Kim Free took some inspiration from Chet Baker for her single “Until the Moon Turns Blue.” The spare and simple composition of the song allows space for the emotional content to bloom as it will. Rather than trumpet, Free employs a gently strummed guitar and a violin figure to filigree her song about heartbreak and learning to let go even if the feelings are difficult to release after the realization that things were never going to work out. Free’s shifting chords are where the complexity of these tangled feelings resolve in unconventional manner as the heart learns to accept what the mind and the more clear judgment of the people in our lives have already pointed out about a relationship that has already played out with nothing left to say and really nothing left to cling to but the emotional habits that have already outlived their usefulness. Listen to “Until the Moon Turns Blue” on Soundcloud and follow Kim Free at the links provided.
On the “Shakedown” single Qwiet Type sounds like he sequestered himself for a couple of weeks with only a box of VHS tapes with recordings of early MTV videos and the entire discographies of Harry Nilsson, Sparks and LCD Soundsystem as companions. In a way it’s a sound akin to Gary Numan gone indie pop funk. The song’s distorted keyboard line and syncopated guitar line overlaid with a quirky synth figure traces the story of a person who may be singing to himself who needs a “shakedown” in search of his real identity under layers of crafted personae constructed from the fantasies of popular culture references and song lyrics. Its a deconstruction of the way many people latch on to manufactured culture as the basis for their own personality and asking, in a more creative way, who we really are when we shed what isn’t authentically ours and recognizing the importance of that discovery. Listen to “Shakedown” on Spotify.
With “Curb Appeal” Jay Madera sounds as though he’s finally able to be philosophical about a past love while realizing he’s been able to move on and talk about the experience with some poetic analysis. Like a break-up song in the past tense and some personal emotional time travel as though a more objective observer looking down on the situation and assessing the personalities, his own included, with a sense of compassion informed by an acerbic wit. The changes throughout the song lays out the drama in a way that keeps drawing you further into the song. Sure, Madera sings great lines like “she could cure my cancers then give me the common cold” and “she’s not benign” but he also goes into his own shortcomings and misapprehensions about his own life and the people in it as well as questioning the nature of the desires that have driven him. The song is anthemic while also deeply introspective and the contrast gives it an striking emotional power especially when combined with Madera’s gift for song dynamics between piano, vocals and percussion in a way that seems familiar but only in that anyone with any thoughtfulness has felt similarly but has yet to articulate to themselves what Madera expresses so beautifully and succinctly here—that the folly of our lives is rooted within and that it’s okay to be upset at others and at yourself but in the end make no villains of anyone and moving on with grace is a natural outcome. Listen to “Curb Appeal” on Soundcloud and follow Madera at the links below.
VVARD’s single “YOU” comes in like the kind of morning when you wake up in a good mood and the sun bright in the sky but not invasive like something that might happen in the later part of early spring. You wake up without any need for an alarm, surprisingly refreshed and looking forward to whatever comes your way in the day ahead. The melodic drones swirling over the vocals while the bass pulses almost imperceptibly below to put some spring in your step. The gentle guitar line in the middle of the song adds a touch of nostalgia to the hopeful tone of the entire song. Described as “the perfect teenage love soundtrack,” Verena Ward’s words spell out how this romance is giving a lot to think about in the best way and allowing the freedom to feel all the feels instead of having to hold it back for fear of scaring anyone off. And yet the song has the aforementioned spirit of lightness that one hopes one would have while in love, the kind of lightness that uplifts your mood without effort and needing no pretext. Listen to “YOU” on Spotify.
“Sand” by Miami’s Donzii is a great example of creative use of a drum machine because the opening of the song sounds like a super precise couple of drummers creating an organic beat that draws you in before the synths, brooding bass and moody vocals establish the song’s dark and enigmatic narrative. Initially the song sounds like something out of the current revival of post-punk and darkwave but the beat is too earthy like something from a dance song for an effect like late 80s Talk Talk doing a one-off with Malaria! There is something wonderfully off standard modern post-punk and in the rhythms is where this band distinguishes itself whether in the bass lines, the percussion, the structure, the cadence of the vocals, all of it and how it all intersects and mutually complements. It’s approach feels as much like choreography as musical composition. Because of that the band comes at this sound from a different angle even if it touches all the tonal and atmospheric qualities that have made much of the modern darkwave and post-punk at its best so compelling. The words seem to express the completely understandable sentiment about the transitory nature of life and how true freedom comes from being free of the overly burdensome nature of trying to survive and thrive in an economic system that is stacked against everyone not in the upper 1% of the 1% all while the engines of that commerce are working to dismantle the natural world as we know it. It’s easy to be fatalistic. But this song articulates how if you live like the worst has passed maybe you can live with the kind of freedom that comes from not having an attachment to the things that don’t really matter. Listen to “Sand” on Soundcloud and follow Donzii at the links below.
