Category: New Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Otoboke beaver Share Anime and Manga Inspired Visual for Breakneck Ripper “I Am Not Maternal”

 Kyoto, Japan-based garage punk act Otoboke Beaver(おとぼけビ～バ～ in Japanese) — Accorinrin (vocals, guitar), Yoyoyoshie (guitar, vocals), Hirochan (bass, vocals) and Kahokiss (drums, vocals) — can trace their origins back to when the band member while being in Kyoto University‘s music club.

The Kyoto-based punk outfit quickly built a profile locally and nationally for pairing incredibly dexterous musicianship with Accorinrin’s confrontational stage presence. But when Damnably Records released the Okoshiyasu!! Otoboke Beaver compilation, Otoboke Beaver began to amass international airplay from BBC Radio 6′s Gideon Coe and Tom Ravenscroft, XFM’s John Kennedy, as well as praise from the likes of Pitchfork, NPR, i-D and The Fader.

Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the band made critically applauded, attention-grabbing appearances across the international festival circuit with stops at SXSW and FujiRock Festival. Their extensive global touring included a sold-out show at London‘s 100 Club. 2018 included an extensive UK tour and a stop at that year’s Coachella Festival.

2019 saw the release of ITEKOMA HITS, an effort that featured “Anata Watashi Daita Ato Yome No Meshi” and “Don’t light my fire,” two feral rippers that possessed elements of noise punk, no wave, prog rock and riot grrl punk, as well as the straightforward yet breakneck “I’m tired of your repeating story.”

At the beginning of 2020, the members of Otoboke Beaver quit their office days jobs in order to embark on a world tour. They completed a two week European tour and were about to embark on their first Stateside tour when the COVID-19 pandemic forced global quarantines and lockdowns. With touring out of the question, the band worked on new material, which they recorded between lockdowns at Osaka-based LM Studio.

The acclaimed, Japanese punk outfit’s newest album Super Champon is slated for a May 6, 2022 release through their longtime label home Damnably. The album’s title is derived from champon, a Japanese word that means a mixture or jumble of things of different types. “It’s a mixture of songs from love to food, life and JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers),” the band explains. “Our music is genre-less and has various elements. We hope that it will be our masterpiece of chaos music. It also sounds like champion.” 

Super Champon will feature two singles the band released back in 2020, “I am not maternal” and “Dirty old fart is waiting for my reaction.” “I am not maternal” continues a run of defiantly feminist, breakneck, mosh pit friendly ripper: big power chords, thunderous drumming and shouted lyrics. Play this one as loud as humanly possible.

The accompanying animated visual was created and animated by the band’s Yoyoyoshie and fittingly it’s an explosive array of bright colors, manga and anime-like characters getting fed up over traditional gender roles.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Blake Morgan’s Cinematic Love Letter to New York

Blake Morgan is a New York-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and the founder and President of ECR Music Group. In his role as President of ECR Music Group, Morgan’s ideas, opinions and editorials on music and the music business have been regularly published by a number of major media outlets including The New York Times, Billboard Magazine, CNN, Newsweek, Variety, The Hill, NME, The Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He also lectures frequently at The Georgetown University Law Center, California State University, Syracuse University,NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, American University and his alma mater, Berklee College of Music. His music advocacy has taken him to Capitol Hill numerous times where, as the founder of the #IRespectMusic movement, he continues to fight for musicians rights in the digital age. As a producer, Morgan has collaborated with a who’s who of contemporary music from Lenny Kravitz to Lesley Gore. 

Since the release of 2013’s Diamonds in the Dark, Morgan has been extremely busy: he has a remarkably six-year run of sold-out shows at Rockwood Music Hall that often feature guest spots from a number of Grammy and Tony Award-winning artists, who join him for unique, on-stage collaborations; 150,000 miles of touring and sold-out shows on both sides of the Atlantic; and production work on over 20 albums by some serious A-list artists. 

Late last year, the New York-born and-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and music biz exec released “Down Below Or Up Above” to praise from the likes of The Aquarian, Post-Punk.com, Culture Catch and my dear friends at Glamglare. “Down Below Or Up Above” will appear on Morgan’s long-awaited fifth album Violent Delights, which is slated for a May 20, 2022 release through ECR Music Group.

