SubmitHub – Page 110 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Dilettante’s Brisk Synth Pop Single “Monster” is a Theme Song For Anyone Needing a Complete Break With the Toxic People in Their Lives

Utilizing the sound palette of a triumphant synth pop song, Dilettante gives its single “Monster” an emotional and conceptual depth it might not otherwise possess if it sounded dire and intense. In the music video we see a woman running down streets at a brisk pace looking as if she is running from a situation and never looking back. The lyrics tell us a story of a person who is choosing not to answer the call of a former partner knowing that person is strong and that she is weak. In the song we hear a line that is both eerie and carries with it a sense of relief and pity in “Now you found something else to play with.” She knows what’s in store for that thing, that group or that person and it’s bleak at best. The chorus swimming in bright and uplifting synth melodies and hopeful vocals describes a spirit of speaking one’s truth and psychologically breaking free of the grip of a dominant person who is so toxic there is nothing possible but a clean break with no thought of maintaining a friendship: “Baby you’re a monster and I don’t forgive you.” Tonally it’s reminiscent of more recent Lower Dens combined with Bonnie Tyler and the video like a modern day noir short of Run Lola Run but with the aim of escaping with one’s soul intact. Watch the video for “Monster” on YouTube and follow Dilettante on Spotify.

Tashi Delay’s “Deception” is a Surreal and Playfully Scathing Send-Up of Modern Political and Economic Malfeasance

Who can say are supposed to be the analogs in Tashi Delay’s animated music video for “Deception” but the primaries are “The Politician” and “The Banker.” The upbeat pop song with the slinky bass line is surreal as the characters get away with legal crimes just as the wealthy and powerful do in real life every day of the week. Casting the fairly scathing depiction may be playful and whimsical in presentation but the images of law officers and clergy cavorting with an array of politicians and bankers turn potential specific material world references into something more universal because we’ve all seen this dynamic play out across decades and even lifetimes. Songwriter and animator Emily Seabroke really found the perfect fusion of accessible music and visual representation thereof as a means of crafting a song with rich socio-political content without being hamfisted, a cleverly sharp edged poppy punk dart to the bloated self-importance and corruption of our era of late stage capitalism and the kind of take on these subjects it’s always refreshing to see and hear. Watch the video for “Deception” on YouTube, follow Tashi Delay at the links below and expect the debut album this fall.

Tashi Delay on TikTok

Tashi Delay on Facebook

Tashi Delay on Instagram

“Rhythm” by roman around is an Affectionate Tribute to the Beloved Animals in Our Lives

The way the guitars sit in the mix on roman around’s “Rhythm” is perhaps most immediately striking. There is an emphasis on the percussion and bass highlights with, indeed, rhythm framing the melody. Roman Rivera’s vocals sound like they’re floating in the memory of a dream. The effusive and effervescent sounds toward the end of the song are like the bubbling up of cherished memories but also a shielding of these memories from being eroded by time. The music video for the song makes the lyrics more explicit as an ode to beloved animals in our lives across a lifetime and how though the specific animals may change or the number expand the special connections we have with them remain consistent and something we can look back on with affection even if the pain of loss can mixes in with the joy of our remembrances even though that short time can often make it even more poignant. The music hits like a lo-fi Built to Spill or the more introspective side of DIIV with truly unconventional song structure. Watch the video for “Rhythm” on YouTube and connect with roman around at the links below.

roman around on TikTok

roman around on Facebook

roman around on Instagram

roman around LinkTree

Belief’s Layered Minimal Techno Track “WOT” Brims With Zen-like Swagger

Stella Mozgawa and Boom Bip as Belief offer the fast-pace techno piece “WOT” as an example of the artists stretching beyond the boundaries of the music for which they’re most well known (Mozgawa as a member of Warpaint but also contributing to recordings by Kurt Vile, Cate Le Bon, Courtney Barnett, Sharon Van Etten and Kim Gordon, Boom Bip for his work with Neon Neon). The track is composed of modulated beats in the minimal techno style but layered to give that simplicity of style a dimensionality that draws you in. The first section sounds like its in an unorthodox compound time, with a break for a vocal that simply says “Wot” as though giving voice to an implied character that is vibing to herself along with the beat, walking through her neighborhood with the ambient urban noise of vehicle whooshing by, the buzzing of streetlights all seeming to affirm an inner pace with accented beats echoing enough to bring a sense of open space and a sense of freedom. If one were to create this emotional and psychological space in one’s head taking in the surrounding area with a Zen-like peace, awareness and mindfulness until someone interrupts your headspace in the music and being one with the world with some mundane foolishness and you dismiss their frivolous demand for attention with a simple, monosyllabic “Wot” and then move on. Without being explicit the song implies swagger and attitude in a more abstract and creative way. Listen to “WOT” on YouTube and follow Belief at the links below.

