Queen City Sounds and Art

Bug Facer Sculpted a Contorted and Agonized Colossus of Loss and Hopeless Desolation in the Seething Noise Rock of “Horsefly”

The white noise in the background certainly helps make Bug Facer’s “Horsefly” sound creepier with minimal guitar line and processional drumming. Like an even more haunted Slint song until a little over a minute in the distorted vocals and noisy guitar escalation crashes in. At that point the caustic desperation is palpable and what once was a fairly chill if unsettling song turns into one that sustains a seething and tortured expression of loss that crosses over into nihilistic passages that are so raw and emotionally fragmented it would be thrilling if it didn’t contain and embody so much psychic anguish. But then in the outro the song waxes back into a weary acceptance, a lull in the waves of agony you feel when you feel like you’ve been left all alone with nothing to live for, a state that seems impossible to overcome but this song seems proof that there are ways to channel that feeling into the kind of art that seems to help in spite of its horrifying power. Listen to “Horsefly” on Spotify and follow Bug Facer at the links below.

Bug Facer on Facebook

Bug Facer on Instagram

ABBATIA’s Low Key Terrifying Video for “World Wide Web” is a Glimpse Into the Macabre Industrial Rap Horrors of Its New Album Red Room

There’s something extra bleak and haunting about a strip mall on a dark night and the music video for ABBATIA’s “World Wide Web” begins there. Then we see a demented figure shaping features in clay on his own head as the band’s crew seems to be on web cam and security footage interspersed with scenes of horror like we’re getting a trip through parts of the dark web accompanied by throbbing, industrial hip-hop beats and rapping that is both frantic and sepulchral in a way that is at times so intense it borders on the humorous. That is if the whole video and didn’t feel like a gnarly segment of the V/H/S franchise with music that is a fascinating collage of mashups that defy narrow classification. It’s in the hip-hop vein but you’d have to be into the more avant-garde or experimental end of that music to find something comparable. Maybe Ho99o9, Dälek or Death Grips but it’s not much like any of those, just the level of genre bending and inventive soundscaping that is more focused on creating a harrowing and menacing mood informed by a sense of the absurd rather than where it fits on a spectrum of musical style. Watch the video for “World Wide Web” on YouTube and follow ABBATIA at the links below. The group’s new album, the appropriately titled Red Room, dropped on November 11, 2022.

ABBATIA on TikTok

ABBATIA on Instagram

Uèle Lamore Soundtracks the Next Generation of Surreal B-Movies With the Upbeat and Playful “Something About Us”

Uèle Lamore’s music video for “Something About Us” gives the song with its gritty yet playful instrumental music in fuzzed out post-punk style melodies its proper contextualization. Throughout the video we are treated to a running string of possible genre tags that are as varied as the music’s fairly genre-less quality itself. It could fit in a weird video game about time travel and culture swapping. It could work for a fun-loving ninja movie starring Sho Kosugi and get him out of retirement for one more movie, a surreal sequel to the nonsensically supernatural Ninja III: The Domination. Maybe a film about cowboys who all gathered together to create a commune after having spent time in the worlds of Sergio Leone films and Jodorowsky’s El Topo having given up on a life of violence and opting for one where they preserve their legacy through elaborate musicals. Anyone made a sequel to Knight Riders? Lamore has you covered here and offering the concept of “low budget Riders of Rohan” but with the idea of cosplay being a thing these days it could work out. However this song might be placed or enjoyed it has a decided trickster experimental pop quality that can shapeshift into any setting. Watch the video for “Something About Us” on YouTube and connect with Lamore at the links below.

Uèle Lamore on Facebook

Uèle Lamore on Bandcamp

Uèle Lamore on Instagram

Mako Bron Celebrates the Will to Exit a Life Situation With Vigor on Synth Pop Song “Hit the Road”

Mako Bron takes us on a bit of a musical time travel trip on “Hit the Road.” Its infectious hooks and beautiful synth melody at times is reminiscent of early Berlin and how that band didn’t quite fit in with the world of late 70s/early 80s synth pop while helping to define it. The use of horns in the mix hits similar emotional resonances as James but this is no retro song. It resonates with the same spirit of that music with the tones, the components of the songwriting and the way Bron harmonizes with the background vocals and the manner in which all the melodic elements come together in the chorus to really drive home a message of personal liberation. It’s a song that expresses a strong desire to be free of a situation and a relationship that feels stifling and no longer feels like something that fortifies life and sometimes that simply means you have to get away geographically to reinforce the emotional departure. This song celebrates that impulse with great spirit. Listen to “Hit the Road” on Spotify and follow Australian songwriter Mako Bron at the links below.

Mako Bron on Facebook

Mako Bron on Instagram

The Album Leaf Brings Us Along on a Drifting Journey to Elevated States of Tranquility on “Future Falling”

The Album Leaf, photo courtesy the artist

“Future Falling” is like listening to the slow evolution of an artist having eased into a new plateau. The Album Leaf has long perfected the background of slow shimmer and hypnotic, repeated, sequenced melody while tones with real physicality of sound carry a melody with a slow blossom of elements that flow and invite you along for a drift into tranquil spaces. You could spend a lot of time sorting out the rich array of elements that create this atmosphere like the ways bell tones are processed, the striking of strings, the layered streams of synth and the orchestration of it all but the mood of slow elevation and acceptance of a peaceful mode of being is the end point of the song as it lets you off with the gentlest of touches at the end of the journey. Listen to “Future Falling” with its prismatic visualizer on YouTube and follow The Album Leaf at the links provided.

