SubmitHub – Page 20 – Queen City Sounds and Art

Piscean Daydreams’ Tranquil Ambient Single “Transmedium” is the Soundtrack to Cosmic and Aquatic Voyages Into Mysterious Spaces

Take a look at the cover art to “Transmedium” by Piscean Daydreams and close your eyes while listening as the sound of water rolling off a large craft as it rises from the ocean, splashing back down into the surrounding ocean. Harmonic tones swell and ascend with a luminous resonance reminiscent of the more otherworldly sections of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”—immersive and calming. The craft, built for underwater voyages and those into outer space, rises into the sky toward destinations off world but who can say where yet the tone of the song gives the scene a sense of wonder about the unknown. The song and its textures conveys a sense of both curiosity and tranquility like you’re seeing a cosmic traveler set off destined to return with horizon-expanding knowledge and accounts of realms well beyond our immediate experience. Listen to “Transmedium” on Spotify and follow Piscean Daydream at the links below.

Piscean Daydreams on Apple Music

Piscean Daydreams on Instagram

Piscean Daydreams on YouTube

Baby Bats’ Darkwave Techno Single “too much” is a Dance Track Against the Downsides of the Attention Economy

With a spaciousness and clarity Baby Bats brings together introspective vocals, percussive synths, spare drums and crystalline melodic sequences to create an enigmatic mood on “too much.” One gets the sense that the song is about an association or an aspect of one’s life that saps you of your energy and motivation on a deep level. The lyrics to the song suggest that this is an expectation or obligation that makes constant demands on your time and attention. Like the phenomenon of doom scrolling or if you’re an artist or anyone that depends on awareness of your efforts to even try to thrive the way you have to contribute to performative social media platforms. It’s a fact of life and a dynamic that can be completely enervating. The song’s low key dance beats sound like the new version of dark synth pop akin to the likes of Nuovo Testamento in that the vibe is 80s dance club informed by modern techno production and though more on the melancholic side equally entrancing. Listen to “too much” on Spotify.

SUNGRAVE’s Post-Metal Epic “Contorta” Reflects the Dynamic Drama of Human Civilization Unraveling

“Contorta” sounds like SUNGRAVE has deconstructied and re-assembled epic, science fiction soundtracks and injected them with Neurosis-esque heaviness and psychedelia. When the vocals come in they sound despairing yet defiant in a song that seems to be about people who have neglected to their detriment ideals, a natural world that nurtured until it was abused and poisoned and each other as a community and all that’s left are the ruins of all truly meaningful values. The tone struck in the song is a mix of outrage and transcendence. The streams of sound unite a sustained rhythm, incandescent, almost screaming guitar and crushing yet fluid riffs and a raw human expression of pain and desolation that really pulls you in like a dystopian film set at a time before an apocalypse, before the collapse of civilization, at a time when people have to make serious decisions for themselves and their civilization, frankly a time like now when we’re on the brink of climate and civilizational collapse and so this song and the album from which it hails, Idyll (released December 20, 2024 and available on vinyl, digital download and on streaming), hit as very of the moment. Listen to “Contorta” on Spotify and follow Denver’s SUNGRAVE on Instagram.

Tapeworms Invite Us Into an Effervescent World Illuminated By Retrofuturist Synthgaze on “Pitch Pop”

The beginning of “Pitch Pop” by Tapeworms sounds like what it might be like on a event-filled summer day with sparkling and saturated synth tones. Or like what it might be like to have daily adventures and new, stimulating experiences akin to living inside an ever-evolving video game with a superb soundtrack. Perhaps the buoyant melodies and playful use of processed sounds and sampled noises reflect the band’s experience of living in Japan for a year far from their home in Lille, France. The group orchestrates bit-crushed synths and processed vocals like a retro-futurist version of hyper-pop. Think like Jockstrap and Sextile collaborating with Phoenix and you’re in the realm of what Tapeworms does on the song and its new album Grand Voyage (out April 11, 2025 on vinyl, digital download and streaming) conveying a dreamlike resonance but one in which one is fully awake and leaning into the flow of events with a joyful sense of wonder. Listen to “Pitch Pop” on Spotify and follow Tapeworms at the links below.

