Queen City Sounds and Art

Andalou-dog’s “Blinding Light” Suggests That as Powerful as the Negative Ghosts of History Past Can Be, Their Repeated Manifestation Today Isn’t Inevitable

Andalou-dog1_crop — Andalou-dog, image courtesy the artist

“Blinding Light” and its layers of processed piano sounds like the modeling of leaves falling from trees in the autumn wind. Apt for a song looking back on the past of the echos of voices long thought dead or in perpetual hibernation or whose energy was transformed into something more productive, beginning as it does with an electric insect buzz, introspective, minimal, melancholic piano and a reverted echo of a Mussolini speech. Though the winds of authoritarianism have blown throughout the world once again with leaders spouting that sort of rhetoric familiar to those who lived through the first half of the twentieth century Andalou-dog’s song beckons us not to succumb to those voices much more to the despair that comes with thinking they are more powerful than they are. The song suggests that as strong and seductive as the wave of emotion and intensity can be it can dissolve into nothing nearly as easily if we do not amplify the phenomenon and deprive it of support in the various ways we can because few things are inherently inevitable in the political and cultural sphere, all things being contingent on the context for them to manifest whether fascism or inspired art and social justice movements. Listen to “Blinding Light” on Soundcloud and follow Andalou-dog at the links below.

soundcloud.com/andalou-dog
open.spotify.com/artist/485ZPlo3NvLsQtGB5GWCFw
andalou-dog.bandcamp.com/releases
facebook.com/AndalouDogMusic

On “How Do You Sleep At Night” Phay Bridges Gives Voice to the Agony and Frustrations of Those Who’ve Kept Quiet About Abuse

PhayBridges1_sm — Phay Bridges, photo courtesy the artist

With a languid pace and a mix of smoldering, cathartic anger, Phay Bridges imbues her song “How Do You Sleep At Night” with the appropriate level of righteous indignation directed toward an abuser. Of course we’ve heard countless stories of these people like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein who used their wealth and power to abuse women and to cover up that abuse for decades. But in our own immediate lives we probably know a few people who on a far lesser scale power trip and abuse as a boost to their own fragile egos when they have a temporary place of minor power and influence over others whether in the workplace, in a community, in social circles, in a family or in a relationship of any kind that they use to peddle “favors” or take out some sadistic outlet on whoever they can. Bridges’ voice articulates the feelings most people swallow or bury to get through those times and coupled with the expressive, fiery guitar work it does so without malice but a call to conscience without letting the abuser off the hook. Look out for her debut full-length due out in fall 2019. Watch the lyric video on YouTube and follow Bridges at the links provided.

facebook.com/bridgett.mess
instagram.com/phaybridges

Like a Balm for the Psyche, Krikl’s “Unease” Stimulates Your Brain With Its Unique Synthesis of the Analog and the Electronic

Krikl1_crop — Krikl, image courtesy Adrianna Krikl

“Unease,” the latest single from avant-garde electronic/ambient artist Krikl weaves together the tactile quality of live cello with layers of synth and electronic beats. The way the elements come in and out of the track gives one a sense of open spaces but also of textures and environmental details we may otherwise ignore like the hum of an air conditioner at a house down the street or of a vending machine. The sounds that when they are gone we might experience a sense of displacement and not fully understand why. The song is called “Unease” perhaps because it was written to dispel that feeling and to make music that could calm and soothe the mind and spirit by stimulating your brain through those aforementioned analog and purely electronic sounds orchestrated in a way that hits you on multiple levels. Highly recommended as a companion to listening to “Unease” are watching Adrianna Krikl’s one minute videos on her Instagram account (linked below) as they give a visually striking and human element to the music that can seem abstract but for the artist is very much a personal statement. The single is part of a larger cassette release with six songs in a handsome package that you can acquire on Adrianna Krikl’s website. Listen to “Unease” on Soundcloud and follow Krikl at the links provided.

adriannakrikl.com
facebook.com/kriklmusic
instagram.com/adriannakrikl

“Kyushu” is Total Bike Forever’s Downtempo Ambient Track With an Intercontinental Flavor