“My Love Is Waiting” is the rousingly anthemic, second single off Morgan’s forthcoming album. Centered around twinkling keys, atmospheric synths, an enormous arena rock friendly hook and Morgan’s plaintive vocals, “My Love Is Waiting” is a defiant and brazenly hopeful love song that’s specifically meant to get people up from their seats to dance and shout along with it. But it’s also the sort of upbeat love song, which views love as the most important force of our lives and that is very rare. Sonically, the song nods at The Police‘s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” as well as Joe Jackson and JOVM mainstays Palace Winter. And that’s a result of old-fashioned craftsmanship paired with an uncanny knack for a well-placed razor sharp hook. 

“If I had only three minutes to play anyone anything from this new record, I’d pick these three minutes,” Morgan says in press notes. “It’s a brazen love song that dares you not to get out of your chair.” He goes on to add that the song was inspired by more than just the power pop and post-punk influences that he’s best known for. “This track has specific Easter-eggs in it connected to The Police’s ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,’ a track I’ve been mesmerized by since I was a kid. I hadn’t intended an indirect homage when we recorded it, but there’s some juicy stuff in there if you hunt for it.”

Directed by genre-defying filmmaker Alice Teeple, the accompanying video for “My Love Is Waiting” is shot in a gorgeous, cinematic black and white, and follows a dapper, black suit clad Morgan in a swooning love letter to New York that begins in Coney Island and through the subway system. Inspired by William Friedkin’s classic The French Connection and Jules Dassin’s The Naked City, the video is “classic, old-school New York cinema mixed with rock and roll,” the New York-born and-based Morgan says in press notes. “There are only two characters in it– me, and New York.”

Directly contrasting the dark, 1940s noir aura of “Down Below or Up Above,” “My Love Is Waiting” was shot in daylight, as a way to reflect the hopefulness of the accompanying song. “We wanted motion, propulsion––just like the song itself has. A modern-day music video crossed with Walter Hill’s The Warriors, full of energy, and full of hope,” Morgan continues. “We also wanted to keep to the aesthetic of the whole record, as we did with the first video: one of classic cinema, where you’re not quite sure what decade this video was shot in. Alice and I both live and breathe that stuff. It’s why we have such a short-hand vocabulary when working together.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lyon’s Ashinoa Shares Tribal and Hallucinogenic “Koalibi”

Lyon, France-based experimental synth act Ashinoa quickly exploded into the national and international scene with the release of their full-length debut, 2019’s Sinie Sinie, an effort that saw the French synth outfit establishing a minimalist krautrock sound and approach.

The Lyon-based synth act supported their full-length debut with tours across their native France opening for JOVM mainstays METZ and Flamingods, Warrmduscher, Bo Ningen, Kikagaku Moyo and others.

Ashinoa’s sophomore album L’Orée is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Fuzz Club. The album reportedly sees the building upon the minimalist krautorck of their debut while taking the listener on a psychedelic journey through the wilderness through shape-shifting electronics.

Primarily centered around a largely synthesizer-driven soundscape, L’Orée‘s material sees the members of Ashinoa exploring a much more natural, organic sound than their previously released work, a sound that at times is percussive and dance floor friendly and other times hypnotic and expansive — and largely inspired by the environment it was written and recorded in. Recorded in a house, tucked away in the French countryside, which bordered on a surrounding forest, the band recalls that the album sessions were spent soaking up their immediate surroundings with a number of collaborators coming in and out to play on the record: 

“The house we recorded the album in was kind of in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by Douglas Pine trees. From this proximity to the forest, we wanted to take our soundscapes to a place we’ve never been before,” the members of the French-based experimental act explain. “Before we were surrounded by concrete, and then far from it. We were looking for a new listening place, to discover new intriguing sounds. We had laid down the basis of the album and then musician friends that would visit us at the time were invited to participate in the making of the album, each one of them bringing a touch of their own.”

So far i’ve written about two previously released singles:

  • Disguised by Orbit,” a L’eclair and Mildlife-like bop centered around cosmic grooves, old school boom bap and Brit Pop swagger
  • “Feu De Joie,” which features some scorching psych rock riffage, twinkling synths and an oscillating beat in a jazz fusion meets psych rock-like jam

L’Orée‘s third and latest single “Koalibi” is a percussive track centered around syncopated polyrhythm, oscillating electronics, a trippy motorik groove and jungle noises — specifically birds and animals calling to each other. Koalibi” is one-part tribal house, one-part acid house one-part psych pop — and entirely danceable.

“’Koalibi’ sounds like the jungle, with animals screaming and birds flying up in all directions. It’s a ritual movement. It’s dancing,” the band says of L’Orée‘s third single.

