Category: Indie Synth Pop

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Vlöe is a French electronic music composer, singer/songwriter and producer, whose work draws from synth pop and synth wave — with a touch of the 90s European demoscene.

The French artist recently released a new, three-track mini-EP. The mini-EP’s latest single “Lying In The Sun” is a retro-futuristic bit of synth pop featuring layers of shimmering synth arpeggios, driving motorik-like grooves, thumping metronomic-like beats, an 80s synth rock guitar solo, and achingly plaintive vocals. Rooted in the nostalgia of being young and lying around on a sunny day with a dear one, “Lying In The Sun” brings M83, Washed Out, and the Stranger Things soundtrack to mind.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Yumi Zouma Share a Hallucinogenic Visual for New Single “Astral Projection”

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of its almost 12 year history, you may recall that the acclaimed indie synth pop outfit and longtime JOVM mainstay outfit Yumi Zouma signed to Polyvinyl Record Co back in 2020. That same year, they JOVM mainstays released their critically applauded, self-produced third album Truth or Consequences, an album that thematically focused on distance — both real and metaphorical; romantic and platonic heartbreak; disillusionment and feeling (and being) out of reach. 

For the overwhelming majority of the bands I’ve covered over the past 12 years, touring is often the most important — and necessary — part of the promotional campaign for an artist’s or band’s new release. Before they hit the road, that artist or band will figure out how to re-contextualize their new material and even previously released material for a live setting, imagining how a crowd will react to what — and how — they’ll play the material in a live set. Like all of the acts across the world, who were touring — or were about to tour–- as COVID-19 struck across the world, the members of Yumi Zouma were forced to end their tour, which included their first ever sold-out, headlining North American dates, and quickly head to their respective homes, leaving scores of their most devoted fans without the opportunity to hear the new album in a live setting. 

That October, the JOVM mainstays released Truth or Consequences (Alternate Versions), an album conceived as the band’s response to the lost opportunity to re-contextualize and explore the boundaries of the original album’s material through live engagement with fans.

Last year, Yumi Zouma released two singles: 

  • “Give It Hell,” a wistful and bittersweet song centered around a classic Yumi Zouma breezy arrangement. But underneath the aching melancholy is a subtle but necessary celebratory note, a reminder that we will find a way to survive and thrive in the most difficult and unusual circumstances — and as someone far wiser than I once sang “all things will pass.” 
  • “Mona Lisa,” an expansive and breezy pop confection that’s one part New Order and one-part Bruce Springsteen that manages to convey a complicated, shifting emotional state, seemingly influenced and informed by our weird and uncertain moment. 

Both of those tracks will appear on the band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Present Tense. Dedicated to an embattled past, Present Tense is the JOVM mainstays’ offering to a tenuous future. With the members of the band forced to go their separate ways and return to their homes, Yumi Zouma found themselves in an unusual place: “It was disorientating,” the band’s Charlie Ryder says in press notes. ““We generally work at a quick clip and average about a record a year, but with no foreseeable plans, we lost our momentum.”

In response, the members of the band went to work, setting a September 1, 2021 deadline for the album to be finished, regardless of world events. What initially began in fits and starts became a committed practice again as the band worked on new material, digging through demos from as early as 2018 and making them relevant to that particular — and peculiar — moment in time. “Someone brings in a seed,” the band’s Josh Burgess says, “and through collaboration, it grows into a song that is vastly different from its original form.”

“The lyrics on these songs feel like premonitions, in some regards,” says Yumi Zouma’s Christie Simpson says. “So much has changed for us, both personally and as a band, that things I wrote because the words sounded good together now speak to me in ways I didn’t anticipate.”

The album’s material evolved through remote and in-person sessions in Wellington, New Zealand, Florence, Italy, Los Angeles, NYC and London. Those sessions found the band exploring a broader sonic palette that includes pedal steel, piano, sax, woodwind and string arrangements played by friends around the globe.  The complex scope of the recordings were then fine-tuned by an array of top mixes including Ash Workman, Kenny Gilmore, Jake Aron with mastering by Antoine Chabert. 

“This is our fourth album, so we wanted to pivot slightly, create more extreme versions of songs,” Ryder says. “Working with other artists helped with that and took us far outside of our normal comfort zone.”

Last month, I wrote about “Where The Light Used To Lay,” a single that continued a remarkably run of bittersweet pop confections, centered around Christie Simpson’s achingly tender vocals, shimmering guitars, glistening keys and the JOVM mainstays’ unerring knack for crafting a razor sharp and infectious hook. Interestingly, “Where The Light Used To Lay” has a hopeful, adult perspective on heartbreak, one that seems to say that while you may be down in the dumps today, this too, like all other things, shall end. And you shall yet again find love in all of its complicated, conflicting, nonsensical glory in its due time. 

