SubmitHub – Page 104 – Queen City Sounds and Art

YUNGMORPHEUS Contemplates the Virtues of Keeping an Even Keel in Life’s Storms of Highs and Lows on “Sonny’s Triangle”

“Sonny’s Triangle” by YUNGMORPHEUS is a little like the inversion of the standard hip-hop song arrangement. It begins with a voice sample of an older man giving some dubious advice to a younger person that has some harsh truth about basically not being able to completely depend on anyone else but yourself so take care with your actions. Then the song eases into a loop like a downtempo production on late period Sly and the Family Stone funk sample all while there’s a leisurely rap opining introspectively on how trying to take short cuts in life didn’t really get him ahead and how discerning between what’s real and what’s performative and boastful. The contemplation further offers how all the choices one makes come with conditions and consequences and how being involved in anything important can put pressures on you that can push you to the breaking point but that if you weather these highs and lows and try not to believe too much in how either will be ongoing and reliable. It’s a song about being realistic about what happens in life and staying focused on doing what matters and keeping an even keel rather than being too caught up in the high of success and the despair of perceived failure. Listen to “Sonny’s Triangle” on YouTube and follow YUNGMORPHEUS at the links below.

YUNGMORPHEUS on Bandcamp

Maja Lena’s Art Pop Single “Portal” is a Mysterious Path to Transformative Self-Discovery

Maja Lena’s experimental pop song “Portal” with its pulse of minimal percussion as rhythm track and melodic drone leading into the songwriter’s almost sing-song-y vocals has an immediate accessibility in spite of its unconventional, more intuitive structure and pacing. Its poetic lines do not follow any standard form of verse and its more avant-garde leanings fit well the beautifully symbolic language and imagery. The music video and its enigmatic footage of dark roads at night, brightly lit vegetation against a dark backdrop and mysterious figures whose faces are hidden by shadow somehow makes the music make more sense in a concrete way in the manner with which Kate Bush’s more structuralist film format videos and the post-modern aesthetic of repeated images and themes reinforcing and evolving meaning with every iteration did for some of her own music. The playful woodwind sounds in this song and Lena’s wide ranging vocals in counterpoint with each other might be compared favorable as well with Cate Le Bon’s wonderfully alien pop songcraft. You hear it and you know that you’re in for a musical ride into realms that will expand one’s emotional knowledge and gain a language for articulating aspects of existence that elude standard use of language. Lena speaks to the way our imagination though a wonderful tool and at the core of our existence and cognitive orientation can run away with us and how we can be compelled by unconscious influences to act in unpredictable ways that are perhaps best understood through imaginative constructs like mythology. When Lena sings about “answering to Pluto,” “answering through fire” and “answering through desire” maybe it’s intended in a way to be literal but Pluto can symbolize the shadow side of ourselves and fire and desire the passions and inspirations that can drive us. But however one interprets Maja Lena’s richly diverse set of symbols as employed in the song, the mysterious allure of “Portal” suggests a transformation in stepping through whether as a life changing decision, choosing to take a path of possible peril but also reward or into the world of another with its personally crafted vision guiding the experience. Watch the video for “Portal” on YouTube, follow Maja Lena at the links below and perhaps give a listen to the rest of the new album Pluto which released on December 2, 2022.

Maja Lena on TikTok

Maja Lena on Facebook

Maja Lena on Twitter

Maja Lena on Instagram

Chon’s “Roses” is a Love Song Rooted in Humility, Affection and Sensitivity

In the spare performance video for “Roses,” Chon (pronounced “Chern”) is cast in black and white with just the songwriter and acoustic guitar in frame though we hear other instrumentation like an electric guitar and a touch of synth. What shines most is Chon’s delicate energy as a vocalist. It’s a bit different from her former life as the lead vocalist in Vietnamese Nü Metal band Bodies On the Floor but the weight of emotion remains and even through the subtle layers of melody and texture, Chon’s voice is an apt vehicle for lyrics that are romantic in tone and reflect a personal insight into the essence of another person that can only come from knowing oneself unguardedly with a compassionate sense of self-awareness that the cruelty of the world often comes from internalizing its trauma and interpreting it back out. But with this song we hear a songwriter for whom a rote pronouncement of love is a shallow platitude and “Roses” comes off more like extending a humble insight with care, affection and sensitivity. There may be a folk element with the song but its musical alchemy transcends genre specificity. Watch the video for “Roses” on YouTube and listen to more Chon on Spotify.

