Category: New Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rising Canadian Artist Magi Merlin Shares an Unapologetic Black Anthem

With the release of her first two EP’s 2019’s On My Way to the Listening Party and last year’s Drug Music EP and a handful of standalone singles, the fairly mysterious yet rising Canadian artist Magi Merlin (pronounced MADGE-eye) has exploded onto the national scene: She has received praise from CRACK Magazine. Along with that she has opened for Lido Pimienta and played at Osheaga Festival alongside ODIE, Jessie Reyez and others. 

Earlier this year, the rising Canadian artist released the Funkywhat-produced “Free Grillz,” a track that featured Merlin’s mix of fiery, self-assured bars and sultry crooned hook gliding over icy, trap hi-hats, skittering snares, glistening synth arpeggios and a tweeter and woofer rattling bass line. “Free Grillz” found the Canadian artist hoping to aspire to at least some of the tropes of hip-hop fame while reflecting on a series of bitterly harsh and inescapable, daily realities, like having oblivious people carelessly mispronounce your name, misogyny, kicking clingy and stupid men out of your life and so on with a mix of humor and world dominating swagger.

Merlin’s third EP Gone Girl is slated for a May 27, 2022 release through Bonsound/AWAL. The EP’s material may arguably be the Canadian artist’s most personal and audacious effort to date: Merlin grew up in Saint Lazare, a suburb of Montreal, created by Nixon types in 70s. A Place of white folks by white folks. Much like in the States, the suburbs are viewed as the epitome of all that’s good and “normal.” Unless of course, you’re Black and Queer — and that perceived normalcy is challenged.

The EP, which continues Merlin’s ongoing collaboration with Funkywhat draws from 90s house, drum ‘n’ bass, Motown and acid flecked hip-hop to create a sound that evokes smoky, after hours clubs — but with rumbling bass lines and thunderous 808s. Thematically, the EP sees the rising Canadian artist touching upon generational angst, fake friends, casual racism and more.

The rising Canadian artist’s latest single “Pissed Black Girl” is a sleek and hyper modern pop song that features Merlin’s assured vocal delivery gliding over icy synth arpeggios, skittering trap beats and a sinuous bass line. Interestingly, “Pissed Black Girl” is rooted in a familiar pent up frustration with fake white progressives and phony liberals but instead of the cliched trope of angry Black woman, it’s a dance floor friendly banger that tells those fakes to go fuck themselves and sit down, while the rest of us get down.

“I wrote this song summer 2020,” Merlin says. “I was made to really look at my identity as a Black woman and what that identity means to the people I surround myself with. I didn’t realize a lot of the people I had around me at the time that identified as progressive, leftist and ‘allies’ were not as supportive as they made themselves out to be. Talking with them just resulted in arguments instead of compassion and understanding. This made me very angry and the only thing I was able to do to vent my frustrations and arrive at some form of catharsis was by singing about it.

“The title of the track references a story an ex-friend recounted to me as well as what I and many other black women who speak their minds are reduced to: an ‘angry black woman.’ This ex-friend told me about a time they went to a predominantly white party in the suburbs and one of the party-goers, while staring out onto the front lawn of the house, said: “wow, there’s a N***er on the lawn” – one of many atrocious acts that go unchecked in white suburbia and various other white spaces. If there is anything I’ve learned from my experiences with ignorant and bigoted people, it is how unapologetic I need to be about my existence. I’m a girl; I am pissed and I’m Black. What about it?”

The accompanying video features the rising Canadian artist being unapologetically herself — but at one point dancing in a circle of flames that reads “Pissed Black Girl.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays La Femme Share Hazy and Hallucinogenic Visual For Atmospheric “Tu T’en Lasses”

Founded back in 2010, Parisian psych pop act and longtime JOVM mainstays  La Femme — currently, founding members Sacha Got and Marlon Magnée, along with Sam Lefévre, Noé Delmas, Cleémence Quélennec, Clara Luiciani, Jane Peynot, Marilou Chollet and Lucas Nunez Ritter — managed to completely hoodwink the French music industry by lining up a DIY Stateside tour as a then unknown band, with only $3,000 Euros and their debut EP, that year’s Le Podium #1.

After playing 20 gigs across the States, the members of La Femme returned to their native France with immense interest from the Parisian music scene. “The industry was like, ‘What the fuck? They have an EP out and they are touring in the US and we don’t know them?” Marlon Magnée told The Guardian. “So the buzz began to start. When we came back to France, it was red carpet. Fucking DIY.” 

2013’s critically applauded and commercially successful full-length debut Psycho Tropical Berlin found the Parisian JOVM mainstays making a wild, creative and sonic left turn incorporating krautrock and synths to the mix. The album eventually earned a Victoires de la Musique Award. Building upon a rapidly growing national and international profile, La Femme’s sophomore album, 2016’s Mystére to praise by Sound Opinions, The Line of Best Fit, The Guardian, AllMusic, BrooklynVegan and a lengthy list of others. 

