Category: post punk

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mexican Post-Punk Outift Mercvrial Shares a Glistening and Incisive Critique of the Social Media Age

Primarily based in Rosarito, Mexico, Mercvrial is a geographically-dispersed recording project in which its members combine elements of post-punk, dream pop and neo-psychedelia to draw the listener into “an opaque musicverse of sparkling melodies and layered guitarchitecture,” the band says in press notes. Back in 2019, the post-punk orientated recording project released their critically applauded debut EP The Stars, Like Dust, which drew favorably comparisons to Creation Records‘, Flying Nun Records‘ and 4AD Records‘ output in the 80s.

And if you’ve been frequenting this site since then — or even earlier — you may recall that in early 2020, I wrote about the hook driven, Wire meets The Church-like EP single “Hsieh Su-Wei” is a shimmering and reverb-drenched, motorik-groove driven homage to the unorthodox Taiwanese tennis professional, Hsieh Su-Wei.

The mysterious, Mexican post-punk outfit’s full-length debut Brief Algorithms is slated for a white vinyl release through British label Crafting Room Recordings — and will be available on all streaming platforms on April 29, 2022. The album will feature guitar from The House of Love‘s and Levitation‘s Terry Bickers on half of the album’s tracks — including the album’s first single “Be That Someone.”

Centered around an angular bass line-driven motor groove, glistening, reverb-drenched guitars, metronomic-like drum patterns, a yearning vocal delivery and the band’s unerring knack for crafting a razor sharp hook, “Be That Someone” sonically reminds me quite a bit of 90125 era Yes and Garlands era Cocteau Twins but with a sleek, modern production sheen. Interestingly, the song comes from a familiar and very lived-in place for most of us at some point in our lives: the need and desire to be liked, desired, wanted — and to have sex.

The accompanying visual is an incisive criticism of our social media-based world: We see people endlessly scrolling and liking on Instagram and posting for pictures with hopes of getting likes. We also see people constantly lying about how awesome their lives are — because they’re desperate to seem likable, popular and beautiful. But in reality, everyone is bored, empty and disconnected.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Canadian/American Duo Ritual Wave Share Sultry “My Sin”

This week is an extraordinarily busy week as I’ve been covering this year’s New Colossus Festival. So I haven’t been posting with the same regularity as I’d normally would. But I’m seeing live music and doing that valuable in-person networking one has to do to get by. And I’m having a ton of fun doing so. But as always, let’s get to the business at hand . . .

Ritual Wave is an emerging post-punk/dark wave duo featuring Toronto-based Judy Karacs and San Diego-based John Goodman. The Canadian/American duo bonded over a mutual love and appreciation for similar styles of music, which led to their collaboration together. Although they’ve been working on material since 2018, the duo’s work sonically sees them combining elements of old school post-punk with melodic dark wave undertones.

“My Sin” their second official single together as Ritual Wave features Karacs’ sultry cooing over glistening and icy synth arpeggios, a propulsive, angular bass line and subtle industrial clang and clatter. Sonically, “My Sin” — to my ears at least — recalls Cocteau Twins, Depeche Mode and the like, but fueled by a desperate, obsessive desire.

“My Sin” as the Canadian/American duo explain uses religious themes as a metaphor to express the psychological torment and destruction of a person willing to sacrifice everything in order to be loved. And as a result, the song explores the darkest sides of obsession, control and desire as is relates to romantic affairs.

“This track was really a labour of love for us. We actually wrote ‘My Sin’ very quickly, in 2018, but ended up re-working, re-recording and re-editing it ’till we finally decided it was ready,” Ritual Wave’s Judy Karacs explains in press notes. “With the lyrics and melody I really wanted to explore the subject of obsession and how that impacts the human psyche. I likened these feelings to a strong religious devotional experience. It was the idea of having such a profound faith in someone that you were willing to sacrifice everything just to hold onto what they made you believe was love. Obviously, this belief was based more on unhealthy fixation and desire instead of genuine love.”

Edited by Ritual Wave’s Judy Karacs, the accompanying visual is shot in a gorgeous and sultry black and white, and evokes the song’s central themes: lust and obsession through religious metaphors.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ed Schrader’s Music Beat Shares a Cinematic and Eerie Visual for Brooding “European Moons”

Baltimore-based post-punk duo  Ed Schrader’s Music Beat — Devlin Rice and Ed Schrader — will be releasing their fourth album, Nightclub Daydreaming is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Carpark Records.

