SubmitHub – Page 130 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Secret Shame’s “Hide” is a Cathartic Declaration of Resistance to the Stultifying Energies of Psychological Oppression

Secret Shame, photo courtesy the artists

“Hide,” the lead track from Secret Shame’s forthcoming sophomore follow-up to its fantastic 2019 debut album Dark Synthetics is a statement on embracing one’s vulnerability and the dangers of always feeling like you need to hide part of yourself as an act of self-protection. In the choruses, guitar riffs hit in a measured yet expressive procession and then bloom forth in wide circles of melody as the rhythm section carries a lot of the weight of the track with an irresistible momentum and energy. In the verses the instrumentation gives the room that is so yearned for in the lyrics that Lena Machina delivers with a focused introspection. The song speaks to anyone that has had to turn a personal asset into a mark of shame because of the bad faith behavior of others and of a culture that consistently treats normal and not inherently destructive human behaviors as an aberration even if it’s something as simple as wanting to have your existence matter despite where the focus of society’s unspoken system of rewards is placed. Not to mention how one can internalize this mindset when it’s the bulk of what’s presented to you in life. It’s a song of no small amount of nuance in its sentiments and musically it’s a step further in the post-punk darkwave direction more than hinted at on the first record and its superb blend of punk and its darker cousin. Listen to “Hide” on YouTube, connect with Secret Shame at the links below and look out for the group’s new album likely announced later in 2022.

Secret Shame on Twitter

Secret Shame on Facebook

Secret Shame on Instagram

Raelism Employs Spooky Atmospherics and Haunting Imagery to Process Personal Darkness on “Self-Soothe Mechanism”

Images in black and white, a woman laying on the ground looking into the near distance flanked by footage of the tides. Then tides coming in and in reverse out. Simple, ghostly synth melody echoing and then giving way to lightly distorted keyboard tracing a line that that goes up and slightly down as the tides move about and hints of another figure appears as a layer of the image over which the tides become slightly transparent. We see a man sitting in an alcove surrounded by an enclosure with foliage. This is how Raelism’s “Self-Soothe Mechanism” starts before the minimalistic percussion edges into the soundscape. The atmosphere of the song and the footage is reminiscent of what a sequel to the 1962 horror classic Carnival of Souls might look and sound like. Especially when the spooky glimmers of higher pitched synth bursts in with short lines answered by hovering, darkly ethereal drones. And then the color as the figure sings/speaks “I didn’t hit you, I didn’t cut you” in almost deadpan fashion. Then the male figure crawls menacing forward from his greened alcove juxtaposed with an image of him sitting at the top of a staircase and holding his face in his hands. It’s a psychological horror in short form and the title of the song might seem counter intuitive except that when someone repeats what he wants to believe to himself to soothe a guilty conscience over some actual or imagined wrong it definitely serves that purpose. Like a mantra that can also serve to heal through reaching into that personal darkness deeply and bringing forth deep seated feelings that haven’t been allowed expression by the conscious mind. And yet the chilling aspect of the composition especially given the video treatment while unsettling is also calming. The combination is like if Alien Sex Fiend made a chill, ambient track with an A24 director directing the music video except in this case it was Abigail Clarkson. Is that perhaps too on the nose connecting the name of this project with the UFO cult of the same name started by Claude Vorihon in the 1970s? Maybe so, but it’s another dimension to this fascinatingly unusual music. Watch the video for “Self-Soothe Mechanism” on YouTube and follow Raelism on Spotify. Look for The Enemy is Us EP set to release in 2022.

Egopusher Conveys a Sense of Great Emotional Poignancy and Emotional Complexity on “Patrol Rework”

Egopusher has described their music as being akin to something Sofia Coppola would have in a science fiction movie of her making and the duo’s song “Patrol Rework” bears this concept out. It is minimalistic, lush, moody and yet has a physicality that feels like both a wind sweeping past you and into the distance only to return like the flutter of feelings when a memory strikes you and you take the time out to contemplate the swirl of emotions evoked strongly yet again. Which is a bit like Coppola’s own filmmaking—a creative evocation of nostalgia and the role of memory in shaping your emotional reactions. But “Patrol Rework,” though tinged with melancholy also feels like a lingering on a memory and living in that moment not as a negative or a positive but as the complexity of experience that often is how we lived and felt at a time of great significance to us. And as something remembered not for any specific resonance but as something poignantly felt giving it the significance and power that a specific context anchors so strongly in our psyche. The songwriters’ use of a simple and evocative piano figure, strings bowed and plucked, synth drones, processed white noise and tonal sweeps is layered but of a piece that covers a great spectrum of sound while sounding tastefully spare. Listen to “Patrol Rework” on YouTube and follow Egopusher at the links provided.

