SubmitHub – Page 30 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Alice Hebborn’s Ambient Modern Classical Piece “Saisons – Mouvement 6” is an Imaginative Voyage From Effervescent Spirits Into Meditative Quiescence

Belgian composer Alice Hebborn’s debut album Saisons is due out December 6 via Western Vinyl. The single “Saisons – Mouvement 6” is an immersive example of Hebborn’s gift for fusing tone, texture and rhythm as though sculpting it all out of an act of pure imagination trying to manifest a concept where the experience of each isn’t separated out as it might be in a more conventional musical mode. In that way Hebborn’s seemingly intuitive performance of the music is reminiscent of the work of Philip Glass and how his own best work seems to wed classical notions of tone and a more organic structure with rhythms drifting where the atmospheric emotional resonance guides it. In the case of this piece the piano, the electronics, the percussive sounds flow like a river and a journey along that river at once with dense sonics and atmospheres until the end where a calm spaciousness takes the place of layers of motion as though the energy of the earlier part of the song is finding its evening out of excitement into quiescence. Listen to “Saisons – Mouvement 6” on YouTube and follow Alice Hebborn at the links below.

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The Shimmering Spiral of The Album Leaf’s “Rotations” is an Emotional Journey to Tranquil Transcendence

The Album Leaf, photo courtesy the artist

The slow shimmering spiral of The Album Leaf’s “Rotations” sounds like what it feels like to look out the window flying over the Arctic circle and looking out the window at the frozen tranquility of the landscape below. It’s stark yet comforting from the relative safety of the airplane cabin. Then the song’s icy synths give way to more solid and direct tones that are vivid and rich yet smooth and resonant in a way that soothes at it stimulates your brain with its ascending melodies that build with subtly added brighter sounds that complement well and intertwine with the core rhythmic frequencies and textures until all glimmer into the distance. It’s a musical journey inward into more transcendent emotional spaces that leaves your brain at ease. Watch the visualizer on YouTube and follow The Album Leaf at the links below.

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The Album Leaf on Facebook

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The Album Leaf on Instagram

Stephen Caulfield’s New Age Ambient Song “Meltwater” Articulates the Wonder and Magic of the Transformation of Ice Into Liquid in Human Time

“Meltwater” from Stephen Caulfield’s new ambient EP Blue Vessels (available October 18, 2024) layers a glimmering foreground and low end background in the beginning. But this all dissolves a bit with abstract piano, minimal guitar and bass joining the synth in a free flowing and evolving drift as the harmonic composition shifts and swirls slowly. It is a musical embodiment of a time lapse view of ice transforming from solid into liquid and how it is both gradual and sudden and when being able to perceive it in more geologic time through the alchemy of a song written imagining this process magical and truly transformative. The shining melody emerging from the slow churn of elements strikes a gorgeous note as the song resolves into tranquility and the sound of droplets. Listen to “Meltwater” on Spotify and follow Stephen Caulfield at the links below.

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Stephen Caulfield on Twitter

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Stephen Caulfield on TikTok

Stephen Caulfield on Instagram

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Stephen Caulfield on YouTube

Bird’s Orchestral Dream Pop Single “The Tides” is an Immersive Masterwork of Cinematic Downtempo

Bird aka Janie Price wrote a short film called Wider Than the Sky for which she also composed the soundtrack. And this year the album for that soundtrack released including the single “The Tides.” Now a new radio edit mix of the song is available with its lushly orchestral sound preserved like an even more deeply atmospheric downtempo track. Price’s emotionally wide-ranging vocals are paired well with transporting string arrangements for an effect like a Michael Jarre score for a David Lean film. Most impressive, though, is how Price matches and complements the orchestral sounds in tone and emotional resonance for a musical synthesis not heard often enough in pop music. Listen to “The Tides” on Spotify and follow Bird at the links below.

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Bird on YouTube

Office Hours’ Clashing and Chaotic Noise Rock Single “No Quiero Votar” is a Raw Rejection of the Nihilism of Meaningless Choices

Office Hours, photo courtesy the artists

The clashing sounds, raw noise and chaos of “No Quiero Votar” by Office Hours gives way to wilder swings and jarring passages of guitar music with a hint of what might be described as atonal melody as the song rushes headlong to its conclusion. A fitting structure and arrangement for a song whose title in English means “I Don’t Want to Vote.” It sounds like a rejection of the illusion of choice when there are none that are particularly great in a political system geared toward giving the elites everything they want and the pandering pantomime of identity politics and fear mongering to an uneducated public that is largely apolitical but convinced of the validity of its opinions. The powers that be favor nihilism and de facto compliance from a citizenry that seems easily placated but for those that genuinely care about consequences and trying to live a life in a relatively sane and stable human community it just seems like a perverse and cynical set of choices so how to react initially except to maybe write a crazy song with a weary lyric expressing a simple denouncement of empty rhetoric. Listen to “No Quiero Votar” on Spotify and follow Office Hours at the links provided.

