Introducing “Touch the Stars Again” is the sound of some vehicle taking off in the distance. Which suits this song by Head Full of Stars as it’s space and glam rock sounds serve well a message in the song encouraging the listener to reach for their sources of inspiration and beyond the mundane everyday existence that tends to define our lives. The expansive and psychedelic melodies and words reminding us that we too quickly forgot what it’s like to be connected with the energies that make us recognize there’s more to life than we often think and we can be excited for something, have something to look forward to than simply being a consumer drone, more than a cog in someone else’s machine, if we can reconnect with a genuine sense of our passions that can hide behind the clouds of compromised visions and the overburdened demands of “real life” if we go too long without daring to live as humans excited by something beautiful and benevolent and real and not mediated by a way of living we’ve all allowed to dominate the existence of everyone and everything on the planet. Fans of the likes of Spiritualized, a more pop end of Hawkwind and, heck, a band songwriter William Bernhard was in the spectacular space rock/psych folk group Sky Cries Mary will appreciate the way Head Full of Stars infuses its guitar work with a noisy and heady psychedelia and rediscovered enthusiasm. Listen to “Touch the Stars Again” on Spotify and follow Head Full of Stars at the links below.
“Flust Etterklang” is Haav’s adaptation of the Inge Weatherhead Breistein track “Flust” from his album Skogskammer. Original sound sources such as the layers of saxophone and modular synth stream into further reaches of abstract tone as a singular flow of sonic experience. Haav weaves in field recordings from metalic sculptures and the local coastal surroundings and slows them down so that even the noise of birds and water has the audio equivalent of an image slightly out of phase. The compound effect puts one in a mood of taking in the minute details of the environment around you and getting lost in its myriad details as interconnected phenomena of existence of which oneself is merely a part. The best ambient music has that effect of inducing a Zen-like state and Haav’s treatment of “Flust” and transforming it into “Flust Etterklang” has taken a fantastic cosmic jazz-like composition and given it a deeply impressionistic filter. Listen to “Flust Etterklang” on Spotify and follow Haav on Instagram.
Brooklyn’s Razor Braids wrote a tender anthem to remember to be in the moment in situations in which your energy might be derailed by thoughts about your past and overthinking the future. In particular when you meet someone special who takes you by surprise with their attention and interest. There is an awareness in the lyrics of the tendency of many people to throw a wrench into something that could be good by succumbing to anxiety over not wanting to mess up an important connection with thoughts of assuming you’re going to make the same old mistakes or that you’re limited by them all the time or new types of errors and offenses one might commit. But really if you can stay in the moment it’ll be okay. The music is loosely in the realm of indie rock or punk the way say bands on the Kill Rock Stars or K Records labels might be in the 90s with punk spirit and ethos but an embrace of vulnerability and gentleness of spirit as a virtue and an aspect of being a complete person. The music video, directed by Razor Braids bassist and vocalist Hollye Bynum, shows a party in which women are mingling and having a good time and not stressing what someone might think is wrong with them, rather, being in the moment as suggested by the song and enjoying genuine connection with one another. The song was apparently written as a queer anthem given the lyrics and the presentation of the song but really anyone that claims they’ve never felt a twinge or much more than a twinge of anxiety in social situations especially in meeting someone special is probably not being completely honest. The immediacy of this Razor Braids song and its inviting spirit makes it accessible for anyone. Watch the video for “She” on YouTube and follow Razor Braids at the links provided.
“Fool’s Empyrean” finds Saapato layering processed field recordings to give a tangible sense of place whether walking in a field, through a forest, walking near a river or a larger body of water. And it is through these sense memories across the track’s nearly ten minutes that we are transported, floating in our minds through these landscapes all at once like translucent sets of memories while a distant and evolving drone and slow arcing tones like abstracted pedal steel tones courses through it all like the sonic equivalent of an amalgam of a light wind leisurely guiding clouds crossing the sun. Intonations of a whispery electronic flute marks time later in the song while whorls of lightly distorted and shimmery guitar sounds blossom and fade. Intermittent bird sounds peek through the incandescent musical haze in an masterfully unhurried composition that induces a psychically cleansing sense of rest from beginning to end and swept away in the end with an increase in the flow of white noise and luminous electronic chimes trailing off into the distance like a slow moving train. Listen to “Fool’s Empyrean” on Spotify and follow Saapato at the links below. Saapato’s new album, the aptly titled Somewhere Else, dropped on November 3, 2023.
