Category: New Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Seattle’s High Pulp Shares Surreal and Symbolic Visual for “You’ve Got to Pull It Up From The Ground” feat. Theo Croker

Seattle-based jazz outfit High Pulp features:

  • Antoine Martel (keys, synths), a self-professed mad scientist with a wall of modular synthesizers and a passion for film scores and abstract soundscapes
  • Rob Homan (keys), whose innate ability to process, deconstruct and reassemble material on the fly bordered on the impressive and scary
  • Scott Rixon (bass), who comes from a punk and hardcore background and possesses pop sensibilities
  • Victor Nguyen (tenor sax), a Pharaoh Sanders acolyte with an ear for urgent, entrancing solos
  • Andrew Morrill (alto sax), whose bold tones and fearless harmonic sensibilities earned him a reputation for pushing the old school into the 21st Century
  • Bobby Granfelt (drums), whose hip-hop and bebop-inspired drumming laid the rhythmic foundation for the entire project

High Pulp can trace their origins to a loose, weekly jam session at Seattle’s historic Royal Room. “When you put us all together, our sound isn’t so much a fusion as it is a synthesis,” the band’s Bobby Granfelt says in press notes. ““There’s a lot of different personalities coming from a lot of different places, and we use it all as fuel to create something that’s totally our own.”

The Seattle sextet’s latest album Pursuit of Ends is slated for a Friday release through Anti- Records. The band’s unique brand of experimental jazz is simultaneously vintage and futuristic, often hinting at Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Aphex Twin and My Bloody Valentine and a wide range of others. The album’s material sees the band carefully balancing meticulous composition with visceral spontaneity and centered around virtuosic performances.

While High Pulp is primarily centered around their core six, Pursuit of Ends sees the band making judicious use of a board network of collaborators with guest spots from Jaleel Shaw (sax), who has played with Roy Haynes and Mingus Big Band; Brandee Younger (harp), who has played with Ravi Coltrane, The Roots, and Makaya McCraven; Grammy-nominated Theo Croker (trumpet); Jacob Mann (keys), who has played with Rufus Wainright and Louis Cole to help push their sonic boundaries even further.

Pursuit of Ends‘ latest single “You’ve Got To Pull It Up From The Ground” is a mind-bending and incredibly slick synthesis of bop, jazz fusion, funk and hip hop. The composition begins with an extensive bop jazz-inspired, drum solo. The song then quickly moves to a section featuring rapid fire percussion paired with sinuous bass lines, twinkling keys and a mournful, modal horn line led by Theo Croker’s expressive Miles Davis-like playing. Throughout the rest of the song, the melody floats and dances through the instrumentation. While the material is rooted in precise performance of the written composition, there’s ample room for soulful, free-flowing improvisation among a collection of sensitive and thoughtful artists.

“During COVID we spent a lot of time listen to Miles Davis’ Second Quintet, and specifically the drum solo at the start was inspired by ‘Agitation’ off of E.S.P.,” Granfelt explains “There’s something about that quintet that is so awe-inspiring. I think it’s the way they have such a deep shared concept which allows them to improvise in a meaningful way.”

“Pull It Up” is really a concept that is at the core of the band,” Granfelt explains. “It’s sort of about magic, sort of about will, sort of about self-love. It’s a concept based in the idea that things are already where they need to be, and it’s about unearthing what is already there as opposed to creating something ‘new’.”

Directed by Isaac Calvin and Seth Calvin, the accompanying video draws on the song’s overarching theme of digging deep, being persistent and staying humble. The video features Granfelt doing useful but mundane tasks: pulling nails out of a board, washing dishes, tying knots and so on. Towards the end f the video, Granfelt builds a shrine, but the offerings aren’t high quality of expensive; rather, they’re scuffed up, well-worn items including roadside flowers, cigarette butts, trinkets, tchotchkes and knick-knacks.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Bratislava’s 52 Hertz Whale Shares Forceful “Phil”

The 52-hertz whale, sometimes referred to as 52 Blue is an individual whale of unidentified species that calls at the usual pitch of 52 hertz, a higher pitch frequency than that of the other whale species with migration patterns most closely resembling it. This whale’s call has been detected regularly in many locations since the 1980s, and appears to be the only individual emitting a whale call at this frequently. This whale, which has never been sighted by only heard through hydrophones, has been described as the “world’s loneliest whale.”

Bratislava, Slovakia-based post-punk outfit 52 Hertz Whale derive their name from the “world’s loneliest whale.” And with the release of 2015’s self-titled debut EP and 2017’s full-length debut i’ve met a lot of people, which the band supported with a lengthy tour through Germany, Poland, Belgium and the Czech Republic, the Slovakian quintet quickly amassed a following both nationally and internationally.

Adding to a growing profile, the band has made stops across the European Festival circuit, including Pohoda, Colours of Ostrava, Liverpool Sound City, Grape Festival, and Sharpe Festival among others, which have been praised by the international press.

The Slovakian quintet’s highly anticipated sophomore album — and first batch of new material in five years, Present Sense Impression is slated for an August 26, 2022 release through Full Moon Forum and Weltschmerzen. “Phil,” Present Sense Impression‘s stormy first single pays homage to The Microphones’ Phil Elverum — with The Microphones’ Song Islands being the foundation from which the lyrics for “Phil” come from. Interestingly, the song has an unusual structure that eschews the traditional verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus format. Rooted in the rapid-fire, inner monologue of a seemingly desperate and crazed narrator, and enormous hooks, the song starts off with a dramatic introduction of scorching synths and guitars that sounds much like a wailing ambulance rushing to an emergency. The song’s second section is centered around thunderous and propulsive four-on-the-floor and angular guitar attack. The song’s third section is a bit more atmospheric, featuring reverb-drenched guitars, military style drumming and a blazing guitar solo. The song’s last 50-60 seconds is an explosive bang before a gentle fade out. The end result is a song that’s unapologetically frenetic and adventurous in scope.

“‘Phil” was put together during the pandemic months of 2020,” 52 Hertz Whale’s bassist Fabo explains. “‘Phil’ and the rest of Present Sense Impression were created in the solitude of the Czech woods with the help of Prosecco, in cracked version of Ableton, and in a rehearsal space filled with smoke. Through cliched teeth, chaos, drive, as well as reluctance,we’ve arrived at a fuse of the good and the bad.” The band’s drummer Tomáš adds “‘Phil’ is one of the two new tracks that don’t feature a classic chorus, much like our older stuff. We only started to make use of those with the guidance of Lazer Viking, who produced most of the album.”

Directed, filmed and edited by Palo Hedmeg, the accompanying video stars Katarína Vyskočová and follows her on a spontaneous shoot in and around a waterworks near Bratislava. We follow her as she stomps, dances and sings along with the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Yeah Yeah Yeahs Share Cinematic and Feverish Visual for Dance Floor Friendly “Burning”

After teasing their first new bit of music in over nine — nine! — years, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Karen O. (vocals), Nick Zinner (keys, guitar, drum machine, bass) and Brian Chase (drums) — announced their long-awaited and highly anticipated fifth album, Cool It Down last month. 

