Queen City Sounds and Art

León Larregui’s “Chromocosmic Avenue” is the Tropical Psych Pop Techno Spy Thriller You Didn’t Know You Were Looking For

Zoé frontman León Larregui has been making a bit of a name for himself for his solo work for several years now. The single “Chromocosmic Avenue” and its attendant music video is about a near future scenario based in the world today where in most major cities it’s all but a surveillance state in public places and increasingly so. The female leads work on a way to break this state of things in secret and by the dark of night with their access to the infrastructure that makes the panopticon possible. It’s a bit fantastical and hopeful because of course the technocratic system will reassert itself unless checked by an accountable government responsive to a population demanding control of its individual liberties. But the song speaks to a desire pretty common among most normal people not to have their movements surveiled and subject to analysis daily and maybe, given current trends, sent to an AI or algorithm to impose consequences for not adhering to a narrow range of “acceptable” movements and behaviors with no nuance and just the inevitable rigid protocols. The song brings together the singer’s melodious vocals in a low key mode suitable for the late night and clandestine vibe of the song with tropical rhythms and a celebratory/subversive spirit in the use of horns and synths. It’s reminiscent of a song that might have been on the soundtrack to a 1980s techno thriller and because of that the song seems more immediately accessible than dire. After all a pop song built on doomerism doesn’t really work and Larregui brought that sensibility that he has honed for years to a song that is both fun and substantive. Watch the video for “Chromocosmic Avenue” on YouTube and follow León Larregui on Spotify.

Cult Experimental Indie Band Panchiko Returns With the Twee Collage Weirdo Electro Title Track to Its New Album “Failed at Math(s)”

Panchiko released its debut EP D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L to little fanfare in 2000 but over the next couple of decades it attained cult status with a 2020, expanded reissue. And now the Nottingham, England indie band has released its debut full length Failed at Math(s) (out May 5, 2023). The title track of the album has an eccentric music video of ants attempting to transport what looks like a potato chip with the name of the band imprinted on one side back to their colony. What made the band’s earlier music so appealing is present in the new music too: a sense of hearing something that sounds assembled from the cast offs of an decayed civilization. Meaning it sounds part standard rock and pop band songwriting but with elements of collage and sampling in the composition whether that’s the precise process or otherwise. “Failed at Math(s)” and other tracks on the new record sound like a product of experimental electronic rock and turntablism. The title song is playful number that could be on a modern hyper pop record inspired by anime and video game music. The vocals get broken up and processed some to give it a beautiful quality of imperfection like a phone call where neither person is getting particularly good reception but the conversation is quality and you don’t want to hang up in case the reception dies off completely. And that delicate, tentative sense with a twee and heartfelt melody like something from a near future of repurposed old technology gives the song a sense of something special from another time whether that’s the near past or the far future but crafted by people making the best of limited resources and time and putting the focus on the emotional resonance. Watch the video for “Failed at Math(s)” on YouTube and follow Panchiko at the links below.

Panchiko on TikTok

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Blue Lupin’s Dream Pop Single “Sleep On It” Journeys From Contemplation to Conviction

The aptly titled “Sleep On It” by Blue Lupin sounds in the beginning like waking up and sleepily taking a journey. The mists of synth melody, the spiderwebs of guitar glimmer, the understated percussion and Joanna Wolfe’s dulcet vocals ease through an impressionistic song that ramps slowly up to a more forceful conclusion like the sentiments of the vocals contemplating what’s ahead resolving into more defined emotional convictions. In the video Wolfe gets on a train and walks through a fog enshrouded city in what looks like the early morning, taking in the quietness of an urban landacape before the business day has begun and stepping forward into a brightening day. It’s a perfect pairing of image and sound and a solid launch of Blue Lupin’s debut EP Satellite People which released on March 17, 2023. Watch the video for “Sleep On It” on YouTube and follow Blue Lupin at the links below.

