YUNGMORPHEUS’ Lush and Dusky “Playin’ the Same Game” is a Depiction of a Day in the Life of a Hustler in the Rap Game

YUNGMORPHEUS, photo courtesy the artist

YUNGMORPHEUS creates a distinctive mood on “Playin’ the Same Game” setting the scene with a narrative of a world of striving in the black market economy. The beat is like an after hours jazz vibe with what sounds like some choice Hammond B3 work in the background and detailed cymbal sounds. The vocals are almost hushed in relating tales of being a hustler who is producing joints for other artists and juggling other income streams and living the life of someone making music from an authentic place, trying to be an artist with integrity while seeing plenty of wannabes come and go with their image in place and people trying to undermine each other in the way that happens too often in a social scene where some people think they’re not succeeding unless they’re climbing successfully over someone else and at times denigrating and underplaying their skills and achievements. But in YUNGMORPHEUS’ voice he’s seen this all before and he’s maintaining and sustaining through the low times and those that may seem like things are going well when the entire time the carpet can be yanked from underneath you. Listen to “Playin’ the Same Game” on Spotify and follow YUNGMORPHEUS at the links provided.

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La Purp Demonstrates Futuristic Swag on the Futuristic Rap Single “Alien”

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The sound of a bell being struck introduces La Purp’s wonderfully braggadocious “Alien.” Not unlike Missy Elliott’s use of percussion in her 2001 hit “Get Ur Freak On,” it’s a signal for a passage into a futuristic musical space. La Purp uses low end pulses and a finely syncopated trap beat with subtle drones in her sound design as a backdrop to her self-portrait as someone who is perhaps high but not just on a substance of choice but on life and in life. When she raps “Up in space ships I am blasted” and elaborates on either side on the ways and provides the boastful evidence with a cool confidence worthy of a Kari Faux in its colorful facility of flow and language. Listen to “Alien” on YouTube and follow the rapper at the links below.

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Trust the Mask Celebrates a Night of Revelry and Passion on Synth Pop Song “Will You Come”

Trust the Mask, photo by Emmanuela Gasparella

Trust the Mask dispenses the at this point in pop music unnecessary intro and gets right into the thick of its brightly otherworldly synth pop on “Will You Come.” There is an immediate momentum and irresistible melody that carries you along for a ride in a song about a hazy morning after remembrance of a night of dancing and drunken, hazy partying that lead to an invite back to a spur of the moment lover’s home and no clear memories of the night events except for “a glass of wine” and “your lips so close to min” and an intention to leave early but being asked to stay and some discussion of not being a person that cheats, legs full of marks from all the revelry, missed calls, a missed alarm and a missing car. But there are no hints of regret in the song and its saturated tones and energetic pace has some resonance with a more synth-infused ABBA song by way of chillwave and the vocals akin to something you’d expect to hear in a Cocorosie song. But the song that really captivates your attention for the duration ends at the just the right, short run time. The sheer economy of songwriting is impressive and effective in its rapid and sustained dopamine hit of pop hooks and celebratory mood. Listen to “Will You Come” on Spotify and follow the Italian duo at the links below.

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Cheap Wedding’s Blazing Shoegaze Single “Skyscraper” is a Song About a Passionate But Doomed Romance

The image of blazing towers as structures built up to be impressive and housing important goods and information is central the Cheap Weddings’ “Skyscrapers.” The song seems to be about a love affair, a relationship, that isn’t good for either person. There are lines that seem to be about a fear of losing oneself in each other and how each person despite the attraction threaten each other’s very foundations rendering each other fragile and vulnerable but instead of that being a wonderful development that is conducive to true closeness and intimacy it’s corrosive and leads to moments of insecurity and pain. Without explicitly saying so the song suggests that some attractions are better left with some distance intact and go no further. The discordant synth, and angular rhythms of the song with the ethereally melodic vocals perfectly expresses this dynamic in that there is something beautiful in that tragedy and perhaps an irony in what might be two people who are too much alike for things to really work out the way they might have hoped. With contributions from Earl Harvin (touring member of Tindersticks), Ori Alboher of ORI and TJ Allen (who has done production work for Portishead and Bat For Lashes) one might expect something more downtempo or in the vein of trip-hop but this song is a short burst of noisy shoegaze glory. Listen to “Skyscrapers” on Spotify and follow Cheap Wedding at the links provided.