“‘Where The Light Used To Lay’ eventually revealed itself as a bittersweet song about the agony of detangling your life as you break up and the enticing future, clarity, and lightness that the end of the tunnel can offer,” the band’s Josh Burgess explains. “When we first started writing the song in 2019, we were all in long-term relationships. By the time the final mix was completed in the Fall of 2021, only one of those remained (thanks COVID). It’s funny how songs can end up revealing themselves in surprising ways, even to their writers. It’s equal parts confronting and calming, knowing that the subconscious starts processing long before the conscious comes to it. Regardless, it’s nice to have a moment with a song where you go ‘damn, ain’t that the truth.’”

Present Tense‘s latest single “Astral Projection” is a decidedly 80s inspired song centered around glistening, reverb-drenched guitars, gently oscillating synths, jazz-like syncopation, Simpson’s imitable vocals and an infectious hook. The song’s narrator seems to have come to a wobbly sort of acceptance of the end of their relationship and what it means for them and their life,.

“’Astral Projection’ is about leaning into bad feelings and the mixed results it brings,” Yumi Zouma’s Christie Simpson explains. “Learning to sit with the reality of a relationship not working out as you hoped. Looking towards the future and knowing there will be others, there will be better times, but sitting in the present moment, trying to make peace with that.”

Directed by Alex Ross Perry, the accompanying video is the third and final part of a narrative trilogy featuring our familiar trio of protagonists. They’re trapped in the apartment. One of the rooms turns into a forest, where the individual members lose their minds and have wild hallucinations while trying to escape. Some of the experience is playful and hilarious; some of it is terrifying and dark. Once they stop fighting their feelings, the weird experience clears up — and they’re able to finally leave. Their friendship seems tighter than what it was at the beginning as a result.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Deriving their name from the Turkish phase for “Golden Day,” the acclaimed Amsterdam-based Turkish psych pop act Altin Gün — founding member Jasper Verhulst (bass) with Ben Rider (guitar), Erdinç Ecevit Yildiz (keys, saz, vocals), Gino Groneveld (percussion), Merve Dasdemir (vocals) and Nic Mauskovic (drums) — can trace their origins to Japser Verhulst’s repeated tour stops to Istanbul with a previous band and his deep and abiding passion for ’60s and ’70s Turkish psych pop and folk, fueled by discoveries Verhulst couldn’t find in his native Holland. 

But as the story goes, Verhulst wasn’t just content to listen as an ardent fan; he had a vision of where he could potentially take the sound he loved. “We do have a weak spot for the music of the late ’60s and ’70s,” Verhulst admitted in press notes. “With all the instruments and effects that arrived then, it was an exciting time. Everything was new, and it still feels fresh. We’re not trying to copy it, but these are the sounds we like and we’re trying to make them our own.” 

Altin Gün’s sophomore album, 2020’s Grammy Award-nominated, critically applauded Gece further established the band’s reputation for re-imagining traditional Turkish folk through the lens of psych rock and pop. Last year’s critically applauded Yol was the band’s third album in three years. And while the album found the band continuing to draw about the rich and diverse traditions of Turkish and Anatolian folk, pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns forced the Dutch outfit to write music in a completely new way for them: virtually — through trading demos and ideas built around Omnichord, 808 and other elements, including field recordings and New Age-like ideas by email. 

“We were basically stuck at home for three months making home demos, with everybody adding their parts,” Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says in press notes. “The transnational feeling maybe comes from that process of swapping demos over the internet, some of the music we did in the studio, but lockdown meant we had to follow a different approach.”

As a result of the new songwriting approach and arrangements prominently featuring Omnichord and 808, the album saw the band crafting material that’s a bold, new sonic direction: sleek, synth-based, retro-futuristic Europop with a dreamy quality, seemingly informed by the enforced period of reflection. Additionally, the members of the acclaimed Dutch act, enlisted Ghent, Belgium-based production duo Asa Moto — Oliver Geerts and Gilles Noë — to co-produce and mix the album, marking the first time that the band has collaborated with outsiders. 

The acclaimed Turkish psych outfit will be embarking on an extensive North American tour next month that includes a two night run at Music Hall of Williamsburg April 28, 2022-April 29, 2022. (As always, the tour dates are below.) Along with that announcement, the band released a new two-song digital single “Badu Sabah Olmadan”/”Cips Kola Kilit.” Both songs originally appeared in some fashion or another on last summer’s Bandcamp-only album Âlem.

“Badu Sabah Olmadon” may arguably be one of the harder rocking songs the Dutch JOVM mainstays have released in some time, featuring a relentless motorik groove, some scorching guitar work, glistening synths and yearning vocals.

“‘Badİ Sabah Olmadan’ is a traditional love song from the town of Kırşehir, where the poet begs his lover to come to him before the night ends,” the band explains in press notes. “We recorded an electronic version for our charity album Âlem, and then started to play it live with the band. We liked it so much that we decided to record a live band version. Happy to play it for our fans this spring!”