Animated by Morgane Botella, the accompanying visual for “Koalibi” fittingly features jungle-like imagery with various wild creatures flying, crawling, swimming and climbing through the jungle, as humanoid figures float by on boats. The humanoid figures travel to a mystical spot, where they trip out and dance throughout the night in their boats — as the wind blows through the reeds and grasses.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Belgian JOVM Mainstays Whispering Sons Share Gorgeous Visual for Brooding “Tilt”

Initially started in 2013 as a hobby for its then Leuven, Belgium-based founding members Kobe Linjen (guitar), Sander Hermans (synths), Lander Paesan (bass) and Sander Pelsmaekers (drums), the rising Brussels-based post punk act Whispering Sons have evolved a great deal. As the story goes, the band then-in search of a singer, recruited Fenne Kuppens, who at that point had been uploading covers of bands like Slowdive to Soundcloud.

Already fostering deep ambition, Kuppens rigorously prepared for the gig. “I’d always wanted to sing in a band, but I never had friends who made music, they weren’t in my surroundings,” Kuppens recalled in press notes. “They were talking about this post-punk thing that I’d never heard of before, so I had to read into it. I could see myself in it, I felt the music.”

Leuven is a quiet, European university town and its mainstream-leaning music scene didn’t connect with Kuppens. But after a year studying abroad in Prague, where she immersed herself in the city’s DIY scene, Kuppens was galvanized — and inspired. “I made friends there who did things with their lives! There was a guy who had a DIY record label and who made music, all from his bedroom. I thought, if they can do this, why can’t we at least try?” Kuppens recalls. As soon as she returned from Prague, she relocated to Brussels. The remaining members of the band — Linjin, Hermans, Pelsmaekers and Paesan — later joined her. And immediately, the band quickly began honing their live show and sound. 

Inspired by Xiu Xiu and Chinawoman, Kuppens’ distinctive, low register vocal style emerged early. “I started to feel more comfortable on stage, to express myself more rather than just singing a song,” she says. “I started feeling the music more, identifying more with the sounds and what I was doing.” Kuppens stage presence became known for being transfixing and trancelike, defined by compulsive movements. “People have said it looks like I’m fighting my demons onstage, I guess there’s some truth in that,” she says.

During the summer of 2015, the band went into the studio to record material. “Fenne was really pushing us saying ‘We have to go for it, not just make another demo,” Whispering Sons’ Kobe Linjen recalls in press notes. The result was their goth-inspired debut EP, 2015’s Endless Party EP. Just a few months after its initial release through  Wool-E-Tapes, the Brussels-based post-punk act won Humo’s Rock Rally, one of Belgium’s most prestigious music competitions.

With the increased attention and accolades came bigger shows, bigger tours across Europe and larger crowds. “People started to expect things from us. We had to adapt quickly,” Linjen adds. The demands of a growing profile and the attention brought onto the band, saw the band setting new, more ambitious targets for themselves. While writing new material for the increasingly longer sets their increased status required, they began to grow tired of the limits of post-punk and eagerly sought ways to push past them as much as possible. “We wanted to evolve, we wanted to attract larger audiences and not just play in one scene,” Kobe continues.

The Belgian post-punk quintet released two 7 inches, 2016’s “Performance”/”Strange Identities” and  2017’s “White Noise” — while going through a lineup change: the band’s friend Tuur Vanderborne replaced Paesan on bass. Their Micha Folders and Bert Vliegen co-produced 2018 full-length debut Image was released through  Cleopatra Records here in the States and Smile Records throughout the rest of the world.

Recorded over a ten day period at Waimes, Belgium’s GAM Studios, Image found the band crafting a dark, brooding blend of experimental and frenetic post-punk that expressed the alienation, loneliness and anxiety that each individual member felt when they relocated to Brussels, Belgium’s largest city. Image garnered praise from music press across the globe — and it amassed millions of streams across digital service providers.

Before pandemic-related quarantines, lockdowns and restrictions, the Brussels-based post punk quintet was establishing themselves for a ferocious, must-see live show while sharing stages with the likes of The Murder Capital, Patti Smith, The Soft Moon, Croatian Armor and Editors. “We were very happy with Image, and at that point it was the best thing we could have made,” Fenne Kuppens says. “But from the moment we finished it we started to look at it in a critical way. ‘This is something we should do again. This is something we don’t like.’ So very quickly we found the direction we wanted to go in for the next album.”

During the summer of 2020, the members of Whispering Sons retreated to the Ardennes to work on new material. And in those writing sessions, the band took what they believed were the strongest part of their earliest work and refined them even further, with a focus on their greatest strength — sheer, unpretentious intensity. “We tried to create an album that’s more direct and more dynamic. More in your face,” Kuppens says. 

