SubmitHub – Page 208 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Molly Bealand Beautifully Conveys a Sense of Trepidation and Trust on “There Lies My Love”

MollyBealand3_crop — Molly Bealand, photo courtesy the artist

Listening to “There Lies My Love” by Molly Beanland conjures visions of the singer walking through an environment of glowing white walls and staircases made of clouds and sunlight. There is a cool quality to her voice but a warm tone to the song and her drawn out notes sound like she’s singing out into a void to reach someone she knows has to be out there but is out of sight. The interplay of vocal styles and tones suggest a versatility mirrored by DJ Distance’s rich production with voice, synth and rhythm working synergistically to accent and buoy each other in transporting the listener to an elevated realm of emotion even though we discover the song has a twinge of melancholy in taking a risk at opening the soft insides of your heart to another. An obvious touchstone to this track would be late 80s and early 90s Cocteau Twins but also the similarly affecting and deeply atmospheric music of Them Are Us Too and Kennedy Ashlyn’s solo work as SRSQ. Listen to “There Lies My Love” on Soundcloud where you can follow Molly Bealand’s worth further including her 2019 EP In the Blue Forever.

soundcloud.com/mollybeanland

With Unconventional, Minimal Elements GINERVA’s Touching “Burning” is a Rare Love Song Without the Melodrama

GINERVA1_sm — GINERVA, photo courtesy the artist

GINERVA’s “Burning” single sounds like waking from a nap with the percolating, minimalist beat. Her vocals shift fluidly from warm and present to the ethereal and contemplative. The sound of scratched strings provide are an interesting unconventionally percussive counterpoint to the minimal guitar work. The saxophone strides into the mix later in the song like the sound of the sun setting into twilight at the end of peaceful, easy day spending time with your love. There’s in an element of sound design to the way the music is composed and it is at times reminiscent of Yann Tiersen’s soundtrack work in its bright tones and upward sweeping progressions. The affection emanating from the song is palpable without seeming cloying because GINERVA strikes the perfect balance of romance with atmosphere. The song sounds like GINERVA is looking forward to the future rather than mourning that the day has to be over and it elevates the tone of the song to a sweet place in the brain. Listen to “Burning” on Soundcloud and follow the songwriter at the links below.

soundcloud.com/ginevra-2
facebook.com/ginevralumusic
instagram.com/ginevralumusic

Hannah Connelly’s Heartbreaking New Single “From Where You Are” Is a Poignant Journey From Denial to Acceptance of the Passing of a Loved One

HannahConnolly2_crop — Hannah Connolly “From Where You Are,” image courtesy the artist

Textural guitar strumming and ghosts of pedal steel frame Hannah Connolly’s finely expressive vocals on the tender, gentle yet heartbreaking new single “From Where You Are” The song is about the loss of her brother and her words tell of the confusion and simple denial of the truth before her. The wishful thinking in the way many of us need as a cushion between our psyches and the death of a loved one with the necessary self-deceptions and refusal to believe as expressed in the line “Maybe when I wake, this will all be over.” But even when you know how many of us find the truth unacceptable until it is impossible to believe otherwise. Connolly relates taking the flight to the services and describes well those emotions mixing in our heads whether we fly out or travel across town, “Window seat 10,000 stories high and I’m too tired to hide the tears in my eyes.” The reality is starting to hit and still Connelly sings “Doesn’t quite feel real, maybe I’m just dreaming but I’m not asleep.” But in the end it is cruel to ourselves and others to deny the passing of our loved ones because it puts off feeling that deep hurt that may strike us at times for the rest of our lives and in accepting the mortality of those closest to us, Connolly gives us a poignant image of how much the acceptance can pain us as well when she sings “Useless wishes falling through the dark.” In the end the elegant and luminous treatment of the subject hints that even if we take the hurt of the loss inside and feel it so poignantly there is a hope of processing the grief even if we will miss that person forever. Listen to “From Where You Are” on Soundcloud and look out for Connolly’s debut album due for release in late 2019.

Valerie Warntz’s “4 AM” is an Orchestral Evocation of Mixed Emotions Cast Into the Night

