Queen City Sounds and Art

Nebno Gives Voice to the Beauty and Melancholy of the Death of a Star on “Nova”

“Nova” sounds like you’re getting to be in deep space surrounded by luminous energies streaming through utter darkness. Nebno’s vocals are ghostly yet stream with a clarity that fades from a central point of resonance. The track is a part of an improvised set of processed vocals that echo lightly into reverb and layered with other streams of voice that flicker in a hard digital angle like something going through a tremolo effect set to one extreme end. But in doing so it’s like being able to hear digital packets transmitted through a quantum communication device through interstellar space. The touch of synth drone distorting into nothingness at the end is not unlike a nova flaring out into the void of cosmic time. Perhaps as an exercise in developing her future aesthetics Nebno has in this track imagined what it might be like to experience the dramatic events of just a few years compressed at the end of the life of a star into four minutes, fifty-six seconds, and give voice to the glorious beauty of that time while expressing the melancholia of bearing witness to the death of a star. Listen to “Nova” on Soundcloud and follow the Swiss artist Nebno at the links provided.

Miriam Clancy’s Darkly Ethereal “Cassowary” is a Ballad About the Perils of Creative Vulnerability

Miriam Clancy, photo courtesy the artist

The music video for Miriam Clancy’s “Cassowary” seems to embody the image of that solitary and scarce species of bird. Clancy can be seen running off into the dark and wallowing alone indoors and overlooking a city in the music video directed by the artist and JP Winger. The circular web of acoustic and electric guitar melodies with Clancy’s breathy and introspective vocals sketch the image of an insular world of a person reluctant to give up the private world of imagination and creativity to seek to expose one’s work to a world that will take it in and have opinions based on projection and interpretation that may not extend the same level of sensitivity and desire to connect genuinely. And you have to let go of that intimate creation and let it fly where it will and become what it will to other people. Maybe this song with its hushed and midnight ponderings aesthetic is about a specific relationship but it sounds like a commentary on the life of an artist with an audience and the delicate balance of inviting people in to one’s private vision and resonating with others and the judgments that may follow and the kinds of attention and creative dissection that makes you want to not risk that process again. And most people with any level of sensitivity probably feel these things even if it’s not about a creative work, but rather one’s ideas and feelings that aren’t perfectly crafted or manicured for public consumption at a time in our collective social history when many of our public interactions have become such. It’s a song with layers and its dream pop sound is one that renders its complexity immediately accessible. Watch the video for “Cassowary” on YouTube and follow Miriam Clancy at the links below. Clancy’s new album Black Heart released on February 3, 2023 on Bandcamp linked below as well.

Miriam Clancy on Facebook

Miriam Clancy on Twitter

Miriam Clancy on Instagram

miriamclancy.com

Vessels to Motherland Channel the Ambient Spirit of the City at Night on “ymnoala”

Vessels to Motherland, photo courtesy the artists

Vessels to Motherland released its latest album LIVE IN BROOKLYN on February 3, 2023. Rather than a traditional live album as the title might suggest it’s an attempt to convey a journey across roughly an hour in familiar places but focusing on elements we sense but often tune out. It is the inverse of the way some ambient albums are conceived in drawing out attention to these environmental details. Each track is an anagram of “anomaly” excepting the closing track with that exact title. The opening song “ymnoala” pairs the sound of a space mission with echoing metallic string sounds, what sounds like coils being bowed at times, a ratchety noise maker, lonely synth drones resonating through an open space, nearly chaotic zither sent through natural reverb. It’s all both otherworldly and intimately familiar like the soundtrack to an industrial part of town at night with mysterious activity going on around you unseen but heard and felt. And the rest of the album is a similarly abstract yet tactile vein. Listen to “ymnoala” on Spotify and follow Vessels to Motherland at the links below.

