Imagine an alternate universe where the Cold War never happened and the conflicts for de-colonization went more humanely than in our actual history and Saigon was a thriving city and cultural center in the mid-70s with an active and inventive psychedelic prog scene that emerged unburdened by the pressure of internecine civil warfare. The exuberant and even celebratory instrumental music heard on Ki!’s single “Nắng Ấm” might have emerged with its lively guitar melodies and jaunty dance beats a full five decades before its 2022 release and perhaps been contemporaries with Fela Kuti and W.I.T.C.H. in an international music scene where ideas could more easily and readily influence each other for the better. It is the soundtrack of a retrofuturist vision for a much more nurturing time ahead of us. Connoisseurs of 1960s Cambodian pop and rock as well the aforementioned and Mdou Moctar will probably enjoy what Ki! is doing on this song. Listen to “Nắng Ấm” on Spotify.
Plus assembled a team of collaborators in Nige Hood and Monogem to create the dusky, urgent and moody track “The End (El Final).” The arc of pulsing synth melodies and luminous drones alongside beats that feel like the percussion equivalent of call and response frame a story of someone who struggles with the temptations of not just everyday life to put you off your hussle but also the trappings of success that can be seductive with people flattering you and pretending to be your friend all while looking for their own opportunity in crawling to the top of whatever industry you can name because there is that unnecessary competitive streak and aspect of to most important endeavors whether it needs to exist or not. The song is about maintaining a healthy sense of self and not overfeed the ego and stick to strong foundational principles. It is about the hustle of being an entrepreneur and/or an artist and the precariousness of balancing integrity and authenticity with success and maybe let a little of the latter go if it means you can be true to what you know is best. Musically the track is somewhere between commercial mainstream hip-hop in production but more experimental in the soundscaping bordering on darkwave for an effect that it sounds like something you’d hear in an epic Michael Mann crime drama even though it isn’t itself about a life in crime. Truly a song for night driving. Listen to “The End (El Final)” on Spotify and follow Plus at the links provided.
Erika Wester builds the soundscape of “Wanted To Be Like You” beginning with a spare acoustic guitar riff and minimal keyboard and percussion. Her hushed and expressive vocals describe a relationship that seems dysfunctional on multiple levels and the progression of the song gives the impression of Wester navigating troubled emotional waters which is an image she employs as a symbol of infatuation and being in sync with someone, or feeling like you are, until you realize that you’re not of a similar mind about the relationship and that one person might be emotionally in a place where they can’t be present with you and you can’t always be the person to pull them out of a bad place all the time. The lines “Wanted to be like you/Till I watched you drown” in the chorus and later in the song “Did you date me/And think there’s be no doubt?/Ain’t it lovely/Until the truth comes out” doesn’t spell out explicitly but makes clear something many people realize at some point in a relationship that’s bad for them and that’s that some people, and most people at some point in their lives and perhaps often enough at the beginning of the relationship, don’t want to be with a real person with a history and flaws and misunderstandings and, well, needs, normal human emotional needs. Without saying so word for word Webster has written a song about someone who has moved on and developed as a person who knows herself and other people better and recognizes that she deserves better than someone who won’t grow and has no seeming emotional incentive to do so but that she doesn’t have to be the one to help facilitate that change. Sure, it’s a pop song with an element of the ethereal running through it but the instrumentation becomes more lush as the song progresses to its inevitable conclusion like the work of art mirrors the psychological growth suggested in the lyrics. Listen to “Wanted To Be Like You” on Spotify and follow Wester at the links provided.
Tobias Karlehag’s “ORQUIDEA” progresses from hazy white noise background to bell tones struck and textural sounds of physical objects used to create the incandescent melodies to a place where the sound waves create a natural distortion on the recording. It grounds a reflective mood with a tangible presence of sound that conveys an organic tranquility that expands beyond the initial tonality as the bell sounds resonate out to create what sound like interference patterns droning onward and decaying into the distance as though approximating an abstraction of the dynamic of the flowers invoked in the title (orchids) as it opens up with its first bloom. It’s sounds like a meditation on delicate and often unseen natural processes that can seem mystical in real time and symbolic of the cycles of the universe. Listen to “ORQUIDEA” on Spotify and follow Tobias Karlehag at the links below.
The gentle psychedelia of “Pocket Theory” by Springworks has a refreshing energy that has the quality of feeling like waking up from a good sleep. The effervescent tones like several tiny belltones twinkling in the mix and the production on the song with an ever expansive dynamic is reminiscent of Thomas Newman’s music for Real Genius and his older brother David Newman’s score for Heathers. Which is to say it’s cinematic and conveys a tangible sense of place and projects a mood that can suit whatever visual environment to which it’s put. In the case of the video for the song it’s a collage of old science videos and psychedelic images like content pulled from a box of VHS tapes found at a thrift store and repurposed to breathe new life into its potential meaning and significance when combined with “Pocket Theory” and its Madchester-esque good vibes and seemingly endless uplift until the song fades out into a tranquil drone over sampled industrial video speech. Watch the video for “Pocket Theory” on YouTube and connect with Springworks at the links below.