Cool It Down is slated for a September 30, 2022 release through Secretly Canadian and features cover photography by Alex Prager. The eight-song album reportedly is an expert distillation of the band’s gifts and will impel the listener to move, cry and listen closely. 

“To all who have waited, our dear fans, thank you, our fever to tell has returned, and writing these songs came with its fair share of chills, tears, and euphoria when the pain lifts and truth is revealed, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O wrote in a statement to the band’s fans. “Don’t have to tell you how much we’ve been going through in the last nine years since our last record, because you’ve been going through it too, and we love you and we see you, and we hope you feel the feels from the music we’ve made. No shying away from the feels, or backing down from what’s been gripping all of us these days. So yes we’ve taken our time, happy to report when it’s ready it really does just flow out.”

“The record is called Cool It Down which is snagged from a lesser known Velvet Underground song. I told Alex Prager whose photo graces our record cover that her image speaks to sweeping themes in the music and sums up how I, Karen, feel existentially in these times! But there’s always more to the story. This is how our new story begins, we present to you with heads bowed and fists in the air ‘Spitting Off the Edge of the World’ featuring Perfume Genius.

Cool It Down‘s first single, the Dave Sitek-produced “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” featuring Perfume Genius is a slow-burning and cathartic power ballad centered around glistening and droning synths, Chase’s thunderous drumming, a distortion-driven guitar solo by Zinner, arena rock friendly hooks paired with the lush interplay between Karen O’s and Perfume Genius imitable vocals. Sonically “Spiting Off The Edge of the World” to my ears sounds like a slick yet subtle synthesis of Show Your Bones and It’s Blitz — and as a result, the song is simultaneously urgent yet an exercise in restraint. 

Lyrically, the song reflects on the current state of the environment, and the need for honesty about the damage we’re inflicting on the Earth. “I see the younger generations staring down this threat, and they’re standing on the edge of a precipice, confronting what’s coming with anger and defiant,” Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O explains. “It’s galvanizing and there’s hope there.” 

The album’s second single., the Andrew Wyatt-produced “Burning” is a dance floor anthem built over a twinkling piano loop inspired by The Four Seasons’ “Beggin’” and features Zinner’s fiery guitar sprawl, thumping beats, Chase’s funky drum patterns pared with Karen O’s imitable croons and shouts. The song captures the Karen O being engulfed in the tumult and unrest of Los Angeles in 2020 — with fire and smoke bearing down on the city and everything its in path. Sonically, the song sounds like a subtle refinement of It’s Blitz!-era YYYs that nods at Fever to Tell.

“Back when I was 19 living in the East Village, one night a roommate dragged me out of the apartment for an impromptu drink across the street,” Karen O writes. “I left a votive candle burning on a plastic yaffa block which, in my absence set flame to my room. Within an hour and-a half of having one drink down the block, firefighters had come and gone extinguishing the fire. I came home to find that a natural disaster had occurred (to my room) and most of my stuff, lost in the flames. All electronic goods were melted and demolished like my laptop, cameras etc. but oddly enough the items that held the most sentimental value remained intact like sketchbooks, a favorite sweater with hearts across the chest, and photographs. I had photos of my parents in their youth where the fire burnt around the two of them as if there was some intangible force field protecting them, many photos like that, mysteriously leaving the beloved subjects untouched.”

If the world is on fire I hope the most beloved stay protected and that we do all we can to protect what we cherish most in this life. ‘Burning’ is a song about that feeling, smoke signals for the soul. Begging to cool it down, just doing it the best we know how. Nick and I nodded to Frankie Valli’s ‘Begging’, with the line ‘oooh lay your red hand on me baby.’ We’ve cut a rug to many a soulful sixties bangers in our day, it was in our DNA by the time we wrote ‘Burning’.”

Directed by the band’s longtime collaborator Cody Critcheloe a.k.a. Ssion, the accompanying video is cinematically shot fever dream that nods at 60s B movies, West Side Story and Los Angeles low-rider culture before ending with the video’s protagonist staring at a raging conflagration.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Jenny Stevens & The Empty Mirrors Share a House Music-Inspired Remix of “Beneath Smooth Waters”

Welsh-born, Finnish-based singer/songwriter and musician Jenny Stevens, a.k.a. The Ukelele Girl is the creative mastermind behind JOVM mainstay outfit Jenny Stevens and The Empty Mirrors, which sees Stevens frequently pairing dark-alt pop with quirky visuals. 

Last year, Stevens released the The Distance Between Us EP, an effort that featured “The River Rolls On,” an atmospheric track that seemed indebted to the likes of Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure and Cocteau Twins. 

Earlier this year, Stevens released “Beneath Smooth Waters” is a slow-burning and brooding track that sees the project adopting a 90s trip hop sound: glistening, reverb-drenched synth arpeggios, sinuous bass lines paired with Stevens’ achingly plaintive vocals. According to Stevens, Bjork’s “Play Dead” and several other tracks were a major inspiration on the song — but to my ears, I’m reminded of Dummy era Portishead. 

Stevens goes on to explain that the song is “also a literal siren song — don’t go too near the water’s edge . . . “

Electronic music producer Bobby Molloy recently gave “Beneath Smooth Waters” the remix treatment that retains Stevens’ achingly plaintive vocal but places it within an uptempo, deep house music-like production featuring glistening synth arpeggios, tweeter and woofer rattling thump and subtle bursts of industrial clang and clatter.

Featuring footage by Sally Haigh, Rotorvideos.com and Pexels.com and artwork by Pexels.com’s Nadine Sh, the accompanying video for the Bobby Molly remix of “Beneath Smooth Waters” uses some of the imagery from the original video and adds digital animation and artwork, some footage of the creepiest doll I’ve ever seen and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Danger Mouse and Black Thought Team Up with A$AP Rocky and Run The Jewels on a Glitchy Roller Coaster Visual for “Strangers”

Danger Mouse (born Brian Burton) is arguably one of the most versatile and prolific artists and producers in music right now: As an artist he has been one-half of Broken Bells and Grammy Award-winning Gnarls Barkley. He has recorded collaborative albums with  Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ Karen O and the late, legendary MF DOOM. As a producer, he has worked with Adele, U2, The Black Keys, Gorillaz, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Michael Kiwanuka, Parquet Courts and a lengthy list of others. 

Black Thought (born Tariq Trotter) is a co-founder and frontman of Grammy Award winning, pioneering hip-hop act The Roots. Trotter is also an accomplished solo artist who has released a critically applauded album and two EPs: 2020’s Streams of Thought Vol. 3: Cane & Able and 2018’s Streams of Thought Vol. 1 EP and Streams of Thought Vol. 2 EP, which helped further his reputation among the cognoscenti — and real hip hop heads — as one of the dopest emcees to ever spit bars. Adding to a lengthy list of accolades and accomplishments, Trotter has acted in film and theater, along with having writing and producer credits.

