Sons of Zöku Invite Us to Join Together to Build a Sustainable Future on the Psychedelic Tribal Folk Song “Earth Chant”

Sons of Zöku, photo courtesy the artists

The steady thrum of bass and tambourine strike alongside the harmonized vocals singing in tandem in mantra-like fashion sets the stage for a hypnotic, ritualistic mood from the beginning of “Earth Chant.” The song by Sons of Zöku weaves together the aforementioned instrumentation and minimalist drumming, colorful, fuzzy psychedelic guitar and meditative flute in a song that sounds so primal and tribal with a mystical orientation that looks forward to a unified human and spiritual future on a journey that connects the distant past with a future through a time when much of human civilization seems bent on self-destruction. The line “meet me on the other side if you will” may not refer to this path out of a long period of cultural derangement and may be a completely personal statement on one person’s experience in life but the communal energy of the song suggests otherwise and its gentle spirit invites the listener onto a parallel course in getting right with a sustainable time to come with the will to get there. Listen to “Earth Chant” on Spotify and follow the Australian band at the links below.

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Madlen Keys Brings Us on a Tour Through Phases of Emotional Darkness and Light on “Ubik”

Madlen Keys opens “Ubik” with a Siouxie-esque, murky tranquility before it all elevates into borderline cacophony to reflect the shift of emotions that runs through the song. The brooding opening of the music gives way to layered, discordant passages and back and forth like its charting the central conflict of the song between expressive self-assertion and melancholic introspection. It’s a song of contrasts of noisy and ethereal melodic, minor chord progressions and traditional song structure and tone. Named after a 1969 Philip K. Dick novel, “Ubik” is about mental illness and the confusing narratives it can run through the brain swinging one’s psychology from great activity to stasis and how it can feel and often is beyond the control of the sufferer. But most people deal with bouts of mental illness in periods of great stress and emotional challenge in their lives. “Ubik” feels like running that gauntlet of moods and working through it. Listen to “Ubik” on Spotify and follow Madlen Keys at the links below.

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NIGHTSISTER Taps Into the Aesthetics of Late 80s Public Access Music Video Programs in the Video for Coldwave/Post-punk Song “Hometown Wound”

NIGHTSISTER, photo courtesy the artists

Portland, Oregon’s NIGHTSISTER seem to have tapped into late 80s underground music video culture in its own cinematic treatment via Talon Media of “Hometown Wound.” It looks like a much more modern update of the collage of images and live performance videos one might have seen on more public access video programs for Wax Trax and affiliated industrial and Goth bands of the aforementioned era with the sense that maybe it was produced in an underground club or in the band’s warehouse or basement and there’s an undeniable appeal of such a low budget yet stylish approach. Could the singer be wearing an old Fearing t-shirt? Who can say but him but if so, nice touch. At any rate, the coldwave track has emotionally resonant yet distant sounding vocals and the kind of distorted and brooding, looping guitar work one might have expected to hear in a late 80s Sisters of Mercy song. But the dusky aesthetic and the moody melodies should appeal to fans of modern darkwave artists like She Past Away (which this band has covered), Haunt Me and French Police. Watch the video for “Hometown Wound” on YouTube and follow NIGHTSISTER at the links provided. NIGHTSISTER released its latest EP Send Angels Here EP on February 28, 2023 and now available on digital and limited edition cassette.

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Kisu Min Shine a Light on the Plight Struggling People Around the World on the Upbeat New Wave Track “Kurds”