September Stories employ a spoken word element for the lyrics to “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DYING TOO MUCH” while the music itself is stark to match the intense and unadorned vocals. The lyrics repeat and in the second iteration the drums come crashing in and the vocals raise in an amplified sense of desperation uttering words of abject alienation and the realization of being doomed by one’s own psychology and feeling trapped by a hopelessness so deep it turns into a self-reinforcing cycle of emotional self-sabotage that feels with great certainty inescapable. Though very different sonically fans of Big Black, Slint and OXBOW will appreciate the bleak imagery and poetic evocation of confronting one’s own worst enemy within one’s own mind. Listen to “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DYING TOO MUCH” on YouTube and check out the rest of the new September Stories EP I STAND IN AWE OF THE GREAT UNKNOWN on one of the streaming services below and follow the group at the links provided.
“Eveningside Decks” opens Warning Light’s latest album Inner Spaces with a an air of mystery and trepidation. Imagine walking home alone in the twilight and you take a trip down an unfamiliar street with houses of unusual shapes with doorways opening directly onto the sidewalk and you see one open with a flickering light illuminating a darkened alcove because it’s near the end of fall. Your curiosity gets the better of you and you look inside and find an empty living room with no windows and a television screen tuned to, unusual these days, to the static of a channel off broadcast. Then a figure comes on the screen and welcomes you to sit and you do and you are invited by this stranger to help with a mission of great importance and great reward if you so choose to come on board for what promises to be the adventure of a lifetime but one that has to remain hush hush. The distorted synth drones and hovering tones set to a meditative, accented beat suggests the air of futuristic film noir with the vibe of Tangerine Dream’s 1980’s soundtracks, like music for a film inspired both by Murakami and Ridley Scott. Listen to “Eveningside Decks” on Soundcloud and give a listen to the rest of Inner Spaces on Bandcamp.
“Things Fall Apart” starts off by placing the song in a mood of mysterious nostalgia with the rising and warping tone like something from a latter day soundtracking of a silent movie. When Alyssa Midcalf’s vocals come in it’s like something from the edge of daydreams as they seem to be lit up from within amidst the luminous fog of the layers of synth melody and the wash of melodic drones. It feels very orchestrated and given the title and some of the enigmatic lyrics it has the effect of bandaging oneself from a traumatic and overwhelming experience that leaves you on or over the edge of emotional collapse without much relief so your mind creates the kind of music that feels like gauze on the psyche as a comfortable shield that allows for the processing of the pain and to heal as best you can when depending on the specific experience maybe you feel like you never can. The song sounds like it’s about the loss of an important person in one’s life and the complicated and messy feelings that can come about from something so final. Maybe you put some distance from yourself and those feelings within yourself, maybe some dissociation as a method of coping through the act of creation and to make things that remind one of better times emotionally the way sound can tap into the nostalgia centers of your mind and redirect the crushing and poignantly painful feelings that won’t go away, the memories that can haunt you for a lifetime. Midcalf seems to have used her most recent album Incubator as a vehicle for restarting her life through creativity while honoring her experiences and maybe that can be a helpful thing to hear for anyone that has been through a rough patch. “Things Fall Apart” certain exemplifies the project. Listen that song on YouTube and follow Primer at the links below where you can explore the rest of Incubator on Bandcamp.
ENPHIN’s new album End Cut came out on Pelagic Records in June and it is a fine representation of the Finnish band’s cinematic, psychedelic doom. The single “Communion” flows with menacing synth washes and processional percussion giving a ritualistic cast especially in the sections where a voice echoes in distorted ripples like an announcer giving direction to an assembled crowd gathering to depart the earth to mysterious destinations in other parts of the universe. Something about music taps into the same, complex emotional and sonic realms as Orbit Service or Dead Voices On Air with that dark form of deeply atmospheric psychedelia that delves deep into the lost recesses of the psyche for inspiration. Listen to “Communion” on YouTube and follow ENPHIN at the links below.
Courtney Cotter King and band, photo courtesy the artist
Courtney Cotter King’s the simple yet evocative piano figure that runs through her song “Conversation” is like a comforting and reassuring presence. That melody along with ethereal strings and soft percussion accents set a gentle and patient air around King’s soulful, vulnerable vocals sounding like she has given up on the ego drive to power through life’s challenging situations. In the lyrics it sounds like she feels like she has made some unspoken transgressions felt deeply, the kind that are difficult to discard and purge from your psyche. And guilt from these acts, however minor yet felt in the core of her being, seems to weigh her down with a kind of numbing effect as suggested in the line wanting her hand held “’til I can feel again.” Feel as in feel normal and whole and not burdened by the weight of conscience and seeking to move beyond it. Could be King is calling upon a higher power to aid in this time when it all feels so poignant and inescapable and oftentimes this is what people need to do because their rational mind and its habit of needing linear logic to think things through isn’t always enough because we depend on our own current faculties which may be inadequate to guide us through in the conventional modes of understanding we consciously possess. King articulates this process in the language of a more traditional faith but the emotional impact of the song and the core human experiences expressed transcend specificity of culture. Listen to “Conversation” on YouTube and follow King at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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