The acclaimed duo’s long-rumored, long-awaited and highly-anticipated joint album Cheat Codes officially dropped today through BMG. While Cheat Codes simultaneously marks Danger Mouse’s first hip-hop album since 2005’s DANGERDOOM with MF DOOM and the follow-up to Black Thoughts’ solo trilogy Streams of Thought, their collaboration can be traced back almost almost 20 years earlier: Trotter and Burton first met back in 2005. They started working on material — but time went on, life happened, other projects and obligations came up. 

Following 2004’s acclaimed The Grey Album, Burton became one of the most in-demand and prolific producers of the day, helming several commercially and critically successful projects, which led to a bevy of accolades and awards. He also developed collaborations with a unique and eclectic array of artists while expanding upon and honing his own musicianship, production and writing. 

During that same period of time, The Roots released a batch of critically applauded albums and became the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon then The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Trotter released his aforementioned, critically applauded solo trilogy Streams of Thought. He collaborated with the likes of Eminem, John Legend, Pusha T., Griselda, and a list of others. He wrote, composed and starred in the widely-praised off-Broadway show Black No More. And adding to a lengthy list of accomplishments, he co-produced a TV series with his Roots bandmate Questlove. 

Each mistakenly thought that the other had moved on and their collaboration just died, but as it turned out, neither one never stopped wanting to work together. Burton had long felt an instinctive need to return to his roots and make a timeless hip-hop album. He knew that Trotter was one of the few emcees truly capable of fulfilling that vision. Simultaneously, Trotter was seeking a space, where he could express himself musically and creatively beyond the confines and structures of his own band. 

This time, Burton was a far more seasoned songwriter and producer, Trotter an even more extraordinary emcee.  So, setting aside all distractions, Burton played Trotter some new music he had had. The ideas and words quickly flowed — and the experience was liberating. 

Meticulously built over a period of several years, Cheat Codes finds Burton pushing widescreen, soul-infused hip-hop soundscapes to new directions paired with Trotter’s commanding presence, incisive lyricism and dexterous wordplay. Unlike the typical producer-meets-rapper/side project, Cheat Codes is an effort between two like-minded collaborators, who raise each other’s games to new heights. 

The album also features an equally acclaimed cast of guests including A$AP Rocky,Run The Jewels, MF DOOM, Michael Kiwanuka, Joey Bada$$, Russ, Raekwon, and Conway the Machine. 

So far I’ve written about three Cheat Codes singles: 

“No Gold Teeth,” which featured a warm and dusty psych soul-like production that brings RZA, Pete Rock, and DJ Premier to mind, that serves as a lush bed for Black Thought’s dense, rapid fire, lyrical deluge. 

“Because,” which features a slow-burning, psych soul-inspired production paired with a vocal hook by Dylan Cartlidge. While being another example of the deep and uncannily innate simpatico shared between the two acclaimed collaborators, “Because” is chock full of dope bars, impressive wordplay and mind-blowing inner and outer rhyme schemes in an easy-going yet urgent cypher between Black Thought, Joey Bada$$ and Russ, that weaves in and out of the political and the personal. 

“Aquamarine,” a woozy and cinematic song featuring skittering hi-hat, thumping beats and squiggling bursts paired with a soaring hook from acclaimed British soul artist Micheal Kiwanuka. The production is a lush and roomy bed for Black Thought’s imitable, hard-hitting bars. “For ‘Aquamarine,’ when I heard the music I just had a feeling to sing about standing up for something that’s unique and following that path”, Kiwanuka says. “I don’t know why but that’s what came out.  Sometimes when you’re following something that’s unique to you it’s as if ‘enemies are all around’. At times life can feel fragile like ‘everything’s burning down’. For some reason the chords and music made me feel that way.”  

“Strangers,” the last single off Cheat Codes before its release, is a neck-snapping banger featuring four of the dopest emcees out there right now — Black Thought, A$AP Rocky and Run The Jewels spitting flames on a woozy and dusty production and glitchy centered around tweeter and woofer rattling beats, sampled, B-movie-like dialogue, soulful vocals. 

“We were honored to get down with our elite and legendary friends Danger Mouse, Black Thought and A$AP Rocky on this banger,” Run the Jewels say in press notes. 

I’ve said this before, and I’m not bullshitting here: Cheat Codes may arguably be the best hip-hop album — and possibly, the best album — of this year. I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

Continuing the duo’s ongoing visual collaboration with video production team UNCANNY, the accompanying, grainy black and white visual is a wild rollercoaster ride that sees each of the song’s four incredible emcees, Black Thought, A$AP Rocky, Killer Mike, and El-P passing the mic — or in this case their phones for them to spit fire. The video captures the song’s urgency and dusty glitchy vibe.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Taleen Kali Shares a Fuzzy, Power Chord-Driven Ripper

Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, poet, essayist, visual artist, and Dum Dum Records label head Taleen Kali (she/they) crafts romantic punk songs with a cosmic sound with elements of shoegaze, psychedelia and grunge that’s dreamy and defiant. Influenced by melodies and imagery from her Armenian heritage and her parents’ birthplaces of Lebanon and Ethiopia, Kali has manages to fuse her cultural linage with the sounds of the modern countercultures she grew up embracing and eventually exploring as a musician.

Kali initially starting her career in earnest as a member of Los Angeles-based band TÜLIPS. After TÜLIPS went out with a bang at their final headline show at The Regent Theater back in 2016, Kali stepped out into the limelight as a solo artist, sharing bills and touring the States with the likes of Ex Hex, Alice Bag and Seth Bogart.

The Los Angeles-based multi-hyphenate’s solo debut, 2018’s Kristin Kontrol-produced Soul Songs EP was recorded at Hollywood-based Sunset Sound Studios and was mixed by Machine’s Brad Laner. The EP, which found Kali’s riot grrl ethos maturing into a polished multifaceted punk sound with noise pop and New Wave, was released to praise from BUST Magazine and Stereogum, who likened her sound to a contemporary Blondie. Soul Songs was also included in Pitchfork‘s Guide to Summer Albums and LA Weekly‘s Best Indie Punk Albums.

Kali and her backing band followed up with an unplugged version of the EP and covers of The Supremes‘ “Baby Love” and Garbage‘s “#1 Crush.” She also recorded a two-song pandemic project called Changing with her TÜLIPS-era producer Greg Katz.

As I mentioned earlier, Kali is the founder of Los Angeles-based experimental label Dum Dum Records and what the The Los Angeles Times has called “cult favorite” DUM DUM Zine — and she’s a sound healer, who often leads group mediations. Interestingly, last year, she briefly pivoted from the punk psychedelia she’s best known for with the release of last year’s Songs For Meditation, a sound bath album. Additionally, her poetry, essays and visual art have appeared in digital and internationally recognized publications including The Onion, Spin Magazine, Razorcake, Los Angeleno, and The Bushwick Review.

