Queen City Sounds and Art

Orions Belte Has Created the Cosmopolitan Jazz Lounge Hit of the Near Future With Orchestral Psychedelic Prog Song “Silhouettes”

Orions Belte, photo courtesy the artists

Orions Belte has long had a gift for turning musical complexity into playful and emotionally charged music. Its single “Silhouettes” moves in pulses and soaring tones with shuffling rhythms. Bass-driven and flute filigrees alongside urgent strings with fiery, fuzzy guitar mid-song “Silhouettes” is part progressive Bossa Nova pop and Krautrock and part orchestral psychedelia. Like a math rock Stereolab in moments and imbued with a similarly effusive energy and freshness of spirit that sweeps into your brain like a bright dream about a party in a retro-futurist jazz club in a cosmopolitan locale. Not just a studio creation, Orions Belte performed the song on its recent swing through North America and helped to cement the trio’s reputation as one of the leading lights of modern art rock. Listen to “Silhouettes” on Spotify and follow Orions Belte at the links below.

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Ryan Cassata’s Indie Punk Ballad “If You Ever Leave Long Island” is a Tender and Affectionate Entreaty to Engage in Relocation Therapy

Ryan Cassata’s punk ballad “If You Ever Leave Long Island” hits with a beckoning tenderness that takes you by surprise from the beginning. The video treatment directed by Dory Fine shows the band performing in a warehouse space on an upper floor with no one else seemingly around. It’s like a symbol for a welcoming spirit, making space for the person to whom the song is sung. Cassata urges a friend and/or loved one to help chase away their sadness by getting out of the familiar contexts that have all the memories of experiences that perpetuate being stuck in life. Cassata urges this friend to not get mired in yet another seemingly comfortable relationship that won’t fix the core issues and environments that are clearly some of the source of the friend’s misery and the earnest choruses and uplifting melodies are so convincing that if this song is directed to a real person or people you hope that person or people have the good sense to follow the words of a friend who knows you so well. Watch the video for “If You Ever Leave Long Island” on YouTube and follow Kill Rock Stars artist Ryan Cassata at the links below.

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Dvanov’s Video for “шушан (shushan)” is a Stark View Into Modern Russian Social Reality Set to Industrial Hip-Hop Beats

Dvanov’s video for “шушан (shushan)” (“That’s It” in English) looks like it takes place in some near future of societal collapse and a simple act of solidarity in sharing drinks and other amenities and rolling through episodic experiences of people trying to eke out small moments of joy as they can in an otherwise bleak reality. The music is a seething industrial post-punk beat under almost spoken word rapping in Russian commenting on the stark reality of the scenes depicted and the confusion, disorientation and social disruption in life under an entrenched oligarchy and its impacts on everyday existence. Fans of “Come To Daddy” period Aphex Twin, the more dystopian end of clipping. and Sleaford Mods if that group stripped its pointed commentary of humor may enjoy this song and the rest of the St. Petersburg, Russia-based project’s new album семья (“Family” in English) which released on March 17, 2023. Watch the video for “шушан (shushan)” on YouTube and follow Dvanov at the links below.

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The Oceanator Remix of Talker’s “Don’t Want You To Love Me” Amplifies the Triumphant Feel of a Song About Overcoming Your Brain’s Broken Inner Narrative

The Oceanator remix of talker’s “Don’t Want You To Love Me” adds a layer of disorienting sound on top of its already luxuriant and bright melodies. The songwriter already turned a song about insecurity and desperation and the anxiety and ambivalence that can come from strong emotions. Especially when you’re not sure that’s what you really feel. The song is a both a reaching out and an acknowledgment of being kind of a mess that you might not want to inflict on someone else and often times not on yourself except that you have to live with the familiarity of your own drives, passions and as yet un-processed dysfunctional ways. But talker, particularly in this remix, makes it seem so exuberant like she’s owning her flaws in the song and encouraging others to do so and daring to have those feelings in spite of the voices in your own head that undermine your efforts. Listen to the Oceanator remix of “Don’t Want You To Love Me” on Spotify and follow talker at the links below.

Auto Portrait’s “By You Infinitely” is an Ambient Pop Song About Warm Memories of Loves Long Lost

Auto Portrait, photo courtesy the artists

Auto Portrait sets a strong sense of place from the beginning of “By You Infinitely.” The swell of tone suggests the rushing of water or a nearby street but this gives way to the delicate and soft plinking of a crystalline keyboard bell tone casting a circular melodic figure as vocals near whisper the lyrics. The vocals are almost overshadowed by the distant layers of drone that drift in but rather they complement each other and reinforce a deep mood of tenderness and regret like a future memory of times spent with loved ones in close contact now long distant temporally and physically but those memories of warmth of feeling and fondness linger when so many other less important connections are gone and those you hold onto are fading in their own way as well. The song honors and mourns this inevitability of living long decades and in that way this ethereal experimental pop song is heartbreaking and heartening at once. Listen to “By You Infinitely” on Spotify and follow the duo Auto Portrait on Instagram linked below.