Kuppens can trace the origins of the lyrics for the band’s sophomore album  Several Others from one sentence she’d scribbled in a notebook “Always be someone else instead of yourself.” “It’s terrible advice,” Kuppens says in press notes. “But it resonated with me and my personal ambitions.” She stared writing about her uncompromising perfectionism that was partially responsible for the band’s success and yet was becoming stifling and overwhelming. “I was at a stage where it was becoming unhealthy. You always think things have to be better, that you can always do more.”

The album, which featured “Satantango” and “Surgery,” went straight to #1 on the Belgian album charts and was released to critical acclaimed across Europe. Their dark and brooding blend of experimental and frenetic post punk paired with their ferocious live shows have helped to cement the Belgian post-punk band’s reputation as one of Europe’s most exciting new bands.

The Belgian act’s latest single “Tilt” was written during the Several Others sessions but was eventually cut from the album because the band felt it didn’t fit in with the rest of the tracks. “Tilt” is a slow-burning and brooding song centered around a sparse arrangement of metronomic-like drumming, twinkling bursts of keys, atmospheric synths, a propulsive and sinuous bass line paired with Kuppens distinctive, baritone-like vocals. With the freneticism dialed down, the introspection behind the lyrics come to the forefront.

“Tilt’ was really a group effort. We had all been working on the song for a long time, trying out different arrangements and different parts, before eventually settling on its final form,” Whispering Sons’ Kuppens says in press notes. “When we went to the studio to record our second album Several Others the track quickly became the odd one out. It became a more intimate and stripped-down version of what we initially intended. We felt that it didn’t fit with the rest of the album, but that it still deserved a release on its own.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: JOVM Mainstays No Swoon Share Introspective New Single

Formed back in 2016, JOVM mainstays No Swoon — Tasha Abbott (vocals, guitar) and Zack Nestel-Patt (synths, baas) — have developed an established sound that sees the pair meshing elements of dream pop, shoegaze, post-punk and ethereal wave through two releases, 2018’s EP 1 and 2019’s ’s Jorge Elbrecht-produced, self-titled full-length debut. 

Much like countless others across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic, threw the the lives and plans of the JOVM mainstays into disarray” their planned tour to support their full-length debut had to be scrapped entirely. After spending the past five years in Brooklyn, the duo relocated to Los Angeles. And understandably, spending over a year in quarantine-imposed isolation forced the pair to step back and think about their lives in new ways — and to examine the intricacies of going through life as we know it.

The duo managed fro released a couple of singles during the pandemic, including the Siamese Dream era Smashing Pumpkins meets Slowdive like Again,” a single that marked massive, life-altering transitions for the duo: their aforementioned return back West paired with a reworked sound and approach.

As the JOVM mainstays explained in press notes, “This song is about when days begin and end with no real definition. About being stuck in the loop of our life and we can’t get out. It may come to no surprise that this song was written early on in the Pandemic. Before everything shut down, I (Tasha) was constantly moving: work, music, sleep, etc., and being at stand-still all of a sudden was definitely strange (on top of the already terror and stress of the pandemic).”

Interestingly, “Again” will appear on the band’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Take Your Time. Slated for an April 8, 2022 release, the lion share of Take Your Time was recorded by the band in Western Massachusetts, amidst the isolation of pandemic related quarantine — with the band’s Nestel-Patt taking up engineering duties during the initial recording sessions. The album features guest spots from longtime collaborator Jon Smith (drums), along with Furrows‘ and Olden Yolk’s Peter Wagner (guitar). Jake Aaron contributed some additional production and Chris Coady mixed the album, pushing the material into something otherworldly. 

Take Your Time‘s material was conceived and written during both personal and global transitions and turmoil — but while celebrating a joyful acceptance of the paths that have lead each of us to where we are right now. About the album’s themes, No Swoon’s Abbott contends, “We are so hard on ourselves for decisions we made years ago. I have plenty of regrets, but I also see it as a process, and it’s ok that I didn’t realize the hopes and dreams of 20-year old me. What did she know anyways?” 

Last month, I wrote about Take Your Time‘s first official single “Besides.” Centered around Abbott’s plaintive and breathy falsetto, a propulsive rhythm section and intertwined buzzing power chords and twinkling, reverb-drenched synths, “Besides” sonically nods at Beach House, but as the band’s Tasha Abbott explains, the song was inspired by a wild, enigmatic dream she once had in which, while exploring a mysterious cavern, she stumbled upon a secret apparently blissful cult with ambiguous intentions.