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Bad Flamingo’s Darkly Dreamy “The Devil Knows” is a Gritty and Shimmery Murder Ballad of a Love Gone Wrong

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo waxes slightly more folk on “The Devil Knows” with a touch of banjo and/or mandolin more prominently in the mix intermingling seamlessly with guitar. The kind of percussion established sounds like the kind of thing a performer will effect by knocking on their guitar and a tambourine on a foot. But there are some nice touches of production with a dramatic, swelling drone here and there and in the background as well as electric guitar shimmer and buzz. The themes are a new spin on a tale of personal darkness and struggling with self-redemption and the acceptance and even romanticizing of one’s lurid past and anti-social impulses. With this song we hear hints of actual skullduggery rather than merely misdeeds in the pursuit of fun or at the fantasy of violating the sixth commandment. Bad Flamingo’s songwriting and musicianship with the tactile quality of fretting the guitar lends the whole song a grounded quality so that it’s cinematic, dreamlike mood has an intimacy and immediacy that makes its story not sound so sinister. Listen to “The Devil Knows” on Spotify and follow Bad Flamingo at the links below.

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Running Man Gives Voice to Modern Existential Weariness and Anxiety in the Caustic Proto-punk Flavor of “One Wrong Move”

Current Dead Kennedys singer Skip Greer has a new project called Running Man and its single “One Wrong Move” sounds like that desperate and caustic early punk era of the mid-to-late 70s but with a Midwest vibe. The edgy guitar and melody immediately resonates with Dead Boys’ 1977 classic “Sonic Reducer.” But this song is about the current era of society and civilization on edge and seemingly about trying to hold it together with so much seemingly at stake in one’s personal life and as a species and the lines “One wrong move and it’s game over” and “It’s been going on far too long” sum up the unfortunate combination of existential weariness and anxiety that permeates the world today. Listen to “One Wrong Move” on Spotify and follow Running Man at the links below. The band’s self-titled debut released November 15, 2024 on vinyl including limited edition pink, CD, streaming and for digital download.

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Icarus Phoenix’s Indiepop Single “Homeostasis” is Like an Epigram About Maintaining a Balanced Psychological Orientation

Icarus Phoenix, photo courtesy the artists

“Homeostasis” by Icarus Phoenix sounds like a finely crafted indiepop song in a classic mode with some nice changes and lilting flute and chime to accent the paces. In its two minutes seven seconds the song is incredibly economical in its songwriting in creating an uplifting mood with lyrics that are like a Zen epigram reflecting the title but relating it to modern life and how the demands of modern life can tilt you off balance from maintaining an internal and healthy mental balance. The opening line “I don’t trust happiness it always fades. A way to exacerbate nostalgia parading” is truly poetic in expressing how our expectations as we’ve been conditioned by society and culture can take us out of the moment and to not live in it. The rest of the song builds upon this concept of eschewing desires and staying focused on what’s important like the creation of art because it comes from within rather than an imposed and conditioned desire that can never be fully satisfied. Maybe it’s a commentary on capitalist culture and its push to turn us into constant consumers part of a paradigm of consumption and expansion of control with no purpose but to perpetuate the same cycle like a cancer. The song seems to suggest that simply writing a solid pop song or other creative work is satisfying on its own without it needing to serve a drive to overpower anything because it has its inherent appeal and need not have a purely utilitarian value in an economic model. Whatever the song is aimed at saying it is perfectly enjoyable as an expertly executed pop song about more than just the usual tropes and those aren’t common enough. Listen to “Homeostasis” on Spotify and follow Icarus Phoenix at the links below.

Icarus Phoenix on Instagram

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Icarus Phoenix on YouTube

Joona Vainionkulma’s Downtempo Ambient Song “Moon Garden” is a Cinematic Swim Through Conflicted Feelings to a Satisfying Resolution

The clarity of tone that Joona Vainionkulma employs in the beginning of “Moon Garden” makes the most of a bubbling minimalist synth tone by suggesting something more exciting over the horizon. When the percussion kicks in and the strains of piano the composition takes on a cinematic aspect like something from a more hopeful Alex Garland film. It transitions from minimal synth to a lush orchestral sound that recalls the soundtrack work of both Giorgio Moroder and John Murphy for the pure evocative impact of the way the music swells and switches to a stark spaciousness on a dime without it seeming sudden. Like swimming in fast moving waters into a those more tranquil for precious moments then back into the stream. The song is at once melancholic and hopeful and leaves you with a sense of resolution. Listen to “Moon Garden” on YouTube and follow Joona Vainionkulma on Spotify.

“Carry On” Finds UK Dream Pop Duo CATBEAR in a More Darkwave Mode Reflecting on the Need to Sustain Ourselves Through Challenging Times

“Carry On” finds UK-based dream pop band CATBEAR in a more darkwave mode. The brooding bass line and icy synth establish a more somber mood and the vocals this time seem even more introspective. The lyrics seem to catalog all the things we’ve done to struggle through times and situations in life and in the world with no seeming end to a need to restart, retool, re-strategize, re-imagine ourselves, our situations and our ability to keep going on. Thus the title of the song. Sometimes it feels like you can only tell yourself that sort of thing to keep from falling completely into despair when challenges and setbacks just keep falling into your path and our collective journey as a species. But the glimmer of melody that flashes into the song hints at moments when something a little more than the usual breaks through what could be a gloomy present and the strong rhythms of the song like a fortifying internal momentum to hang onto. Listen to “Carry On” on Spotify and follow CATBEAR at the links below.