SubmitHub – Page 24 – Queen City Sounds and Art

&Tilly and BlauDisS Weave a Downtempo Pop Song About Dreams Deferred on “right//left”

&Tilly and BlauDisS, photo courtesy the artists

&Tilly and BlauDisS team up again for “right//left.” A dreamlike, hazy background drone serves as almost an emotional canvas but one more reactive and dynamic upon which the vocals sing a tale of desolation and melancholic yearning set to a downtempo beat and minimal piano melody. The song was written from the perspective of the daughter of Sarah “Sally” Hemmings, Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved lover. The song seems to reveal a person who can see the future of echoes of the more radical rhetoric of the day, but words those living in the then present who write and speak them lack the will and power to see them realized in the literal phrasing. The line “Won’t get free/A hundred years/Fulfills these dreams” is poetic and quietly powerful in framing a deferred liberation and at least a slightly better world. In the music video we see our singer wandering sideways and backwards in lonely, tiled halls looking dejected and distressed. Is it a commentary on how in some ways in many places our own modern history of civil rights has taken some steps back in so many places and using imagining the hopes of someone who might never live to see the freedom that seems so obvious and logical as a lens through which to examine the present? Possibly but the song itself can be appreciated as a gorgeously immersive song that soothes the mind while not dismissing one’s concerns with performative bravado. Watch the video for “right//left” on YouTube and follow &Tilly at the links below.

Céline Dessberg’s Single “Selenge” Blends Traditional Mongolian Harp Sounds With Psychedelic R&B Jazz

Céline Dessberg masterful performance on the yatga (the traditional Mongolian harp) on “Selenge” perfectly lines up with the psychedelic R&B flavor of the rest of the track. The effect is a set of rhythms and melodies that transcend originating cultural context, Dessberg herself having French and Mongolian ancestry. Her performance on the instrumental as evidenced in the video takes an ancient instrument and translates it into the eclectic aesthetics of modern jazz without losing the old world appeal of the sounds. She seems to effortlessly orchestrate the song with an elegant composition like a web of tones and texture paired with visuals that show older images of Mongolian culture as the song is almost a reminder that the Mongols once held sway over an international empire that integrated cultural and artistic influences along with its more fearsome reputation—a complex legacy with rich traditions. Dessberg’s brings past and present together in a way that lingers with you and hits as timeless and not anchored to modern musical subgenre much less beholden to older musical forms. Watch the video for “Selenge” on YouTube and follow Dessberg at the links below. The song is out now as a limited 7” vinyl out via That’s Love Records as well as digital download and on streaming platforms.

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Céline Dessberg on Bandcamp

Lucy Liyou Speaks to the Broken Heart Processing a Love Not Fully Reciprocated on Ambient Pop Single “Arrested”

Lucy Liyou’s vocals have an ever so slight quaver with the strength of feeling on the single “Arrested.” Her vocals are forward in the mix with a harmonic wash of ambient tone swirling gently in the background with a touch of minimal piano work to provide a glimmer of melody and impressionistic rhythm. Liyou navigates through the low end drones and distorted white noise waves as almost a musical metaphor for the complex emotions depicted in Liyou’s lyrics of yearning for the kind of love and acceptance everyone wants but doesn’t always get and not necessarily wanting to feel that way even after you’ve come to accept the situation for what it is. Sometimes that reality strikes you and you will feel the well of emotions all over again in a different way than perhaps the initial agony. Liyou began writing the music for this album when she was in college and over half a decade later those feelings feel more fully and creatively articulated while honoring the pain that inspired the songwriting and how that experience can echo again in other situations in your life. Certainly a queer or trans kid can experience that kind of psychological disruption but anyone that has had dysfunctional parents or those that seem incapable of extending the normal, parental emotional support will resonate with what Liyou has expressed in this song. And let’s face it, that’s entirely too much of not just America but the world and you see it in music, literature and art worldwide. Lucy Liyou just gave it a gentle elegance of form in “Arrested” with a beautifully ethereal video directed by Park Seung Won. Watch that video on YouTube and follow Lucy Liyou at the links provided. Liyou’s new album Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name is out March 21, 2025 via Orange Milk on limited edition vinyl, digital download and streaming.