“Clips Kola Kilit” is a dance floor friendly, decidedly 80s synth bop centered around 808-like beats, glistening synth washes and wobbling bass synth paired with a coquettish and sultrily delivered spoken word/rap-like vocal. For those children of the 80s — like me — “Clips Kola Kilit” brings back memories of acts like Whodini, The Human League, Nu Shooz, Cherelle, and others. And interestingly enough, it sound as though it could have been on Yol but was cut from the album.

NORTH AMERICA TOUR 2022

April 4 – Montreal, CAN @ Le National

April 5- Toronto, CAN @ The Axis Club

April 7 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall

April 8 – Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater

April 12 – Vancouver, CAN @ Rickshaw Theatre

April 13 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile

April 14- Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall

April 17 – COACHELLA FESTIVAL

April 19 – San Francisco @ August Hall

April 21 – Los Angeles, CA @ Roxy (co-headline with Nilüfer Yanya)

April 24 – COACHELLA FESTIVAL

April 26 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair

April 27 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

April 28 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg

April 29 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts

April 39 – Washington, DC @ Capital Turnaround

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Last year, the rising Brooklyn-based psych pop/dance pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Psymon Spine — Noah Prebish, Sabine Holler, Brother Michael Rudinski, and Peter Spears — released their sophomore album Charismatic Megafauna. Thematically, the album explored the complicated feelings and catharsis involved in the dissolution of human relationships — through hook-driven, left-of-center electronic dance music meets psych pop. The album received critical praise from  the likes of Paste Magazine, FLOOD, Brooklyn Vegan, Under the Radar and NME. The album and its material was added to number of playlists including NPR Music, Spotify‘s New Music Friday, All New Indie, Undercurrents and Fresh Finds, Apple Music‘s Midnight City and Today’s Indie Rock and TIDAL‘s Rising. And the album received airplay internationally from BBC, KEXP and KCRW among others. 

The Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays capped off a big 2021 with the the digital 7 inch release “Mr. Metronome”/”Drums Valentino.” 

  • “Mr. Metronome” may arguably be the most straightforward, club friendly track of the band’s growing catalog. Featuring a German vocal hook sung by Sabine Holler, which translates to “I saw your message, I have to go work,” followed by a repeated refrain of “my schedule, my schedule,” “Mr. Metronome” is centered around tweeter and woofer rocking beats, glistening synth arpeggios and a relentless, motorik groove. Inspired by Kraftwerk, Soulwax and others, the song’s lyrics features musings on dating and social dynamics while reflecting the band’s restlessness and desire to quit all unfulfilling obligations to focus on what really matters to them — music. 
  • “Drums Valentino” is a New Wave-like single featuring industrial clang and clatter, shimmering guitars, glistening synths and an off-kilter yet dance floor-friendly groove. Sonically, the song helps to emphasize the song’s lyrics, which talk about feeling uneasy and uncertain with a psychological precision.

The members of Psymon Spine grew up in the ’00s and ’10s with a deep appreciation and love for the art of the remix. And after the release of their sophomore album, the band found themselves craving longer, even more dance-floor friendly versions of the album’s material. The band recruited a handful of producers and electronic music acts including Love Injection, Dar Disku, Each Other, Safer, Bucky Boudreau and Psymon Spine’s Brother Michael to remix material from the album. 

Charismatic Mutations, the remix album of last year’s Charismatic Megafauna, is slated for an April 1, 2022 release through the band’s label home Northern Spy Records.

Last month, Hot Chip‘s Joe Goddard tackled “Milk” feat. Barrie. Goddard’s remix retained Barrie’s coquettish and ethereally cooed vocals but placed them within a euphoric Balearic house-like production centered around skittering beats, glistening synth arpeggios and cosmic space effects. “This remix was very natural and very joyful for me,” Goddard explained. ” I did it in lockdown so I felt a sense of freedom and playfulness that was really nice and actually, in retrospect, very unique.  I love the vocals on this song, so I placed them at the forefront, and I tried to sonically make the mix one that was balearic and satisfying.  Macrodosing.”

Charismatic Mutations second and latest single sees Love Injection tackling the funky, dance punk bop “Jumprope.” Clocking in at an expansive seven-and-a-half minutes, the Love Injection remix is a seemingly LCD Soundsystem-like instrumental take that retains the propulsive bass line of the original and pairs it with skittering beats, glistening synth arpeggios, congo-led percussion, a relentless motorik groove and chopped up vocal samples.

“‘Jumprope’ immediately takes us back to the early 2000s and the sound that would be synonymous with the kids in Downtown Manhattan and Williamsburg, Brooklyn,” Love Injection explains. “It was the reintroduction of dance music to punk, pioneered by the likes of Suicide and Was (Not Was), but was immortalized in a new way by DFA (both the production duo and the label) in some of their earliest releases.” 

