Queen City Sounds and Art

Evelyn Cross Immerse You in Ambient Drift and Cosmic Textures on “Strange Behavior”

As Evelyn Cross, Nic Johns and Neal Harris utilize minimalist percussive synth patterns and impressionistic melodies to craft evocative sound environments. From their new album Oblique Tragedies (released June 20, 2024) we hear “Strange Behavior” which conjures memories of the emotional touchstones John Carpenter tapped into with his early soundtrack work as well as the more tranquil moments of Tangerine Dream’s own cinematic scoring. The percussive tones accent a journey through an ambient backdrop with flares of icy melody and swirls of harmonic drone. There is a deep sense of what might be called progressive drift to the aesthetic of the song that invites immersion within its forward moving atmospheres The title seems to suggest observations made of enigmatic environmental features in an alien landscape that is best expressed in a musical form that articulates its mysterious essence. Listen to “Strange Behavior” on Soundcloud where you can listen to the other track from Oblique Tradegies (perhaps appropriately named after Brian Eno’s and Peter Schmidt’s famous card-based method for stimulating creativity) “Logan’s Run.”

Dominic Sen Vividly Recalls Romantic Misadventures Through the Lens of Religious Trauma on Warmly Luminous Electro Pop Single “Fear of God”

In “Fear of God” Dominic Sen offers a vivid portrait of religious trauma and how it can affect and influence romantic and less than romantic relationships. The video and its visuals are like a mid-1990s alternative rock video including the out of focus moments lends itself well to its reflective yet confessional tone. But Sen’s vocals are clear though slightly distorted with a touch of processing and pitch shifting. The lyrics are more a straight narrative than a traditional song form giving it a dreamlike yet immediate quality. Perhaps unintentionally the song is reminiscent of Alanis Morissette with a world music flavor in the beats and string melody. Sen’s words recall raw memories but her delivery softens that blow like a powerful memory that one can recall with the intensity of that moment but speak to it through the filter of a processed memory that was a part of the path that brought you to where you are today. Watch the video for “Fear of God” on YouTube and follow Dominic Sen at the links below.

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Get Swept Up in the Breezy, Psychedelic Folk Art Rock of The Silver Abduction’s “Quarter To Two”

The Silver Abduction, photo courtesy the artists

The Silver Abduction debuts with its single “Quarter To Two” and a sound that is both intimate and wintry. A ghostly drone quickly gives way to an uptempo rhythm, vintage organ and melodious and expressive vocals that make tasteful use of touches of vibrato that bring to the song a vividness of tone contrasting a nostalgic flavor with a what feels like emotional intentionality. In moments the songwriting is reminiscent of Margo Guryan or Broadcast in an urgent, psychedelic folk mode. There is an immediacy to the song from beginning to end that sweeps you up in its momentum and words about late night adventures. Listen to “Quarter To Two” on Spotify and follow The Silver Abduction at the links below. The group’s self-titled full-length becomes available on August 30, 2024 on digital download, streaming and limited edition vinyl.

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KapTep’s “Longlat” is an Transcendent Journey Immersed in Luminous Ambient Fog and Harmonic Drones

KapTep’s “Longlat” begins with a harmonic drone like a luminous fog that surrounds what sounds like human activity and the operation of radio equipment in the middle distance. The sense of drift brings to mind the sensation of being on a boat gliding through tranquil waters in an evening fog faintly lit by moonlight and starshine. It’s the kind of music one heard in Werner Herzog’s more existential films of the 70s and early 80s that suggest entering a zone or a liminal moment where the extraordinary and significant is unfolding around you like a spiritually resonant dream state. As the song progresses the harmonic drone shifts almost imperceptibly into higher registers and the touches of abstract strings emerge and give way to the noises of a signal transmission to the end of the piece. The song is an adventure the same way perhaps films like Beyond the Black Rainbow or Monsters were beyond the action sequences to the way the mood of the film shifts reflecting a change in the essence of the characters in modes subtle but deep and difficult to articulate if sensed with clarity. Listen to “Longlat” on Spotify where you can listen to the new KapTep album Latitude Longitude which dropped June 7, 2024 also available for digital download on Bandcamp.

