SubmitHub – Page 132 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Monalia Swim Straight Into the Acceptance of Cosmic Impermanence on “We Are Dust”

The title of Monalia’s “We Are Dust” sums up nicely the overarching theme of the song. The vocals intone the refrain “Time whatcha gonna do to me now?” in the beginning of the song before the guitars come in with an forceful, expansive dynamic reminiscent of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” and evolving into an introspective psychedelic drone and processional rhythm comparable to something done by Black Angels that reflect the tone of a reluctant acceptance of the cosmic and the way our lives are simply a blip on the timeline of infinity and the atomic components of our bodies and our entire existence are the dust of ages that happen to have come together for these moments that are all we can consciously know. But it’s not pure abstraction as the opening line suggests as does the follow up line later in the choruses after that opening line is sung: “Sneaking up behind, taking what’s mine, nothing matters to you.” This acknowledges the ways in which so many things, and in the end everything, we take for granted or cherish can be seemingly perversely taken from us over the course of our lives but of course it’s the nature of things even if the personal effect of a cycle of impermanence of being is tragedy. The details in the this song that is a well orchestrated assemblage of melodies, atmospheres and finely crafted tonal accents are immediately striking in aggregate even though it may take multiple listens to identify and fully appreciate. Listen to “We Are Dust” on YouTube and follow Norwegian psych/dream pop band Monalia at the links provided.

Monalia website

Monalia on Facebook

Monalia on Instagram

Talker’s “My Meds” is a Poignantly Realistic Portrait of Living With Anxiety and Depression

In the video for “My Meds” it may look like talker is rolling about her nicely appointed Bohemian loft but that’s all atmosphere. With the translucent drapery and sheets and soft lighting to enhance a sense of feeling trapped in a fog that won’t go away. At the center of the track are the plaintive vocals sketching a head space where you’re in that place overwhelmed by depression and/or anxiety that you don’t know how you’re feeling or what to feel beyond a formless emotional urgency that has no outlet because the trajectory of these feelings is usually attached to something solid and coherent that is a source of those feelings. You lose a loved one, your source of income, an opportunity, a friendship, a relationship or any number of other factors and you can wrap your emotional state around that and it makes both intellectual and intuitive sense. Unfortunately, depression and anxiety don’t always and maybe even rarely work that way and it can be an accumulation of things or a subconscious response to complex issues in your life or just plain a chemical imbalance triggered by who can say what. But it is a feeling where you kind of wish time would disappear and you have no psychological anchors that bring you back from that edge. You don’t know what or how to feel but you feel that aforementioned momentum that feels like raw desperation even if you’re in a low energy place. Yes, a beautifully ethereal pop song with talker’s typically evocative vocals but one that truly captures what it’s like to be in a place many of us have been or are in now because the world and society in general has been in such a corrosive place with seemingly no one taking steps to reduce the ambient weight of challenges carried by most people. And meds can get you through some of the worst times but long term significant change is long overdue. But for now some solidarity on at least mental health issues is welcome and talker provides a bit of that with her song. Watch the video for “My Meds” on YouTube, follow talker at the links below and look out for her new In Awe of Insignificance EP due out 3/25/22.

ZoZo’s Relentless Video for “Blood-Brain Barrier” is Like an Expression of Cyberpunk Mysticism

ZoZo (Zoe Wardlaw and John Mannion) created something truly a manifestation of the their glitchcore pop sound in the video for “Blood-Brain Barrier.” It looks like something like a live action Junji Ito manga mixed with a science fiction horror MMO set to a frenetic pace but not one that ever seems overwhelming even as multiple streams of sound, rhythm and texture stream past you as you take a trip into the blood stream and into organs and interact with everyday life processes in the chemo-electrical system that we depend on and take for granted every day of our lives happening as it should reliably across a lifetime. ZoZo gives a voice and a mythical imagery to this process while telling a tale that seems part mystical, part self-affirmational and part menacing with a poetry worthy of the more elegant end of Atari Teenage Riot. Watch the ferocious video for “Blood-Brain Barrier” on YouTube and follow ZoZo at the links provided.

