Category: New Audio

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Permanent Records and RidingEasy Records Release a Party Starting Anthem off Their Forthcoming “Brown Acid: The Thirteenth Trip” Compilation

Throughout the course of this site’s 11-plus year history,  Permanent Records’ and RidingEasy Records‘ ongoing collaborative proto-metal and pre-stoner rock compilation series from the 1960s and 1970s, Brown Acid have been regularly featured. Now, as you may recall, each individual edition of the ongoing series is centered around RidingEasy Records founder Daniel Hal’s and Permanent Records co-owner Lance Barresi’s extensive, painstaking research and curation with Hall and Barresi spending a great deal of time attempting to track down the artists behind these great yet sadly under-appreciated tunes. 

Frequently those bands haven’t written, played or recorded together in 30 or 40 years — but Barresi and Hall encourage the bands to take part in the compilation process. “All of (these songs) could’ve been hits given the right circumstances. But for one reason or another most of these songs fell flat and were forgotten,” Lance Barresi explains in press notes. “However, time has been kind in my opinion and I think these songs are as good now or better than they ever were.”

Having the original artists participate as much as humanly possible in the compilation process can give the artists and their songs a real second chance at the attention they had the misfortune of missing all of those years ago. And of course, for critics, audiophiles and fans alike, the material on the Brown Acid series will do three very important things: 

  • introduce listeners to some great, sadly under-appreciated tunes that fucking rip or will melt your face right off 
  • fill in the gaps of what was going on in and around regional, national and even international underground scenes during the 60s and 70s
  • push the boundaries of proto-metal, proto-stoner rock, metal and stoner rock in new directions. 

The 13th edition of the Brown Acid series, Brown Acid: The Thirteenth Trip is fittingly slated for an October 31, 2021 release. Continuing in the path of its 12 predecessors, The Thirteenth Trip sees Barresi and Hall somehow digging even deeper into a very deep well of material recorded throughout the 60s and 70s — and discovering tunes still rip and rip hard.

Last month, I wrote about The Thirteenth Trip‘s first single, the hard charging and groovy, arena rock friendly ripper “Run Run” by  Montreal-based outfit Max. Technically credited as Gary Del Vecchio with Max — not the band from Montreal — the compilation’s second single “Buzzin” begins with what sounds like an in-studio party full of guffaws, yelps and chatter and is centered around a Led Zeppelin “Heartbreaker“-like funky blues riff, rollicking rhythmic changes and a chugging bass line. Simply put “Buzzin'” is a party-starting anthem.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Rising Jakarta, Indonesia-born and-based singer/songwriter and pop artist Afgan was raised listening to Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston and Brian McKnight — and as a very shy boy, he found solace in music, slowly gaining confidence in quiet karaoke rooms. Interestingly, for the Jakarta-born and-based artist, music has always been an equal synergy of far-flung global inspirations paired with a devotion to proudly showcasing his heritage through nods to Indonesian pop.

Since the 2008 release of his full-length debut Confession No. 1, the rising Indonesian pop artist has released five solo albums, countless number one hits and has amassed over 44 million Spotify streams with over 1 million listeners across 79 countries — just in 2019. In the past three years, Afgan has played sold-out shows across Southeastern Asia including a set at Korea’s Yuseong Hot Springs Festival in front of 30,000 and an appearance at Singapore‘s Hyperplay Festival alongside Nick Jonas. The rising Jakarta-born and-based artist has managed to score a bevy of industry awards — and building upon a growing profile, he made his Stateside debut at a Sofar Sounds show in San Francisco.

Released earlier this year, Afgan’s sixth album Wallflower sees the Indonesian pop artist making a foray into the global scene. The album derives its title from his favorite movie, The Perks Of Being A Wallflower and his deep connection to the film’s soft-spoken protagonist Charlie, played by Loghan Lerman. Afgan told NME, “I just relate so much with the main character and felt like my personality had a similar quality with him.” He continues “I looked up the meaning behind the word [wallflower] and felt like okay, that’s actually a good description of me and I want to own that part of myself.”

Thematically, the album, is influenced and informed by the rising Indonesian pop artist’s own tumultuous relationship and battles with his mental health. Much of the album lyrically is inspired by some of the self-help books that have helped him in drier times. “I‘ve been battling anxiety and panic attacks for years, so I wrote “Hurt Me Like You” about it,” Afgan explains. “Nobody can hurt me more than my own self. I really want to change the stigma around mental health, and in Indonesia, it’s still considered a taboo to talk about it. If we became more happy and at peace with ourselves, I think everything would be better.”