Queen City Sounds Podcast S4E29: Late Slip

Late Slip released its debut full-length record I Love You on June 7, 2024 via Party Mermaid Records on 12” LP vinyl, CD, digital download and on streaming platforms. Lead by singer, songwriter and guitarist Chelsea Nenni the retro-pop group offers tightly crafted songs reminiscent of 60s girl groups, 70s period Dolly Parton and Josie Cotton. Nenni was East Coast born but grew up in California a fan of Elvis Presley and Tom Petty and studied opera in college. But it was Gwen Stefani that inspired Nenni to finally try to start a band. She moved to NYC in her mid-20s in pursuit of that goal and during a particularly bleak winter taught herself guitar and wrote the musical foundations of the earliest Late Slip songs. Before fully developing the project Nenni moved to Los Angeles and almost immediately found herself working at the legendary Amoeba Music record store where she made friends and connections that helped her more fully achieve her creative goals. The group recorded its first EP Other Men (2016) at Barefoot Studios with Cian Riordan (who has worked with Sleater-Kinney, St. Vincent and others) and through Amoeba Nenni met with store regular Bobb Burno of Best Coast fame (and Polar Goldie Cats renown to those more underground and experimentally-minded). Bruno connected Nenni with Lewis Pesacov who produced the new record. Although the sounds and visual aesthetic of yesteryear inform the music of Late Slip there is a warm spiritedness to the performances that anchor it very much in the vital present.

Listen to our interview with Chelsea Nenni on Bandcamp and follow Late Slip at the links below.

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The Psychedelic Folk Pop of Pearl Charles’ “Smoke In The Limousine” Evokes Feelings of Nostalgia While Living in the Present

Pearl Charles, photo courtesy the artist

Pearl Charles evokes future, past and present overlapping in “Smoke In The Limousine.” Her vocals echo ever so slightly with a touch of reverb in unconventional melodies. A simple guitar figure runs through the song paired with a minimal string arrangement to add a melancholic wistfulness to a song about how we spend our time and how easy it is to live with regret when we don’t live and act in the moment and how that can weigh us down with the memory of what we wish we’d done. To this point Charles sings “There’s a world over your shoulder/And each day you’re getting older/Don’t get left behind” as if to remind you that the weight of your own history is always going to be there but it’s best to do something now and not to let that legacy and habit keep you from being present and making the memories you’d prefer rather than sepia-tinged perceptions of “the good old days” when there are plenty more to be had that needn’t be beholden to where you’ve already been. Charles brings to the song a dream-like psychedelic sheen that conveys feelings of nostalgia with a yearning what’s yet to come which is particularly effective way to tap into the kind of Laurel Canyon cosmic folk that is a clear inspiration to Charles’ songwriting here. Listen to “Smoke In The Limousine” on Spotify and follow Pearl Charles at the links below.

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Las Nubes’ Gloriously Brash Single “Enredados – Misty’s Mix” is the Noisy Garage Punk Anthem of the Summer

Las Nubes dropped its latest record Tormentas Malsanas on June 14, 2024 (digital download, streaming, limited edition colored vinyl) and its blend of fantastic vocal harmonies and fuzzy, noisy garage pop. Throughout the record the band reveals a gift for shifting between dreamy, gentle, atmospheric melodies swiftly and easily into soaring, bombastic anthemic rock. The single “Enredados – Misty’s Mix” is reminiscent simultaneously of Pixies and Skating Polly. The band lead by Ale Campos (who is a film photographer and guitarist in Iggy Pop’s band) and Emile Milgrim (drummer for Mr. Entertainment & The Pookiesmackers as well as sound designer and head of the Other Electricities label in addition to co-founding Miami Girls Rock Camp) has found a sweet spot between the blistering and the transcendent, the intense and the playful with songs that have an undeniable momentum in which it is easy to get swept up and, yes, tangled, but in the way you’d want to be, as the title of the song suggests. Listen to “Enredados – Misty’s Mix” on Spotify and follow South Florida’s Las Nubes at the links provided.