The album and its material can be traced back to 2019 when Schrader and Rice began initially writing song with the idea of making a fun, danceable album. Along with touring drummer Kevin O’Meara, the members of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat road-tested the material while on tour with Dan Deacon in February 2020. 

As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic brought most aspects of our lives to a screeching halt. But as it turns out, sadly, that Dan Deacon tour was one of the last experiences that Schrader and Rice had with O’Mera, who died in October 2020. O’Meara’s death weighed heavily on their minds as they finished working on the album. Understandably, it was an unshakeable moodiness and heartache. As Schrader puts it, “The cave followed us into the discotheque.”

They then went to record and mix Nightclub Daydreaming over a breakneck two-week period with Craig Bowen at Baltimore’s Tempo House. The end result wasn’t the album of “sunny disco bangers” that Rice says the band originally set out for, but something that turned out far deeper and darker. Their long-held reputation for whiplash-inducing stylistic shifts between aggressive and noisy rock and operatic, gloom pop have given way to a single aesthetic that seamlessly fuses those different impulses within propulsive, stark arrangements. 

“The fun thing about this record is that it’s all at once informed by our more recent lush productions with Dan Deacon, yet spartan and boiled-down, exuding a coldness wrapped in ecstasy, following our time honored trend of never giving people what they expect, but hopefully what they want,” says Schrader.

The Charm City-based duo started off this year on an explosive and attention-grabbing note: Back in January, they released two singles off the album and announced the dates for an extensive Spring 2022 tour that includes an April 23, 2022 stop at Union Pool.

Last month the pair released Nightclub Daydreaming‘s third single.

As for the singles:

  • “This Thirst” is a sleek post-punk ripper centered around angular guitar attack, a forceful motorik groove, a rousingly anthemic synth-led chorus and Schrader’s cool yet urgent delivery. The song’s narrator finds his irresistible urges leading him through a surrealistic, chemical-fueled fever dream of desperate back-alley bartering and scheming, uncertainty and existential threats. 
  • “Berliner,” is a dark and brooding bit of post-punk centered around rumbling and distorted bass, scorching angular attack and unrelenting four-on-the-floor paired with Schrader’s coolly delivered baritone. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Berliner” evokes flop sweat and bleary-eyed late nights fueled by booze and drugs, lingering ghosts, and fever dreams. 
  • “Echo Base,” a song that’s one part lingering ghosts, self-flagellation, bitter regret and simmering frustration centered around an icy facade. 

Nightclub Daydreaming‘s fourth and latest single “European Moons” is a slow-burning, brooding meditation centered around Schrader’s achingly plaintive and exhausted baritone, shimmering guitars, and dramatic drum rolls. Much like its immediate predecessor, there’s regret and simmering frustration — but it hides a sense of repression and uncertainty.

Directed by Jay Buim, the accompanying visual for “European Moons” features a stylish title card by Susan Juvet and follows a blonde bobbed haired woman entirely clad in black, also played by Juvet, who walks through an abandoned underground bunker facility with abandoned 60s and 70s office equipment. Superficially, she seems bored and disinterested but throughout the video her behavior seems unnatural and forced, as though she’s attempting to repress and then bury something deep within herself.

Right before the members of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat are about to embark on their tour to support the album, Schrader issued a personal statement about their gender identity, which I’ve included in full, below:

“In the past few weeks, I’ve made a big decision. I’ve decided to give you the full me. I’ve decided to speak openly about something that I had never spoken to anyone about. The me that I’ve been repressing in hopes of not making other people feel uncomfortable. But that’s not a life—that’s an inhumane purgatory that I am done subjecting myself to. 

That said, I have always felt like a woman and my pronouns are they/them.

“The stage and the studio have always been a safe space for me, where I can share my deepest struggles, joys and laughs. In your art, you can’t lie. That’s why I have always chosen riddles and cryptic lyrics in my art. I could never lie, but I could disguise the truth.

With Nightclub Daydreaming I continued this precedent, essentially telling my autobiography through fictional characters and surreal landscapes. But these are the stories of my fear, my neuroses, my ecstasy and my journey. 

The first single off of the record, ‘This Thirst,’ is about the thirst for my true self, and features the first time I ever referred to myself as a woman: “Who will rock you to the fire / Who’s the priestess to ordain?” 

