SubmitHub – Queen City Sounds and Art

Fugue State’s “Dark” is an Ambient Jazz Dream Pop Song That Soothes and Stirs the Imagination

Dan Langa of Fugue State, photo by Alex SK Brown

“Dark” has an iterative quality to its arrangements with subtle changes in the repeated sequences. For the song Fugue State brings together elements of ambient jazz, truly left field pop and a sort of collage and cut up technique in laying out the rhythms and sounds so that tones overlap with rhythms with an effect of watching a film with layers of varying opacity so that there is an organic flow of what is at the forefront in the mix. The core rhythm is carried by a percussive melodic line and the vocals float dream-like through the song like a fond but elusive memory. There is something soothing and faintly uplifting about the song and it comes across as a retrofuturist dream pop that draws on older musical ideas to create something with new and fresh resonances. Listen to “Dark” on Spotify and follow Fugure State at the links below.

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Fugue State on Bandcamp

Fugue State on YouTube

Blvckhndz Boosts Community Protection on Darkwave Hip-Hop Single “I Am Your Neighbor”

Blvckhndz pairs a spectral melodic synth line with an urgent beat on “I Am Your Neighbor” that complements well rapid but expertly sequenced bars about life in a community today. The title hearkens one to the Kengo Hanazawa manga series I Am a Hero and the artwork shows our own hero of the song, perhaps, giving a kick to the yarbles of an ICE agent instead of a literal zombie. And the song ends with the now familiar refrains of “ICE out!” and concluding with “Fuck ICE.” Who can’t get behind those sentiments that isn’t a bootlicker? The whole song though is like a mini manual for surviving this perilous era and maintain an inner calm even as hectic as it can seem. The song straddles the genre lines of hip-hop, darkwave and synthpop and video game music in a way that expands the boundaries of all by unifying them. Listen to “I Am Your Neighbor” on Spotify and follow Virginia-based artist Blvckhndz at the links provided.

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Blvckhndz on TikTok

Blvckhndz on Instagram

Mindy Gledhill Inspires Finding Everyday Wonders Around You on Dream Folk Single “Hidden Pictures”

Mindy Gledhill, photo courtesy the artist

The almost layered guitar work under Mindy Gledhill’s vocals, doubled now and then to great yet subtle effect, in “Hidden Pictures” are like a musical embodiment of the songwriter’s lyrics. Gledhill seems to be reminding us of that Buddhist story about being able to see the universe in a blade of grass if only you are open to perceptions of wondrous things around you in everyday life where previously you seemed to only find the mundane. A slight shift in perspective and cognitive priorities is really all it takes, no special powers or bolt of “enlightenment,” it’s a shift that’s accessible to everyone and Gledhill’s melodiously gentle song seems to have a way of coaxing this painless and easy transformation with its soothing energies. Listen to “Hidden Pictures” on YouTube and follow Mindy Gledhill at the links below.

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Oski XD Doski’s “Bonny Wraith” is a Culture Jamming Collage of Post-Punk Psychedelic Folk

Oski XD Doski, photo courtesy the artists

“Bonny Wraith” by Oski XD Doski sounds like it was assembled from glitched out fragments of songs almost collage style to form a song that is at turns lo-fi indie rock, post-punk weirdness and psychedelic rock circa early Flaming Lips. The video has ghosts in frame, paintings of ancient Egypt, archaic cartoons, images of the outlines of the earth and all animated together. It’s obvious the song and the video were created organically and brought together with an analog sensibility in mind. Like the people in the band came up partly on old Nickelodeon shows and Liquid Television and had seen music videos from Residents and Renaldo & The Loaf. Musically the song and its coherent yet eclectic style has a flavor that seems akin to early Ween gone Neo Folk. It’s really does no justice to the uniqueness of the song to compare it immediately to anything else but fans of Sun City Girls may like this as well. Watch the video for “Bonny Wraith” on YouTube and follow Oski XD Doski at the links provided. Gotta appreciate a band using a meme emoticon in the middle of its moniker. The group’s new album Latency Issues released February 15, 2026.

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Oski XD Doski on TikTok

Oski XD Doski on Instagram

Oski XD Doski on Bandcamp

“Spin Glass” by storyinsoil is an Ambient IDM Piece That Sounds Like the Score of a Utopian, Existential Science Fiction Drama From the ‘70s

The rapid-cycling, almost iterative aspect of storyinsoil’s “Spin Glass” with the intro has a minimalistic quality of early synthesizer music but as the track progresses the modulated, lower end tonal rhythm anchors the song. The circular bright tone increases in volume and brightness and then decreases giving a real sense of space allowing for other layers to express a more delicate emotional coloring from inside its framing. The percussive aspect of the more prominent sounds lends the song a tactile quality and the more subtle sounds one more melancholic yet imbued with a sense of wonder. Toward the conclusion the song gives way to a touch of more conventional melody as the rhythms fade out conveying a cinematic quality to the song like the closing credits of one of those existential science fiction and adventure films of the 1970s and 1980s the likes of which were typically soundtracked by the likes of Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh. This doesn’t feel like a homage to that era of synthesizer music so much as finding a fresh application of the way that music had an analog tonal quality that was as palpable as it was atmospheric. Listen to “Spin Glass” on YouTube and follow storyinsoil at the links provided.