Taleen Kali’s Jeff Schroeder and Josiah Mazzaschi-co-produced full-length debut Flower of Life is slated for a March 3, 2023 release through Kali’s Dum Dum Records. Sonically, the album sees the rising Los Angeles further cementing her fuzzy and noisy take on psych punk paired with vocals that run the range of femme punk and shoegaze siren.

Flower of Life’s latest single, album title track “Flower of Life” is a grungy psych punk ripper centered around Kali’s sneering delivery, fuzzy power chords, thunderous drumming, soaring organ chords paired with a mosh pit friendly chorus. To my ears, “Flower of Life” sonically, is a defiant and decidedly 120 Minutes-era MTV-like alt rock influenced song — think My Bloody Valentine meets riot grrr-era punk. So far, the track received praise from Buzzbands LA and Grimy Goods, and radio airplay from KEXP.

“‘Flower of Life’ was a spiritual concept I held onto for a long time before writing this song,” the Los Angeles-based multi-hyphenate explains in press notes. “The flower is a fractal, a cycle, ever blooming, ever decaying. 

“For our 1st music video, we wanted to honor this cycle by highlighting the cultural moments we experienced in the recent past as a way of celebrating our resilience while also looking ahead to the future. For our band right now, it means being able to perform again and tour to support our upcoming album. In the larger scheme of things, it means so much more. 

It was important to us to not only highlight resistance but also celebration in the music video. The news clips in the video range from footage of LGBTQ pride marches to recent protests, which include the recent Roe vs. Wade demonstrations, Armenians in L.A. protesting the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Black Lives Matter, and even the 2017 Women’s March.”  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Plaster Cast Share A Hazy and Dreamy Bop

Plaster Cast, which currently features members split across the country, can trace their origins back to when producer Alex Esk started the project with vocalist Cameron Wilson back in 2011 — while both were studying video art at UC San Diego. Wilson’s sister Michaela Lustig joined the project as a second vocalist. Producer/engineer Brah1m joined the band after meeting Esk, when they both worked for The Real Housewives.

And with that lineup, the members of Plaster Cast wrote and recorded their debut EP, 2016’s Permanence, which received critical praise from Gorilla vs. Bear, The Fader, Vice, and BBC Radio. Adding to a breakthrough year for the outfit, EP which featured “Sunless,” a melancholic, downtempo pop song centered around Wilson and Lustig’s uncanny harmonizing and a warped beyond recognition Adele sample, and “Undecided,” which featured Foxes in Fiction appeared on a number of year-end lists.

The project’s sophomore EP Control is slated for release tomorrow. Understandably, informed by the vast changes of the sociopolitical climate that have occurred since 2016’s Permanence, Control EP thematically is a large, perceptive grown towards modernity with the EP’s material touching on various concepts of individualism vs. collectivism, intimacy vs. alienation, and the self-consciousness of empathy — but in an understated, largely philosophical fashion. 

The EP also sees a deeper sense of collaboration between the project’s core members, inspired by the insight that relinquishing one’s own ideas can provide both empowerment and diminishment simultaneously. And as a result, the EP reportedly feels more like a group of friends in a personal therapy session, in which all their collective fears, joys and uncertainties are shared in a way that touches upon a more expansive reflection of the human condition. 

The material is rooted within the intersection of warmth and isolation — and the band’s desire to acknowledge their own literal and symbolic closeness and distance, shaped by each member’s own reality. “The songs are connected by themes of remoteness and looking at relationships as a negotiation of what you get and what you give up,” Plaster Cast’s Wilson explains. “Ultimately the work of looking at your place in your relationships is worth the pain it can cause, as we are useless alone.”

But ultimately, the central theme at the heart of Control is the relinquishment of control in one’s life: The control of our thoughts, the control over the circumstances and impermanence of life, the control over a world that’s often confusing, uncertain and mad. And paradoxically through relinquishing control — and the possibility of it — there often comes a sense of great mindfulness and calm. 

Last month, I wrote about EP single “Waves.” Beginning with an ethereal introductory section featuring dreamily cooed vocals and atmospheric synths, the song around the 25 second mark quickly ramps up to become a relentless, disco-tinged, motorik groove-driven bop with mournful synth pads and an infectious hook as a sinuous and lush bed for those dreamily delivered harmonies. While sonically bearing a resemblance to Chromatics and others, the song expresses an aching yearning for understanding and companionship in a desperate, uncertain moment.

The EP’s latest single , the dreamy and hazy “Videotheque” much like its predecessor begins with a lullaby like introduction featuring strummed acoustic guitar paired with achingly vulnerable vocals that quickly morphs into a slickly productions club and lounge friendly, house music-like bop centered around layers of glistening synth oscillations, skittering beats and a breezy melody serving as a lush bed for dreamy boy-girl harmonies. But unlike its predecessor, the song thematically touches on the sense of dissociation, longing and ache that often comes from any relationship.

Shot by Cameron Wilson and Rachel Louie with assistance from Christopher Konecky at Hook Fabrication and edited by Cameron Wilson, the lyric video features the members in a glitchy VHS haze, which adds to the song’s dreamy and hazy air.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: DJ Premier Teams Up with Remy Ma and Rapsody on a Banger Celebrating All Things Hip Hop

Founded in 1996, Mass Appeal is an entertainment company dedicated to documenting the emerging movements that influence popular ideas through the perspective of those, who shape and shift culture. Since its founding, Mass Appeal has become the self-professed elevated voice of hip hop and its ever-expanding sphere of influence.

With 2023 marking hip hop’s 50th anniversary, Mass Appeal developed #HipHop50, a massive, cross-platform initiative aimed at celebrating the momentous anniversary in the most authentic and globally impactful way possible: #HipHop50 is a multi-year celebration that includes strategic partnerships, immersive global activations and charitable elements, as well as the creation of once-in-a-lifetime moments featuring the iconic voices that have transcended culture.

Mass Appeal have teamed up with The Orchard to distribute Hip Hop 50: The Soundtrack, a collection of ten EPs of all-new, original music that will unite the industry’s most highly regarded producers and talents to look back, honor and celebrate 50 years of hip hop music and culture — all while looking forward at hip hop’s bright future. The series will feature music curated by DJ Premier, Swizz Beatz, Mustard, The Dream, Mike Will Made- It, No I.D., Hit-Boy, Take A Daytrip and Tainy. A portion of all #HipHop50 proceeds will be donated to various charitable organizations, including the Universal Hip Hop Museum, set to open its doors in 2024.

The first EP of the series, DJ Premier: Hip Hop 50: Volume 1 is a five-song EP entirely produced by the legendary DJ Premier. Featuring collaborations with Lil Wayne, Nas, Remy Ma, Rapsody, Joey Bada$$, Slick Rick, and Run The Jewels, the EP salutes and celebrates the beloved — and wildly influential — Preemo sound, while amping hip hop heads for the next releases in the series. (Personally, the Preemo and Swizz Beatz editions are right in my wheelhouse. I’m curious about the No I.D. edition, too.)