“I have some really weird dreams,” Abbott said in press notes. “They are often these wide-ranging sci-fi stories. This song is part 2 of the same dream that inspired a song on our first record ‘Don’t wake up, wake up‘. That dream had ended with meandering into a cave that turned out to be the home to a cult where everyone looked the same and seemed very ‘happy.’ Though, obviously they were not very happy because it was a cult. I eventually got out.”

“Wait to See,” Take Your Time‘s brooding third and latest single is centered around a maelstrom of synths, driving percussion, blown out bass with Abbott’s ethereal vocals floating over the mix, to create a mesmerizing song that’s simultaneously bruising and dreamily introspective.

“This song is about growing up,” No Swoon’s Abbott says in press notes. “
We’re talking to our younger selves who had very specific dreams and ideas of how our lives would pan out. But as we all know, the hopes and dreams we had at 15 are usually not our realities when we grow up.. We could look back and be upset that we didn’t become who we had hoped to be, or we could relish the new ideas and new dreams, and be ok with where we are. This song is about how looking back now, you can see the path that led to where we are now and how we wish we could tell our younger selves to be kind to who we will grow up to be.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Acclaimed Aussie Pop Artist Meg Mac Shares a Cinematic Visual for Cathartic “Is It Worth Being Sad”

Born Megan Sullivan McInerney, the Sydney, Australia-born, Melbourne, Australia-based singer/songwriter, keyboardist and pop artist Meg Mac can trace the origins of her music career to when she was a small girl: As the story goes, she began singing as soon as she could speak and began writing her own original songs when she was a teen.

McInerney began degree studies in Digital Media but relocated to Perth , where she studied music at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts. After earning her degree, she recorded “Known Better” and submitted the song to Triple J’s Unearthed. After she submitted her song, McInerney and a car load of friends left on a road trip from Perth to Melbourne, where she would later relocate — and as they were approaching Melbourne, she learned that Triple J had selected her single and were going to play it.

As a result of being named an Unearthed Featured Artist of the Week in 2013 and Unearthed Artist of the Year in 2014, McInerney exploded into the national scene: “Roll Up Your Sleeves,” reached #80 on the ARIA Singles Chart in August 2014 with “Never Be” landing at #39 the following year — and she went on her first national headlining tour.

She also received nominations for Best Female Artist and Breakthrough Artists during the 2015 ARIA Music Awards. And adding to a growing national profile, Marie Claire Australia named her an Artist to Watch in 2015 and Rolling Stone Australia nominated McInerney for a Best New Talent Award. By 2016, “Never Be” landed at #11 on Triple J’s Hottest 100.

“Roll Up Your Sleeves” was featured in a number of American TV series including HBO’s Girls, Grace and Frankie and Astronaut Wives Clubs — and as a result, the MegMac EP became a platinum selling effort. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, Mac’s 2017 full-length debut Low Blows entered the ARIA Charts at #2 and received praise internationally from the likes of InStyle, Buzzfeed, Noisey, V Magazine and the New York Times who called her music “rooted in soul with just enough contemporary production.”

Developing a reputation for live show centered around her soulful vocals, Mag has managed to consistently sell out national tours and shows across her native Australia, has opened for Clean Bandit and D’Angelo — and she’s played some of the major festivals’ across the international festival circuit including Governor’s Ball and SXSW.

Sadly, several years have passed since I’ve last written about Meg Mac. But she begins 2022 with her latest single “Is It Worth Being Sad,” a cathartic pop song centered around McInerney’s powerhouse, pop belter vocals and an atmospheric, Kate Bush-like production featuring a sampled church choral section and a soaring sing-along worthy hook. Interestingly, “Is it Worth Being Sad” manages to be enormous yet intimate, personal and deeply humble while featuring a narrator trying to chart out a new course for their life in the aftermath of profound heartbreak and uncertainty.

“I had just run away to the country,” McInerney recalls. “I was running away from my troubles. I was living in peace and quiet finally and really thought I’d figured it all out, and it was all smooth sailing ahead. It was the start of sorting out my life. This song was like my first step—I didn’t know it then, though.”

The incredibly cinematic, accompanying visual for “Is It Worth Being Sad” features an all-black clad Aussie pop artist on a speed boat in the mountainous countryside. The skies start off as a slate gray before turning stormy and foreboding with lighting in the skies above. But as her little boat keeps moving forward, the skies begin to clear up. All storms, no matter how tumultuous pass in time.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: METZ’s Alex Edkins’ New Project Weird Nightmare Shares Surreal Animated Visual for Debut Single

Alex Edkins has developed an honed a reputation for being a master craftsman of sweaty, mosh pit friendly rippers as the frontman of Toronto-based JOVM mainstays METZ.

