Initially comprised of Preston Maddox (bass, vocals, keyboards, samples and programming) Jake McCown (drums, noise, programming) with recent recruits Jack O’Hara Harris (guitar), Richard Napierkowski (synth) and Martin McCreadie (synth) joining to flesh out […]
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.
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Comprised of Nik Rayne, Grant Beyschau, Cody Schwartz, Connor Gallaher and Miguel Urbina, the Tucson, AZ-based quintet The Myrrors have been releasing material under a rather dark and mysterious cloak — and that shouldn’t be terribly surprising as their sound is equally dark and mysterious. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year or so, you may recall that I wrote about “Dome House Music,” a single off Arena Negra that reminded me of The Black Angels‘ Directions to See a Ghost and the Silber Records roster as “Dome House Music” slowly built up into a trance-like groove with blasts of saxophone floating and darting through the mix of a song that sounds as though it could inspire a shamanic ritual.
The Tucson, AZ-based quintet’s forthcoming album Entranced Earth is slated for a May 27 release through renowned psych rock label Beyond Beyond Is Beyond Records, and the album’s latest single “No Clear Light” will further cement the quintet’s reputation for crafting dark and moody psych rock as the band pairs shimmering guitar chords with plaintively moaned vocals, warm bursts of flute and feedback. And while arguably being one of the most hauntingly and eerily beautiful songs they’ve released, it’s also the darkest one they’ve released to date; in fact, the song sounds as though it should be part of the soundtrack of a psychological thriller about a mass murderer; you should be able to picture the murderer as he’s stalking his innocent victims . ..
Comprised of its frontmen Manchester, UK-born and Paris-based David Shaw and Paris-born and based Dombrance, along with Guilluame Rosel (percussion) and Victor Paillet (bass), the Paris-based electronic music collective DBFC emerged onto the French electronic music scene with the release of several singles through renowned indie label Her Majesty’s Ship Records last year. Building on the attention they’ve already received the collective’s latest single “Automatic,” which was recently released through Different Recordings will further cement the act’s reputation for crafting slickly produced electronic music that’s indebted to French electronic music and to Kraftwerk as the French collective’s latest single has the act pairing cascading layers of shimmering and undulating synths with a driving, motorik groove and ethereally cooed vocals bubbling up and then floating over the mix in a song that sounds indebted to Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express” and Primal Scream‘s “Autobahn 66” — but with a subtle cosmic glow around its edges.
With the release of their debut effort Dreaming, the Brooklyn-based trio Graveyard Lovers — comprised of Zach Reynolds (vocals, guitar), Tricia Purvis (drums) and Joel Reynolds (bass, guitar) — quickly received national attention for a sound that was compared favorably to the likes of Pixies, Sonic Youth and others. Building upon the buzz of their debut, the band’s music has been heard in a variety of movies and TV series including Showtime’s Shameless — and they’ll be releasing their album Past The Forest Of The Fruitless Thoughts in two parts, with part one in June and part two slated for release later this year. Part one’s first single “Told A Lie” will further cement the Brooklyn trio’s growing reputation for crafting 90s alt rock-inspired indie rock as the band pairs layers of jangling and buzzing guitars, throbbing bass lines and plaintive vocals with incredibly anthemic hooks — but with some electronics towards the bridge to add a subtly modern touch to a familiar and winning formula.
The band will be playing a Thursday night residency at Piano’s in the Lower East Side with one of the shows celebrating the release of “Told A Lie.”
Comprised of American-born vocalist Rose Suau, best known for her work in synth pop act Shoestrings and Swedish-born multi-instrumentalist and producer Johan Angergård, best known for his work with Club 8, synth pop side project Djustin can trace their origins to when the duo, who noticed an eerily parallelism in their lives — both are middle children, born in the same year and under the same astrological sign and have identical record collections — started with a mutual admiration of each other’s various musical projects, back in the late 90s. Suau and Angergård started writing each other lengthy letters about love, life, pop music and other subjects. Naturally, those letters turned to emails –and although both Suau and Angergård went on to form several other musical projects including Pallers, Invisible Twin and The Legends, the duo continued a regular correspondence.