The French JOVM mainstays long-awaited, third album Paradigmes was released last year through the band’s own Disque Pointu and distributed through IDOL. And over the course of that year, I managed to write about five of the album’s nine previously released singles:

  • “Cool Colorado,” a coolly bombastic single that seemed indebted to Scott Walker and Ennio Morricone soundtracks while being an “ode to the San Francisco of the 70s — and to Colorado, the first American state to legalize cannabis. 
  • Disconnexion,” a surreal what-the-fuck fever dream centered around pulsating Giorgio Moroder-like motorik grooves, a fiery banjo solo, atmospheric electronics, twinkling synth arpeggios, a philosophic soliloquy delivered in a dry, academic French and operatic caterwauling. 
  • “Foutre le Bordel,” a breakneck freak out that meshed Freedom of Choice-era DEVO and Giorgio Moroder with ’77 punk rock nihilism. 
  • “Le Jardin,” an achingly sad lullaby written and sung in Spanish — the band’s first song in Spanish. Inspired by a trip to Spain that the band took a few years ago, the song as the band explains is a kind of an old-school slow dance, which underlines how fragile and random fate is.
  • “Pasadena,” a slow-burning, woozy ballad that sounds — and feels — like a narcotic-induced haze. Written as an informal response and continuation of the story told in “Septembre,” off the band’s sophomore album, “Pasadena” features the main character of “Septembre” as a teenager. And as a result, the song is about budding romances — primarily their seemingly carefree nature at the time, their eventual difficulties and confusions, and the weight of peer pressure.

April has been very busy for the JOVM mainstays. Earlier this month, they released Paradigmes: Le Film, a full-length film co-directed by the band’s Sacha Got and Marlon Magnée and Aymeric Bergada du Cadet that’s centered around the album’s material, and highlights their humor and creativity. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Wnil2ipf0

The JOVM mainstays will be releasing an exclusive, vinyl, Record Store Day edition of Paradigmes, Paradigmes: suppléments, a deluxe edition of their critically applauded third album. You can purchase it here: https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/14923

And along with the Record Store Day exclusive vinyl release of Paradigmes: suppléments, the band released yet another single off Paradigmes, the album closing track “Tu T’en Lasses,” a slow-burning and atmospheric fever dream, centered around skittering beats, glistening synths and a distorted yet mournful horn solo paired with dreamily delivered vocals.

The accompanying video for “Tu T’en Lasses” continues a run of hazy, feverish visuals: The members of La Femme are house band at a local dance, playing the slow dance song for the couples out there — including a Sid and Nancy-like couple. Is it an achingly nostalgic memory of a lost love and a time since passed — or a drug and booze-fueled hallucination? Or perhaps both? That’s up to you to decide.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Psychedelic Porn Crumpets Share Animated, Horror Film-Inspired Visual for New Ripper “Acid Dent”

Throughout their history, the acclaimed Perth-based outfit Psychedelic Porn Crumpets — Jack McEwan (vocals, guitar), Luke Parish (guitar), Danny Caddy (drums), Wayon Bilondana (bass) and multi-instrumentalist Chris Young — have developed a reputation for being one of Australia’s preeminent purveyors of enormous riff-based psych rock.

The Perth psych rockers’ fifth album Night Gnomes officially dropped today through Marathon Artists/What Reality? Records. The follow-up to last year’s critically applauded SHYGA! The Sunlight Mound, Night Gnomes sees the acclaimed Aussie outfit throws the listener into a range of different sonic territories and emotional fields through the exploration of even more sonic influences and creative tangents than before while being firmly rooted in the sound and approach that has won them fans across the world.

Written in Perth during pandemic related lockdowns, and recorded at McEwan’s Perth home and Blackbird Studio with Dave Parkin, Night Gnomes is informed by the sense of isolation and the accompanying mania of being out of sync with the normalcy and patterns of the life that McEwan and the rest of the band had gotten accustomed to over the past few years.

“Night Gnomes is a bit darker than the other four releases. I don’t know if that’s the bi-product (sic) of being locked inside Western Australia for the past two years but it’s definitely given us a lot of time to think,” McEwan says of the new album. “I reckon this record has a bit more of a KID A/Amnesiac vibe to it, it’s a bit weirder, a little left of the ‘psych/pop’ world we’ve been tagged under. I kinda like that though, forever expanding, variety is the spice of life! It starts moody, talks of break ups and new relationships; gets kinda chirpy in the middle and then ends really beautifully, a bit like Jurassic Park 3. I reckon Spielberg might actually rate it, he’s a mixture of a bag, ain’t he.

“All in all, I’m very proud of everyone’s efforts, it’s a step up which is a good direction to be stepping and it’s a good body of work that I’m happy to share with the world, our little patch of darkness. And if deeper isn’t your cup of moonshine, then at least you know the sixth album will be upbeat as F@!#.””

Because the album follows so closely to its immediate predecessor, in some ways the material on Night Gnomes feels a bit like a continuation of the same narrative ideas and story that McEwan initially dreamed up. Unsurprisingly, the album retains elements that will appeal to the band’s oldest fans while providing a peak of where the band is going next sonically. “I stepped up a few recording techniques and tried to hone in on the production side of things a little more, gave my mental train a fresh lick of paint and tried to make the album step up in quality from the previous four releases, while still holding onto that ‘Crumpet’ approach to songwriting,” McEwan says.