Edkins’ new side project Weird Nightmare sees the METZ frontman showcasing a new side of his long-established songwriting featuring enormous power chords and mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses he’s best known for — but with a sugary, distorted power pop touch.

Weird Nightmare’s debut single “Searching For You” is a fun, straightforward power pop banger featuring shout-along-with-upraised-beer-in-the-mosh-pit choruses, swooningly earnest lyricism, the enormous power chords Edkins is best known for but with an accessible, old-timey inspired craftsmanship that makes the song incredibly radio friendly — as though it Edkins and his METZ bandmates were covering Cheap Trick or Big Star.

“It’s a fun, no nonsense rock ‘n’ roll song,” Edkins explains. “It’s about searching for meaning and inspiration all around us. In my mind, the ‘you’ in the chorus refers to something bigger than companionship or love, it’s that intangible thing we all look for but never find.”  

Directed by Ryan Thompson and animated by Jordan “Dr. Cool” Minkoff, the accompanying visual for “Searching For You” is fittingly a trip into a weird nightmare that follows a pizza delivery person racing against the clock to deliver a pizza before it becomes free.

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”. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sunglaciers Share Uneasy Ripper “Out of My Skull”

Calgary-based post-punk outfit Sunglaciers can trace its origins back to 2017 as a collaboration between its founding — and core — members: multi-instrumentalist Matthieu Blanchard and lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Evan Resnik. When they started the project, Blanchard had completed his studies in medicine, working in family medicine and addiction and Resnik had returned from a trip hitchhiking through France.

Since the project’s formation, the Calgary-based act has released a couple of EPs and their full-length debut, 2019’s Foreign Bodies, which saw them crafting a sound that blurred the lines between dazzling indie rock melodicism and icy, post-punk experimentation, centered around a maximalist approach. 

During that same five year period, the members of the Canadian post-punk outfit have seen a steadily rising profile, as they’ve shared stages with the likes of JOVM mainstays Preoccupations, Omni and Daniel Romano while topping the charts of college radio stations across Western Canada. Understandably, when the pandemic put their touring plans on a then-indefinite pause, the band quickly shifted their focus to writing material, dedicating 40-plus hour weeks to music during the early months of 2020. 

Those writing sessions wound up becoming the Calgary-based outfit’s sophomore album Subterranea, slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Montreal-based purveyors of all things psych and trippy, Mothland. Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Chad VanGaalen, who co-produced the album, Subterranea reportedly sees the band eschewing the maximalist approach of their previous releases and crafting material with a decided laser focus. The end result is a frenetic, breakneck album of material with songs that never overstay their welcome. “We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” Sunglaciers’ Matthieu Blanchard explains. “Our last album Foreign Bodiesand the EPs that came before it had lots of long songs with different parts drifting back and forth. For this album, we decided to strip our songs down to two or three minutes with only a few ideas in each of them.”

“The bulk of this album came together during the pandemic and the changing of gears that we had to do,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik says. “I was out of work and Mathieu was working half as much as usual, so we had lots of time on our hands. We flipped a switch and started playing music everyday. It’s a good indicator of how we were writing at the time while we wrapped our heads around some new gear and saw what came out of it. Essentially, we took all of our favourite musical tendencies and put them together. We were listening to a lot of McCartney II at the time and loved how eclectic it was, which led to us mirroring that vibe.”

With an extended timeframe to write and record, the album, which was recorded at Bruce Crews’ voiceover studio On Air Studios allowed the members the opportunity to learn skills in engineering and for the opportunity to swap the instruments that each member typically played, a strategy that was employed during the writing and recording of Portishead‘s Third and David Bowie‘s “Boys Keep Swinging.” The album also features contributions from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen, Hermitess‘ Jennifer Crighton and Roman66′s Louis Cza The Black Greek God. The end result may arguably be Sunglaciers most urgent and cohesive batch of material, an effort that draws from the likes of Deerhunter, Total Control, and BEAK> among others.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Avoidance,” a woozy and uneasy ripper full of guilt and recriminations delivered with a breakneck freneticism centered around a persistent synth-driven groove. And while sounding a bit like Plague Vendor and Atsuko Chiba, “Avoidance” lyrically touches upon themes of alienation, abandonment and guilt in a way that should feel familiar to most of us during this unusual moment of our lives. 