DJ Premier: Hip Hop 50: Volume 1‘s first single “Remy Rap” is a neck-snapping banger centered around a minimalist, tweeter and woofer rattling Preemo production featuring looping bursts of wobbling bass synths, skittering beats, explosive hand-claps and some good ol’ fashioned turntablism serving as a funky and sinuous bed for Remy Ma and Grammy-nominated Rapsody to trade fiery and swaggering bars and verses. While showcasing two criminally underrated — and just fucking dope — emcees, the song is a forceful reminder that hip hop wouldn’t be where it is today without the women who have cultivated, supported and performed alongside the men.

Directed by Maya Table, the accompanying video for “Remy Rap” pays homage to early 90s NYC hip hop and its related imagery: The NYC skyline, inner city building rooftops, grainy black and white footage, Kangol bucket hats, enormous hoop earrings, hockey jersys, thick Cuban link chains and DJ Premier furious scratching — and of course, two amazing emcees vibing off each other.

Fittingly, this one comes out on the 49th anniversary of DJ Kool Herc‘s legendary “Back to School Jam” at 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop. So let’s celebrate and honor the pioneers, the dreamers, legends and icons of the music and culture that has become the lingua franca of the past three generations or so of young people. Long live hip hop, y’all! Long live the DJ! Long live the emcee! Long the live the breakers! Long live the graffiti writers!

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hanya Shares Surreal and Feverish Visual for “Amateur Professional”

Brighton-based dream pop act and JOVM mainstays Hanya — currently Heather Sheret (vocals, guitar), Benjamin Varnes (guitar) and Jack Watkins (drums) — exploded into the national and international scenes with the release of their debut EP, I Used to Love You, Now I Don’t, an effort that saw the British outfit quickly and firmly establish a sound that featured elements of dream pop and shoegaze. 

Much like countless acts across the globe, back in 2020, the Brighton-based JOVM mainstays had plans to build upon a rapidly growing profile both nationally and internationally: they released their acclaimed, sophomore EP Sea Shoes, which they supported with touring across the UK and their Stateside debut at that year’s New Colossus Festival. But since then they’ve been busy.

Last year, the Brighton-based released their acclaimed third EP 100 Metre Sprint which featured: 

  • “Texas,” a shimmering bit of dream pop that nods at 70s AM rock, and focuses on the longing and excitement of a new crush/new love/new situationship
  • “Monochrome,”a hazy and slow-burning ballad that celebrates the pleasures of life’s small things
  • “Lydia,” a slow-burning and gorgeous track that continues upon their winning mix of 70s AM rock and Beach House-like dream pop. 
  • “Fortunes,” a slow burning track, which featured  A Storm In Heaven like painterly textures, ethereal harmonies and deeply personal, lived-in lyricism. 
  • “Logan’s Run,” which struck me as a lush and brooding synthesis of AM Rock and lush, A Storm in Heaven-like textures. Fittingly, the track was inspired by the 1970’s sci-fi classic, which the band watched a lot during the pandemic. 

Hanya’s newest single, the Theo Verney-produced “Amateur Professional” sees the rising Brighton-based outfit marrying their live show energy with their recorded sound — while further refining and pushing that sound in subtle yet decided new direction. Centered around a post-punk influenced take on shoegaze and dream pop that features shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars paired with angular and propulsive bass lines serving as a lush bed for Sheret’s gorgeous and vulnerable delivery singing ongue-in-cheek lyrics, “Amateur Professional” features the band’s penchant for rousingly anthemic hooks. But at its core, the song strikes at something deeply familiar for me — and those I’ve spent my adult life covering: The moral and mental gymnastics that creatives must grapple with when attempting to make a side-hustle viable in a consumer world that doesn’t value authenticity and constantly vies for every moment of our attention. 

“‘Amateur Professional’ was written at a time when we felt our most cynical,” Hanya explains. “Trying to remain inspired in this chaos and constantly grappling with self-doubt is something every person experiences, and we wanted to explore that in this world of a ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ mentality. The track is about attempting to be a full-time professional in whatever it is you want, even if you feel like a lousy amateur a lot of the time. It’s a fighting song, for when you’re feeling like giving up.”

Directed by Sara Azmy, the accompanying video for “Amateur Professional” is a gorgeously shot and surreal fever dream split between the office drone working at the office to support themselves and their dream until they burned out and lost their minds — and their dreams of music stardom. That balance between doing what you have to do to support yourself and living your dreams can be extremely complicated.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Murlocs Share Slow-Burning and Pensive “Compos Mentis”

With the release of their first four albums, The Murlocs  — King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Ambrose Kenny-Smith (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and Cook Craig (bass) along with ORB’s Cal Shortal (guitar) and Crepes‘ and Beans’ Matt Blach (drums) and Tim Karmouche (keys)— firmly established a reputation for crafting fuzzy and distorted psychedelic blues, which they supported as an opener for the likes of Gary Clark, Jr., Mac DeMarco, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Pixies, Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks, Wavves and of course, Kenny-Smith’s and Craig’s primary gig, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard — and as a headlining act, as well. 

Recorded at Button Pushers Studio, last year’s Tim Dunn-produced, 11-song Bittersweet Demons found the band lovingly reflecting on the people, who have left a profound impact on their lives — the saviors, the hell raisers and other assorted and mystifying and complex characters they’ve come across. While being among the most personal and complex batch of material they’ve written in their growing catalog, the album saw the band bouncing between and around sun-blasted pop, blues punk and wide-eyed psychedelia. 

The Murlocs’ sixth album Rapscallion is slated for a September 16, 2022 release through ATO Records. Self-produced by the band during the early stages of the pandemic, Rapscallion‘s 12 songs were recorded in the home studios of the band’s Kenny-Smith, Shortal, Blach, Cook Craig and Karmouche. Conceived and written as a coming-of-age novel in album form, the album’s material is partly inspired by Kenny-Smith’s adolescence as a nomadic skate kid. The album’s world is wild and squalid, populated by an outrageous cast of misfits — teenage vagabonds, small-time criminals, junkyard dwellers and truck-stop transients among others. The end result is an album that thematically — and narratively — is stepped in danger, delirium and wide-eyed romanticism of youth. 

Sonically, Rapscallion is reportedly a marked departure from Bittersweet Demons‘ garage rock leanings, with the album’s material featuring strains of stoner metal and post punk. And while darker and more formidable, the album’s songs are still fueled by the same freewheeling energy they’ve brought to the stage. 

Last month, I wrote about Rapscallion‘s first single, “Virgin Criminal,” a decidedly post-punk song centered around buzzing and angular guitar attack, a forceful motorik groove, Kenny-Smith’s punchy and breathless delivery paired with the band’s unerring knack for rousingly anthemic hooks. And at its core is a tale of an unnamed protagonist, who describes his first crime, an ill-fated convenience store robbery, which ends in murder — and the wild thrill the narrator gets from being an outlaw.

