LUC’s single “Glow” bursts with a fuzzy, funky synth pulse and soaring, soulful vocals that serve as almost a counterpoint to the grit of distorted processed guitar and bass that carries the main melody. In that way the track is reminiscent of the way Goldfrapp reconciles elements that seem to contrast but in the end compliment one another to give the music great momentum and emotional peaks that border on bombast but come off more like swagger. The mix of the track is fascinating in that it allows for the more granular sounds to shine as well as the ethereal soundscaping and the melodious and acrobatic vocal line. The Los Angeles-based project says the genre “is LA Garagetronic” possibly because its combination of electronic dance pop and garage rock but really it stands out for the super production and adeptness in making disparate elements work together to create something decidedly different than its component parts. Listen to “Glow” on Soundcloud and follow LUC at the links provided.
What:The Legendary Pink Dots w/Orbit Service, The Drood, DJ Mudwulf and VJ Dizy Pixl When: Thursday, 10.31, 8:30 p.m. Where: Ophelia’s Electric Soap Box Why: The Legendary Pink Dots and its mystical, spectral, ambient psychedelia will turn 40 next August and is currently undertaking a tour celebrating the landmark date along with its new album, 2019’s Angel in the Detail. The new record contains elements of what has always made LPD great including entrancing atmospheres, singer Edward Ka-Spel’s poetic lyrics that articulate deep truths about the human condition and how it manifests in our lives and civilizations. It also comments on the perilous state of things in the world today and especially in “The Junkyard” and how the elites are trying to finish completing a world system that renders those of us not in that upper one percent of one percent as pieces of junk in world civilization. The surreal and beautifully disturbing music video is well worth a view. Also sharing the bill tonight is the likeminded Denver-based ambient psychedelic rock band Orbit Service which has been gracing local stages and well beyond since the mid-90s. The Drood, also from Denver, is like a dark psychedelic prog band with punk-intensity and a sense of theater and the ability to create exorcistic emotional experiences in song. DJ Mudwulf will set the mood with what is sure to be a great set for the holiday and VJ Dizy Pixl will set the visual mood as per her usual level of excellence.
What:Bethlehem Steel w/Gila Teen and guest When: Friday, 11.1, 9 p.m. Where: Lion’s Lair Why: Bethlehem Steel has been together since 2012 but started garnering national attention for its outstanding performances at the South By Southwest festival in 2016. At that time the group had out a couple of EPs but released its debut full length Party Naked Forever in 2017. Its thrilling collision of fuzzy pop and dynamic atmospheric rock has drawn comparisons to 90s noise pop acts like Weezer and contemporary artists like Courtney Barnett and Waxahatchee. But often enough the group’s expansive, imaginative songwriting and creative ambition has resulted in some music that pushes boundaries of the loud and quiet format that many bands have adopted of late so that its songs will remind some of the emotionally stirring music of older bands like Failure, Slint and Rainer Maria. It has that kind of fire and caustic sound as well as lyrics that delve deep into the darker regions of the psyche with a defiant spirit lighting the way. In September, Bethlehem Steel released its fantastic self-titled full-length for which it is touring in support. Also on the bill is Gila Teen, the experimental post-punk band that brilliantly mixes moody atmospheres with a splintery pop punk.
What:Yung Bae w/Birocratic and Jaguar Nights When: Friday, 11.1, 8 p.m. Where: Marquis Theater Why: Dallas Cotton started making music as Yung Bae while living in Portland, Oregon but his production-based future funk started garnering him wider audiences while still a student at Oregon State University. His sound straddles that sort of 70s soul and R&B-inspired sounds and the aesthetic of modern electronic pop music. So while he references classic music it comes off with a more modern sensibility and energy. It hearkens to a previous era and the unsullied excitement of that music but in a way that couldn’t really have been accomplished at the time in terms of how he sculpts sound and edits it together. In 2019 Yung Bae released his fifth album in as many years with Bae 5.
