Queen City Sounds and Art

REYSHA RAMI Industrial Hyper Pop Hip-Hop Song “S0ULFUL_4NARCHY_EXUM” Casts Off Oppressive Cultural Legacies

The beginning of “S0ULFUL_4NARCHY_EXUM” had a sound like you might imagine would precede the hunters team arriving for another round of attempting to wipe out the alien invaders in the manga Gantz—a distorted, accelerating tone. REYSHA RAMI’s processed vocals drop in like a digital avatar of a human in a virtual landscape. It’s just over two minutes of industrial hyper pop hip-hop with some lines dropped in by guest vocalist Exum. It’s a song of liberation from oppressive cultural legacies that fans of early Crystal Castles will appreciate and when Exum comes in one is reminded of Doesone lending a further dimension of science fiction flavor to the song. So many ideas are packed into the song it feels like it couldn’t possibly be so brief in duration yet it flows with a commanding energy. Listen to “S0ULFUL_4NARCHY_EXUM” on Spotify and follow REYSHA RAMI at the links below.

REYSHA RAMI on TikTok

REYSHA RAMI on YouTube

REYSHA RAMI on Instagram

McKenzie Stubbert Orchestrates a Journey From Quiet Tension to a Place of Solace on Electro-Acoustic Ambient Track “Err”

KcKenzie Stubbert recorded the piano part of his song “Err” on a 1949 Acrosonic with the subtle touches of analog imperfection that ends up giving the piece some character without having to manufacture sound anomalies in post-editing. The spare and drawn out dramatic aspect of the song with the accompanying ethereal drone lends the whole an air of mystery. The music video written and directed by Habitual Loss and featuring Crissi Badurina and Sarah Minor is like an elevated horror short about two women who go to a remote location, a winter retreat perhaps, to deal with religious trauma after undergoing the sort of conversion therapy to drive out “inappropriate” impulses or thoughts, whatever those might be. We see one of the women floating in air at one point and later writing and turning and twisting in bed all before that experience has been cast off and an emotional reconciliation can begin. Which is also the emotional arc of the song that starts with tenderness, grace and subtlety and across the journey of the composition Stubbert brings us to a place of great calm. Watch the video for “Err” on YouTube and follow Stubbert at the links below. His new album, from which this track hails, Waiting Room was released on August 18, 2023 via Curious Music.

McKenzie Stubbert on Bandcamp

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Nick Norton’s Electronic Ambient “Slow Night at the Arcade” is a Welcome Journey Into a More Leisurely and Therapeutic Headspace

There’s something almost mystical about Nick Norton’s composition and video work for his single “Slow Night at the Arcade.” We see what at another time might hit someone as one of those old fractal videos from the 90s but also like a psychedelic evolution of the screen from the hold video game Tempest. It starts off like a short trip through violet clouded space to a wormhole bounded by angular walls. But with those walls/alleys turning in a slow spiral as motes of light drift toward us from a distant sun surrounded by luminous gasses emanating from its center. Like a journey through a wormhole to a more tranquil sector of the universe. The steady, calming pulse anchors the streaming haze of melodic synth tone and playful bursts of sound and orchestrated runs of notes and bleeps and blips punctuating the flow of soothing drone. The title suggests the kind of job that really doesn’t exist anymore the way it did in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s when someone might be working shifts at a video game arcade and the ambient sounds of various machines on start screens would generate an ambient hum that collectively feels like a world at rest with maybe a few players at machines changing that flow of mood but in the end creating a meditative backdrop. The sheer relaxed mood that conjures in a world that seems out of joint where nothing much seems chill is remarkable and Norton captures that energy perfectly with this song. The songwriter/composer wrote “Slow Night at the Arcade” and the rest of his new album Music For Sunsets (which released on September 15) alongside his recovery from a severe mental health break at the height of the 2020 pandemic ironically while working hard to help raise funds for other suddenly out of work musicians and getting back into music production and building a home studio. That can be a challenging and lengthy process but if this song and the rest of the unique ambient soundscapes of the new album are witness to and proof of Norton’s discovery of sounds and ideas that can guide the mind to a more restful place. Watch the video for “Slow Night at the Arcade” on YouTube and connect with Norton at the links below.