“Compos Mentis,” Rapscallion‘s second and latest single is a slow-burning and pensive ballad featuring fuzzy and distorted guitars, twinkling keys and a motorik-like groove paired Kenny-Smith’s imitable delivery. While seeing the band exploring a more contemplative — and perhaps even softer — side, “Compos Mentis,” asks a far deeper, far more vexing question: Are we in control of our own minds?

“After a long day of truck stop fights, hitchhiking and getting kicked off trains, our beloved rapscallion protagonist decides to spend the night in an abandoned junkyard,” The Murlocs’ Ambrose Kenny-Smith told the folks at Flood. “Finding peace within the garbage that surrounds him, he begins to question his purpose in life and whether or not he’s in control of his own mind.”

Created by Guy Tyzack, the accompanying video for “Compos Mentis” follows a dirty, Oscar the Grouch-like Kenny-Smith wandering around an abandoned suburban factory and a junkyard. He comes across four garbage bags, which oddly enough contain his equally dirty bandmates. It’s surreal and almost childlike fantasy of being a filthy, n’er-do-well kid forever.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Beacon Share a Surreal Animated Visual for Brooding “Pay My Debts”

Over the course of this site’s 12 year history, I’ve managed to spill a copious amount of virtual ink covering New York-based electronic music duo and JOVM mainstays Beacon. Their third album, 2018’s Gravity Pairs saw the duo — Thomas Mullarney III (vocals) and Jacob Gossett (production, keys, synths) — radically changing their creative process and writing material that was a sonic left turn from their previously released work. 

Mullarney III and Gussett embarked on open-ended writing sessions, in which they adopted a more linear songwriting style instead of the loop and texture-driven method they had developed and honed during the creation of their first two albums. The initial demos they wrote were built around piano chords and guitar phrases paired with vocal melodies, which they then edited into a number of different iterations. Doing so allowed the duo to look at each individual version from a multitude of angles and directions. 

As they continued through Gravity Pairs‘ creative process, they expanded upon some songs and pared others back. Much like the bending of light through a prism, the abstract, patient and deeply painterly process eventually turned the material they had been working on into a space in which wildly different colors, tones and textures — in the album’s case, minimalist ballads, elaborate pop spirituals and driving dance tunes — can coexist simultaneously and at different speeds. 

Interestingly, with each iteration they created, the JOVM mainstays quickly discovered that they could easily expand upon how they presented Gravity Pairs‘ material in a live setting: They could play the album’s material in a straightforward fashion — or they could play that material in a very different fashion that added or subtracted color and shading, depending on the circumstances, their moods and their desires. 

While Gravity Pairs found Beacon boldly pushing their sound and approach in adventurous, new directions, the material remained imbued with the vulnerability and yearning that they’ve long been known for. 

A couple of years have passed since the release of Gravity Pairs, but the JOVM mainstays have been busy: Back in 2019, they opened for acclaimed Aussie electro pop artist Nick Murphy during his North American tour, which included a stop at Brooklyn Steel. The duo shared a series of stripped down, live studio sessions — and they released a remix album, which featured remixes and edits by Elkka, Helios, and CRi. 

2020 saw the release, of a meditative, piano-led take on the Pixies‘ “Wave of Mutilation” inspired by the slower tempo and phrasing of the UK Surf B-side, which showcased the song’s mutability. Just before the pandemic struck, the members of Beacon embarked on a headlining European tour. 

Beacon capped off 2020 with the release of “Feel Something,” which saw Mullarney III and Gussett continuing to prioritize the creative process behind Gravity Pairs while painting a surrealistic and disturbing vision of desire, longing and control that feels like a lived-in perspective of a codependent and dysfunctional relationship — with a person or a situation. 

Last month, the longtime JOVM mainstays announced that their highly-anticipated and long-awaited fourth album, Along the Lethe will be released on September 9, 2022 through their own imprint, Apparent Movement. The pandemic forced the duo to change their creative approach again but reportedly, the end result is a gorgeous and brooding album meant to make the listener stop and reflect. 

The duo wrote, recorded and produced the album during a period of extreme uncertainty in the pandemic, with the band’s Thomas Mullarney III explaining: “I was haunted by this feeling of history intruding on our reality as lockdown descended on NYC, I was reading a book called The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth about the apocalyptic aftermath of the Norman Invasion of England in 1066, written in a ‘shadow tongue’ combining old and modern english. This uncanniness followed me through the pandemic.” Thematically, Along the Lethe is as much about the allure of forgetting tragedy as it is the need to maintain our connections to the past. But interestingly, it may arguably be the most eclectic, expansive album of their growing catalog to date. As the band’s Jacob Gossett says, “It feels like a record without restraints.”

So far I’ve written about three of the album’s singles:

  • “Until Next Time,” the first bit of new material from the duo in over two years. The single revealed a fresh, new aesthetic rooted in contrasts: Rumbling electronic feedback and noise gives way to a swirling and twinkling piano-led melody paired with Mullarney’s achingly delicate falsetto, trembling metronomic beats and swirling static, which rises and crashes into Mullarney’s vocals. 
  • “Can’t Turn Back,” a stunning and seemingly effortless mesh of electronic music genres, timbres and moods centered around UK garage-like rhythms, twinkling synth arpeggios, skittering beats and atmospheric pads while Mullarney III sings of losing himself “in the constant dark” with achingly delicate vocals. As part of an album largely written during pandemic-related quarantines, the specter of hopelessness, uncertainty and struggle looms large — and yet, the song attempts to keep the existential doom at bay, while looking upward. 
  • “Ostrich” is a mesmerizing piano-driven song featuring contributions from multi-instrumentalist Colin Stetson, who contributes fluttering and mournful horns and woodwinds into the song’s gently swelling electronic noise. Inspired by a tuning technique used by The Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed and John Cale, “Ostrich” required all strings of every stringed instrument to be tuned to the same note. And with that foundation, Gossett and Mullarney III improvised on the synths and instruments in their studio, which gives the song a hypnotic and dreamy atmosphere. 

“Pay My Debts,” Along the Lethe‘s fourth and latest single sees the duo effortlessly meshing genres as you’ll hear skittering trap beats, glistening synth-driven hooks paired with syrupy R&B-like grooves and Mullarney III’s achingly plaintive vocals. “Pay My Debts” manages to convey a core theme of the album, as the song lyrically reckons with the weight of guilt and absolution.

“The title of our new album, Along the Lethe, came from lyrics in the song ‘Pay My Debts.’ The Lethe is one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, and souls who drank from it lost all memory of their lives on earth. Forgetting can be seductive, and the Lethe offers a kind of absolution—not in the form of forgiveness, but erasure. The desire to transform the collective trauma of the last two years into a collective amnesia is one of the themes of our new record. The chorus in ‘Pay My Debts;’ alludes to an impending ecological disaster that’s followed the narrator even into Hades: ‘Something in the sky turns black, start another fire, I guess.’ Despite the allure of forgetting, and the Lethe’s metaphysical power to do so, the spectre of the last two years is inescapable.”