“There was one particular remix that we know, love, and have had special moments with on the dancefloor at the late David Mancuso’s Loft parties that became the guiding light for our reinterpretation. We very intentionally set out to reimagine ‘Jumprope’ in the spirit of that moment, rewriting the bassline and bringing in new synth elements. The Loft memory greatly influenced the remix’s arrangement and gave it its name.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tempers Share a Hallucinogenic Visual for Dreamy “Sightseeing”

New York-based synth duo Tempers — Jasmine Golestaneh (vocals) and Eddie Cooper (production) — have diligently carved out their own niche within dark indie, electronica and synth pop circles since their formation. After a series of digital singles released back in 2013, the New York duo began to solidify their sound and approach, a sleek, brooding, nocturnal take on synth pop and dark wave.

The duo’s self-produced album New Meaning is slated for an April 1, 2022 release through Dais Records. As the duo explain, the album is about navigating the unknown, coping mechanisms and exploring the nature of choice. The album’s ten songs reflect on the creation of meaning as a way to access liberation in times of transition and loss while speculating on the transformative potential that exists alongside the grief of living in a world that is an ongoing state of crisis. Much like their previously released material, New Meaning continues a run of nocturnal music, that’s introspective yet quietly intense. 

So far, I’ve written about two of New Meaning‘s previous released singles:

  • “Unfamiliar,” a song that sounded indebted to 80s New Wave while evoking our current moment — living in a world that’s gone even madder and more uncertain than ever before. 
  • “Nightwalking,” a brooding, hook-driven song centered around icy synth arpeggios, thumping beats, a relentless motorik groove and Golestaneh’s achingly plaintive vocals floating off into the ether. The song manages to evoke late nights wandering around with your thoughts as your only company. 

“Sightseeing,” New Meaning‘s latest single is centered around glistening synth arpeggios, thumping kick and Golestaneh’s achingly plaintive and ethereal vocals. And much like its immediate predecessor, the Soft Metals-like “Sightseeing” evokes nocturnal stills through sleeping cities with your own thoughts and regrets, in that liminal space between dreaming and being alert.

“‘Sightseeing’ looks at the thrill and struggle of urban life,” Tempers’ Jamine Golestaneh explains in press notes. “It’s a song about finding meaning by constantly dissolving, renewing, and redefining oneself, amidst the machinery of the city. The video explores how psychic traces left by memory can transform architecture, and animate parallel worlds. It’s also a continuation of an ongoing theme in our work, investigating the relationship between public and private space.”

The accompanying video by Los Angeles-based Clayton McCracken features a hallucinogenic mix of touch designer programming, vintage video technology, 3D animation and live improvisation that focuses on a journey through a city at night. His work predominantly deals with the role of natural forces in virtual environments, utilizing lights, liquids, and vapors to explore themes of entropy and technological impermanence which thematically fit hand in hand with “Sightseeing”. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

DYD is a French production trio, who individually and as a unit have had lengthy careers producing a number of successful French artists — and for remixing the work of internationally acclaimed artists like Dua Lipa, Lauv, Billie Eilish and others.

The trio step into the spotlight as artists and producers with their debut single “Colorblind.” Centered around layers of glistening synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rattling, skittering beats and achingly plaintive vocals, “Colorblind” reveals the French production’s ability to craft radio friendly bangers with infectious hooks.

After remixing several big mainstream hits, we thought we had to release our single. And it’s there. Hot. Colorblind will be the title of this first track, pending the EP in the coming months!

DYD also remixes great mainstream artists of the international POP.
Just for their personal pleasure. Whether Dua Lipa or Lauv to Billie Eilish.
Her remixes are validated by the artists’ labe

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Clemence Violence Shares Sultry and Self-Assured “Holy”

Clemence Violence is an emerging Paris-based singer/songwriter and pop artist. Her debut single “Holy” is centered around thumping kick drum, a sinuous bass line, twinkling keys full of malicious intent and a razor sharp hook paired with the French artist’s sultry vocals.

The song manages to reveal a remarkably self-assured young artist while sonically being a slick synthesis of Billie Eilish and Back to Black era Amy Winehouse. Thematically, the song touches upon spirituality, eco-feminism, witchcraft and one’s relationship to nature.

The emerging French artist is a graduate of ESEC (Higher School of Cinematographic Studies) and the accompanying visual was co-directed by Violence and a longtime friend, and the visual emphasizes the song’s themes — with a gorgeous and creepy air.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Yumi Zouma Share a Gorgeous and Trippy Visual for Bittersweet Yet Hopeful “Where The Light Used to Lay”

Acclaimed indie synth pop outfit and longtime JOVM mainstay outfit Yumi Zouma, which features members residing in New Zealand, the States and the UK signed to Polyvinyl Record Co back in 2020. That same year, the acclaimed act released their critically applauded, self-produced third album Truth or Consequences, an album that thematically focused on distant — both real and metaphorical; romantic and platonic heartbreak; disillusionment and feeling (and being) out of reach. 

For the overwhelming majority of the bands I’ve covered over the past 12 years, touring is often the most important — and necessary — part of the promotional campaign for an artist’s or band’s new release. Before they hit the road, that artist or band will figure out how to re-contextualize their new material and even previously released material for a live setting, imagining how a crowd will react to what — and how — they’ll play the material in a live a set. Like all of the acts across the world, who were touring — or were about to tour– as COVID-19 struck across the world, the members of Yumi Zouma were forced to end their tour, which included their first sold-out North American dates, and quickly head home, leaving scores of their most devoted fans without the opportunity to hear the new album in a live setting.

