Elea Calvet’s title to the song “Sinuous Ways” suggests in its very language the way life can be like walking a tightrope in navigating tensions and precarious situations. Also the imagery of the lyrics highlights the interconnections of the various aspects of our lives and how it’s held together like the connective tissues of living. The music cast in strings, piano and Calvet’s near whispered vocals like a jazz singer who maybe took in a little influence from Edith Piaf’s cadence and Jarvis Cocker’s phrasing conveys a mood like a late night cabaret act performing in a darkened club in Paris or Berlin. The words can at times seem to describe obliquely a complicated relationship but one that is more like coming to terms with that relationship with oneself and grappling with one’s own existential angst. Listen to “Sinuous Ways” on Spotify and follow Elea Calvet at the links provided.
The spacious and finely textured guitar loop that runs through Amie Hayes’ single “Wicked Woman” sets a mood as dark, stark and brooding as the subject matter of the song. Hayes’ vocals sound slightly doubled to give the words a deep resonance even as they’re delicate and introspective in tone. But there’s an undeniable edge to the song the whole way through as Hayes sings the tale of someone who can’t handle the narrator’s intensity of feeling and personal strength and likes to see her bowed and subservient even if that’s not her nature and lacking that keeping her at a distance so that none of that thorny humanity and grimy emotions rub off and complicate matters. The narrative thus hits like a modern bit of folklore. Musically it’s like a dark, slowcore piece reminiscent of maybe some of Chelsea Wolfe’s more dusky folk compositions and its labyrinthine melodies gets under your skin a little in a way that invites repeated listens. Listen to “Wicked Woman” on Spotify.
A gentle oscillating shimmer of drone runs in the background of Boy of Sleep’s “Retonsel.” It has an effect like a touch of light against dark while a synth melody rolls through in a resonant, sequenced loop. It feels like a modern classical piece composed for an art installation featuring early fall foliage transitioning from green to golden. Partway through a second melody eases in between the background and foreground loop which in its crisp, and clear if slightly echoing resonance seems more in focus while the middle musical figure is rimmed with a haze like a fog drifting through the aforementioned imagery. There’s something uplifting and calming about all three sets of sounds working together that also captures a certain magic of the impossible moments to witness as summer transitions to fall in a forest and rather than seem melancholic or nostalgic conveys a mood of acceptance. Listen to “Retonsel” on YouTube and follow Boy of Sleep at the links below.
If you close your eyes and listen to Micah Pick’s and Analise Hausmann’s ambient piece “Stars in the Riptide” you can picture the heavens reflected off the waters as they rush into a rocky inlet, shimmering and endless fragments of glinting light. The song begins with a distant sound like a slow swelling wind, the waveform building in the ocean headed to shore then splashes and rushes as the tide rises. White noises as the crest of the waves ripple through the scintillating melody into a slow cascading frisson of tones that peaks and fades. In the extended version of the song we get to savor that heady anticipation early in the song as it evolves with seeming subtlety into a flood of activity but we hear the simulated sounds of sea birds on the edges of the soundscape much more distinctly and the resonating tones toward the end and apex of the song stretch out like an elongated vortex that breaks and dissolves abruptly into infinity. Listen to both versions of “Stars in the Riptide” on Spotify and follow Micah Pick on Bandcamp.
The acoustic guitar strums keep “heaven to you” by Dead Boyfriend centered like a looped mantra giving its fluid melodies a kind of outline and structure. Violin hovers at the edges of the song like a hummingbird. The spectral keyboard tones flow about in cool colors adding melancholic and introspective hues to a spare soundscape. All while the vocals seem to convey impressionistic images of sense memories attached to feelings shared with the smallest of circles. Listening to the song feels like getting a glimpse into a secret, deeply personal world with vulnerabilities laid bare in safety. Something about its combination of textural rhythms and ethereal tones works itself into your mind with a spirit of therapeutic calm that lingers with you long after the song’s conclusion. Listen to “heaven to you” on Spotify where you can listen to the rest of the it’s just bad news EP and follow Dead Boyfriend at the links below.
Spectral shimmers of faint melody haunt the background of “Сквозь Тернии к Страху” (“Through Thorns to Fear” in English) by Голос КАА (The Voice of KAA). Like ghosts of former human activity in abandoned buildings just out of sight. When the vocals come in its like firmly whispered commentary on the state of things like a narrator for the Russian equivalent of The Twilight Zone. But the hovering buzzing sounds that zip in and out of the soundscape and swells of icy sounds lend it an aspect of a more supernatural science fiction especially when the vocals become distorted and mutated going into a more darkly ethereal passage as if we’re hearing mourning for a better time that will never be again. Musically it’s reminiscent of an especially spooky part of a song by The Legendary Pink Dots had the band been tapped to score Brandon Cronenberg film in its shadowy, industrial, ambient psychedelia. Listen to “Through Thorns to Fear” and follow the now Singapore-based experimental artist with roots in Saint Petersburg The Voice of KAA at the links below.