“There’s definitely a few moments in older albums where I’ve been lazy and tweaked things after we’ve finished recording but with Night Gnomes, I made sure to stick with Dave’s ethos and polish every track before it was sent to Jelly to mix. I’m much happier with how my vocals are sitting now, I left a lot of room in the tracks to bring them out rather than adding twenty million layers beforehand, it feels a lot cleaner, the idea for each song is present and accessible without too much ear straining. To me, it’s our best work. I feel like we’re moving forward while still learning and these albums are a checkpoint to where we’re at, and for now we’re happy with our little Night Gnome.”

Night Gnomes‘ latest single “Acid Dent” is a head banging ripper, centered around enormous, power chord-driven riffs, rumbling bass, driving rhythms paired with mosh pit friendly hooks and McEwan’s punchy shouts. But while thrashing with a relentless and seemingly carefree abandon, the song sees its narrator offering a bit of a concession to growing older and maybe slowing down a bit from some of the riotous decadence of youth — before its way too late.

Every generation has their means of escapism and for some reason here in Perth, or at least when we were in our heyday you could purchase mushrooms and acid from any decent supermarket,” McEwan explains. “So it’s inevitable we’re gonna be munching jumpers and chatting to fences in a few decades, but as for now, well… we’ve seemed to somehow milk a career out of it. Who’d have thought. But yeah, it’s probably not going to end well, hence my newly appointed position on drug safety. Then again, someone also once told me, “Hell hath no fury like a man who’s pressed pause on his drug abuse”, so now I’m slightly more perplexed as to where I stand. Anyway, good luck to everyone, enjoy yourselves but remember nobody wants to pick up your marbles after.”

“When we were younger, we were carefree and living tall, “McEwan says. “You get home with a handful of stuff in your pocket from whatever festival and just munch all of it, until you wake up in the morning so scattered. If we kept carrying on this way, we’d wind up in mental institutions by 35. So this is a nice little story about slowing down a bit.

Directed by frequent visual collaborator Ollie Jones, the video for “Acid Dent” continues a run of claymation-based animated videos. This time, we follow a mustachioed maintenance man working at PPC Chemicals, who has a terrible accident at work: He falls into a glowing vat of toxic sludge.

After being treated at a local hospital, he returns home to discover that as a result of his accident, everything he touches melts before his eyes. The video ends with some hilarious yet horrifying, horror movie-inspired hijinx. “I’ve always been a fan of the horror sub genre ‘ MELT MOVIES ‘ — films like Street Trash, The Blob and Body Melt,” Ollie Jones explains. “So when I was given the title of the track, I knew what I wanted to do right away. A simple story of a guy who after a freak accident is granted the powers to melt everything he touches and how it escalates in a comedy of errors throughout the video. Think the Skittles advert only more gruesome.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Trenton’s Joy on Fire Shares Sardonic and Explosive Ripper “Selfies”

Currently based in Trenton, noise rock/no wave/experimental rock/art punk outfit Joy on Fire — founding members John Paul Carillo (guitar), Anna Meadors (saxophone), spoken word artist Dan Gutstein (vocals) and a drummer — can trace their origins to Baltimore‘s art scene, where the band’s founding members originally met and started writing material together.

“Baltimore is a city where musicians of different stripes come together quite readily.  With the art college (MICA) [Maryland Institute College of Art] up the road from The Peabody Conservatory, trained jazz / classical musicians come together, in the city’s Station North Arts District, with self-taught musicians who bring other artistic disciplines into their music, a Talking Heads vibe,” Joy on Fire’s John Paul Carillo writes in a statement about Baltimore and its influence on the band. “In my case, while Anna was at Peabody, I was at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, getting a degree in fiction writing.  Anna and I met in a basement jam session, and the band began then.  We still play the first song we ever wrote together, ‘Red Wave,’ which finally appeared on 2021’s Unknown Cities.”

Meadors’ background as a classically trained saxophonist collided with Carillo’s love of experimental art rock and punk and creative sparks immediately few between the pair. “I knew pretty early on that a career in classical saxophone wasn’t for me; I met John during my sophomore year [at the Peabody Conservatory], and the world of weird rock music opened up for me,” Meadows writes. “I had been listening to this Terry Riley album for saxophone quartet and vocalist, Assassin Reverie, and fell in love with it, and John introduced me to the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, as well as the bands Morphine and King Crimson. There is this saxophone solo on King Crimson’s ‘One More Red Nightmare‘ that changed my life, it is so visceral, and it starts with just a long trill that is so simple and so perfect for the part. When Joy on Fire started, I was able to use the techniques I learned from jazz improvisation over this big chordal electric bass sound that John has, and it was such a thrill.”

Since those early jam sessions between Carillo and Meadors, the band has expanded to a quartet with the addition of Gutstein and a drummer while being remarkably prolific, releasing five full-length albums: 2015’s full-length debut The Complete Book of Bonsai, 2017’s Fire with Fire, 2019’s Hymn, last year’s Unknown Cities and Another Adventure in Red, which landed at #7 on Concrete Islands’ Albums of the Year list for 2021.

The Trenton-based outfit has toured up and down the Eastern Seaboard to support their recorded outfit with stops at Burlington Discover Jazz Fest, Boston’s The Middle East Café, Baltimore’s Metro Gallery, Asheville’s Asheville Music Hall and Shapeshifter Lab.

