yet machines and digital existences too must update, repair and replenish in the face of the variations of stimulus to their own environment just like us humans. Vessels to Motherland brilliantly gives expression to that very concept without a single word spoken or sung in the song with a title that suggests an individual name whether of a consciousness or a place or a collective, a corporate entity, which adds yet another dimension to the level of creative work going on with the song. Listen to “shenandora” on Soundcloud, follow Vessels to Motherland at the links below and look out for the NYC-based duo’s full length album Machine Lieder set for release in 2022.
Trentemøller came to prominence as a gifted purveyor of imaginative electronic music but since 2007 he’s been operating with a full band in manifesting his musical vision. The single “Like A Daydream” from the recently released album Memoria (out on the artist’s own label In My Room). The title of the song is exactly the mood and tonal architecture of the song as ethereal guitar both chimes and traces the trajectory of introspective thoughts as they are cast forth from Lisbet Fritze’s sublime vocals. There is a measured dynamic to the song that also allows for the deeply atmospheric guitar and synths to bloom like a rapid sunrise and flooding the soundscape with an uplifting energy that takes one from the melancholic mood that perhaps spawned the song to an emotional space out of the psychological shadows from which personal truths brew before ready to be brought to light and shared despite what some might think of as their imperfection. The image and concept of the daydream works well here because it’s one of the few times in life when you can be conscious and let your imagination and authentic self merge in ways that are nourishing and healing to the mind. Fans of Slowdive and Lush are encouraged to dive deep into the artist’s catalog and Memoria in particular. Watch the gorgeous and evocative music video for “Like A Daydream” on YouTube and follow Trentemøller at the links below.
Wikka subversively plays upon the horror movie trope of the “creature feature” for the song of the same name. Setting the tale to an organic industrial beat and a variety of electronic sounds that bring a feel of the darkly mythological and fairy tale to the song akin to the sorts of moody, dramatic music of Switchblade Symphony in its heyday in the late 90s. But Wikka’s production gives the song an intimate feel like getting a peek into private thoughts that speak well to what it’s like to feel like someone out of step with mainstream society and ostracized as such when the source of this low key ostracizing is based on just being a little different which is too often enough for certain types of people to declare you a freak, a degenerate and whatever other othering language is available. But the subject of Wikka’s song is ready to come out of its place of hiding where it’s taken some time to heal from the hurtful verbiage and treatment ready to join others who are similarly different in a public world whether accepted by cultural conservative types or not because staying out of sight and mind is just not all that fulfilling especially when what you are is not inherently destructive to others. Listen to “Creature Feature” on Spotify and follow Wikka at the links below.
AJ Lambert isn’t exactly leaning on her lineage for her musical career as the daughter of Nancy Sinatra and granddaughter of Frank Sinatra. Not when you’re releasing a song called “When You’ve No Eyes” with a self-directed music video like something straight out of a low budget, psychedelic science fiction movie. Animated lightning strikes in the sky at the beginning and credits for the video roll like it’s the end part of a movie with aesthetics resonant with the 2017 film The Florida Project. Bubbles float through the sky, streaking bolts of fire, purple clusters of clouds, a bouncing red bit of fluid and a turning object like an interdimensional satellite floats as an observer over this human drama with no humans visible unless the remains of human civilization count along with the graffiti on walls. The song itself is a heartfelt pop Americana with Lambert’s impassioned, breathy, slightly husky vocals about the illusions people try to perpetrate on one another when dropping these pretenses are really necessary for life and indeed the world to move forward in a more valid direction that nourishes rather than evades being real and living in the here and now. Watch the video for “When You’ve No Eyes” on YouTube and connect with Lambert on Spotify.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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