“Treasure the Good Times” may well be the signature track to Mokhov’s album For Monkey (released March 7, 2023) which was dedicated to his dog Monkey who passed away on Monday, 19 December 2022 from a brain tumor at 6 and a half years old. The song is an effervescent, upbeat song of saturated synth melodies with bright tones and syncopated beats with white noise textures coursing through like a breeze on a sunny day. It’s a song that invites a good mood and a lightness of spirit that comes from good memories and a sense of tranquility. Fans of Boards of Canada’s more playful moments and Tycho circa Past is Prologue or Dive will appreciate what Mokhov has going on here. Listen to “Treasure the Good Times” on YouTube and follow Mokhov at the links below.
The enigmatic, melodic bass at the beginning of “Kenopsia” by Torre di Fine creates an expectation of stark moodiness ahead. And the song delivers on that early promise as the vocals come in a near whisper while a background drone suggests an overhanging menace. Then a second voice, one that sounds more feminine, joins the first voice and then becomes the lead near the halfway point and adding another layer of emotional resonance that truly embodies the meaning of the title of the song which refers to, according to Collins Dictionary online, “the eerie atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but now abandoned.” And the song does sound like the kind of music that would be appropriate to an environment of urban decay and neglect. Like a song inspired by ruins and more recently observing the world during the period of lockdown for various countries including the band’s home country of Italy. Fans of brooding, stark minimalism the likes of which one might hear on a The For Carnation record or one of Codeine’s more stripped down moments will find something to appreciate about this song’s near skeletal composition. Listen to “Kenopsia” on YouTube and follow Italy’s Torre di Fine on Spotify.
The First Eloi’s latest single “Neverland” from its forthcoming, debut full length continues its fusion of noisy post-punk and shoegaze spaciousness. There is a momentum to the song in which the warmly ethereal vocals seem to dance about in the mix like a figure in a gritty, luminous fog buoyed by sustained low end rumble. In that haze is a spindly melodic guitar figure that seems to hold the tune together before it concludes with a shudder like a door closing on a secret realm as suggested by the song title and the song’s references to Tinkerbell and days seeming to stretch on longer than they would in normal life. Maybe this is a song about hanging with Peter Pan and crew but perhaps more a metaphor of making a life that feels like it is elevated and magical and imbued with a significance that isn’t there when mundane concerns dominate. Given the name of the band is a reference to H.G. Wells’ 1895 classic novel The Time Machine and its Utopian people the Eloi who lead an idyllic life with supported by a dark secret. Listen to “Neverland” on Spotify and follow The First Eloi at the links below.
If the lyrics to “Haunted” can be taken even remotely at face value, Isadora Eden has transmuted a great deal of pain and anguish into a beautifully resigned melancholy. The nuance and detail in the guitar work and the impressionistic bass lines elevate the dark mood of the song in which Eden sings about a lingering emotional pain at the hands of another person. The kind of hurt that might come from the kind of emotional abuse you can bury to make it through your days but which spring up unbidden at times with an intensity that can be challenging to set aside when it happens at odd and inconvenient times. Eden speaks to that resurgent rawness of feeling and how it can leave you feeling disoriented when you haven’t had a chance to properly process the trauma of it all. And of the frustration of not being past it and blaming oneself for not having worked your way through the experiences that haunt your emotional state already. Yet in writing these lyrics in this way Eden makes it okay to not be okay and to be willing to be patient with something like the human mind and how it’s not just some technological process that has a set time or parameters or easy fixes. Is the song dream pop? Sure if Chelsea Wolfe wrote dream pop. It Has that richness of mood and attention to detail in songcraft and production that sets it apart from any easy genre categorization which is a sign of the strength of the songwriting to be found elsewhere on Eden’s forthcoming full length Forget What Makes It Glow which drops in July with a release show on July 15, 2023 at The Marquis Theater with Pink Lady Monster and Rose Variety. Listen to “Haunted” on Spotify and follow Isadora Eden at the links below.
Xinwenyue Shi is an artist from Chengdu, China who released his latest album Bashu Renaissance Chapter Two on April 20, 2023. The album is truly like a tour through and a melancholic examination of the, per his bio, “fading heritage of his beloved Chinese hometown region, Bashu, by shining a light on its people’s stories. Shi weaves between Chinese and English lyrics and a hybrid of styles with a grace, creativity and fluidity that immediately hooks you in for a full listen. The lead single “Hustler Wang, A Li Li” and its animated video really give a vivid glimpse into Shi’s observations showing a China that is modern, cosmopolitan, evolving and rich with its own interface with cultural influences from elsewhere. Its vocals employ both a hip-hop style and later a more melodic pop expression and where it also shines is in the beats that shift and have a textural quality that seems to ground the music into its human story and the truly transporting synth/keyboard lines that set the mood in cinematic style with samples connecting the song with a larger arc of interconnected stories of people in a certain place at a certain time during a period of great change and flux. And yet Shi compellingly captures a wistfulness about these changes and a bittersweet sense of loss for what made where he’s from special and unique as forces that are changing the whole world have an ambivalent impact to a place he calls home. The song along and the music video are heartbreaking and remarkable and truly demand repeat listens as Shi is a genuine pop music innovator. Watch the video for “Hustler Wang, A Li Li” on YouTube and follow Xinwenyue Shi at the links provided.