Belief on Instagram

Dude Reppin Knowhere’s Anti-Banger “Airplane Mode” is a Subversive Deconstruction of Popular Culture and Electronic Dance Music

Dude Reppin Knowhere really turns the whole concept of going viral and self-promotional obsession and maintaining active social media engagement as a replacement for actual activity that helps one’s self-esteem on its head with “Airplane Mode.” The title of the song and the project name alone more than cleverly hint at the vibe he’s going for with the song where the vocals seem tuned down a little, maybe slowed down or with effect to give it that tonal warp. Every hip-hop artist and those adjacent is reppin’ some geographical zone like its really an identity for a lot of people and Dude Reppin Knowhere isn’t into that so much. The track is an anti-banger and yet is also oddly catchy so there is a healthy amount of subversive spirit to what this song that is part ambient and part the kind of playful production aim that is a part of what Aphex Twin does when he’s in a mood to take tropes and do something more creative with them. The music video shows a guy who looks like an EDM/rapper/influencer type frolicking in various locales except the music is what hype might sound like if it had already collapsed under its own hubris and had slid into the electronic music equivalent of broken machine mode. The video and the song might even be purely funny if it wasn’t also oddly inventive and offering a lateral thinking take on deconstructing popular culture and style. Watch the video for “Airplane Mode” on YouTube and follow Dude Reppin Knowhere at the links below.

Dude Reppin Knowhere on Instagram

Dude Reppin Knowhere on Facebook

Parallel Perfectly Conveys the Elusive, Bittersweet Moods of Moving Forward From a Cherished Time of Life on “Drench”

The gently cascading guitar riffs of Parallel’s single “Drench” from its 2022 self-titled album hits the ear with shades of Slowdive and A Shoreline Dream with a hint of more lo-fi production. Its drifty structure and dual vocal melodies are at times reminiscent of The Prids or Molchat Doma especially in the way the performances feel elegant and intuitive. Guitar melodies strike high and descend to land in a hypnotic loop that carries you through a bittersweet memory that haunts you from a significant and transitional point in your life when memories made have real resonance and endurance for the long term and become part of your identity. There’s something about these kinds of memories that feel special and significant in often elusive ways yet Parallel captures the emotional energy of them well. Listen to “Drench” on YouTube and follow the Oakland-based band at the links below.

Parallel on Instagram

Double Wish Evokes the Desperate Dark Underbelly of Southern California Striving on Lo-Fi Synth Pop Song “Spirit Away”

There is something of a layered aesthetic to Double Wish’s single “Spirit Away.” It sounds lo-fi in its production and mix but maximalist in composition. The simple, even spare, percussion anchors the song to a forward progression and the smooth bass accents help to set that pace as well with the repetitive acoustic guitar riff almost like a sample that sets an unmistakable vibe and in this case like a noir set in one of the seedier pockets of early 2000s Los Angeles. Maybe a psychodrama about people grinding and striving to stay afloat and snatching small bits of joy where you can get it while holding on to some dream of creative or otherwise professional success but not quite knowing if it’s going to be there for you. It has a sound like a future Paul Thomas Anderson film set in that milieu where landlords don’t update the décor or the infrastructure to their rental properties since the 1970s or earlier. There is an AM radio feel to the song though the songwriting style probably wouldn’t quite have been possible until the early chillwave artists established and made successful the style to introduce then no longer au current sunny and hazy synth sound to an indie rock format that embraced and furthered experimental R&B styles. What sets this song apart from similarly mutant neo-Laurel Canyon sounding work is the way the soulful vocals sit and float amid gorgeously shimmering synth arpeggios that ascend seemingly endlessly like an escalator into the sky. When the song is on the outro we hear what sounds like a computer repeating the title of the song through a radio on in another room to give a mysterious touch to a song that already sounds like something from another era having emerged in modern times without the obviousness of retrofuturism. Listen to “Spirit Away” on Spotify and follow Double Wish on Instagram.