That October, the JOVM mainstays released Truth or Consequences (Alternate Versions), an album conceived as the band’s response to the lost opportunity to re-contextualize and explore the boundaries of the original album’s material through live engagement with fans. Last year, Yumi Zouma released two singles:

  • “Give It Hell,” a wistful and bittersweet song centered around a classic Yumi Zouma breezy arrangement. But underneath the aching melancholy is a subtle but necessary celebratory note, a reminder that we will find a way to survive and thrive in the most difficult and unusual circumstances — and as someone far wiser than I once sang “all things will pass.”
  • “Mona Lisa,” an expansive and breezy pop confection that’s one part New Order and one-part Bruce Springsteen that manages to convey a complicated, shifting emotional state, seemingly influenced and informed by our weird and uncertain moment.

Both of those tracks will appear on the band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Present Tense. Dedicated to an embattled past, Present Tense is the JOVM mainstays’ offering to a tenuous future. With the members of the band forced to go their separate ways and return to their homes, Yumi Zouma found themselves in an unusual place: “It was disorientating,” the band’s Charlie Ryder says in press notes. ““We generally work at a quick clip and average about a record a year, but with no foreseeable plans, we lost our momentum.”

In response, the members of the band set to work, setting a September 1, 2021 deadline for the album to be finished, regardless of world events. What initially began in fits and starts became a committed practice again as the band worked on new material, digging through demos from as early as 2018 and making them relevant to that particular — and peculiar — moment in time. “Someone brings in a seed,” the band’s Josh Burgess says, “and through collaboration, it grows into a song that is vastly different from its original form.”

“The lyrics on these songs feel like premonitions, in some regards,” says Yumi Zouma’s Christie Simpson says. “So much has changed for us, both personally and as a band, that things I wrote because the words sounded good together now speak to me in ways I didn’t anticipate.”

The album’s material evolved through remote and in-person sessions in Wellington, New Zealand, Florence, Italy, Los Angeles, NYC and London with a broader sonic palette that includes pedal steel, piano, sax, woodwind and string played by friends around the globe. The complex scope of the recordings were then fine-tuned by an array of top mixes including Ash Workman, Kenny Gilmore, Jake Aron with mastering by Antoine Chabert.

“This is our fourth album, so we wanted to pivot slightly, create more extreme versions of songs,” Ryder says. “Working with other artists helped with that and took us far outside of our normal comfort zone.”

“Where The Light Used To Lay” Present Tense‘s latest single continues a run of lush yet bittersweet pop confections centered around Christie Simpson’s achingly tender vocals, shimmering guitars, glistening keys and the JOVM mainstays unerring knack for crafting an infectious hook. And much like its predecessors, “Where This Light Used To Lay” has a hopeful, adult perspective on heartbreak, one that seems to say that while you may be down in the dumps today, this too, like all other things, shall end. And you shall yet again find love in all of its complicated, conflicting, nonsensical glory in its due time.

“‘Where The Light Used To Lay’ eventually revealed itself as a bittersweet song about the agony of detangling your life as you break up and the enticing future, clarity, and lightness that the end of the tunnel can offer,” the band’s Josh Burgess explains. “When we first started writing the song in 2019, we were all in long-term relationships. By the time the final mix was completed in the Fall of 2021, only one of those remained (thanks COVID). It’s funny how songs can end up revealing themselves in surprising ways, even to their writers. It’s equal parts confronting and calming, knowing that the subconscious starts processing long before the conscious comes to it. Regardless, it’s nice to have a moment with a song where you go ‘damn, ain’t that the truth.’”

Directed by Alex Ross Perry, the accompanying video for “Where The Light Used To Lay” is the second of a trilogy series, and it features three women — Jessie Pinnick, Lily Sondik and Michaela Brown — trying to enter an apartment. When they do eventually enter, they all walk into a room with velvet curtains, palm fronds and a disco ball. They spend most of the time gently swaying and dancing to music. Each of the women seem locked into their own memories, as though they were dancing the heartache away. They try to leave the apartment only to discover that they’re locked in. And they seem to accept with it a fated shrug.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Allegories Share a Euphoric New Single

Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — can trace their origins to their penchant for indulging in unconventional musical pursuits. Even after founding anthemic, indie-rock outfit The Rest, they embraced any opportunity to indulge their more outré inclinations and desires. In 2014. Bentley and Mitchell began writing and recording material with no clear destination in mind, dabbling in everything from neoclassical compositions to hip hop. Gathering further, inspiration from DJ’ing house and hip-hop nights, the act began to create electronic music that often shifts between the mainstream and underground spectrum. 

