Draag(Adrian Acosta (left) and Jessica Huang (right)), photo courtesy the artists
“Jalen Rose” originated in email and text conversations between Adrian Acosta and Jessica Huang of Draag during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 with a demo following in 2021. And now the song in its mature, properly recorded in the studio form is being released ahead of the debut LP from the project due out in late Spring of 2024 through á La Carte Records. Taking inspiration from late night walks through the Wan Chan neighborhood of Hong Kong, a locale that is both one of the busiest commercial districts in the city but also ample urban decay. Meaning it’s surely a place that has energy and a certain haunted quality to boot especially after the usual business hours of daytime. Musically the song is in the realm of dream pop but with more rich and textural guitar work mixed in with uplifting electronic melodies and beautifully ethereal vocals courtesy Huang, Acosta and Chelsey Holland. Acosta, Huang and Chris King, aka Kai Tak, of Cold Showers fame have crafted in this song a soundscape that is resonant with what Curve was doing in the early 90s and perfectly blending shoegaze tones and aesthetics with that of electronic music in a way you can easily get lost in for its just over three and a half minute duration complementing the vocals and buoying up their irresistibly transporting moods. Listen to “Jalen Rose” on Spotify and connect with Kai Tak at the links below.
The title of “The Stars Gaze Back” by Spectre Horsemen Pale With Dust evokes both Nietzsche’s words about looking into the abyss and knowing it looks back into us and the imagery and concepts of H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror. Certainly the slow moving drone of the song creates a mood of tension and anticipation one might expect in a particularly dark thriller that heads in unexpectedly weird territory. With the sound of throat singing in the mix it already feels like something mystical but when a noise like a distorted oscilloscope hovers in like an alien vehicle paying a visit to a Stygian event the song warps into a more ambient version of what SunnO))) does with its own sonic architecture to open up the brain to emotional experiences that transcend linear time. Listen to “The Stars Gaze Back” on YouTube and follow Spectre Horsemen Pale With Dust on Spotify.
Sailor Winters is the project of noise artist Ryan Cox from the state of Georgia, USA. His latest single “Tug Champion” sounds like a distorted, flowing, abstracted howl layered over an enigmatic, repeating melodic figure reminiscent of the energetic yet melancholic piano work in Moby’s 1995 song “God Moving Over the Face of the Waters” as used to great dramatic effect at the end of the film Heat. The contrast between the two sounds paired together is fascinating on its own but the net emotional effect of the track is one of unease and catharsis. It sounds otherworldly like the field recording of an automated deep space mining robot relieving some of its own tedium with a bit of music as it repairs the life support system of a not often visited, asteroid mining colony. Whatever Cox’s inspiration the sound piece showcases the creative and expressive possibilities of not being tied to having to create music that adheres to a standard commercial genre or any of the tropes of harsh noise. Listen to “Tug Champion” on Bandcamp.
Meow Piglet’s icily haunting track “Doors” is about recurring dreams and how each can be a portal to another part of one’s subconscious or to another iteration of experiences from one’s unwaking hours. The human mind is often drawn to memories of dreams as potential answers to questions that occur while awake and for the song the image of doors and falling through them resonates with the familiarity of the dream state and how people and stimuli from that time are often unfamiliar yet seem a normal part of dreaming. The song itself is a series of portals into various realms of music. The beginning has a ring of menace and of dark spaces with a circular, slightly distorted vortex of tone and a minimal, percussion beat like the sound of a train track before shifting to more textural sounds as the focus and then on into gorgeous passages that may remind certain listeners of the blissful noises of 1991, foundational IDM song “Papua New Guinea” by The Future Sound of London. And yet further into the song there is an indie electronica passage where we hear singer Aurora Hentunen’s melodious voice offering a poetic rendering of a concrete description of the aforementioned dream exploration and the cyclical nature of dreams and how their true significance, assuming there is any, can elude us even when we turn to them for answers. Though the song traverses various moods, styles and genres of electronic music it all feels somehow like a unified aesthetic the way our dreams feel like a continuous experience that too shifts throughout their duration. Listen to “Doors,” with contributions from audio-visual artist Luka Batista, on Spotify and follow Helsinki, Finland’s Meow Piglet at the links below. The group’s latest album Deeper released on December 1, 2023.