Woven Talon’s Video For “Guri” is an Entrancing Companion Piece to the Song’s Shamanic Sounds

The video treatment for Woven Talon’s single “Guri” by Katharina Jung, Chris Dahl-Bredine and composer Andrew Tumason weds the shamanic music with the image of a mystic communing with nature at dawn. She becomes one with the elements and the landscape, visualizing an abstract representation of a primal nature spirit depicted in shadow-darkened mosaic as hand drums keep a beat that can be kept by anyone, and chanting carries through the piece like a guiding set of principles one keeps in mind without having to focus on it with the linear aspect of the conscious mind. The song is from the album Hajiko (which released on June 21, 2022) and represents “Part III of the Kahu Takaya Story—A journey with Ruca, Grandfather Owl, deep into the Indigo Dunes.” Recorded in Byron Bay, Australia in a studio in the jungle near the ocean this song both captures a certain pan-indigenous sensibility and a cinematic aesthetic that isn’t sound design and soundtracking so much as suggestive of an experience of a world we don’t visit often but beside which we exist daily and in reorienting the mind to an awareness of this parallel world around us all the time the song is also a reminder of our connectedness to the natural world and our existence inseparable and indistinguishable from the contiguous aspect of the material and perhaps the spiritual world. Watch the video for “Guri” on YouTube and follow Woven Talon at the links provided.

Woven Talon on Instagram

Tunnel’s Angsty and Cathartic “Lemonhead” Turns the Myth of Love and Romance as the Fulfillment of Life on Its Head

The guitar breaks on Tunnel’s “Lemonhead” are so effective at conveying a switching frame of mind it’s like an update on the loud-quiet-loud dynamic of early Bostonian alternative rock. The song’s chain of couplets seem to describe being in a place in your mind where nothing satisfies you and you’ve been, yes, soured on the motivations of other people and no matter how much you know this general feeling of nearly physical disdain for what should give you comfort and good will is an artifact of a disaffected mind you can’t intellectualize it away and won’t take such prescriptions from other people. The chorus in the last half of the song of “Love is fine/Love is boring” speaks to how this thing that’s supposed to be the culmination of your young life is more nuanced and not the solution to everything and then what? The narratives of our culture in the end prove inadequate for real life and you’re forced to figure out what works for you. The hard hitting and expressive drumming provided by Fugazi’s Brendan Canty pair well with Natasha Janfaza’s somehow both winsome, introspective and forceful vocals. The use of bass chords as well as those for guitar and the dreamlike synth melody in the context of a song that feels angsty and cathartic really gives this song some compelling contrasts that make this song a great closing track for the debut album Vanilla and ending the record on a note that demands you revisit the whole thing. Watch the video for “Lemonhead” on YouTube, follow Tunnel at the links below and explore Vanilla further on Bandcamp or Spotify.

Tunnel on Facebook

Tunnel on Instagram

Chris Kyle’s Psychedelic Pop Song “Space Flower” is a Relaxing Passage Through the Infinite Drift of the Cosmos

Chris Kyle’s single “Space Flower” from his latest EP Stardust conveys a sense of infinite drift and flow with drawn out guitar work and his own hazy, slightly echoing vocals. The echoing riffs and use of musical space makes you feel like you’re hanging out there beyond the stratosphere with Jimi Hendrix and Bowie. Especially in the context of the music video in which a space bee lands on the technological space flower satellite after an astronaut observes the tranquil beauty of the earth from orbit. The languidly psychedelic song is an example of how Kyle, a guitarist in brilliantly eclectic R&B act Cautious Clay, is able to experiment outside his usual mode of songwriting with weaving together styles to create something unique and compelling and in this case playful music in which it’s easy to get lost for a few minutes. Watch the video for “Space Flower” on YouTube, follow Chris Kyle on Instagram and give a listen to the rest of the EP and other music by Kyle on Instagram.

Chris Kyle on Instagram