SubmitHub – Page 134 – Queen City Sounds and Art

AJ Lambert’s Psychedelic Video For “When You’ve No Eyes” is an Imaginative Presentation of a Song About Cutting Through Our Collective Illusions

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.

Khazali’s “Dance on the Rain” is a Poetic Portrait of Acceptance of a Break-Up

The lush, pulsing, hazy melody of Khazali’s “Dance on the Rain” immediately takes you back to the early days of chillwave when that music was new and felt fresh and like something borrowed from a dream. But Khazali’s song has obviously learned from production methods and aesthetics that have come along since while embracing the sounds of analog synth in the mix as bright touches of a handful of notes cut through that haze and along with the staccato guitar work provide a framework within which the singer’s ghostly yet soulful vocals can drift along in an easy manner depicted in the evocative music video. It all sounds chill and introspective and it is but Khazali’s words in spare stanzas paint us the portrait of the end of the cycle of a break-up in unmistakable terms and where regret and pain has turned to acceptance but not without a touch of sadness. Watch the video for “Dance on the Rain” on YouTube and connect with Khazali on Instagram linked below.

Khazali on Instagram

First Frontier Strikes a Strong Chord of Romantic Heartache and Psychological Honesty on the Emotionally Raw “Insist”

First Frontier covers a lot of emotional territory on the single “Insist” from its forthcoming EP Just Matter (out March 18, 2022). Hailing from Birmingham, UK, First Frontier on this song sounds like a bit like an American indiepop band. The yearning tones of the guitar as the song begins may make you think you’re in for an indie rock song like many we’ve heard in recent years but it also has an unvarnished quality that feels more honest and earnest. And the lyrics tracing the contours of a relationship in which two people are intimately aware of their own shortcomings as articulated in poetic detail. The line “There’s a weakness in my head/More an enemy instead/And it takes me from the light/To the dark side/When I’m lonely in this bed/I see why some people let/Jagged whispers lead them straight to the wrong life” contains so much psychological insight, searing honesty and compassion it really makes the song a standout. But even when the song waxes more romantic it’s never, ever corny or hackneyed, it brims over with a heartbreaking poignancy that you don’t hear in nearly enough pop music and the spare instrumentation with the fragile male and female vocals giving the song a tender authenticity is hard to beat. Listen to “Insist” on Bandcamp and follow First Frontier at the links below.

firstfrontiermusic.com

First Frontier on Twitter

First Frontier on Facebook

First Frontier on Instagram

First Frontier on YouTube

Jori Larres’ “Counterpoints” is a Musical Analog to Interstellar Quantum Travel

Finnish composer Jori Larres uses rapidly shimmering, distorted synths to introduce us to his song “Counterpoints” as if a tonal transportation system to a higher dimension where the minimal percussion gives shape to passageways in the song once the ethereal effervescence clears away. The song feels like an elevated stroll with elongated notes lighting the path ahead in a world of pure light and benevolent, resonating energies that have a form emerging from the intersection of opposed elements of sound. A call and response dynamic that creates the vibration and interactions from which solidity forms. Later in the song we, the listners, emerge from the that busy yet comforting soundscape into a place of utter peace and silence. And in retrospect it feels like the musical analog of directly experiencing a future form of quantum travel that feels like a slow transcendence as we are converted to energy and then back into solid form not unlike the way the transporters on Star Trek effect their function. Probably not Larres’ inspiration for the track and yet it is a kind of nourishing array of sounds in which you are washed taking in their vibrations. Listen to “Counterpoints” on YouTube, connect with multimedia artist and musician Jori Larres at the links provided and give a listen to the recently released album Intervals from which the single was taken.

Jori Larres on Apple Music

Jori Larres on Facebook

Jori Larres on Instagram

BONG-747 Soundtracks the Life of a Futuristic Taxi Driver on the Present time mix of “Big Brother” as remixed by iY?

The Present time mix remixed by iY? of “Big Brother” puts the focus on rhythmic elements of the track and the more ethereal atmospheric elements where synth lines seem to streak by. Sonically it sounds like what it might be like to fly a vehicle in some future where hearing the ambient traffic chatter is a part of life for someone shuttling passengers to and from high rise buildings and distant home or recreational destinations. Samples of radio talk sit side by side bright but hazy melodies and a tonal percussive features that track the passage of time and lend a backdrop of urgency and low key menace. At points it comes off a bit like an unlikely but entirely possible collaboration between Brian Eno, The Crystal Method and Oneohtrix Point Never with the physicality and sense of texture of the first, the gift for dark yet playful moods of the second and the way the latter is able to craft emotional sonic vistas with layered movement. Listen to the track on YouTube and connect with BONG-747 at the links provided.

BONG-747 on Facebook

Nobody Ever Does Takes Us on a Cosmic Journey to Inner Tranquility on Ambient Psychedelic Track “Rustig Aan”

Nobody Ever Does, photo courtesy the artists

Nobody Ever Does might look like a vagabond version of Jellyfish and one might expect a different flavor of psychedelia from “Rustig Aan.” But what emerges across it’s lush and gorgeous sprawl of sound nearly nine minutes long is a downtempo and meditative listening experience akin to a mellower Bardo Pond without the passages of raw noise. Measured, hypnotic percussion, streaming synths sparkle, ethereal female vocals stream melodic poetry as if cast adrift on the ocean of subconscious thought. In the background voices speak like distant radio signals echoing announcements barely discernible. Bell tones and languorous guitar work throughout give the whole thing which seems so casually and unhurriedly cosmic an organic grounding reminiscent of Sky Cries Mary’s more abstract sonic explorations of inner space for a net effect of utter tranquility. Listen to “Rustig Aan” on YouTube, follow Nobody Ever Does at the links below and listen to the rest of the album Settle Down album from which “Rustig Aan” is drawn out now on Spotify.