The Album Leaf on TikTok

The Album Leaf on Facebook

The Album Leaf on Instagram

thealbumleaf.com

Blue Lupin Joyously Burns the Bridge With a Duplicitous Former Lover on “Surface of the Sun”

Blue Lupin aka Joanna Wolfe employs gritty atmospherics in her song “Surface of the Sun” so that it’s dream-like reverie has an appropriate tinge of discomfort. In the video treatment directed by Joseph Daly we see Wolfe walking around a park at points but mostly pointing a camera at the camera filming her, an inversion of the kind of gaze and dynamic we usually see in a music video. And the song about a lover who no one in her life really meets or sees and who never brings her into their life and wanting to exit the relationship, or perhaps the charade of one is more accurate, is a succinct examination of perception and comprehension and how we apply and choose to apply that when we feel like we have a special connection with someone and how breaking things off can feel like an act of self-liberation rather than lingering heartache. The song cast in expansive, distorted dream pop certain feels like a celebration that overcomes initial feelings of self-disappointment because who wants to spend too much time mourning someone who merely wasted our time? Watch the video for “Surface of the Sun” on YouTube and follow Blue Lupin at the links below.

Blue Lupin on TikTok

Blue Lupin on Twitter

Blue Lupin on Instagram

“Fruit Flies” by elison is a Dream Pop Song About Finally Letting Go the Detritus of Your Life with a Loving Exuberance

Elison delves into the darker side of nostalgia on “Fruit Flies.” It has a sound like an AM radio pop song appropriate to this self-aware consideration of how we can romanticize a time that wasn’t so good for or to us but the hindsight of adulthood brings some clarity to the those memories and how trying to live up to them can poison the present with habits of feeling. “Get drunk on the memories,” Marissa Kephart sings in the chorus as swirling glittery guitar tones sweep by, ending the line with “Spin out of control.” It’s a statement about how one can get stuck in the past while some people are able to say goodbye to another part of their life and the ways of being that no longer seem relevant but we’re all shaped by how we’ve been and it’s easy to engage in self-judgment and get stuck with those memories as a kind of personal, perpetual cudgel and re-litigate and repeat patterns to try to get things right to think doing so will give us an illusory sense of control. The exuberance of the melody and its lightness contrasts with lines like “I still haven’t taken out my trash” and “Body molding from the inside” as an impetus to clean one’s house for the New Year and a new you and this song sounds like the will to do so at last. Listen to “Fruit Flies” on Spotify and follow elison at the links provided.

elison no Instagram

elison on YouTube

Dick Dudley Comes to Terms With the Necessities of Normiedom and Punk Weirdo Existentialism on the Jittery “Dog Park”

Dick Dudley wastes no time on “Dog Park.” For a song that just a little over a minute long and is essentially having a moment of acute existential awareness at the reality of working a regular job and doing the thing one needs to do to do right by one’s animal companion and take one’s dog to the dog park it gets weird with the spiky, jittery guitar work and slinky bass line and mumbling, borderline nervous breakdown vocals. And within that micro universe of contemplation the song takes out a moment to indulge a guitar solo worthy of Minutemen before sputtering out and life going back to the usual rituals and acceptance of such in order for life to maintain a semblance of normalcy and stability. But for a moment the character of the song, perhaps a universal experience for the working bloke who sometimes plays in a weird punk band, we get a glimpse into the idle thoughts that seem so poignant and amusing because life is so often mundane and absurd when allowed under the microscope of self-examination and in taking that time to remind oneself of the proper place of these thoughts it is entirely possible to live with both being an art weirdo and a normie and not see either as mutually exclusive. Listen to “Dog Park” on Spotify and follow Dick Dudley on Instagram.

Kyoto Kyoto’s Art Prog Post-Punk Track “Trier” is Driven by an Orchestrated Nervous and Furious Energy

“Trier” by Kyoto Kyoto sounds like someone wound up one of those recent UK post-punk bands and sped up its trajectory with Wire-like nervy intensity. It seethes with energy and it sounds like it is going to come off the rails but the precision of the rhythm is hidden with bursts of noise and furious arpeggios that dissolve a third of the way through the song to give way to a rapid bass line that pulses in a repeated pattern joined by guitar and drums in a tight pattern while vocals seem to chant with an urgent message like it’s all riding headlong to a mysterious destination. At times it sounds like Hella and a hyperkinetic version of Yes newly inspired by the likes of black midi and drawing some inspiration by Carl Orff with an update on a bit of Carmina Burana. Orchestral math rock with the art punk sensibilities of a current post-punk band that didn’t get the memo that it needed to sound like something in any current trend in that style of music. Listen to “Trier” (as in Lars von Trier? Who can say?) on Spotify and connect with Kyoto Kyoto at the links provided.

Kyoto Kyoto on Facebook

Kyoto Kyoto on Twitter

Kyoto Kyoto on Bandcamp

Kyoto Kyoto on Instagram

Comiti’s Energetic Yet Brooding Synthwave Single “Luminous and Sparkling” Comments on Conventional Notions of Image and Substance

The rhythmic urgency and distorted synths of Comiti’s “Luminous and Sparkling” from the beginning is an interesting way to get into the more brooding darkwave aspect of the song when the ominous vocals begin. The music video looks like it borrowed a bit from a process video for creating mannequins and sculpting class and doll making footage. Is it commentary on the way people have often crafted how others want to see them and to make a more “perfect” image going back centuries well before the cheap, modern and thoroughly pervasive way of social media? In the video the artist hangs back in shadow while presenting the least glamorous image and though in a mediated format of a music video the most honest presentation of everything we see. The contrast of enigmatic moodiness and driving energy and the collage of imagery in the music video suggests and aesthetic that is more than a simple genre and though conceptual more accessible than a pure art project. As a complete package it challenges conventional notions of image and substance. Watch the video for “Luminous and Sparkling” on YouTube and follow Comiti at the links provided.