TotalBikeForever6_sm — Total Bike Forever, photo courtesy the artists

Adam Faulkner and Tim Stephens traveled a long way both physically and psychologically to make the music they’ve released as Total Bike Forever. The track “Kyushu” found the longtime friends making the trek from London to Tokyo (we can assume they didn’t ride their bikes the entire route seeing as large bodies of water are involved). Along the route they composted tracks of electronic music infused by local influences taking fourteen months across over twenty-five thousand kilometers and traversing twenty-six countries. The plan is to release their debut album with an accompanying documentary to screen at festivals in Europe and the UK. But for now you can listen to “Kyushu” which includes the sound of various Japanese flutes and a Nepalese women’s choir from Kathmandu. The story behind the song could overshadow the music but “Kyushu” is an engrossing downtempo song that combines the analog with the digital in a way that feels like a synthesis of methods and cultures that transcends preconceived notions of where this music must come from and where it fits in. It washes over your mind like a sonic palette cleansing for the mind. It sounds like the end of a long journey and taking some time to look back on everything you experienced before going back home to the contexts you know best. Listen to “Kyushu” on Soundcloud and follow Total Bike Forever at the links below.

soundcloud.com/totalbikeforever
youtube.com/channel/UCZ3r7jPQ-eUs6v2ss3frs_g
facebook.com/totalbikeforever
instagram.com/totalbikeforever

Marble Arch’s “Moonstruck” is a Song About Reconnecting With the Creative Magic and Joy of Childhood

MarbleArch3_sm — Marble Arch, photo courtesy the artists

Vinyl Williams’ video for the Marble Arch single “Moonstruck” is like an expanded universe of colors, imagery and shapes on a framework of sixteen bit video game graphics aesthetic. It suits the song which is a chill, downtempo song that sounds like time spent taking stock and contemplating the past through the emotional lens of childhood in order to recapture some of the magic and purity of going through life without having your perceptions and instincts shaped so much by the weight of a lifetime of mixed experiences. It’s a creative wiping away of life’s spiritual crust and rediscovering some of the magic and wonder of feeling and creating with unalloyed joy but one informed by the knowledge of how easy it is to let so many things in life let you get jaded and stunted in your natural development as a human and creative person. Pablo Picasso famously said something about taking a lifetime to learn to paint like a child, this song feels like a similar process of reconnecting with that energy in songwriter Yann Le Razavet’s life. Look for the full album Children of the Slump out on Géographie. Watch the remarkable video below and follow Marble Arch at the links provided.

open.spotify.com/artist/6Oy6CwwhQqijvzAjpkoazG
facebook.com/marblearchmusic
instagram.com/marblearchband

“White Noise (Don’t Be a Winner)” Finds Indigo Bunting Time Travelling Down the Pop Vortex and the Post-Punk Collage Wall of Sound

IndigoBunting2_crop — Indigo Bunting, photo courtesy the artists

Austin’s Indigo Bunting is thankfully not taking cues from modern trends in pop music and its new single “White Noise (Don’t Be a Winner)” taps liberally across decades for musical ideas to inspire something decidedly different. The choruses have a classic melodic quality and large sonics akin to the songs produced by Phil Spector at Gold Star Studios in the 1960s. But the palette of sound is an enchantingly disorienting mash-up of Siouxsie-esque post-punk, warping psychedelic reminiscent of the less noisy end of Indian Jewelry and a drums that sound like they were recorded while the drummer was sitting inside an echo chamber with curiously tight reverb so that beats cascade off each other in a manner that really compliments the subculture jamming composition generally. Nevertheless, this is an accessible song that is not a send-up of possible influences so much as some cool nods amid the band’s inspired, dancing, gyering collage of sound. Listen to the song on Soundcloud and follow Indigo Bunting at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/indigobuntingband
open.spotify.com/artist/6avshE7vAUgZHXmbU3AfFy
indigobuntingmusic.bandcamp.com/releases
twitter.com/_IndigoBunting
facebook.com/IndigoBuntingBand

Tacono Gates Defiantly Melancholic “It’ll All Come to Pass” is a Reminder That the Burdensome Situations in Our Lives Are Ephemeral