Now as the story goes, although Suau and Angergård had corresponded with each other for years and begun to really know each other, they had never met; however, last fall when Angergård was looking for a vocalist and lyricist for a new musical, side project the first person he thought of was Suau. As Angergård explains in press notes “I love the soulful sensualism in Rose’s voice and figured she’d be perfect for the project. I’m pretty used to writing everything myself and wanted to see what would happen if I did things in new ways. So, I took the chance and sent a couple of tracks over to Rose with me singing gibberish. A week later she dropped a recording of the finished vocals and it was…well, just lovely.”
Tryst, the duo’s soon-to-be released debut EP is slated for a May 13 release through Labrador Records, and the EP’s latest single “Concrete” pairs Angergård’s production consisting of cascading and undulating layers of synths and propulsive boom-bap beats and a razor sharp hook with Suau’s suggestive and sultry vocals in a swooning yet moody song that thematically focuses on lust, obsession and heartbreak. And while nodding at both house music and 80s synth pop, the single possesses a contemporary and radio friendly sheen.
With the December 2015 release of their debut single “I Feel,” the Bath, UK-based indie pop quintet Bad Sounds quickly emerged into the British scene as the single received praise from the likes of The Line of Best Fit and Vice Noisey, and received airplay from BBC Radio personalities Zane Lowe, Phil Taggert, Annie Mac and Huw Stephens. “Avalanche,” Bad Sounds’ latests ingle was co-produced by Duncan Mills, and the single has the band pairing fuzzy guitar chords, angular bass chords, electronic bleeps and bloops, a motorik-like groove, and a rousingly infectious hook in a song that sounds as though it was indebted to Damon Albarn‘s work with Blur and Gorillaz, complete with a similar peculiarly British wry, self-effacing irony — but with a subtly contemporary take on a familiar and beloved sound.
Adding to a growing national profile, the Bath-based quintet will be touring the UK festival circuit with appearances at The Great Escape and Dot to Dot, among others. Check out the tour schedule below, if you’re in or around the UK.
Tour Dates:
20 May – The Great Escape, Brighton
28 May – Dot To Dot, Bristol
12 June – Field Day, London
2 September – Festival No. 6, Portmeirion
Featuring Australian-born, New York-based frontman and drummer Steven Fisher, The Wilful Boys specialize in a bristling and angry power chord-based rock that channels the sounds of New York’s hardcore scene as you’ll hear on “Rough As Guts,” the first single off the band’s long-awaited full-length debut album, slated for a July 1, 2016 release through Ever/Never Records, a label that has developed a reputation for its growing roster of Australian-born, New York-based hardcore bands.
“Rough As Guts” reminds me of the punk shows I caught at The Continental, Coney Island High, CBGB’s, The Acme Underground and others — but somehow, angrier and more anxious and unsettled as Fisher howls and yells aggressive and abrasive lyrics that describe a fully fleshed out deeply self-loathing, depraved, fucked up character that could have lived within the pages of Dostoevsky’s Notes From the Underground.
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New Video: Robert Glasper and Bilal Team Up for a Modern and Soulful Re-Intrepretation of Miles Davis
Robert Glasper is a renowned, Grammy Award-winning pianist, composer and producer, who has developed a long-held reputation for relentless experimentation and iconoclastic genre mashing — his jazz trio, The Robert Glasper Trio featuring Glasper (piano), […]
New Video: The Eerily Haunting Visuals and Sounds of Enemy Planes’ “We Want Blood”
Comprised of Casey Call (vocals, keys, synths, guitar), Joe Gamble (guitar), David LeDuc (bass), Kristine Stresman (keys, synths, vocals, percussion), Shön Troth (lap steel guitar), Joe Call (drums) and Jessica Anderson (drums), Enemy Planes is a […]