ZoZo website

ZoZo on Bandcamp

ZoZo on Instagram

Samantha Connects the Modern Mind With Primordial Ways of Being on “The forest calls me back into her womb”

“The forest calls me back into her womb” as a title alone suggests so much of the draw of nature and reconnecting with primal, natural forces within oneself, ancient spiritual beliefs, Jungian archetypes and pagan mysticism. But Samantha’s song with the video looking like something out of a future Robert Eggers film along with the black and white imagery as a great representation of the hypnotic drones and ethereal vocals presents an experience that taps into what sounds like memories of human existence prior to civilization as we’ve known it for ten thousand years. The figure in a mask of earth and leaves rolling about in ritualistic fashion like a dance from a society that preserves its culture and religious beliefs in performance, art and oral history. Samantha herself in the video wanders slowly through a fog enshrouded forest barren of leaves as though making that symbolic journey to connecting her conscious mind with ancestral knowledge though communing with nature. Watch the video for “The forest calls me back into her womb” on YouTube and follow the Belgian ambient artist on Spotify.

James Leonard Hewitson’s “Stable” is the Most Upbeat Song About Barely Holding On of Recent Days

James Leonard Hewitson, photo by Hollie Galloway

James Leonard Hewitson is on to something on his single “Stable.” It as an upbeat synth melody that runs buoyantly throughout the song like something out of an 80s pop song while a jangly guitar riff accents the verses. And the music video for the song looks like some misguided commercial for local television with a real estate broker/house flipper standing in front of one of his ill designed signs ready to tell you how you can make your fortune in buying and selling suburban homes. But the lyrics, delivered with a curiously cheerful affect, is all about how Hewitson, or the character of the song, is just doing what he can to keep himself stable which is why he’s emotionally unavailable. It’s a song about the kind of dissociation you can enter when modern life seems completely at odds with a healthy psychology and those that adapt might be the really mad ones. And Hewitson demonstrates this in a subtle but effective way by singing while reclining on the hood of a car, shirtless, smoking a cig and singing into a Shure SM-57, not some fancy-looking mic but one that has been a workhorse in the studio and on stages for decades. He looks unsure of himself and of you while conveying a sense of being relaxed at the same time which is a nice trick. It is perhaps one of the most effervescent songs about barely being able to hold on ever written and immensely catchy and worthy of repeated listens. Watch the video for “Stable” on YouTube and follow Hewitson at the links below.

James Leonard Hewitson on Twitter

James Leonard Hewitson on Facebook

James Leonard Hewitson on Instagram

Bendi Boi’s Spy Thriller Darkwave Track “Spinnen Sie” in a Hypnotic Glimpse Into Futuristic Downtempo Techno

There’s something undeniably appealing about something so surreal as the mix of elements South Korean songwriter Shinji Kim brings together for her project Bendi Boi. In music video for “Spinnen Sie” from the Bendi Boi album Meine Gäst, Kim and perhaps producer Danila Chikilev introduce visuals making it look like a futuristic spy drama as imagined by Korean comic or manga artist including the figure and image of popular child’s toy/cultural artifact Mon Chichi. The music sounds like a really pure blend of post-punk and on the more techno and experimental end of that like ADULT. or a more stripped down Boy Harsher except Kim’s vocals are very much her own fascinatingly tone of focused dispassion with lyrics in both English and German. The whole aesthetic feels very cosmopolitan and internationalist Bohemian in a way that sounds like a glimpse into a future in which we want to live where it wouldn’t be unusual to free associate and culture jam in such a seamlessly creatve way. Watch the video for Spinnen Sie” on YouTube and connect with Bendi Boi on Spotify and Apple Music where you can hear the rest of Meine Gäst.

Bendi Boi on Apple Music

Basement Revolver Reconciles Passion and Tenderness on the Dream Pop Love Ballad “Dissolve”

Heavy, distorted guitar sinks into ethereal guitar atmospheres as the musical equivalent of the title of Basement Revolver’s single “Dissolve.” The words are a tender portrait of feelings of romantic love and the progression from infatuation into something deeper and the recognition of a bond that seems easy and natural. The dual quality of the song really works not just as a metaphor for the emotional dynamic at its core but as musical forces to play off each other and unify in moments to enhance each other and create something new out of formerly fairly disparate elements like Catherine Wheel collaborating with a dream pop band. Listen to “Dissolve” on YouTube, connect with Basement Revolver and the links below and if you’re so inclined pick up a vinyl copy of the group’s new album Embody here.