Tapeworms on Twitter

Tapeworms on Facebook

Tapeworms on Instagram

Tapeworms on Bandcamp

Tapeworms on YouTube

VLF’s Synth Punk Single “Fashion” Rages Against the Violent Inhumanity of Late Capitalism’s Demands For Uniformity

VLF is the solo project of Liam Power who appears to have played all the instruments on the new album Quantum Regression (released February 28, 2025) which might go some way to explain how pointed, focused and unified the songs sound. The single “Fashion” with its urgency is reminiscent of the more aggressive end of both Wire and Buzzcocks with the noisier instincts of the former and the undeniable hooks of the latter. The song seems to be about the frustration with yet embracing the idea of going out of fashion when everything seems to be disposable in our culture and how trying to keep up with all of that can be a rat race the erodes the humanity out of developing something unique because creativity and creative work is not something that can always or ever just be cranked out much less developed at the speed expected out of late capitalism. So why not embrace your analog existence and resist the monetization of all aspects of life. The song rages and explodes and reassembles back into focus like a parallel dynamic to that expected of us but it also veers off that path in glorious fashion like a rebellion against the imposition of arbitrary modes of being. Listen to “Fashion” on Spotify and follow VLF on Instagram. Fans of the aforementioned as well as Snowy Red, A Place to Bury Strangers and even Big Black will find a good deal to like with this song and the rest of the album.

Pink Turns Blue Make a Case For Hope in Basic Human Connections on the Melancholic Post-punk Single “Can’t Do Without You”

Mic Jogwer of Pink Turns Blue, photo by D. Vorndran

Pink Turns Blue takes on an uncomfortable personal truth on “Can’t Do Without You.” The gleaming drift of guitar riffs and the steady rhythm serves its meditational quality well. The touch of melancholic atmosphere sets the mood because the song and its powerful music video outline the personal cost of taking on a world seemingly filled with struggle and tragedy and now with global fascism rising and world powers either funding or doing little to stop obvious genocides it can feel hopeless and overwhelming unless you have some foundation of hope no matter what your place is in all of this mess when you’re not the people holding the reins of power. The song suggests that so much energy expended in the struggle for what’s right without a vision to drive it to give a guiding sense of hope, despair can take over and make you think nothing has any power to change things for the better. But the song seems to come from the perspective of someone who is trying to hold on to a shred of something better that feels like there can be an impetus, a glimmer of human solidarity and caring, of love that can push back against the wave of darkness that can feel like it’s snuffing out everything good and decent. It in effect makes a case for the personal being the political and how often that tide can turn in ways with small efforts that become larger causes and movements that can turn things in a positive direction beginning with the basic component of what makes life and society so vital and that is with bonds with one another. Watch the video for “Can’t Do Without You” on YouTube and follow Pink Turns Blue at the links below. The band’s new album Black Swan released on February 28, 2025 on vinyl LP, digital download and streaming.

Pink Turns Blue on Wikipedia

Pink Turns Blue on Twitter

Pink Turns Blue on Facebook

Pink Turns Blue on Instagram

Pink Turns Blue on Bandcamp

Twin Court Conveys a Deep Sense of the Mystical Pastoral on Ambient Folk Gamelan Track “Iroh”

Twin Court from Ithaca, New York released its debut LP Forgotten Turns on March 1, 2025. The single “Iroh” displays the group’s seamless combination of post-rock musical ideas with the instrumentation and methods of Gamelan. The minimal lyrics “Everything blows away” repeated like a mantra is like a reminder of the impermanence of all things even those we are conditioned to think are eternal but in the course of time will be gone or transformed beyond our current recognition and sometimes this is ourselves during the course of a lifetime whether we consciously realize it or not. There is a pastoral quality of the textures, delicate, orchestrated tonality and percussion in the song reminiscent of where Phil Elverum has been with both The Microphones and especially Mount Eerie with a similar mindset in approaching the music. A freshness and spontaneity and an outlook that is keenly aware of the cycles and circles of our lives interweaving with one another akin to Black Elk’s mystic vision. The luminous “keyboard” sound in the song is in fact not electronic but the gendèr, a type of metallophone that naturally sounds otherworldly but whose resonant analog tone lends the music a calmingly mysterious resonance. Listen to “Iroh” on Spotify and follow Twin Court at the links provided.