Adding to a growing global profile, the album features “M.I.A.,” a collaboration with Hong Kong-based multi-hyphenate Jackson Wong. The collaboration can trace its origins to a chance meeting between the two artists after Afgan played at 2019’s V Live Awards in Seoul. But in the meantime, the rising Jakarta-born and-based artist has released a remix of the sultry Quiet Storm-inspired, Troy Taylor-produced “Touch Me” that features a guest spot from Robin Thicke while retaining the swooning yearning at the core of the song.

`”‘Touch Me’ is a song with a dark and sexy beat that tells the story of one’s physical attraction at first glance, and how that touch may trigger a series of feelings,” Afgan explains. “Usually, these kind of messages are hard to communicate in Bahasa Indonesia, so this is my first time translating these feelings into a song as I’m now singing in English. This was a challenge for me but I am relieved and happy with the result.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Coastal Elite is a Sydney-based recording and live music collective featuring contributions from assorted members of the Personal Best Records family, including Carl Fox, Australian Athlete, Physique, Swoop‘s Josh Beagley, Uncle Jed‘s Laura Stitt, Touch Sensitive‘s Michael Di Francesco, The Goods‘ Rosario Ferraro, Andrew Bruce, Vincent Sebastian, Rich Sanford, Terepai Richmond, Moody Beach, Holiday Sidewinder, Wa Wa Nee‘s Paul Gray, Kat Karrtell, Pretty Mess, Professor Groove and a growing list of others. The collective have received attention across their native Australia for crafting breezily escapist material that explores seasick funk, maritime disco, aqua boogie and yacht rock.


The Aussie collective’s latest single “I Can See The Water” is a bit of breezy, 80s synth funk featuring glistening synths, a strutting bass line from Touch Sensitive’s Michael di Francesco, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, an enormous hook, alternating boy-girl vocals from Carl Fox and Moody Beach. And while sonically bringing Shalamar, Evelyn “Champagne” King, Patrice Rushen, Cherelle and others to mind, “I Can See The Water” is a dance floor friendly bop that reveals bittersweet and melancholy vibes just under its surface: The song’s protagonists wistfully reminiscence on a lost love between the two and update each other from separate viewpoints in asynchronous song talk.

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Emerging French Producer Krocodeal Releases a Hypnotic Banger

Marc Braccagni is a 30 year-old, emerging Paris-based electronic music producer, best known as Krocodeal. He started out as a guitarist and although he discovered electronic music much later on; it changed his life — and the direction of his music career.

Inspired by the likes of Damon Jee and Darlyn Vlys, the emerging French producer has developed a unique sound centered around punchy beats, trance melodies and glistening chords.

Krocodeal’s latest single “Judge” is hypnotic club banger with a widescreen quality. Centered around glistening synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, the new single sonically is one part retro-futuristic, John Carpenter-like soundtrack and one-part deep house.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: JOVM Mainstays Still Corners Release an Upbeat and Optimistic New Bop

London-based dream pop act and JOVM mainstays Still Corners — vocalist and keyboardist Tessa Murray and multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Greg Hughes — have managed to bounce between chilly and atmospheric pop and shimmering guitar-driven, desert noir through the release of five albums: 2012’s Creatures of an Hour, 2013’s Strange Pleasures, 2016’s Dead Blue, 2018’s Slow Air and last year’s The Last Exit.

The Last Exit continued where its predecessor left off with 11 songs centered around shimmering and carefully crafted arrangements featuring organic instrumentation paired with Tessa Murray’s smoky crooning. Thematically, the album took the listener through a hypnotic and mesmerizing journey filled with dilapidated and long-abandoned towns, mysterious shapes appearing on the horizon and long trips that blur the lines between what’s there and not there.

Understandably, the album’s material was brought into further focus as a result of last year’s pandemic-related lockdowns and quarantines. “There’s always something at the end of the road and for us it was this album. Our plans were put on hold – an album set for release, tours, video shoots, travel,” Tessa Murray explained in press notes for the album. “We’d been touring nonstop for years, but we were forced to pause everything. We thought the album was finished but with the crisis found new inspiration and started writing again.” Three of the album’s songs — “Crying,” “Static,” and “‘Till We Meet Again” were written during this period and they reflect upon the profound impact of isolation and the human need for social contact and intimacy. 

Serving as the immediate follow-up to The Last Exit, the duo’s latest single “Heavy Days” is a propulsive and uptempo bop featuring twinkling synth arpeggios, a chugging motorik-like groove, shimmering Western-tinged guitars and a soaring hook paired with Murray’s imitable smoky vocals. Sonically “Heavy Days” finds the duo retaining the beloved elements of their overall sound — but while seemingly drawing from 80s pop.