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Nick Norton on Bandcamp

Nick Norton on Instagram

Unca John Humorously Sends Up Extremist Delusions on Lively Power Pop Ballad “Your Opinion”

Unca John’s irresistible power pop hooks on “Your Opinion” and warmly welcoming vocals are a fantastic contrast to the subject matter of the song. Imagine Camper Van Beethoven having emerged in the 2020s and that pointed, wry sense of humor but with such a knack for compelling songcraft and you have an idea of what you’re in for when Unca John takes us on a tour through the recent years of American political culture when the most crazed notions and extreme views came out of the fringe into our everyday lives. Unless you’re a bit of a ring wing lunatic yourself given to flights of deranged fancy yourself you will recognize the people Unca John addresses in the song in humorous and succinct yet detailed fashion and even invoking an old ultra conservative ghost that never died off with the John Birch Society and has come to haunt even current dominant conservative circles when extremists call Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, some of the most corporate centrist Democrats of our time, communists and cultural Marxists. Unca John goes much further into that mode of thinking where people feel special because they think they have secret and hidden knowledge that the “deep state” doesn’t want us to know even though their hero and avatar of an entire movement was president for a full four years enriching himself and his family at public expense. Unca John voices our collective frustration with this bizarre wave of destructively delusional thinking that has been boiling for decades but which has seem to have burst in dramatic fashion all over public life. All in the name of people believing their opinion, without merit or uninformed by actual critical thinking, matters enough to be imposed on everyone else. Maybe this sort of no bones about it ridicule will help but even if not, Unca John has delivered a solid slice of pop goodness with some rhetorical grit. Listen to “Your Opinion” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of his excellent 2023 album Midlife Crisis Vanity Project.

Media House’s Vulnerable Dream Pop Single “Maybe” Encourages Us to Re-examine Our Entrenched and Self-Destructive Habits of Mind

Media House’s “Maybe” sounds like the cycling guitar part with a touch of chorus and tremolo to give it a bit of a resonant shimmer is like something out of a music box. That is if such a device included a more complicated expansion as the song progresses. But that kind of repetition like a sample to establish the reflective mood of the lyrics. It’s a song that sounds like it was written alone with the vocalist looping parts and bringing them all together in the end to augment a song that seems to be about reconsidering one’s choices and how some of them can have a cumulative negative impact on others and thus one’s own. The line “Maybe there’s a price to pay when everyone is gone” is the most telling because many people really do think they can do it all alone and don’t need anyone else but that’s sheer foolishness as a human being. Then “Maybe there’s another way to go about this life” suggests that perhaps what we think we know about ourselves and our life isn’t the best way and it will leave us confused when we drive people away without meaning to because ego can bring you to think how you are and how you behave is best. Without being obvious this delicate, almost dream pop song offers a gracious way out of being so stubborn and attached to ways that don’t serve your best interests by beginning most of the lines of lyrics with the word “maybe” and the various dimensions of one’s life conceptions and assumptions about being your authentic self that may be outmoded. Listen to “Maybe” on Spotify and follow Seattle’s Media House at the links below.

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The Vacant Lots Unleash Hypnotic Coldwave Single “Amnesia” Ahead of the Release of its New Album Interiors

The Vacant Lots are set to release a new album Interiors on October 13, 2023 via Fuzz Club but ahead of the release of that fifth record by the Brooklyn-based band we get the single “Amnesia.” The music video is in black and white like with flickering images like a VHS collage someone made splicing together scenes on an old video mixing board. Across the image are drawings in lines of light like Stan Brakhage had a hand in designing the visuals. Musically the streams of distorted synth and background melancholic melodies supporting disaffected vocals akin to what The Church might have sounded like had it gone in for a coldwave sound rather than psychedelic, arty post-punk. The production is lo-fi but unlike many other modern post-punk and darkwave bands that have gone that route the composition of the song has a tonal dimensionality that combines a modern approach to drum machine programming with a self-awareness of how the song will sound in various environments including live where it seems this song would flood the room with its hypnotic frequencies. Watch the video for “Amnesia” on YouTube and follow The Vacant Lots at the links provided.