What:Dia De Muertos celebration: Altas, Plume Varia and Los Mocochetes When: Saturday, 11.2, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Denver instrumental rock band Altas is doing its now annual Dia De Muertos show in which the members will dress in the appropriate regalia for the occasion making the show a true event rather than just another gig. The group’s sweeping, cinematic grandeur and fiery musical pyrotechnics and mastery of mood and atmosphere is worth witnessing alone but also on the bill is psychedelic rock band Los Mocochetes and downtempo dream pop band Plume Varia and its emotionally rich and haunted compositions.
What:The Locust w/Disposal Notice and Its Just Bugs When: Saturday, 11.2, 8 p.m. Where: Summit Music Hall Why: The Locust recently reconvened to bring its mutant, death metal inflected, noisy hardcore on a national tour. The group’s surreal imagery and costumes along with its equally bizarre lyrics has made it difficult to lump in with any convenient musical movement. Its Just Bugs (the apostrophe is left off) is an industrial punk hip-hop group from Colorado and just as impossible to pigeonhole.
What:Twin Peaks w/Post Animal and Ohmme When: Saturday, 11.2, 8 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Twin Peaks from Chicago weathered the mid-2010s blowout of garage rock and neo-psychedelic rock that was making the underground rock scene of a certain stripe become fairly stale and performatively exciting. What helped was that Twin Peaks was writing good songs and hasn’t stayed stuck in the same sound for its entire career thus far. Its 2019 album Lookout Low sounds like an odd and interesting hybrid of power pop and the weirdo punk of The Fall at its most Lou Reed-inspired, mix in some unusual flourishes of 70s rock with nods to Peter Frampton and Thin Lizzy. All while delivering spirited and sometimes gloriously ragged performances which are much needed at a time when a sanitary quality has permeated too much modern music.
What:Vivan Girls w/Down Time, Short Shorts and Backseat Vinyl — CANCELLED When: Sunday, 11.3, 7 p.m. Where: Marquis Theater Why: Vivian Girls caused a stir in the indie underground of the 2000s and 2010s with their lo-fi, noisy pop songs. The group’s ability to mix buoyant dynamics with dark, brooding moods and sounds was a fascinating contrast. The band split in 2014 with members going on to perform in La Sera, The Babies and Upset (all still going concerns). But in summer 2019 the group announced it was reforming with a new record, Memory, on the way and released in September.
SRSQ, photo by Tom Murphy
What:TR/ST w/SRSQ and DJ Slave 1 When: Sunday, 11.3, 7 p.m. Where: Summit Music Hall Why: TR/ST came to prominence as the new darkwave movement was coming together with a sound that seemed to come out of the then renewed interest in vintage synths, that cold, bright, moody sound of Goth-y 80s synth pop and its cousin chillwave. But Robert Alfons’ vibrant, soulful voice and imaginative soundsccaping are the key ingredients that elevated this project above many of its contemporaries. In 2019 TR/ST released The Destroyer (Part 1 and 2), a more experimental and ambient, ethereal set of songs than his previous offerings and a clear product of reassessing directions and ideas to produce something different. SRSQ (pronounced Seer Ess Que as in the lettes for the latter two) is Kennedy Ashlyn the charismatic singer formerly of brilliant dream pop band Them Are Us Too. Her 2018 album Unreality is a moody and emotionally harrowing and cathartic downtempo album that seems to have absorbed the darkness and pain of the underground world in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire and given it a voice that exorcises some of that energy.
What:Keytar Fest IV: The Jinjas, R A R E B Y R D $ and Claudzilla When: Sunday, 11.3, 4 p.m. Where: Glitter City Why: Just like the title of the event suggests, this is a mini festival featuring all projects that incorporate keytars as an essential part of the songwriting and this includes weirdo synth punk Claudzilla and experimental hip-hop/IDM-inflected trio R A R E B Y R D $.