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Jacob The Horse Give the Communist Resistance to the Ruling Class a Power Pop Party Punk Anthem With “The Black Hand”

Jacob The Horse, photo by Heather McAlpin

Jacob The Horse sound like they popped into the current era from the dawn of power pop in the 1970s on “The Black Hand.” But this celebratory-sounding song like some odd yet charming fusion of The Guess Who, Kiss, Cheap Trick and Big Star is infused with a working class political consciousness and revolutionary fervor. It’s not often you hear a party song that references The Black Hand, possibly a more than slight nod to the Serbian military society that is credited with the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in 1914 or the organized crime groups in America, it mentions having Communist parties (lower case) and “Dancing and singing ‘bout workers’ rights,” as well as more than passive resistance to the ruling class. Musically it’s something you’d almost expect to hear on classic rock radio where few artists are singing so directly about a proletarian uprising with such joy unless that station plays a lot of The Clash and Billy Bragg. Listen to “The Black Hand” on YouTube and follow Jacob The Horse from Los Angeles at the links provided. The group releases its new album At Least It’s Almost Over on March 20, 2026.

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Otracami’s Ethereal Folk Pop Single “Perfect Reach” Embraces Uncertainty and Complex Feelings

Otracami was taking Adrianne Lenker’s School of Song class one winter while also reading Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez when the ideas and methods of songwriting came to her. The gentle elegance of the guitar work and the subtly shifting harmonics are imbued with the hauntedness one associates with the novel. But Otracami utilizes that mood in “Perfect Reach” to tell a different kind of story in impressionistic phrases of yearning and one’s own motivations in pursuing the path of that yearning and how what you think what you want can seem better at a distance and all the while not wanting to be trapped and defined by expectations. The song expresses a frame of mind knowing how what seems perfect and attainable can be elusive because no one and nothing can fully live up to the visions in your head and the assumption of fulfillment when you find it difficult to accept deviation from an ideal. And sometimes you’d rather not risk disappointment and preserve that perfect fantasy of the mind until it resolves in one’s imagination. The song’s melancholic, dreamlike melodies and the singer’s intimate vocal delivery hold empathy for the embrace of uncertainty, emotional complexity and a desire to avoid harming oneself and others emotionally. Listen to “Perfect Reach” on Spotfy and follow Otracami at the links below.

Otracami on TikTok

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Piotr Michałowski’s Textural Ambient Composition “Something Good” Combines the Sublime and the Unsettling

Piotr Michałowski puts a good deal of texture and percussive qualities in the layers of “Something Good.” Its bright, harmonics over pulsing drones in the beginning sounds like the rapid flow of clouds across summer skies if you could experience that in fast forward while your mind remains at rest and soothed by effervescent music. This part of the song flows into a movement where a distant piano intones a simple melodic figure in the background while a cycling rhythm keeps a steady pace and processed electronic strings like distorted violin cuts through it all with a nearly palpable quality. Toward the end a processed white noise breaks the tranquility of the piece like all along we’ve been hearing a secret radio transmission of a performance of an ambient song by a performer now being suppressed by the state and the feed is being interrupted just as the song fades to quiet. To combine the sublime with the unsettling in this way isn’t so common and that sets the song apart. Listen to “Something Good” on Spotify and follow Polish composer Piotr Michałowski at the links provided. The album The New Season released January 16, 2026.

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Piotr Michałowski on Facebook

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Taroug’s “Najet” Infuses Modern Electronic Dance With Traditional Tunsian Instrumentation For a Distinctly Futuristic Cross-Cultural Sound

Taroug (aka Tarek Zarroug) releases his new album Chott on March 27, 2026 via Denovali Records and the single “Najet” further embodies the German-Tunisian producer’s brilliance at fusing modern experimental electronic dance music and traditional Tunisian sounds. The dub-like beats and the echo of wind instruments before the flute takes forefront in carrying melody while vocals interweave throughout the track while scintillating patterns spin around the edges gives and clearly organic hand drums come into the mix gives the song a distinctly futuristic feel but one that embraces elements of the past that give it a new context. One doesn’t often associate the creative products with a link to Tunisian or Islamic cultures generally as something futuristic and that’s just what Taroug has done with the song and the album linking cross-cultural musical influences to create something new. Fans of the more electronic end of Muslimgauze or the more experimental, production infused releases by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan will appreciate Taroug’s knack for depth of layers and immersive soundscaping. Listen to “Najet” on YouTube and follow Taroug at the links below.

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Strange Fruit’s IDM Shoegaze Single “Monopolar” is Like a Mood Window Into Late 90s Underground Music Hopefulness

Strange Fruit, photo courtesy the artists

“Monopolar” by Jakarta, Indonesia’s Strange Fruit eases into motion with hazy harmonics and swelling and resolving textures and tones. The mood is like a downtempo band that got deep into blissed out shoegaze psychedelia. Yes, there is guitar but the whole songwriting aesthetic is more like electronic music and fans of Seefeel, Black Moth Super Rainbow and the more experimental end of Verve will appreciate the most. It’s like a musical break from the overwhelming turmoil of world events which we could all use a little bit of now. It feels like what the late 90s did in the underground music world with a sense of mystery and an ambient hopefulness. Watch the entrancing video for “Monopolar” on YouTube and follow Strange Fruit at the links below. The group’s latest EP Drips, its first release after about a decade-long hiatus, drops April 3, 2026 via Gentle Tuesday Recordings.

Strange Fruit on Instagram

Strange Fruit on Bandcamp