SubmitHub – Page 144 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Anaamaly’s “Passing Moments” is an Ambient Embodiment of Unstructured Time

Listening to Anaamaly’s “Passing Moments” is like watching a snow globe in slow motion and taking the time out to imagine what life might be like spending a tranquil afternoon there looking out a window near a river. A drone enshrouding an echoing cascade of tones rippling in the soft sound of wind and hints of water flow mixing together under a pale grey sky as large snowflakes fall all around. Motes of distant sounds peek through dusk like nearby street lights catching your attention periodically when the fog thins or the snow lets up for a moment. Indeed these passing moments aren’t common because there is so often too much in life to push you along or that demand your attention but when they do hit you they seem significant and a point of acute awareness of the need for unstructured time in life. Listen to “Passing Moments” on Spotify or Bandcamp and give a listen to the rest of the Geometric Moods album for similar vibe. Connect with Anaamaly at the links below.

Anaamaly on Facebook

Anaamaly on Instagram

Anaamaly on YouTube

SUEVERIE Voices the Collective Ache Over Separations From Our Loved Ones During the Pandemic on Dream Drone Track “VEKI”

Echoing percussion and a low key urgent swirling drone introduces us to SUEVERIE’s song “VEKI” and in the music video we see a corresponding visual of rippling waters at dusk. Vocals come in with a similar dynamic of echo crying out for relief from an ache of loneliness. For this duo it’s a matter of lockdown and the ongoing pandemic that has forced their separation as each lives in a different country, quite an imposed long distance relationship compounding the isolation and relative lack of contact we’ve each, those of us observing basic precautions anyway, undergone for nearly two years. The slow turning drone and introspective, haunted vocals embody that state of affairs and at the same time sounds like a best attempt to breach that chasm in the ways we can. Sure the members of SUEVERIE like all of us can keep in contact in virtual ways and even make creative work together but it’s not quite the same and the prolonging of these separations have had psychological impacts that are going to affect people for years to come. “VEKI” and the distorted soundscapes and the way it ends in what sounds like a signal breaking apart due to some breakdown in technology sounds like that psychic distortion and disruption. The tone is despairing, and the intensity of feeling is palpable, but the vocals glow with a hope for a break in the worst impacts of the global health crisis so that loved ones can be reunited despite the challenges we all still face put on the backburner by an immediate crisis. Watch the video for “VEKI” on YouTube and follow SUEVERIE at the links below.

SUEVERIE on Apple Music

SUEVERIE on Bandcamp

SUEVERIE on Instagram

Crackberry’s “After You” Manifests the Specter of the Negative Influence of Algorithms on Our Consciousness

“After You” initially strikes as a strange techno track and the processed vocals like a vocoder making innocuous statements as a melodic note sequence blossoms accenting the rhythm. But even from the beginning there’s a dark undertone that makes you wonder when the shoe is going to drop on a piece of music that minus the lyrics could be the music you’d hear in the foyer of an electronics boutique in some near future space station. But the words point to an artificial intelligence that has awakened to its uses and abuses and awareness of its connection to our dependence on technology and ability to tap into and manipulate our inner selves. “I will take your soul, then I’ll see what’s next” is such a chilling line and also serves as a creative bit of social commentary about how we’ve already succumbed to algorithms and current, crude artificial intelligence manipulating our desires, our reactions to virtual social situations and even the stock market and the evil of reputation sites or, if you’re in China and other authoritarian societies, your reputation score designed to keep you in line. For such a pleasant foreground vibe, the background and clandestine content makes this apparently short and simple song a pointed examination of our relationship with technology and how it has come to warp our very consciousness. Listen to “After You” on Spotify, explore the rest of the Fever Dream album and follow Crackberry at the links below.