What:Danny Brown w/Ashnikko and Zeeloperz When: Sunday, 11.3, 7 p.m. Where: Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom Why: Ever since the larger world outside of Detroit started cluing into Danny Brown’s genius following the release of 2010’s The Hybrid, the rapper has garnered a large cult following for his eccentric yet sharply cogent and thoughtful yet raw lyrics and production that incorporates a wide range of sounds that one hadn’t often heard in hip-hop outside of the underground and alternative circles of the 90s and early 2000s. Brown picked up where that left off and pushed things further particularly on his 2016 album Atrocity Exhibition which borrowed its title from a science fiction novel by J.G. Ballard and whose beats sounded almost like a new hybrid of industrial and rap that reflected the atmospherics as much as the textures and rhythms. With his new album, 2019’s uknowhatimsayin¿ Brown follows a similar sonic path but brings together more organic, almost found sounds with processed layers of atmosphere. Intact is his gift for surreal imagery and wordplay that gets under your skin.
Monday | November 4
GRÜN WASSER, photo courtesy the artists
What:GRÜN WASSER w/Natural Violence, French Kettle Station and Night Shift DJs When: Monday, 11.4, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: GRÜN WASSER is a Chicago-based electro-pop/industrial whose pulsing rhythms and dreamlike moods sound like endless nights wandering a menacing urban landscape and commenting on the culture of the nightlife. That is if the group’s new album Not OK with Things (Holodeck Records) is any indication. There is an almost claustrophobic quality to its densely atmospheric beats contrasted with Keely Dowd’s lightly echoing, ethereal vocals. French Kettle Station has been through more permutations of his sound than many artists bother to explore but of late he’s been developing a sound that’s still rooted slightly in 1980s No Wave disco and modern glitch dance pop but also influenced by 1980s adult contemporary music and its unexpectedly newly influential use and voicing of drums and vintage synths in a way that in any other contexts would be utterly wack but takes on an almost spiritual cast in certain underground electronic artists including that side of what FKS has been up to in the past year or two. His latest album, Over X Millenia takes those ideas and injects them with non-western rhythmic ideas and a New Age music aesthetic for something new yet strangely familiar. Its closest cousin that comes readily to mind is Brian Eno and David Byrne’s 1981 classic My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
Tuesday | November 5
HTRK, photo by Kate Meakin
What:HTRK w/Midwife, Echo Beds, Human Tide When: Tuesday, 11.5, 8 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: Since 2003 HTRK, originally from Australia, has been making music inspired by the brooding, otherworldly atmosphere of the films of David Lynch. Though the name of the band is pronounced “Hate Rock” it’s not so much rock except in the experimental sense as much as downtempo and ambient soundscaping. In 2010 founding musician Sean Stewart passed away leaving Nigel Yang and Jonnine Standish to carry on and as a duo HTRK has released a handful of some of the most fascinating music mixing electric music with an electronic aesthetic being made today. The group’s latest album is Venus in Leo with its exquisitely subtle dynamics and cinematic approach to its composition and sound design with lingering, impressionistic guitar riffs drifting around Standish’s hushed and soulful vocals.
Minami Deutsch, photo courtesy the artists
What:Kikagaku Moyo w/Minamu Deutsch When: Tuesday, 11.5, 7 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: Kikagaku Moyo from Japan is a true synthesis of 70s Krautrock, classic Japanese psychedelic rock and more traditional Japanese folk. Currently the group is touring with the like-minded Tokyo band Minami Deutsch. The group’s urgent rhythms, mesmerizing drones and hypnotic dynamics sound like what it is to travel through Tokyo and its subtle but odd mixture of old world and high tech metropolis side by side in all of the city’s giant districts. On the group’s new EP, Can’t Get There that dynamic often takes you to a place of anxiety and then release as it draws you into its irresistible groove.
What:Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage w/Adam Baumeister When: Tuesday, 11.5, 7 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: A rare chance to see eccentric, genius freak folk and comic artist legend Jeffrey Lewis and his band along with local star of experimental folk and psychedelia, Adam Baumeister, head of Meep Records and former member of Navy Girls and Bad Weather California.