On ‘Black Pearl,’ I sing of two lovers disconnected by an ocean, representing the personal dichotamy [sic] between my true self and who I was presenting to the world. In retrospect, you can hear the yearning as I sing “I want to see you really…a foreigner, even home now / I shut in vaults to heal you.” I was the foreigner whom no one had ever met, besides my bathroom mirror. When home alone, I would wear women’s clothing, put on makeup, blast M.I.A. and Yelle, and somehow this felt like a crime that no one would ever accept.

You can hear both my euphoria and trepidation on songs like ‘Berliner.’ Deep down, I was beginning to feel my real self emerging in an undeniable way, and I was horrified by it. It felt as if others held the key to my own self worth through their acceptance, or lack thereof. 

On ‘European Moons,’ which we release today, I depict myself as a marionette, at the whims of a puppet master forcing me to present a distorted and untrue version of myself. “My posture’s at your strings / too much of coded sighs / I’d like to see you in the night.” It was my true self that I could only see at night. 

I have always felt like a woman and, moving forward, I will begin following that path one day at a time. Only the future knows where exactly that path will lead me, but I’m doing it my way. I will no longer only see my true self at night.

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.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Cy Dune Shares a Frenetic and Ecstatic Ripper

Seth Olinsky is a singer/songwriter, guitarist, composer, producer and studio owner best known as the co-founder and lead vocalist of acclaimed, underground, experimental noise folk outfit Akron/Family. He’s also known as the creative mastermind behind the equally acclaimed project Cy Dune, a project that has found Olinsky exploring the blues, 50s rock and 60s/70s photo-punk through his unique lens. 

Olinsky’s various projects have displayed a post-genre approach in which he collages several different genres simultaneously to create multiple meanings while purposely juxtaposing authentic and pure songwriting sincerity with self aware meta-meaning and pranksterism. 

His latest Cy Dune effort Against Face is slated for a March 3, 2022 release through Lightning Studios. Clocking in at a breakneck 18 minutes, the album is a meta-punk blast through 20th Century art school punk forms mashed together. 

In the lead up to the album’s release next month, I’ve managed to write about two of Against Face‘s previously related singles:

  • Title track “Against Face” a buzzing and mischievous, mosh pit friendly mash-up of Bob Dylan and The Stooges self-titled album — in particular “No Fun.” 
  • “Disorientation (Cut Up),” a dazzling and mind-bending synthesis of angular Wire-like post punk, house music, and New Order/Manchester sound centered around enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks paired with Olinsky delivering dance floor friendly cliches in a series of non-sequiturs before the song breaks sown and remixes itself. 

Clocking in at about 85 seconds, Against Face‘s latest single “Any More” is a frenetic, polyrhythmic and breakneck freakout featuring buzzing power chords paired with Olinsky’s crooning verses and howled choruses and an ecstatic, free jazz-inspired guitar solo. The song veers out of control like a runaway train — and it’s just a lot of fucking fun.

“My favorite part of this song is how out of control the drums feel – the way that these fast, derailed drums cycle against the slower, almost crooner-like drag of the verse vocals,” Olinsky says in press notes. “The guitar solo is just a sheer jump off a cliff, and I love how it cuts off so sharply into nothingness. There’s an electricity in the song that evokes a wildness and spirit that has an ecstatic, visceral excitement to me.”

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: 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: JOVM Mainstay Genesis Owusu Shares a Frenetic New Ripper

2017’s  Cardrive EP saw Ghanian-born, Canberra, Australia-based, 20-something artist Genesis Owusu — born Kofi Owusu-Anash — quickly establishing himself as a perpetually restless, genre-blurring chameleon with an ability to conjure powerful and deeply personal storytelling in diverse forms. Cardive EP eventually garnered an ARIA Award nomination for Best R&B/Soul Release and praise from Sir Elton John (!), NME, i-D, mixmag and others. Adding to a growing profile across Australia, Owusu has opened for Dead Prez, Col3trane, Sampa The Great, Cosmo’s Midnight, Noname, Animé, Ruel and others. 

Back in 2020, Owusu-Anash released a handful of highly-celebrated singles including the fiery mosh-pit friendly banger “Whip Cracker” and the ARIA Award-nominated smash hit “Don’t Need You,” which quickly became the #1 most played song on triple J radio — and since then has received airplay in the UK on both BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 and here in the States on KCRW, KUTX, The Current and Alt98. Those singles prominently appear on Owusu-Anash’s critically applauded full-length debut Smiling With No Teeth.

