SubmitHub – Page 140 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Oliver’s “Oasis” is a Succinct Meditation on Fulfilling Your Dreams in a World of Pitfalls

Oliver sets the mood for “Oasis” with a sampled piano figure and spare and light percussion in a beat that in its repetition suggests the backdrop for what will be a meditation on the state of things imbued with the hopes and anxieties blended in the way life can feel both complicated and simple at once. The line “Put my love where I should, trust where I can, leaving fate where it land” is pragmatic and wise but informed by vision to get to where you want to in life especially as a creative person. Misplaced love and loyalty can detail your life or set you up for failure, as can trusting to freely and openly with the wrong people and accepting that accumulated actions can feel like fate but even that is more complicated than it seems and it isn’t the ultimate end of things. Realizing that alone can give a person hope that there are options. Oliver addresses the specter of racism, self-doubt in one’s abilities undermining one’s confidence and perhaps ability to enjoy one’s accomplishments and the ways in which dubious goals and dreams can limit one’s potential and erode one’s sense of self. It’s just over two minutes but “Oasis,” appropriately named given the tenor of the song and the time taken out of the flood of life to contemplate these subjects, contains a great deal of personal insight. Listen to “Oasis” on Soundcloud, give the rest of Oliver’s Stay With Us EP/album a listen on Spotify and connect with the New York-based rapper at the links provided.

Duglo’s “Peaceful Woods” is a Vivid Sensory Experience In Musical Form of the Majesty of a Place of Great Natural Beauty

Duglo’s use of white noise tones, abstract drones, background harmonics and creative arrangement of volume swells on “Peaceful Woods” perfectly evokes a sense of a mind cleansed of distraction by the raw beauty of untrammeled wilderness. Though the composition could be set during any season it seems to be a fine sonic manifestation of a sunny winter day with swirls of snow brushing the landscape from a breeze following a dusting of snow, bird calls in the near and middle distance and mild winds stirring the starkly beautiful branches. It’s a vivid piece that expresses the majesty and spiritual aspect of that moment when the collective sensory experience of a place of pure nature hits you in ways you didn’t know you needed and otherwise might take for granted. Listen to “Peaceful Woods” on Soundcloud, give the rest of the Okay, Fine EP a listen on Spotify or Bandcamp and connect with Duglo on Instagram.

Duglo on Instagram

Take the Interlude to the Secret Bonus Level With Gaëtan Vigier on the 8-Bit Synthwave Crime Drama “Braquage”

Gaëtan Vigier, image courtesy the artist

“Braquage” by Gaëtan Vigier sounds like a secret side story of Castlevania where you get to loot as much of Count Dracula’s hidden treasure vault as possible in three minutes, thirty-seven seconds. The screen glitches out in cadence with Vigier’s pulsing beat like Perturbator soundtracking the aforementioned section of the video game accessible only through exploiting an alternate route through the game and entering a secret code attained by jotting down characters clandestinely visible on every few screens. The lively 8-bit tune and its shifting, urgent tones is irresistible and just as the title suggests, in English it means “Robbery,” it feels like you’re getting away with something thrilling. The single is out now on Vigier’s Arcade Bit 1 imprint, listen on Soundcloud and connect with all things from the artist on his website linked below.

gaetan-vigier.com

The Grinch Dreams of Future Social Domination on Dax’s “GRINCH GOES VIRAL”