Alfah Femmes is a band from the metropolitan area of Poland and specifically Gdańsk. It’s particular aesthetic draws on a variety of styles for inspiration, blurring the lines between post-punk, New Wave, art-pop and indie rock and its new single “Trench Coats” is a playfully subversive take on a song about one’s hometown. In the music video we see vocalist Sofia Bartos in black and white dancing against the backdrop of colorful views of the band’s home city with the lyrics seemingly addressed to some guy in a trench coat who seems occupied with looking at his Tissot (a luxury brand of Swiss wristwatch) but who could very well be plotting a bit of skullduggery. The sparkling guitar melody and steady drum beats sound like something that one would expect from one of the artier New Wave bands from California in the 80s like Romeo Void and with a similarly irreverent edge to the songwriting. That Tricity is considered the California of Eastern Europe seems like a more than passing resonance in terms of the tone and musical style. And yet the chiming guitar work and warping synths and Bartos’ melodious vocals are also reminiscent of the jangle-y college rock of the American Southeast of the 80s as well particular when a string part graces the later parts of the song when Bartos’ head and hands become disembodied for a moment like a nod to the Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Visually and musically “Trench Coats” seems simple in its charms but contains in both a referential complexity that keeps it a fascinating experience rewarding those who take the song in beyond its obvious charm and solid pop songcraft. Watch the video for “Trench Coats” on YouTube and follow Alfah Femmes, whose name is an obvious nod to Violent Femmes and not so obvious reference to Australian indie rock group Danny Kelly & The Alpha Males, at the links below.
Chicago’s Crawling Vines released its Who Killed William Goose? album on January 5, 2024 and the single “ON A BRANCH” hits a specific emotionally complex resonance. That being an emotional rawness and fragility a and yearning for connection when it feels like things are falling apart. The guitar progression and the way it flares forward in moments and embodies a spare minimalism in others is reminiscent of something New Order would have done later in the 80s or maybe Bernard Sumner’s project with Johnny Marr, Electronic. But also of modern shoegaze/dream pop bands like Beach Fossils but with more fuzz tone. Yet in the vocals and overall tone of the song it has a similar embrace of human vulnerability and acknowledging needing people for whom one’s feelings are complicated. That interpersonal dynamic informs much of the rest of the album giving it a deeper mood than many other artists exploring this particularly spacious and sophistipop end of the shoegaze. Listen to “ON A BRANCH” on Spotify and follow Crawling Vines at the links below.
Fire Motel is the songwriting project of multi-instrumentalist and singer Ilya Litoshik. The latter was born in Belarus but his family moved to upstate New York in 1991 when he was a young child. During a stint in the music program at a college in Schenectady, New York his parents moved to Round Rock, Texas and Litoshik ended up dropping out of school but before then a friend that had moved to Denver told him that the city had an up and coming music scene. Spending some time in Round Rock and finding nothing to keep him there the fledgling songwriter with $400 to his name relocated to the Mile High City around 2008. And though he spent his earliest days in Denver crashing on couches and sleeping in basements, Litoshik also fell in with a group of creatives including an art collective called The WPA Collective where he met Bryon Parker and other musicians who were making the Denver underground vibrant at that time.
