Author: William Ruben Helms

William Ruben Helms is a Corona, Queens, NYC-born and-based African American music journalist, freelance writer, editor, photographer and founder of the DIY, independent music and photography site, The Joy of Violent Movement. Over the course of the past two decades, Helms’ writing and photography has been published in Downbeat, Premier Guitar Magazine (photography), Consequence, The Inventory, Glide Magazine.com (words and photography), Publisher’s Weekly, Sheckys.com, Shecky’s Bar and Nightlife Guide 2004, New York Press, Ins&Outs Magazine, Dish Du Jour Magazine, Aussie music publication Musicology.xyz (photography) and countless others, including his own site. With The Joy of Violent Movement, Helms specializes in covering music with an eclectic, globe-trotting, and genre-defying perspective that’s deeply inspired by and informed by his birthplace and home, arguably one of the most diverse places in the world. Since its founding back in 2010, The Joy of Violent Movement can proudly claim readers across the US, Canada, the UK, The Netherlands, France, Australia, and several others throughout its history. https://www.joyofviolentmovement.com https://www.joyofviolentmovement.com/shop https://www.instagram.com/william_ruben_helms Twitter: @yankee32879 @joyofviolent become a fan of the joy of violent movement: https://www.facebook.com/TheJoyofViolentMovement support the joy of violent movement on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheJoyofViolentMovement hire me for headshots, portraits and event photography: https://www.photobooker.com/photographer/ny/new-york/william-h?duration=1?duration=1#
New Audio by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Here Lies Man Returns with Their Most Anthemic and Ambitious Song to Date

Over the past year or so, I’ve written a bit about the Los Angeles, CA-based act Here Lies Man, and as you may recall, the act, which was founded by Marcos Garcia and Geoff Mann, both of whom have been members of renowned Afrobeat act Antibalas have received attention here and elsewhere for a sound that manages to seamlessly bridge classic, Fela Kuti-era, funky Afrobeat grooves with classic, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin-era, power chord-fueled rock.

The band’s highly-anticipated sophomore effort You Will Know Nothing is slated for a June 15, 2018 release through RidingEasy Records, and the album finds the band busily refining and expanding upon their sound; in fact, as the band’s co-founder Marcos Garcia explains in press notes, “We’re very conscious of how the rhythms service the riffs. Tony Iommi’s (Black Sabbath) innovation was to make the riff the organizing principle of a song. We are talking the same approach but employing a different organizing principle: For Iommi, it was the blues, for us to comes directly from Africa.” Along with that, the members of the band specifically focused on writing catchier, much more anthemic material with a slightly slicker, crisper production, while lyrically, they wanted to focus on a conceptualized effort, as the songs thematically are centered around states of being and consciousness. As Garcia continues “We wanted to go deeper with the sonic experience. Even though it sounds more hi-fi than the first record, it was important that it didn’t sound too polished.”

Interestingly, the album’s material is also based around some musical theory and mathematics with interludes between each song that are 2/3rds to 3/4th of the tempo of the previous song. “The reason it breaks down to 2 over 3 or 3 over 4 is that everything in the music rhythmically corresponds to a set of mathematical algorithms known as the clave. The clave is an ancient organizing rhythmic principle developed in Africa.” As the band’s Geoff Mann says “We dove deep into the texture of the music, beyond the groove and the riff. Although something might sound like one instrument, there are subtle layers shifting through. It’s definitely a headphone album.”

However, much like the previous album, the duo of Garcia and Mann recorded You Will Know Nothing a their Los Angeles studio on a Tascam 388 8-track recorder. Congas later recorded by percussionists Richard Panta and Reinaldo DeJesus. Then Garcia traveled to New York to record the interludes with former Antibalas keyboardist Victor Axelrod. Mixing took the most time of the entire process, as they had to found the proper sonic space of each layer of musical detail with their first album engineer Jermey Page mixing the drum parts and the band tackling the remainder while balancing a busy touring schedule.

Much like its hallucinogenic but anthemic predecessor “Fighting,” You Will Know Nothing’s latest single “That Much Closer to Nothing” is centered around a blistering power-chord rock and shuffling yet propulsive rhythms — and while managing to mesh psych rock, stoner rock, Afrobeat and classic rock, the album’s new single is incredibly textured and requires multiple, careful listens. Interestingly, the track also reveals a band that has written some of the most ambitious yet accessible material they’ve written to date.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Los Angeles-based Indie Act Elle Belle Writes a Break Up Letter to America

Led by its acclaimed creative mastermind and primary songwriter the New Hampshire-born, Los Angeles, CA-based Christopher Pappas, who’s best known for his work in The Everyday Visuals and has assembled and conducted his own orchestra to play his original orchestral compositions, and has written compositions for NASA, Elle Belle is a Los Angeles-based synth pop/garage rock act  — and with the band’s forthcoming, sophomore album No Signal slated for a June 29, 2018 release through Little Record Company, the album sonically finds the band drawing from synth pop, krautrock and indie rock while being among the most politically charged material they’ve released to date.

