Queen City Sounds and Art

SOMOH Helps to Untangle the Emotional Mess We All Often Find Ourselves Within on the Poignantly Heartfelt “I Know You Care”

With spare guitar work and introspective, up close vocals and minimal drums SOMOH starts off “I Know You Care” on a particularly vulnerable footing. But as the song progresses the musical elements swell up, joined by a wash of synth as the emotional arc of the song intensifies before dropping back to a quieter moment and building again. It’s an elegant song about heartbreak and compassionate frustration with great nuance in its simplicity. It expresses how when you’re hurt initially it’s hard to know what to say sometimes so it’s best to just feel and sort out the words as you go. The line “I know you care/But you don’t show it well” in the last half of the song encapsulates so poignantly and succinctly an emotional complexity and nuance that goes beyond the typical love song and heartbreak tropes and gets to the reality of what it can often be like to be in a real relationship with an actual human being who may not be equipped with all the emotional intelligence to react or behave in the ways one would hope with the typically limited set of personal skills we are encouraged to learn in many cultures. SOMOH singer and songwriter Sophia Mohan’s breathy vocals and way of diving deep into that tangle of feelings with a clarity of feeling truly helps to clarify what could otherwise be purely messy. Listen to “I Know You Care” on Spotify and follow SOMOH at the links provided.

SOMOH on TikTok

SOMOH on YouTube

SOMOH on Instagram

Abby T. Imbues “I Want It All” With a Sense of Mystery and Swagger

Abby T. accomplishes the rare union of mystique and swagger on her track “I Want It All.” The almost classical music structure of the songs and the plucked string sounds that mark the bars and sync well with the finely syncopated percussion help to give the vocal delivery a sense of the personal confessional, the aspirational and the dismissal of the ill intent of others with great finesse. She warns all comers to talk to her nice and not to talk with their eyes, advising them to look into some kind of therapy to get over hating what they like. Sounds like a more kind and clever addressing of misogyny than you typically hear in any song. But the core idea of the song is not being ashamed to want the good things in life:“I don’t want the fame, I wanna get paid, I’m not ashamed, I want everyhing.” In that line Abby T. speaks for many of us in articulating the fact that sometimes everything in that essential and meaningful sense is pretty realistic and not the mere survival we’ve all come to accept unless we were born to wealth. Fan’s of the imaginative beats and poetic imaginations of Doja Cat and Kari Faux will appreciate what Abby T. is putting out with this track. Listen to “I Want It All” on Spotify and follow Abby T. at the links below.

Abby T. on TikTok

Abby T. on Instagram

Heradel’s Intimate and Otherworldly “Mother” is the Pop Equivalent of a Space Rock Song

Heradel taps into multiple sonic and emotional resonances with her single “Mother.” The treatment on her vocals brings together a feeling of intimacy and the otherworldly. The rhythmic line, the bass, is like something out of a Fad Gadget song but the organic, percussive background sounds give the song a gently tactile feel that grounds its more ethereal drift and bursts of sounds that rise up to accompany the singing as it floats into luminous fades. In moments it’s reminiscent of Sinead O’Connor circa “I Am Stretched on Your Grave” but with the earthy alien vibe of late 90s Björk. It’s an enveloping piece of work like the experimental pop equivalent of a space rock song and not the kind of music one would expect from an artist with cultural roots in Cuba. Listen to “Mother” on Spotify and follow the Los Angeles and Havana-based Heradel at the links below.

Antics & Collectables’ Debut Single “Breaking Point” is an IDM Infused Downtempo Catharsis of Ambient Anxiety

“Breaking Point” is the debut single by the Antics & Collectables collective based out of London. With the collage of imagery in the music video the downtempo IDM flavor of the track hits like something that emerged out of late 90s alternative hip-hop, Warp Records releases, Air’s abstract downtempo jazz funk pop and Dilla’s most haunted left field experiments in pure mood sculpting. There is a great use of tension building and release and informal rhythm and structure that really works for a song that seems to be about someone who feels like they’ve been on this ascent of building anxiety and anticipation for some relief from that swell of energy, like being on a constant simmer and not quite a boil in the psyche. The dark melodies, the rising arpeggios of tone, the sweeps of white noise and low end pulse, the soft yet jittery percussion have a textural as well as musical quality that the abstract and dreamlike imagery of the video somehow captures perfectly. Like you’re stuck in a quietly menacing dream waiting to wake up but not quite being able to reach into the light of consciousness. There’s something beautiful about this sustained feeling as that prolonged wait finds some release as the song ascends and descends in the roller coaster of its tonal and emotional progression to the end. Watch the video for “Breaking Point” on YouTube and follow Antics & Collectables on Instagram.