“Smiling With No Teeth is performing what the world wants to see, even if you don’t have the capacity to do so honestly,” Owusu explains in press notes. “Slathering honey on your demons to make them palatable to people who only want to know if you’re okay, if the answer is yes. That’s the idea, turned into beautiful, youthful, ugly, timeless and strange music.” Each of the album’s 15 tracks can trace their origins back to studio jam sessions with a backing band that features Kirin J. Callinan, Touch Sensitive’s Michael DiFrancesco, World Champion‘s Julian Sudek and the album’s producer Andrew Klippel. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about three of Smiling With No Teeth‘s singles:

  • “The Other Black Dog,” a mind-bending production that meshed alternative hip-hop, industrial clang, clatter, rattle and stomp, off-kilter stuttering beats and wobbling synth arpeggios that was roomy enough for Owusu-Anash’s breathless, rapid-fire and dense flow. Managing to balance club friendliness with sweaty, mosh pit energy, the song is a full-throttled nosedive into madness that reminds me of the drug and booze fueled chaos of ODB, and the menace of DMX.
  • “Gold Chains,” a brooding yet seamless synthesis of old school soul, G Funk and Massive Attack-like trip hop centered around shimmering and atmospheric synths, stuttering boom bap beats, squiggling blasts of guitar and the rising Ghanian-born, Canberra-based artist’s Mos Def/Yasiin Bey-like delivery, alternating between spitting dense and dexterous bars and crooning with an achingly tender falsetto. “‘Gold Chains’ got me thinking about the flaws of being in a profession where, more and more, you have to be the product, rather than just the provider of the product, and public misconceptions about how luxurious that is,” Owusu-Anash explains in press notes. “Lyrically, it set the tone for the rest of the album.” 
  • “Same Thing,” a jolting and uneasy future funk banger centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, skittering beats, bursts of Nile Rodgers-like guitar, a propulsive bass line and infectious hook serving as a silky bed for Owusu’s alternating dexterous and densely worded bars and soulful crooning. But at its core is an unflinchingly honest — and necessary — view of mental health struggles. 

Owusu-Anash capped off an enormous 2021 with the Missing Molars EP, a five-track accompaniment to his critically applauded full-length debut. Recorded during the Smiling With No Teeth sessions, the Missing Molars EP material didn’t make the album — but further continue the soul-baring narrative of his debut. “Missing Molars is an extension of Smiling With No Teeth,” Owusu-Anash explains. “A small collection of tracks from the SWNT sessions that take the already established world-building groundwork of the album, and expand that universe into new and unexplored places. These are all tracks that I felt were special in their own right and needed to be shared. This is music without boundaries.” 

Recently, Owusu-Anash made his Stateside, late night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he performed SWNT standout single “Gold Chains” along with his backing band. 

And as you may recall, the Ghanian-Aussie JOVM mainstay had to reschedule his January Stateside tour to March-April as a result of the Omicron variant. The rescheduled tour includes an April 2, 2022 stop at Bowery Ballroom. (As always, you can check out the tour dates below. And check out the following for tickets and more information: https://www.genesisowusu.com/tour)

in the lead up to his Stateside headlining tour, the acclaimed Ghanian-Aussie JOVM mainstay shared Smiling With No Teeth‘s sixth and latest single, “Black Dogs!” may arguably be the most post-punk/punk rock leaning song on the entire album. Centered around a propulsive and angular bass line, a relentless and forceful four on the four, twinkling and fluttering synths, bursts of angular guitar paired with Owusu-Anash’s angry snarls, “Black Dogs!” is a mosh pit friendly stomp, fueled by simmering rage. It’s a rage that’s deeply familiar to me as a Black man frequently in era white spaces: Maybe you don’t get abused by the police at all, but the constant microagression, the backhanded compliments, the outright insults get deep into your soul. For me, it often feels like life is a series of insults, of someone always saying “you ain’t shit.”

Directed by Daniela Federici, the accompanying visual for “Black Dogs!” is split between a sumptuous and cinematic black and white and vivid color and captures Owusu-Anash’s frenetic, captivating energy.