What:Negative Approach w/Blood Loss and Tuck Knee When: Wednesday, 11.6, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Negative Approach from Detroit was one of the bands out of that early wave of American hardcore than seemed particularly seething and intense and fronted by John Brannon who went on to noisy psychedelic blues band Laughing Hyenas and Easy Action. Easily one of the greatest frontmen of rock music because he seems to actually be losing his mind swept up in the moment.
What:Weird Wednesday: FangFuck, Zealot and Bolonium When: Wednesday, 11.6, 9 p.m. Where: Bowman’s Vinyl & Lounge Why: Weird Wednesday includes left field indie rock local supergroup Zealot and Bolonium a band inspired by Devo and which comes off like an odd combination of band, cheesy game show and Troma film.
What:Kurt Vile and the Violators w/Dinosaur Jr When: Wednesday, 11.6, 7 p.m. Where: The Mission Ballroom Why: Dinosaur Jr is the missing link between gritty classic rock like Neil Young, hardcore and 90s alternative rock and more influential on modern music than is often obvious. The mixture of sheer volume with tunefulness reconciled eras of music in a way that is often taken for granted and which bands like Nirvana and other massively commercial successful bands took to topple the music industry marketing machine and culture. Apparently modern folk/psychedelic artist Kurt Vile has felt this influence and thus has Dinosaur on this tour and for its part, the members of Dinosaur Jr have continued to release music, some of the best of its career in the past decade.
When “Gasoline” starts up, you think for a second that it’s going to go into a warped version of “Repo Man” by Iggy Pop but then the rhythm fully engages and its headlong pace and cutting but melodic guitar riff, helped by Rikk Agnew formerly of The Adolescents and Christian Death (circa the 1982 classic Only Theatre of Pain), are an integral part of the song and its tale of a combustible relationship that is mutually destructive but irresistible. The kind where both people know how fucked up it is but the drama and the darkness are a turn on for both people and they’re going to ride it out until it flames out in spectacular fashion. The metaphor of relationship as perilous car ride is borne throughout but especially the part that begins with “crash and burn” and completes with “built for speed,” I’m what you need.“ Singer Joie Blaney takes some lines and MisMaxine Murrderr others as they sing/scream almost as call and response but also together. And dark as the song goes there’s something sweet about it at heart like two cynical hedonists who’ve seen it all get each other and get to each other by bypassing their defenses and numbness to vanilla stimulation even if it will cost them in the end. Listen to “Gasoline,” produced by Paul Roessler of The Screamers, 45 Grave and Nina Hagen fame, on YouTube and follow Rx27 at the links below.
What:Penelope Isles w/Sleepy Animals and Sad Bug When: Thursday, 10.24, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Penelope Isles from Brighton, UK recently released its debut album, Until the Tide Creeps In, through Bella Union. The record is a mix of woozy indie pop and fuzzy guitar rock. Its washy dynamics and use of samples and incidental sounds on the record speaks to an almost sound design approach to the recording to convey a sense of place and an experience beyond some pristine studio product. It’s as though you’re hanging out with the band and going for a walk along that shore and trading stories about life. The band’s use of minor progression transitions is sublime making the record more evocative than might seem obvious on first blush and worth delving into for the sheer array of sounds and emotions running through the ten tracks.
What:Emergency Contact w/Debaser and American Culture When: Thursday, 10.24, 9 p.m. Where: Rhinoceropolis Why: Seattle’s Emergency Contact is somewhere betwixt irreverent lo-fi slacker rock and pointed post-punk. Also on the bill is Josh Taylor (former Friends Forever and used to run Monkey Mania) as Debaser playing some strange bass-based songs. Unless it’s something completely different these days which it may be. American Culture is a guitar rock band rooted in indie pop but influenced by the chimy-dreamy-dark post-punk of The Cure. All shredders who care more about songwriting than showing off, which is a rarity.
What:Weathered Statues EP release, Triton FC, Rejekted Kauses When: Thursday, 10.24, 8 p.m. Where: Hi-Dive Why: Weathered Statues is releasing its latest EP, Desolation. Fans of Xmal Deutschland and The Cure will find something to like about this post-punk band whose fluid rhythms and urgent melodies go for the dark places in the psyche as a path to catharsis and healing.