Dre Ishmail’s “Lost In My Thoughts” is a Harrowing Depiction of Being Trapped In One’s Own Emotional Labyrinth

Dre Ishmail’s “Lost In My Thoughts” begins with the sound of reaching a voice mail prompt and haunting tones that border on atonal but are really disorienting and out of step with any melody. Dark, shimmering, icy anti-melodies cast in slow spirals almost anchored by a loping bass line is not at all the typical sound you’re expecting on a hip-hop track. But Ishmail’s lyrics about being trapped in the recursive patterns of mind and getting stuck re-litigating your thoughts and feelings and overthinking even overthinking itself captures perfectly that feeling of emotional paralysis in the form of one’s mind going over the same thoughts ad infinitum that can happen when you’re undergoing a variety of mental health episodes without any clear path out of that pattern that maybe at one point served to keep one from dipping further down the levels of psychological trauma response. But the behavior has become a rut so deep that it can seem almost comfortable simply due to the fact that it has become your new normal. The unsettling and nightmarish nature of the music sets a tone that while not aberrant, getting lost in one’s own personal labyrinth is unhealthy but that the expression of that discomfort can be a signal of an awareness that leads to acting to making the changes necessary to move on from the psychological stagnation. The song is pure hip-hop but it eschews all the musical tropes that have become rote production styles in the past decade and Ishmail’s gift for creating such an original soundscape is a real achievement for the art form. Watch the video for “Lost In My Thoughts” on YouTube and follow Dre Ishmail at the links provided.

Dre Ismail on Facebook

Dre Ismail on Twitter

Dre Ismail on Instagram

Clouds in a Headlock Deliver Downtempo, Cosmic, Psychedelic Hip-Hop With “Phantasia”

Clouds in a Headlock, photo courtesy the artists

The psychedelic and downtempo chillout beats for “Phantasia” by Clouds in a Headlock with its imaginative stream of consciousness lyrics with the project’s various MCs delivering bars as the song sits back into a transporting passages between blocks of words like getting otherworldly, free verse meditations on organic spiritual observations born of navigating a confusing world as a thoughtful person. The music video coupled with the song with a cast of characters like street mystics wandering a large urban park relocated to the edge of town is reminiscent of a fan video for a Boards of Canada song. The first rapper presented projects his face beyond his immediate body in one of the most beautifully visually disorienting parts of a particularly colorful video treatment like a long lost cable access video from a time when you could find some of the strangest and most original examples of home grown cinema around before it became accessible to anyone with a smart phone. This lends the whole experience of seeing and listening to the song an air of mystery that is often missing in modern media. But that mystery comes with an inviting energy that emanates from the figures we see and the music that’s lush and easy on the brain and gently transporting. It’s a remarkable piece of work that recalls the IDM-esque, ambient flavored works of other practitioners of psychedelic hip-hop like A Tribe Called Quest and Digable Planets. Witness the wondrous strangeness of “Phantasia” on YouTube and follow Clouds in a Headlock, flagship artists of the ŌFFKILTR circle at the links below.

Clouds in a Headlock on Instagram

Clouds in a Headlock Fat Beats l nk.to

1st Base Runner’s Video for “Dark Drive Through The Canyon” is Like a Deep Mood Michael Mann Film in Miniature

1st Base Runner, photo courtesy the artist

1st Base Runner’s “Dark Drive Through The Canyon” is perhaps best experienced by watching the music video directed by Dilly Gent. In the video Tim Husmann from the project sits high on a box inside a convertible while driving around Long Beach told to remain absolutely still despite the cold and having just filmed the underwater music video for “Man Overboard” earlier the same day. It suits the lush and dramatic ambiance of the song and we see Husmann in focus as a nightscape and evening lights and daytime views stream by behind him out of focus and mixing up our own sense of time. Like a short Michael Mann film with the industrial part of Long Beach and its harbor and highways as the backdrop. The cascading, bright tones fading out in sequence swimming in a breeze of dim light drone are cinematic in quality themselves but in context of the video it creates a meaning and a mood we recognize in taking a moment to contemplate a peaceful core of our mind even as events and a dystopian state of the world streams by that we can and will have to engage with at some point but from which we can take a break now and then for moments of Zen. Watch the video on YouTube and follow 1st Base Runner at the links below.