Kisu Min, photo courtesy the artists

Kisu Min from Łódź, Poland mix an anthemic, introspective sound at the beginning of “Kurds.” But the song soon ramps up into an energetic modern equivalent to a mid-80s New Wave and post-punk sound. Think something like Big Country or O.M.D.. Fluttering synth, ethereal vocal melodies, crystalline guitar lines, buoyant rhythms all work together in a song about how Western powers, especially the USA, have basically abandoned the Kurds in various conflicts after pretending to be allies while seemingly casually neglecting the struggles of people in other regions of the world until there is some profit to be made but not on their behalf, but in the pursuit of economic interests. Of course economics mean zero without people but our species, especially those with power and wealth, seems to lack the ability to lean that basic fact and extrapolate from there. Kisu Min just put these kinds of ideas and the destructive fallout therefrom into a vibrant pop song that on the virtue of a catchy, bright melody alone could be on mainstream radio and playlists in the classic juxtaposition of lighthearted music with lyrics that don’t truck in vapid niceties. Watch the video for “Kurds” on YouTube and follow Kisu Min at the links below. The band’s album City of Revolution released on February 27, 2023.

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Laveda’s Gently Poignant “Troy Creeps” is a Simple Song About the Complex Maze of Human Relationships

Laveda, photo by Bryan Lasky

Laveda crafts the build of “Troy Creeps” expertly with the minimal guitar riffing and steady drum beat with electronic swirls in the background while the vocals carry the emotional weight of the song. It’s a song about complex feelings and the intricacies of social interactions and relationships with a real insight into how things can get messy when your heart has overlapping loyalties and burdened with uncertainties and all colored by past experiences that mean everyone comes to every situation with assumptions and emotional scars and trauma that can completely dictate every situation unless you take the time to talk them out some and not act on impulse. This simple song with its emotionally charged yet elegantly crafted melody does justice to that everyday reality that often goes overlooked and isn’t often the subject matter of pop songs that focus on love and life as something that is part of our minds with absolute clarity. It’s a realistic song about how we are and we we can extend that understanding to others if we approach each other with honesty and integrity. Watch the video for “Troy Creeps” on YouTube and follow Laveda at the links below. Laveda’s new album A Place You Grew Up In released on April 14, 2023 on digital, vinyl, cassette and CD and all can be purchased through the Bandcamp link.

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Rat Champion’s Gorgeously Crushing “Face” is a Deeply Bittersweet Shoegaze Catharsis of Painful Memories

Rat Champion, photo courtesy the artists

Rat Champion’s use of small details in the guitar riffs like the bends and single note accents really lends the song “Face” from its new EP Flux (released March 18, 2023) a subtle and powerful poignancy in addition to the song’s already enveloping emotional vibrancy. The clipped, doom-like guitar riff paired with truly captivating vocal harmonies and burnished and flowing swells of guitar and percussion brings to the song a touch of grit to help frame a song that is so deeply bittersweet in its evocation of heartbreak and what sounds like painful and haunting memories of familial abuse. The fact that the song is so gorgeous in its atmospherics and its songwriting so expansive in tone makes its subject matter hit a little harder and makes the potential catharsis more thorough. Listen to “Face” on YouTube and follow Rat Champion from Boise, Idaho at the links below.

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Longboat’s “Midnight Drive” is a Neon Hazed Synth Pop Story of a Man With a Lurid and Murky Past

Longboat’s “Midnight Drive” is the narrative of someone who is trying to get some enjoyment out of life on a leisurely drive. The simple pleasure of it and the tranquility. The synth tones are saturated and percussive while carrying a melody and in its haze to a steady electronic beat and meditative vocals we hear suggestions of a past that might have some dark episodes but nothing so nefarious as rumors in our storyteller’s social circles speculate. The music video is a depiction of this journey with a ride through the desert at first before scenes from a city in an unspecified city in the world. It could be the USA, it could be somewhere in the UK, somewhere in Asia or Latin America or elsewhere. The footage has signifiers that don’t spell this out and that fits the song well as we don’t really find out the mystery our narrator hints at throughout the song. It’s like the musical equivalent of the plot of a long lost 1980s William Friedkin film or an early Michael Mann offering. And musically it sits somewhere between a Murray Head song and a modern vaporwave track and that bridging of times and aesthetics is what makes the song retain re-listening value. Watch the video for “Midnight Drive” on YouTube and follow Longboat on Instagram.