For his latest Grinch-themed video, “GRINCH GOES VIRAL,” Dax brings us a Grinch who wants nothing more but to go viral to attain his dubious ends. The green one ponders his plans and grievances to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” In years past Dax’s Grinch videos have been wonderfully surreal and absurd and with this one the rapper has really outdone himself. This Grinch checks his Tik Tok feed for inspiration, hate consults with Instagram and gets into a conflict with his girlfriend and her father landing him in jail but pleads that “green lives matter.” Subsequent to release our protagonist considers that he’s toxic and suffers from ADHD and PTSD but also bitterness over how his own victimhood complex and how Christmas ruined him and that Hollywood chose Jim Carey to play the Grinch instead of the Grinch himself. This pushes the Grinch to concoct a new movie where he gets to play himself and indulge in all the questionable language and themes of racial slurs, sexual ambiguity, skewed political commentary and of course nudity. Then when the Grinch has duped Hollywood producers to set this film in motion and the inevitable fame comes with the success of that cinematic misadventure the Grinch will hang with Biden, Harris and Zuckerberg and recognized by everyone with the viral explosion of popularity. The Grinch lets us in on a secret of his fantasy, though, about how he would become an idol worshipped by the public but hating himself provately, about to afford to go anywhere but unable to do so because of his anxiety but he justifies this fate because everyone hurts him first so he doesn’t care who he hurts on his vision of upward social trajectory. What happens with the Grinch’s plan? Watch to the end. The production on these videos from Dax has always been well executed and too real even when over the top and his vocal delivery is so fluid and energetic it sustains the narrative through some major verbal gyrations in the story. There’s nothing much like it. Watch the video on YouTube and connect with Dax at the links below.

Dax on Instagram

Dax on YouTube

“La nuit renait toujours” by Ce qui nous traverse is cinematic post-rock to ease the tensions of a tumultuous year

The video treatment that Guillaume Vallée & Larissa Corriveau brought to the impressionistic ambient and musique concrète composition “La nuit renait tourjours” (trans. “The Night Is Always Reborn”) by Montreal-based musical ensemble Ce qui nous traverse takes us through an arc from sunrise to nightfall. Drawn out guitar drones, long-bowed notes on strings, the samples of early morning bird song and accented percussion soundtrack what looks like a road trip throughout a day, mountainous bluffs in the distance, fields at hand out the window, filmed on Super 8 or 16 millimeter. It’s reminiscent of what a Stan Brakhage vacation film might look like with the layered, processed and treated images with the glitches, textures and decayed and damaged bits of film left in. The action of the song sneaks up on you and takes you along for an emotional ride through moments of afternoon reverie and on into a tranquil yet dramatic sunset with the instrumentation reprising for a whirling of elements into a a climax of activity before a fadeout with resonating keyboards. Cinematic post-rock to ease the tensions of a tumultuous year. Watch the video for “La nuit renait toujours” on YouTube, listen to the new album Le sacre de Sainte-Barbe on Bandcamp and connect with Ce qui nous traverse at the links below.

cequinoustraverse.ca

Ce qui nous traverse on Facebook

Ce qui nous traverse on Instagram

Desert Liminal Uses a Beautifully Hazy Sound to Encourage us to Dream Better For Ourselves on “Flicker Screen”

Desert Liminal, photo courtesy the artists

“Flicker Screen,” the latest single from Desert Liminal’s 2021 album Glass Fate, comes on like a parallel universe version of Chromatics: Lush, warm vocals, ghostly atmospherics and strong melodic lines on the piano paired with assertive yet finely accented percussion. It’s a song whose emotional flavor is nostalgic because it’s about memory, identity, our cognitive orientation and aspirations. The flicker screen of the title invokes the mechanics of cinema and how those mediated and highly processed images can embed themselves in your imagination though as your own interpretation of events and when you impose that type of understanding and interpretation on living people who don’t live episodically within neat frame lines and according to a script with a narrative through line or according to a cohesive aesthetic to suit anyone’s tastes. Yet the song isn’t a stripping back of a romanticized view of the world. It does employ hazy layers of atmosphere and an introspective vocal delivery but its yearning for something better and more organic and thus more unpredictable and un-controlling in which everyone involved can be who they are authentically. Listen to “Flicker Screen” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of Glass Fate and follow the band at the links provided.

