SubmitHub – Page 49 – Queen City Sounds and Art

The Gorgeously Layered Textures and Melodies of Deth Rali’s “Candle in the Dark” is a Short Passage of Mystical Psychedelia Worth Getting Lost Within

Deth Rali, photo by Julianna Photography

Deth Rali’s 2021 album Light Levels felt like an ambitious dream pop album, orchestral in its composition and completely immersive in its soundscapes. The band’s latest single “Candle in the Dark” immediately feels like it’s organized organically with subtly expansive waves of tone guided gently by finely cadenced percussion. Like you’re listening to the ghost of a memory of psychedelic fantasy movies from another decade but manifesting as as song within which one also hears echoes of 90s indiepop and whatever amalgam of dream pop phase Animal Collective, chillwave and the bright and soothing synth composition of the late, great Norm Chambers (aka Panabrite, think Soft Terminal period) probably isn’t even part of the band’s musical DNA. It’s a song that gets into your brain and you feel better for having experienced its soothing frequencies. The band regularly performs live in Denver and Colorado so if you can, witness this stuff in person for the full effect. Listen to “Candle in the Dark” on Spotify and follow Deth Rali at the links below.

dethrali.com

Deth Rali on Facebook

Deth Rali on Instagram

Deth Rali on YouTube

Dinah’s Avant Folk Single “Ferns” is a Minimalistic Meditation on Finding Inspiration for Inner Strength in the Natural World

Dinah’s new single “Ferns” (from her forthcoming album Dinah! due out February 23) begins with a minimalist clarity, spare guitar work and the songwriter’s alto voice bringing to the song an air of mystery. As the song progresses we hear some simple electronic percussion and synth but all more rhythmic and textural in effect lending the song a fragile vulnerability that conveys an emotional authenticity even as the lyrics are somewhat enigmatic in their explicit meaning. Dinah employs the imagery of nature and how many of us find an emotional resonance in the natural world that we don’t often find directly in human society and the ways our true intentions can be masked or compromised by agendas that may not even be our own. The line “Gentle white pine, teach me to stand strong” is so simple and in the context of the music video it makes a powerful poetic sense the way find strength in their spiritual beliefs or in their memories or other sense of energies bigger than standard, everyday human existence. It’s like leaning back into one’s imagination for the kind of fortitude that can’t be taken away and can have a consistency where other sources of strength can falter. Fans of the more minimal, folk end of Xiu Xiu will appreciate how Dinah cuts the songwriting and the words used to their essential emotional core on this song and the other singles now available to hear from the album. Watch the video for “Ferns” on YouTube and follow Dinah at the links below.

Dinah on Facebook

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Kidä’s Entrancing IDM Pop Song “Sand Invades Everything” is Imbued With a Sense of Cosmic Sensuality

Kidä has collaborated with the likes of Yves Tumor and Gaika and her new single “Sand Invades Everything” is well within that realm of genre-bending, boundary-pushing electronic pop. Her lush, ethereal vocals are buoyed by a dynamic beat and pulsing electronic bass. The lyrics brim with images of desire and sexual themes of mythical dimensions yet rooted in visceral, earthly experiences. It’s like a pure fusion of downtempo, industrial pop and IDM. The moods are deep and expansive, engrossing. The bendy, Middle Eastern string melody and the sheer soulfulness of the song blend the exotic with a sense of immediacy. Fans of Sudan Archives will appreciate the cohesive, eclectic sound and the way it moves through your mind and takes you to a better place. Listen to “Sand Invades Everything” on Spotify and follow Kidä at the links below.