Interestingly enough, the album’s latest single “The Real World” pairs a slick, dance floor friendly production that brings Tame Impala, In Ghost Colours-era Cut Copy and Uncanny Valley-era Midnight Juggernauts with an extremely cynical and pretty hopeless take on how Pappas believes that Americans have fallen asleep at the political wheel. “The Obama years felt like such a triumph that we failed to stay politically diligent,” Pappas says. “The video shows these tales of us letting our guard down as told between two men living in a now-destroyed world. The song explores the reality that, to a certain extent, the Trump presidency is something that we let happen, not something that happened to us. Then people were dying, all we did was stop and stare. Now it seems so silly, but I guess you had to be there. Trump was a punchline, but it’s not so funny anymore.”  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays The Vryll Society Release Trippy Yet Meditative Visuals for Album Single “Andrei Rublev”

Over the past handful of years, I’ve written quite a bit about the Liverpool-based shoegaze quintet and JOVM mainstays The Vryll Society, and as you may recall, the band, which is comprised of Michael Ellis, Ryan Ellis, Lewis McGuinness, Lloyd Shearer, and Benjamin Robinson have received attention from both this site and across the blogosphere with a series of singles that revealed a sound and songwriting approach that draws from a diverse array of influences, including Funkadelic, Aphrodite’s Child, krautrock and classic shoegaze.

The Liverpool-based shoegazers latest single “Andrei Rublev” is the first official single from the band’s long-awaited full-length debut, Course of the Satellite slated for an August 10, 2018 release, and interestingly enough, the song is inspired by Andre Tarkovsky’s 1996 arthouse film Andrei Rublev, a historical period piece and biographical film on the life of the 15th century Russian icon painter, during one of several incredibly turbulent periods of Russian history, which lead to the creation of the Tsardom of Russia. Thematically, the film concerned itself with several themes — artistic freedom, religion, political ambiguity and uncertainty, autodidacticism, and the creation of art under a cruel and repressive regime. And while the film’s characters lived over 400 years ago, there’s so much that should resonate with modern viewers. In any case, the understandably slow-burning and meditative song manages to nod at shoegaze and 70s AM rock in a way that brings another JOVM mainstay to mind, Chicago’s Secret Colours, but while hinting at an urgent ache for something far bigger and permanent than oneself. 

The recently released video features an alien like orb that floats in the distance that reflects and refracts the images so that they’re given a fish-eye effect, as the band walks through the British woods in a brooding fashion; throughout the song, the band’s individual members are shown with the very setting they’re walking superimposed behind them but upside down, which creates a meditative yet trippy effect. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Last year, I had written a bit about the Brighton, UK-based indie rock band, Thyla, and as you may recall the band can trace its origins to when its founding trio of Millie Duthie, Danny Southwell and Dan Hole met back in 2015 while attending college. Quickly bonding over shared musical interests, Duthie, Southwell and Hole formed the band — but with the addition of the band’s newest member, Mitch Dutch, the band began to reimagine their sound and aesthetic, before writing and recording  some new, attention grabbing material, centered around a distaste of what they felt is the stale and boring state of the British recording industry.

Not only have they furthered Brighton’s growing reputation across the UK for producing some of England’s best and hottest, up-and-coming bands, they’ve played with the likes of Dream Wife, Luxury Death, Matt Maltese, Yonaka, Husky Loops and Lazy Day.  Adding to a growing profile, the members of Thyla have been spotlighted alongside Pale Waves, Nilüfer Yanya, and Sorry in NME‘s 100 Essential Acts for 2018, and this year, they’ve shared bills with Sunflower Bean, INHEAVEN and Fickle Friends. Additionally, BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stephens named the band one of his Alternative Tips for 2018 — and that interestingly enough coincides with a headlining spot at BBC’S Biggest Weekend Fringe and a set at The Great Escape Festival.

