With a seething intensity and noisy urgency El Señor brings to the song “Dirty People” an electrifying conviction to its message of compassion and class solidarity. Mid-song when the vocals hit a more defiant tone that amplifies the sentiments about having a love for the people that certain corners of society reject and declare dirty, undesirable and generally “other.” The buzzsaw guitar and dissonant and angular attack of the music somehow combines a Ty Segall-esque tunefulness with the sonic mayhem of a song by a band like The Gordons and infused with a restless spirit that gives the song an irresistible immediacy. Think a psychedelic garage rock group with the sensibilities of a hardcore band. Listen to “Dirty People” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the album Affection to Belong and follow El Señor at the links below.
In the music video for “Hoppe,” TEKE::TEKE looks like it’s performing in the unlikely, grungy, underground club in one of Japan’s gigantic metropolises. But this just enhances the vibe of a band that seems to have amalgamated Bossa Nova, classic Japanese folk pop, punk, funk, jazz and psychedelia. But really the footage was shot at Pow Wow in Montreal, Quebec where the band is based and by Samuel Woywitka and Sei Nakauchi Pelletier with animation flourishes by Maya Kuroki. The song goes in wild directions but maintains an infectious charm. In moments the music is reminiscent of something Prince might have done had he gone an indiepop route and worked with Fishbone to get there. In others Deee-Lite but rather than electro retro disco, trying its hand at ska and ending up somewhere weirder and more original. That the song seems to be about the folly of assuming anything is permanent and not in a constant state of flux suits the style well. Multiple manifestations these beautiful and endearing hybrid pop sounds can be head throughout the group’s 2023 album Hagata out now via Kill Rock Stars. Watch the video for “Hoppe” on YouTube and follow TEKE:TEKE at the links below.
Second Daughter draws on long arcs of rhythm and lush atmospheres and melancholic, ethereal melodies to craft the weighty and processional “Love Language.” It sounds like the kind of synth pop you would use to close out an indie dance night or as the outro music of an existential and tragic love story inspired by the more romantic side of David Lynch’s cinematic career. The tone of the song is one of resigned and remorseful acceptance that someone with whom one is involved communicates love in a way that isn’t in line with one’s own, with gestures and words that don’t quite resonate though they might with someone else. And the most one can say is the person tries and that both people make the effort but it’s just not going to work out no matter how much time and energy you’re willing to put into it. Maybe there was an initial spark or attraction that brought the people together, which happens often out of circumstance or a momentary period in a person’s life and you want it to work out but deep down you both know it won’t and rather than let that disconnect spiral into something destructive you take a moment to reflect and mourn the possibility you wanted to manifest like adults. Listen to “Love Language” on Spotify and follow Second Daughter at the links provided.
The Siren Project is a downtempo/dream pop/post-punk band that started in Denver in 1998 and quickly became a staple in the local Goth and alternative rock scenes for several years. When the cultural infrastructure around the Goth scene began to dissolve and being a band perceived as making music in that style and the social connections surrounding it didn’t quite line up with the ascendance of mid-2000s indie rock in Denver, The Siren Project most often performed at events and club nights that catered to the subculture. And during the course of life events that sometimes put being more active on hold the band remained the enduring duo of vocalist Malgorzata Wacht and producer/synthesist Alex Seminara throughout the 2010s and now 2020s. In 2016 The Siren Project released its debut album Denouement. The record included songs dating back to the group’s earliest days and featured the contributions of various collaborators and yet at its heart was the sense of yearning and connection, of a romance with life and its meaning. Wacht’s powerful and expressive vocals and the lush and dreamlike melodies conveyed a very European sensibility that one hears in bands that influenced the duo’s early creative efforts like Clan of Xymox, Depeche Mode, Dead Can Dance and The Cure. Yet The Siren Project very much as its own sound that has set itself apart from its peers in the older Goth scene of Denver and of today. These days the style might best fall under the umbrella of darkwave seeing as its songwriting style and aesthetic has had less in common with industrial and EBM and more with modern acts like Boy Harsher, KANGA and Kaelan Mikla.
Listen to our interview with Wacht and Seminara on Bandcamp and follow The Siren Project at the links below. The band has a live show opening for Goth industrial legends Seraphim Shock at The Oriental Theater on Friday, September 1, 2023 with Faces Under the Mirror, hosted by Sid Pink and DJ sets from DJ Slave 1. For more information on the band and its goings on as well as to listen to the music please visit the links below.
Louisville, Kentucky’s Wombo dropped its latest release the Slab EP via Fire Talk Records on June 9, 2023. The second single “Thread” and its companion music video showcase the more tender side of the band’s songwriting. Originally written by singer Sydney Chadwick on piano the song has morphed into something no less minimalist in musical quality but driven by spare percussion, melodic bass lines and Chadwick’s vocals sounding like they’re coming from a secret place and revealing personal secrets, not tentatively, but as though feeling safe enough to be so vulnerable to speak those words out loud about having to protect oneself emotionally through subtle acts of subterfuge. The music video itself looks like something filmed clandestinely to perhaps release to a public someday but maybe leaked quietly online for those more savvy and clued into the vibe to find. Musically it’s a slight departure from the beautifully dissonant tonality of earlier releases from the band yet in line with its seeming willingness to go off established maps of expectation in crafting music that gets past those filters. Watch the video for “Thread” on YouTube and follow Wombo at the links below.