Blue Lupin on TikTok

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Chopper’s Darkly Romantic Video for “Springtime” is Like Night Drive Adventure Film Directed by Gregg Araki

The video for “Springtime” by Chopper looks like it could have come out of the same time period as the first handful of Gregg Araki’s films and captured on an old, high quality VHS tape. Musically it’s like a more darkwave My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult song or something by Alien Sex Fiend. But more melodic, more glam rock, but with the same gloriously lurid aesthetic. The song has a lush quality that boils up and flares out dramatically that suits the sights and sense of adventure in the song with its blossoming flowers, fire, fireworks and night drive visuals and the darkly passionate and romantic sentiments of the lyrics. It’s the kind of song one hopes to hear at Goth nights around the world because it fits right in with the modern incarnation of that sort of thing without being defined by it. “Springtime” is the first single in Chopper’s forthcoming mini-album Shock Pop Vol. 1 which should release later in 2023. But for now you can watch the music video on YouTube and follow Chopper at the links below.

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Bad Flamingo’s “Keep Off of You” is a Late Night Honky Tonk Mantra Against Your Habits of Attraction to Someone Bad For You

Bad Flamingo, photo courtesy the artists

Bad Flamingo strips its sound back even further back than it has for a whole on “Keep Off of You.” The spare acoustic guitar, perhaps banjo, with some touch of fuzzy electric guitar and a hint of synth accented by the barest percussion has rarely sounded quite this minimal. And the vocals are not a whisper but certainly like the voice in your head as you’re writing something in a journal when you’re feeling foolish for letting yourself be duped again by someone for whom you have given into your weakness to indulge some time that ended up being a hurtful waste of your minutes and hours. The lyrics are like a set of honky tonk mantras against giving in to your impulses and instincts to the kind of animal appeal and attraction to someone that’s bad for you and in just over three minutes of these reminders you hope that our narrator is finally able to get that fool out of her system. Listen to “Keep Off of You” on Spotify and follow the great country/folk/weirdness of Bad Flamingo at the links provided.

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Mirabelle Skipworth’s Cosmic Folk Song “Good Morning” is a Gentle Embodiment of Working Through Inner Emotional and Spiritual Conflict

Mirabelle Skipworth, photo courtesy the artist

Mirabelle Skipworth’s elegant guitar work on “Good Morning” follows an unconventional melodic and rhythmic path throughout the song. When her vocals come in to provide a more explicit narrative framework of melancholic and spiritual unrest we are guided through the labyrinth of emotions with music that has an immediacy and intimacy in its intricacies.. In the background a low key drone swells while Skipworth beckons for relief from a deep and unsettling uncertainty that torments her in the early hours when there is time and quiet to contemplate and perhaps untangle this knot of emotion before the activity of daytime demands one’s focus. In moments the yearning and ache Skipworth expresses is reminiscent of some of the emotional resonances one hears in a Joanna Newsom song and though there is more than a strand of the ethereal and ghostly here too its folk stylings are mixed with more than a touch of country. Listen to “Good Morning” on Spotify and follow Mirabelle Skipworth at the links below. Her new EP This Morning’s Malaise released on March 17, 2023 and is available through Spotify as well.

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Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E42: Arts Fishing Club

Arts Fishing Club, photo courtesy the artists

Arts Fishing Club is an indie rock band from Nashville that formed in 2016. Singer/guitarist Christopher Kessenich grew up seeing live music with his father and older brothers witnessing a mix of alternative music, classic rock and jam bands all of which fed into his own eclectic songwriting. The band’s debut album Rothko Sky (due out June 16, 2023) is arranged as a kind of personal journey of a person who in the first half of the record sets out in life idealistic and open to everything only to find out that all of us have limitations both human and of our own unique psychology. On the album’s second half there is a reflection on the nature and impact of love, sex and pain and how that can shape who we are once the shine and novelty of new experiences evolves into appreciating the breadth and depth of life. The songs have a bluesy grit and an often impassioned delivery informed by the flow of its narrative element for a record that sounds like it had to be made by a band a few releases into its career once it has figured out who it is and what it wants to say with intention but with the exuberance of a new band intact.