Vessels to Motherland on Facebook

Vessels to Motherland on YouTube

Vessels to Motherland on Instagram

vesselstomotherland.com

El Morabba3 Present the Struggles of a Conflicted World in the Darkly Dreamlike Video For “El Wuhoosh”

The black and white noir aesthetic of El Morabba3’s video for “El Wuhoosh” with its use of animation techniques and visuals give it the aspect of an experimental science fiction movie. The song is about struggling with the forces of hostility, strife and oppression that exist within and between nations. And the haunting and unsettling imagery of the video is reminiscent of a darker corner of the Zone from Tarkovsky’s Stalker or one of the pockets of Hell in Can Evrenol’s Baskin. The figures in the video look like they’ve been smeared with the spirits of the battlefield and shaking off that psychic poison. A spectral drone serves as the backdrop to the lyrics with the swells of human voices drifting into a spiral of tones and distorted washes of sound and flickering noises. That is until the song blossoms into an expansive dynamic that breaks through the silence and the dark boundaries of the bleak nighttime forest setting. It’s the sound of hope against hope, against an extremely challenging present. For some the song may be reminiscent of some of the more unusual experiments in sound and conceptual songwriting that Peter Gabriel did early in his career, to others more in the realm of modern masters of dark yet colorful moods like Laurel Halo and Grouper. But El Morabba3 presents us with its own unique vision and expression of a conflicted world and an attempt to come to terms with how to transform these situations through creative acts. Perhaps in a way that more blunt action in the world has yet to accomplish. Watch the video for “El Wuhoosh” (which in English is “Monsters”) on YouTube and follow El Morabba3 at the links below.

elmorabba3.com

El Morabba3 on Facebook

El Morabba3 on Instagram

ONBC Offer a Tranquil and Dreamlike Message About Not Putting Off Acting On Your Dreams With “Heady Days”

A repeated, evolving guitar figure of glittery gossamer tone runs through ONBC’s “Heady Days” with the barest drum strike to mark time. Horns resonate in the distance and then up close dolefully toward the end of the song. The song is just two minutes seventeen and feels like a pool of a contemplative mood you can dive back into repeatedly. The lyrics are enigmatic and dark about being told that the best days, the heady days, are ahead but you keep waiting and they never come so you have to do something. In the song “the choir just burned down the place while thinking about you and the heady days” because you can’t wait around forever and leave your dreams on a shelf without becoming a bit of a tragic figure in your own life. Structurally and tonally it’s reminiscent of Slowdive’s “Crazy For You” but even more spare and to the point. Listen to “Heady Days” on Spotify and follow ONBC at the links provided.

ONBC on Facebook

ONBC on Instagram

Ania’s “Grass is Greener” is a Sonically Inventive Subversion of the Clichés of the Struggles of Trying to Make it in the Disillusioning Music Industry

Ania offers a strikingly vivid portrait of the false glamour of the image of a striving musician in an industry that will take and give little back. The song has a world weary tone and its style is eclectic taking some strands of grunge and 90s alternative rock but giving it some new life with unpredictable and darkly evocative key changes throughout when the song veers off familiar territory like Ania is subverting the expected songwriting form and melodic scheme which is what keeps the song a fascinating listen and the music video while mostly the usual band performing live shows the dark side of the music world too and the self-questioning and anxieties and disillusionment. Ania has played guitar for a variety of bands, has played many of the rooms in Los Angeles and its environs that people not living there and operating as a musician in that city might assume is a “great opportunity” and other clichés and projected fantasies when you’re not living and trying to make it in that cultural milieu and this song seems informed by the reality of trying every avenue as approach as a working musician trying to also establish an outlet for one’s own creative work while remaining true to yourself as a human and how challenging it can be. So yes, it’s a another take on a classic theme but Ania infuses the songcraft with not just musical chops but a willingness to take the music beyond established boundaries in rock even in titling the song the ways she does as in context it takes on an expanded meaning of having put in your time with earnestness and skill and often getting the same results yet still being willing to try a life in the arts. Watch the video for “Grass Is Greener” on YouTube and follow Ania at the links provided.

Pain in the Yeahs’ “Former Terraformer” is a Retrofuturist Post-Punk Dance Club Hit

“Former Terraformer,” the title track to Pain in the Yeahs’ new EP hits with a retro electronic post-punk aesthetic like James K. Ultra did some world building while writing the songs. In its distorted synths, driving rhythms, pounding percussion one imagines the dance club pop counterpart to Author & Punisher. But for a dance club set in a universe where Alien, The Terminator and Blade Runner somehow coexist, humanity has defeated the A.I. to colonize outer space and come to terms with hostile life forms and life can still be a bit of a grind because despite these strides in civilizational development the originating sin of crony capitalism has leaked into far future human endeavor. And thus the title of the song as though one could live long enough in this future scenario where being a terraformer was your prior avocation and now you’re burnt out and recognize that what you wanted out of this bizarre life of fake endless horizons and opportunity was a love that cut through that haze. And this song is a romantic ballad to that yearning. The chorus of “I need you, Candy/Candy do yo see me/I’m all fucked up this evening/I’m working hard, getting stronger/But the nights are getting longer.” And the opening line of “I could never turn my back on you even if I saw the worst in you/You that it’s true/Back on earth things are strange/I make money but I feel the same” speaks to this ennui and seeking meaning in career when it feels like you’re just going through the motions as part of some big, unfulfilling machine is not unlike how a lot of people feel now. It strikes at universal themes and like all science fiction conceits is a commentary on the present. Listen to “Former Terraformer” on Spotify and follow Pain in the Yeahs at the links below.