What:Maribou State w/Sea Moya When: Friday, 10.25, 8 p.m. Where: Gothic Theatre Why: English duo Maribou State are known for their remixes of popular artists as well as musical collaborations with the likes of Khruangbin, Holly Walker and Pedestrian on its 2018 album Kingdoms of Colour. The project’s sound could be described as downtempo steeped in non-Western sounds and rhythms mixed with electronic jazz and soul. Its songs have mood aplenty but also an uplifting quality driven by creative song dynamics. Though often described as an electronic project, Maribou State includes live, acoustic drums, guitar and other instrumentation performed by humans and not just a track of well sculpted electronics. Fans of Prefuse 73 and Blockhead may find much to like with Maribou State.
The Vanilla Milkshakes with Frank Registrato on drums circa 2015, photo by Tom Murphy
What: Shibui Denver #7: Frank Registrato and Stalebread Scottie When: Sunday, 10.27, 7 p.m. Where: Mutiny Information Café Why: Assuming a blizzard doesn’t descend on Denver, the next edition of Shibui Denver hosted by Queen City Sounds and Art scribe Tom Murphy will include Frank Registrato of The Vanilla Milkshakes who will perform vocal and piano songs for perhaps the first time in the Mile High City. He was once involved in the world of music in Orlando and Disney and in the orbit of Lou Pearlman and his pop music empire and brings a lifetime of vast musical experience into his songwriting and performances. Also on the bill from out of town making a special appearance is Stalebread Scottie of The Drunken Catfish Ramblers, blues folk artist from New Orleans, who appeared in the HBO series Treme.
Tuesday | October 29
Samvega circa 2016, photo by Tom Murphy
What:Today’s Paramount, Samvega, Emily Shreve and Giardia When: Tuesday, 10.29, 7 p.m. Where: Lost Lake Why: Doom/folk/psychedelic band Samvega will perform at this show that features other bands on the spectrum of math rock and experimental like Today’s Paramount and Giardia.
Milly, photo courtesy the artistWhat:Swervdriver w/Criminal Hygiene and Milly When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 7 p.m. Where: Bluebird Theater Why: Of all the bands lumped in with early 90s shoegaze, Swervedriver, like Catherine Wheel, was one those that rocked a little harder than most and its use of car metaphors seemed to vibe with an American sensibility as well. The band’s 1991 debut album Raise yielded classic blazers like “Son of Mustang Ford” and “Rave Down.” Over the course of the next two decades and more the band evolved and explored new vistas of sound and is now touring for its 2019 album Future Ruins. Opening act Criminal Hygiene from Los Angeles sounds like a mix of slowcore delicacy and fuzzy indie pop. Milly, also based in Los Angeles, started as the home recording project of frontman Brendan Dyer when he was living in Connecticut. But the band has fleshed out a spacious and evocative sound employing entrancing gradients of atmosphere and floating melodies. The group recently released its Our First Four Songs EP showing great promise as modern slowcore soundsculptors with an ear for transporting dynamics.
What:Devendra Banhart w/Black Belt Eagle Scout When: Wednesesday, 10.30, 7 p.m. Where: Boulder Theater Why: Psychedelic folk genius Devendra Banhart is now touring in support of his latest album Ma. His shows are always a lush presentation of his fascinatingly colorful and left field compositions. But sharing the bill is Black Belt Eagle Scout. Katherine Paul released the album Mother of My Children under that moniker in September 2018 to great acclaim for its vivid and poetic depiction of the experiences of queer Indigenous people in a sensitive and nuanced manner. Her bright, atmospheric folk songs and gently soulful vocals reveal an inner strength that comes across powerfully. She recently released her new record At the Party With My Brown Friends.
