Queen City Sounds and Art

On “Running Away” Noé Solange’s Delicacy of Feeling has a Lingering Emotional Impact

NoeSolange_RunningAway_crop — Noé Solange, photo courtesy the artist

A candle light in the fog quality imbues Noé Solange’s “Running Away” with an heartfelt lonely and lost quality as her voice intones a desire to escape a relationship that has turned toxic leaving complicated emotional tanglements in the wake of its dissolution. When the vocals seem to rush into a gentle flurry of sounds it’s like Solange is able to get lost in a crowd to succeed in that escape. The soft but rippling tones and minimal beats seem to reinforce a sense that the narrator of the song had to calm her own mind and steel her resolve to make the break for real instead of an urgent notion never acted upon. The delicacy of feeling with the underlying intensity gives the song an unexpected power that lingers with you. Solange is currently unsigned and self-releasing her music so follow her trajectory on her Spotify account.

scorediggers “Brandenburg Beat” is a Brilliantly Subversive Re-Purposing of the OG Classics in the Tradition of Wendy Carlos and Walter Murphy

scoredigger1_crop — scoredigger, photo courtesy the artist (cropped)

Not everyone is thinking to steal, “note by note from Brandenberg concerto No. 2 by Johann Sebastian Bach.” But scoredigger has and incorporated it into a progressive hip-hop beat. Sure, “cratediggers” have sampled everything under the sun to find the choicest sounds, rhythms and ideas to re-purpose and transform into something more modern. Wendy Carlos released the 1968 classic Switched-On Bach, a synthesizer-based interpretation of Bach including Brandenberg Concerto but No. 3 not No. 2. And of course Walter Murphy had a hit in 1976 with “A Fifth of Beethoven,” a disco dance floor smash. So scoredigger is in great company and this morphing of Back into a cool downtempo track is brilliant in its own right. Listen on Soundcloud and check out scoredigger’s further exploits at the links following.

soundcloud.com/scoredigger
r-cr.bandcamp.com/releases
instagram.com/scoredigger

Lady Jay’s single/video “Freedom” Is a Soaringly Soulful Embodiment of the Very Concept

LadyJay1_crop — Lady Jay, photo courtesy the artist

Ghanaian singer and songwriter Lady Jay delivers a powerful example of her soulful and sultry voice on her new single/video “Freedom.” A song about personal empowerment in what seem to be especially dark times right now. Without aiming the song to be about a particular demographic or nationality, Lady Jay’s song has a universal quality with its soaring choruses and written in a pop style that doesn’t suggest a narrow subgenre but, rather, classic songcraft and accompanied only by a hint of chimes and expansive but subtly tasteful piano. It is a declaration of liberation that can resonate with anyone while also working as simply a great song with arresting vocals. Jay and her pianist are garbed in white raiments and jewelry with caged doves that are symbolically set free as Jay floats upward off the ground as if imbued with divine powers, the spark of which various world spiritual traditions believe exist in everyone and everything and which is justification enough for mutual respect and freedom. Symbolic but not heavy handed, the video for “Freedom” is a beautiful and compelling expression of Lady Jay’s words and her own obvious passion for all people to experience the freedom about which she sings. Watch/listen below and follow Lady Jay at the links provided.

ladyjaymusic.com
open.spotify.com/artist/0rNTIEZKm4LYPn16AcpTaS
twitter.com/LadyJayLives
facebook.com/LADYJAYOFFICIAL
instagram.com/ladyjaylives

“Thru the Vines” by Jane In Space is a Psychedelic Industrial Worm Hole Trip

JaneInSpace1_sm — Jane In Space, photo courtesy the artists

New York’s Jane In Space strikes that sweet spot where industrial, post-punk and psychedelia meet on “Thru the Vines.” The video is like something that was originally filmed on VHS with the glitches and all and the then clumsy visual effects but then processed using modern editing software. The worm hole/fractal trip a little halfway past the song is reminiscent of the introduction to Doctor Who and the face like the id monster from Forbidden Planet. The pulsing then droning bass, textures and white noise processed to provide the industrial noise equivalent of a melody may remind some listeners of a strange hybrid of Author & Punisher and LIARS with the vocals of Ian Astbury. Whatever the actual influences or roots of this sound its contorted sonic brutality and surreal soundscapes and visuals are striking. Watch and listen below and follow Jane In Space at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/janeinspace
open.spotify.com/artist/1yoRV2D5XUYL6gIe1tywhy
twitter.com/janeinspaceband
facebook.com/listentojaneinspace
instagram.com/janeinspace

Captain Kudzu’s “Months” is a Dark, Winding, Trippy, Self-Accounting Psychedelic Pop Song

CaptainKudzu1_sm — Captain Kudzi, photo courtesy the artists

There’s a bit of Nicolas Winding Refn style in Captain Kudzu’s video for “Months.” The vivid colors and seemingly stream-of-consciousness-yet-focused pacing join the meditative percussion and bass in anchoring the drift-y melody and languid guitar work even when it blossoms in distorted vortexes in the moment when the guitar head stock seems to puncture reality itself. The vocals sound borderline affectless but it suits the dreamlike quality of the song and its progression into a deconstructed ending with a sound like melting film projected on the big screen as the center, the through line, running throughout the song. An unusual downtempo psychedelic pop in sound and structure seemingly about not making excuses for the self-created chaos in your life because it eventually catches up to you whether you’re prepared or not. Watch the video below and follow Captain Kudzu at the pinks provided.

earthlibraries.com/captain-kudzu
facebook.com/captainkudzu
instagram.com/captain.kudzu

For Anyone That Has Let Their Feelings Run Away With Them, Callum Pitt Has a Song For You in “Slow My Heart Rate Down”