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Last Wars’ “Attrition” is a Retrofuturist Analog Synth Rebel Anthem

The artwork for the forthcoming Last Wars album Escaper has that brutalist architecture style that you would expect to see in an update of the Duke Nuke ‘Em video game or an even more dystopian Grand Theft Auto game set in the future anticipated by Escape From New York or The Terminator. Lead single “Attrition” has a menacing urgency with distorted synths and Vocoder, fantastic electronic bass and an almost impressionistic melody like bursts of joy escaping in through the emotion dampening fields imposed by a technocratic oligarchy to maximize labor efficiency. Musically it makes one think about what might happen if Trans Am and Chrome collaborated on a piece of music to give it a retrofuturist flavor imbued with a spirit of rebellion. The song makes you want to see the movie or read the graphic novel that could have spawned it. Listen to “Attrition” on Spotify and follow Last Wars at the links below. Escaper releases on September 15, 2024 on digital download, streaming and as a limited edition vinyl LP.

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Mary Ocher’s Cosmic Pop Single “The Rubaiyat Medley” Free Associates High Concept Musical and Creative Ideas Across Centuries

Mary Ocher seems to be in a space out of regular time in the video for “The Rubaiyat Medley” playing a harp with fruit hanging from strings around her as she sings bits of the famous “The Rubaiyat” of Persian poet and polymath Omar Khayyam (1048-1131 CE), one of the classics of Islamic and world literature. The video also seems to be arranged like a silent movie with scene and title cards. Nearly three minutes in the classical instrumentation shifts into something more like funk with a solid back beat. All this with Ocher’s dramatic and highly expressive vocals providing the commentary as comedic scenes unfold in the first half of the song. But this particular song borrowing from variations on Dorothy Ashby’s 1970s compositions of the aforementioned poem and the movements across its ten minute thirty-eight seconds run time evolve into other musical realms as well as what might be described as cosmic downtempo during a period in which it appears the richness of fruit is featured and celebrated. In the “Epilogue” section Ocher’s voice is treated with a Vocoder briefly before the song picks up tempo again for “The Betrayal” portion that has a Bernie Worrell-esque electro funk that slinks along as we see images of people wearing sheep masks being annointed with the pulp of pomegranate from a bowl by a priestly figure. The end. What did we just see? Ocher directed the video with help from collaborators but it felt like a more playful and cosmic Pier Paolo Pasolini or Abbas Kiarostami film setting it apart from most music videos in recent memory. Watch the video for “The Rubaiyat Melody (feat. Your Government)” on YouTube and follow Mary Ocher at the links below. Her new album Your Guide to Revolution released in Europe on June 14, 2024 on vinyl, digital download and streaming with a physical release set to be made available more widely in the rest of the world on July 19.

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The Noisy Outbursts of Too Many Suns’ Unraveling Post-punk Single “Kim Gordon” is a Cathartic Purge of the Anxieties of Modern Life

Too Many Suns, photo courtesy the artists

“Kim Gordon” is bit of a different style of song from Lisbon, Portugal’s Too Many Suns’ new album Reverie (released May 24, 2024 on the band’s own Reverie Records). Whereas a good deal of the rest of the album is in the realm of psychedelic pop, “Kim Gordon” is brash and noisy and seems to be inspired by one of those songs Kim Gordon herself would write about the life of a person struggling with personal demons and an oppressive culture that inspires what some might see as an extreme reaction to internal and external pressures but given Gordon’s delivery and emotional nuance reveals those responses as simply normal human reactions to heightened anxiety in the face of dysfunctional forces. The band ties the noisy riffs and emotional outbursts as vocals to a groove but in the end just lets the self-deconstructing song be what it tranquilly settles into. Listen to “Kim Gordon” on Spotify and follow Too Many Suns at the links provided.