TaconoGate1_crop — Tacono Gate, image courtesy the artists

Tacono Gate gets “It’ll All Come to Pass” going with a grittily uplifting riff that soars into an evocative, anthemic verse. The synth compliments the elevated tone of the vocals in a way that syncs nicely with what comes to be an almost hypnotic melodic drone that flows and resolves throughout the song. Fans of The Chameleons and Comsat Angels will appreciate the defiant yet melancholic progressions. Like the band is struggling against the unacceptable inevitable. Like knowing you’re going to take that okay paying job because it’ll mean that you can afford to not just survive but have something for yourself to pursue what you really care about on the side until maybe it becomes your main gig. All while taking it on with a resigned spirit knowing that you, and really everyone, deserves better than what is on offer, that this contingent reality that benefits the few at the expense of the hopes and dreams of the majority is unsustainable but for now it is what it is. And yet, the song more than hints that this and other situations in life will come to pass in the end. While cold comfort in the moment, it beats utter despair. Listen on Soundcloud and follow Tacono Gate at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/taconogate
open.spotify.com/artist/2R72laeotc3lBpfYh4sLAz

frogi’s New Single “moonlight” Speaks to Importance of Nourishing Our Psyches By Holding Onto Our Best Dreams and Fantasies

frogi1_crop — frogi, photo courtesy the artist

Frogi’s knack for bringing together musical elements in an unconventional manner is on fully display on her “moonlight” signal. With finger snaps and kick drum, the harmonizing between the lead and backing vocals suggest something that is rooted in a more African realm of music as manifested through some of what Talking Heads did and more recently the experimental songwriting and performances of Tune-Yards. And with this song frogi expresses the internal notion of the way the world we want to be contrasted with the world as it is. The refrain “Keep me in the moonlight” is an apt metaphor for the more idealized vision rather than that of the world in the harsh light of the sun. It evokes a desire to live in the more subconscious, intuitive, dreamlike realm at least a little to retain a bit of a world where not everything has to adhere to the mundane and where the wondrous, however personally defined, can live and flourish and in turn fill our hearts with moonlight. Listen to “moonlight” on Soundcloud and follow frogi’s fantastical, left field pop on Spotify.

The Sheer Alien Beauty of Outer Space Finds a Poetic Articulation in Drew Harris’ “Xeno”

DrewHarris1_crop — Drew Harris, photo courtesy the artist

Apparently the inspiration for Drew Harris’ song “Xeno” was pondering what it might feel like to be in space, as in outer space, for the first time. In the song his bell tones carrying the melody in soft but sometimes atonal sonic hues, the streaming, ethereal synth and incidental sounds indicates that Harris feels like the weightlessness would be the first striking feature and with it a wondrous tranquility. And that once you adjust to the unfamiliar sensation you would notice features of the environment alien to your experiences on earth. Night and day would be effectively meaningless outside of your internal clock so perhaps your sense of perceived time would be disorienting as expressed in the inventive ways Harris alters the tone and pace of the song and fades sounds in and out of the foreground of your hearing. Harris’ evocation of that first encounter with a world without an atmosphere and no real night and day would be alien to us in ways we have yet to fully take in right away because our species developed on the earth with our very reference points of existence stemming from that primordial collective origin as living creatures. And yet Harris makes that alienness hypnotic and beautiful the way astronauts have described looking back at the earth from orbit and from the moon. Listen to “Xeno” on Spotify and follow Harris at the links below.

soundcloud.com/drewche_bag
open.spotify.com/artist/2umxxgR6sAUDuVYDB1V5RM
drewharrismusic.bandcamp.com

Zaliza’s “Phoenix Rising” Takes You On a Journey of Personal and Creative Transformation

Zaliza2_crop — Zaliza, self-titled EP cover (cropped)

“Phoenix Rising” by Zaliza begins curiously with a saxophone figure that gives way to an introspective, minimalistic, downtempo song. Its spare guitar, piano accents on the warm, sonorous vocals, low frequency synth drone in the background and the aforementioned saxophone coming back in to punctuate each section of song gives the song a feeling of a procession of personal development. The slight processing of vocals to echo and shimmer at the end of a line gives a twinge of personal hauntedness like the ghost of your old self trying to creep back into your consciousness but which you have to remember to shake off as you enter a new phase of your life. When the song goes out with what sounds like synthesized flutes giving an ascending signal to the end of the day it feels as though you have joined the narrator of the song in effecting her casting off the raiments of her previous life and donning those more appropriate to the life she wants to lead. “Phoenix Rising” is from Zaliza’s self-titled 2019 EP released earlier this year and on August 2 she put out her new EP, Wicked Game. Listen to “Phoenix Rising” on Spotify and follow Zaliza at the link below.

open.spotify.com/artist/0z1LeTQVd6xe3FunzOFqbG