Desert Liminal on Facebook

Desert Liminal on Instagram

Desert Liminal on YouTube

The Ballroom Thieves Weave a Poignantly Accurate Portrait of Despair and the Will to Move Forward on “Shine”

The Ballroom Thieves, photo by Shervin Lainez

The Ballroom Thieves turn the spare guitar part and raw, tender vocals of “Shine” into a song that achingly and beautifully depicts what it feels like to be desolate, burned out and floating in moments of dissociated observations and holding on by a thread to something even if nothing seems to matter or make sense. Calin “Callie” Peters uses the image of light as a metaphor for the energy that uplifts and brings comprehension and meaning which can have fluid qualities that flow in and out of our psyche and without it we feel lost. The way the guitar phrases frame the lyrics and with touches of cello to shade in the background of the music the song comes across like a very sharp and sensitive portrait of depression and how it’s easy to get stuck when the vital energy of life and the will to be active and engaged seems out of reach and you seem unable to get out of a perpetual twilight and mostly in existing in the dark of your personal night. But the line “shine a light, turn the night back into morning, shine a light, take the night away from me” points to at least desire for help in easing out of that gloom that seems impossible to escape. The pastoral feel of the song in the end becomes a perfect vehicle for expressing some very heavy and real states of mind without the clumsy hubris and toxic positivity that is too often brought to bear on the subject. Listen to “Shine” on Spotify and connect with The Ballroom Thieves at the links below.

ballroomthieves.com

The Ballroom Thieves on Twitter

The Ballroom Thieves on Facebook

The Ballroom Thieves on Instagram

Anna Larson Gives us a Musical Vision of a Comforting and Nurturing Presence in Our Lives With “Constant Star”

Anna Larson’s piano accents on her modern classical piece “Constant Star” give an emotional nuance and an atmospheric mood that sketches an elegant and vivid sonic image of object of the title. The background electronic drone lends an added luminous aspect to the tonal choices employed in the composition and in doing so suggests multiple meanings and interpretations to the song including an unmistakable sense of emotional intimacy with the “Constant Star” not only being a celestial object inspiring imaginative speculation but a person or a passion that seems to always be there as a beacon in challenging times. It’s certainly a musical work that suggests cinematic qualities and immediately brings to mind the classical music Ken Burns has chosen for his various documentary series and here it’s part of an EP of similarly evocative soundscapes poetically titled Returned Light. Listen to “Constant Star” on Spotify and the rest of Returned Light there as well, both linked below.

Soheill Encourages Us to Step Through the Portal Into Our Best Lives in the Orchestral “The Doorway”

Soheill structures the single “The Doorway” so that it reflects its message of encouraging the listener to embrace one’s authentic self and to take the important first step of trusting your instincts and not the voices of self doubt inside your mind that prevent you from living a full life. The spare piano and Soheill’s emotive vocals coax that flicker of self awareness into action and to reach for and walk through the threshold into a new life casting off the ways that didn’t suit you even though they became a habit that met with social sanction and conformity to a standard that had nothing much to do with who you really were. The instrumentation swells in orchestral fashion and includes slowly dramatic percussion and layers of evocative keyboards and synths The arc of the song gently makes that final step into the future seem not only possible but inevitable in service to your best self. Listen to “The Doorway” on Soundcloud and follow Soheill at the website or through any of the links and social media accounts accessible through the artist’s Linktree.

soheill.com

Soheill Linktree

Sandwoman’s Warmly Intimate “Hot December” is a Tender Expression of Not Wanting to Ruin a Friendship Because You’re in Love

Sandwoman originally wrote “Hot December” in 2015 as a way to express that moment when a friendship becomes something more romantic. And this 2021 release manifests those early thoughts and songwriting in a song that places words about the fear, uncertainty and vulnerability when you take that step to see if that’s where things are going and the risk of humiliation and changing the friendship in ways that make things uncomfortable and awkward from then on forward. The word “hot” may refer to the ways it is often used but here it seems more to embody that feeling of energy welling up in you that is a welling up of anxiety over the possible consequences of your actions however they may turn out. It’s never easy opening yourself up the way you need to in order to tell someone how you feel about them in a romantic way and Sandwoman captures those waves of being on the verge. Her warm vocals processed into an ethereal bliss later in the song and the cloud of synth drone, lingering guitar washes, sleigh bells and electronic drums make it not just an actually touching and not corny love song but one that is also something of a holiday tune without explicitly being so. In Sandwoman’s case things worked out with her producer Grant Carey so it could for you too. Listen to “Hot December” on Spotify and connect with Sandwoman at the links below.

Sandwoman on Bandcamp

Sandwoman on Instagram