SubmitHub – Page 132 – Queen City Sounds and Art

“Paranoid” is Razz’s Genre Mashing, Psychedelic Hip-hop, Blues Pop Song About Needing to Get Some Sleep Before One’s Mind Goes Completely Into the Red

From the beginning of Razz’s single “Paranoid” you’re not quite sure what you’re in for. It comes on like an techno track but has production like a hip-hop song with vocals like a rap but executed more like an odd psychedelic pop song. The music swims with simple percussion, bell tone swirls, burbling tones and counterpoint backing vocals. A synth bass accents the passages and seems to establish the rhythm of the song but all the elements dip in and hang back like an odd barbershop quartet but without anything of that aesthetic except the structure. It’s an unusual song that defies genre pigeonholes almost completely. The lyrics outline the late night thoughts of a person who is plagued by night terrors that shake his psyche and interpret the world through the stressed perspective of someone whose mind never fully gets to rest and it makes him, yes, paranoid. Listen to “Paranoid” on Spotify below.

Detective Larsson’s “Magic Show” is a Deep Dive Into a Sense of Mystery and Romance

Detective Larsson, photo from artist’s Bandcamp

Detective Larsson tap into some deep emotional territory on its single “Magic Show.” The great blend of acoustic guitar and washes of synth and cello are truly transporting in a way that perfectly complements Amanda Larsson’s warm, clear and delicately powerful vocals. It is a song about love but in a larger as well as the personal sense and its use of natural imagery like the Harvest Moon, morning dew, a pebble beach and the sunrise on the sea ground the track as its ethereal melodies coalesce and drift about enshrouding you in a sense of wonder. At times it’s reminiscent of “Lucky Man” by Emerson, Lake & Palmer but without that songs poignant sense of tragedy. This song sounds like its words are about making memories to last a lifetime and fans of Tindersticks will enjoy its inventive interweaving of organic sounds and those more abstract and electronic for a completely engrossing emotional listening experience with nuance and an ear for rich emotional colorings. Listen to “Magic Show” on Bandcamp and follow Detective Larsson at the links provided.

Detective Larsson on Facebook

Eldridge Rodriguez Peers Empathically into the Fraying Collective Psyche of Humanity on “All My Favorite Clowns Are Dead”

Something sounds slightly off from the beginning of Eldridge Rodriguez’s “All My Favorite Clowns Are Dead.” The melody warps slightly, a bell rings out counting cadence in the rhythm like a reminder of how things have gone a bit or more than a bit off the rails in the world the last few years. In half a decade we’ll collectively have glossed over this time when we should be remembering and taking steps to make the world a better place because we’ve really been given a chance with a relatively minor global health disaster compared to the collapse of all world economies in the wake of what looks like the inevitable future climate disaster. But that’s getting away from the way this song’s strong rhythms and lightly psychedelic flourishes frame a song about hubris, ego and the delusional behaviors that happen every day that help so many of us to hold on to beliefs and lifestyles that are unsustainable. Eldridge Rodriguez makes those behaviors personal and relatable. You hear a bit of that Liquid Liquid bass style circa “Cavern” keeping things steady but the distorted, burbling synth flows over those reliable bass lines like life and society coming apart and Cameron Keiber’s vocals doubling and waxing ever so slightly desperate as well. There is a strong tone of compassion for the ways in which we alow ourselves to believe what seems convenient to preserve a way of life that has brought us success and comfort and the manner in which we cling to those ways of being even as it’s coming apart. On this song the band unites the virtues of post-punk’s strong and stark rhythms with colorful atmospheric touches that can flow and dribble outside established boundaries giving the whole thing a fragile quality that keeps you hooked to the end. Listen to “All My Favorite Clowns Are Dead” on Soundcloud and follow the group at its website linked below. The single is the B-side to the Eldridge Rodriguez single “Have I Gone Too Far” released on January 28, 2022.

eldridgerodriguez.com

DataBass Creates the Piano Ambient Analog of the Eternal and Ancient Shepherding of the Souls of the Departed to the Underworld on “Journey of Anubis”