CallumPitt2_crop — Callum Pitt, photo courtesy the artist

Callum Pitt sounds like he’s sitting back from everyday life floating on clouds of memory on “Slow My Heart Rate Down.” His expressive falsetto meshes perfectly with the build of piano, synth, guitar and drums before transitioning to an impassioned peak and falling back into a tranquil infinity. It’s a song for anyone who has ever let their feelings get ahead of them or who feel so strongly that it hurts. The inevitable comparisons to Radiohead and Jónsi will happen with the finger picking and the falsetto but Pitt’s own fluidly versatile singing style and songwriting, as with the aforementioned, goes beyond superficial similarities and on the other songs on the Poisoned Reveries EP, his oh-so-subtle quaver and vibrato demonstrates a connection to a deep well of emotion that can only be individual. Give the song a listen and follow Pitt at the links below.

soundcloud.com/callum-pitt
twitter.com/callumpittmusic
facebook.com/callumpittmusic

Guidon Bear’s “Magellanic Cloud” is About Transcending One’s Sense of Existential Claustrophobia

GuidonBear1_crop — Guidon Bear, photo courtesy the artists

The vulnerability and heart you hear in “Magellanic Cloud” by Guidon Bear engages you immediately. Plaintive vocals accented by luminous Fender Rhodes and dynamically expressive drums tell the story of feeling emotionally crowded or smothered by your surroundings when you desperately need a place where you can have a space to yourself to decompress and process. Cleverly titled after the dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way the song speaks metaphorically to small town life and the social dynamics thereof, the power of gossip and how in some locales it can seem like the whole universe since it’s so near at hand and significant in your existence. But, really, it’s a small part of a large galactic cluster in a whole universe. It’s a melancholic song about keeping perspective without any heavy handed sentiments and condescension. The band consists of Mary Water of Little Red Car Wreck, drummer and multi-instrumentalist Pat Maley of Lois and Courtney Love (the band also including Lois Maffeo) and synth-player E. Michael Bradley. All names that may not come readily to mind to everyone but certainly significant artists out of the American Pacific Northwest who have been honing their pop songcraft in unconventional ways for years. Recently the group released its full-length Downwardly Mobile: Steel Accelerator (on Antiquated Future Records), an album full of thoughtful, emotionally vibrant and warm indie pop for fans of Rainer Maria, Danielson and Mirah. Listen below and explore further the wonderful world of Guidon Bear at the links provided.

antiquatedfuture.bandcamp.com/album/downwardly-mobile-steel-accelerator
facebook.com/Guidon-Bear-183171818368245

FEVRMOON’s “Mountain of Dreams” Is Experimental Pop Operating With the Logic of the Hypnogogic State

FEVRMOON2_sm_crop — FEVRMOON, image courtesy the artists

The distorted synth and voice like a television tuned to a dead channel (and other Neuromancer references) at the beginning of “Mountain of Dreams” by FEVRMOON gives way to the hypnotic flow of a long piano figure playing out to infinity and disembodied vocals floating above, strings giving a sense of yesteryear when they come in, and an echoing sonar blip that marks the time out of time evoked by this song. Splashes of water and wind chimes later in the song as the voice let’s out a cry in processed stutter gives a sense of the otherworldliness of inner space before the song cuts off, as so many dreams do, before they make logical sense to our conscious minds while seeming so significant and perfectly sensible while we’re having them. There’s no convenient genre tag for this kind of song beyond something like experimental electronic pop but that wouldn’t do justice to how beautiful and strange it really is. Listen below and follow FEVRMOON’s journey at the links provided.

open.spotify.com/artist/7DO2sQCAkO7DwDpXGIhEAU
youtube.com/channel/UCMFqtPK-HkcQIeFKC57X_5g
fevrmoon.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/fevrmoon
instagram.com/fevrmoon

Greta Stanley Overcomes Early Morning Anxiety in “Follow Suit” and So Can You

Greta Stanley’s voice sits in flow of melodic rosettes of sound and impressionistic guitar picking at the beginning of “Follow Suit” as she considers the state of her life and the day ahead. The ethereal gives way to distorted guitar and a more direct flow of ideas and shifting back and forth between doubts and certainties about getting up and making something of the day instead of being paralyzed by the possibilities before actually rising out of bed and following if not a plan of action on the knowledge that it’ll all sort itself out whether you know for certain what faces you because no one fully does even if most people’s lives have some element of necessary and healthy predictability. Maybe the song isn’t rooted in the experience of anxiety but if not, Stanley has captured that feeling perfectly as well as the moment when your brain is in gear and and over that initial bump in the road of your day. Follow Stanley and her music at the links provided.

open.spotify.com/artist/3lkwqHO5vO9jUlmJd0N5aC
facebook.com/gretastanleymusic
instagram.com/gretastanley

Origami Ghosts Subvert the Folk Pop Paradigm With Its Inventive Rhythms On “Lost and Proud”

OrigamiGhosts1_crop — Origami Ghosts, image courtesy the artists

There’s been a bit of a glut of folk rock in the past decade and a half with the success of various artists. But Origami Ghosts distinguishes itself from the pack on “Lost and Proud” with not just an expansive and upbeat melody incorporating a diverse instrumentation, but because there’s something a little subversive in its songwriting. Rhythms intersect as through two or more streams of the music are in a dance together, a method akin to what Camper Van Beethoven and Meat Puppets did on their early records as they inverted punk and mixed it with non-Western musical ideas and folk in the case of the former, and psychedelic rock and country with the latter. And there is an affectionate tone and exuberance for life in the song that is irresistible. The group will soon release its album Healthy Travel Potions on July 12 but for now listen below and follow the band at the links provided.

origamighosts.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/origamighosts