Queen City Sounds and Art

JAF 34’s Film and Music Video for “EMPTY” Charts the Contours and Internally Corrosive Impacts of The Rat Race of Late Capitalism

Think of the new album video by JAF 34 “EMPTY” as something of a short cosmic thriller and science fiction film with obvious nods to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jodorowsky, Stephen Kostanski and Panos Cosmatos. Musically the arc is like taking the very concept of dream pop to much more ambitious heights than usual. Yes, the flowing, refreshing synth drones that evolve and slip into the cracks of consciousness. Sure the ethereal, simple guitar line that wanders even as it suggests a distant destination. But JAF 34 doen’t leave it there, chapters of this song proceed to give a musical depiction of the way we have regulated our time on the earth and given up so much of our lives to the commodification of not just our waking hours but how the content we help to create to offer up as products of social capital monetizable as experiences and bits of information for others and as markers algorithms can use to market to us and to other people whose own characteristics and patterns of behavior and consumption match our own. This recursive feedback loop the film suggests does in fact leave us fairly empty and running on a kind of treadmill that serves capital instead of our genuine selves. The music thus in the point in the film reflects the layers of distortion and, flux and frantic and desperate activity and for what? More wandering and chasing paths outside our genuine and organic interests and desires and following those suggested to us by an impersonal economic model that enriches large corporations at the expense of society and our individual psyches. It’s an ambitious piece of work that has more in common with a work of art out of FLUXUS, Holly Herndon or Laurel Halo than any standard experimental electronic or rock artist as its social critique is inseparable from its execution. Watch the “EMPTY” in its entirety on YouTube and connect with JAF 34 at the website linked below.

JAF 34 Website

Artemis Orion Explores the Ways We’ve Learned to Desire Love on “visions”

Artemis Orion’s “visions” (part six of her song cycle/EP “honey”) gets a bit of a high definition boost on the Nine Paths remix. The original definitely wasn’t lacking and fits perfectly in the context of an album meditating on the arc of love throughout one’s life. This remix, though, emphasizes the low end and sharp edges of the track and gives it a bit of an industrial flavor toward the end. The video for the original version of the song (on YouTube embedded below) reveals a song that examines the nature of how we experience and conceptualize our desires on even the subconscious level through both social conditioning and how we’ve taught ourselves about what we can and should expect from others particularly in the context of an intimate relationship. The disorienting landscapes, the flow of symbols and signifiers in the video work perfectly with the ethereal vocals and expert use of reverse delay to take the melody out of the usual logic of musical rhythm. The imagery suggests a hazy early winter morning and the tenor and sentiments expressed speak to a cultivated sense of compassion for oneself and the vulnerabilities of others. Fans of Married in Berdichev, Grouper and Midwife will find much to like in what Artemis Orion has to offer with this song and the rest of “honey.” Listen to “visions” on Spotify, check out the captivating video on YouTube and follow Orion at Instagram linked below.

Artemis Orion on Instagram

Alex Wilcox Takes Us to Where Ancient Earth Radio Broadcasts Have Gone to Play on “BOO.”

Listening to Alex Wilcox techno track “BOO.” it pays to give it the time to develop from a pulsing beat to staccato vocal blips accenting the rhythm while a background drones ease into the brisk pace of the song. Oscillating bubbles of sound warp through right before a high pitched alien voice speaks to us in a language we don’t understand, its voice echoing like a dream of a memory of taking the subway in a futuristic nation we’ve never been to. Other voices come in as though you’re receiving radio signals sent from earth forty years ago preserved by the cold of outer space arriving at some distant star far from the earth and captured for analysis and enjoyment as a sample by an electronic artist who has an affinity for cultural media artifacts from ancient earth. Then the full seven minute and one second of the track are over right after all sound sources trigger at once to build to a grand blowout and burnout of all processed signals fading away. Whatever the nature and methodology for the song, Wilcox has definitely taken us on an unusual musical journey by going beyond the bounds of conventional techno songcraft. Listen to “BOO.” on Spotify and connect with Wilcox on Soundcloud as well.

