Queen City Sounds and Art

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.

Alice Boyd on TikTok

Alice Boyd on Twitter

Alice Boyd on Instagram

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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.

Lore City Music on Twitter

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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.

Vitesse X on TikTok

Vitesse X on Twitter

Vitesse X on Instagram

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.

Vatican Vamps on Facebook

Vatican Vamps on YouTube

Vatican Vamps on Bandcamp

Vatican Vamps on Instagram

The Lively and Dynamic Layers of GoGo Penguin’s “Saturnine” is a Fascinating Contrast With the Imagery of the Song’s Title

GoGo Penguin’s “Saturnine” is neither slow nor gloomy. Perhaps the meaning of the word mysterious is better. But no, its upbeat rhythms and lively piano melody with finely accented bass has an energy that propels the song forward. Throughout the song each component of the instrumentation plays off each other taking on the role of carrier of rhythm, of accenting that rhythm and in the case of piano and bass offering an unconventional countermelody that frames the percussive melody underlying that emerges to prominence as the rest of the instrumentation drops out. Its a style of composition that provides dynamic contrast that gives this instrumental track and the group’s other material a distinctive character and expressive personality that conveys a complexity of emotion that something more spare and minimal and less layered would not. Listen to “Saturnine” on YouTube and follow GoGo Penguin at the links below.

GoGo Penguin on Facebook

GoGo Penguin on Twitter

GoGo Penguin on Instagram

Codefendents and N8NOFACE Give us an Intense and Raw Peek Into Doing Hard Time on the IDM Industrial Rap of “Bad Business”

“Bad Business,” the latest single of Codefendants with N8NOFACE, crashes together industrial beats with an almost screamo rap fitting the scenes from the music video. Codefendants is Fat Mike of NOFX fame, legendary rapper Ceschi Ramos and Get Dead vocalist Sam King and the project thus far has pushed the artists into powerful new territory. “Bad Business” presents scenes from a prison and the skullduggery and violence and stark reality in general of serving time and the system in which one finds oneself. It’s snippets of a particularly dramatic period in the lead character’s life and the thrumming low end and IDM industrial beat has a menace and unsettling quality that explodes into distorted and desperate vocals in both English and Spanish like an Aphex Twin and Death Grips mashup. It’s raw and takes you through the paces of a life you hope you never have to experience but in doing so triggers a brief adrenaline rush like a more straightforward, established genre song often can’t. Watch the video for “Bad Business” on YouTube and follow Codefendants at the links below.

Cofedendants on TikTok

Cofedendants on Instagram

Noah Before’s Extended Ambient Track “Pole Tracking (inlier)” is the Sound of Weeks of Endless Night and of Endless Day

Noah Before’s “Pole Tracking (inlier)” requires some initial patience that pays off in the end. The spectral drift of drone comes wafting in like an early morning, snow strewn breeze in the dead of winter after days of blizzards. There is a stark and melancholic beauty to hearing those freezing winds in the distance that one witnesses from time to time in more moderate climates but frequently as one gets closer to one of the earth’s poles. One wonders if Noah Before did some mathematical mapping of weather patterns charted via satellite and plugging the data in to generate the swelling and swirling sounds that manifest and bring with it that specific and special energy of a place of climate extremes forbidding to all but the most intrepid and adapted creatures whether naturally or with humans technological assistance. This track gets into the headspace of what it might be like to be a scientist studying the Arctic or Antarctic in person for months at a time. Its composition evokes the mystery of it all and what one might call its intimate grandeur that not everyone gets to experience except for limited periods of time when a polar vortex sweeps south. It is the sound of weeks of endless night and of endless day in its constantly evolving gyre of electronic drones. Listen to “Pole Tracking (inlier)” on Spotify and follow Noah Before at the links below.

Noah Before on Instagram