Basement Revolver on Instagram

Stephen Durkan Brings a Raw Vulnerability in Speaking to a Generalized Sense of Burned Out Desperation on “Prayer”

Stephen Durkan, photo courtesy the artist

The hovering drones and background high frequency, subtle sound like the voices of starlight are the perfect setting for Stephen Durkan’s poem “Prayer.” He speaks of the deep kind of alienation anyone that is half paying attention feels these days of existential dread and exhausted, burned out desperation for any flicker of hope or at least comfort perchance to have something real and vital to look forward to. When Durkan speaks of a life feeling like it’s been pre-programmed and living having becoming like “software running itself.” When he expresses that he doesn’t feel like his actions have any weight and how that makes everything feel heavy, of how we’re all thrown into the world without an instruction manual and a sense that the world only exists to hut you and having no meaningful direction only toward more meaningless fog and fuzz of life in world not built for the nurturing of all but rather the extraction of resources from everything and everyone from material goods as well as the intangibles like time, energy, intellect, creativity and a sense of life and for what? Durkan makes this reality so poignantly personal in the track it can be a bummer but one that actually tells it like it is and in that manifests something that is comprehensible and thus not a hanging, shapeless notion in your mind weighing you down. And so even if you can’t change things right now the awareness means the reality can have less unconscious control over feelings. Listen to the “song” or poem or whatever we can call it on Spotify, listen to the rest of Durkan’s masterful and affecting debut EP The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves on Spotify or Bandcamp and connect with Durkan at the links provided.

Stephen Durkan on Facebook

Stephen Durkan on Instagram

Sibillie Attar Highlights the Tensions of Holding Onto One’s Authenticity in Pursuit of a Creative Life on “Cold Generation”

Sibillie Attar, photo by Nina Andersson-Voight

Sibillie Attar celebrates her decade as a solo artist with the new EP Lost Tracks 2012-2022. The lead track from the compilation is “Cold Generation” was recorded in 2017 and meant originally for release on the 2018 Paloma’s Hand EP. The song begins with urgent piano and a countdown sounding like something from a 1960s rocket launch. But when Attar’s vocals come in bright and emotionally intense yet sweetly melodic it can be easy to miss how the song is one of conflicted feelings that in contrast to the bubbly, ascending synth line and the dynamic of a slightly drifting momentum seems so striking and direct in its use of metaphors for trouble coming down the pike of your life and not being able to live with the compromises expected of you when success in your profession or your creative life suddenly becomes a part of your reality and a rising sense of panic and maybe even disgust at the insincerity that seems to be part of the deal of popularity and critical recognition while navigating the circles in which one has been thrust and perhaps even sought out before knowing what might happen. Attar sings of not knowing if she wants to make it because it “seems everybody’s faking” while she’s stuck in her “violent mind” and “no one cares for the good fight.” Sounds like it can warp one’s sense of one’s status in all your relationships. Attar garnered a Grammy Nomination for “Best Newcomer” in 2012 for her first EP The Flower’s Bed so maybe that experience informed some of this song or she was projecting and extrapolating for songwriting purposes on the experiences of people who have garnered even more sudden popularity at great personal cost. Whatever the true inspiration of the song it is instantly compelling and thought-provoking which is a rarity in a pop song indie or otherwise. Listen to “Cold Generation” on Spotify and follow Attar at the links below.

sibillieattar.com

Sibillie Attar on Facebook

Sibillie Attar on Instagram

Sibillie Attar on YouTube

The Lovelines Ponder the Nature of Love and Desire on the Downtempo “Dark Thoughts About A Pretty Flower”

The Lovelines enter downtempo jazz pop territory with its latest single “Dark Thoughts About A Pretty Flower.” A steady drum beat runs through the song while synths flutter about like luminous highlights and bell tones accent the the track with an incandescent tonality lending the track a sensuality befitting its subject matter. The duo’s female singer sounds like someone out of a modern jazz quartet in her cadences and inflections of voice as she ponders the different aspects of love like a flower and how it manifests under various stimuli and in the case of this song of blooming in moonlight and another in sunshine. She also wonders if her own love will come to fruition if properly nurtured and coaxed as well. But the song works as a pure exercise in concise songwriting and formal structure. Because of the production and the blend of organic and electronic its reminiscent of 90s trip-hop but with a refreshing minimalism that draws you in immediately. The subtle details and mini-flourishes of synth and keyboard play really frame the song well as it suggests a contemplation of the roots of desire without having to spell it out to you Listen to “Dark Thoughts About A Pretty Flower” on YouTube and follow The Lovelines at the links below.