Crackberry Manylink

Crackberry on Twitter

Crackberry on Instagram

Red Mecca’s “Without a House, Without a Door” is Lush Darkwave in Cosmic Colors

The enigmatically titled new Red Mecca single “Without a House, Without A Door” presents us with a wall of steady, powerful percussion and a distorted shimmer of drone through which flares of bright melody pierce periodically as a Susanne Jonsson vocalist graces this stark yet full soundscape with human presence. The effect has the kind of grandeur one often heard in the more hypnotic and drone laden works of Sky Cries Mary with Johnsson’s performance very reminiscent of the expressive and alluring vocal style of Anisa Romero. But Red Mecca, with its name a very cool and obvious nod to the third, great, 1981 studio album by Cabaret Voltaire, is very much more in the post-punk by way of modern darkwave mode with its processional pace and deeply lush, finely textured electronic soundscapes. Think Big Black Delta, think the more modern offerings from Gary Numan. Gorgeous stuff that captivates the imagination. Listen to “Without a House, Without a Door” on Soundcloud and connect with Red Mecca at the links provided.

Red Mecca on Facebook

Manpreet Kundi Encourages us to Connect With Our Intuitive Self on “Don’t Wake Me”

Manpreet Kundi, photo courtesy the artist

Manpreet Kundi paces her single “Don’t Wake Me” like a casual stroll down a luminous, fog enshrouded pathway. Her breathy vocals sketches memories and hopes mixed together in the infinite potential of life in dreams. During the course of the song Kundi examines her feelings and desires for life with a spirit of gentleness and asking no one wake her from this state where the mind is whole and functioning outside the divide of rational and irrational, emotional and logical, we assume during our waking moments. In the state of lucid dreaming suggested by Kundi’s lyrics we are perhaps most free to reach toward personal truths that can manifest in beneficial consequences for life once we wake up if we indulge the time to go with the flow of what might be called dreamtime in the sense of the Aboriginal concept and our connection to it as an intuitive process that synthesizes all aspects of our minds. Kundi sings about this in a more poetic fashion utilizing imagery and experiences from dreams but the message is clear that we want ourselves and others to allow us to learn to trust our best internal voices in self-healing and to make our most authentic choices. The soothing, dream pop in which Kundi sets her song to spare piano, ethereal strings and washes of synth only makes the heady content more easily accessible. Listen to “Don’t Wake Me” on Spotify and connect with Manpreet Kundi at the links below.

Manpreet Kundi website

Manpreet Kundi on Facebook

Manpreet Kundi on Instagram

Fischer und Hansen’s Darkly Downtempo “elephant’s room” is an Eloquent Expression of the Horrors We Accept as Normal

Fischer und Hansen make a very unconventional and tricky rhythm work on the “elephant’s room” single. Plucked strings, shuffling percussion and a vocal accenting at unusual angles to the main dynamic expands the sonic possibilities of the track in a way that becomes obvious as other electronic elements make their way into the backdrop: droplets of sound, wavering, distorted drones, echoing, phased washes of white noise. Along with the atonal hovering tone in the distance at the beginning of the song, all of these compositional details bring a sense of playful menace. Maybe the expression of the elephant in the room referring to the unspoken topic people are trying to avoid was taken conceptually to another level as a concept guiding this song as it builds a great sense of tension and release by the end when the chorus repeats “It’s no natural environment.” That statement alone in this creeping, slow seething downtempo track seemingly about the forces putting pressure on us daily that we ignore to our peril just trying to get by succinctly spells out how just because we’re used to something pervasive in our world and tolerate it doesn’t mean it’s actually normal, a condition of the world we must accept or natural at all. Listen to “elephant’s room” on Spotify and connect with Fischer und Hansen on Instagram.

Death Hags Invite us to a Haunted Christmas Night on the Icy Moons of Titan on “North Pole Chaos”

Death Hags, photo courtesy artist Bandcamp

Death Hags apparently tried to craft a sound like one would imagine the winter solstice to feel on one of the icy moons of Titan (one of the moons of Saturn). The resulting composition “North Pole Chaos” begins with a distorted drone and spiralling and sparkling tones akin to “First Dark Ride” by Coil. But when Lola G’s vocals come in singing “Silent Night” it’s spooky and gets more spectral as the vocals process into echoes that layer and flow into the stream of textured drone and intermittent blips that merge with a low atmospheric for an overall effect like one has become part of the surrounding, frigid environment before a more clear, bubbling melody pushes the low, distorted, distant howl to the edges of hearing. The effect is like stepping into a mysterious cave that blocks the chaos of a windy, winter storm outside, the vocals returning to beckon your back out into the primordial weather of the surface of a distant celestial object. The vibe recalls the mood of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1939 story “In the Walls of Eryx” and how the prospector in the story fades away while recounting his observations for the search party that eventually finds his corpse in a invisible maze on Venus—haunting yet oddly beautiful. Listen to “North Pole Chaos” on Bandcamp and take a chance on the rest of the album Frozen Santa which is a fascinating mix of brooding synth pop and experimental, wonderfully creepy ambient works. Connect with Death Hags at the links below.

