SubmitHub – Page 170 – Queen City Sounds and Art

“Switch Off The Light” is a Spooky Yet Sweet Unconventional Love Song From Synth Pop Group Fragile Gods

FragileGods_SwitchOffTheLight_crop — Fragile Gods “Switch Off The Light” cover (cropped)

Fragile Gods tap into a lo-fi 80s synth pop sound for its single “Switch Off The Light.” The processed male vocals sound like something channeled from AM radio floating over spare electronic percussion and a bouncing, distorted synth line accented by playful tones and counter melody on another synth. Even when joined by female vocals, the whole song has the quality of a lost gem of a song one might find on a VHS of cable access/public television music video shows. Sonically it’s reminiscent of Pseudo Echo, Landscape and The Human League if that music was recorded in a home studio with a lead singer who is clearly inspired in part by Peter Murphy and David Bowie. The words to the song hint at supernatural themes but as a pretext for people getting together. The lines “You’re not the only who hears whispers in the night/you’re not the only one who sees things in the dark” solicit a common bond, a solidarity of uncommon sensitivity. When the vocalist sings “There are ghosts that occupy my dreams, now I fear I’m coming apart at the seams, switch off the light, it’s alright, hold me tight,” it comes from a place of not wanting to be alone amid one’s fears and anxieties, whether of the actual supernatural variety or of those that can feel like it in the moment. Perhaps an unusual and unconventional love song but one that becomes a bit of an earworm. Listen to “Switch Off The Light” on Soundcloud and follow Fragile Gods on the group’s website linked below.

fragilegods.com

Bright Analog Synths Give Lift to Russian Trip-Hop Band AIST’s single “Rocket Fuel” in Conveying a Yearning for the Inspiration to Reach the Life You Want

AIST_RocketFuel2_crop — AIST, photo courtesy the artists

On its single “Rocket Fuel” Russian trip-hop band AIST gives us a glimpse into a future when the international angst of today has been eased and everyday human life isn’t as distorted and amplified by world events in a direct and urgent way. The bright analog synths shimmer and trail off to give the song an upward drifting quality while propelling the melody forward as the female vocalist sings a song about yearning and striving for the life you want and finding the impetus to get there. Is the “rocket fuel” of the song a metaphor for the support and love everyone needs to make it far in life, to achieve their dreams? Perhaps, but either way, the way the group arranges its tones from the pulsing synths, drones, percolating tones and winsome vocals gives the song a quality of having come to us from a near future that seems impossibly relatively carefree compared to the dark intensity of the present but not one where humans still struggle with discouragement embrace inspiration where they can find it. Listen to “Rocket Fuel” on Soundcloud and follow AIST at the links provided.

vk.com/insideaist
soundcloud.com/aist-580331044
facebook.com/insideaist
instagram.com/insideaist

Tracy Karam’s Powerful Video For Sandmoon’s “Angels” Highlights the Feelings of Displaced Emotions and Rootlessness in the Wake of the Loss of a Parent

Sandmoon2_sm — Sandmoon, photo courtesy the artists

Tracy Karam’s video for “Angels” by Lebanese experimental rock band Sandmoon gives a visual interpretation of a song about a 12-year-old kid who loses a parent and haunted by memory and loss, acts out in unpredictable ways as one will when trying to make sense of what seems and is deeply unfair and which unmoors your life. The youth puts some of his energy into playing drums and some of his time trying to make sense of the new reality of his life. The song’s sparkling and shimmering melodies and gently introspective but emotionally vibrant vocals are accented perfectly by percussion that sets a progressive pace like life passing you by as you feel swept along in its wake when you’re grieving. The tone of the song is one of compassion and patience even when the momentum of life’s demands would like you to move on before your heart is ready. Watch Karam’s powerful and evocative video on YouTube and follow Sandmoon at the links below.

soundcloud.com/sandmoon
open.spotify.com/artist/4omCgekRoMrLhx2POoCx9n
youtube.com/sandmoonmusic
facebook.com/sandmoon
instagram.com/sandmoonmusic

“Saturn” by Comfort Level 7 is An Ambient Soundscape of Cosmic Horror in the Gulfs of a Cold Planet

ComfortLevel7_bindrune_cover_crop — Comfort Level 7, *Bindrune* cover (cropped)

If there was a space station in orbit around the titular planet of Comfort Level 7’s “Saturn,” the soundscape of the song is the analog of the both the endless mystery of the gas giant and the dark thoughts that might run through your mind if you were a scientist stationed there, remote from all civilization for months on end. The white noise drones and distant sounds of who can say playing about like a kind of bleak space wind you couldn’t possibly hear but which might exist like a ghost in your imagination where lie vague memories of Lovecraftian horror with the Great Old ones and their offspring colonizing not just earth but the outer planets of the solar system as well. The ululating tone that runs through the piece and the staccato arpeggiated rhythmic tone gives voice to imagined horrors out in the deeps of the planet named after an ancient Roman deity. The song isn’t easy listening but its brooding drone and spooky vibe is nevertheless entrancin. Listen to “Saturn” on Soundcloud and follow Comfort Level 7 at the links below where you can also find the project’s 2019 EP Bindrune which includes this track.