Joy on Fire’s seventh album, the Carillo and Meadors-produced States of America is slated for a June 11, 2022 release through their longtime label home Procrastination Records. The album’s material can be traced to a joint writing session between the band’s Carillo and Gutstein, which quickly “grew into monsters” as the duo turned loose song structures, ideas and lyrics into fleshed out songs. Most of the album’s material was recored at Princeton University‘s Studio B, where Meadows is currently a Ph.D. student in Music Composition.

The album will feature previously released singles “Anger and Decency,” “Thunderdome,” which originally premiered on Bob Boilen’s All Songs Considered and “Uh Huh,” which has an accompanying video that’s an official selection at 14 film festivals across the world, including LA Rocks Film Festival, London Rocks Film Festival and was a winner at the Obskuur Ghent Film Festival.

States of America‘s latest single “Selfies” is a neurotic, New Wave-meets-No Wave-meets-art punk ripper centered around a menacing Stooges-like groove, thunderous drumming, Gutstein’s sardonic, spoken word lyrics about the emptiness and vapidity of social media narcissism paired with Meador’s saxophone skronk and wailing that initially creeps its way into the arrangement and builds up in intensity as then song ends with an explosive and chaotic coda. The song captures the relentless need to be liked, seen as cool, successful and popular that’s inspired by the social media age in a way that’s startlingly accurate yet wildly hilarious.

“‘Selfies’ began with a riff I had hanging around for a while, a riff that has a bit of a Stooges vibe, especially with the reverse delay on it, and when lyricist / vocalist Dan Gutstein joined Joy on Fire, I arranged it for vocals,” Joy on Fire’s John Paul Carillo writes. “Dan has some great lines in it, displaying his edgy sense of humor: ‘Happiest,” goes the refrain, ‘we were happiest / Lying to each other.’  The piece is a critique of narcissistic culture, with ‘Love is like gazing everywhere / Catching an echo with your hands…Why not, why not, why not selfies!’  The impossibility, emptiness, and sadness of trying to catch an ‘echo with your hands’ is (not) relieved by taking selfies, would be one interpretation.  Often in Joy on Fire songs, saxophonist Anna Meadors begins the song or at least jumps in pretty quickly.  This time, she lays out for the body of the song, and then just kills it over a vamp that drives to the end of the tune, with Dan then sneaking back in, like the sax has driven him mad: ‘La-la-la-la-la Selfies!’  The wild saxophone is a further Stooges connection.  The acidy vibe that Iggy Pop asked for from Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay — Anna certainly has it here, and then some.”
 

The accompanying video for “Selfies” continues in a similar vein as the video for “Anger and Decency,” with heavy amounts of visual distortion and manipulation atop footage of the band performing the song and fittingly cuts to a number of video selfies.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Aussie Artist Gray Days Shares a Trippy Visual for Glistening “Transcend”

Gray Days is the (mostly) solo recording project of a rather mysterious Aussie singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who writes and records all the parts of his music — with the exception of drums and tricky lead guitar parts. He makes his music in his garage and then takes it to a friend’s studio, where that friend engineers and mixes the material. 

Last week, I wrote about “Going Nowhere,” a song that sonically brought JOVM mainstay act Husky and Starsailor to mind, complete with an anthemic Brit Pop-like hook. But underneath all of that, “Going Nowhere” revealed a songwriter with a deliberate attention to craftsmanship and an uncanny knack for a big, catchy hook.

Released late last year, “Transcend” is a dreamy, 120 Minutes MTV-like track centered around shimmering and twangy guitars, a sinuous bass line, the Aussie artist’s plaintive delivery, a big hook and a wah wah pedaled solo, that sounds as though it were inspired by Starfish era The Church.

The accompanying visual features some trippy and fittingly psychedelic imagery.

Both “Going Nowhere” and “Transcend” will appear on Gray Days full-length debut, Drifting, which is slated for release tomorrow.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Smile Shares a Gorgeous and Unsettling Visual for “Free In The Knowledge”

The Smile features a collection of England’s most accomplished musicians — and some extremely familiar names: Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, and Sons of Kemet‘s Tom Skinner.

So far, the trio have released four critically applauded singles, including two which I’ve written about.

  • “The Smoke“
  • “You Will Never Work in Television Again“
  • “Skirting On The Surface,” a meditative slow-burn centered around Greenwood’s looping and shimmering guitar, stuttering jazz syncopation, a supple yet propulsive bass line, mournful saxophone and Yorke’s weary falsetto singing lyrics contemplating impermanence and mortality.
  • “Pana-vision” a cinematic, Amnesiac era Radiohead-like song centered around a mesmerizing piano line, jazz syncopated drumming, a supple bass line and Yorke’s imitable falsetto.

All four of those tracks will appear on the trio’s highly anticipated debut Nigel Godrich-produced full-length debut A Light For Attracting Attention. Slated for a May 13, 2022 release through XL Recordings, the album features strings by the London Contemporary Orchestra and a full brass section of contemporary British jazz musicians that include Bryon Wallen, Theon Cross and Nathaniel Cross, Chelsea Carmichael, Robert Stillman, and Jason Yarde.