Directed by Boy Tillekens, the accompanying surreal, animated video follows a faceless, purple humanoid on a journey from the idyllic, Holland-like banks of a motionless river towards a billowing plume of black smoke across the horizon. “I was picturing a Thomas Hart Benton painting coming to life,” Tillekens says in press notes. “Kind of treating the landscapes as if it’s a character itself — quite surreal, a bit Lynchian.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Saint Kochi Shares Lysergic Animated Visual for “Leeches”

Born in London to parents, who immigrated from India and Kenya, the rising British chamber pop/psych pop artist Saint Kochi has led an extraordinary and unusual life, that for a while got in the way of his real lifetime aim — to make music his entire life, not a part of it. There was so much that occupied his time: a flirtation with genuine stardom as a professional cricket player, parents who doubted hat anyone could survive with a career in the arts, and an unexpected career as a seller of massive ships. 

Saint Kochi continued to push forward with his lifelong dream of making music, releasing last year’s self-titled debut EP. Building upon the growing buzz of his debut EP, the British chamber pop and psych pop artist’s Dom Ganderton co-produced sophomore EP Almost Lost officially dropped today. The EP is a bold step forward for the rising British artist, as it sees him crafting gorgeous and thoughtful music meant to transport the listener to another place.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past few months, I’ve written about three of the EPs singles in the lead-up to its release:

  • “Almost Lost,” a cinematic track that brought  The Beatles, Scott Walker, The Verve, and JOVM mainstays POND to mind — but while possessing an enormous sound, the song is rooted in intimate and lived-in lyricism that’s personal yet universal. 
  • “Out of Time,” a single that features a gorgeous string arrangement paired with a sumptuous bass line, boom bap-like drums, twinkling bursts of keys and Saint Kochi’s plaintive cooing. And much like its immediate predecessor, the widescreen vibes are rooted in intimate, lived-in experience. 
  • “Lifeline,” a single that continued a remarkable run of cinematic, swooning, orchestral pop rooted in personal yet universal experience: With “Lifeline,” the song thematically is rooted in the desire to connect with another person, who understands you for you, and is there for you during the most tumultuous and difficult periods and struggles of your life.

Almost Lost‘s fourth and latest single “Leeches” is a stunningly gorgeous and thoughtful song featuring strummed guitar, a soaring orchestral arrangement, a fuzzy and lysergic guitar solo and enormous hooks paired with the rising British artist’s plaintive falsetto. “There is a lyric that is lifted out of a Basquiat painting called Leeches– it made me think a lot about unspoken realities of peoples’ lives that exist alongside our interactions with people and relationships in a very immediate sense,” Saint Kochi says.

While primarily recorded at Saint Kochi’s purpose-built basement studio, the string arrangement performed by the 14-piece string section was recorded at RAK Studios, where iconic albums like Radiohead‘s The Bends and a lengthy list of others was recorded. The string section fulfilled the rising British artist’s ambition of “making a record that had these big cinematic James Bond, Beatleseque type of strings on them.” 

Directed by Kate Renshaw-Lewis and featuring animation, VHS and transfer workday Dillion Moore, the accompanying video for “Leeches” follows an animated Saint Kochi through a lysergic journey through the lives of every day folks he encounters during a regular day in London.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: British Columbia’s Blessed Share Tense and Eerie “Anything”

With the release of 2020’s self-released, full-length debut, the Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada-based art rock/post punk outfit Blessed — Drew Riekman, Reuben Houweling, Jake Holmes and Mitchell Trainor — received attention for crafting a self-assured, fully formed sound and aesthetic informed by their reverence to their community to their small, rural city, located in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. 

Last year’s iii EP saw the Abbotsford-based act further expanding upon their sound and approach: The EP’s material featured glitchy electronics, measured drum work and guitar work that frequently shifted from chiming and cheerful to serrated and snarling with a turn of a phrase, paired with Reikman’s tenor vocals. The EP continued the long-held ethos of collaboration and community that’s been at the center of their work. The self-produced EP was recorded at Vancouver-based Rain City Recorders with vocals tracked at friends’ houses across their hometown. They then recruited four different mixers for each EP’s song — Purity Ring’s Corin Roddick, Tortoise’s John McEntire, Holy Fuck‘s Graham Walsh and the band’s own Drew Riekman.

Blessed’s Drew Riekman credits Fraser Valley’s previous generation of DIY artists with fostering a strong sense of local responsibility, pride and solidarity that the band aims to perpetuate and continue for younger generations. In fact, they do so by attending city council meetings, by booking all-ages shows with local acts and by sharing resources with younger artists leaning the ropes of recording, touring and grand application.

iii‘s material as Riekman said at the time, reflected his own experiences and struggles with anxiety, which at its worse has confined him to his home for months at a time. “I really struggled with agoraphobia when I was younger, and still do to this day,” Riekman said in press notes. Frequently, collaborating with members of their community helped create a “feeling of the world getting smaller” and served as a salve for anxiety and uncertainty. 

Blessed’s sophomore album Circuitous is slated for an October 28, 2022 release through Flemish Eye. “‘Circuitous: Of a route or journey, longer than the most direct way,” Blessed’s Drew Riekman recites. Interestingly enough, the word is a description of a profound and rare way of creating that makes their sophomore album, much like their previous releases, a singular, moving and unsettlingly committed piece of work.

Circuitous reportedly will further cement and expand the band’s status as a band’s band: a patient. eclectic outfit guided by reverence for and an intense pursuit of an internally-dictated creative agenda focused on musicality, songwriting, performance and artistic growth. The album sonically sees them sharpening their strengths and bringing more depth and expansion into their creative process: The end result is a sweeping, industrial art-rock tragedy rooted in walls of noise, tightly controlled drums, meandering ambient and staccato syncopation that was pulled from hours of jam material and hundreds of demos.

While the album’s eight tracks sprawl, thrash, burst and fall, the album’s material thematically touches upon agoraphobia, isolation, grief, the hyper control of capital and the numbness it breeds.

The album’s first single “Anything” is a slow-burning, hypnotic, and brooding track featuring looping and shimmering guitars, bubbling electronics, thunderous drumming, and a propulsive and throbbing bass lines paired with Riekman’s plaintive vocals. But at its core, is a song that incisively ridicules modern life.

“The narrative that you can be anything if you work hard enough is absurd. It ignores so many facets of life, development, geography, class, on and on et al,” Blessed’s Riekman says in press notes. “But it pits people against each other in an effort to become ‘something’, a ‘something’ that is loosely defined and shaped by personality rather than a communal vision. It creates a pedestal to put yourself or others on. You’re never good enough, because there’s always someone above you doing more. We’re reaching for unattainable lifestyles, that we don’t even need, that are hyper individualistic and negate the need for community. When you’re looking at the environment you exist in socially as a pyramid, and there’s people you want to be closer to “at the top”, that’s a net negative for anyone. The more accessible we are, and on the level with each other we are in our immediate places, the more we gain.”