The group is now on its first larger national tour with a stop in Denver at Globe Hall on May 23, 2023 and we had a chance to speak with Kessenich about hits roots as an artist and the rich tapestry of creative elements that went into the make-up of Rothko Sky. Listen to our interview on Bandcamp and follow Arts Fishing Club at artsfishingclub.com.

Pynch Pulls the Mask of the Myth of Meritocracy Off With Elegant Sarcasm on Art Pop Single “London”

That “London” by Pynch sounds so low key celebratory yet has lyrics that are so poetically acerbic makes the song hit deeper. Its rich low end of which its playful melodies and measured rhythms bounce and pulse is enveloping and inviting and in moments one is reminded of the vibe of Pulp’s “Common People” and how that song in its time commented so sagely on class and culture. “We waste our money all on drugs and coffee/We must be so lazy, why don’t we start saving?/Every penny counts if we wanna buy a house/Twenty years from now, the banks will bail us out.” Those words and how the face value meaning of them minus the sarcasm cut through all the excuses, nonsense and corrosive mythology of late capitalism more clearly than some overlong manifesto thick on theory divorced from anyone’s lived experience. “Have you ever dreamed of owning your own home? That’s just a bourgeois fantasy, better leave that shit alone/Welcome to the real world, you’re not the only one that’s scared/Spo try and find some peace of mind if you can.” That kind of gaslighting every working class or even middle class person has heard their whole lives. Pynch seem keenly aware of how now even the middle class is finding its own formerly comfortable economic position seems precarious but of course it’s your fault when the system itself isn’t work and the bulk of the windfall of productivity is funneled into fewer and fewer hands. It’s a gorgeous indictment of a world out of balance and while it doesn’t offer a solution because certainly an actual solution will require great political will that hasn’t quite coalesced into an overwhelming movement just yet it’s a song of solidarity and an expression of not buying into the bullshit we’re expected to take on without question. Watch the video for “London” on YouTube and follow the UK band Pynch at the links below. The group’s new album Howling At A Concret Moon released on April 14, 2023.

Dax Prophesies his Coming Transformation in the Science Fiction-Themed Music Video for “Quiet Storm”

The video for Dax’s remix of “Quiet Storm” begins with a simple question: “Do you believe aliens exist?” Then Dax as an alien not unlike Louis Gossett Jr. in Enemy Mine invades the bridge of a starship and the crew subdues him temporarily and throw him into the brig and analyze him and what makes him work and try to dissect his capabilities. But this all reflects his rapid fire stream of consciousness lyrics that catalog a litany of issues and complaints commenting on the state of the world, some of which sounds like a fantastical conspiracy theory fantasy mixed in with some time traveling cultural references so that it all fits in with the forceful rhyme scheme. It’s the sound of someone on the verge of something with a brain boiling over with anxiety and desperation to direct that energy into something authentic and impactful and in that state sometimes the ideas come to you dense and in rapid succession. Dax captures that moment in the song and pairs it with a melancholic beat and the contrast as usual, with the always creative imagery, is what gives the song its emotional resonance. Watch the video for “Quiet Storm” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links provided.

Dax on TikTok

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Eleanor Hammond Reminds Us to Strive for Real World Everyday Satisfaction Over the Fleeting Rewards of Living Online on the Soulful Synthpop Song “Dream Chaser”

Eleanor Hammond’s luminously melancholic “Dream Chaser” floats on an ambient melody and anchored by processional beats. It sounds like a 1980s synth pop ballad cast in modern production methods and gently echoing percussion like ideas and words fluttering off into the ether of fading aspirations as Hammond utters the lyrics. It’s a song about not getting lost in the dubious achievements of social media and how the roller coaster of emotions involved can warp your psyche and your goals and define them according to the whims of wherever the algorithms are being tweaked during any given time to meet the demands of marketing and monetization metrics and the ever mutating nature of the flows of engagement. Hammond in her yearning voice encourages herself and anyone listening to trust not in the whims of others as dictated by the demands of a corporation and its complete lack of truly personal regard for you as a human and focus on the tangible and genuine immediacy and intimacy rather than its unsatisfying virtual attempt to simulate the same. Listen to “Dream Chaser” on Soundcloud and follow Hammond at the links below.