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Kidä on YouTube

Easy Sleeper’s “Timekeeper” Highlights the Ways Our Internalized Regulation of Time Negatively Impacts Our Quality of Life

Easy Sleeper, photo courtesy the artists

The breezy guitar jangle of the opening of Easy Sleeper’s “Timekeeper” suggests the song may be about some nostalgic portrait of a poignant earlier time in life. But the guitar work is soon joined by vocals that seem a little strained and at points punctuating the chorus with shouted lines because the song is about the pressure time exerts on all our lives from the time we’re forced to be aware of it early in life to the way it regulates the existence of most of us, the conscious awareness and imposed adherence to time tables, from school, work, other obligations, social and otherwise, and in the last third of the song the guitar turns from beautiful and borderline pastoral to distorted and intense like the weight time weighs on us all. After all what could be more demented and destructive than imposing a time of your life at which you’re supposed to accomplish this or that or when you’re an artist the demand for inspiration and creative development as a product that can be reliably produced when so many of our actual timelines are idiosyncratic and not subject to the whims of a marketplace. The fact that the song goes from organic whimsy to anxiety-wracked angularity is a brilliant mirror of life from the childhood of most people to adulthood. There has to be a better way. Listen to “Timekeeper” on Spotify and follow Easy Sleeper at the links provided.

Easy Sleeper on TikTok

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Vania and Cravat Come Together For the Entrancing IDM Chillwave Fusion of “Only You”

NYC-based singer and songwriter Vania teamed up with Spanish experimental electronic pop band Cravat for an utterly transporting and entrancing single “Only You.” The song is about a relationship that really isn’t so great for either person but in which there’s something to the bond even though it involves hurt feelings as the cost of staying together. Vania’s lilting vocals with a touch of processing sounds like a pop star from another world dancing in the unconventional rhythms crafted as tonal swells and drifts of percussive tone guided by a pulsing rhythm. It’s like a true fusion of chillwave, hyperpop and IDM and drawing on the sense of melancholic nostalgia of the first, the otherworldly structures of the second and the free association of aesthetics, sounds and technologies to craft beats borrowed from across decades baked into the third. Though the song is frank in its winking embrace of the elements of dysfunction that are part of many relationships that aren’t meant to last it celebrates the feelings that went into forming them. Listen to “Only You” on Spotify and follow Vania at the links provided.

“If Your Sky Should Fall” by evrshde is a Tender Dream Pop Song of Affection and Understanding

“If Your Sky Should Fall” finds evrshde draping a measured, echoing beat in billowing tones and descending, gauzy tones. It’s a love song but invokes a more unconventional, nuanced and complicated understanding of what it means to actually relate to anyone who is sensitive and has struggled with the disappointments we all face, scarred a bit by emotional abuse and weary of potential mistreatment, guard up and hesitant to be involved—wary of needing to fulfill an idealized role that they can’t really consistently live up to. The pacing of the song is like a slow walk down a darkly foggy path with the music swelling up with incandescent flares of warmth and light periodically to light the way. And that’s the vibe of the song in general, gentle, unobtrusive but reassuring. Fans of HTRK and the more enigmatic and ambient end of Enya will appreciate the song’s soundscapes. Listen to “If Your Sky Should Fall” on Spotify and follow evrshde at the links below.

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Mary Middlefield’s Live Video for “Heart’s Desire” Reveals the Dream Folk Song’s Dark Yet Joyful Catharsis

Mary Middlefield “Heart’s Desire” single art

Mary Middlefield’s live performance video for “Heart’s Desire” lends a more grounded and human face to its dark story of a young woman and her interactions with an older man who abuses his position of relative authority. The intricate guitar work and orchestral arrangements and Middlefield’s vulnerable vocals for most of the song gives it a quality that one might expect out of a sort of indie folk inflected dream pop song but the lyrics reveal a lot about a warped interpersonal dynamic that doesn’t lead to healthy places. In the video Middlefield looks like she’s re-living some of these harrowing experiences without being explicit in the sordid details. It’s a conventionally beautiful song in its arrangements and lively rhythms and flow of melody. But there’s a surprise for everyone that watches to the end because the lyrics end in a different way than the studio version that’s readily available and Middlefield sings in the end, screaming with her entire being and arching backward with the force of emotion, “You grow old and I’ll watch you die” and repeating the line. But it’s not dark so much as cathartic for everyone who has been in a situation like the kind she outlines in the song and for far too many young women it isn’t uncommon. Watch the video for “Heart’s Desire” on YouTube and follow the Swedish singer-songwriter at the links below.

