Queen City Sounds and Art

Pink Turns Blue’s “Dancing With Ghosts” is a Song About the Will to Break From Stifling Relationships

Pink Turns Blue (Mic Jogwer), photo by D. Vondran

Pink Turns Blue released its new album Black Swan on February 28, 2025 and the singles put out around the release of the album hint at the album full of self reflection on interpersonal conflict, inner struggles and the yearning for growth and satisfaction rather than a familiar yet stifling situations that can off shape and define our lives. “Dancing With Ghosts” and its brooding yet urgent melodies dives into the latter directly. The music video depicts a young man who is trying to escape from a family dynamic filled with the kind of turmoil and conflict that does no one any good and in the video we see not just him seeking freedom and fulfillment outside the family but also the mother and father characters who fight looking on reflectively especially at the end. In that way it becomes obvious the song is about how we are all participants and victims of this dysfunctional normal in our own ways and sometimes simply removing oneself from the situation can be the best choice for many of us and one to which we may be driven before we understand that’s what’s going on. The jangly shimmer of the guitar melody paired with the melancholic vocals make the song stick with you reinforced by the strong emotional hook of the imagery of the video. Watch that video on YouTube and follow Pink Turns Blue at the links below. Black Swan is now available on vinyl LP, CD, digital download and streaming.

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Impulse Nine’s Cinematic Epic “Call of the Void” Combines Fiery Doom Drone and Modern Classical Sounds For an Emotionally Charged Journey Through Inner Space

Impulse Nine, photo courtesy the artists

When Impulse Nine’s cinematic opus “Call of the Void” opens with drone and brass horn sounds you might not expect the distorted field that comes into the track that cycles up and then back down before the song takes off further into a mysterious horizons as suggested by the title. One might be excused for imagining a collaboration between SunnO))) and Philip Glass composing especially as the hazy clears into the spaciousness of a pristine piano melody warped ever so slightly by reverse delay processing to just give it a tinge of the weird and otherworldly at the edges. The piano becomes more urgent and discordant as the song swings right back into fiery, distorted, engulfing drones like something you’d expect to hear in a Mogwai song, punctuated by majestic piano chords and processional percussion. Impulse Nine really sustains the moods throughout while coming together as a kind of heavy music orchestra that expertly shifts complementary tones and textural elements so that even with the drones going it never feels static. Rather, you feel like the song is taking you somewhere you want to go even if you don’t know where that might be. The mix is so well blended that you can hear the glimmer of piano and keyboard melody clearly in the blaze of guitar sounds drum accents in the last half of the song and the contrast of the more distorted sounds with those more pristine establishes an elevated mood but one that inspires reflection and acceptance. In the last portions of the song the foundational elements shift slowly into a tranquil dynamic that is as soothing as it is satisfying like you’ve really been through something glorious with the band and it’s time to let go of those peak moments and embrace the peace with which the song leaves you. Listen to “Call of the Void” on Spotify, its seventeen minute length seems to go by quickly, and follow Impulse Nine at the links provided.

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A.M. Architect Sets Your Mind at Ease With the Soothing and Transporting Flow of Downtempo IDM Bliss on “Eli”

A.M. Architect, photo courtesy the artists

Electronic duo A.M. Architect released its new album Avenir on February 7, 2025. Comprised of Diego Chavez and Daniel Stanrush the project brings together ambient streams of tone and minimal techno sound design with generative visuals for a uniquely evocative presentation of music. The video for the single “Eli” reflects the attention to tonal detail and the way the sounds interact with one another flowing over a minimal, finely textured beat. The spare and soulful vocals complete an impression of the song as an analog experience though it clearly draws upon a deep knowledge of digital production visually and musically. It’s almost a downtempo song or the offspring of another branch of electronic music that blossomed in the 90s as well with IDM. Whatever its roots the song has a flow that eases into your mind and soothes the mind with lingering guitar and crystalline keyboards that drift and carry you into tranquil psychic territory with seeming effortlessness. Watch the video for “Eli” on YoTube and follow A.M. Architect at the links below.

