Maya Deren – Queen City Sounds and Art

Susurrus Station, photo courtesy the artists

The title of Susurrus Station’s “Meshes of the Afterlife” is a nod to Maya Derren’s 1943 short experimental/psychological film Meshes of the Afternoon. While not the proto noir of Deren’s film, the music video for the song involves masked figures reminiscent of a mix of the masks worn by the Brutal Exterminators in Zardoz and Japanese classical theater masks. The song itself has a playful energy rooted in rhythms and textures lending its melodies an otherworldly feel at times as the song explores themes of mortality and struggle and taking a chance on doing something with your time that brings you some joy and psychological freedom from the heaviness of the times we’re living through right now that no one asked for but psychotic greed and power mongers are imposing on us all at great cost to human society, psychology and the rest of the world, often dismissed as incidental to human experience, with it. Susurrus Station leans into the whimsy without losing sight of the reality that makes that more necessary than ever to indulge. While the elements of songwriting and its tools for effecting its unique sound the mood is reminiscent of late 2000s Deerhunter but more utilizing synth and piano more than guitar to achieve a dreamlike quality that draws out one’s capacity to connect with a realm of the imagination and dreams where more seems possible and nurturing rather than limiting and destructive. In that way the song, perhaps hinting with the title at seeing a future free from mundane mortal existence, fees like a gateway to a better time. Watch the video for “Meshes of the Afterlife” on YouTube and follow Susurrus Station at the links below. Look out for the group’s new album Mythomania due out later in 2026.

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Allison Lorenzen, photo by Reid Fioretti

Allison Lorenzen’s 2021 album Tender is the kind of record you take in and get transported to a place beyond time and outside linear logic. Like dream pop from beyond the Wardrobe to a reconciled, peacetime Narnia. But in Lorenzen’s deep atmospherics are moments of mystery and darkness and Jack Manzi tapped into that for his video collaboration with Lorenzen and the treatment of the song “Vale” through Silver Island Studios. Cast in black and white with stylized movements, some seemingly ritualistic with the trappings thereof as well, and set in a wooded area per the song title, the grainy and hazy drone of guitar perhaps provided by musical contributor Madeline Johnston (Midwife) offering an immediate emotional lens alongside Lorenzen’s own solemn, processional piano and the sparest of percussion, the video is reminiscent of Maya Deren’s 1945 avant-garde film classic A Study in Choreography for Camera. Like if Deren had collaborated with Georgia O’Keefe on the visual design and produced a film rural mystical noir. Lorenzen’s enigmatic lyrics are like a dark prophecy that fades with the sustained gloom of the song like a dream that isn’t a nightmare but imbued with a sense of menace nevertheless. It’s the kind of mood that is somehow worth visiting to give voice to the feelings that haunt you in moments of heightened anxiety as a way to gain comprehension of them and loosen their ability to grip your psyche. Watch the compelling video for “Vale” on YouTube and follow Lorenzen at the links below.