Interestingly, despite the literal weight of it’s title “Heavy Days” may be the most optimistic and sunny song of the JOVM mainstays’ growing catalog. “Sometimes it all feels like too much, there’s a lot to take in reading the news all the time,” Still Corners’ Tessa Murray says in press notes. “We wanted to write a reminder to put the phone down now and again and get out there and live life to the fullest while you can.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Toronto’s Absolutely Free Releases a Sprawling, Politically Charged Single

Acclaimed Toronto-based psych pop act Absolutely Free — multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Matt King, Michael Claxton (bass, synths) and Moshe Fisher-Rozenberg (drums, synths) — is an offshoot of experimental rock outfit DD/MM/YYYY, an act whose multi-rhythmic, boundary pushing raison d’être provided a springboard for Absolutely Free’s sound and approach. The Canadian psych trio’s full-length debut, 2014’s Absolutely Free. received a Polaris Prize nomination and received widespread critical applause from the likes of Pitchfork, The FADER, Stereogum, BrooklynVegan,Exclaim!, Under the Radar, PopMatters, AllMusic and countless others. 

During the past decade, the members of the Absolutely Free have cultivated and developed a long-held reputation for an unorthodox approach to both conceiving and performing music: Since the release of Absolutely Free., the Toronto-based psych pop act have released an array of multimedia projects and releases including 2019’s Geneva Freeport EP, which features U.S. Girls‘ Meg Remy. And adding to a growing profile the’ve toured alongside the likes of Alvvays, Youth Lagoon and JOVM mainstays Preoccupations and shared bills with Beak>, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, U.S. Girls and Fucked Up. 

Absolutely Free’s highly-anticipated Jorge Elbrecht-produced sophomore album Aftertouch is slated for a September 24, 2021 release through Boiled Records. Deriving its name from a the name of a synthesizer function, the album is fueled by the trio’s desire to “. . . to create an album that wasn’t bound by a physical ability to perform it live, to not only expand our palette, but also to consider the live performance as something completely separate.” Culling from myriad of influences including krautrock, New Wave, early electronic dance music, and an array of international psych and funk complications, the album sonically and aesthetically finds the trio shifting in, around and between analog and digital sounds, and real and fabricated images while simultaneously reveling in and refuting the loss of tactility. Thematically, the album explores narratives of hegemony, grief and exploitation in the present while sustaining curiosity for the unknown post-everything future. 

Last month, I wrote about Aftertouch album single “Interface,” a dreamily maximalist song featuring glistening synth arpeggios, percussive and angular guitar blasts, a chugging bass line and an insistent rhythm paired with plaintive vocals that reminded me of Amoral-era Violens — in particular, “Trance Like Turn.” The album’s latest single “Remaining Light” is a sprawling track with two distinct parts — a cinematic and atmospheric instrumental introduction featuring twinkling keys, glistening synths and clinking marimba. At around the 2:20 mark, the song slowly morphs into a slow-burning and brooding bit of pop featuring King’s plaintive, reverb drenched vocals ethereally floating over the mix.

Continuing a run of expansive and mind-bending material, “Remaining Light” was originally written in 2016 and was informed by the disturbing trend of rising gun violence against marginalized populations at the time of its creation. The song thematically tackles the weighty issues of structural racism, poverty and injustice that are embedded into society’s often corrupt and exploitive systems — all while sounding like a slick synthesis of The Fixx’s “Sign of Fire” and Amoral-era Violens.

“‘Remaining Light’ expresses the frustration felt towards invincible and corrupt institutions that uphold structural inequities, including police brutality and manufactured poverty experienced primarily by racialized communities,” the members of Absolutely Free explain. “Written during a heat wave in the summer of 2016, the song dishearteningly remains as relevant as ever today.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Stockholm-based psych pop/dream pop duo Astral Brain — Einar Ekström (production, composition) an Siri af Buren (vocals, lyrics) — can trace their origins back to the breakup of Ekström’s previous band Le Futur Pompiste. Although the band split up, Ekström continued writing new music with the hopes of eventually teaming up with a new vocalist.

Back in 2015, Ekström was introduced to af Buren, who is also a member of Malmö-based act Testblid!, an act that Ekstrom was a fan of for years. The pair bonded over mutual influences, and they decided to work together: af Buran began writing lyrics and melodies for the arrangements that Ekström had written years before.

Over the past two years, Astral Brain released a couple of singles while working on their forthcoming full-length debut album, The Bewildered Mind, which is slated for an October 15, 2021 release through Shelflife Records. Sonically, the album reportedly find the pair drawing from and blending elements of cinematic soundscapes, jazzy library music, early electronic music, 60s psychedelia and other genres into their own sound.