Mary Middlefield on TikTok

Mary Middlefield on Instagram

Mary Middlefield on Bandcamp

Beans Maintains a Zenlike Calm in the Hyperkinetic Urgency and Relentless Word Flow of “ZWAARD 1”

Beans is back with his bravura display of verbal mastery in “ZWAARD 1,” the opening salvo for his forthcoming album ZWAARD (out March 15, 2024 via his own imprint Tyger Rawwk Rcrds). This time out the rapper worked with Finnish producer Sasu Ripatti aka Vladislav Delay. The song is the first of fourteen tracks with the same title followed by the corresponding track number. Beans seems to be exploring the current state of hip-hop and his own struggles and coming to terms with his own mortality while still being caught up in pushing his art forward. The rapid-fire flow of poetry while hyperkinetic percussion and splashes of melodic keyboards looped set a nervy urgency pulls us along in the wake of Beans’ headlong pace as he makes observations about how things are and despite how the song has that irresistible forward momentum the rapper sounds like he’s taking it easy and provides a model for keeping an even keel even when you are operating in a world and an environment that seems in a hurry. He maintains an artful grace in the face of an accelerated culture. Listen to “ZWAARD 1” on YouTube and follow the former member of legendary hip-hop crew Antipop Consortium Beans at the links below.

Sivan Levy’s Ambient Pop Song “My Far Away Femme” is a Windswept Epic of Heartbreak and Reckoning With the Truth

The softly percussive atmospheric sounds at the beginning of “My Far Away Femme” by Sivan Levy is so hushed and ethereal it’s ghostly in its presence but seems to transform into vivid piano tones that ripple like droplets in a pool of water as the tipping off point for the singer’s vocals. At around the halfway point there is a string chord progression that turns as though processed through a phaser conveying a sense of desolation so complete so efficiently it’s gently heartbreaking. Washes of white noise in the distance like a ferocious coastal wind give the song a deeply haunted quality that truly enhances the lyrics that might be despairing words to a loved one or to oneself about how it’s easy to fall in love with the ideal of someone at a distance when that image isn’t reality and those feelings built on a foundation of nothing. “Your fantasy does not exist,” Levy sings to sum up the actual reality of the situation and sometimes the truth hurts even when surrounded with gossamer flows of sound and a soft delivery as Levy offers here. The song is a sort of art dream pop with an ear for layers of ambient soundscapes that feel like one is stripping away layers of wishful thinking. Listen to “My Far Away Femme” on Spotify and follow Sivan Levy at the links below. Levy’s latest EP side:w released on February 4, 2024.

Sivan Levy on Facebook

Sivan Levy on TikTok

Micro/macro’s “Reassembling the Self” is an Extended Mantra of Emotional Healing Set to an Ambient IDM Beat

Composer Tommy Simpson is releasing the song “Reassembling the Self” as a single under his experimental electronic moniker of Macro/micro. The track was originally written as part of the score to a forthcoming science fiction short film called R.A.E.R. BETA 0027 about, according to the film’s tagline, “a woman struggling to overcome a traumatic loss” who “seeks out help from a tech developer with a device that promises to accelerate the emotional healing process.” The beat-driven track works separate from that context as a song with a melancholic tonal echo of a melody that resonates in the near distance while a gentle industrial beat traces what feels like a process suggested by the title. Knowing some of the plot of the film only helps to hear in the song the kind of grace, patience and care one needs to exercise when you feel like you’ve come apart a little or more than a little and you want to get yourself on a better footing and often that takes some meticulous and steady effort without rushing yourself like you’re a mass manufactured product. Maybe some guided work can feel like you’re re-engineering your psyche some and that can help the process of coming back into yourself go more quickly. It’s a short song but it hits like a nuanced and extended emotional mantra that helps you to wrangle up some of the rough edges and put them back into place. Not a meditation so much as a set of sounds that keeps you on a track to center yourself as you ease yourself into a better place. Listen to “Reassembling the Self” on Spotify where you can hear the rest of Simpson’s deeply evocative score to the film and follow Micro/macro at the links below.