“I really wanted to capture the tension and the rising chaos of the song in video form, and Daniela Federici knew how to bring that energy in spades, but also in a really artful way,” Owusu-Anash says in press notes. Of “Black Dogs!,” he adds, ” “It’s a straight-to-the-point song encompassing a day in the life of me, or just any Black person in Australia. It’s not that I’m getting abused by police every day, but it’s all the little micro-aggressions. Sonically speaking, it plays into how I feel every day, going into white spaces and feeling a bit paranoid.” 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Baba Ali Shares a Brooding and Uneasy Scorcher

Last year, rising Transatlantic indie duo Baba Ali — Baba Doherty (vocals) and Nik Balcin (guitar, synths) — released a series of singles through Danger Mouse‘s 30th Century Records, before releasing their full-length debut Memory Device through Memphis Industries to widespread critical acclaim, including features in the Observer and Sunday Times, heavy rotation from KEXP, KCRW and BBC 6 Music, as well as being named BBC 6 Music’s Album of the Day.

The rising duo’s double A side single “Living It Up”/”Black & Blue” act as a bribe between both old and new sonic directions, although both tracks were originally written back in 2020 — before they started working on what would become Memory Device‘s material. As it turns out, the duo put these tracks aside in order to focus on the Memory Device sessions, only to be revisited upon a newfound relevance to how their live show had evolved.

“We ended up reacting to the beginning of lockdown by writing a tonne of new songs in my basement in New Jersey,” Baba Ali’s Doherty says in press notes. “Some of the tracks ended up forming a mixtape that we put out on Bandcamp. ‘Black & Blue’ was a song from that collection of songs, and one we were really happy with at the time, so this was an interesting opportunity to open the track up again and see how our experiences since that period had changed our approach to recording.

“It is a song I am always trying to convince Nik to add to our live set, but I don’t even think he can even remember the tuning he used for it. Hopefully giving the song an official release will kind of force his hands on that one.”

Centered around buzzing synth arpeggios, skittering beats, slashing bursts of guitars, Doherty’s insouciant and dryly ironic delivery, “Black & Blue” is a brooding and slick synthesis of industrial electronica and post-punk that describes love as an experience that’s complex and confusing full of searing, blistering lows and euphoric highs, and made stranger, more dangerous in our increasingly apocalyptic age.

The “Living It Up”/”Black & Blue” double A single is the first non-Yard Act release through Zen F.C., the label run by the band’s James Smith and Ryan Needham. “We loved Baba Ali’s music from the moment we heard it. They’re joining us for our debut album tour in February,” Smith and Needham say in press notes. “When Baba sent through some new tunes he and his bandmate Nik were working on we saw an opportunity to reboot Zen F.C., and to preserve on wax and share some great music with the world. It was a no-brainer for us. We are honoured, we are buzzed to have Baba Ali as the first ever non-YA release on Zen F.C. – follow the label, there will be much more to come in the future.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Reims, France’s Not A Number (N.A.N.) Shares Hopeful “Run Again”

Bernard Collot is a Reims, France-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the French post-punk recording project Not A Number (N.A.N.) Late last year, Collot signed with North Shadows Records, who released his Not A Number debut EP Wave earlier this month both digitally and as a limited run cassette.

Wave EP features the 4AD Records-like “Black Water,” which I wrote about some time ago on this site. The EP’s latest single “Run Away,” much like its immediate predecessor seems indebted to 4AD Records post-punk: shimmering and reverb drenched guitars, gated drums, angular bass lines and a soaring hook paired with Collot’s achingly plaintive vocals singing about a universal experience the lifting of deep grief and heartache and falling back in love again. And as a result, while being brooding, the song evokes a sense of hope.

The accompanying video for “Run Away” was shot on Malta and follows Collot wandering around the island nation’s shoreline and winding streets and alleyways by himself. With the video occasionally becoming glitchy, there’s a sense that we might all be watching in the matrix.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ed Schrader’s Music Beat Shares an Eerie and Dream-like VIsual for “Echo Base”

2018’s Dan Deacon-produced album Riddles saw the Baltimore-based post-punk duo  Ed Schrader’s Music Beat — Devlin Rice and Ed Schrader — turning heads both nationally and elsewhere.