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Lucy Liyou on Instagram

Funeralcare Breaks Things Off With a Toxic Situation on Synth Pop Single “Marathon”

Funeralcare’s title track to Manchester band’s new Marathon EP (out January 24, 2025) is a curiously upbeat song considering the subject matter. The minimal guitar work, synth drones, the short vocal lines all syncopated finely like something you might have heard out of an early 80s New Wave band. But the production with the ambient synth backdrop and the unorthodox song structure speaks to a sensibility more modern like the members of the band are as much into electronic dance music as into pop and rock. It serves the theme of the song well of having someone in your life who is just a little too much, whose presence you’re realizing is a chore because of the unrealistic expectations and dealing with the aftermath of consistently poor life choices can get to be a real drag that you have to cut loose from that situation eventually if things don’t change. The song isn’t a celebration of finally having had enough to let go as an acceptance of such a need after really giving the relationship, whatever its nature (friendship, romantic, professional) a go. Listen to “Marathon” on Spotify and follow Funeralcare on Instagram.

Alex Wilcox’s Glitch Techno Single “Cut Me” Purges Nervous Energy With Its Furiously Infectious Beats

Alex Wilcox and Catnapp, image courtesy the artists

The frenetic pace and granular sonic detail of Alex Wilcox’s “Cut Me” can make one forget how finely edited the whole song is in the end. The title is almost meta in how the song hits like is a series of jump cuts with blips and streams of textural tone sipped in between the and over the anchoring pulse that one can feel and discern as a kind of ghost infrastructure of the song. It sounds like someone purging a lot of nervous energy by creating something that in the listening feels like you’re hearing the work of someone intimately connected with the workings of their own anxieties and no stranger to channeling that energy into something productive that is the perfect combination of precision and chaos. Interspersed we hear vocals by Catnapp that seem both weary and resigned caught up in the headlong pace of the song. Fans of solo Alice Glass and Machine Girl will appreciate the exuberant glitchcore sensibility of this single. Listen to “Cut Me” on Spotify and follow Alex Wilcox at the links below.

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Alex Wilcox on Instagram

snapir & Ænie’s Modular Synth Composition “2110: Ash Grey” Evokes a Sense of a Post-Civilization Future

snapir & Ænie, image courtesy the artists

The backdrop sound of white noise fog sets the stage for “2110: Ash Grey” the single from snapir & Ænie’s new album Egression (released February 26, 2025). As the track progresses droplets of electronic clicks, hovering tones, distorted flares of horn-like sounds and an almost improvisational rhythm that flows through, touches of disintegrating melody emerging from harmonic drones work together to create in the mind something like the music from a world as projected onto the future by 1960s and 1970s science fiction writers and filmmakers. But this one feels more alien and more dystopian in the way of Andrei Tarkovsky where that future isn’t so sparkling, epic or dramatic, but more low key where people explore the nature of their dreams and aspirations while being wary of achieving them because they’ve so long been accustomed to diminished expectations. There is a tension and a sense of wonder that bleeds through those internalized defenses against transcendence. This song has that kind of energy of existential examination and working one’s way through a murky future where the mysteries may turn out to be completely nothing you might have imagined. Taking shape with the composers’ collaboration utilizing a Serge Modular System synthesizer it’s an environmental ambient piece with real texture and a warped library music vibe that utilizes the uniquely haunting tones and possibilities of one of the classic 1970s synths with consistently fascinating results. Listen to “2110: Ash Grey” on Spotify and follow snapir & Ænie on Instagram.

Joan Arnau Pàmies’ Downtempo Techno Jazz Single “Esperança” is a Stirring Piece on Resistance Through Vulnerability

Joan Arnau Pàmies, photo by Iolanda Sebe

Catalonian composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Joan Arnau Pàmies is set to release his new album Guidelines/Fonaments on April 4, 2025 via his Protomaterial Records imprint. Lead single “Esperança” is a masterclass in layered, minimal rhythms, textures and tone. Moody and faintly luminous piano melody serves as an emotional context in which guest vocalist Martina Perpinyà’s introspective and expressive delivers lines about persevering against what seem like discouraging forces and in spite of one’s fatigue and malaise, in spite of one’s perceptions of what you thought you were struggling for and to accept changing circumstances without losing sight of what’s most important. It seems like a particularly poignant song in these times especially since the song isn’t premised on being tough. It is a quiet and downtempo piece like a bit of abstract acid jazz. But in taking that form it shows how the will to persevere can look and sound like grace and the embrace of one’s human limitations as a source of strength and resistance because it is attainable to just about everyone. Listen to “Esperança” on YouTube and follow Joan Arnau Pàmies at the links below.