Over the next several years Litoshik became involved in various projects including Adam Adam with Parker and Corey English. But perhaps the most enduring and popular of Litoshik’s bands until recently was Turvy Organ which ran through much of the 2010s and perhaps prophetically released its final single “Cold Water” on March 13, 2020 as the pandemic lockdowns ended live music and in many cases bands during the course of the subsequent year and a half. In the core of that band’s songwriting you can hear the strains of what Litoshik would do with his next project Fire Motel. Fans of Modest Mouse, Deathcab For Cutie and The National might have found something to really dig into with the excellent Turvy Organ. Early Fire Motel felt more stripped down than that but of course with sophisticated songs and Litoshik’s earnest and unpretentious performance style. However, in the years leading up to the pandemic and certainly after venues started opening again something had changed drastically in Denver in ways that have made it challenging for bands and anyone related to the music industry to develop and thrive. Litoshik felt this deeply and painfully so thinking about places where he might be able to flourish more fully so he moved to New York City in the spring of 2023 to connect with the creative energy of that city where there is always something going on and where a creative community has found a place to grow and be supported by what NYC has to offer in terms of opportunities and cultural infrastructure for decades.
Prior to his move, Litoshik had been working on his next set of songs for release and finally completed the recording and production of The World an Opera for release on October 1, 2023. Litoshik wrote the album, recorded it in his New York residence, mixed the songs and did the other production with mastering by Carmine Francis. Contributing vocals on the album is Alli Walz. You can hear echos of Litoshik’s various influences in the music but the new record combines the more analog musicianship with a kind of sound design and electronic production element for a sound that is deeply evocative and firmly establishes the songwriter as an artist who knows how to articulate a sense of wonder and poetically express the source of our modern anxieties while offering insightful portraits of life that anyone that has been living in the USA in recent years would recognize.
“Get It Right” by Astoria, Queens, NYC synthpop artist Ghostcake has an uplifting charm that captivates from the beginning. Its ethereal bell tones, pulsing, warm bass and drifting melodies is like the memory you’d want to have of going to an unlikely combination of 1980s arcade and theme park minus any of the dark side of any of that. The beats are like something you’re more likely to hear on a hip-hop track with the steady cadence that supports well some choice bars but the music is more in the vein of a fantastical anime sequence where the lead character has time to follow her bliss in a wonderland of delights. The main lyric that we hear echoing slightly here and there is “I swear I’ll get it right” which introduces a deeply human element in this otherwise otherworldly and surreal pop song but lends it an irresistible hopefulness. Listen to “Get It Right” on Spotify and follow Ghostcake at the links below.
The guitar figure that runs throughout CR&M’s “Mondegreen” might for some be reminiscent of Acid Mothers Temple’s 1997 psychedelic rock classic “Pink Lady Lemonade.” But around it is a rapidly repeating textural tone like a fluttering, cybernetic dragonfly. When the vocals come in like a disembodied presence in a dream it’s calming if barely discernible. At two and a half minutes in the tones cascade down over the forward progression of the original riff and the two vocalists ripple off one another in a dreamy shimmer that accentuates the mood of the song of transcending mundane existence and indulge a full blossoming of the imagination as a key to emotional and psychological liberation. Through composing the song so it taps into the aesthetics of genuinely psychedelic rock and the hypnotic loops of IDM it truly sounds like something different as it dares to incorporate sound elements that are outside the bounds of standard, pristine music production. Listen to “Mondegreen” on Spotify.
Lila Swain entrusted Animal Feelings to lend more than a touch of cinematic soundscaping to her 2023 single “Calling.” The original is a spare yet soulfully evocative electronic pop song. For this remix the textures are accented and augmented so there is a quality like something from a futuristic music box in this version. The sounds of alien birds warble and Swain’s vocals echo ever so slightly and bleed into one another like a sound in the conscious world entering a dream state without interrupting it whereas the echos in the original seem distinct and spaced out slightly more. All of the atmosphere elements stream out to the edges and beyond the horizon and the song is transformed into something one might expect more from a rare and obscure but treasured downtempo compilation from the late 90s. Except the sensibilities here are all modern with how Animal Feelings interpreted Swain’s original composition’s emotional impact, deconstructed some of the elements and reassembled them to lend the song an impressive depth of dynamic atmospheres to amplify all the song’s emotional resonances. Listen to the Animal Feelings remix of Lila Swain’s “Calling” on Spotify and follow the Australian singer and songwriter Swain at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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