SubmitHub – Page 120 – Queen City Sounds and Art

“Pain” is Miss Torsion’s Playfully Realistic Ode to Chronic Health Conditions

Miss Torsion has crafted an ode to the “invisible ailment” of chronic pain on a song titled, simply and directly enough, “Pain.” In the lyrics she expresses the frustration with the whole process of dealing with such pain and its sources and how it can disrupt your entire psychology when it hits hardest and complicates anything resembling normal life functioning that people who don’t suffer from chronic pain take for granted like walking normally, or being able to sleep well or any physical activity requiring exertion, exercise and being able to have your brain work normally rather than focus on the pain when it’s there in full force or as a dull background annoyance threatening to crash in. The source of chronic pain is wide and different and too often you can suffer from more than one form. But whatever that might be, Miss Torsion’s playfully moody, post-punk pop song captures that experience in a way that is accessible and accurate including how your mind wants to find a way to fix what’s happening even though it can be a complicated ailment and may resist an easy treatment that lasts. It’s a rarity to hear this subject matter in any song and rather than express the anguish and dark thoughts, Miss Torsion presents it all as something that many people have to live and find a way to get through the worst times even if it’s something that may or may not be a thing of the past in one’s life. Listen to “Pain” on YouTube and follow Miss Torsion at the links below.

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Wellbeloved Evokes the World’s Collective Frustrations and Bad Communication Habits on the Psychedelic Blues of “The Values”

Wellbeloved, illustrated picture courtesy the artist

Wellbeloved brings together some seemingly disparate elements for its single “The Values” from its most recent album The Rusty. Distorted yet slightly shimmering guitar to psychedelic effect, splayed percussion tracing the edges of rhythm while also keeping the unconventional beat, Velvet Underground-esque guitar solos that burn over and through a drone of keyboards and bass holding the song together through force of while. It all sounds like its coming apart and colliding together elements that shouldn’t work but somehow do. David Wellbeloved lists a bevy of things going wrong in the world, all well familiar to anyone that has survived the past several years, and in listing them you get the feeling he is trying to make sense of these phenomena as well and all the angst that comes from having to deal with this flood of negative stimuli every day. But the line “Everybody’s yelling but nobody’s saying anything new” gets to the core of the collective psychological issue that is perhaps blocking actually dealing with the world as it is and with issues as they are and that is not questioning the dominant paradigms that seem to be running most people’s lives. The outsized faith in one’s own ideas and beliefs is a common shortcoming and maybe Wellbeloved isn’t suggesting he has the answers but there can be no doubting maybe taking some time off pointless self-assertion and taking the time to figure out if our stories make as much sense as we think is in order but with most people having to work too much to get by we’ll see if a more nurturing and sane world can emerge in spite of the failings of our crumbling worldwide civilization. Listen to the psychedelic blues punk of “The Values” on YouTube and follow Wellbeloved at the links provided.

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Nasim Khushnawaz Delivers a Bravura Rubab Performance on the Energetically Elegant “Sahargah”

Nasim Khushnawaz is a master of the Afghan rubab, one of the national instruments of Afghanistan. It’s a stringed instrument in a range of three sizes so that the smallest has 5 sympathetic strings, the medium has 19 strings and 13 sympathetic strings and the large has 21 strings with 15 sympathetic stings. It has a widely expressive range with a dazzling array of tonal, rhythmic and textural voicings that give the instrument its distinctive sound. Khushnawaz’s father is the late Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz who is considered one of the great players of the rubab and who helped to expose the West to the instrument and its music when ethnomusicologist John Bailey in the 1970s made recordings of Rubab of Herat, Afghanistan to an audience outside that country. The younger Khushnawaz recently put out his latest album of traditional Herati pieces and three classical Afghani including the lead track “Sahargah.” Captured with beautiful sonic detail and evocative power, one hears the musician’s technical prowess but also a masterful interpretive mastery with counter melody and rhythm switching effortlessly between single note syncopation and strumming utilizing drone and rapid arpeggios that give the music a fluidity and energy that is both inviting and immediately engaging even for listners who are unfamiliar with this style and form of music. The title means “Priceless” in English, a concept that should apply to one’s cultural heritage which Khushnawaz preserves ably here and across the entirety of the album Songs From The Pearl of Khorasan. Listen to “Sahargah” on Spotify and follow Nasim Khushnawaz at the links below.