ValerieWarntz1_crop — Valerie Warntz, photo courtesy the artist

“It’s 4 AM, the windows are open wide,” Valerie Warntz sings at the top of the chorus of the song “4 AM” sounding like she’s been there before, up too late contemplating looking back on the night, back on her life wondering how she got here and why she keeps doing this to herself. One imagines her looking out into the pre-dawn night when anyone normal that doesn’t have an overnight job or crawling back from a shift in the service industry is already asleep after a long night. The accented piano line, the pulses of electronic bass and Warntz’s voice interact like a miniature orchestra giving voice to that moment in your life when maybe you feel confused about a relationship and where it’s going or where it went wrong with someone part of you doesn’t want to live without but another part of you know is causing you the kind of emotional distress to be up late but not sure if that means the feelings are deep or if those deep feelings are a sort of rationalization of the repeated pain you experience in your connection with that person. Except that the song sounds like the aftermath of the initial inner turmoil and you’re just contemplating what to do from here and if it’s all worth salvaging but knowing, as much as you don’t want to admit it to yourself, despite the comforts you’ve enjoyed, that it’s over. The song is part of Warntz’s album Revelation due for release later in 2019 but for now you can listen on Soundcloud and follow Valerie Warntz at the links below.

soundcloud.com/valeriewarntz
youtube.com/channel/UCI_n4C_0SZKdheL7I_BTJig
twitter.com/ValerieWarntz
instagram.com/warntz

“Move” by Blush FM is the Sound of Someone Who Has Long Cast Off the Emotional Grip of Someone Bad For Them

BlushFM1_crop — Blush FM, photo courtesy the artist

The hushed piano and vocals of Blush FM’s “Move” at times reminds one of an inverted version of Wham!’s “Everything She Wants” with some choice reverse delay on the keyboards. Synths wail in slow motion swirl around the vocals like sonic fog. Although it’s essentially a song declaring a casting off of unrealistic and draining expectations in a relationship there is a sultry tone to the melody as if written from a time in the future when the poignant ache of the moment is a memory being mulled over and processed in the hindsight of life experience and having the emotional vocabulary to put things in their proper context. The song feels intimate and present but the immediacy of the split has the aforementioned quality of discussing the photograph of an old love whose memory conjures those feelings all over again but without the ability to send you into a dark place, merely a melancholic frame of mind. When Blush FM sings “I can’t do what you want me to do, I don’t know how to move that way” and “Can I mention that I’ve put in all of my time” it sounds both romantic and weary, an interesting quality in a pop song where declarations of forever love or soul searing pain are the tropes. This song is for people who can still feel but aren’t in the grip of influence of someone bad for them. Listen to “Move” on Soundcloud.

Blood Child Bursts Restrictive Cultural Mores On the Noisy and Rebellious “Psycho”

BloodChild2_sm — Blood Child, photo courtesy the artists

Blood Child balances raw noise, introspective melody and splintered rhythms on “Psycho,” the lead single from its new EP Shower Me. The EP is apparently about living in a culture where concepts of success are narrow defined and conformity to behaviors and mentalities that channel your efforts into attaining that success are expected. There’s no room for making the types of mistakes everyone, as a living human, makes going through life or for ways of being that are well within the range of acceptable, understandable and, yes, normal, outside the range of social expectations and what might be considered “respectable.” In the band’s native Denmark that might look slightly different than it would in the USA or China but the same sorts of forces that cause psychological and thus social friction by forcing people through social pressure or even laws that benefit mostly a moneyed interest and for certain ways of resisting that coercion to be considered anti-social or “psycho.” This song embraces that resistance to arbitrary social mores and norms by not only using the word “psycho” as a kind of refrain against conformity but in crafting a song that bursts outside strictly conventional notions of structure and melody while emerging as accessible and anthemic. Listen to the song and the rest of the Shower Me EP on Spotify and follow Blood Child on Facebook.

facebook.com/bloodchildmusic

Christopher Tignor Articulates the Anxiety and Concern of the Modern Era on “The Resonance Canons”

ChristopherTignor1_sm — Christopher Tignor, photo courtesy the artist

“The Resonance Canons” by Christopher Tignor sounds like something that might have come out on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label in the 90s. It is tightly composed but feels spontaneous. The track is over eleven minutes long but because its sounds and dynamics are organic driven by Tignor’s prepared piano and violin, and his tasteful use of electronics, it feels like you’re on a journey through a sacred space in your mind and plumbing psychological spaces you’ve neglected. The glittering melody halfway through the song is the sound of personal illumination after a passage through personal darkness. Music with similar emotional resonance can be brooding but this song sounds like some of the heaviness that weights on so many people right now with the state of culture, politics and the environment, a persistent concern mixed with hope. As the track progresses into its last chapter, spare textural melodies and low end swells accent a sense of uncertainty about the future even as chimes and the constant, beat loses its tonal quality into pure minimal percussion like a sense of acceptance of the pervasive sense of the pervasive tentative mood about our future potential as a species. Deeply emotional stuff from a guy who has been steeped in the worlds of avant-garde and modern classical music not to mention his job as a software engineer for Google but maybe that’s the background that helps in putting together a complex and moving piece such as this. The song is a part of the forthcoming album A Light Below due out on Western Vinyl on 10/11/19. You can listen to the track on Soundcloud and follow Christopher Tignor at the links below.