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Prismia Draws Us Into an Emotional Liminal Space of Connection and Dreams on Synth Pop Single “Blue Hour”

Prismia’s “Blue Hour” opens with a dreamlike harmonic drone behind Prismia’s melodiously introspective vocals as a pulse of tone marks time. Altogether the mood feels like a deep late night mood and in the video directed by Quinn Warner we see images of the singer against a dark field and in a wooded, mountainous area by a river in cyan hues among friends. The song has a delicacy of feeling like a shared, cherished experience and we get a hint of what might have inspired the song and staying up until dawn talking because you don’t want the conversation to end but where natural boundaries draw a line from which one can pick up again at a later time. It’s the kind of song you would want to hear in a poignant moment in the kind of existential drama where people come to realizations about what’s truly important to their lives being connecting with people and doing meaningful things that inspire and stir the heart rather than the chores most of us have to settle for in order to get by. But the song rightly points to how that needn’t be our focus and we can shut down that mode of being and leave it behind even if for a short time. Watch the video for “Blue Hour” on YouTube and follow Prismia at the links provided.

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&Tilly and BlauDisS Weave a Downtempo Pop Song About Dreams Deferred on “right//left”

&Tilly and BlauDisS, photo courtesy the artists

&Tilly and BlauDisS team up again for “right//left.” A dreamlike, hazy background drone serves as almost an emotional canvas but one more reactive and dynamic upon which the vocals sing a tale of desolation and melancholic yearning set to a downtempo beat and minimal piano melody. The song was written from the perspective of the daughter of Sarah “Sally” Hemmings, Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved lover. The song seems to reveal a person who can see the future of echoes of the more radical rhetoric of the day, but words those living in the then present who write and speak them lack the will and power to see them realized in the literal phrasing. The line “Won’t get free/A hundred years/Fulfills these dreams” is poetic and quietly powerful in framing a deferred liberation and at least a slightly better world. In the music video we see our singer wandering sideways and backwards in lonely, tiled halls looking dejected and distressed. Is it a commentary on how in some ways in many places our own modern history of civil rights has taken some steps back in so many places and using imagining the hopes of someone who might never live to see the freedom that seems so obvious and logical as a lens through which to examine the present? Possibly but the song itself can be appreciated as a gorgeously immersive song that soothes the mind while not dismissing one’s concerns with performative bravado. Watch the video for “right//left” on YouTube and follow &Tilly at the links below.

Céline Dessberg’s Single “Selenge” Blends Traditional Mongolian Harp Sounds With Psychedelic R&B Jazz

Céline Dessberg masterful performance on the yatga (the traditional Mongolian harp) on “Selenge” perfectly lines up with the psychedelic R&B flavor of the rest of the track. The effect is a set of rhythms and melodies that transcend originating cultural context, Dessberg herself having French and Mongolian ancestry. Her performance on the instrumental as evidenced in the video takes an ancient instrument and translates it into the eclectic aesthetics of modern jazz without losing the old world appeal of the sounds. She seems to effortlessly orchestrate the song with an elegant composition like a web of tones and texture paired with visuals that show older images of Mongolian culture as the song is almost a reminder that the Mongols once held sway over an international empire that integrated cultural and artistic influences along with its more fearsome reputation—a complex legacy with rich traditions. Dessberg’s brings past and present together in a way that lingers with you and hits as timeless and not anchored to modern musical subgenre much less beholden to older musical forms. Watch the video for “Selenge” on YouTube and follow Dessberg at the links below. The song is out now as a limited 7” vinyl out via That’s Love Records as well as digital download and on streaming platforms.

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Lucy Liyou Speaks to the Broken Heart Processing a Love Not Fully Reciprocated on Ambient Pop Single “Arrested”