Noah and the Loners’ Righteous Fury on “Protest Anger” is a Rallying Cry We Need Now When the World Threatens to Fall Apart

Noah and the Loners, photo courtesy the band

Noah and the Loners seethe with a fury one might expect from a song called “Protest Anger.” It’s a punk song that combines a pointed energy and urgency that is part Killing Joke and part the raw power of an early era street punk band. But what the band does here with its surging rhythms and electrifying attitude is not just critique society with a sensitive and thoughtful if spirited set of words. Rather, Noah and the Loners dispense with the niceties and cut to the core with the kind of direct sentiments that feels exciting regardless of whether you’re a member of Gen Z or just someone who is done with the framing of times past that may have been adequate to that moment but do fuck all for a time when climate disaster isn’t in some distant future, it’s been on our doorstep and beyond for years while our leaders and political and economic systems are in deep denial. The line “This country’s in doomsday danger” sums that up immediately. And “Government cancer and look into my eyes and tell me the Tories play fair” could apply to the situation in America with the GOP. “Centrism” has been the handmaiden of fascism worldwide and the younger generation is keyed into that knowledge in a way older generations tend not to be. What could be clearer about that weak lack of resolve about the proper role of government and human organizing in general than “People die in the street while you screw up and repeat and repeat and repeat.” Who wouldn’t be furious and frustrated at such irrational political malfeasance. The song is a rallying cry that sounds so vital now and very much embodying a spirit running through the world that leaders and establishment types ignore at their own peril.

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Buddy Wynkoop Injects a Self-Aware Neurotic Fury Into Its Math Rock Punk Single “Relatable”

Buddy Wynkoop, photo courtesy the artists

Buddy Wynkoop’s herky jerky rhythms on “Relatable” are anchored by math rock-esque precision with spookily playful synths and altogether immediately recall 1970s Devo and Gary Numan. But the nervy energy and particular brand of eccentric irony is very much of this moment framed in the lingo and sensibilities of today. Talk of telling someone they’re relatable, the self-examination to the point of neurotic self-obsession, the self-medication, the crying things out and telling yourself it’s all fine. Maybe that’s something people did in decades past but it’s definitely something people do now. But with the spiky musical dynamics and borderline frantic energy and self-awareness Buddy Wynkoop on this song at times reminds one of the late, great Lithics, who were also from Portland, Oregon, perhaps also of Ganser and Dry Cleaning. But Buddy Wynkoop strips things back a little before dashing its songs with furiously creative self-indulgence. Listen to “Relatable” on Spotify and follow Buddy Wynkoop at the links below.

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Cleo Handler’s Wryly Humorous “but i’m a vegetarian” Indulges in the Darkly Surreal and the Absurdly Mundane

Cleo Handler, photo courtesy the artist

Cleo Handler asks a lot of surreal questions and poses odd scenarios in her song “but i’m a vegetarian.” The vocal style is deadpan and conversational but melodic enough to be singing and in that way like a strange story set to minimal guitar riffing and drums. The vibe is definitely in the realm of King Missile, Dead Milkmen and Camper Van Beethoven in that the wry and absurd sense of humor informs lines about eccentric aspirations. “what if i became a carnivore, what if i became an arsonist, what if i robbed a fucking bank, what if i became a grand larcenist” gives us a peek into idle, dark fantasy and mentions of listening to podcasts about fucked up men and going for a run contrasts that with some of the most mundane pursuits that some people think makes them edgy. It really is choice humor in an understated way one might more often see underlying the film work of Miranda July in which the humor isn’t spelled out for you but which in aggregate offers sharp analysis of society and the stream of consciousness daydreams that can drift into your brain upon which some act and others shake themselves out of or enjoy for the ridiculousness of these unusual psychological impulses. Listen to “but i’m a vegetarian” on Spotify and follow Cleo Handler at the links below where you can also listen to the rest of her recently released album gold on Bandcamp, a record that fans of experimental post-punk band Dry Cleaning may enjoy as well.

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