Call in Dead Upends the Questionable Merits of Gender Norms on the Hardcore Ripper “Patriarchy”

Call In Dead, photo courtesy the artists

Unfortunately the really boring and narrow patriarchal mindset is so common in American society rendering many men and male identified people incapable of living a full human life. It’s beyond toxic masculinity though that is the extreme end of this cultural indoctrination. Orlando, Florida based punk band Call in Dead (why call in sick when you can, you know) uses the musical language of hardcore to land a thrilling and unabashed critique of that aspect of the culture on its single “Patriarchy.” Musically it’s reminiscent of Minor Threat’s “I Don’t Wanna Hear It” in terms of ferocity and the spirit of not having regressive behavior and it’s even shorter at 1:05 versus the Minor Threat song at 1:14. But it’s not just the patriarchy that Call in Dead takes to task but an entire set of gender norms that are entirely out of date and social conditioning that stunts one’s development as a person and finding amusement in how ridiculous it is to live your life like nothing can hurt you, like violence is the only answer and the way to asset your personal power as a display of a need for dominance and as though having connection with others and even feeling love is a weakness which is just absurd and in this life you’re going to need more capacities than the patriarchy and its culture has to offer and being able to understand oneself and others beyond simple, binary gender norms is always cooler and more liberating long term and more regularly than truncating one’s cognitive framework for the sake of holding onto a dubious value system just because it’s a story you’ve been encouraged to tell yourself your whole life. Listen to “Patriarchy” on Spotify and follow Call in Dead at the links below.

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100% Contemplate Power Relations in Society on the Retro-Futurist, Electronic Post-punk Song “Prisoner”

The shimmery, shining, repetitive synth line that runs through much of 100%’s “Prisoner” is like an analogous representation of a transmission through a landline. The other synth melodies sound like something that could have come about in 1985, 1995, 2005 or 2025. Which is fitting given the themes of the song and Lena Molnar’s vocals striking an inquisitive and low-key confrontational tone questioning the nature of power relations, justice, public safety and the habits of a society choosing to self-medicate rather than deal with serious social issues and how we deal with them or don’t in an adequate way. The song is a lo-fi, mostly electronic post-punk track but that fits these eternal themes that never seem to get resolved and though technology develops society finds a way to sweep problems that science and a current dominant form of economics, almost always in lock step with one another, doesn’t seem to be able to address to anyone’s satisfaction. Is this a song inquiring about the life of a prisoner? Who is the prisoner? Are we all of habits and ways of being and living? Does this song expand upon the meaning of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”? This song invites the listener to contemplate these questions on a fundamental level. Fans of early Ladytron will appreciate how the song seems both retro and out of normal time. Listen to “Prisoner” on Spotify, give the rest of the album Clear Visions out on It Records now, and follow the Australian band 100% at the links below.

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WITXHES’ Post-punk Krautrock Track “A Part Ache” is a Harrowing Commentary on Aging

WITXHES launch us into “A Part Ache” with an urgent Motorik beat and an urgent, distorted synthesizer melody. Barely discernible but clearly troubled/conflicted vocals offer snapshots of what it means to be aging, if the introduction to the unusual video is any indication. The visuals are historical pictures in the daily life of children in a town in South Dakota during the Great Depression as shot by Ivan Besse and edited for the song by Emanuel Lundgren. The latter added color anomalies and warping and visual distortion as though turning old photographs into an old VHS tape image. The song is reminiscent of the bizarre and wonderful mashup of industrial, punk and psychedelic Krautrock that was early music by Pop. 1280 circa The Grid. It has a similar appealingly scuzzy aesthetic that lends the sentiments of the song an authenticity that a more pristine soundscape couldn’t really do justice. Aging is something that happens to us all if we’re lucky and the experience of it can feel like an accelerating process that stretches out memory that can hit most people like a feedback loop if they don’t take the time to put one’s experiences into perspective, a luxury many of us aren’t regularly afforded. And in the end these experiences and memories and direct connections with others really only matters to us and the people we know. A hundred years from now most of us won’t even be part of official history. The song reflects that phenomenon and realization well in all its confusion and moments of cognitive clarity. The track comes from the Swedish post-punk band’s June 3, 2022 album Bury your Witxhes and you can watch the video on YouTube, maybe check out the rest of the record on Bandcamp and otherwise connect with WITXHES at the links below.

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Get Lost in the Intimate and Mysterious Sounds of JoobieSaez’s Collage Psych on “Cramps”

JoobieSeaz apparently recorded the guitars for “Cramps” on “amateur” equipment a couple of winters ago and couldn’t replicate the sound on more professional gear. And there’s something to be said for laying down a mood with a unique texture and sonic quality. The completed song as it is doesn’t sound like it’s coming from any conventional realm of rock even given its psych aesthetic. Like the band took the aforementioned guitar work that sounds like Cranes and Bardo Pond had an acoustic jam session and sketched out some delicate passages that couldn’t help but be unusual and mysterious and built the rest of the song around it with a framework of a loping, descending bass line, soft percussion and vocals that whisper with an intimate, diarist quality that both ponder and seem to beckon. Really JoobieSeaz’s song doesn’t sound like much else except it has a feel like something that could have come out on a 1990s American underground label that was home to unique and some would say eccentric artists like a K Records, Kill Rock Stars or early Matador. Listen to “Cramps” on YouTube and follow the German band JoobieSaez at the links below.