“Song for the Garden” is Half Shadow’s Cosmic Folk Ode to Our Innate Connection With the Forces and Manifestations of Nature Within and Without

There’s that section in the 2005 Flaming Lips documentary The Fearless Freaks where we’re shown publicity photos of the band wandering in a psychedelic landscape and they’re referred to as these trippers and weirdos when Wayne Coyne really wasn’t someone into psychedelics. But that aesthetic and sentiments expressed and the complexity of impressions resonate with the music video for the latest Half Shadow track “Song for the Garden” (from the forthcoming album At Home With My Candles due out April 7, 2022 on Bud Tapes & Dove Cove Records). Jesse Carsten sits with an acoustic guitar in a natural landscape of rock formations, beaches, drying plants, woods in the near distance as animations layer over the top of the footage and images collage together in sync with the way his vocals meld and melt together with the warping background melody and the processing of his own vocals. The lyrics poetically describe what seems to be a mystical experience with the spirit of the natural world itself as an aggregate entity of which we’re never really apart except in the limited and self-involved cognition of typical human consciousness. The music is somewhere between ambient pop, cosmic country and psychedelic folk and wonderfully not choosing to fit into a narrow genre. It’s a song that washes through your mind and makes the truth of being connected to a larger existential context obvious and impossible and unnecessary to resist. Sonic touchstones perhaps worth mentioning would be solo Syd Barrett, Orbit Service and Legendary Pink Dots but best experienced for yourself so watch the video on YouTube and follow Half Shadow and Carsten at the links below.

Half Shadow on Bandcamp

Half Shadow on Facebook

Half Shadow on Instagram

Early Signs Approaches the “Highs and Lows” of Ebb and Flow of Fortune in Life With Zen-like Humor

Early Signs catalog the various ways in which life’s peak moments and not so lofty heights seem to work in parallel in our lives on “Highs and Lows.” The song written in a psychedelic pop Americana style loosely follows a cadence not unlike that of Warren Zevon’s 1977 hit “Werewolves of London” and like that song there is a sense of darkly ironic humor without malice. In this song the lyrics goes down a list of situations where we work hard, get recognized for such in petty ways, only to be rewarded with the opportunity to do more work or rewarded in other dubious ways such as the “social media queen” who trades her “boundaries for compliments” all while endeavoring without taking into consideration burnout, our own and that of the very situations we’re in. Is the song warning against being too satisfied before another downturn in life, against getting too comfortable? Or just bemoaning the perceived inevitable. The song works with multiple interpretations of one of the basic facts of life—that the good times don’t last forever. And that knowing this means that maybe you can roll with the flow of fortune and failure without despair. Listen to “Highs and Lows” on Spotify, look for the debut album out in April 2022 and follow Early Signs at the links below.

Early Signs on Instagram

Husbands Sonically Free Associate America’s Collective Dissociative Tendencies on “Wishbone”

The menacing bass line and almost motorik beat that opens “Wishbone” by Husbands and the way the song unfolds with disparate streams of sound is reminiscent of pop weirdo Russ Ballard. The song weaves together strands of post-punk, Krautrock, synth pop and experimental psychedelic rock across it’s duration. The distorted vocals, processed to sound robotic, cuts through the mix and then gives way to moody harmonies that contemplate the dissociative aspects of modern American culture. The fractured guitar solo in the first half of the song sounds like society or at least one’s psyche on the verge of fragmenting while the synth work mid-song touches on the warped, dreamlike soundscapes of Black Moth Super Rainbow. As the song plays visions of Stereolab collaborating Black Angels on a cover of Ballard’s 1984 hit “Voices” is hard to shake which just makes “Wishbone” a bit of an earworm in the end. Listen to the song on Spotify and connect with Husbands at the links provided.