Lord Dying is a band from Portland, Oregon that formed in 2010 and over the course of the past several years has established itself as a group who took roots in doom/sludge and extreme thrash and created a body of work that is as heavy as it is atmospheric, as bludgeoning and aggressive as it is capable of shifting into delicate and introspective moments. In 2019 Lord Dying released its most creatively ambitious album up to that time in Mysterium Tremendum, a meditation on death and loss and the extremes feelings that come about in their wake. It was the first chapter in a trilogy of albums whose next installment is Clandestine Transcendence which releases on streaming, download, CD and Coke Bottle Clear and Olvie Green 180g vinyl on January 19, 2024 via the MNRK Heavy imprint. The album is perhaps even more diverse in the sonics of its songwriting with the extreme ends of the band’s style emphasized with the most crushing and heavy hitting passages in the Lord Dying catalog and the most ethereal and delicate moments of vulnerable introspection. Stylistically Lord Dying includes its most clear and straight forward vocal performances and a song that starts out like something you’d expect from a punk outfit before it escalates into something much heavier. It is arguably Lord Dying’s most creatively realized record thus far and a welcome entry in a body of work that is uncommonly imaginative and eclectic in the realm of heavy music.
Listen to our interview with Erik Olsen of Lord Dying on Bandcamp and follow Lord Dying at the links provided.
The nighmarish tonal drifts, warping and bends in “You’ll Always Be, What’s Her Name” by The Bodies Obtained from the beginning sets a darkly surreal mood. Especially the cutting, swelling flares of synth, clearly distorted to give it a discordant quality that tears into the downtempo mood established by the rhythm. But even that rhythm fractures and stumbles and reasserts itself and flows with the sounds seemingly dropped into the track like samples without an anchoring context like the melodiously wordless vocals. Like a trip hop song comprised of freely associated sampling, like a DJ Shadow song with a cyberpunk aesthetic. No actual human now could know but it’s like the band has created the experience of jacking into a neural network right out of a William Gibson novel but instead of a smooth experience you got into a feed with a crumbling and inconsistent connection and being routed in not random but intermittent bits of information. And yet in the end it all works out for a chill track that is simultaneously fascinatingly and beautifully unsettling. Which could be said of all the songs from the new The Bodies Obtained album Until I Crawl Away which dropped on November 10, 2023. Listen to “You’ll Always Be, What’s Her Name” on Spotify and follow the duo at the links below.
The sound of a future depicted in the more existential science fiction movies of recent years with an ambient sense of dystopian menace and hope (think Ex Machina and Beyond the Black Rainbow and the like) is present in millhope’s single “Prototype.” With vocal contributions from Jenny Thiele to inject its vibrant synthwave style with a human touch the song pulses along with extended keyboard melodies swimming over and under the sprinkling of introspective and delicate guitar work and a skeletal yet vivid percussion giving the song and its layers of ethereal tones an unconventional solidity. The title suggests a lot like building something one hopes will be a breakthrough whether that’s a technology, an invention, a lifestyle leading to better things. The song has that kind of breezy optimism that contrasts nicely with its darker musical elements. Listen to “Prototype” on Spotify and follow millhope at the links below.
Eddie Durkin is a singer and guitarist and songwriter in indie rock band Lazarus Horse which put out its remarkable latest album Three Birds on August 4, 2023. The album is strikingly economical in its songwriting and audacious in its bare bones production. All but one of the songs is under three minutes and the greater number of the rest in the concise two and a half-minute range. The band could have paid for some studio time and rehearsed the songs to the point of absolute precision and pristine recording condition. But the album was recorded entirely to a smart phone with a few overdubs to preserve an immediacy, an intimacy of emotional resonance and a spontaneity of spirit that reflect the influence of the kind of pop songcraft from the likes of artists on the Sarah Records imprint, Beat Happening and Sparklehorse. It’s a lo-fi affair but with an out sized impact in which the band’s multiple vocalists are given the opportunity to shine. Fans of the song “After Hours” by The Velvet Underground will find a great creative kinship throughout Three Birds.