Death Hags on Instagram

The Howard Hughes Suite Transports us to a Placid Head Space Outside of Time on “Lake of Dreams”

“Lake of Dreams” proceeds in a recursive fashion a streaming atmospheric tonal line that expands with additional textures and parallel sounds suggesting circular movement, slow ripples. The title is thus apt as you’re drawn into the drones that put your mind from a tranquil everyday headspace into one traveling on the waves of a lake from a mystical dream where your spirit can be at rest and open to information and feelings one perhaps resisted previously. The unmistakable movement of sound through long delay and the reverse version thereof takes one out of any sort of standard time and beyond even compound time to a sound that intentionally or not takes the listener outside of such limitations into a pure and intuitive experience. Could be synths, could be other electronics, could be processed pedal steel by which The Howard Hughes Suite made a name for himself in local and international music circles but the soundscaping is both organic and ethereal and reminiscent of the cosmic ambient of Popol Vuh, the mystical Americana of Daniel Lanois, the space new age of Apollo-period Brian Eno and the otherworldly emotional eloquence of Robin Guthrie’s solo work. Listen to “Lake of Dreams” on Spotify, be on the lookout for the album High & Lonesome album out February 18, 2022 and connect with The Howard Hughes Suite at the links provided.

The Howard Hughes Suite on Twitter

The Howard Hughes Suite on Instagram

The Howard Huges Suite on YouTube

Last Wars’ Synthwave Post-Punk Song “Pale Fire” is a Musical Avatar of Weathering Despair in the Face of Impending Global Disaster

With “Pale Fire” Last Wars seem to be tapping into some of that dark, moody vibe of A Place to Bury Strangers by way of synthwave inspired by Trans Am and Holy Fuck. The driving, distorted synth line and shuffling percussion that pushes the song at a headlong pace with whispery vocals painting for us an imagery of a decaying and fragmenting civilization and its impacts for one’s own life and psyche, not some abstract political commentary. When the guitar comes in it casts tonal fire against the dusky and fuzzy drone wall of electronic sounds like Bernard Sumner putting in some choice licks on a long lost Giorgio Moroder song for a soundtrack for an abandoned movie version of a William Gibson story. It’s a fierce yet fragile song that seems to draw out an accurate depiction of the fraught times we face when shit is getting real, Don’t Look Up is only satire because a comet isn’t coming to destroy us all but climate change is, and panicked nihilism is just not an option. Listen to “Pale Fire” on Soundcloud and connect with Last Wars at the links below.

Last Wars on Facebook

Last Wars on Instagram

1st Base Runner Distills the Essence of Emotional Stasis After Heartbreak on “Flux”

“Flux” drifts in with a synth bass pulse and then steady percussion before bright, expansive synths bring in hanging melodic progressions. 1st Base Runner singer and songwriter Tim Husmann comes in like a bright ghost of himself offering simple yet wise observations on the experience of and living in regret and how it’s tangled up in our romantic relationships and the illusions and delusions we craft that are too often the glue that keeps people together for awhile before those same evasions of personal and mutual truth are the ingredients for the dissolution of the band even when the lingering feelings and the aftermath of the break-up still haunts us. Husmann offers different views of a relationship now in shambles from a first person perspective yet illuminates in poetic detail where people come to a profound misunderstanding of each other partly built on the lack of honesty at the outset and an unwillingness to be vulnerable and honest in the name of love. All the while Husmann articulates lingering feelings of hurt and being stuck in a place of wounded feelings while the other person has moved on. Most of us have been there and this dramatic mini-epic illustrates that ordeal in a way that sounds like he’s transcended it already. Husmann took seven years off of putting out music to rest and recuperate his creative instincts before forming 1st Base Runner but a quick listen to his new EP Ellis, the follow-up to the album Seven Years of Silence out in June 2021, showcases that the fallow time was well spent. Listen to “Flux” on Spotify and connect with 1st Base Runner at the links provided.