The sonorous piano notes drawn out as if headed to a distant and mysterious horizon bring us into DataBass’s “Journey of Anubis.” The inspiration of the track is the never ending journeys of the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis, as he delivers and protects souls of the departerd on their way to the underworld. The measured and processional pace of the piano work and synth drones like the distant winds of eternity create a sense of the sacred and enigmatic but also a gentle spirit like the sound of acceptance of the inevitable without angst, of a natural process and order of things and the passage from earthly death to another state. In Western culture a deity like Anubis might be seen as sinister but in ancient Egyptian culture Anubis is undoubtedly benevolent and nurturing in his stewardship of the souls of the departed and his own role in the grand order of the universe. There is that sense to the song too, a chance to experience the unknowable as a musical analog thereof and in that manner “Journey of Anubis” succeeds completely. Listen to the song on Spotify and connect with DataBass at the links below.

DataBass on Twitter

DataBass on Facebook

DataBass on Instagram

DataBass on YouTube

Christof R. Davis’ Ambient Mini-Epic “Troposphere” is a Succinct Musical Chart of the Long History of Earth

Christof R. Davis, photo courtesy the artist

“Troposphere,” the title of Christof R. Davis’s new single says so much about the seeming inspiration of the track. The title refers to the part of the earth’s atmosphere and the planet itself where the bulk of life and weather patterns exist. Almost the whole drama of life on earth including that of the human race has happened within the troposphere. The song begins with resonating drones like the sonic manifestation of primordial sunrise, the kind that has fallen on countless millennia of the history of life on earth. In drifts an evolving melodic tone and another shining and intertwining with the first. The dynamics of the song are organic and expressive of the subtle forces that have remained consistent and nurtured a great diversity of life and for lack of a better way of expressing it the manifestation of the natural course of the development of the planet across time from the early eras before life and on to the current era. The ambient composition brings in a bit of flute sound late in the just over two minutes of the song as perhaps a symbolic nod to the thin sliver of time that is the existence of our species and those that led up to our emergence on the planet. The delicacy, grace and fragility of the song contains within it an implicit statement on how we cold be no longer part of that grand symphony of natural forces by virtue of or civilizational choices. With any luck people will collectively choose to change course and that flute sound in the future equivalent of this song will sound out longer to reflect a choice for the path of wisdom and sustainability and not one embracing greed and elite power. Listen to “Troposphere” on Spotify and follow Christof R. Davis at the links below.

Christof R. Davis on Apple Music

Christof R. Davis on Twitter

Christof R. Davis on Facebook

Join Gus Englehorn in the Weird Side of Your Brain on the Dada Pop “Tarantula”

The surreal weirdness of Gus Englehorn’s song and video for “Tarantula” immediately triggers memories and visions of Half Japanese, Alice Donut, They Might Be Giants and King Missile in your brain. It’s from an album called Dungeon Master and if geek adept status wasn’t earned for Englehorn for that alone, the curiously catchy and tuneful song turns an off standard melody sound in the vocals and unusual delivery into something that draws you in. The lyrics are also somewhat nonsensical and bizarre. “Tarantula that whispers in your ear” followed by lines that don’t clarify a thing like “Hold your head under water” and “River bed ever after.” But it doesn’t matter. It’s absurdist imagery at its finest and need not fulfill some linear succession of thought. The image of a tarantula whispering quasi mystical, Dada-esque phrases into your ear forces the brain down alternate pathways that take you off the map of the everyday. And does it make less sense then the words to a whole swath of pop music? “Louie Louie” people have sung along to since it came out or “Surfin’ Bird” and both songs are completely demented musically with lyrics that matter less than the almost shamanistic quality of their cadence and the same is true here. Watch the video that Englehorn made with his musical partner in crime Estée Preda made for “Tarantula” on YouTube and connect with Englehorn at the links below. Dungeon Master releases on April 29, 2022 on Secret City Records.