Pain in the Yeahs on Instagram

The Album Leaf Pairs With Bat For Lashes to Imbue “Near” With the Warmth of Yearning Affection

The Album Leaf, photo courtesy the artist

Jimmy LaValle as The Album Leaf brings a real sound design and cinema score aesthetic to his tracks for the forthcoming album FUTURE FALLING (due out May 5, 2023). But he is able to transform the background and pure mood aspect of that form of songwriting into ambitious pop songs like “Near” which features Bat For Lashes aka Natasha Khan. The song sounds like the kind of tune you might write if you were trapped by winter snows in isolation and yearning for contact with someone for whom you have a deep affection. The sweep of textural drone in the background flowing with percussion that seems to move in the seemingly random manner of precipitation while highlighting Khan’s soulful and introspective warmth and gift for conveying an expansive and enveloping spirit. Listen to “Near” on YouTube and follow The Album Leaf at the links below.

The Album Leaf on TikTok

The Album Leaf on Facebook

The Album Leaf on Instagram

thealbumleaf.com

Gurriers’ Raging and Intense Send-Up of Online Culture “Approachable” is the Noisy Post-Punk You’ve Been Looking For

Gurriers hit us with a flood of imagery and moods in the video for its song “Approachable.” It’s a heated and heady send-up of a culture and its commentators who, as they say, live online in that kind of personal echo chamber of hyper reality in which rage culture brews in a cauldron of dissociative psychosis. The video is a mashup of news imagery cut with abrupt savagery and inspired editing and animation. It perfectly complements a song where guitar howls in whirling noise and the driving rhythms buoy the distorted vocals in a dancecable fury that fans of Viagra Boys and IDLES will find immediately resonant. Though the song sounds like someone on the verge of a psychotic break it also seems imbued with a wry sense of humor that gives it a self-aware edge. One only imagines what this kind of seething energy might be like to witness live. Watch the video for “Approachable” on YouTube and connect with the Irish post-punk band Gurriers at the links provided.

Gurriers on Instagram

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E41: Buck Gooter

Buck Gooter is a “Ghost-motivated electronic rock” band from Harrisonburg, Virginia originally consisting of the duo of Terry Turtle and Billy Brett. Across many releases starting in 2006, Buck Gooter has charted a unique creative vision from the music to the artwork and performance style. At times a self-styled “industrial blues” group Turtle and Brett infused their highly political and insightful songs with an electrifying intensity and layered aesthetics fusing the avant-garde with the immediately accessible. Like a punk band that got into arthouse films and drew more inspiration from the likes of The Screamers, Butthole Surfers and Chrome than the usual suspects. Turtle tragically passed away on November 20, 2019 but left the legacy of the band to Brett who has continued Buck Gooter and releasing albums to which Turtle contributed posthumously including 2021’s Head In A Bird Cage and the new album Ghost Brain which includes samples of Turtle’s vocals and music with contributions from Oliver Ackermann of A Place to Bury Strangers who recorded, mixed and mastered the record at Death By Audio in Queens, NY. It represents but the end of a chapter in the life of the band and a new beginning.

Listen to our interview with Billy Brett of Buck Gooter on Bandcamp and see the band on tour in the USA now including on Friday, April 14, 2023 at Glob in Denver with Polly Urethane, Nightshark and Pythian Whispers, show at 9, $10. The tour itinerary below following the Denver show.

4/15/23 – Albany, CA @ Ivy Room 4/16/23 – San Francisco, CA @ Thrillhouse
4/18/23 – San Pedro, CA @ The Sardine 4/19/23 – Los Angeles, CA @ Permanent Records Roadhouse
4/21/23 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Lost Leaf 4/22/23 – Miami, AZ @ Miami Loco Arts Festival

buckgooter.com

Buck Gooter on YouTube

Buck Gooter on Instagram

Buck Gooter on Facebook