Egopusher on Instagram

Survival Skills’ “Tethered” is Like the Luminously Captivating Outro Music For a Cosmic Science Fiction Series

Survival Skills, photo courtesy the artist

Despite its title “Tethered” by Survival Skills sustains a steady momentum suggestive of linear movement. Like the soundtrack for a transcendent, science fiction side scroller video game. Layers of synths intertwine and trade out prominence in maintaining a theme and a tone run through with a dynamic rhythm that pulses and hits percussive accents. Another image that comes to mind is like the outro music from a season of a TV show about the adventures of another Gallifreyan time lord that isn’t the Dr. Who. You can almost hear the luminous imagery and stream of stars or the visualizer of a trip through a worm hole to another galaxy in the song’s cycling drones and fragmenting streams of sound. Listen to “Tethered” on Soundcloud and connect with Survival Skills at the links below where you can also listen to the rest of the recently released Cascade Concrete EP out now on Bandcamp.

Survival Skills on Instagram

“Olympic Skeleton” by McDead is Like an Instrumental, Wire-esque Soundtrack to the Exploration of Past Sites of the Olympics

If Wire had done a more pop score to the 2022 Winter Olympic games it might sound a bit like McDead’s instrumental post-punk song “Olympic Skeleton.” The driving, angular guitar lightly distorted with a touch of fuzz, playful interludes with call and response with synth bell tones, accented leads, start and stop dynamics that come off like freezing on an image for a second before the tenor of the song switches. Yet there’s a brightness to the song that contrasts a bit with the image conjured by the song title which might make those in the know recall the 2010 horror film Frozen (nothing like the beloved 2013 Disney animated feature). But there are no dire endings here and no morbid tones which gives the song a surreal aspect like someone years from now finding a skeleton from a lost fan or competitor found while excavating a former Olympic site and pondering on who that person is and how they got to be there. Perhaps it’s all just a play on words with the name of the project in mind and/or an oblique commentary on what happens to the sites of Olympics once the games move on to the next country following all the development no longer always put to civic use. And on that note, check out the song on Bandcamp and explore the works of Kev McDead by following him at any of the links below.

New Goo’s “Distancer” is a Finely Crafted, Ebullient, Otherworldly Indie Pop Gem

“Distancer” sounds like New Goo rapidly laid down layers of sound collage and yet this dynamic works as an unconventional architecture for what is essentially a pop song. It has a buoyant energy that carries you along for ride through bursts of sonic color and textures. Which is why Aspen De Rosa’s video (linked below on YouTube) with the bit about carnival rides seems so fitting. Dot Ashby of New Goo imaginative uses a keyboard chord that would be atonal in another context yet seems to perfectly complement Ashby’s breathy and melodic vocals. It never feels rushed and to say it’s reminiscent of a more manic and classic indie pop flavored Broadcast might be to overstate the song’s momentum and yet the song really hooks you from the beginning with sounds both alien and comforting that are instantly inviting into an alternative creative headspace that inspires repeated listens. Check out the track for yourself on YouTube and follow New Goo at the links below.

newgoo.info

New Goo on Facebook

New Goo on Instagram

The Wistful and Melancholic Tones of don’t get lemon’s “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” is the Sound of Accepting a Dim Future That Hopefully Never Quite Arrives

don’t get lemon, photo by Anthony Flores

The second single from don’t get lemon’s album Hyper Hollow Heaven (out March 26, 2022 on à La Carte Records) has the rather dire title “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” and the lyrics hit with the resigned nihilism born of an accurate assessment of where human civilization is trending. But the music is a special kind of lush, synth pop like bedroom production style Roxy Music or Crush-period Abe Vigoda. In the video Austin Curtis, the band’s singer, seems to party privately in the few creature comforts available in late capitalism before the utter collapse: oddly plentiful, Asian grocery items that seem like a cruel and surreal joke, karaoke night lighting and equipment, late night Vegas lounge aesthetic. This while the audio equivalent of VHS video fidelity and visuals to match has Curtis singing about basically being ready for the end of the world or at least the world as we know it and knowing that it’s kind of too late to do anything to stop it. One imagines if synth pop had existed in the fourth century Roman empire it would take on a tone like this between climate change, widespread political corruption and fiscal malfeasance, deep social divisions, international strife, pandemics and other crises that ended up rendering the most powerful economic and political entity the world had ever seen unable to rally to address the many built in ills that were contributing to its downfall. Many perceptive people had to have seen it coming and had there been a popular art form that survived we might have seen the ancient equivalent of a song like this born out of similar struggles, pressures and a sense that it’s all worse than a recession or political partisanship gone wild. This band personalizes the ambient anxiety of the time with a soothing song that commiserates with us a downer mood. But contained within it is the seed that we could turn this whole thing at least partly around but do you see anyone overthrowing the oligarchic power and economic structure in the next five to twenty years? Seems unlikely so while perhaps hoping and working for the best may as well enjoy some of the small joys of life before it’s completely over. Watch the video for “D.I.E.I.N.T.H.E.U.S.A.” on YouTube and connect with don’t get lemon at the links below.

