Queen City Sounds and Art

“How To Feel” is Useless Cities’ Song Against The Colonization of Our Dreams by a Conformist Culture

UselessCities7_crop — Useless Cities, photo courtesy the artists

Before the release of “How To Feel,” Useless Cities wrote a string of captivating, ethereal post-punk-flavored songs. The new single, though, brings into the band’s oeuvre an edge and an urgency that befits the subject of the song. The piano melody and rhythmic guitar riff work in tandem to create an expressive dynamic that captures the mood of resisting the kind of subtle oppression outlined in the song. The lyric, “They’ll build you, they’ll build your hopes too” goes a bit beyond simply stating how a person or a culture will suggest or even insist how you feel and the proper feelings to express and the ways of expressing them. But we all naturally rebel against being so straightjacketed even when we comply with unspoken social rules. The myth is that with modern culture we’ve risen above such things but anyone that lives in the real world can attest, especially now when our lives are more circumscribed and channeled into outlets of expression, the struggle for personal liberation even at the level of our dreams and aspirations that are authentically our own has never ended. Musically the song might loosely be called post-punk but like many modern bands, Useless Cities have gone beyond the stylistic limitations such a term might imply. Listen to “How To Feel” on Soundcloud and follow Useless Cities at the links provided.

uselesscities.co.uk
soundcloud.com/useless-cities
youtube.com/channel/UCbaH3L6rdt93PjL1QwCvEgA
uselesscities.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/UselessCities
facebook.com/UselessCities
instagram.com/uselesscitiesband

Meresha’s “Olivia” Sounds Like the Futuristic Dance Jazz Pop That the Characters From Baghdad Café Might Make

meresha-door-_sm — Meresha, photo courtesy the artist

Prepare for some truly unconventional dynamics and soundscaping on Meresha’s “Olivia.” On one level it has the vibe of a left field jazz pop song. But also like something Art of Noise might have done had it attempted a hip-hop-inflected R&B song. Vintage keyboard sounds sound like a sample place amid lo-fi electronic percussion and percussive tones to create what feels like layers of polyrhythms as backdrop to a song that warns against the perils of being addicted to the various enticements one can find in modern life. But the song sounds so surreal like a forgotten song for a tropical dance club set in an urban, non-dystopian 1980s science fiction movie. Like if the lead characters of the 1988 Baghdad Café made it out of there and decided to start the aforementioned dance in a suburb of Miami where somehow hurricanes and the effects of climate change never seemed to hit because the weird and benevolent energy of the endeavor put up a barrier against such things. It’s an unusual song but one that is so original it quickly grows on you and bears repeated listening. Check out “Olivia” on YouTube and follow Meresha at the links below.

Meresha.com
soundcloud.com/meresha

Struggling With His Personal Demons of Anxiety and Self-Doubt, James Walker Overcomes Both Through the Gentle Momentum of the Hazy Melody of “Sane”

JamesWalker2_sm — James Walker, photo courtesy the artist

James Walker strikes a deeply introspective note at the beginning of “Sane” with a simple and dusky melodic synth figure. When his vocals come in accompanied by a hazy drone and flute-like arpeggiation and he sings of running from himself in a fit of anxiety, critical self-examination and self-alienation with which he struggles with a resolve he has to talk himself into. Sub bass gives the track a sense of movement while much of it is gauzily gorgeous atmospherics representing the fog one can get in when trapped in your own thoughts and that is what reinforces that part of the narrative that holds on to the will to overcome one’s tendency to shoot oneself I the foot. It’s an interesting contrast that lends what could otherwise be a simple though emotionally complex song a bit of stylistic depth. Listen to “Sane” on Spotify and follow James Walker at the links below.

soundcloud.com/james_walker_music
open.spotify.com/artist/08cmuH6uJGH9dQjvvdkTvR
youtube.com/c/jameswalkerfilms
jwalkermusic.bandcamp.com/releases
twitter.com/JWalkerSounds
facebook.com/jameswalkermusic
instagram.com/James_Walker_Music