“Martial Meditations” by narducci is a Cinematic Soundscape of Sultry, Late Night Jazz Lounge Moods

Somehow narducci has used what sounds like a rainstick, some sultry late night jazz saxophone processed for maximum foggy moodiness and minimal synth drones with spoken word in Japanese interspersed with non-verbal soulful vocals to craft a different kind of cinematic song. It has a duskiness that sounds like something that one might expect to hear in the opening sequences of an animated version of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. It works as a song in itself with an arc of emotional resolve from reverie to acceptance but something about its arrangement suggests strongly as a companion to a visual narrative in which each complements and enriches the effectiveness of both. Maybe at some point narducci will find a way to make “Martial Meditations” into a short film or get it expertly placed onto a soundtrack but for now you can listen to the song on YouTube and follow narducci at the links provided.

narducci on Instagram

narducciofficial.com

Oldest Sea Builds a Cosmic Scaffolding Out of a State of Emotional Void With the Colossal and Transcendent Black Metal Track “Consecration”

The stately and desolate riffing that Oldest Sea uses to introduce “Consecration” sounds like something you’d hope to hear from a band with a name like that and a song title with that resonance of language. It’s crackling distortion sculpting and hanging dynamics in the classic transcendental black metal vein. But when the vocals come in they are ghostly yet emotionally rich. The lyrics seem to take a feeling of emptiness and of being at a low point and turning that into something transcendent and climbing the lurching steps of the crushing guitar chords and finely accenting drums to a different place outside of that void that you know you’ll find yourself in once again but also knowing you can build a ladder out of it with seemingly nothing at all if you can imbue it with a meaning that comes from a place beyond your immediate psychological state. Fortunate are the people who have never been in a place in their head where you feel like you have nothing left, the product of a slow or even quick descent into depression and what once sustained you seems beyond reach and maybe something so seemingly unlikely like a heavy and cosmically melodic black metal song feels like a scaffolding to a space where one’s connection to at least that emotional uplift eases a sense of meaning and positive emotional sensation into your brain. Listen to “Consecration” on Spotify and follow Oldest Sea on Instagram.

Bug Facer Sculpted a Contorted and Agonized Colossus of Loss and Hopeless Desolation in the Seething Noise Rock of “Horsefly”

The white noise in the background certainly helps make Bug Facer’s “Horsefly” sound creepier with minimal guitar line and processional drumming. Like an even more haunted Slint song until a little over a minute in the distorted vocals and noisy guitar escalation crashes in. At that point the caustic desperation is palpable and what once was a fairly chill if unsettling song turns into one that sustains a seething and tortured expression of loss that crosses over into nihilistic passages that are so raw and emotionally fragmented it would be thrilling if it didn’t contain and embody so much psychic anguish. But then in the outro the song waxes back into a weary acceptance, a lull in the waves of agony you feel when you feel like you’ve been left all alone with nothing to live for, a state that seems impossible to overcome but this song seems proof that there are ways to channel that feeling into the kind of art that seems to help in spite of its horrifying power. Listen to “Horsefly” on Spotify and follow Bug Facer at the links below.