Gus Englehorn on Apple Music

gusenglehorn.com

Gus Englehorn on Twitter

Gus Englehorn on Facebook

Gus Englehorn on Instagram

Jaws The Shark’s Bold and Fiery “Still Young” is a Meditation on Growing Up Without Growing Jadedly Old

Jaws The Shark, photo courtesy the artist

Olly Bailey is wearing a Hole t-shirt in the video for “Still Young” and the big, distorted riffs that drive the song hearken back to the grunge era without miming it. His spirited vocals and song dynamics that swing the chords deftly from the melancholic to the brash with major progression leads that have a bold momentum reflected in the performance of the song in general. There is a fiery aggression to the sound of the song that serves as counterpoint to a fairly raw and sensitive reflection on youth and outgrowing the naivete of your younger years while trying not to lose your enthusiasm for life and without developing a calloused and jaded heart. Watch the video for “Still Young” on YouTube and connect with Bailey’s solo rock band Jaws The Shark at the links below.

Jaws The Shark on Facebook

Jaws The Shark on Instagram

Exumano’s “We Come From the Sky” is Like an Ambient Techno Industrial Passage Out of the Glut of Inessential Stimuli of Modern Life

“We Come From the Sky” finds Italian composer Exumano using a shuffling, industrial rhythm and repeated motifs to build a sense of space and movement. The single tonal pulse amid the more percussive and texture soundscapes is like a guiding beacon in the fog through the constant flow of information and marketing to which we’re subjected daily as a distraction from finding a focus and purpose in life. The processed piano section is like a guiding lifeline through this tidal wave of info-junk and as the track progresses an urgent melody emerges to suggest getting to the end of this glut of inessential stimuli or at least to be able to tune it out and at song’s end the white noise clears with a strong rhythm line underneath a more blunt pulse that no longer feels like a beacon in the distance. Musically it’s reminiscent of early 2010’s techno and deep house but blended with industrial musicand the prepared sonic environment composition end of ambient. Listen to “We Come From The Sky” on YouTube where the visual element was done in collaboration with Arice CG and follow Exumano at the links below.

Exumano on Facebook

Exumano on Instagram

Julian Zyklus Invites Us For a Refreshingly Glorious Trip to Exotic Places in the Ocean on “Waterpiano n.1”

Imagine yourself looking out the window of being lowered into the Great Barrier Reef in a transparent submersible while listening to Julian Zyklus’ “Waterpiano n.1.” The sounds of water flowing and lapping against the side of your craft as you hear widely dynamic and expressive, joyfully elegant piano work and bright synth tones trace the path of your trip and enhance the raw and otherworldly beauty of your environment before you are pulled back out into the world you know. The track is the first on Zyklus’ forthcoming EP Waterpiano. Listen to “Waterpiano n.1” on Spotify and connect with Zyklus at the links below.

Julian Zyklus on Instagram

Shellter’s Crushingly Honest “Wissant” Makes the Heartfelt Hurt of a Bad Breakup Easier to Process

The all but black and white video treatment by Alex Schuurbiers for Shellter’s single “Wissant” poignantly complements the song’s feeling of utter emotional desolation. Shellter’s powerfully expressive vocals manage to be forceful yet fragile as she sings words that describe the aftermath of a break-up. But it is bereft of any rage, of any anger, and all that’s left is the hurt and the vulnerability that you have to allow yourself to feel in order to process the experience of a bad break-up especially one in which one’s emotions were put into such turmoil and in which you were made to feel like the villain. The ache in the lines “How your voice hit me hard without caution/How I broke like a branch in slow motion” and later the refrain of “How you made me believe that was me” hit deep even though Silke Janssens (aka Shellter) sounds like she’s merely contemplating some melancholic episode of the distant past with some time and space between. Her words for this song are poetically visceral and without going into the gory details it’s obvious she felt that hurt profoundly and found a way to transmute it into a song that with the presentation of her voice front and center and tender instrumentals augmenting the reflective vibe of the song is something one can take on and maybe find a way to process one’s own heartfelt hurt in the resonance of the lyrics and accessible tones employed by the songwriter. Watch the video for “Wissant” on YouTube, follow the Belgian singer-songwriter at the links below and give a listen to the rest of Shellter’s debut EP The Sun’s Already Low which was released on November 26, 2021.