Clocking in at just about two minutes, “Out of My Skull” is full of foreboding, uneasy menace centered around hypnotic, glistening synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line and propulsive drumming paired with Resnik’s anxious delivery. And as a result, the song evokes a frustrated, restless boredom — and it should feel familiar for most of us, stuck at home with nothing to do, nowhere to really go and no one to see.

Directed by the band’s Evan Resnik, the accompanying video is shot in a brooding and cinematic black and white, and interestingly, it conveys both menace and playfulness simultaneously.

“’Out of my Skull’ is dark but it’s lively. I shot in black and white to lend a bit of a classic, noir vibe to the video, which also helped bring out some of my innate 90s influence,” the band’s Evan Resnik says in press notes.

“The lyrics loosely reference Miles Davis and a few moments from his life: his hiatus from 1975-80, a shooting in 1969, being assaulted by a cop outside Birdland in 1959. I watched a lot of music documentaries in early 2020 when we began writing this record. Miles was a mysterious and brooding artist, and that initial inspiration helped me get into that mindset during songwriting and throughout the video production. The video is intimate but detached, with close-up faces in contrasting, unreal environments. We’re in your face, but we’re not really there. 

“We had a lot of fun shooting, and I think that comes through in the video and adds a bit of levity.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kendra Morris Shares Slow-Burning and Intimate “Circle Eights”

Kendra Morris is a Florida-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, multi-disciplinary artist and newest JOVM mainstay. Now, as you might recall, as a singer/songwriter and musician, Morris can trace the origins of her music career to discovering the joys of multi-tracking and harmonizing with herself on a karaoke machine in the closet of her childhood home.

Morris then went on to play in cover bands in her home state before relocating to New York with her band, which played her original material. Her first band split up and she dealt with the aftermath by writing material alone on an 8-track in her closet. Sometime after, she met longtime collaborator and producer Jeremy Page and signed to Wax Poetics, who released her full-length debut, 2012’s Banshee. 

Morris self-released her sophomore effort 2016’s Babble. Then she went on to collaborate with the likes of DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, MF DOOM, Czarface, Ghostface Killah, Dennis Coffey and Dave Sitek among others. And while being a grizzled, New York scene vet, Morris’ work generally embodies a broader sense of American culture, drawing from a wide array of influences across music and film dating back to the mid 20th Century. 

The Florida-born, New York-based artist’s long-awaited sophomore album Nine Lives was released last week through Karma Chief Records. While being her first full-length album in a decade, the album represents a major turning point in her life both professional and personally: The album for her heralds the beginning of a new chapter; an evolution to the next level of adulthood; and the first on her new label. The album’s material encapsulates moments from what could easily be nine lifetimes lived over a chronological time period — or nine lives lived simultaneously in parallel and convergent realities in the multiverse. 

In the lead up to the album’s release last week, I managed to write about two of its singles:

  • “Penny Pincher,” a slow-burning ballad about reaching the end of the road in a relationship, fueled by regret, heartache, acceptance and steely determination to go forward with your life.
  • “Nine Lives” is a strutting, hook-driven bit of soul pop jam centered around Morris’ sultry vocals, stuttering boom bap beats, squiggling guitar, and glistening Rhodes arpeggios that sounds as though it could have been released between 1992-1996 or so. 

The album’s latest single “Circle Eights” is a slow-burning song centered around twinkling Rhodes, a sinuous bass line, a steady rhythm and Morris’ soulful vocals full of a deeply aching yearning. “Circle Eights is about the feeling of being outside of yourself and feeling kind of alone and awkward even when you’re surrounded by your friends,” the New York-based JOVM mainstay explains. “I remember hanging out at a rooftop party in Brooklyn one summer night and looking around at all the people I was with plus the groups of people I didn’t know and just lifting my glass and laughing out loud and yet feeling like I wasn’t really there. Like I was just watching a movie and I was thinking.. Where do I fit in all this right now? 

Directed by Morris, the accompanying video for “Circle Eights” sees the JOVM mainstay employing stop motion animation and live action as it follows the secret adventures of an old toy through Morris’ apartment. At points, this beloved toy seems to be watching a life as though they’re a passive observer “I made the accompanying video using what I had on hand and shot using stop motion animation combined with live action around my apartment while I had covid,” she explains. “I love a good challenge and believe that with a good idea you can make anything exciting.. and so began my covid adventure.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: France’s Charles Like The Prince Shares a Nostalgia Fueled Visual for “Cigarette”

French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Charles de Villers is the creative mastermind behind solo recording project Charles Like The Prince. de Villers emerged onto the French scene with 2020’s “Estonia.”