Produced by Macks Faulkron and mixed by Alex Newport, Thyla’s latest single “Blame” may arguably be one of the more arena rock/festival circuit rock friendly singles they’ve released to date, as the song is centered around angular guitar and bass chords played through a generous amount of reverb, thundering and propulsive drumming and a rousing, anthemic hook meant to evoke the anxious frenzy of neurosis and crippling self-consciousness. As the band explains “‘Blame’ is a about the uncharacteristic choices people make when they’re trying to be like someone else, for the sake of someone else, at a cost to themselves. It’s a neurotic frenzy of guitars with self conscious lyrics about the state of paralysis jealously puts you in; blind anger with no real solution.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Throughout most of the course of this site’s history, I’ve written quite a bit about the New York-based produced, DJ, remixer and longtime JOVM mainstay Rhythm Scholar, and as you may recall, he has received attention for slickly produced, crowd-pleasing mashups and remixes of classic hip-hop, soul, pop and New Wave. Earlier this year, I wrote about Rhythm Scholar’s remix/reworking of Bill Withers‘ beloved classic “Use Me Up” featuring a backing band,  which features Marcus Horndt contributing soulful blasts of Fender Rhodes, Jason Spillman contributing a 70s soul and disco-inspired bass line, Sami Turune, contributing some bluesy guitar paired with Withers warm vocals and rhythm guitar, and some insane scratching and production from Rhythm Scholar. And what I loved about that remix was that it was a lovingly anachronistic take that walked a difficult tightrope between the original’s 70s soulful roots and contemporary production.

The New York-based producer, DJ and remixer has continued to be remarkably prolific, and with his latest single, he takes on Chic‘s classic, smash hit “Good Times” with a breezy, funky house-leaning remix featuring layers of arpeggiated keys, twinkling Fender Rhodes, thumping beats and a muscular bass line while retaining the song’s infectious hook. Much like his “Use Me Up” remix, the “Good Times” remix updates the song in a way that breathes a different life into it, while retaining some of the most familiar and beloved elements of the original.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Late last month, I wrote about the Austin, TX-based indie rock act Sun June, and as you may recall the act, comprised of founding members Laura Colwell and Stephen Salisbury, along with Michael Bain (guitar), Sarah Schultz (drums), and Justin Harris (bass) can trace their origins to when its founding duo started the band while working long hours in the editing rooms of renowned filmmaker Terrance Malick’s editing rooms, practicing whenever Malick was out of town.

Last year, the band began working on their forthcoming full-length album Years with Evan Kaspar at Estuary Recording Facility, recording the material live to tape without being overly polished or processed. As the band notes, the album is a “we’ve-been-broken-up-along-time” album, and explores how loss — of friends, family members and partners — evolves over time; but while not being too heavy or too serious.  Album opening track “Discotheque,” was an atmospheric and slow-burning track that manages to evoke a complex array of profoundly inescapable and inexplicable loss but with a sense of pride and celebration; to truly live, after all is to know, accept and live with loss, because it meant you knew love and connection with others, even if it were brief.

“Slow Rise II,” Years‘ latest single begins like a gorgeous, half-remembered reverie with a rousing hook that manages to possess an underlying ache for anything familiar — even if it you can’t go back home again and even if you can’t get that precious moment back. And they do so while furthering their growing reputation for shimmering reverb-heavy indie rock with a folk leaning.

The band is touring to build up buzz and support for their new album, check out the tour dates below.
TOUR DATES
May 16 | Austin, TX @ Stubb’s (w. Hovvdy, Half Waif)
June 16 | El Paso, TX @ Neon Rose
June 17 | Tucson, AZ @ Owls Club
June 19 | Los Angeles, CA @ Bootleg Theater
June 20 | San Francisco, CA @ The Knockout
June 21 | Chico, CA @ Tender Loving
June 22 | Olympia, WA @ Cascadia Brewing
June 23 | Portland, OR @ Turn Turn Turn
June 28 | Phoenix, AZ @ Trunk Space
June 29 | Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
June 30 | Marfa, TX @ Lost Horse Saloon

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Sugar Candy Mountain Offer Empathy as a Weapon of The Resistance

Currently comprised of founding member Will Halsey (vocals, drums), Ash Reiter (vocals, guitar), Sean Olmsted (guitar, synth) and Jeff Moller (bass), the Oakland, CA-based psych rock act and JOVM mainstays Sugar Candy Mountain can trace its origins to when Halsey, who had had stints drumming in several different Bay Area-based bands including The Blank Tapes, fpodbpod and Ash Reiter‘s backing band began the project as a bedroom recording project in which he initially wrote songs in the vein of of Montreal and The Beach Boys. Shortly after Halsey began the project, he recruited Ash Reiter, and the duo began writings songs together — with the duo writing decidedly psychedelic material, inspired by Reiter’s obsessive collecting of various effects pedals. Since the release of their earlier material, there has been a series of lineup changes with the band adding Olmsted and Moller, as its newest members, allowing Halsey to return to drum duties.
 