Bug Facer on Facebook

Bug Facer on Instagram

ABBATIA’s Low Key Terrifying Video for “World Wide Web” is a Glimpse Into the Macabre Industrial Rap Horrors of Its New Album Red Room

There’s something extra bleak and haunting about a strip mall on a dark night and the music video for ABBATIA’s “World Wide Web” begins there. Then we see a demented figure shaping features in clay on his own head as the band’s crew seems to be on web cam and security footage interspersed with scenes of horror like we’re getting a trip through parts of the dark web accompanied by throbbing, industrial hip-hop beats and rapping that is both frantic and sepulchral in a way that is at times so intense it borders on the humorous. That is if the whole video and didn’t feel like a gnarly segment of the V/H/S franchise with music that is a fascinating collage of mashups that defy narrow classification. It’s in the hip-hop vein but you’d have to be into the more avant-garde or experimental end of that music to find something comparable. Maybe Ho99o9, Dälek or Death Grips but it’s not much like any of those, just the level of genre bending and inventive soundscaping that is more focused on creating a harrowing and menacing mood informed by a sense of the absurd rather than where it fits on a spectrum of musical style. Watch the video for “World Wide Web” on YouTube and follow ABBATIA at the links below. The group’s new album, the appropriately titled Red Room, dropped on November 11, 2022.

ABBATIA on TikTok

ABBATIA on Instagram

Uèle Lamore Soundtracks the Next Generation of Surreal B-Movies With the Upbeat and Playful “Something About Us”

Uèle Lamore’s music video for “Something About Us” gives the song with its gritty yet playful instrumental music in fuzzed out post-punk style melodies its proper contextualization. Throughout the video we are treated to a running string of possible genre tags that are as varied as the music’s fairly genre-less quality itself. It could fit in a weird video game about time travel and culture swapping. It could work for a fun-loving ninja movie starring Sho Kosugi and get him out of retirement for one more movie, a surreal sequel to the nonsensically supernatural Ninja III: The Domination. Maybe a film about cowboys who all gathered together to create a commune after having spent time in the worlds of Sergio Leone films and Jodorowsky’s El Topo having given up on a life of violence and opting for one where they preserve their legacy through elaborate musicals. Anyone made a sequel to Knight Riders? Lamore has you covered here and offering the concept of “low budget Riders of Rohan” but with the idea of cosplay being a thing these days it could work out. However this song might be placed or enjoyed it has a decided trickster experimental pop quality that can shapeshift into any setting. Watch the video for “Something About Us” on YouTube and connect with Lamore at the links below.

Uèle Lamore on Facebook

Uèle Lamore on Bandcamp

Uèle Lamore on Instagram

Mako Bron Celebrates the Will to Exit a Life Situation With Vigor on Synth Pop Song “Hit the Road”

Mako Bron takes us on a bit of a musical time travel trip on “Hit the Road.” Its infectious hooks and beautiful synth melody at times is reminiscent of early Berlin and how that band didn’t quite fit in with the world of late 70s/early 80s synth pop while helping to define it. The use of horns in the mix hits similar emotional resonances as James but this is no retro song. It resonates with the same spirit of that music with the tones, the components of the songwriting and the way Bron harmonizes with the background vocals and the manner in which all the melodic elements come together in the chorus to really drive home a message of personal liberation. It’s a song that expresses a strong desire to be free of a situation and a relationship that feels stifling and no longer feels like something that fortifies life and sometimes that simply means you have to get away geographically to reinforce the emotional departure. This song celebrates that impulse with great spirit. Listen to “Hit the Road” on Spotify and follow Australian songwriter Mako Bron at the links below.

Mako Bron on Facebook

Mako Bron on Instagram

The Album Leaf Brings Us Along on a Drifting Journey to Elevated States of Tranquility on “Future Falling”

The Album Leaf, photo courtesy the artist

“Future Falling” is like listening to the slow evolution of an artist having eased into a new plateau. The Album Leaf has long perfected the background of slow shimmer and hypnotic, repeated, sequenced melody while tones with real physicality of sound carry a melody with a slow blossom of elements that flow and invite you along for a drift into tranquil spaces. You could spend a lot of time sorting out the rich array of elements that create this atmosphere like the ways bell tones are processed, the striking of strings, the layered streams of synth and the orchestration of it all but the mood of slow elevation and acceptance of a peaceful mode of being is the end point of the song as it lets you off with the gentlest of touches at the end of the journey. Listen to “Future Falling” with its prismatic visualizer on YouTube and follow The Album Leaf at the links provided.