open.spotify.com/artist/4fHCEeChre5Ajrkk2ktKdG
twitter.com/tignortronics
facebook.com/ChristopherTignor
instagram.com/tignortronics

OGMH’s Anthemic “Red Sheets” Articulates the Sense That We’ve All Been Sold Down the River by Modern Capitalism and its Corrosive Culture

OGMH2_sm — OGMH, photo courtesy the artists

The melodic, high tone bass line and minimal electronic percussion at the beginning of “Red Sheets” by OGMH calms the mind as the vocals come in with a tone that expresses pain and confusion in a way that is both transporting and affecting. Who can’t relate to the line “happiness is a fraud” that has lived and been honest with themselves and experienced life’s low points at least once in awhile. The keyboards soar and sync up with the rhythm and impressionistic guitar riff to sweep away those dark thoughts as only music that is willing to go to that place can sometimes. Anthemic and urgent the song captures a yearning for something more meaningful and vital in a world where so many of us have been sequestered to a life more ordinary and diminishing returns for our efforts in a way that permeates all of life. “Don’t give me that look like I’ve been lazy,” doesn’t that about sum up the plight of people who have done what they were supposed to do or make a solid effort only to find out its never enough? The song is about the struggles of generation Y but it could apply to anyone who has realized that the international economic and political system as it is is aimed at grinding under the people that don’t matter, those that weren’t born to wealth but sold a lie about hard work and getting an education and what happiness looks like and how you’ll get there if you just line up behind an agenda that never serves your life the way we all assume it should. The track is the lead single from the band’s new album
Void and you can listen on Soundcloud and follow OGMH at the links below.

soundcloud.com/ogmh
open.spotify.com/artist/77Mf2B6N3udwXpUXS9bFHt
youtube.com/channel/UCmfzqF773MnsGEMXBgjrMfw
ogmh.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/realOGMH
instagram.com/o.g.m.h

YALI BLANK’s New Video and Single “Keep Me Sane” Powerfully Evoke the Personal Darkness of Being Stuck When It’s Time to Move on From a Failed Relationship

YALI_BLANK2_lg — YALI BLANK, photo courtesy the artist

YALI BLANK’s single “Keep Me Sane” is awash in dense low end that buoys the ethereal melody in a fascinating dynamic that also leaves the sonic space for the more delicate melodies and BLANK’s soulful vocals to shine through. The desolate tone of the lyrics and the yearning is evoked well by Cheap Vacation’s music video. It is there that we see YALI BLANK sitting alone in dark spaces, illuminated by a mysterious light that gives little distinct detail of the background except for the gear used to make the music, a fishbowl, a mouse running across equipment. The colors are reminiscent of a Nicolas Winding Refn film and as the plot plays out stones break mirrors and the psychological space of being trapped by someone’s hold on you by song’s end when keyboards are torched as well as other trappings of what perhaps defined the nature of the relationship. It’s dark stuff but the warping vocal treatments and the surreal quality of the video paired with a song about not being able to move on are fascinating contrasts. The single is part of YALI BLANK’s new EP Why Do Flowers Mean Love? due out October 2019. Watch the video on YouTube and follow YALI BLANK at the links below.

youtube.com/channel/UCYd8aAWcCNhuwWam_WwGSCQ
facebook.com/YALIofficialpage
instagram.com/yali.music

Liily’s Music Video for “Wash” is a Rampaging Monster Feature Worthy of the Song

Liily1_crop — Liily, photo courtesy the artists

The claymation video for Liily’s new single “Wash” begins with a figure standing in the foreground like an omniscient narrator describing the action unfolding in the valley below the Hollywood sign. The frantic pace of the song and urgency of the vocals give the scene a surreal quality as we see scenes of fast food drive-ups and car culture flexes, cyclops robots and monsters rampaging through the landscape growing from the aforementioned robot into something much larger as it feeds on the populace and anything else in its path. Our car racing heroes come to the rescue with shovels, a katana, a pistol and explosives. In the end we see the word “Wash” appear on the screen before the credits. Clearly the name of the song but perhaps a rascally nod to someone needing to clean the monster blood and guts off the Hollywood sign. Musically its noisy post-punk in the vein of Liars or HEALTH if they went through a hardcore and psychedelic garage rock phase and as bombastic and wonderfully rampaging as the music video. Watch for yourself on YouTube and follow Liily at the links below.

liilytheband.com
open.spotify.com/artist/2asx6eXv9qzj5rA0ESrdO3
youtube.com/channel/UCZt2HPLSGjnShUrXVPHWxmQ
twitter.com/Liilytheband
facebook.com/LiilyTheBand
instagram.com/liilytheband