Sugar Candy Mountain’s latest album Do Right was released earlier this month and the album is deeply influenced by our outrageous and infuriating sociopolitical moment. Written as part travelogue and part response to the moment, the album’s material is also an attempt to offer a much needed balm that says “come on outside and daydream a bit; look at the sky; look at the flowers; enjoy a moment of necessary peace — because it’s so rare.” With that in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that the band has noted that nature is where they often go to re-calibrate their moral compass, when it’s been frequently upended by the demoralizing and maddening daily news cycle. Sonically speaking, Do Right finds the band retaining elements of the 60s and 70s rock and psych rock inspired sound, centered around Reiter’s ethereal vocals; however, the album finds the band adding synths, which will subtly modernizing their sound also gives it a slightly retro-futuristic sound similar to
Pavo Pavo and Drakkar Nowhere.
 
Now, as you may recall album single “Split in Two” was a hazy and mesmerizing track in which the band invites the listener to join them as they had to a quiet, beautiful place to escape this mad, mad, mad, mad world. Interestingly, the album’s latest single “Mar-a-Lago” as the band’s Reiter explains in press notes was written from the perspective of a Trump supporter, of someone who feels voiceless and vaguely unsatisfied with life and who desperately wants to matter, to belong to something bigger than themselves, to be lead by someone who can get them what they think they need in their lives — and as a result, it’s arguably one of the more empathetic portrayals of desperately lost, desperately stupid people I’ve heard in some time, as it suggests that desperation the Trump supporter has felt is a familiar one. 
 
Directed by Arsenii Vaselenko, the recently released video for “Mar-a-Lago” features the band’s Reiter and Halsey dressed as astronauts (sort of), and playing in front of psychedelic-tinged visuals.
 
 
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Brooding and Gorgeously Cinematic Visuals for The Color Forty Nine’s “I Will”

Comprised of little white teeth’s and maquiladora’s Phil Beaumont, The Black Heart Procession’s James Hooper, The Black Heart Procession’s,  The Album Leaf’s and The John Meeks Band’s Matt Resovich and The John Meeks Band’s John Meeks, the San Diego, CA-based indie act The Color Forty Nine features a collection of multi-instrumentalists, who have actively strayed from their previous roles to find new musical connections to songwriting; in fact, the band’s frontman and primary songwriting Beaumont, by happenstance picked up a baritone ukulele to travel with more easily and as a result, was how he began writing the songs of their debut album; Resovich plays violin and Casiotone through self-built effects pedals; Hooper, a highly sought-after drummer, plays bass; and Meeks, who fronts his own band, plays drum, filling out the band’s rhythm section. 

The band’s self-titled EP is slated for  June 15, 2018 through Darla Records and the EP, which was written and recored over the past 9 months or so, features a handful of songs that borrow from autobiographical moments with other songs featuring semi-fictional tales of real and imaginary characters encountered from both sides of the border, Beaumont’s lyrics reportedly explore the notion that we all seek refuge, in places, moments and people with whom or from whom, we sometimes want to escape. Interestingly, the EP’s first single,  the gorgeously mournful “I Will” a single that the band says speaks to the idea of finding anonymity within a crowd, as well as allowing ourselves to accept and celebrate the foibles of human nature — while being somewhat confessional and heartbreakingly earnest and vulnerable in a way that modern music sometimes just isn’t and can’t be.  Sonically, the song manages to be reminiscent of Boxer and High Violet-era The National thanks to an old-timey feel paired with novelistic lyrics; however, the song takes a leisurely pleasure in small things — drinks with old friends, wandering around lost and seeking something more, even when you have no idea of what exactly it is, of feeling small and insignificant and not knowing why. 

Directed by frequent collaborator and filmmaker Grant Reinero. the recently released video for “I Will” was on shot in a gorgeously cinematic black and white on location at the Bar Copacabana in Tijuana, Mexico, and the video features the members of the band drinking and playing in the bar, including a pensive Beaumont, scribbling the song’s lyrics in a small notebook at the bar, and stars a local bar patron, Alicia, who drinks beer and puts songs on the jukebox. Each individual is lonely and while lost in their own thoughts and regrets, they’re desperate to seek solace and refuge in another.