Nobody Ever Does on Instagram

Nobody Ever Does on TikTok

Sonomancer Conjures the Ghosts of Modern Techno-Anxiety in the Beautifully Disturbing Video for “Digital Graves”

Sonomancer’s video for “Digital Graves” is strongly reminiscent of a Junji Ito manga if he and Inio Asano collaborated on a science fiction horror story about deep regret and the way the digital aspect of human relationships were the vector of cosmic horror. Like a generative disillusion and self-and-mutual alienation reflected in the song with its slow moving synth swells like a warning siren and ambient distorted electronic sounds and cycling sounds that are inescapable and crawling from all sides as a reminder that you’re never alone and always connected in this artificial way. Martha Goddard’s vocals are the beacon of humanity in the song expressing the regrets and misgivings of the specific ways we store our memories digitally through photos and videos or means of staying in contact and how what in another era might have been private is often exposed to too many people and which can be lost when technology glitches, fails or is discontinued in general. The song builds into a gentle and subtle industrial techno track with organic percussive textures that seem to compliment perfectly the shifting and disturbingly beautiful imagery of the video. It is indeed a track for our current era with the aesthetics to match. Watch the video for “Digital Graves” on YouTube and follow Sonomancer at the links below.

Sonomancer on Instagram

Nathan James Mills Considers His Cycle of Bad Habits on “These Friends”

Nathan James Mills channels touches of Jesus and Mary Chain and a bit of A Place to Bury Strangers on his punky post-punk single “These Friends.” Crunchy, fuzzy guitar riffs accent and then drive the dynamics bolstered by a steady beat while Mills considers his relationships with his vices and other people as types of friendships. He lists a short cycle of identity steeped in hedonism in the choruses by asking what would have have to say in casual conversation, with whom he would have sex and would he do drugs while down on his luck and are those kinds of friendships with behaviors and social situations the kinds of friends that are better than misery? Later in the song he sings of losing a friend because maybe he was too caught up in that cycle of past times to be present for a real relationship that isn’t a self-destructive coping mechanism or a tool to facilitate the same because “dysfunction is so pure.” But the moment of clarity peeks in as a hint, as a suspicion with the line “If I ever saw the other side maybe I’d just sit down and cry.” Indeed over wasted time, over wasted opportunities for a life you actually want to have instead of what seems to make you feel alive for a few moments here and there and over the trail of psychological neglect and carnage you’ve left in your wake along the way. It’s a short song at two minutes thirty-one but it packs in a lot and invites exploring one’s own bad habits. Listen to “These Friends” on YouTube and connect with Nathan James Mills on Spotify.

Secret Shame’s “Hide” is a Cathartic Declaration of Resistance to the Stultifying Energies of Psychological Oppression

Secret Shame, photo courtesy the artists

“Hide,” the lead track from Secret Shame’s forthcoming sophomore follow-up to its fantastic 2019 debut album Dark Synthetics is a statement on embracing one’s vulnerability and the dangers of always feeling like you need to hide part of yourself as an act of self-protection. In the choruses, guitar riffs hit in a measured yet expressive procession and then bloom forth in wide circles of melody as the rhythm section carries a lot of the weight of the track with an irresistible momentum and energy. In the verses the instrumentation gives the room that is so yearned for in the lyrics that Lena Machina delivers with a focused introspection. The song speaks to anyone that has had to turn a personal asset into a mark of shame because of the bad faith behavior of others and of a culture that consistently treats normal and not inherently destructive human behaviors as an aberration even if it’s something as simple as wanting to have your existence matter despite where the focus of society’s unspoken system of rewards is placed. Not to mention how one can internalize this mindset when it’s the bulk of what’s presented to you in life. It’s a song of no small amount of nuance in its sentiments and musically it’s a step further in the post-punk darkwave direction more than hinted at on the first record and its superb blend of punk and its darker cousin. Listen to “Hide” on YouTube, connect with Secret Shame at the links below and look out for the group’s new album likely announced later in 2022.

Secret Shame on Twitter

Secret Shame on Facebook

Secret Shame on Instagram

P Tersen’s “Methymnia” is an Otherworldly Fusion of Ambient and Drone with Modern Avant-Garde Classical Music

P Tersen’s “Methymnia” begins with a drone and brings in an array of organic sounds like a discordant orchestra. The title of the song is the name of the part of the island of Lesbos that was home to the poet and musician Arion who is attributed as having invented dithyrambic poetry, the precursor to Athenian tragic theater. In the context of P Tersen’s song one hears the deconstruction of classical structure favoring something more unorthodox in the vein of what Alexander Scriabin did with his “Piano Sonata No. 6” in crafting something singular and alien using fairly traditional instrumentation and pushing the aesthetics in ways that defy easy description using the usual language in capturing the tenor, mood and dynamics of music that seems to follow its own organic and internal logic. “Methymnia” bridges the worlds of ambient and drone with the classical avant-garde in a way that strikes the ears as mysterious and fascinating like remembering music from the world of dreams visiting another quantum reality where notions of harmony and melody at decidedly off from even the different cultural traditions in the earth we know. Listen to “Methymnia” on Soundcloud and connect with P Tersen at the links provided.

P Tersen on Vimeo

P Tersen on Instagram