Daraa Tribes is a musical troupe from the oasis town of Tangounite in the Daraa River Valley of Morocco, each member hailing from a different tribe but all bring together various musical traditions of ancestral tribal sounds. It’s single “Bshara” (meaning “Good News” in English) is an energetic and intricate flow of strings, percussion and voices in panoramic choruses and lively solo performance orchestrated as a celebration of pastoral living and community with imagery perhaps drawn from Bedouin culture and daily practices that give context and continuity to existence and identity. The richness of detail in the song though one that feels so foundational and organic in execution is entrancing and hypnotic in the way of a great deal of Arabic music rooted in traditional forms. Yet the song has the spontaneous flavorings of Saharan Blues giving it an undeniably modern resonance. Watch the lyric video for “Bshara” on YouTube and connect with Daraa Tribes at the links provided.
Ronins Musik’s “Radio” begins with the sonic conceit of tuning a radio to find some more suitable music for the moment. What the dial settles upon is a stream of music that is equal parts lounge jazz, downtempo beats and the sounds of distant street noises blending into the flow of life. When the vocals come in we hear the line “All you left me was a radio,” and then relating that how every time he presses play he hears the person who left him and “every single song tells me we’re through, but I can’t turn it off because it’s the truth.” And there is a melancholic vibe to the song but also a spirit of acceptance. It’s a bit of the opposite of one of those songs in which everything reminds the singer of their lost love. This song comes from the perspective of being past that point yet maybe haunted a little by the ghosts of memories of what once was. Musically it’s reminiscent of a super chill, minimalist Was Not Was song with roots in jazz but written with pop sensibilities yet not beholden to a narrow style. Listen to “Radio” on Spotify and follow Ronins Musik at the links below.
The way the guitar tones unwind in Astral Bakers “Beautiful Everything” is redolent of Sonic Youth circa EVOL and Sister in a more drifty and wispy dynamic, daring to break from straight ahead notation in favor of expressive flourishes. The sound might be described as psych-noise-jangle. The layered rhythmic arrangements and finely accented melodies move with a gentle urgency. There is something spidery about the guitar work and fragile about the delicate percussion and a sensitive inflection to the vocals that reflects well a song that seems to be about someone who has tried so hard to do everything by the book to fit in with some mainstream image of success and acceptability and falling short repeats to themselves sentiments as those in the chours, “It’s a beautiful life, it’s a beautiful everything.” It’s an image that recalls Annette Bening’s character in 1999’s American Beauty where she’s so tightly wound and no one is fooled and she insists everything and everyone conform to her image of her life until little by little it can’t and the image is shattered and maybe she’d have been better off not trying to live up to unrealistic standards and images. This is a song about that. Living with immediacy and in acceptance of human frailty. In some regards the sentiments resonate with the sorts of things Jarvis Cocker was singing about on the 1995 Pulp album Different Class and how life would be so much easier if people could be real and not limited by internalized, arbitrary social conventions. It’s a subtle and poetic exploration of a complex emotional reality that many of us have experienced ourselves or witnessed in others. Watch road trip-themed performance video for “Beautiful Everything” on YouTube and follow French rock band Astral Bakers at the links below. The track comes from the group’s debut album The Whole Story set for release on February 9, 2024 via Sage Music.
The sounds of a pursuit in a cybernetic alien landscape is what emerges out of the sounds of strings/robotic sinews being stretched at the beginning of Petruccio’s “Lektr.” An urgent, dramatic melody cycles through while percussive sounds and flowing textures bubble along with pulses of distorted sound. The melody gives way to harmonic arpeggios that loop frantically at headlong pace toward a seemingly unknown destination but trusting that the path ahead won’t give out. The sound palette of the song evolves as it goes and in the last roughly third of the song all melody seems burned out and echoing metallic, scraping tones in a tunnel take its place yet the sense of motion persists though an unmistakably close up, almost claustrophobic feeling accompanies these noises that become a constant wail of squealing metal kicking up sparks of sound until the sudden end. We’ve been on a ride through harrowing spaces in the song in an place perilous and strange but you kind of want to get back on for that ride again. Listen to “Lektr” on Spotify and follow Petruccio on Bandcamp where you can listen to the rest of the Electrocephaliya album which released on October 10, 2023.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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