Alexander Hacke and Danielle De Picciotto have been composing music together as hackedepicciotto for over twenty years. Based out of Berlin the two met in the 1980s in the same musical and art circles that included the influential industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten with which Hacke has been a member since 1981. De Picciotto was one of the founders of Love Parade in 1989, a traveling electronic music festival in Berlin dedicated to peace and international understanding and both musicians have been members of foundational post-punk band Crime and the City Solution since 2012. De Picciotto is an internationally recognized author and visual artist and creator of two graphic memoirs We Are Gypsies Now (2013) and Die Heitere Kunst der Rebellion (2020). Separately and together the artists have been involved in film making, cinematic scoring, multi-media presentations as well as finely crafted albums under the current collective moniker since 2016 (previous releases as Alexander Hacke & Danielle De Picciotto). The latest is Keepsakes released July 28, 2023 the duo’s second record on Mute. The album was recorded at the studio Auditorium Novecento in Napoli, Italy where Enrico Caruso and Ennio Morricone both recorded. De Picciotto and Hacke took advantage of the use of tubular bells and a grand piano in the studio and an array of other on hand instrumentation to craft songs in celebration of friendship and the lives of various friends with music that is as orchestral as it is intimate, imbued with subtle and surprising textures within its expressive melodies and experiments in sound and songwriting. It is arguably the duo’s finest record to date in an already remarkable career catalog.
Listen to our interview with hackedepicciotto on Bandcamp and follow the project at the links below and perhaps catch them at their always compelling live shows. Keepsakes is currently available on digital, CD and vinyl through one of the link portals below.
V V Brown taps into a classic neo soul sound for “Twisted,” a thoughtful yet forceful examination of the ways a creative and social culture can be co-opted and exploited for profit without the people who make up the organic, human community of people in which that culture germinates benefiting directly. Brown’s voice sounds like its coming from another time and traveling through a hall of images and memories while a repeating phantom of processed vocals passes her by to a rhythm outside of the standard 4/4 time of pop music, rather, something more behind or ahead of that beat, dragging behind ever so slightly at times like a Dilla production. It altogether keeps you riveted on Brown’s commentary about the commodification of black and other indigenous cultures as something to fetishize and sell back to that community and to people who think that by buying in they’re participants. It’s a process as old as the model of colonialism and its endless trivializing the culture, spirituality, beliefs and art of the colonized so that it can be turned into yet another product. But in Brown’s words and lyrics you hear a spirit of resistance to this pattern and a reclamation of the dignity of the authentic culture as something you are rather than giving it up as something for sale. It’s the kind of creative subversion of the dominant paradigm that has been part of popular musical styles for decades and even centuries. V V Bown, with “Twisted,” just gives it her own brand of soulful cool. Listen to “Twisted” on Spotify and follow V V Brown at the links below.
“Turn to Roses” has a soft production and meditative rhythms that suggests the dawning of something within. Songwriter Good Lee tapped Starling Arrow vocalist/musician Marya Stark to perform the vocals for the song from the August 4, 2023 album A World Within to give it a gentle but melodiously evocative touch. Stark’s turn at singing the song took her out of her usual context in a more folk vein and sat perfectly in a downtempo pop song about forgiveness and the power of growing beyond the accidental hurts and offenses we can visit upon those we love and have loved. The line “all our arrows turn to roses” points to the almost emotionally alchemical process of that path out of holding onto one’s aggrievement and into a place of grace and to remember the things that brought you together rather than the misunderstandings and conflicts that drove you apart. The song is reminiscent of early 90s New Age-inflected pop music but with a modern production sensibility that lends the ethereal tonality a warmth it might not otherwise possess. Listen to “Turn to Roses” on Spotify and connect with Good Lee at the links below.
Maddy Briggs utilized a live organ recording through Max/MSP to craft a single take, live performance, debut EP titled Late Night Swim which released on June 13, 2023. This method gives the ambient/drone composition a dreamlike unity that lives completely up to the title of the whole piece. The third section “At Bay” has an organic almost iterative tonal shimmer like the moonlight and pool lights dancing on the surface of the water and illuminating its depths. The first half of the track has an effervescence that is like the immediate sensory quality of entering that environment and the second half the meditative tranquility of taking in the sheer, uninterrupted peacefulness of the experience with the brighter tones coming to the fore as one is able to absorb the unique quality of light and how it and being immersed in the water can drive away daytime psychological concerns and one is able to enjoy what it is to be a human living in the world unburdened by the near constant presence of other stimuli that we take for granted even if we don’t consciously clock their impact on our psyche. The rest of the EP embodies different facets of being able to truly indulge the therapeutic quality of a full body experience of a Zen-like state. Listen to “At Bay”and the rest of Late Night Swim on Spotify and follow Maddy Briggs at the links below.
“I’m a Dreamer” is the debut single by dream pop band The Parade from Stockholm, Sweden. Its introspective melodies and gentle rhythms and melodious vocals are reminiscent of Saint Etienne and in moments the keyboard work like something you’d expect out of an early 90s downtempo group but a production style more like club music you’d hope to hear these days. Given the music video and footage like a raiding of thrift stores for VHS tapes and repurposing and editing them to give a deep sense of late summer, night time revelry. And this song is seemingly about a casual, summertime romance that might turn into something more but doesn’t have to evolve beyond something mutually entered into for the good times for now. Watch the video for “I’m a Dreamer” on YouTube and follow The Parade at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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