Since the beginning of the year, Ian O’Dougherty (of Uphollow, Slim Cessna’s Auto Club, Tauntaun and Fauxgazi among other projects), under his songwriting moniker Eolian, has been writing and releasing a song a week and collecting various tracks into albums. His April 2019 album Home conveys a sense of loss and yearning and rebuilding. The track “Be Home” in particular is an upbeat, Robyn Hitchcock-esque power pop ode to the ability of people to reclaim their personal power by making where they’re living their home and not just a place to put your possessions and sleep every night. Its urgent pace and lightly distorted guitar melody suggest movement and one can almost see the subject of the song putting personal touches on the house or apartment to make it feel like his own place, not the equivalent of a long term hotel. The idea of home can be elusive, amorphous quality for many but a sense many if not most people crave in some capacity—a place of your own to belong, whatever that looks and feels like. It can be taken away from you in various ways including when a relationship ends, one has to move for a job or one is displaced due to rent hikes, made homeless or perhaps worst, through natural disaster or war. O’Dougherty’s song, though, is aimed toward the spirit to put your personal stamp on where you’re staying and the significance of such for your psychological health. Listen to “Be Home” on YouTube and follow Eolian at the links below.
Dog Basketball, still from video for “Gold Dust Falcon Crest”
For the last year and a half Zack Marshall has been writing, producing and recording his forthcoming EP due fall 2019 under the name Dog Basketball. The Denver-based project was adapted to a live band including Jack Long, Ben Eberle, and Kylie Ludvig, members of Denver punk/hardcore bands Use the Sun and Screwtape. Marshall, a former member of his high school band Use the Sun, took a departure from his roots in emo, pop punk and math rock in favor of a more pop-oriented, mellow, abstract electronic sound.
The EP’s lead single, “Ghost Dust Falcon Crest,” is reflective of the, as Marshall says, “moody/off-kilter electronic indie pop w/ jazz and ambient influences.” Using samples and field recordings of “bones, coins, birds, metal gates, etc for either percussive purposes or atmospheric / impressionistic purposes,” the single will remind some listeners a bit initially of IDM artists that favor the use of organic sounds in their tracks like Boards of Canada but the song quickly evolves into a delicate, introspective pop song. While tempting to compare the song to some music by Microphones, for which there are certainly resonances, it might be better compared to Clairo’s brand of lo-fi pop and its intimate and personal character.
Ahead of the November 22 release of the EP, mixed and mastered by Berlin-based producer Dan Taro, formerly of Denver and who contributed production elements, Dog Basketball is releasing the video for “Gold Dust Falcon Crest.” Looking like a cross between a 1980s public access art or nature video with the glitches and visual quality to match the gloriously refined amateur sound of the music. It’s a complete aesthetic. Directed by Nick Goforth, the video was filmed in Estes Park, Colorado and inspired by the genre of found footage and “lost tapes” that you can find all over YouTube and the internet in generally if you go looking and which has been the subject and aesthetic of multiple movies, often in the realm of horror. While not horrific minus large cockroaches toward the end, the video is meant to convey a sense of being followed by something out of sight. Like the song, more impressionistic than defined, it invites the imagination to contemplate what it might mean and where it might go from finding the mysterious book. It draws you in to the kind of mystery the lead character in the video is experiencing and thus a sense of wonder. The video and song are analogs of one another while complementing each other perfectly.
Watch the video below and catch Dog Basketball at DIME in Denver on October 25 and on November 1 at 40 West Studios for a Halloween-themed video game soundtrack covers set. Follow the project at the links provided below.