Lucy Liyou’s vocals have an ever so slight quaver with the strength of feeling on the single “Arrested.” Her vocals are forward in the mix with a harmonic wash of ambient tone swirling gently in the background with a touch of minimal piano work to provide a glimmer of melody and impressionistic rhythm. Liyou navigates through the low end drones and distorted white noise waves as almost a musical metaphor for the complex emotions depicted in Liyou’s lyrics of yearning for the kind of love and acceptance everyone wants but doesn’t always get and not necessarily wanting to feel that way even after you’ve come to accept the situation for what it is. Sometimes that reality strikes you and you will feel the well of emotions all over again in a different way than perhaps the initial agony. Liyou began writing the music for this album when she was in college and over half a decade later those feelings feel more fully and creatively articulated while honoring the pain that inspired the songwriting and how that experience can echo again in other situations in your life. Certainly a queer or trans kid can experience that kind of psychological disruption but anyone that has had dysfunctional parents or those that seem incapable of extending the normal, parental emotional support will resonate with what Liyou has expressed in this song. And let’s face it, that’s entirely too much of not just America but the world and you see it in music, literature and art worldwide. Lucy Liyou just gave it a gentle elegance of form in “Arrested” with a beautifully ethereal video directed by Park Seung Won. Watch that video on YouTube and follow Lucy Liyou at the links provided. Liyou’s new album Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name is out March 21, 2025 via Orange Milk on limited edition vinyl, digital download and streaming.

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Funeralcare Breaks Things Off With a Toxic Situation on Synth Pop Single “Marathon”

Funeralcare’s title track to Manchester band’s new Marathon EP (out January 24, 2025) is a curiously upbeat song considering the subject matter. The minimal guitar work, synth drones, the short vocal lines all syncopated finely like something you might have heard out of an early 80s New Wave band. But the production with the ambient synth backdrop and the unorthodox song structure speaks to a sensibility more modern like the members of the band are as much into electronic dance music as into pop and rock. It serves the theme of the song well of having someone in your life who is just a little too much, whose presence you’re realizing is a chore because of the unrealistic expectations and dealing with the aftermath of consistently poor life choices can get to be a real drag that you have to cut loose from that situation eventually if things don’t change. The song isn’t a celebration of finally having had enough to let go as an acceptance of such a need after really giving the relationship, whatever its nature (friendship, romantic, professional) a go. Listen to “Marathon” on Spotify and follow Funeralcare on Instagram.

Alex Wilcox’s Glitch Techno Single “Cut Me” Purges Nervous Energy With Its Furiously Infectious Beats

Alex Wilcox and Catnapp, image courtesy the artists

The frenetic pace and granular sonic detail of Alex Wilcox’s “Cut Me” can make one forget how finely edited the whole song is in the end. The title is almost meta in how the song hits like is a series of jump cuts with blips and streams of textural tone sipped in between the and over the anchoring pulse that one can feel and discern as a kind of ghost infrastructure of the song. It sounds like someone purging a lot of nervous energy by creating something that in the listening feels like you’re hearing the work of someone intimately connected with the workings of their own anxieties and no stranger to channeling that energy into something productive that is the perfect combination of precision and chaos. Interspersed we hear vocals by Catnapp that seem both weary and resigned caught up in the headlong pace of the song. Fans of solo Alice Glass and Machine Girl will appreciate the exuberant glitchcore sensibility of this single. Listen to “Cut Me” on Spotify and follow Alex Wilcox at the links below.

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snapir & Ænie’s Modular Synth Composition “2110: Ash Grey” Evokes a Sense of a Post-Civilization Future

snapir & Ænie, image courtesy the artists

The backdrop sound of white noise fog sets the stage for “2110: Ash Grey” the single from snapir & Ænie’s new album Egression (released February 26, 2025). As the track progresses droplets of electronic clicks, hovering tones, distorted flares of horn-like sounds and an almost improvisational rhythm that flows through, touches of disintegrating melody emerging from harmonic drones work together to create in the mind something like the music from a world as projected onto the future by 1960s and 1970s science fiction writers and filmmakers. But this one feels more alien and more dystopian in the way of Andrei Tarkovsky where that future isn’t so sparkling, epic or dramatic, but more low key where people explore the nature of their dreams and aspirations while being wary of achieving them because they’ve so long been accustomed to diminished expectations. There is a tension and a sense of wonder that bleeds through those internalized defenses against transcendence. This song has that kind of energy of existential examination and working one’s way through a murky future where the mysteries may turn out to be completely nothing you might have imagined. Taking shape with the composers’ collaboration utilizing a Serge Modular System synthesizer it’s an environmental ambient piece with real texture and a warped library music vibe that utilizes the uniquely haunting tones and possibilities of one of the classic 1970s synths with consistently fascinating results. Listen to “2110: Ash Grey” on Spotify and follow snapir & Ænie on Instagram.