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Shadow Creek in the Music and the Video for the Song “Suburbs” Manifests the Surreal Unease of the Soporific Sameness of the Hinterlands

The video and the song “Suburbs” by Shadow Creek are perfect companions in capturing the surreal blandness of suburbs. Yet how hypnotic and meditative so many of them can be because the builders for many are the same company nationwide and the designs of houses so similar for blocks and blocks in large spaces. In the song there’s a lyrics about watching the sky because it offers the most variety while itself composed of familiar elements just like the seasons mentioned in the song as well. The music is a steady electronic beat with a warping inconsistent flow and haunting vocals. One gets the sense of shifting in and out of reality and a sense of being trapped in a soporific existence of repetitive, almost ritualistic existence. The line “Life goes by in the suburbs” certainly describes American suburbs from the mid-to-late 70s when a certain variety started to spring up seemingly everywhere and even through to today despite how fractured the economy has become and how city living has been transformed by a particularly insidious form of gentrification that has had a suburbanization effect in the city with suburbs existing as they always have like bedroom communities with their own universe of infrastructure for living and growing up with little real culture germinating in any of them. Shadow Creek hails from in and around Houston, one of the most geographically expansive cities in America and thus its own suburbs must simply sprawl in a way that seems like a supernatural dystopian movie. But anyone that lives in a city with robust suburbs and has grown up in them recognizes the feel Shadow Creek has created with the song that’s as much music as it is sound design to experience. You feel like you can get lost in the song like one of the labyrinthine subdivisions designed more for efficiency of land use than utility and that’s the point, while it is vaguely soothing there is an undertone of unease that gives the song an appealing edge in acknowledging that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the suburbs but there is something unsatisfying to them and be their very nature incomplete in serving the the full cultural and social needs of everyone. Fans of Indian Jewelry/Studded Left and GOWNS will find something resonant here. Watch the video for “Suburbs” on YouTube and follow Shadow Creek on Spotify.

Mokhov’s Melodic Ambient Song “Treasure the Good Times” is an Inducement to a Good Mood and Lightness of Spirit

“Treasure the Good Times” may well be the signature track to Mokhov’s album For Monkey (released March 7, 2023) which was dedicated to his dog Monkey who passed away on Monday, 19 December 2022 from a brain tumor at 6 and a half years old. The song is an effervescent, upbeat song of saturated synth melodies with bright tones and syncopated beats with white noise textures coursing through like a breeze on a sunny day. It’s a song that invites a good mood and a lightness of spirit that comes from good memories and a sense of tranquility. Fans of Boards of Canada’s more playful moments and Tycho circa Past is Prologue or Dive will appreciate what Mokhov has going on here. Listen to “Treasure the Good Times” on YouTube and follow Mokhov at the links below.

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The Stark Minimalism of Torre di Fine’s Post-Rock Mood Piece “Kenopsia” is a Musical Embodiment of Urban Decay

Torre di Fine, photo courtesy the artists

The enigmatic, melodic bass at the beginning of “Kenopsia” by Torre di Fine creates an expectation of stark moodiness ahead. And the song delivers on that early promise as the vocals come in a near whisper while a background drone suggests an overhanging menace. Then a second voice, one that sounds more feminine, joins the first voice and then becomes the lead near the halfway point and adding another layer of emotional resonance that truly embodies the meaning of the title of the song which refers to, according to Collins Dictionary online, “the eerie atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but now abandoned.” And the song does sound like the kind of music that would be appropriate to an environment of urban decay and neglect. Like a song inspired by ruins and more recently observing the world during the period of lockdown for various countries including the band’s home country of Italy. Fans of brooding, stark minimalism the likes of which one might hear on a The For Carnation record or one of Codeine’s more stripped down moments will find something to appreciate about this song’s near skeletal composition. Listen to “Kenopsia” on YouTube and follow Italy’s Torre di Fine on Spotify.