“Open Open” finds Los Angeles-based songwriter Rainsford trying to make amends for mistakes in a relationship that ended. She sings about the classic refrain about wishing she could go back in time and not break promises and fix all the mistakes made and hard words spoken in a moment of duress. But her echoing vocals sound for all the world like the conversations you’ve had with yourself, punishing yourself for how things have gone bad despite your intentions and not wanting to accept that sometimes its not enough to apologize because the other person has simply had enough of you and your ways no matter what overtures you make, no matter your sincere expressions of love and acknowledgments of wrongdoing. It sounds like the ways you’ve convinced yourself endlessly that your earnestness and energy should earn you another chance because how bad could your mistakes have been. But as the song winds down into a repeating low end melody it feels like acceptance of the inevitable and the sadness of the realization that your efforts are for naught, your wishes amount to little and maybe, just maybe, the failure of the relationship wasn’t all about your own failures and shortcomings and that your making them so had a part to do with it having no chance of reconciling. It’s a self-aware, trippy pop song and all the more effective because it is so. Listen to “Open Open” on Soundcloud and follow Rainsford at the links provided.
The video for “Subcosmos,” the title track to the new album by Late Night Venture, was shot in the western suburbs of Copenhagen. But the beginning of the song sounds like Deckerd is looking out on the Los Angeles of the future, whoops, November 20, 2019. But not to worry, the post-metal band quickly dives off the deep end into heavy, slow burning riffing that still somehow manages to sound like late night driving music for people into Isis and Neurosis. The guitar twirls and roils with the synth line in alternatively fiery and meditative passages in epic, upward sweeping arcs. Anyone that has spent some time exploring the urban landscape in a car knows that it isn’t just chill, quiet music that serves as the perfect soundtrack to the gritty mystery of that kind of adventure, it just needs to have a mood that feels like motion and provokes a mood and “Subcosmos” certain does that. Watch the dramatically enigmatic video on YouTube.
Producer and DJ Joxaren teamed up with the artist INIMA for the aptly titled “The Freaky.” It’s a mutant hybrid of Klezmer and modern electronic pop—an unlikely pairing that shouldn’t work but does so beautifully here. INIMA’s vocals wouldn’t be out of place on mainstream radio and her versatility makes the songs truly strange dynamics and tonal shifts shine. The structure of the song fits the usual pop length and dynamic but it’s there that Joxaren’s willingness to get, indeed, a little freaky with the production sets the song apart. Sure there’s a trombone but at times that trombone sound glitches out in a rapidly repeating cycle to match the image of the player doing the same. Sometimes INIMA’s vocals glitch out in that perfect timing that feels like we’re experiencing some imitation of reality having a moment when the content stumbles. But it’s intentional and it works because it embraces what might otherwise seem like an accident. It also doesn’t feel overly contrived, it simply adds an sonic and visual representation of the lyrics celebrating an appreciation for things getting a little weird and resisting being a predictable and a nicely conditioned marketing demographic. By interrupting the flow of the song, the glitches serve as a musical example of bucking the prevailing trends and patterns in life as well. Watch the video on YouTube and follow INIMA on her IG account.
The title track to Tan Cologne’s album Cave Vaults On The Moon In New Mexico (due out February 14, 2020) pairs textural guitar with wandering vocals and ethereal guitar swells and a swaying bass line. It’s reminiscent of a more desert-y Mazzy Star, more psych folk, bendy tones and introspective reverie in the cadence of the singing like taking down stream of consciousness observations. The imagery from the music video directed by Wes Sheridan, is of long drives through the deserts of the American West, around Taos, New Mexico specificially, and stopping in at the kinds of dive bars you never see if you spend most of your time in big cities and avoid “flyover” country completely. But places where people can take it easy, have some drinks and play a little pool and talk about the life and the events of the day in relative peace. The kinds of places where everyone is welcome if you don’t make a nuisance of yourself. The tranquil quality of the song and its almost pastoral mood reflects that slower pace of life and the time and inclination to think and feel deeply but without the burden of the intensity and drive for which people from cities operating at a faster pace pat themselves on the back for keeping up even if the that isn’t always the best approach to everything in a normal human life. Watch the video on YouTube and follow Tan Cologne at the links provided.
“Kandaka” by Eastern Foreigner is proof of the inevitable synthesis of multiple musical styles that’s been happening for years anyway. The production is hip hop, the structure and percussion too but the overall sound palette is more like darkwave industrial and the vocals somewhere between and uniting the two. It’s a moody and menacing song whose hard beats and cold shimmers frame the story of a person who has had to survive in a world where everything and everyone is compromised, a dystopian near future that is really a story about today projected into a more futuristic vision. But it is also a song that suggests a place that so far is free from that compromise if you can manage to not let a broken world colonize every aspect of your life down to your subconscious and warp the roots of what you want out of life. It’s probably impossible to fully escape that conditioning without some work but the story of the song points to how your dreams, operating outside the usual boundaries of conscious and logical thought, operates outside easily controllable systems of social control, can be a place of freedom and purity and by extension, your imagination too. It is the place where positive change can happen first most easily, in your own mind, and where it is possible to envision something better even if life and the world around will always be a work in progress. It’s not a song about revolution but one that suggests that personal revolution begins in your mind and spreads by sharing and evolving ideas and ways of living and being that can be suppressed but not taken away. Cyberpunk came to be about gadgets and clandestine affairs when the early work, and the best work later, was about ideas and freedom and resistance to dehumanization this song is like a soundtrack to that aspect of science fiction. Listen to “Kandaka” on Soundcloud and follow Eastern Foreigner at the links below.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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