1st Base Runner on TikTok

1st Base Runner on Facebook

1st Base Runner on Instagram

1stbaserunner.com

Snailbones’ Caustic and Jagged “Dead Inside” Has the Same Scrappy and Irreverent Spirit of Classic Chicago Noise Rock

Snailbones is from Portland, Oregon but from jump “Dead Inside” sounds like the trio has been steeped in Chicago noise rock and early post-punk hardcore. Think Shellac (and of course Big Black), Articles of Faith, Naked Raygun and more recently Meat Wave. That angular, caustic guitar sound and scrappy spirit that made a lot of the aforementioned so compelling. And yes, the group has had some of its music mastered at Electrical Audio in Chicago with some tracks done by Bob Weston and Snailbones plans to record with Steve Albini in March 2023. So those bonafides check out. But none of that wouldn’t matter if music didn’t measure up. “Dead Inside” is almost accusatory in tone regarding the source of what leads to feeling dead inside and the song dynamics go beyond choppy, cutting, mutant punk aggression. The lyric lines and the music paired with it sound like they’ve been rough cut and stretched out with the jagged places left in place so that the potential danger hangs in every moment. Listen to “Dead Inside” on Spotify and follow Snailbones at the links below.

Snailbones on Instagram

Snailbones on YouTube

snailbones.com

Penkowski Find the Weirdest Route Out of the Perilous and Depressing State of the World in the Psychedelic Music Video for New Wave Post-punk Song “Butterfly”

Penkowski has a few delightful tricks up its sleeve on its single “Butterfly.” Not only is the music video a wildly colorful, part animation, part collage art 3D explorer video game style visual presentation but the clipped riffing opening the song is like something out of the New York No Wave era like something you’d hear in a Contortions or Bush Tetras song but then the song shifts abruptly into a more elevated pop post-punk mode like the early 90s solo David Byrne work. But the whole time one is reminded of 80s New Wave with the slinky bass line and Falco-esque near yelping vocal cadence reflecting an age of absurdity and anxiety but in the outro we see our hero riding on a plane out of the phantastical and disorienting landscape on the wing of a plane, making the best of the outrageous state of things, whilst the guitar becomes more ethereal and spidery like the ending section of “Marquee Moon.” The song touches on some familiar places and yet is not like much of anything else going on right now and that’s what makes the song so standout. Watch the video for “Butterfly” on YouTube, connect with Penkowski at the links below and maybe give a listen to the album Final Destination Disneyland out now on Fiasko ltd. and Chinese label Invisible Water.

Penkowski on Instagram

fiasko.ltd

Queen City Sounds Podcast S2E30: Richard X. Heyman

Richard X. Heyman, photo courtesy richardxheyman.com

Richard X. Heyman recently released his 15th solo album 67,000 Miles An Album. The veteran musician and producer was is a founding member of The Doughboys who in the 1960s were a legendary garage rock band from New Jersey though their oeuvre was comprised mostly of covers of commercially successful bands of the time like The Yardbirds, The Kinks and of course the Rolling Stones. When the group split in 1968 (before re-forming in 2000) Heyman went on the drum for the likes of Brian Wilson, Link Wray, Jonathan Richman, played keys for Ben. E. King, guitar for Mary Weiss of The Shangri-Las. The new album includes new material and older work reworked and assembled as a kind of tour through time and in space. The earth travels through space at 67,000 miles per hour and on its axis at more than 1,000 miles an hour. The length of the album in time is approximately the distance you’ll have traveled as a passenger on spaceship earth. Recorded at both Heyman’s home studio Kick Factory and at Eastside Sound in NYC, the album features Heyman on vocals and a wide array of instrumentation with Nancy Leigh on bass and backing vocals and guest performances from Probyn Gregory on brass, Julia Kent on cello and Chris Jenkins on viola. Musically the album is brimming with infectious and exuberant melodies and exquisitely orchestrated power pop. It’s the kind of record that could have come out fifty years ago or now and seemed very much of the moment.

We had a chance to speak with Heyman about his career and his collaborations as well as the concepts and assemblage of the new record and you can listen below on Bandcamp. The album is now available on CD, digital download and via streaming services having released on Turn-Up Records on October 21, 2022. Please visit www.richardxheyman.com for details on listening and purchasing.