Throughout the past decade or so, Bentley and Mitchell have had busy schedules. Bentley had worked in the music industry. Mitchell operates a restaurant. But Allegories almost always found a way to creep back into their lives — if only as a private amusement between the duo. Eventually, they would wind up spending the better part of a decade winnowing down 35 song ideas into their 9-song album Endless, their first album in over 14 years.

Late last year, I wrote about “Pray” a bizarre yet winning mix of menace, irony and sincerity paired with an Evil Heat era Primal Scream meets Sound of Silver era LCD Soundsystem-like production. Endless‘ latest single “Constant” is centered around oscillating synth pulse, an achingly plaintive vocal delivery and a euphoria-inducing hook. The end result is a sugary sweet, endorphin and dopamine rush that feels both pleasant and yet somehow kind of off.

The song is what the duo call a “timid diss track to oneself and all that you love.”

Endless is slated for an April 29, 2022 release.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Brooklyn-based psych pop/dance pop act and JOVM mainstays Psymon Spine — Noah Prebish, Sabine Holler, Brother Michael Rudinski, and Peter Spears — can trace its origins back to when its founding duo of Noah Prebish and Peter Spears met while attending college. Bonding over mutual influences and common artistic aims, Psymon Spine’s founding duo toured the European Union with Prebish’s previous electronic project Karate. While in Paris, Spears and Prebish wrote their first song together. By the time, they arrived in London, they were offered a record deal. 

When Prebish and Spears returned to the States, the pair recruited Micheal “Brother Micheal” Rudinski and their Karate bandmates Devon Kilbern, Nathaniel Coffey to join their new project. And with that lineup, they fleshed out out their demos, which wold eventually comprise their full-length debut, 2017’s You Are Coming to My Birthday. The band went out to support the effort with immersive art and dance parties like their Secret Friend party series across Brooklyn and through relentless touring. 

Prebish was also splitting his time with rising Brooklyn-based dream pop act Barrie and around the same time, Barrie began to receive attention across the blogosphere and elsewhere as a result of a handful of buzz-worthy singles, and 2019’s full-length debut, Happy to Be Here. Interestingly, during his time with Barrie, Prebish met his future Psymon Spine bandmate, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Sabine Holler. 

Last year, the rising Brooklyn-based psych pop/dance pop outfit released their sophomore album Charismatic Megafauna. Thematically, the album explored the complicated feelings and catharsis involved in the dissolution of human relationships — through hook-driven, left-of-center electronic dance music meets psych pop. The album received critical praise from  the likes of Paste Magazine, FLOOD, Brooklyn Vegan, Under the Radar and NME. The album and its material was added to number of playlists including NPR Music, Spotify‘s New Music Friday, All New Indie, Undercurrents and Fresh Finds, Apple Music‘s Midnight City and Today’s Indie Rock and TIDAL‘s Rising. And the album received airplay internationally from BBC, KEXP and KCRW among others.

In the lead up to Charismatic Megafauna‘s release, I managed to write about three of the album’s released singles:

  • “Milk,” a coquettish, club friendly banger with Barrie that brings to mind In Ghost Colours-era Cut Copy and Soft Metals‘ Lenses. The single received attention internationally — with the single receiving praise from   Vanyaland, High Clouds, Echowave Magazine, The Revue, Hype Machine and a list of others.The track also landed on  Spotify playlists like Undercurrents, All New Indie and Fresh Finds, as well as the YouTube channels of  David Dean Burkhart, Nice Guys‘ and Birp.fm. And lastly, the track received airplay on BBC Radio 6. 
  • “Modmed,” an  Andrew VanWyngarden-produced and cowritten, strutting disco-tinged track that’s captures the ambivalent and confusing mixture of frustration, doubt and relief of a relationship that had long petered out and finally wound down to its inevitable conclusion. Interestingly, the song is inspired and informed by personal experience: Prebish and Holler’s difficult decision to leave Barrie to focus on Pysmon Spine full-time. 
  • “Confusion,” a hazy and lysergic banger centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, a wobbling bass line and looping guitar solo paired with Prebish’s plaintive vocals and a trippy, spoken word-delivered break that sonically reminded me of Tame Impala‘s Currents.

The Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays capped off a big 2021 with the the digital 7 inch release “Mr. Metronome”/”Drums Valentino.”

  • “Mr. Metronome” may arguably be the most straightforward, club friendly track of the band’s growing catalog. Featuring a German vocal hook sung by Sabine Holler, which translates to “I saw your message, I have to go work,” followed by a repeated refrain of “my schedule, my schedule,” “Mr. Metronome” is centered around tweeter and woofer rocking beats, glistening synth arpeggios and a relentless, motorik groove. Inspired by Kraftwerk, Soulwax and others, the song’s lyrics features musings on dating and social dynamics while reflecting the band’s restlessness and desire to quit all unfulfilling obligations to focus on what really matters to them — music. 
  • “Drums Valentino” is a New Wave-like single featuring industrial clang and clatter, shimmering guitars, glistening synths and an off-kilter yet dance floor-friendly groove. Sonically, the song helps to emphasize the song’s lyrics, which talk about feeling uneasy and uncertain with a psychological precision.

