SubmitHub – Page 145 – Queen City Sounds and Art

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.

1st Base Runner on YouTube

1stbaserunner.com

1st Base Runner on Twitter

1st Base Runner on Facebook

1st Base Runner on Instagram

Oliver’s “Oasis” is a Succinct Meditation on Fulfilling Your Dreams in a World of Pitfalls

Oliver sets the mood for “Oasis” with a sampled piano figure and spare and light percussion in a beat that in its repetition suggests the backdrop for what will be a meditation on the state of things imbued with the hopes and anxieties blended in the way life can feel both complicated and simple at once. The line “Put my love where I should, trust where I can, leaving fate where it land” is pragmatic and wise but informed by vision to get to where you want to in life especially as a creative person. Misplaced love and loyalty can detail your life or set you up for failure, as can trusting to freely and openly with the wrong people and accepting that accumulated actions can feel like fate but even that is more complicated than it seems and it isn’t the ultimate end of things. Realizing that alone can give a person hope that there are options. Oliver addresses the specter of racism, self-doubt in one’s abilities undermining one’s confidence and perhaps ability to enjoy one’s accomplishments and the ways in which dubious goals and dreams can limit one’s potential and erode one’s sense of self. It’s just over two minutes but “Oasis,” appropriately named given the tenor of the song and the time taken out of the flood of life to contemplate these subjects, contains a great deal of personal insight. Listen to “Oasis” on Soundcloud, give the rest of Oliver’s Stay With Us EP/album a listen on Spotify and connect with the New York-based rapper at the links provided.

Duglo’s “Peaceful Woods” is a Vivid Sensory Experience In Musical Form of the Majesty of a Place of Great Natural Beauty

Duglo’s use of white noise tones, abstract drones, background harmonics and creative arrangement of volume swells on “Peaceful Woods” perfectly evokes a sense of a mind cleansed of distraction by the raw beauty of untrammeled wilderness. Though the composition could be set during any season it seems to be a fine sonic manifestation of a sunny winter day with swirls of snow brushing the landscape from a breeze following a dusting of snow, bird calls in the near and middle distance and mild winds stirring the starkly beautiful branches. It’s a vivid piece that expresses the majesty and spiritual aspect of that moment when the collective sensory experience of a place of pure nature hits you in ways you didn’t know you needed and otherwise might take for granted. Listen to “Peaceful Woods” on Soundcloud, give the rest of the Okay, Fine EP a listen on Spotify or Bandcamp and connect with Duglo on Instagram.

Duglo on Instagram

Take the Interlude to the Secret Bonus Level With Gaëtan Vigier on the 8-Bit Synthwave Crime Drama “Braquage”

Gaëtan Vigier, image courtesy the artist

“Braquage” by Gaëtan Vigier sounds like a secret side story of Castlevania where you get to loot as much of Count Dracula’s hidden treasure vault as possible in three minutes, thirty-seven seconds. The screen glitches out in cadence with Vigier’s pulsing beat like Perturbator soundtracking the aforementioned section of the video game accessible only through exploiting an alternate route through the game and entering a secret code attained by jotting down characters clandestinely visible on every few screens. The lively 8-bit tune and its shifting, urgent tones is irresistible and just as the title suggests, in English it means “Robbery,” it feels like you’re getting away with something thrilling. The single is out now on Vigier’s Arcade Bit 1 imprint, listen on Soundcloud and connect with all things from the artist on his website linked below.

gaetan-vigier.com

The Grinch Dreams of Future Social Domination on Dax’s “GRINCH GOES VIRAL”