Twin Court on Instagram

Twin Court on Bandcamp

Eliana Glass’s Downtempo Jazz Single “Shrine” is an Impressionistic Evocation of the Deep Places of Memory

Eliana Glass’s slightly breathy, soulful, dusky vocals on “Shrine” sound like something from another era. Like a deep jazz lounge in the 60s or 70s like Peggy Lee or Lena Horne in a particularly melancholic mood and reaching into realms of the musical avant-garde. The soft bass accents and minimal piano accompaniment lend the song an irresistible cool to complement Glass’s own as she sings about how in life we encounter people whose memory lingers with us for a variety of reasons and the ways the resonance of those experiences however extended or brief become part of the narrative of our life story like the influences that go into the writing of a work of fiction. Glass seems to choose to be enriched by these memories rather than haunted by them though “Shrine” has a deep and immersive moodiness that feels both mysterious and comforting. In the music video filmed, directed and edited by Jules Muir from a concept by Costa Colachis Glass we see the singer in granular images that look like memories feel—often hazy yet vibrant, in moments shadowy and with the analog quality of the lived experience faded and colored by one’s distance from the actual events and emotional associations. Watch the video for “Shrine” on YouTube and follow Eliana Glass at the links below. Her new album E releases on April 5 on vinyl, digital download and streaming.

Eliana Glass on Instagram

Eliana Glass on Bandcamp

Chris Bullinger’s Folk-Inflected Pop Song “Shine” Draws You Into Its Tale of Serendipity With Its Leisurely Charm

Chris Bullinger, photo courtesy the artist

Chris Bullinger’s husky voice serves as a nice contrast with the smoothly atmospheric melodies and gentle rhythms of “Shine.” In the video that mixes animation and pastoral settings juxtaposed with those more urban and late night we get a feel for the leisurely pace of the song and how its spare poetry and storytelling seems to be about chance connections we make if we’re not too caught up in being focused on what we’re “supposed” to be putting our energy into and just be a human open to experiences and being willing to give a little of ourselves back to the people we meet along the way in our lives as we live them without it having to be transactional or pragmatic. The song is in a folk pop vein and rather than demand too much of its listeners it invites you in with its leisurely energy and simple charm. Watch the video for “Shine” on YouTube and connect with singer and songwriter Chris Bullinger at the links below.

Chris Bullinger on Facebook

Chris Bullinger on Instagram

Miss Torsion’s Darkwave Pop Single “Too Close To See” is an Enchanting Song About the Perils of Delusional Beliefs

Mirjam Götschy’s video treatment for Miss Torsion’s “Too Close To See” lends a playfully dark fantasy element to the song. Which seems to be the appropriate for a mood for a song in which the narrator of the song addresses a friend or loved one who seems to lack the ability to be in the present instead caught up in an endless web of their own obsessions and projections upon the world around them to their own detriment. In the video Miss Torsion takes on the guise of a type of mystical being in various incarnations and as a disembodied presence dancing on a landscape of burning hills and a lush forest as she sings to the aforementioned indulger of personal fictions to “Wake up” from these dreams that don’t serve a creative vision so much but delusions that have a negative impact on the people in their lives. The title of the song cleverly suggests the concept of being too close to one’s ideas and creations to have an objective assessment as to their validity. It’s a serious message delivered with a dramatic flair as an eccentric pop song with a Gothic darkwave flavor but one that doesn’t overshadow how it’s also the kind of song one might hear at a Goth nigh or club and draw people to the dance floor. Fans of Lene Lovich and Gitane Demone will likely appreciate the song greatly.