Husbands on Twitter

Husbands on Facebook

Husbands on Instagram

Kate Schroder Provides a Model for Finding Your Own Guiding Light to a Better Life on “Monday”

Kate Schroder, photo courtesy the artist

Kate Schroder’s “Monday” begins with a sample from How the Grinch Stole Christmas! as a prelude to a song of chilly, incandescent tones behind Schroder’s focused and emotive vocals. She seems to articulate how depression and a touch of impostor syndrome can make every day seem the same and weigh you down with routine and a lack of energy to push forward yet find a way to grind through the same cycle over and over. The title of the song presents that immediate impasse that can seem insurmountable until you literally live through the day. But the flickering, luminous quality of the keyboard line limns the tune with the haze of dreams and aspirations that pull you through these tedious life moments that are less than inspirational. And Schroder herself sings of that impulse to work one’s way through a period in life when noting is an obvious guiding light except for the one you provide yourself even if only a little, a little at a time until you reach your goals. If rekindling one’s heart fires to larger sizes and a spirit of action for the good can work for the aforementioned Grinch, it can work for you too. Listen to “Monday” on Bandcamp and connect with Schroder at the links below.

Kate Schroder on YouTube

Kate Schroder on Apple Music

Kate Schroder on Facebook

Kate Schroder on Instagram

The ALLAY Remix of Erik Bashore’s “Contortion” is an Ambient Prelude to the Onset of Full Winter

The ALLAY Remix of Erik Bashore’s “Contortion” is so transformative that the spare, acoustic ambient track that is the original is rendered into pure atmosphere, its distinct sounds processed and blurred into a continuous flow. It’s like the warm and detailed instrumentation of the original is a campfire obscured by a sudden snowstorm. Post-rock becomes something darker and moodier when the original song wasn’t exactly short on a hushed vibe. If the track were used in a soundtrack perhaps this remix would be in the introduction and the original for the credit sequence. It’s reminiscent of Onehotrix Point Never’s score to the 2017 crime thriller Good Time and suggests hidden depths within a blizzard on the edge of civilization and setting the expectation of an emotionally harrowing drama ahead. Listen to the ALLAY remix of “Contortion” by Erik Bashore on Soundcloud.

Alexander Nikolaev’s “Snowflakes” is the Embodiment of Reflective Isolation of Winter and the Urge For an Active Future

With two lines of piano, spectral synth drones and violin Alexander Nikolaev assembles layers of sound in a dynamic that embodies the delicate individuality of snowflakes falling from the sky. And when all the elements sync together later in this very short song at two minutes, the context of the snowflakes in the bigger picture of snowfall in a vast landscape. The melancholy tenor of the melody suggests a time of reflective isolation but the song has a palpable sense of momentum suggesting an emotional leaning into the long winter season ahead even while life may seem fallow anticipating a year of activity following a period of stasis. Perhaps not just an evocation of winter but of this lingering and seemingly more perilous years of plague and unease with how it doesn’t seem to end yet looking forward to when life can move forward as normal. A simple work that works on multiple levels. Listen to “Snowflakes” on YouTube and follow Nikolaev at the links below.

Alexander Nikolaev on Facebook

Alexander Nikolaev on Instagram

“Strange Kind of Love” is The Lovelines’ Enigmatic, Nostalgic Pop Debut

Brother and sister duo The Lovelines’ debut single “Strange Kind of Love” loops that title as a lyric throughout the song with a touch of different takes on the delivery creating an almost hypnotic rhythm. The layered percussion sounds both like a drum machine and like an organic drum sample while strings drop in to cast a nostalgic tenor toward the end of the song as the whimsical, slightly distorted guitar lead that came in early on the song to trace the melody set by the resonating bell tones. The image for the single looks like a 1960s designer’s idea of the near future and makes one wonder what this strange kind of love might be and with whom the woman pictured (the whole image looks like a very well imagined collage, adding to a surreal quality to the presentation of the song) might be discussing the details of such. It’s a simple pop song in just over two minutes and it sounds like music one might hear in a montage shot in a film set during the era of Mad Men and as such suggests there’s more than seems obvious on initial exposure. Listen to “Strange Kind of Love” on Spotify and follow The Lovelines at any of the links on their LinkTree below.

The LoveLines LinkTree