A Light for Attracting Attention‘s fifth and latest single “Free In The Knowledge” is a sparse and brooding song centered around atmospheric synths, strummed acoustic guitar, a cinematic string arrangement and Yorke’s imitable falsetto singing lyrics that captures the desperation, uncertainty and madness of our unique and troubling moment.

Directed by Leo Leigh, the accompanying, cinematically shot visual that captures a collection of characters in the throes of an inexplicable and desperate mania in the English woods. The end result is a video that’s unsettling, haunting and full of existential dread.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: A.M. Boys Share a Trippy Visual for Hypnotic “Traveler”

New York-based electronic duo A.M. Boys features two accomplished and grizzled scene vets:

  • John Blonde (synths, vocals), is an electronic musician and singer/songwriter, who was a principle member of JOVM mainstay act House of Blondes. As a solo artist, he releases material as Muscle Club.
  • Chris Moore, a producer, engineer, mixer, multi-instrumentalist, and electronic musician. As a producer and engineer, Moore has worked with David Bowie, TV on the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Scarlett Johansson, Foals, and OSEES. As an electronic musician, Moore has released solo work as Light Vortex and through a variety of other aliases through the years.

Blonde and Moore can trace their collaboration together back to meeting at an Aphex Twin listening party they attended back in 2014. The duo struck up an instant chemistry that resulted in a batch of original songs in 2018 using analog synths, drum machines, space echo and voice that paired clean, post-punk minimalism with a contemporary approach to rhythm and arrangement.

They sent Suicide’s Martin Rev one of their earliest tracks “Distance Decay,” and by the next day, they were offered an opening slot with the post-punk legend. The duo have shared a stage with Deerhunter side project Moon Diagrams, and they’ve played one of the most memorable sets at local, experimental venue Spectrum. As DJs, they’ve spun sets at Jupiter Disco, Troost, Sundown Bar, Wythe Hotel and several other spots across town.

The New York-based duo’s full-length debut Distance Decay is slated for a June 3, 2022 release. Written and recorded by the duo, at their Brooklyn-based studio Glowmatic Sound with additional vocal recording by Jeff Berner at Studio G, the album’s title is derived from a term that describes the pattern of criminals committing fewer crimes, the further they travel from their homes. Sonically, the ten-song album sees the members of A.M. Boys focusing on an intimate and minimalist approach to instrumentation and composition through the juxtaposition of rippling rhythms with melodic synth lines and ethereal vocals.

The album’s material as written during darkly lit, late night jam sessions influenced by post-punk and coldwave, along with their revered trinity of Kraftwerk, Aphex Twin and Prince — with one song being directly influenced by Throbbing Gristle. The recording sessions were deliberately pared down to allow the pair to recreate the songs live. For the duo, the minimal approach helped to yield material that develops a deeper emotional resonance with repeated listens. “We knew we didn’t want to layer too much, we felt that the songs sounded stronger with less. A lot of modern music can be fussy and cluttered, we wanted to present the music simply, gaining a transparent power,” Blonde explains.

During the height of the pandemic, Blonde and Moore holed up at their studio and recored an entire second album — and are currently working to incorporate some of that new material in their live sets. But in the meantime, Distance Decay‘s second single, “Traveler” is a mesmerizing and hypnotic track featuring skittering beats, glistening and oscillating synths paired with Blonde’s ethereal vocals and spacey feedback. While nodding at John Blonde’s previous work with House of Blondes and Kraftwerk, “Traveler” fittingly possesses a trippy cosmic air, the end result is a song that seems to be a perfect for late night space travel.

Directed and filmed by New York-based motion designer David-Lee Fiddler, the accompanying visual for “Traveler” was a deeply collaborative effort between Fiddler and the duo that incorporates live, in-studio footage shot by Doug Young, animated still photos taken by A.M. Boys’ John Blonde, which were used for the album’s cover art. The end result is a trippy and mesmerizing video that seems perfect for those with ASMR. The duo credit Fiddler with being an energetic director that “seemed capable of translating any idea we had into reality.” Blonde adds “The ‘Traveler’ video is what we think the electricity looks like inside our synthesizers.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Denver’s Graffiti Welfare Shares Trippy “Volume”

George Lattimore is a Denver-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the emerging psych pop recording project Graffiti Welfare. Lattimore grew up in a music loving home, where he developed a voracious ear, listening to anything he could get his hands on.

Eventually, the Denver-based multi-instrumentalist discovered Animal Collective, Tame Impala, Radiohead, Brian Eno, Miles Davis and a few others. For Lattimore, listening to Tame Impala’s Lonerism was a life changing experience: The first time he heard the album, he bought a Roland Juno-G keyboard and started writing and recording his own material.

Lattimore used that Juno-G until the screen died; but that was fine because at that point, he was ready to grow musically and to become much more serious at pursuing a career in music.

He moved from Austin to Denver for grad school, then recorded and self-released an EP on Spotify that began to receive some positive attention. Buoyed by the positive attention from his debut, Lattimore felt that he was ready to make something much more serious, defined and complete — his full-length debut Revolving Shores.