The album’s first single “Five Thousand Miles” features af Buren’s jazzy delivery ethereally floating over a gorgeous arrangement centered around twinkling keys, a hypnotic motorik groove and a soaring hook. Sonically, “Five Thousand Miles” brings Young Narrator in the Breakers era Pavo Pavo to mind, as it possesses a similar nostalgia-inducing, retro-futuristic sound paired with a careful attention to craft.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the course of the past couple of years, I’ve managed to spill copious amounts of virtual ink covering North Shields, UK-born, Newcastle-based singer/songwriter, guitarist and JOVM mainstay Sam Fender. 2019 was a breakthrough year for Fender: His Bramwell Bronte-produced. full-length debut, Hypersonic Missiles was a commercially successful and critically applauded effort, which was supported with some relentless international touring that included two North American tours with a festival stop at Lollapalooza and sold-out shows in Los Angeles and NYC. Fender also made appearances Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. And Fender was featured on CBS This Morning Saturday in a segment in which CBS anchor Anthony Mason chatted with the British JOVM mainstay about his seemingly sudden rise in notoriety.

Although 2019 was full of some momentous, life-changing achievements for the rising, young British singer/songwriter, the year unfortunately, ended on a frustrating and disappointing note: Fender had to postpone and then reschedule a handful of sold-out, end-of-the-year dates.

Before the pandemic struck, last year looked promising for the JOVM mainstay. Fender was hand-picked by  Elton John to play at his annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Party — and he received a BRIT Award nomination for Best New Artist.

Much like countless other artists across the world, Sam Fender’s plans were put on an indefinite pause but he did manage to keep busy, writing and recording the standalone single, the anthemic 80s-inspired slow-burn “Hold Out,” and a bluesy cover of Amy Winehouse‘s “Back To Black,” which he performed on BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge series. But along with that he also wrote and recorded his highly-anticipated sophomore album Seventeen Going Under.

Slated for an October 8, 2021 release through Interscope Records, Seventeen Going Under is reportedly the most intensely personal album of Fender’s growing catalog with the material finding Fender turning the mirror on himself — particularly his adolescence and the trials and tribulations of growing up. As a result, the album is a relatable journey that careens through an often misspent youth, navigating tumultuous relationships with both friends and family and trying to figure out what comes next and how to get there. Naturally, his birthplace of North Shields serves as the setting for the album’s songs, which see him chronicling cherished memories, difficult encounters and the events that he can’t unsee. “The whole record is about growing up and the self-esteem issues that you carry into your adult life,” the acclaimed, British JOVM mainstay explains.

Seventeen Going Under‘s third and latest single “Get You Down” is a big, breakneck Born in the USA era Bruce Springsteen-ilke song centered around Fender’s earnest delivery, a soulful horn solo, strummed guitar, a sprinkle of soaring strings. While being an unvarnished and honest look at himself and his life, the new single centered around Fender’s unerring knack for crafting rousing arena rock anthems. “This song in particular is about how insecurity has affected my relationships. Definitely one of the more personal ones,” Fender notes.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

During the course of this site’s 11-plus year history, I’ve managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink covering the acclaimed indie synth pop act Yumi Zouma. Last year, the JOVM mainstay act, which features members residing in New Zealand, the States and the UK, signed to Polyvinyl Record Co, who 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.

Touring is often the important — and necessary — part of the promotional campaign for an artist’s or band’s new release. Before the tour, the artist or band will begin to figure out how to re-contextualize their new material and previously released material for a live setting, imagining how a crowd will react to what — and how — they’ll play in a set on tour. Much like countless acts across the worlds, the members of the acclaimed JOVM mainstay act had to cut their tour short and put the rest of their plans on hold, leaving scores of their devoted fans without the opportunity to hear the new album in a live setting.

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

The JOVM mainstays’ latest single “Give It Hell” is essentially classic Yumi Zouma — wistful and melancholy lyrics paired with breezy, hook-driven synth pop. As always, Christie Simpson’s gorgeous vocals float over an equally ethereal arrangement of glistening synth arpeggios and a gentle yet forceful motorik groove. But just underneath the song’s bittersweet air is a subtle celebratory note, a reminder that in the most difficult of circumstances, we need to be grateful for being here right now. Perhaps more than ever, “Give It Hell” is fueled by deeply personal experience:

“Before we went on stage for the only show we would play on our sold-out 2020 US tour, we held each other tight,” Yumi Zouma’s Josh Burgess says in press notes. “Fighting back the tears, someone said, ‘let’s give it hell tonight’. The next day, Truth Or Consequences was released. We drove to New York, took some photos, and dispersed back to our homes in the US, UK, and New Zealand. We haven’t been in the same room since. “To ‘give it hell’ is one of the strongest ways to stay present. Throwing yourself entirely into something, knowing it’s all you can give – it can be equal parts rewarding and humbling. This song encapsulates us digging deep, pushing through self-doubt, and being grateful for the purpose and process of making music together. Especially when it’s hard and feels futile. In the spirit of staying present, we wanted to release this song NOW, and not wait for any other moment than this one.”