simulacrarecords.com
comfortlevel7.bandcamp.com

“Osc Nova” by at her open door is Like the Soundtrack to a Lost Dystopian Future Videogame of the 80s

AtHerOpenDoor_OscNova1_crop — at her open door, photo courtesy the artist

“Osc Nova” by at her open door sounds like the soundtrack for a bizarre video game set in the universe of 80s science fiction cinema and video games. Distorted synth drones are the baseline with minimal electronic percussion pounding an descending tonal progression. Highly processed guitar sounds flare as though the representation of either intense combat or action in some kind of competitive exercise. The production is a hybrid of classic hip-hop and Herbie Hancock-esque experimental jazz and modern 8-bit giving it that touch of retro electronic musicality composed from a more modern sensibility and freeform blending of styles that would rarely have been threaded together in years past and not with the same freshness of approach in seeing all sounds and methods as fodder for songwriting. Listen to “Osc Nova” on Spotify and follow at her open door at the links provided.

soundcloud.com/atheropendoor
open.spotify.com/artist/5t3oFbi9B3YQwWNWcjLKpU
youtube.com/channel/UCA1brFVgWw6cgEy0gIzowRA
atheropendoor.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/at_heropendoor
facebook.com/pg/atheropendoor

“The Childish Tendency to Speak of Events as Coincidences” is Isik Kural’s Environmental Ambient Evocation of the Landscape Taking Shape as the World Wakes Up With the Dawn

IsikKural_TheChildishTendency2_crop — Isik Kural, image courtesy the artist

Isik Kural’s enigmatically titled “The Childish Tendency to Speak of Events as Coincidences” begins with a gentle oscillating tone that increases in volume slowly before its intertwining layers vividly manifest, like an object in the distance before dawn, illuminated to reveal itself as more than another shadow of the skyline. The tone fades into melodic drones punctuated by higher pitches and textural sounds like glasses struck slightly nearly out of hearing. Toward the later middle part of the song these abstractions solidify some with what sounds like a piano figure heard from a building on another floor of a building drifting in through the window as birds greet the sun edging higher in the sky, its golden strands expressed as bright, streaming tones and a breeze through branches as white noise. Less a song than the evocation of an environment expressed through sonic analogues of that experience, the track is a great example of how music, imaginatively conceived and executed, can convey a sense of time and place better than words and visual representations alone. Take a listen to “The Childish Tendency to Speak of Events as Coincidences” on Spotify.

“Trail Through the Underbrush” by Yellow Rainbow is the Evocation of a Full Sensory Snapshot of the World Around You

YellowRainbow_TrailThroughTheUnderbrush2_crop — Yellow Rainbow, image courtesy the artist

Yellow Rainbow’s single “Trail Through the Underbrush” sounds like a journey along the track that is the title. But a journey that takes in the rich details of the surrounding landscape, all its textures, its interweaving ecological systems, the ambient energy of the area. This deep taking in of the myriad details our conscious minds gloss over in seeking out what we usually deem the most salient data makes you aware of the mystery and the beauty in what might otherwise seem mundane. Composer Brian Lee uses field recordings taken in the Canadian Rockies to give this ambient track a concrete sense of place and texture while slow sweeping drones give an informally melodic voice to natural light, slowing it down in the listening and in the experiencing of that light as it plays on leaves and branches in the ever changing visual stimulation of the natural world paired with its full sensory experience. “Trail Through the Underbrush” conveys this taking the time to absorb what the world is giving to you in as much of a whole as possible given human limitations and in doing so it whispers into your mind a deep sense of peace. Listen to the song on Spotify and follow Yellow Rainbow at the links below.

soundcloud.com/yellowrainbowmusic
open.spotify.com/artist/4gknoqFJpaXgFSNaaZcJFl
yellowrainbow.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/yellowrainbowmusic
instagram.com/yellowrainbowmusic

Mingo’s “Morphogenetic Field” is a Sonic Approximation of a Journey Through a Space Fold