Written, self-recorded and self-produced over the course of five years, Revolving Shores was mastered at Golden Colorado‘s The Wheelhouse Studio. Revolving Shores‘ first single “Volume” is centered around Lattimore’s laconic delivery, glistening synth arpeggios, reverb-drenched, blown out beats and a wobbling bass line. The end result is a somnambulant song that evokes a half-remembered yet very vivid dream.

The accompanying video for “Volume” features stock footage of Midtown Manhattan shot in the 50s and 60s, mass manufactured doodads, what appears to be Los Angeles in the 80s that’s slowly given trippy, mind-bending effects.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Emerging Aussie Artist Gray Days Shares a Heady Visual for Anthemic “Going Nowhere”

Gray Days is the (mostly) solo recording project of a rather mysterious Aussie singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who writes and recordings all the parts of his music — with the exception of drums and tricky lead guitar parts. He makes his music in his garage and then takes it to a friend’s studio, where that friend engineers and mixes the material.

Released a few weeks ago “Going Nowhere” sees the emerging Aussie artist pairing shimmering and reverb drenched guitars, a steady backbeat and a plaintive vocal delivery with an enormous, anthemic Brit Pop hook. And while sonically recalling Aussie JOVM mainstay act Husky and Starsailor, “Going Nowhere” not only reveals a deliberate attention to craftsmanship — but a songwriter with an uncanny knack for writing an infectious hook.

The accompanying visual for “Going Nowhere” is a heady mix of cinematic, live action footage of every day people — a young couple madly in love, a commuter train in the rain and of people seemingly starting anew in their lives with animation and other effects.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Blake Morgan Shares Euphoric Love Song

Blake Morgan is a New York-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and the founder and President of ECR Music Group. In his role as President of ECR Music Group, Morgan’s ideas, opinions and editorials on music and the music business have been regularly published by a number of major media outlets including The New York Times, Billboard Magazine, CNN, Newsweek, Variety, The Hill, NME, The Huffington Post, and The Guardian.

He also lectures frequently at The Georgetown University Law Center, California State University, Syracuse University,NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, American University and his alma mater, Berklee College of Music. His music advocacy has taken him to Capitol Hill numerous times where, as the founder of the #IRespectMusic movement, he continues to fight for musicians rights in the digital age. As a producer, Morgan has collaborated with a who’s who of contemporary music from Lenny Kravitz to Lesley Gore. 

Since the release of 2013’s Diamonds in the Dark, Morgan has been extremely busy: he has a remarkably six-year run of sold-out shows at Rockwood Music Hall that often feature guest spots from a number of Grammy and Tony Award-winning artists, who join him for unique, on-stage collaborations; 150,000 miles of touring and sold-out shows on both sides of the Atlantic; and production work on over 20 albums by some serious A-list artists. 

Late last year, the New York-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and music biz exec released “Down Below Or Up Above” to praise from the likes of The Aquarian, Post-Punk.com, Culture Catch and my dear friends at Glamglare. “Down Below Or Up Above” will appear on Morgan’s long-awaited fifth album Violent Delights, which is slated for a May 20, 2022 release through ECR Music Group.

Last month, I wrote about the rousingly anthemic “My Love Is Waiting” a defiant and brazenly hopeful love song that views love as the most important and necessary force of the world, meant to get people up from their seats to dance and and shout along with it. But underneath its anthemic hooks, the song, which at points nodded at The Police‘s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” Joe Jackson and JOVM mainstays Palace Winter revealed a penchant for old-timey pop craftsmanship paired with an uncanny knack for a well-placed, razor sharp hook.

Violent Delights‘ third and latest single “Baby I Would Want You” is swooning and euphoric guitar pop song that to my ears that sounds indebted to Elvis Costello, XTC‘s “Mayor of Simpleton.” While continuing a remarkable run of brazen and defiantly earnest love songs, “Baby I Would Want You” manages to be unintentionally fitting for our apocalyptic moment that simply says “welp, the ship is sinking and the end is nigh, but I got you and you got me.” r

It’s a rare sort of love, but the sort of love we all need in our desperate and uncertain time.

Continuing his ongoing collaboration with genre-defying filmmaker Alice Teeple, the accompanying video for “Baby I Would Want You” is shot in a cinematic black and white at Williamsburg’s Pete’s Candy Store and features Morgan and his backing band performing and hanging out at the venue. And much like the preceding visuals, it captures a very New York scene that’s near and dear to my heart.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Mackenzie Leighton Shares a Playful Visual for “Je ne suis pas poéte”

Mackenzie Leighton is a rising San Diego-born, Paris-based indie folk singer/songwriter musician and JOVM mainstay. When she was a child, Leighton’s family moved to a small, seaside town in Maine, where she grew up and spent her most other formative years. The JOVM mainstay can trace the origins of her music career to her youth: her father took her to classical piano lessons as a girl.

When Leighton turned 18, she attended my alma mater, New York University — and while in New York, she played in several jazz and folk inspired bands. Upon graduation, Leighton relocated to Paris. Leighton landed a day job as a florist and then launched a solo career with the release of 2017’s self-titled EP, a singer/songwriter folk effort that was released to praise and comparisons to Phoebe Bridgers and Julia Jacklin. 