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Fox Fagan Brings Us on a Psychedelic Funk Adventure Into a Realm of Desert Cowboy Rock and Roll Mystics in the Video for “Let’s Get Lost”

The video for Fox Fagan’s “Let’s Get Lost,” directed by Jon Delouz begins inauspiciously enough with the songwriter lost in the desert carrying a plastic gas can when he stumbles across a trio of what look like desert cowboy mystics. But the simple, distorted shimmer of the guitar riff keeping up an almost hypnotic melody alongside Fagan’s direct yet hazy vocals gives the whole scene some thematic direction as it is given a funk flavor with the synths and subtle bass. This colorful and fanciful soundtrack we follow our hero out of being lost into an enclave of the aforementioned mystics and joins them in a set like a jam space out of a 1970s road adventure movie. But is it all a wonderful dream? You’ll have to watch the video to find out. But the song is kind of an ear worm in its simplicity and Fagan’s inviting energy to go along on the journey of its jaunty pace and gently infectious energy. Watch the video for “Let’s Get Lost” on YouTube (featuring cameos from Orenda Fink of Azure Ray and Todd Fink of The Faint) and connect with Fox Fagan at the links provided.

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Spirits of Leo’s “Solaris” is an Elegant and Ethereal Song About Rediscovering and Reconnecting With the Essence of What Drives Your Life

The sonics of Spirits of Leo’s single “Solaris” are so vivid and detailed it’s easy to get lost in its ethereal drift of vocal and guitar melody guided gently by the accenting rhythms. The way the elements of the song synergize gives a sense of intuitive composition, an organic feel in how well everything syncs up. In the studio and perhaps in the songwriting it’s Ryan Santos Phillips (vocals, guitars, bass and synth) and Alex Lichtenstein (drums) but that can turn into an exercise in self-indulgence but you can tell the musicians considered the place and role of the instrumentation and the possibilities of expression when reinforcing and complementing each other. The processional pace and elegant dynamics of course recalls the likes of The Cure and Cocteau Twins but Spirits of Leo has clearly taken that inspiration and crafted its own musical character. The song though invoking the title and themes of both the Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel and Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film uses that poetic imagery as a vehicle for song about the meaning of one’s life and its direction and getting back into focus after feeling adrift for too long. “Sift core from ether/Lest I forget what I’m made of” is a beautiful image of rediscovering one’s essence and the line “This is my time now/Retake my Solaris” speaks to reclaiming one’s power and engaging in the activities and habits of mind that make life feel worth living. Listen to “Solaris” on Spotify, connect with Spirits of Leo at the links below and look out for the full length album Gossamer Blue available August 12 on á La Carte Records.

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London Plane Tries to Coax Disaffected Visionaries and Creatives From Self-Imposed Exile on “Come Out of the Dark”

London Plane, photo courtesy the artists

London Plane employs a lo-fi sensibility on its psychedelic post-punk single “Come Out of the Dark.” With the imaginative music video for the song one gets a taste of what feels like a more humanized science fiction concept album that is its new record Bright Black (which released on June 17, 2022). It’s not really comparable sonically or songwriting-wise to Failure’s 1997 masterpiece Fantastic Planet. But conceptually and in terms of how some of the imagery and language used makes for a more colorful storytelling and the ability to tell stories of human psychology and relationships in ways that don’t seem hackneyed or trite. “Come Out of the Dark” deftly incorporates electric and acoustic guitar with synths, drums, bass and poignant vocals for an effect like Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Dazzle” but repurposed as more modern indie pop space rock song. The easy sweep from major chord progression to minor and back throughout the song at unexpected points enhances the emotional impact of its layered melodies. The message of the song encouraging a specific person or the generalized you for whoever needs to hear the words to stop being disengaged, jaded and above it all when you can “be cool” and “come out of the dark” and “be adored,” “Be a defender,” “be a hero.” Yet the tenor of the song is one of understanding of a desire to disconnect with the world and events and community because of how it can wear you down or alienate but if you have some great personal qualities and skills and knowledge it’s wasted in wallowing in cynicism and bitterness when you can enjoy putting that all into the world in a productive way. Even if only a little. The music video is like something that Panos Cosmatos would make if he were in the business of such things and really captures a desire for isolation when the human community needs people of creativity and imagination more than ever. Watch the video on YouTube and follow London Plane at the links below.