The members of Psymon Spine grew up in the ’00s and ’10s with a deep appreciation and love for the art of the remix. And after the release of their sophomore album, the band found themselves craving longer, even more dance-floor friendly versions of the album’s material. The band recruited a handful of producers and electronic music acts including Love Injection, Dar Disku, Each Other, Safer, Bucky Boudreau and Psymon Spine’s Brother Michael to remix material from the album.

Charismatic Mutations, the remix album of last year’s Charismatic Megafauna, is slated for an April 1, 2022 release through the band’s label home Northern Spy Records.

The album’s first single is Hot Chip‘s Joe Goddard tackling “Milk” feat. Barrie. Goddard’s remix retains Barrie’s coquettish and ethereally cooed vocals but places them within a euphoric Balearic house-like production centered around skittering beats, glistening synth arpeggios and cosmic space effects. And while still being a dance-floor bop, Goddard’s remix adds a trippy, cosmic air to the proceedings.

“This remix was very natural and very joyful for me,” Goddard explains. ”  I did it in lockdown so I felt a sense of freedom and playfulness that was really nice and actually, in retrospect, very unique.  I love the vocals on this song, so I placed them at the forefront, and I tried to sonically make the mix one that was balearic and satisfying.  Macrodosing.”



l. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Julie Kathryn is a New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, sound designer, producer and creative mastermind behind I AM SNOW ANGEL, a critically applauded solo recording project that has received critical praise from the likes of Huffington Post, Indie Shuffle, Magnetic Magazine, Creem Magazine, Refinery 29, All Things Go and a lengthy list of others.

The New York-based producer and artist has also simultaneously developed a reputation as a highly sought after sound designer and producer working with Ableton and Splice.com – and she’s the co-founder of Female Frequency, a musical collective dedicated to empowering women and girls in the music industry.

Back in 2019, Julie Kathryn released her I AM SNOW ANGEL sophomore effort MOTHERSHIP. Recorded in a cabin in the wintry Adirondack woods, MOTHERSHIP touched upon themes of isolation, longing, love, paranoia and the paranormal. Since her debut’s release, she has been extremely busy: she gave birth to her first child, collaborated on Sophie Colette’s attention-grabbing “In Love a Little,” released a gorgeous and spectral cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song.”

The New York-based producer and artist recently announced that she will be releasing her third album Lost World later this year. Along with that announcement, Julie Kathryn shared Lost World‘s first single “Twisted Romance.” Co-written with Charles Newman and J.J. Appleton, “Twisted Romance” is a decidedly anachronistic, retro-futuristic bop centered around a motorik groove, glistening synth arpeggios paired with the New York-based producer and artist’s plaintive and ethereal cooing. While possessing an aching nostalgia and longing, the song manages to sonically nod at Kraftwerk and early 80s New Wave.

“‘Twisted Romance’ is a synthpop love story set in a dystopian matrix where people’s memories can be erased — or generated, or recovered — within our vast grid of digitized consciousness,” Julie Kathryn explains in press notes. “Reality and technology are interfused. I’m singing to someone who has either lost memories in the grid (like through a glitch, or even an intentional deletion) or maybe never actually had them (fabricated), and I am desperate to help this person recover the memories of how much we loved each other.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Tempers Shares Brooding and Icy “Nightwalking”

New York-based synth duo Tempers — Jasmine Golestaneh (vocals) and Eddie Cooper (production) — have diligently carved out their own niche within dark indie, electronica and synth pop circles since their formation. After a series of digital singles released back in 2013, the New York duo began to solidify their sound and approach, a sleek. brooding, nocturnal take on synth pop. 

The duo’s forthcoming, self-produced album New Meaning is slated for an April 1, 2022 release through Dais Records. As the duo explain, the album is about navigating the unknown, coping mechanisms and exploring the nature of choice. The album’s ten songs reflect on the creation go meaning as a way to access liberation in times of transition and loss while speculating on the transformative potential that exists alongside the grief of living in a world that is an ongoing state of crisis. Much like their previously released material, New Meaning continues a run of nocturnal music, that’s introspective yet quietly intense. 

Late last year, I wrote about “Unfamiliar,” a song that sounded indebted to 80s New Wave while evoking our current moment — living in a world that’s gone even madder and more uncertain than ever before. New Meaning‘s second and latest single “Nightwalking” continues a remarkable run of brooding, hook-driven material, with the song centered around icy synth arpeggios, thumping beats, a relentless motorik groove and Golestaneh’s achingly plaintive vocals floating off into the ether. The song manages to evoke late nights wandering around with your thoughts as your only company.

“I took a lot of long walks at a time when people had abruptly vacated NYC, and left the remnants of their homes on the sidewalks,” Tempers’ Golestaneh explains. “The city’s landscape became very surreal – a ghost town turned inside out. I was thinking about how to stay open, and embrace life derailed. The sky over the city was a real source of mystery, in it’s own world of pink sunsets, and sparkling nights. The contrast of that oblivious beauty amidst the pandemic chaos felt very special, and inspired the song.”