Earth Control Pill, August 2019, photo by Tom Murphy
Earth Control Pill is releasing its first music video for two songs paired together, “Fan/Pool.” The project, which is comprised of Kathryn Taylor (formerly of political punk band Future Single Mom and noise/performance art duo Sex Therapy and noise rock group Born Dumb) whose unearthly drones are hypnotically soothing and reflect a kind of collage aesthetic abstracted to soundscapes. In the video, like a lo-fi David Lynch short, Taylor (in blue gloves) and friends undertake some kind of benevolent ritual. The cast includes video director Laura Conway in teal gloves, Mattie Gonzales of New Skin Magazine in pink gloves, artist Meghan Meehan (Conway’s partner in monthly DJ night Night Shift) in yellow gloves and, later, performance artist/musician Coleman Mummery of Goblin King of the Pop Stars comes in first wearing teal gloves and switching to purple. At times the video treatment by Conway and Anna Winter, with contributions from filmmaker Kim Shively, is reminiscent of the surreal quality of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls or Troll 2, like it’s out of phase with normal reality. The song is a little different for Earth Control Pill too as it’s more a conventionally jaunty melody that almost sounds like music for a kid’s show and the video captures the dancing and silly antics friends get up to when no one is watching. The informal sacredness of those moments done in an environment decorated as if from weeks of thrift store finds turned into something magical so everyone who goes there knows they’re in some place different where the mundane stuff of everyday life doesn’t belong. The visual effects are subtle and humorous like the reverse effect of the cigarette un-ashing back to Taylor’s face. There is a darkness and lightness to the video that may or may not reflect the purity of the moments on screen but done as a private thing to share among friends. Nothing nefarious, just a little silly at moments. Dreamlike and subtly humorous like an inside joke at no one’s expense, the video helps making music that might seem abstract much more accessible.
If Birdman Cult’s song “Snakes” wasn’t a jaunty, fuzzy post-punk garage rock song its video would come off more like the notorious “11B-X-1371” clip that circulated a few years ago. A hooded and robed figure in a bird mask bearing tilted pentagrams presents as the high priest of some nefarious cult handling snakes like he’s officiating at something more sinister than the “Cremation of Care” ceremony at Bohemian Grove. Rather, the symbols are more primal connecting the vitality of the song itself to more elemental forces than the theatrically wicked. The “snake” in this song also taps into mythology and turns the symbol on its head with the temptations of the city and its culture serving as transformative role through corrupting an outmoded set of values and sensibilities. If you turn off the sound the optics are certainly spooky but the music gives it the playful context much as many things seem far scarier than they are if you don’t know much about them and this song challenges that cognitive dissonance beautifully. Watch the video for “Snakes” on YouTube and follow Birdman Cult at the links below.
RARE CIGARETTES is the alias of producer Daniel Gol who in the single “Amygdala,” made in collaboration with ZAAR, gives us a downtempo exploration of that most modern of ailments, anxiety. The vocals seem very chill on the subject but in the music with the distorted synth haunting after the finely textured beats and enshrouding the other elements of the music you hear how those emotions can overwhelm so much of your life. The vocals can’t escape it, the rhythm can’t and in the end those distorted drones and synth arpeggios close out the track. In expressing the power of those phenomena of the mind, though, Gol suggests we can externalize and express those feelings and perhaps better understand and get a grasp of them so they do not have undue power over our minds. Listen to “Amygdala,” a word that refers to the part of the brain that processes emotion, another nice touch to the song, on YouTube and follow RARE CIGARETTES at the links provided.
A distant drone flecked with the sound of static or a nearby flame introduce us to Voga’s new track “A Render in Sepia.” When the strings come in with the melodic and drifty companion tone like a processed organ one does get the sense of looking at an old photograph. The song has the mood of a window onto a time and place of rustic simplicity. Like sitting by the fire in your cottage in the woods as the snow falls outside in heavy but quiet layers, reading from a beloved book and pausing now and then to stoke the fire and contemplate the fact that you don’t have to be anywhere for days compounded by the snowstorm. Because of this the quiet part of your mind can merge with the imagination and put your mind in its own storytelling mode as you finally get to writing your own book of wonder and adventure. This song feels like a prelude coming from a place of supreme tranquility. Created with synth drones, strings and muted horn the track was re-recorded through a cell phone and thus the sense of another time or cut off from civilization is an illusion but one that seems welcome fantasy away from the rate race most of us live in today. Listen to “A Render in Sepia” on Soundcloud and follow Voga at the links provided.
![Milly Press Photo 01 PRIORITY B+W [06-10-19] (1)](https://queencitysounds.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/milly-press-photo-01-priority-bw-06-10-19-1.jpg?w=840)
Queen City Sounds and Art 
You must be logged in to post a comment.