Zoé frontman León Larregui has been making a bit of a name for himself for his solo work for several years now. The single “Chromocosmic Avenue” and its attendant music video is about a near future scenario based in the world today where in most major cities it’s all but a surveillance state in public places and increasingly so. The female leads work on a way to break this state of things in secret and by the dark of night with their access to the infrastructure that makes the panopticon possible. It’s a bit fantastical and hopeful because of course the technocratic system will reassert itself unless checked by an accountable government responsive to a population demanding control of its individual liberties. But the song speaks to a desire pretty common among most normal people not to have their movements surveiled and subject to analysis daily and maybe, given current trends, sent to an AI or algorithm to impose consequences for not adhering to a narrow range of “acceptable” movements and behaviors with no nuance and just the inevitable rigid protocols. The song brings together the singer’s melodious vocals in a low key mode suitable for the late night and clandestine vibe of the song with tropical rhythms and a celebratory/subversive spirit in the use of horns and synths. It’s reminiscent of a song that might have been on the soundtrack to a 1980s techno thriller and because of that the song seems more immediately accessible than dire. After all a pop song built on doomerism doesn’t really work and Larregui brought that sensibility that he has honed for years to a song that is both fun and substantive. Watch the video for “Chromocosmic Avenue” on YouTube and follow León Larregui on Spotify.
Panchiko released its debut EP D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L to little fanfare in 2000 but over the next couple of decades it attained cult status with a 2020, expanded reissue. And now the Nottingham, England indie band has released its debut full length Failed at Math(s) (out May 5, 2023). The title track of the album has an eccentric music video of ants attempting to transport what looks like a potato chip with the name of the band imprinted on one side back to their colony. What made the band’s earlier music so appealing is present in the new music too: a sense of hearing something that sounds assembled from the cast offs of an decayed civilization. Meaning it sounds part standard rock and pop band songwriting but with elements of collage and sampling in the composition whether that’s the precise process or otherwise. “Failed at Math(s)” and other tracks on the new record sound like a product of experimental electronic rock and turntablism. The title song is playful number that could be on a modern hyper pop record inspired by anime and video game music. The vocals get broken up and processed some to give it a beautiful quality of imperfection like a phone call where neither person is getting particularly good reception but the conversation is quality and you don’t want to hang up in case the reception dies off completely. And that delicate, tentative sense with a twee and heartfelt melody like something from a near future of repurposed old technology gives the song a sense of something special from another time whether that’s the near past or the far future but crafted by people making the best of limited resources and time and putting the focus on the emotional resonance. Watch the video for “Failed at Math(s)” on YouTube and follow Panchiko at the links below.
The aptly titled “Sleep On It” by Blue Lupin sounds in the beginning like waking up and sleepily taking a journey. The mists of synth melody, the spiderwebs of guitar glimmer, the understated percussion and Joanna Wolfe’s dulcet vocals ease through an impressionistic song that ramps slowly up to a more forceful conclusion like the sentiments of the vocals contemplating what’s ahead resolving into more defined emotional convictions. In the video Wolfe gets on a train and walks through a fog enshrouded city in what looks like the early morning, taking in the quietness of an urban landacape before the business day has begun and stepping forward into a brightening day. It’s a perfect pairing of image and sound and a solid launch of Blue Lupin’s debut EP Satellite People which released on March 17, 2023. Watch the video for “Sleep On It” on YouTube and follow Blue Lupin at the links below.
The video for “Springtime” by Chopper looks like it could have come out of the same time period as the first handful of Gregg Araki’s films and captured on an old, high quality VHS tape. Musically it’s like a more darkwave My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult song or something by Alien Sex Fiend. But more melodic, more glam rock, but with the same gloriously lurid aesthetic. The song has a lush quality that boils up and flares out dramatically that suits the sights and sense of adventure in the song with its blossoming flowers, fire, fireworks and night drive visuals and the darkly passionate and romantic sentiments of the lyrics. It’s the kind of song one hopes to hear at Goth nights around the world because it fits right in with the modern incarnation of that sort of thing without being defined by it. “Springtime” is the first single in Chopper’s forthcoming mini-album Shock Pop Vol. 1 which should release later in 2023. But for now you can watch the music video on YouTube and follow Chopper at the links below.
Bad Flamingo strips its sound back even further back than it has for a whole on “Keep Off of You.” The spare acoustic guitar, perhaps banjo, with some touch of fuzzy electric guitar and a hint of synth accented by the barest percussion has rarely sounded quite this minimal. And the vocals are not a whisper but certainly like the voice in your head as you’re writing something in a journal when you’re feeling foolish for letting yourself be duped again by someone for whom you have given into your weakness to indulge some time that ended up being a hurtful waste of your minutes and hours. The lyrics are like a set of honky tonk mantras against giving in to your impulses and instincts to the kind of animal appeal and attraction to someone that’s bad for you and in just over three minutes of these reminders you hope that our narrator is finally able to get that fool out of her system. Listen to “Keep Off of You” on Spotify and follow the great country/folk/weirdness of Bad Flamingo at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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