For Its Video for “Do We Give a Damn?” bnsnburner Looks Like it Took the Extreme Tourism Route to Film in an Abandoned Chapel in Chernobyl

bensnburner3_crop — bensnburner, photo courtesy the artists

bensnburner’s video for “Do We Give a Damn?” looks like it was filmed in a long disused room in Pripyat, Ukraine. The visuals like Vice followed the band to film in that forbidden place playing this music that sounds like a mix of brooding minimalism and playfulness. Between guitar, drums and synth the band weaves a sound that reaches heights of desperate, haunted quality at times, at others, a dark spaciousness. All the while, even when the song peeks from behind its dark shroud, there is a sense of menace. Like maybe the band is in denial of a band of homicidal mutants á la The Chernobyl Diaries laying in wait when they try to make their exit from the doomed city. But the song ends on such a transcendently ethereal final passage it sounds as though the band escaped the musical darkness and thus a perilous fate as well. Watch the inspired performance on YouTube and follow bensnburner at the links below.

bensnburner.com
soundcloud.com/bensnburner
youtube.com/user/bensnburner
bensnburner.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/bensnburner
instagram.com/bensnburner

Repenter’s New Single “Skeletons” is the Perfect Balance of Edgy Melodies and Grace

Repenter1_crop — Repenter, image courtesy the artists

Repenter’s latest single “Skeletons” melds soulful, smoky vocals with grittily fuzzy guitar that soars like the musical equivalent of a cutting torch. And yet amidst that balance there are melancholic melodies and a dynamic structure that separates the song immediately from other bands who are using heavy distortion in their soundscape and basically aping some 90s alt-rock style. “Skeletons” is more like the logical progression out of 80s hard rock and New Wave. Taking the refined edge of the one and the well-crafted melodrama of the other to make the kind of song that isn’t beholden to either. The cover art, either a Frank Frazetta print or one made to imitate that style is the embodiment of how this band’s music works together—brute sonic force and melodic grace and fluidity. The art may make you expect to hear something like Molly Hatchet or Basil Poledouris but Repenter has mastered giving heavy rock some emotional nuance. Listen to “Skeletons” on Soundcloud or with the visualizations on YouTube.

In the Cacophany and Surreal Imagery of Kopper’s Video for “Fading Fires” We See a Psychologically Violent Artistic Reinvention Come to Pass

Kopper1_crop — Kopper, photo courtesy the artists

Kopper’s rambunctious riffing suits the story of the song “Fading Fires” (from the EP of the same name) as its about an artist who is stuck and frustrated with his work, hoping for some kind of breakthrough. Guitar, vocals, bass and drums seem to be working not at sync so much as coming from the same source and then working in tandem at points, giving the impression of a frayed dynamic reflecting a frazzled psyche. Often rather than just chords it sounds like the guitar riff winds up into a seeming explosion of fragmented melody accented by the rhythm. The effect is one of a different kind of psychedelic rock than the kind we’ve heard of late get so trendy. It sounds like a mind coming apart and reorienting in necessary new patterns and the inner turmoil that can be part of that process of forcing your mind into unfamiliar paths in order to grow out of your bad habits. In the music video we see the painter disgusted with his own stagnation and then visions of the band wearing faces like modern post-modernist Chagall pieces as well as people at a social gathering with the same. This imagery puts him over the edge into confronting the creative urges he’s been resisting until he finally wrestles with the visions taunting him and then takes them in to be cast out again as his new level of artistic expression and persona. The violence of the music reflects this catharsis in setting the old mind and methods to flame and getting on with the new. Watch the surreal video on YouTube and follow Kopper at the links provided.

kopperuk.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/Koppermusic
instagram.com/_kopper_

Emiji’s “Ambient Trip” remix of “Katharsis” is Design to Convey a Deep Sense of Peace in the Body and Spirit

Emiji2_crop — Emiji “Katharsis” cover (cropped)

Emiji’s “Ambient Trip” remix of his song “Katharsis” takes some of the edge off the IDM original, removes the beat and emphasizes the pure atmosphere over the understated textures of the original and keeps the tempo to an organic flow where the sounds almost feed back on each other like the movements on an enclosed body of water. It makes you think of what it might be like to lie on the bottom of a lake and watch large snowflakes fall on the surface as you drift along letting the tranquil waters dissolve any tension in your body and spirit, letting a deep sense of peace settle into you. The remix gives the song an almost entirely new meaning. Whereas the pace picks up on the original and conveys a strong sense of place, this remix emphasizes a strong sense of mood and the ability to get even more lost in the music. Listen to the “Ambient Trip” remix of “Katharsis” on Spotify and follow the Dublin-based artist at the links provided.