The Vacant Lots on Facebook

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The Vacant Lots on Instagram

18 Fevers Burn Down Elitist Pretensions on Punk Rock Rager “Gate Keeper”

18 Fevers bring ample punk fervor to its single “Gate Keeper” as the song calls out the nuances of gate keeping and those who seem to always put themselves in such positions of power over others. In the song there are lyrics denouncing the white savior complex which seems too relevant in so many places and even in a city like Seoul, South Korea from which the band hails. The song points out how gate keeping tends to keep a music scene or any local creative culture small because of arbitrary standards of who get to be a part of it and what is considered the genuine deal. The line “Whining about punk costumes and Kpop does not make you hardcore” is something most people can relate to who have been in or adjacent to a local or not so local punk or whatever style of music scene anywhere. The song and its raging and liberating sounds are about resistance to forces that try to define what needn’t be defined according to a checklist that was never really a part of where punk started or where it has gone but isn’t that also a critique of what is essentially an elitist and colonist mindset? Whatever the layers of meaning one can get from the song it’s a fiery takedown of the people and mindsets that try to keep things narrow and therefore boring. Listen to “Gate Keeper” on Spotify and follow 18 Fevers at the links below. The group’s latest EP Death Punk Disco released on July 13, 2023.

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18 Fevers on YouTube

18 Fevers on Bandcamp

18 Fevers on Instagram

The Quiet One Finds Resilience Through Sheer Emotional Openness on Dream Pop Single “Surrender”

Sometimes songs about self-empowerment and working through tragedy with no one to fall back on but yourself can come off as tough and try hard. But “Surrender” by The Quiet One replaces sonic bravado with a sound more melancholic and soft with ethereal, shimmery melodies and fragile guitar work that lends Amber Wilson’s words and hushed vocals an emotional immediacy and accessibility that makes that inner strength seem attainable. Wilson wrote the song following the passing of her mother and the tenderness and self-patience and grace required to weather that kind of pain informs the songwriting. After all resilience and strength need not look and feel like some stoic and rigid approach to your own life. “Surrender” feels like a catharsis through sheer emotional openness and getting through by feeling it all rather than trapping any of it in a dark place in the psyche. Listen to “Surrender” on Spotify and follow the Scottish singer-songwriter at the links below.

The Quiet One on TikTok

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The Delicate Psychedelia of Yard Art’s “Undertow” is an Entrancing Trail of Ghostly Melody Into the Horizon

Yard Art flow into the spidery early melodic guitar work of “Undertow” as though spinning the delicate structure of its psychedelic and shoegaze tapestry from the beginning and throughout. But the sounds expand and swirl like something one imagines one would hear if you were around at the turn of the 90s in Seattle and a new band called Sky Cries Mary, seemingly unaffected by the rising popularity of grunge, handed you one of the demo cassettes of its new direction toward a fusion of folk, psychedelic rock and a nascent other strand of alternative rock. Except that Yard Art is clearly drawing upon on more contemporaneous influences in its luminous sketches and explorations weaving in and out of a standard song structure. Fortunately the band has no problem drawing those musical ideas into hypnotic trails into the horizon and lead you to wonder what else it might have in store. Listen to “Undertow” on Spotify and follow Yard Art on Instagram.

Mainland Break Evokes Nostalgic Moods to Look to the Future on Jangle Pop Single “Portland”

Mainland Break, photo courtesy the artists

Mainland Break evoke deep feelings of nostalgia to ground you in the emotional present on “Portland.” The music video was shot on 8mm in Tijuana, Mexico and looks like an old family vacation film but one where a friend is playing a tiny guitar in numerous locations that look like they have to be from another era. The sparkling guitar melody with its dynamic jangle and steady yet breezy rhythms with warm vocals lingering on the vowels in the verses really conveys a sense of both looking back and assessing while moving toward what’s to come with a freshness of mind and enthusiasm for the here and now. Fans of later period Real Estate and Wild Nothing will find much to appreciate with this single as well as the group’s recently released full-length One Way Ticket to Midnight which dropped on digital, CD and vinyl on July 21, 2023.