Japanese ambient artist Chihei Hatekeyama and jazz drummer Shun Ishikawa released the album Magnificent Little Dudes Vol. 1 on May 24, 2024 via Gearbox Records to great acclaim. The second volume in the series is due out later in 2024 but for now you can hear the sprawling, meditative single “M6.” The impressionistic, drifting piano work against the backdrop of a harmonic tonal shimmer sounds simultaneously like an expression of droplets of sunlight on the ocean on a bright and calm summer day and of drifts of blowing snow catching the light of a full moon. That dual atmospheric resonance manifests as a sound both tranquil and tactile, soothing and enigmatic. It feels more iterative than simply repeating like a loop and that is what catches your attention without interrupting your thoughts. Listen to “M6” on Spotify.
Desert Liminal’s melancholic and trailing tones on “Kid Detroit” convey a sense of an earlier period of one’s life that one looks back on with feelings of nostalgia but through the lens of one’scurrent perspective. It flows with the kind of romance of wish you could go back to that earlier period of your life and re-write parts of it like it was a movie and maybe that would put your later life in a better place. Yet one senses that in the song the knowledge that such playing with time and one’s own life’s narrative while attractive and something to occupy some idle time might take away the person you are today and the lessons and achievements however taken for granted that opened the window to even entertain improving your backstory. When the song waxes uplifting and hopeful it’s like an embrace of one’s whole self including the mistakes, flaws, wrong turns and misfortunes that didn’t sink you maybe, just maybe, improved your life in ways you don’t yet understand and in many that you do. And yet there’s no harm in thinking in ways that you can enact today with one’s current level of self-awareness if you choose to lean into it rather than run from it into fantasy. The dynamic piano work and overdriven guitar help to anchor the introspective vocals and to orchestrate an undeniable push and pull of mood that bring the song’s themes into focus in a way that lends this dream pop song some grit. Listen to “Kid Detroit” on Spotify and follow Desert Liminal at the links below. The band’s new album Black Ocean is out October 18, 2024 via Whited Sepulchre Records on streaming, digital download and limited edition vinyl.
Lord Buffalo seems to channel esoteric films of the 70s in the mood of “Slow Drug” right from the beginning. Think Jodorowsky, Herzog and Ken Russell. The pulsing of piano and stretched, processed presumably guitar sound like the sounds of an otherworldly creature speaking hit as more of a sound design choice than mere songwriting. But as the song progresses more recognizable musical elements leak into the soundscape with urgent guitar loops and tribal percussion before the song seems to completely unfold and unfurl mod song and that sound we might have been unsure of before reveals itself as a voice through a distorted filter so that it is more like an occult incantation. Once the song gets into full swing its rich details of sound and deserty-psychedelic vistas reminiscent of the hypnotic and mystical music Boris included on the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s 2009 neglected classic The Limits of Control or the music of Bad Rabbit in the same film. There’s something epic and mysterious about it without the predictable trappings. Listen to “Slow Drug” on Spotify and follow Austin, Texas’ Lord Buffalo at the links below. The group’s new album Holus Bolus released July 12, 2024 on streaming, for digital download and physically on CD and vinyl via Blues Funeral Recordings.
With its languid, shuffling pace, Mr. Gnome’s “Mind’s Gone” is a day dream-y meditation on existential crisis and a tentative acceptance of uncertainty. The chrous of “My mind’s gone, I don’t even know just where to find it, I don’t even know just where it’s hidin’” speaks to being in a place where you’re questioning everything at a time in your life when everything seems up in the air and you try to maintain but you’re not sure you can. The simple rhythm, the echoing piano chords and the slightly distorted vocals with the hint of background spectral drone create the impression of despite a soul-felt state of having felt like you were on the right path and doing the right things and realizing that the carpet has been yanked out from underneath you. Over the past several years many people especially in the creative space have felt this and the pandemic amplified the precarious ability to pursue one’s art with integrity and without heavy distraction. With the cost of living having boosted egregiously over the past 12 years or more you can feel like what do you have to do to survive because the foundations of life have been eroded so quickly and then the world seems to be falling apart so what do you do? You try to hang on and hold onto the things that give you life meaning and if you’re a songwriter you write about that situation with a poetic truth and make music that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to evade a clear and present reality and struggle which Mr. Gnome has done here and on the rest of it’s new record A Sliver of Space due out for streaming, digital download and on CD and vinyl on September 27, 2024. Listen to “Mind’s Gone” on YouTube and follow the Cleveland-based experimental rock band at the links below.
ChooKi’s mastery of creative production brings to “World Is Mine” a layered aesthetic that enhances her expression of themes of reclaiming her own power. The pitch bending is reminiscent of hyper pop but the beat is more measured and refreshingly not glitched out as it contrasts effectively with how the other sounds and experiments in unconventional melody structure seem to be able to wander and resolve where they will. The song and its lyrics seem to be a clear evocation of the concept of true self-cultivation and allowing oneself to grow and develop from an authentic place and perspective rather than be warped or diverted by bad faith actors in your life or simply those that for whatever reason of their own background can’t help but try to diminish those with whom they come into contact in small yet significant ways. In the song you can hear the songwriter’s efforts to strain the toxins of undue and non-beneficial influence out of her psyche, a process which takes time and thus the song’s pace is one informed by patience with self but with the real effort put into the free flowing expressions as the practice of fortifying a genuine sense of self built on a healthy and compassionate foundation. Fans of Björk and Yeule will get a lot out of the song. Listen to “World Is Mine” on Spotify and follow ChooKi on Instagram.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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