emijimusic.com
facebook.com/emijimusic
instagram.com/emijimusic

Retrofuturist Glam Pop Icon Dominic Sen Takes Us on a Charmingly Nerdy Romantic Trip to the Museum on “Natural History”

DominicSen1_crop — Dominic Sen, photo courtesy the artist

Dominic Sen’s video for the new single “Natural History” is a jaunt through a natural history museum on the part of a visitor from the future captured with all of the intentionally lo-fi charm of an early 1980s camcorder. As with previous singles, Dominic Sen blends a soft synth pop with idiosyncratic science fiction concepts and the unabashed embrace of being a nerd. The lyrics of “Natural History” has lines like “A day at the museum with you is a parallel universe crossing my path” and “The mood in the gift shop is a phony uncertainty, do I purchase this postcard, do I let you inside?” No “normal” pop artist writes songs with words and imagery like that and it allows Dominic Sen to make truly unique metaphors and reinvent what romance and romanticizing and personal mythmaking can look and sound like. The “futuristic” outfit she wears in the video is about as convincing as something from a BBC production from the 1970s like something you’d see on Blake’s 7 or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Tomorrow People or Dr. Who. But it works and it gives the video and its syncing with the vibe of the song a charming authenticity it wouldn’t if it was too conventionally legit. The song is part of Dominic Sen’s album Can’t Tell You written with Cameron Wisch (Cende, Porches) and Ronnie Stone (Ronnie Stone & The Lonely Riders) with Lily Cohen taking on the persona of Dominic Sen, a retrofuturist glam pop icon. Watch the video on YouTube and follow Dominic Sen at the links below.

dominicsen.com
youtube.com/channel/UCOZdo1EKiddN4QAyqgp__bQ
twitter.com/dominics3n
facebook.com/dominics3n
instagram.com/dominic.sen

New Wolves’ “Influencer” and its Eye-Catching Animated Collage Video Call Into Question the Performative Aspects of Social Media Culture

NewWolves2_crop — New Wolves, photo courtesy the artist

The music video for New Wolves’ new single “Influencer” gives now obvious clues about whether the song is a commentary on the socio-cultural phenomenon of the “influencer.” It’s a series of adventures in collage and it introduces an ever-changing array of imagery interacting and evolving before returning to an early image of a bird humanoid stepping out of the fray of the jungle of messaging and visuals that it had stepped into and strolled through. The chill pop song with nicely subtle textures and an incandescent synth line has lyrics more than hinting at the pressures involved with being an influencer and the constant need to provide content and preferably from one’s own life so that one turns one’s individual experiences and preferences into a commodity to present and to be consumed on the regular. Without explicitly saying so, New Wolves perhaps suggest that that is, on some level, the nature of social media entirely in which we present a mediated experience all the time in a way we did not before its existence. In the song’s soothing yet melancholic town we hear some empathy for the state of things but also a yearning to escape and even entirely derail the process of making out psyches a consumer product to be monetized by corporations. Watch the video on YouTube and follow New Wolves at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/new-wolves
open.spotify.com/artist/2KOqtDxp2na3uUfP37R7VK
twitter.com/wolves_new

Ganser’s New Single “Buio” Calls For Sometimes Rocking Your Own Boat With Dramatic, Futile Gestures to Disrupt Patterns of Complacency and Stagnation

Ganser1_crop — Ganser, photo courtesy the artists

The video for “Buio,” the lead single from Chicago post-punk band Ganser’s new EP You Must Be New Here (due out November 8) depicts a situation many of us are familiar with and that being at a social occasion where we’re disengaged and not sure why we’re there. So the protagonist, played by Caitlin Eward, envisons putting her hands in the middle of the cake and wrecking the décor and violating decorum. It represents being at that point in your life where going through the motions of a life that seems stale and stagnant that you’re not even sure what it is about that place in your life, however much one sought it out, that makes sense. The chorus of “I won’t pretend I know anymore, I don’t even know what I like anymore” speaks directly to that moment when you’re ready to do something ridiculous to shake up your status quo whether something like putting both hands deep in a cake, one that you baked to celebrate the accomplishments that mean little to you anymore or some other dramatic gesture to inject some chaos into stultifying comfort. Watch the video on YouTube and follow Ganser at the links below.

soundcloud.com/ganserband
open.spotify.com/artist/32ONqBogM4wH7VRbcMZYtE
ganser.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/ganserband
instagram.com/ganserband