The New York-based duo will be embarking on lengthy national tour that includes a March 31, 2022 stop at Elsewhere’s Zone 1. In May, the duo will be in Europe for a handful of dates. But the word on the street is that Tempers will be announcing some more tour dates in the near future. Until then, tour dates, as always, are below.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montreal’s Thaïs Shares a Trippy and Cinematic Visual for “Arrête de danser”

Thaïs is an emerging Montreal-based singer/songwriter, who specializes in an atmospheric and delicate pop centered around the French Canadian singer/songwriter’s ethereal vocals. Thematically her work focuses on melancholy, loneliness and dysfunctional and confusing love.

Last year, the French Canadian artist released the Paradis Artificiels EP, which featured “Boreal,” a track inspired by a trip she took to Iceland that evoked the awe-inspiring sense of being in a gorgeous, natural beauty and taking it all in deeply — and “Sushi Solitude,” an atmospheric and delicate bit of synth pop that brought Washed Out to mind.

Since the release of Paradis Artificiels, the emerging Montreal-based artist signed to Bravo Musique, who released Thaïs’ latest single, “Arrête de danser.” Continuing a run of slickly produced pop centered around glistening and atmospheric synth arpeggios and traplike beats, “Arrête de danser” sees the French Canadian artist seamlessly meshing electro pop and trap; in fact, the song alternating between a syncopated trap-inspired flow for the verses and her ethereal cooing for the song’s hook.

While being club friendly, the song is actually a bitter tell-off to an unhealthy and dysfunctional lover that the song’s narrator knows is wrong for her and yet, she can’t quite get over. Despite her relative youth, the rising Montreal-based artist captures the push-and-pull of fucked up relationships with fucked up people.

Directed by Bobby Leon, the recently released, cinematically shot video for “Arrête de danser” follows an incredibly fashionable Thaïs as she goes to a local mall complex, where she’s haunted by memories of this lover at almost every turn, including a movie theater, that shows a movie that’s suspiciously close to her own life.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lucky Lo Releases a Swooning and Euphoric Anthem to Queer Love

Lo Ersare is a Umeå, Sweden-born, Copenhagen-based singer/songwriter, musician, and the creative mastermind behind the emerging indie pop project Lucky Lo. Ersare relocated to Copenhagen in 2014 and quickly made a name for herself as a busker and as an integral part of the city’s underground music scene, performing everything from folk to experimental jazz to improvisational vocal music. Along the way, her love for Japan and its music brought her to the island nation, where she has performed, grown a devoted fanbase and gathered inspiration, which has seeped into her music in various ways.

Ersare’s full-length debut, Supercarry is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Tambourhinoceros Records. The album will feature previously released single “Heart Rhythm Synchronize,” which was about synching heartbreaks through love and song and album title track “Supercarry,” a sleek and seamless synthesis of Annie Lennox and Peter Gabriel, that thematically finds Ersare quickly establishing a major thematic concern in her work — the transformational power of radical love.

Supercarry’s latest single, “Ever” is a swooning and infectiously optimistic pop song centered around glistening synth arpeggios, a strutting disco-inspired bass line, shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, a rousingly anthemic hook and Ersare’s plaintive pop belter vocals. Arguably, the most dance floor friendly of the album’s released singles, “Ever!” brings Talking Heads, and Annie Lennox to mind paired with the euphoria of Sylvester‘s queer anthem “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).”

Lyrically, the song’s narrator has found a way to transform the hardships of living in a cruel and judgmental world that won’t allow them to be themselves into a deep, sustaining hope and confidence; the sort of quiet confidence to be self-assured in whatever your truth may be. As Ersare explains the song is an anthem for queer love.

The inspiration for the song began deep inside a YouTube rabbit hole. Ersara was binging on Freddie Mercury videos one night. That eventually lead to her researching the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, and the blacklash of homophobia the gay community felt back then.

She came across a video of a gay man, who bravely announced to a reporter that no amount of homophobia could keep gay people from loving each other that struck her as timeless. Since the dawn of society, gay people have been — and will keep on — loving in secret, despite antagonism, until the world eventually accepts them.

This video resonated with the Umeå-born, Copenhagen-based artist, who was then inspired to make a song for “anybody, who feels they are living a truth in secret can listen to, dance to, and feel that they will be accepted. By repeating the motion, it’s going to change the world,” she says.

Animated by Isabelle Friberg, the recently released video is a life affirming love song: We follow the video’s protagonists, who have a meet cute at local bowling alley and fall madly in love. They represent the love that man in the 80s video clip talked about. And while we get a glimpse into their lives and their love, we see Ersare and her band performing the song, while looking like characters straight out of Jem. The video manages to be brightly colored, overwhelmingly positive and a sweet visual that emphasizes the song’s swooning euphoria.