The First Eloi Expertly Fuse Noisy Post-Punk and Soaring Shoegaze Spaciousness on “Neverland”

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The First Eloi’s latest single “Neverland” from its forthcoming, debut full length continues its fusion of noisy post-punk and shoegaze spaciousness. There is a momentum to the song in which the warmly ethereal vocals seem to dance about in the mix like a figure in a gritty, luminous fog buoyed by sustained low end rumble. In that haze is a spindly melodic guitar figure that seems to hold the tune together before it concludes with a shudder like a door closing on a secret realm as suggested by the song title and the song’s references to Tinkerbell and days seeming to stretch on longer than they would in normal life. Maybe this is a song about hanging with Peter Pan and crew but perhaps more a metaphor of making a life that feels like it is elevated and magical and imbued with a significance that isn’t there when mundane concerns dominate. Given the name of the band is a reference to H.G. Wells’ 1895 classic novel The Time Machine and its Utopian people the Eloi who lead an idyllic life with supported by a dark secret. Listen to “Neverland” on Spotify and follow The First Eloi at the links below.

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Isadora Eden Makes It Okay to Not Be Okay With Lingering Trauma on Dark Dream Pop Single “Haunted”

Isadora Eden, photo by Sierra Voss

If the lyrics to “Haunted” can be taken even remotely at face value, Isadora Eden has transmuted a great deal of pain and anguish into a beautifully resigned melancholy. The nuance and detail in the guitar work and the impressionistic bass lines elevate the dark mood of the song in which Eden sings about a lingering emotional pain at the hands of another person. The kind of hurt that might come from the kind of emotional abuse you can bury to make it through your days but which spring up unbidden at times with an intensity that can be challenging to set aside when it happens at odd and inconvenient times. Eden speaks to that resurgent rawness of feeling and how it can leave you feeling disoriented when you haven’t had a chance to properly process the trauma of it all. And of the frustration of not being past it and blaming oneself for not having worked your way through the experiences that haunt your emotional state already. Yet in writing these lyrics in this way Eden makes it okay to not be okay and to be willing to be patient with something like the human mind and how it’s not just some technological process that has a set time or parameters or easy fixes. Is the song dream pop? Sure if Chelsea Wolfe wrote dream pop. It Has that richness of mood and attention to detail in songcraft and production that sets it apart from any easy genre categorization which is a sign of the strength of the songwriting to be found elsewhere on Eden’s forthcoming full length Forget What Makes It Glow which drops in July with a release show on July 15, 2023 at The Marquis Theater with Pink Lady Monster and Rose Variety. Listen to “Haunted” on Spotify and follow Isadora Eden at the links below.

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Xinwenyue Shi’s “Hustler Wang, A Li Li” is a Beautifully Bittersweet Avant Pop Examination of Hometown Changes in China

Xinwenyue Shi, photo courtesy the artist

Xinwenyue Shi is an artist from Chengdu, China who released his latest album Bashu Renaissance Chapter Two on April 20, 2023. The album is truly like a tour through and a melancholic examination of the, per his bio, “fading heritage of his beloved Chinese hometown region, Bashu, by shining a light on its people’s stories. Shi weaves between Chinese and English lyrics and a hybrid of styles with a grace, creativity and fluidity that immediately hooks you in for a full listen. The lead single “Hustler Wang, A Li Li” and its animated video really give a vivid glimpse into Shi’s observations showing a China that is modern, cosmopolitan, evolving and rich with its own interface with cultural influences from elsewhere. Its vocals employ both a hip-hop style and later a more melodic pop expression and where it also shines is in the beats that shift and have a textural quality that seems to ground the music into its human story and the truly transporting synth/keyboard lines that set the mood in cinematic style with samples connecting the song with a larger arc of interconnected stories of people in a certain place at a certain time during a period of great change and flux. And yet Shi compellingly captures a wistfulness about these changes and a bittersweet sense of loss for what made where he’s from special and unique as forces that are changing the whole world have an ambivalent impact to a place he calls home. The song along and the music video are heartbreaking and remarkable and truly demand repeat listens as Shi is a genuine pop music innovator. Watch the video for “Hustler Wang, A Li Li” on YouTube and follow Xinwenyue Shi at the links provided.

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