LP’s new single “Die For Your Love” bursts with her signature passionate delivery and emotional vulnerability. Yes, the title of the song might be interpreted as a hackneyed and melodramatic premise in pop music. But LP never sounds less than utterly sincere and the triumphant and bombastically expansive dynamic to the song is stirring and imbued with a sense of endless possibilities and hope. Many pop artists write romantic ballads but with “Die For Your Love” one gets a real feeling for the romance of the moment in that sense that one knows the validity of one’s feelings and how the strength of that certainty can inspire you in other ways to work toward positive ends in all areas of your life. Listen to “Die For Your Love” on Soundcloud and follow LP at the link below.
Palm Haze’s melding of ethereal vocals and distorted drones on “Almost Soon” may remind some listeners of how Medicine could come across like a blend of Bailter Space’s fuzzy and urgent space rock drone and Band of Susans at their most minimal and gently crushing. The song keeps to a similar pace throughout but because of the modulation in tone and melody alongside the introspective and enigmatic vocals and phased and hypnotic yet driving fuzz the song has a surprising emotional weightiness. At one point the song’s noisiness drops off into a purely delicate, downtempo vocals and undistorted guitar tone. This dynamic of the song as well as how the short expansive bursts of synth toward the end are emblematic of the chorus of “It’s okay” as a mantra of hope for the end of a tough time that has gone on too long and will end, almost soon. And, with any luck, soon enough. Listen to the song on Soundcloud and follow Palm Haze at the links below. Also, look for the album Rêve Bleu due out August 30 on YHS Records.
With the video for his song “Keep Your Mind,” Grey Mcmurray gives us a timelapsed view into a windy morning. Is it a harp or dulcimer creating the delicate, ethereal string melody? Is part of it guitar? It matters less than how the music draws us into a dream-like sonic realm punctuated by sharp ululations like a rooster crowing with the dawn. A harmonium drone and organ drift in with a kind of complimentary counter melody for a song about trying to keep it together despite great internal and external pressures making keeping any kind of equilibrium challenging. And as the song comes to its conclusion the elements fall apart and piano breaks off into a kind of anti-melody and the rhythm comes off the rails ever so gently yet abruptly. It is an unsettling moment yet Mcmurray’s treatments in the song give an often abstract and mysterious process a form that is explicable that he was able to articulate in an accessible format thus giving voice to struggles many people face daily but in which they often feel alone. Mcmurray shows how it’s possible to pull back from the ledge through living in the moment and honoring your feelings. Listen to “Keep Your Mind” on YouTube and watch the attendant video and keep a lookout for Mcmurray’s first solo album Stay Up due out September 19, 2019 through Shahzad Ismaily’s figureight records. You can follow Mcmurray and figureight records at the links below.
“Forever Jaeyoung” isn’t just a play on words, it reflects the background and life of Korea Town, Los Angeles rapper kyaro.. Taken from the recently released album The Choom Gang Chronicles, the track has kyaro. spitting bars over downtempo jazz beats about his life and adventures at home and in his journeys living in various parts of the world and picking up local slang and forming observations about culture and society to weave into his storytelling. Apparently kyaro. was once a boxer and some of the necessary combative attitude transformed into the swagger he brings to his vocal deliver. Though a Korean American, kyaro. references “gaijin goons” invoking the Japanese word for “foreigner” but often adapted as an ironic pejorative term for wack white people, inverting the sense of who is a foreigner and where. Featured vocalist Mzee Macharia talks about being tokenized when he was about five, as often happens to people of color in general and articulates an experience that isn’t often addressed in music. But most of the story in “Forever Jaeyoung”is a relatable story of coming up needing to be tough and navigating where one belongs and if indeed one does belong in the context of American society. The specific biographical details of the story, as with any artist worth listening to, are what makes the song stand out but its core meaning about identity and figuring out how to get through life is universal. Listen to “Forever Jaeyoung” on Spotify and follow kyaro. at any of the links below.
Kevin Bowe & The Okemah Prophets, Every Part of the Buffalo cover (cropped)
It would be impossible to not compare Kevin Bowe & The Okemah Prophets’ song “Deaf Ears” to The Replacements because of the sheer grit and attitude yet irresistible tunefulness of the song. At the same time the cadence of the vocals and the way the lines are arranged in the context of the song is reminiscent of Bob Dylan circa Street Legal but with more urgency. The guitar chords are struck with an offhanded fluidity and left to hang as the distorted glitter of the jangle-y dynamic rings out between the complimentary riffing as if to reflect a sense of being completely and utterly done with the deceptions, other mind games and the self-sabotage in giving a relationship that was always toxic yet another chance. Listen to “Deaf Ears” on Soundcloud and follow the band on its website.