don’t get lemon on Bandcamp

don’t get lemon on Facebook

don’t get lemon on Instagram

Dot Allison’s “Love Died In Our Arms” as Remixed by Lee “Scratch” Perry is Overflowing With Richly Emotional Seductive Energy

Having first come to prominence as the frontperson for One Dove Dot Allison has had a long and distinguished career with numerous collaborations and an acclaimed solo career. Now Allison has the distinction of having been part of Lee “Scratch” Perry’s final work: his remix of her song “Love Died In Our Arms.” The songwriter and vocalist has long had a gift for imbuing her work with a lush warmth and an enveloping quality informed by great emotional nuance. The almost undulating structure of “Love Died In Our Arms” lends itself well to Perry’s dub treatment as the breathy vocals float through reggae style instrumentation, echoing tones, a vibrant keyboard mid song like a non-linear, cinematic presentation of film slides from a person’s life projected in slow motion animation. It’s the kind of song in which it would be easy to get lost especially when played on a powerful sound system embraced by its alchemy of layered sounds and exquisite sound design coupled with its richly emotional seductive energy. The remix is part of Allison’s forthcoming Entangled Remix EP but for now you can listen to the single on Spotify and follow Dot Allison at the links provided.

dotallison.com

Dot Allison on Twitter

Dot Allison on Instagram

Elodie Rêverie Elicits the Spirit of a Great and Transformative Romance on “Casa I Don’t Know”

Elodie Rêverie, photo courtesy the artist

Elodie Rêverie brings a great deal of mood and atmosphere to her new track “Casa I Don’t Know.” With her usual sultry and widely expressive voice, Rêverie sings about a love that can and should happen and one that contains an element of mystery because they two people don’t necessarily know each other well or if they do that element of fantasy and purity of feeling toward one another hasn’t evaporated with familiarity. The music video for the song shows Rêverie, looking a little like a young Natalie Wood, frolicking around a private pool and giving attention to an unseen figure capturing intimate but not lurid moments in their life together. In black and white with footage either from or made to look like taken from an old camcorder with the “PLAY” indicater and the rightward pointing triangle in the upper left of the screen and the “SP” in the lower left letting us know it’s being recorded at the speed that produced the best image fidelity on that old technology. This touch and the small video glitches enhance a sense of nostalgia and old fashioned romance perfect for the tenor of this song. The piano melody, the whispery production on parts of the vocals, the slowly sweeping synth tones, it all gives the song a beautifully hazy aspect that lends the sense of romance an appropriately dreamlike quality as something it could all be and putting that intentionality into the songwriting. Many love songs are hackneyed but Rêverie’s ear for classic pop songcraft and imaginative yet sincere emotional performances with attention to dynamic nuances has consistently meant her songs are instantly affecting and durably appealing. Watch the video for “Casa I Don’t Know” on YouTube and follow Elodie Rêverie at the links below.

Elodie Rêverie on Instagram

Seven Layer Piano Cakes Captures the Uncertainties, Insecurities and Urgencies of Parenthood on “Remy”

Seven Layer Piano Cakes, photo courtesy the artist

Through his musical project Seven Layer Piano Cakes, Justin Hoyt offers us his single “Remy” about his young son. Plenty of artists have written songs about and/or for their children to the point where it’s all but a subgenre. But Hoyt begins with “Hey little man, the clothes I bought don’t seem to fit” and later “did your growing up have anything to do with me” and for a moment you may think there was some kind of separation but it’s really about how quickly your kids can grow up and you as a parent are usually just doing the best you can without much in the way of having a map for doing things right and never certain if what you’re doing is adequate or appropriate or helpful or nurturing the way maybe you should be or which would be optimal. Hoyt ponders these insecurities while hinting that being concerned about all of these things probably means you’re at least trying to do things the way you should and that will always mean more and be more effective than giving up and not trying to be at least a halfway decent parent. The melancholic tone of the song matches the uncertainty Hoyt expresses so well and the dynamic of the song shifting from slow moments of contemplation to urgent passages marking the seemingly impossibly rapid passage of time is a great evocation of how the pace of being a parent feels in the living it. Watch the luminously beautiful visualizer video for “Remy” on YouTube and connect with Seven Layer Piano Cakes at the links provided.

Seven Layer Piano Cakes on Instagram