Leighton’s sophomore EP, 2020’s Tourist(e) was a decided change in sonic direction that found the rising American-born, French-based artist working with French musicians and producers while pairing folk-inspired songwriting with lush yet contemporary instrumentation and production. Leighton has supported both of her recorded efforts with shows in and around Paris, as well as with tours in Italy, Belgium and here in the States. 

Last year’s Fleuriste EP thematically saw Leighton focusing on the reality of life as an expatriate in Europe: being constantly torn between two different cultures and hemispheres. Sonically, the EP continues in a similar vein as its immediate predecessor: Leighton pairing folk-leaning songwriting with lush and modern production.

I had previously written about three of the EP’s singles last year:

In the buildup to the EP’s release, I managed to write about two of the EP’s singles:

  • “Un jour la vie,” a playful and infectious invitation to dream of an escape to Italy, to drink endless Aperol Spritzes and to dance the night away without a care in the world, centered around Leighton’s coquettish vocals, a sinuous yet propulsive bass line and shimmering guitars. 
  • “Flueriste,” a hook-driven pop confection that focuses on the plight of musicians unable to work because of the pandemic — but full of hopes of a bright future of live shows and all of the things we missed so much. 
  • “Mona by the Seaside,” another breezy, hook-driven pop confection that tells the story of the narrator’s friend Mona inviting her for a weekend at the beach. While detailing easy-going summer days and nights with friends — both old and new — the song is centered around the bittersweet and tacit acknowledgement that nothing is forever, and that the good times need to be cherished.

The EP’s latest single, EP closing track, the slow-burning and contemplative “Je ne suis poéte” was one of the first songs that Leighton wrote in French. Throughout the song, Leighton openly discusses how difficult it is to write in another language and how paradoxically, it forces a guileless and unvarnished sort of honesty: She winds up getting straight to the point and saying things frankly in a way that she couldn’t in her native English. But at its core, it’s a sweet and playful love song about the desire to write a song in French that a Francophone lover will love.

Directed by Coraline Benetti, the accompanying visual follows Leighton to a quirky book store — the sort that you’d only see in Europe or pre-Guilliani/pre-Bloomberg New York. And while in the bookstore, she winds up going on a series of endearingly awkward dates with a handful of famous French poets — François de Malherbe, Paul Verlaine and Jacques Prévert — but nothing seems to work.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Silk Skin Lovers Share a Dreamy and Atmospheric Ballad

Silk Skin Lovers — Félix Foucambert (vocals, guitar), Jean-Baptiste Halin (bass, bass synths), Lucas Lerbret (guitar, backing vocals) and London-born Callum Taylor (keys, backing vocals) — is a rising French indie rock outfit that emerged into French scene with a handful of singles inspired by and informed by nightlife and nightlife revelry.

Released last year, Silk Screen Lovers’ debut EP, Bloom saw the band crafting material that bounced between playful delight to late-night melancholy; the blurring of memories to the brink of sobering up a bit as you head home — or when you arrive home, whichever comes first. While the EP’s material is primarily based in magical surrealism, it also reveals a band concerned about serious issues, including racism and police brutality.

“The first seeds of Bloom were planted in the summer of 2020,” the members of Silk Skin Lovers explain. “As a young and developing band, we found ourselves growing in a context that was harsh and complicated, as opportunities for artists were scarce to non-existent for a period. The EP was a natural response to not only the artistic restraints we were faced with, but the frustration of being away from what we love to do, and further from our aspirations as musicians.”

Earlier this year, I wrote about the the uptempo, Smiths-like bop “Moon 1AM,” a track that revealed itself to be emotionally ambivalent: despite the upbeat tempo, the song was a bittersweet and dreamy rumination meant to make you dance away your sorrows — even if it’s only for a little bit.

The rising French act’s latest single, “Forever” is a slow-burning and dreamy ballad centered around atmospheric synths, shimmering, reverb-drenched guitars, gently padded drums and Foucambert’s achingly plaintive vocals. “Forever” manages to sonically recall Beach House while simultaneously evoking melancholy and euphoria.

Directed by Robinson Lebret, the accompanying video for “Forever” follows a young woman as she prepares for a night out — to catch Silk Skin Lovers at a local club while reminiscing about a presumed lost love. And as a result, the video is a fever dream in which past and present bump into each other uncomfortably, and where ghosts linger.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Belau Teams Up with Akacia on The Dreamy and Atmospheric “Dreamstate”

With the release of their debut single “Island of Promise,” the Budapest-based electronic music duo and JOVM mainstays  Belau — Peter Kedves and Buzas Krisztian — quickly exploded into their homeland’s scenes while establishing bouyant, summery, dance floor friendly sound designed to evoke “cheerful places, filled with sunshine, where one can relax, unwind and find peace and harmony,” the duo explain.

“Island of Promise” landed at #1 on Deezer Hungary, one of the country’s largest string services and reventually amassed over 500,000 streams. The song was featured in the HBO Hungary series Aranyélet. And adding to a growing profile, “Island of Promise” was part of an international Pepsi ad campaign shown in 33 countries.

The Budapest-based duo’s full-length debut, 2016’s The Odyssey was nominated for and won a a Hungarian Grammy for Best Electronic Music Album. They supported the album with an intense, international touring schedule: 120 shows in 19 countries with a run across global festival circuit, which included stops at Eurosonic, Sziget, Reeperbahn, Untold, and SXSW.