DJ Zeyhan used field recordings captured in the place for which “Sri Lanka” was named in the mix for the song. Combined with flutes and organic percussion, the song has a multi-dimensional quality that strongly suggests place and context, particularly at the end when insects are sounding out into the night. Zeyhan’s trance-like synths, shakers, robust, melodic low end synth melody and intertwining with the flute and undercurrents of bright electronic tone drone convey the jungles, wetlands, rivers and dynamism of a place like Sri Lanka. Altogether the song hits your ears like a world music synth pop song created after the 90s when Future Sound of London’s “Papua New Guinea” did a similar mixing of aesthetics and concepts. Listen to “Sri Lanka” on Soundcloud and follow DJ Zeyhan at the links provided.
The texture of Trovato’s new single “Crash” is metallic. It begins with string tones processed through reverse delay to suggest latency in the launch of what’s to come. Then, like robots building a new city from the ground up in the foothills of a vast mountain range, the song unfolds and develops with pounding bass, spring-like sounds, gently whorling guitar like fiber optic lines coiling out and put in place as the central nervous system of the nascent urban center. The cybernetic bird chirping is like the cadence to which the robots work away the day as if part of the design of the program of instant-city-assemblage in case someone were to come along and encounter the project and instead of necessarily thinking it a purely destructive and exploitative endeavor, more like an unusual, automated art project. It’s reminiscent of Ian McDonald’s 1988 novel Desolation Road about the terraforming of Mars and the cultures that develop out of it in that that novel doesn’t focus so much on the ooh wow technology aspect of the story so much as the impact of those events on a macro, historical scale without ignoring the micro and deeply personal. Listen to “Crash” on Soundcloud and follow Trovato at the links below.
Rob Simonsen’s enigmatic composition “Coeur” leads us through a desolate emotional landscape with minimalist piano and electronic sounds and tones with the texture and analog of breezes and wind. The music video for the song shows two sets of seekers, mystics, coming together at a sacred spot marked by a spiritual symbol where they enact an ancient ritual of grounding and reconciliation between the dark side and the day side of the psyche in, coming together in a dance from which one of the seekers walks away preferring to shoulder a mysterious burden to the blissful state offered. Perhaps it represents taking on the challenges of knowing and of creative fulfillment over comfort and too easy answers. The video also made by Simonsen leaves the interpretation to the viewer but it fits well a song that seems resigned to its own ambiguity much as the lead subject of the video. Watch Simonsen’s videographic treatment of “Coeur” and follow the artist at the links below. Simonsen will release his debut solo album Rêveries on September 6 through Sony Music Masterworks.
Vergo | Kraven | Dario Ferrara, Space & Time EP cover (cropped)
“Miles Away,” from the Space & Time EP (Bassoff Records) by Vergo | Kraven | Dario Ferrara is a dark techno track that wouldn’t be out of place in a Nicolas Winding Refn science fiction thriller set in Berlin. The sound is a blend of French techno and Italian trance but the spiraling, distorted synth work driving the track, that later gives way temporarily to ascending ethereal passages, would crossover well to a darkwave night as its aesthetic is similar to electro industrial but with a different palette of tones and rhythms. The song takes you on a journey and winds you up as it draws you in to let you go into a state of bliss as the song goes to the outro. Listen to “Miles Away” on Spotify where you can also sample the rest of the Space & Time EP and follow the artists at the links provided.
Stevie Zita strikes an adroit balance between the sardonically amused but not jaded, resigned acceptance and hopefulness on “Anastasia.” It’s a song about a troubled girlfriend who seems unaware of her own worth and potential and self medicates with the 80s drug of choice—cocaine. Of course that’s one substance that has come back into popularity with a vengeance in this era of being pushed to do and be more and to go, go, go at a bare minimum at a pace that will burn out any normal human eventually. The tone of the song is a tacit acknowledgment of letting go that demented way of being. This song captures the mixed emotions and the perhaps doomed romance in the musical parlance of the glam and dream pop end of post-punk. It’s lush and gentle melody almost makes it seem possible that the subject of Zita’s song will indeed discover a way back home to stay after all. That Zita named the song “Anastasia” which means “She who is reborn” suggests that potential not just of Anastasia’s inherent potential as a human but her potential to recreate her life on a healthier basis. Listen to the track on Soundcloud and follow Stevie Zita at the link on the same website below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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