pamies.info

Joan Arnau Pàmies on Instagram

Joan Arnau Pàmies on Bandcamp

Yspai Bit’s Sophisti-Post-Punk Single “Emptiness” is an Elegant Self-Persuasion to Breaking the Barriers of Traditional Culture

Yspai Bit imbues its song “Emptiness” with a yearning for a life with more vitality and meaning. Musically it’s a fusion of melancholic post-punk and synth pop in a style that resonates with later period Body of Light and The Blue Nile. The subtle flourishes that carry the song have an almost orchestral feel with the guitar dropping in lightly yet elegantly and both electronic drums and synths working in tandem with the rhythm of the lyrics. The activity of the city nightlife outside the narrator’s windows is depicted as chaotic yet alluring, seemingly perilous but offering a fulfillment to the yearning we hear in the song that itself the narrator knows is a narrative intended to keep him from violating some unwritten rule and transgressing past an outmoded system of morals and repressive traditional culture that presents itself as the only meaningful set of values and ethos. We hear in the song the narrator talking himself into crossing that line because in an unspoken way he knows what he’s been told is just manufactured tales and perspectives intended to keep people in their place. It’s not obviously a subversive song but sometimes subversion looks and sounds like something that is a conversation with self dissolving arbitrary and internalized notions of how the world and the self need to be. Listen to “Emptiness” on Spotify and follow Yspai Bit from Tatarstan, Russia at the links below. Lyrics in English provided below the links.

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Yspai Bit on Instagram

“Emptiness” lyrics in English

Simply because a friend has gone away.
I don’t want to live in the present moment,
Exchanging life for the emptiness of fleeting details.
The city outside the window roars with chaos,
Drenched in the vivid glow of its lights.

Chorus
Hands are yearning to break the glass,
This void has trapped me; it won’t pass.
To dive in sin, the city’s night,
And shed the shell that feels so trite.

Slung Kicks Out a Hefty Portion of the Turmoil of Family Trauma With the Infectious Fire of “Laughter”

Slung charges right into the opening moments of “Laughter” including a hearty yell from vocalist Katie Oldham. Initially it resonates with the same thrill as “Cherub Rock” by Smashing Pumpkins. But Oldham’s vocals switch seemingly effortlessly between breathy melodies and punk aggression with the band doing the same. And as the song progresses the guitar work veers off any 90s rock comparisons with a more ethereal atmospheric flair. In the music video the band is dressed up like they came out of some rock and soul review act of the 50s and 60s and demonstrating an exuberant joy in the music that’s as infectious as the song itself while indulging in what has to be described as a cake fight during the mid-song breakdown. But all the fun and hijnks makes the song’s message of finding a way to confront the reality of difficult relationships while juggling the fact that you may not get what you want or need out of them and find your own catharsis move on as best you can sometimes with a chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Writing an aggressive song with undeniable hooks is certainly one method that has worked for many and “Laughter” is an earworm. Watch the music video on YouTube and follow Slung at the links below. The group’s debut album In Ways will be released May 2, 2025 via Fat Dracula. A UK tour kicks off the same day as the album release.

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Slung on Instagram

Gen’s Moody, Ambient Techno Single “It’s Too Late” Is a Song About Being Gentle With Yourself In Letting Go of Bad Situations

The darkly hazy tone that swirls slowly in the background of Gen’s single “It’s Too Late” immediately establishes a dreamlike atmosphere. The minimal percussion in the foreground gently anchors the song as the vocals deliver words in clear tones an acknowledgment of how its past time to return to a person, a situation, a headspace that may have felt comfortable for awhile but one’s personal development and lived experience has revealed as no longer the place one wants to be or should be even if there are aspects of it that would offer the “normality” of familiarity. But sometimes you just know “There’s no going back” even if you’re tempted to and in the lines “It’s too late, Don’t cry” there is the reminder that sometimes even giving up things bad for us can hurt even if that’s a wasted emotion. The song feels like a stirring fusion of 90s downtempo and the more ambient end of deep house perfect for a late night techno set. Listen to “It’s Too Late” on Spotify and follow Gen at the links below.