Durkin grew up on the west side of Denver and like many people had some basic music lessons as a kid including guitar lessons which he gave up when it wasn’t about the kind of music and creativity to which he was most drawn. So Durkin ended up playing football for a short time until it became obvious to him that that wasn’t for him either. Fatefully he was able to catch an OK Go show at the Bluebird Theater in 2005 when he was fifteen-years-old but mainly to see the indie rock band The Redwalls. From then on Durkin aspired to be in a band with the wide eyed faith of youth and by his late teens he was involved in one of his early bands that played live shows in the highly experimental rock band Stupendous Sound Society with his friend Conor Black. But the latter moved on from doing much music and with him went his collection of synthesizers and Durkin formed the more pop-oriented band Sparkler Bombs. With both projects Durkin performed shows in the DIY underground after attending shows at Rhinceropolis and showing up one day to drop off a demo recording to Travis Egedy aka Pictureplane who kindly offered to book Stupendous Sound Society on a bill.
By the early 2010s, the partying and substance abuse and resulting mental health issues caught up with Durkin and he had to be away from it all for a handful of years to get his perspectives more in order and to reconnect with his authentic self. Durkin was always an intelligent and sensitive person with a lot of creativity but when Durkin came back into writing and playing music he seemed to possess a high degree of self-awareness and that informed his songwriting and imbued it with great persona insight. The early incarnation of Lazarus Horse included Hunter Dragon aka Hunter Adams and the latter’s faith in Durkin’s talent gave the project an early impetus that propelled it to its current quartet comprised of Durkin and three members of the great indie rock band Rabbit Fighter: Brooke Theis (bass, vocals), Zoya Brou (guitar, vocals) and Daniel Sayers (drums).
Listen to our deep dive interview with Eddie Durkin on Bandcamp and follow Lazarus Horse at the links below.
There’s something sinister about the sound and dark visual style of the video for “Billy’s Dream” by Amiture. It’s reminiscent of Dom and Nic’s treatment for The Chemical Brothers’ “Setting Sun” video. It all seems normal but there’s an underlying unsettled quality to the surreal aesthetic. But this Amiture song is more steady in its pace even when it bursts forth with the processed percussion and guitar sounds. Like an industrial song written by Nick Cave who is bored with anything resembling the standard sounds. It’s like an even more post-punk The The and the story of a man, Billy Lamb, who has lost track of who he is and slips in and out of a dream of prowling underground gambling establishments haunted by memories of his family, both his father and his son, and how he wants to escape his circumstances but seems drawn back into his personal nightmare by his own weaknesses. But the desperation is there and we hear it in the music. The steady snare strike and the contorted, textural tones generated by heavily modified guitar signal or electronically create a disorienting atmosphere where it feels like the whole thing could careen off into hysterical psychosis from its sustained emotional intensity and because of that there’s a thrilling simmer of electricity throughout the song. Watch the video for “Billy’s Dream” (directed by Cyrus Duff, produced by JZ Tinneny and shot by Owen Smith-Clark) on YouTube and follow Brooklyn’s Amiture at the links provided. The duo’s new album Mother Engine drops February 9, 2024 via Dots Per Inch Music on streaming, download and vinyl.
“Sierra” is Crystal Canyon’s tribute to Julee Cruise “which guitarist/vocalist Lynda Mandolyn says is, ‘me having a conversation with her spirit, dreamlike.’” And the song’s drifting and hazy atmospheres and processional pace with guitar sounds trailing off like an early morning fog in the sunrise. The drum accents hit perfectly to punctuate the paces and Mandolyn’s introspective vocals relate late night meditations on heartache and heartbreak and processing the flood of feelings in a way that won’t hit as hard even if they hit deeply. The way the song gently unfolds and repeats the themes with a hypnotic quality will appeal to fans of Slowdive’s unorthodox crafting of melody and mood as well. Listen to “Sierra” on YouTube and follow Portland, Maine’s Crystal Canyon at the links below. The group’s new album Stars and Distant Light was released November 3, 2023 on streaming, download and vinyl.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
You must be logged in to post a comment.