Building upon the buzz that “Estonia” received, de Villers will be releasing his Charles Like The Prince debut EP this Spring. The EP’s first single “Cigarette” is a slow-burning pop confection centered around glistening guitars, atmospheric synths, de Villers achingly plaintive vocals, and reverb-drenched drum machine. The end result is an airy yet yearning song that subtly recalls early Beach House, Washed Out and others. The accompanying visual for “Cigarette” is shot through a nostalgic and cinematic haze, full of romantic yearning and of course, cigarettes.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: PLOHO Shares a Brooding Post Punk Ode To The World’s Housing Projects

Since their formation back in 2013, the Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia-based post-punk trio PLOHO have firmly established themselves as one of most prominent purveyors of a contemporary, new wave of Russian music. Inspired by late Soviet era acts like Kino and Joy Division, the Siberian act’s sound and approach evokes the bitter cold of their homeland. 

Last year, Artoffact Records released the Siberian trio’s fifth album, Фантомные Чувства (Phantom Feelings). I managed to write about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Танцы в темноте (“Dancing in the Dark”), a nostalgia-inducing, dance floor friendly bop featuring reverb-drenched guitars, shimmering synth arpeggios, a motorik groove and rousingly anthemic hooks paired with lyrics delivered in a seemingly ironically detached Russian. 
  • “Нулевые” (in Cyrillic) or “Nulevyye” (in Latin),” a bracingly chilly bit of 4AD Records-like post punk centered around frontman Victor Ujakov’s sonorous baritone, shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, skittering four-on-the-floor, a relentless motoik groove and an enormous hook. And much like its predecessor, is a dance floor friendly bop.

The Russian post punk outfit starts off the year with “Plattenbauten,” their first ever German-language song. “Plattenbauten,” is a translation of the band’s 2015 debut single “Новостройки (New Buildings)” featuring lyrics translated by German poet Boris Shneider and re-recorded as a standalone single.

Centered around a relentless motorik groove punctuated by forceful four-on-the-floor, Ujakov’s deadpan delivery and shimmering angular guitar attack, “Plattenbauten” is a decidedly new take on the original’s vibe, that evokes an oppressive, seemingly infinite grey, an oppressive sameness, an overwhelming poverty and frustration. As Jim Kelly’s character says in Enter the Dragon “Ghettos are the same all over the world.” It seems that he wasn’t wrong.

The song’s title refers to a new style of communist-era high-rise apartment blocks, which were at one point highly popular throughout a great deal of Europe — and for the Russian post-punk outfit, recalls the Soviet era aesthetic. “This song was playing in German in my head when I found myself in eastern Berlin,” the band’s Victor Ujakov says in press notes. “I lived in exactly the same area thousands of kilometres away in Novosibirsk (West Siberia). The atmosphere was amazing.”

Directed, edited and shot by Igor Tsvetkov, the accompanying video for “Plattenbauen” follows Ujakov on a late night walk through the back alleys of a Plattenbauen while singing the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: Alice Offley Shares Slinky “Pour (Your Love On Me)”

Alice Offley is an emerging London-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who comes from a deeply musical family: her family has had deep roots in jazz and soul — with her cousin being the legendary Dusty Springfield. As a child of the 80s, Offley grew up listening to Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Prince. And she recalls that her first best friend was a portable cassette player.

As a professional musician and vocalist, Offley has had stints playing bass and contributing vocals to the touring bands for Thompson Twins, Tricky, and Cyndi Lauper starting in her teens, playing arenas, venues and TV studios across the world.

Currently, her day job has her singing and playing piano in a number of London bars. But her solo project sees the London-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist specializing in funky, 80s-inspired disco pop. Offley’s first single of the year, “Pour (Your Love On Me)” is a slinky dance floor friendly bop centered around the British artist’s coquettish cooing, a strutting bass line, glistening synths and an infectious hook. Sonically, “Pour (Your Love On Me)” brings Finnish synth and funk JOVM mainstays Beverly Girl, Dam-Funk, Escort, Adeline and others to mind as it possesses a similar retro vibe paired with deliberate craft.

The accompanying visual features Offley wearing a turquoise jumpsuit with turquoise heels with her trusty cassette player/boombox and her bass in front of flashing colored lights.

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: Mathieu Saïkaly Shares Intimate and Yearning “Neptune”

Mathieu Saïkaly is a French singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and artist. whose career started in earnest when he turned 17: Saïkaly started a YouTube channel that initially featured recordings of the French artist doing covers, but gradually […]