After the release of The Odyssey, Belau released a series of remixes of tracks off their debut. Their sophomore album, 2019’s Colourwave featured:

  • “Breath,” a sultry, dance floor friendly collaboration with Sophie Lindinger centered around glitchy beats and a sinuous yet anthemic hook
  • The Massive Attack-like “Natural Pool“
  • “Rapture,” a collaboration with Blue Foundation‘s Kirstine Stubbe Teglbjærg centered around a trip hop-inspired production featuring shimming synth arpeggios, wobbling low end and Stubbe Teglbjærg’s sultry vocals
  • “Essence,” a collaboration with Sophie Barker that features Barker’s sultry vocals gliding over a shimmering production centered around looping, reverb-drenched guitar shimmering synths, skittering beats and an enormous hook that brought Third-era Portishead and Octo Octa to mind – but a with a brooding air.

During the height of the pandemic, the duo teamed up with Sexto Sentido for  “Luz,” a decided change in sonic direction that was a blend of traditional Afro-Cuban folk music and modern electronica paired with lyrics sung in Yoruba and Spanish. To my ears, “Luz” reminded me of JOVM mainstays Ibeyi. And according to the band, the song, which was included as part of Colourwave DLX album was a spiritual journey for the duo.

The Colourwave DLX album also featured an Ohxalá remix of “Breath” feat. Sophie Lindinger that retained Lindinger’s sultry vocal and paired with a dub-leaning house production that gave the song a completely different feel: a bracing chilliness that brought Octo Octa’s Between Both Selves to mind.

Belau’s first single of the year, “Dreamstate” features Aussie pop vocalist Akacia, who has amassed over 50 million streams across the different streaming platforms. “Dreamstate” pairs the Aussie vocalist’s sultry and expressive vocals with an atmospheric R&B production featuring skittering reverb-drenched beats, a reverb-drenched guitar solo, glistening synth arpeggios to a create a song that evokes a half-remembered and feverish dream.

“The history of transfiguration is deeply rooted in our culture, but for most of us, the grace we are possibly able to live towards ourselves is distant, mystical and looks impossible to have access to in this profane world,” the Hungarian JOVM mainstays say in press notes. “Although this road, on the other hand, is available for everyone, if you walk through it, it feels like an actual ‘dreamstate.’ The song tells the story of a life beyond our own limits, a shift from stagnation to progress, a way out of our own dread. A man who is much wiser than us once claimed that only if such an internal process takes place in the individual hearts – and then, of course, outwards – is the way to bring eternal peace to the societies of the world. And there is certainly nothing else that Belau could support even more in these increasing dynamics of the world. We are all made out of gold.”

The accompanying video was filmed in Malta and follows a woman as she explores and wanders around the Mediterranean island nation. Through the use of prism and kaleidoscopic filters, the gorgeous surroundings are given a dream-like quality.

“We made a video for ‘Dreamstate’ in Malta with our good friend. Spent four days on these beautiful islands, at daytime we discovered the breathtaking landscapes at the evening we played some live shows, such good memories” the members of Belau recall.

The duo are currently working on their third album — and are touring across Europe, including some festival dates.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Gold Tongue Shares a Menacing Visual for Anthemic “Who Do You Think You Are”

London, Ontario, Canada-based indie outfit Gold Tongue — Brent Jackson, Danny Shultz, Josh Torrance, and Thomas Perquin — specialize in a hard charging, anthemic take on rock that draws from desert rock, blues and hard rock.

Centered around a chugging and propulsive bass line, steady warpath drumbeat, enormous power chords, an arena rock friendly hook, bursts of twinkling keys, and a 12 bar blues-like song structure, the Canadian band’s high octane, debut single “Who Do Think You Are” is a song specifically meant to be played loud as humanly possible — whether in your car or at a small, sweaty club.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, “Who Do You Think You Are” is inspired by this peculiar moment full of misinformation, mistrust, bullshit and fear — during one of the oddest, most difficult periods of modern history. “Our collective psyches have been beaten to a pulp, our emotions strapped to a rocket ship flown by billionaires into space at a million miles an hour,” the members of Gold Tongue say in press notes.

The accompanying visual is menacing and unsettling, as it features masked figures with black and white imagery of the band’s members superimposed over them. Throughout the video, the faces morph into surrealistic and nightmarish shapes.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: MADSUN Teams Up with Naomi Wild on the Soulful and Yearning “You and Me”

MADSUN is a risng French-born electronic music producer, who currently splits his time between his native France and the States. His earliest tracks amassed over one-million streams and those tracks received media coverage in 25 countries.

Adding to a growing international profile, the rising French-born producer has had his music appear in ad campaigns for The Definite Article, as well as The Architect: Paris video game and the original soundtrack for the Lille, France-based European Film Festival.

MADSUN’s latest single “You and Me” is a slow-burning bit of synth pop centered around glistening synth arpeggios and thumping beats paired with Naomi Wild‘s soulful, yearning vocals singing about a profound and deep love shared between two soulmates.

Directed by MADSUN and Arctic Hue, and edited by Allan Fernandes and Mayur Sharma, the accompanying video for “You and Me” feature two 3D generated status facing each other and in a deep and loving embrace.