For his latest Grinch-themed video, “GRINCH GOES VIRAL,” Dax brings us a Grinch who wants nothing more but to go viral to attain his dubious ends. The green one ponders his plans and grievances to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” In years past Dax’s Grinch videos have been wonderfully surreal and absurd and with this one the rapper has really outdone himself. This Grinch checks his Tik Tok feed for inspiration, hate consults with Instagram and gets into a conflict with his girlfriend and her father landing him in jail but pleads that “green lives matter.” Subsequent to release our protagonist considers that he’s toxic and suffers from ADHD and PTSD but also bitterness over how his own victimhood complex and how Christmas ruined him and that Hollywood chose Jim Carey to play the Grinch instead of the Grinch himself. This pushes the Grinch to concoct a new movie where he gets to play himself and indulge in all the questionable language and themes of racial slurs, sexual ambiguity, skewed political commentary and of course nudity. Then when the Grinch has duped Hollywood producers to set this film in motion and the inevitable fame comes with the success of that cinematic misadventure the Grinch will hang with Biden, Harris and Zuckerberg and recognized by everyone with the viral explosion of popularity. The Grinch lets us in on a secret of his fantasy, though, about how he would become an idol worshipped by the public but hating himself provately, about to afford to go anywhere but unable to do so because of his anxiety but he justifies this fate because everyone hurts him first so he doesn’t care who he hurts on his vision of upward social trajectory. What happens with the Grinch’s plan? Watch to the end. The production on these videos from Dax has always been well executed and too real even when over the top and his vocal delivery is so fluid and energetic it sustains the narrative through some major verbal gyrations in the story. There’s nothing much like it. Watch the video on YouTube and connect with Dax at the links below.

Dax on Instagram

Dax on YouTube

“La nuit renait toujours” by Ce qui nous traverse is cinematic post-rock to ease the tensions of a tumultuous year

The video treatment that Guillaume Vallée & Larissa Corriveau brought to the impressionistic ambient and musique concrète composition “La nuit renait tourjours” (trans. “The Night Is Always Reborn”) by Montreal-based musical ensemble Ce qui nous traverse takes us through an arc from sunrise to nightfall. Drawn out guitar drones, long-bowed notes on strings, the samples of early morning bird song and accented percussion soundtrack what looks like a road trip throughout a day, mountainous bluffs in the distance, fields at hand out the window, filmed on Super 8 or 16 millimeter. It’s reminiscent of what a Stan Brakhage vacation film might look like with the layered, processed and treated images with the glitches, textures and decayed and damaged bits of film left in. The action of the song sneaks up on you and takes you along for an emotional ride through moments of afternoon reverie and on into a tranquil yet dramatic sunset with the instrumentation reprising for a whirling of elements into a a climax of activity before a fadeout with resonating keyboards. Cinematic post-rock to ease the tensions of a tumultuous year. Watch the video for “La nuit renait toujours” on YouTube, listen to the new album Le sacre de Sainte-Barbe on Bandcamp and connect with Ce qui nous traverse at the links below.

cequinoustraverse.ca

Ce qui nous traverse on Facebook

Ce qui nous traverse on Instagram

Desert Liminal Uses a Beautifully Hazy Sound to Encourage us to Dream Better For Ourselves on “Flicker Screen”

Desert Liminal, photo courtesy the artists

“Flicker Screen,” the latest single from Desert Liminal’s 2021 album Glass Fate, comes on like a parallel universe version of Chromatics: Lush, warm vocals, ghostly atmospherics and strong melodic lines on the piano paired with assertive yet finely accented percussion. It’s a song whose emotional flavor is nostalgic because it’s about memory, identity, our cognitive orientation and aspirations. The flicker screen of the title invokes the mechanics of cinema and how those mediated and highly processed images can embed themselves in your imagination though as your own interpretation of events and when you impose that type of understanding and interpretation on living people who don’t live episodically within neat frame lines and according to a script with a narrative through line or according to a cohesive aesthetic to suit anyone’s tastes. Yet the song isn’t a stripping back of a romanticized view of the world. It does employ hazy layers of atmosphere and an introspective vocal delivery but its yearning for something better and more organic and thus more unpredictable and un-controlling in which everyone involved can be who they are authentically. Listen to “Flicker Screen” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of Glass Fate and follow the band at the links provided.

Desert Liminal on Facebook

Desert Liminal on Instagram

Desert Liminal on YouTube