Auto Portrait on Instagram

Alice Boyd’s Art Pop Song “Separation” Is a Tribute to the Interconnected Nature of Life

Alice Boyd’s music video for “Separation” as interpreted by Studio Gruff takes the song and renders its minimalistic choir of voices into flashes and streams of color on a dark field, like gentle fireworks. But as the song progresses and Boyd’s voice comes to the fore we see a progression of images of life taking to land from a primordial sea and evolving rapidly in beautiful alien forms that become those more familiar to us today. In the lyrics Boyd references the Cambrian age and how it was there before us but as such is our predecessor in the continuum of cosmic and earthly dynamics that is life and its impacts on and interactions with the environment and its own various manifestations. The song with its sharp and playful rhythms and creative use of voice as both a percussive and melodic element is a manifestation of the knowledge of that interconnectedness making the song high concept art pop that fans of Rubblebucket, Laurie Anderson and Tune-Yards will appreciate. Watch the video for “Separation” on YouTube and follow Alice Boyd at the links below where you can find a route to listen to the rest of Boyd’s newly released EP From The Understory which dropped on digital and vinyl on April 21, 2023.

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Eric Angelo Bessel’s Alluringly Enigmatic Ambient Composition “Secret Lake” is Like the Soundtrack to a Lost Episode of The Twilight Zone

Eric Angelo Bessel, photo courtesy the artist

Eric Angelo Bessel’s enigmatic ambient track “Secret Lake” from his newly released album Visitation (April 21, 2023 via Lore City Music on LP and digital) hits like memories of waking up in the middle of the night as a kid with a strange TV show on called The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits and catching only a section with beautifully evocative music and a black and white scene of an alien landscape or a walking on a strange landscape no earth and having no narrative framing to place what you’re seeing, just the emotional resonance where your brain is mixing dreams with the conscious mind before you get back to sleep. The sound of bell tones and background drones as the slow and tactile melody runs its course in hypnotic patterns and echoing ever so slightly like the theme music to Days of Our Lives but far too off into psychedelic dreamspace to tap into the mundanity of a daytime drama. Yet the song in its evolving repetitions feels like something intimately familiar with fond associations yet tantalizing and paradoxically comforting. It’s a unique composition in the realm of ambient music which can often utilize the same sound sources and same-y arrangements. It’s like the soundtrack to a lost episode of The Twilight Zone which we all wish we could see or from the buried fifth season of Channel Zero. Listen to “Secret Lake” on YouTube and follow Lore City Music, Bessel’s label with his wife Laura Mariposa Williams, at the links below.

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Vitesse X Gives Us a Feeling of Ever Present and Intimate Immediacy on Electronic Dream Pop Song “Right Now”

“Right Now” finds Vitesse X expanding beyond the dreamy dance floor synth pop-infused drum and bass of Us Ephermeral. In the music video she frolics at the beach at various times of the day, morning, evening and in the full light of the sun. And the song has dusky vocals, touches of bright, dappled, guitar shimmer and effervescent electronic echoes. In this way, Vitesse X stimulates different parts of the brain and the music has the same refreshing quality that early hyper pop, witch house and chillwave had in dipping into retro sounds and employing them into modern production aesthetics. But Vitesse X uses these ideas to craft a modern update on dream pop as something that has absorbed the otherworldly electronic sensibilities of IDM artists on the Warp imprint and the likes of early Crystal Castles. “Right Now” is a song that lives up to its name by giving the listener an ever present feeling of vulnerable immediacy. Watch the video for “Right Now” on YouTube and connect with Vitesse X at the links below.

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Vatican Vamps’ Melancholic Yet Urgent Groove on “Salford Love Pslam” is Pure Post-Madchester Manchester

If you didn’t know any better you’d think “Salford Love Psalm” by Vatican Vamps was a song that came out of a band from Manchester, UK. Salford being in the northwestern part of Greater Manchester is a dead giveaway as a reference for anyone that has paid close attention to the history of Joy Division and Factory Records and their respective personnel. But singer and guitarist Nat Lort-Nelson apparently spent time growing up in Manchester though Vatican Vamps is based in Denver. But these biographical, historical and cultural realities aside, the song with its spiraling dynamics and its keen fusion of electronic and rock aesthetics and its channeling of brooding, melancholic and darkly thought-provoking observations and pronouncements into upbeat, danceable post-punk pop tells you it’s Manchester in spirit if not as a matter of geographical fact for the band. Yet even without these resonances, the way the song hits into a heady groove with expansive atmospheric guitar work and urgent yet introspective vocals is irresistible at a time when a lot of post-punk and indie rock is favoring a more thin and less sonically rich sound while chasing and failing to catch a genuine dance music cadence. Vatican Vamps have united all those creative impulses and urges in this song. Listen to “Salford Love Psalm” on Spotify and follow Vatican Vamps at the links provided.