Longtime collaborator and digital artist Nathan Donovan teamed up with Jacob Dutton to art direct and design original art and videos for the album’s songs, centered on a nameless, childlike robot that can make specific, subtle and uncanny expressions. The childlike robot appears on the album’s cover art — and in the accompanying video. Set in an eerie all white factory, the robot comes to life when its OS is inserted into a small disc drive behind its ear. The robot’s quickly seems to gain a sense of consciousness and self in a way that’s eerie, unsettling and all too childlike.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Vacant Lots Share a Motorik Groove-Driven Bop

With the release of 2020’s Interzone through London-based psych label Fuzz Club, the Brooklyn-based psych duo The Vacant Lots — Jared Artaud (vocals, guitar, synths) and Brian McFayden (drums, synths, vocals) — crafted an album’s worth of material that saw the duo blending dance music and psych rock while maintaining the minimalist approach that has won the band acclaim across the international psych scene. 

The duo’s highly-anticipated fourth album Closure is slated for a September 30, 2022 release through Fuzz Club. Written during pandemic-related lockdowns, the eight-song Closure clocks in at 23 minutes and continues the Brooklyn-based duo’s established “minimal is maximal” ethos — all while being a soundtrack for a shattered, fucked up world. 

“During the pandemic the two of us were totally isolated in our home studios,” The Vacant Lots’ Jared Artaud says. “I don’t think the pandemic directly influenced the songs in an obvious way, but merely amplified existing feelings of alienation and isolation. We found ourselves writing in a more direct and vulnerable way than ever before.”

Last month, I wrote about Closure‘s first single “Chase.” Written on a Synsonics drum machine and a Yamaha CS-10 synthesizer, “Chase” is firmly rooted in their long-held “minimal is maximal” ethos but while seeing the Brooklyn-based duo pushing their sound in a club friendly direction while still being lysergic. Arguably one of their most dance floor friendly songs, “Chase” is centered around what may be the most vulnerable and direct lyrics of their growing catalog with the song subtly suggesting that at some point we will all need to dance away our heartache — if only for a three or four minutes.

“‘Chase’ is a song about longing, about the struggle of love across time zones,” The Vacant Lots’ Brian MacFayden explains in press notes. “It’s about the desire to close that gap of separation, but also the anticipation and excitement that builds between each encounter. It’s about a sense of knowing how it should be before it is.” The band’s Jared Artaud adds, “‘Chase’ has this duality that strikes a balance between wanting to dance and taking a pill that plunges you on the couch.”

Closure‘s second and latest single “Thank You” is a dance floor friendly banger centered around a relentless and angular, arpeggiated baseline paired with a four-on-the-floor drum machine pattern, glistening synths, angular guitar buzz and sneering vocals. But while being a New Order-like banger, “Thank You” is a bitter tell-off to a people (and situations) that have wasted valuable time.

“‘Thank You’ was built in the framework of simplicity,” The Vacant Lots Brian MacFayden says. “It has a relentless pace driven by an angular arpeggiated bassline and drum machine pattern. A Juno-6 was used for chords throughout, a Korg M500 for the leads, and the track is brought to another level with guitars layered on top. The process of crafting this song was done entirely remotely due to the pandemic and the layers over time became more and more refined until we were satisfied with each sound source.”

Directed by Alexander Schipper, the accompanying video brings Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground to mind as it features two impossibly cool people in sunglasses smoking and swaying to music, shot in grainy black and white.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Brijean Takes Viewers on a Trip Through the Cosmos in Visual for Breezy “Take A Trip”

Brijean is an acclaimed indie pop project that features:

  • Brijean Murphy, a Los Angeles-born percussionist, who can trace the origins of her music career to her childhood: Murphy’s father Patrick is a percussionist and engineer, who taught a young Brijean her first patterns on a pair of congas that she inherited from the late Trinidadian steel pan drum legend Vince Charles. As a percussionist, the younger Murphy initially made a name for herself as a highly-sought after touring musician with sstints in the touring bands of Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls and Poolside, as well as several others.
  • Doug Stuart, a jazz and pop session musician and producer, who has worked with JOVM mainstays Bells Atlas, Meerna, Luke Temple, Jay Stone and others.

Their debut EP, 2019’s WALKIE TALKIE was written and recorded in marathon sessions at their intimate home studio, during breaks in Murphy’s then-very busy touring schedule. The EP found the duo quickly establishing a unique sound that meshed Murphy’s Latin jazz and soul upbringing with Murphy’s 70s disco and 90s house-inspired production.

The duo released their acclaimed, full-length debut Feelings last year, through Ghostly International. The months surrounding the album’s release rang bittersweet with the sudden death of Murphy’s father and both of Stuart’s parents. In a haze of heartache, the duo left the Bay Area to be near family, resetting in four cities in under two years. Their to-go rig became their traveling studio and the tracks they had started writing, along with Angelo, Murphy’s 1981 Toyota Celica became their few constants.

Angelo, the duo’s latest EP was released yesterday through Ghostly International. Deriving its name from Murphy’s car, the nine-song EP features songs that the pair have written and carried with them through a two year period of profound change, heartbreaking loss and nomadic relocation. The EP finds Murphy and Stuart processing one of the most difficult periods of their lives in the only way they know how — through rhythm and movement.

Interestingly, while Feelings formed through collaborative james with friends, the Angelo sessions gave Murphy and Stuart the chance to record at their most intimate — “to get us out of our grief and into our bodies,” Murphy says. Despite being informed by a dark and somber period of heartbreak and loss, Angelo beams with positivity and creative renewal, and sees the duo exploring vibrant new moods and hues while reaching for effervescent dance tempos.

Angelo EP‘s latest single “Take A Trip” is a neon-hued, summery, dance floor friendly bop featuring a strutting disco-inspired bass line paired with crowd-noise, handclaps, whip-cracks, a horse neigh, twinkling synths, and hiccuping cuíca paired with Murphy’s ethereal cooing. “This song is an inquiry into shifting perspectives – a way to deepen our lived experience by becoming aware of the unexplored facets of our own perception,” the band explain.

Directed by Nathan Castiel, the accompanying video for “Take a Trip” takes the viewer into a Dreamcast-era video game world that features the duo traveling through the cosmos to entertain all — and defeat an evil villain through music. But the video pulls back to follow the duo in our universe playing the video game fittingly called “Take A Trip” — and then driving in Murphy’s Toyota Celica.

“For the ‘Take A Trip’ video, I was inspired by Dreamcast-era video games and wanted to create something fun and otherworldly that interplays lo-fi 3D animation with the warmth of 16mm film,” Nathan Castiel explains.