Mingo_Myristica_cover1_crop — Mingo *Myristica* cover

There is a sense of floating through a long, gray, luminous tunnel toward an unknown destination in Mingo’s “Morphogenetic Field.” When the percussion comes in it sounds as though it has traveled through water some distance like an echo. The harmonic tones running through the piece drift and fade like rosettes of light through which you pass on the journey. Toward the end of the song these tones unite for a long fade out with the low end becoming more prominent. One imagines experience a slowed down process of being transformed from matter into energy and beamed across space or to parallel dimension and feeling the gradual transfer and remanifestation into physical existence at the end. Or the sensation of traveling through a space fold with one of the Spacing Guild Navigators from the Dune universe and the surreal actuality of bearing witness to such an event firsthand. It gives one pause to consider the many ways we experience technology and how it must seem, echoing Isaac Asimov, like indistinguishable from magic for most of our actual knowledge of its workings. Listen to “Morphogenetic Field” on Spotify and follow ambient/experimental electronic artist Mingo at the links below.

soundcloud.com/mingo-sphere
youtube.com/user/sonarwebnet
twitter.com/mingosfear
instagram.com/mingosphere

Mazeppa’s Video for “The Way In” is a Psychedelic Journey From Academic Curiosity to Mystical Awareness

Mazeppa_TheWayIn2_crop — Mazeppa, photo courtesy the artists

The video for Mazeppa’s single “The Way In” shows us a woman searching through old stacks of books as the band issues forth layers of drone accented by a Motorik beat and ritualistic vocals. The woman finds herself leaving the shelves of books through an opening into a forest brimming with warm motes of light to meet with two figures wearing vaguely earth goddess robes and painted symbols. They help her discard the raiments of modernity to reveal her new wardrobe as an initiate of an expanded mystical awareness. She dances at a fire while the band, made up to by mystics in their own right, plays for the gathered seekers, the visual sense warping with the bends in tone and ebb and flow of sounds and rhythm. At the end the members of Mazeppa are seen with eyes glowing from the collective illumination that took place and to which you have been invited as well. Musically it’s in the realm of psychedelic rock but one that seems to time travel for influence and borrowing elements of the aforementioned Krautrock and more than the Motorik beats, the modulated distortion into droning atmospherics in hypnotic repetition as one might hear in the records of Spacemen 3 and the mystical bent and ritualistic compositional aspect of Sky Cries Mary. But Mazeppa here doesn’t sound throwback as the sound itself suggests an immediacy and focus on the moment from the beginning of the song to the end. Watch the video for “The Way In” on YouTube, follow Mazeppa at the links below and look out for the band’s full length album due out in 2020.

itunes.apple.com/us/album/storm/1460681099
soundcloud.com/user-222685140
open.spotify.com/artist/6mC7wWLh5lMPJDjFFaBdYs
youtube.com/channel/UCDvEt7UN4sSojx_UKyqiVpw
mazeppa.bandcamp.com
facebook.com/MazeppaBand

Locate S, 1 Gets Real About Mental Health Issues on “Personalia”

LocateS1_Personalia1_crop — Locate S, 1, photo courtesy the artist

The title track of Locate S, 1’s upcoming full length album Personalia is an upbeat exploration of the wave of darkness that has seemingly filtered through the culture and the consciousness of so many of us in the past several years. With the strong bass line, bright synths and melodious vocals Christina Schneider, singer and main songwriter behind the project, gives us some poetic nuggets of personal despair and self-deprecation like “I can’t see myself in anything” and “Curse another crowd that doesn’t get it. Maybe something’s wrong with me. Maybe I’m just dumb.” Anyone with sensitivity has probably felt that first line and anyone in a “local” band in a city where you’re not playing a trendy style of music, which is to say most artists, has felt the second set of lyrics. You get to the point where you wonder what’s the point. And Schneider nearly did quit, perhaps more than music, as hinted at in the lines “Almost killed myself so I went home / I just cannot take these local shows.” Maybe not to be taken literally but the picture Schneider paints of the mood of late is one that honors the dark places your mind goes when it all seems like you’re hitting your head against the wall for years and for what? Whether that’s with music or just trying to get by in life. But somewhere in the song Schneider reconnects with the small things that make it seem worth it: “Plug in tonight when I get to my room / pretend I’m someone that I could believe in” and “I’ve shorted out but if I play long enough I’ll become the person that I wanna be again.” In singing that Schneider isn’t just saying it’s all going to work out or that hope and “manifesting” is going to make it happen but rather that some self-belief will help make it all seem worthwhile to you even if it isn’t celebrated by masses of people. The song’s fusion of gritty rock with ethereal soundscapes and Schneider’s melodious voice is a refreshingly effective take on a subject that is often avoided in a world of pop where people mention mental health issues but don’t dive deep enough into the core of those anxieties without getting lost there. Personalia, named after a poem by Mary Ruefle, is out on April 3 on Captured Tracks. But for now watch the video for the song on YouTube and follow Locate S, 1 (on tour with of Montreal in Spring 2020) on Facebook, linked below.

Sophomore album Personalia out April 3 on Captured Tracks

facebook.com/christina.schneider.locates1