The duo’s fourth album Nightclub Daydreaming is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Carpark Records. The album can be traced back to 2019 when Schrader and Rice began initially writing song with the idea of making a fun, danceable album. Along with touring drummer Kevin O’Meara, the members of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat road-tested the material while on tour with Dan Deacon in February 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt. Sadly, that Dan Deacon tour was one of the last experiences that Schrader and Rice had with O’Meara, who died in October 2020. O’Meara’s death weighed heavily on their minds as they finished working on the album. Understandably, it was an unshakeable moodiness and heartache. As Schrader puts it, “The cave followed us into the discotheque.”

They then went to record and mix Nightclub Daydreaming over a breakneck two-week period with Craig Bowen at Baltimore’s Tempo House. The end result wasn’t the album of “sunny disco bangers” that Rice says the band originally set out for, but something that turned out far deeper and darker. Their long-held reputation for whiplash-inducing stylistic shifts between aggressive and noisy rock and operatic, gloom pop have given way to a single aesthetic that seamlessly fuses those different impulses within propulsive, stark arrangements.

“The fun thing about this record is that it’s all at once informed by our more recent lush productions with Dan Deacon, yet spartan and boiled-down, exuding a coldness wrapped in ecstasy, following our time honored trend of never giving people what they expect, but hopefully what they want,” says Schrader.

The Charm City-based duo started the year on an explosive note: Last month, they released two singles off the album and announced dates for an an extensive Spring 2022 tour that the duo optimistically put on the books. The tour includes an April 23, 2022 stop  Union Pool. (As always, those dates will appear below this review.)

As for the singles:

  • “This Thirst” is a sleek post-punk ripper centered around angular guitar attack, a forceful motorik groove, a rousingly anthemic synth-led chorus and Schrader’s cool yet urgent delivery. The song’s narrator finds his irresistible urges leading him through a surrealistic, chemical-fueled fever dream of desperate back-alley bartering and scheming, uncertainty and existential threats.
  • “Berliner,” is a dark and brooding bit of post-punk centered around rumbling and distorted bass, scorching angular attack and unrelenting four-on-the-floor paired with Schrader’s coolly delivered baritone. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Berliner” evokes flop sweat and bleary-eyed late nights fueled by booze and drugs, lingering ghosts, and fever dreams. 

“Echo Base,” Nightclub Daydreaming‘s third and latest single is propelled by breakneck drum fills, a relentless bass line and glistening guitar. Much like its immediate predecessor, the song is one part lingering ghosts, self-flagellation, bitter regret and simmering frustration centered around an icy facade.

“A few years ago, I saw Carrie Fisher speak, and she referenced a Paul Simon song from Graceland where he compares her eyes to cold coffee. Her voice cracked as she spoke, and the whole theater went silent,” Ed Schrader recalls. “This lyric from a decades-old song about a decades-old relationship still hurt her. This moment showed the brilliant, sharp-shooting woman of my childhood dreams as a real, vulnerable, wildly misunderstood and underappreciated human being. I wanted to make a song befitting a princess, our Carrie.”

Directed by Devon Voelkel, the new video for “Echo Base” is a haunting and uneasy fever dream that’s split between a robe wearing Rice microwaving cut up limes and dancing on his bed — until he gets sucked into a portal, where he unites with his bandmate in a cobweb covered, dank cavern, where they perform in front of no one in particular.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Seth Olinsky is a singer/songwriter, guitarist, composer, producer and studio owner best known as the co-founder and lead vocalist of acclaimed, underground, experimental noise folk outfit Akron/Family. He’s also known as the creative mastermind behind the equally acclaimed project Cy Dune, a project that has found Olinsky exploring the blues, 50s rock and 60s/70s photo-punk through his unique lens. 

Olinsky’s various projects have displayed a post-genre approach in which he collages several different genres simultaneously to create multiple meanings while purposely juxtaposing authentic and pure songwriting sincerity with self aware meta-meaning and pranksterism. 

His latest Cy Dune effort Against Face is slated for a March 3, 2022 release through Lightning Studios. Clocking in at a breakneck 18 minutes, the album is a meta-punk blast through 20th Century art school punk forms mashed together. 

Last month, I wrote about album single and title track “Against Face” a buzzing and mischievous, mosh pit friendly mash-up of Bob Dylan and The Stooges self-titled album — in particular “No Fun.” Against Face‘s third and latest single “Disorientation (Cut Up)” is a dazzling and mind-bending synthesis of angular Wire-like post punk, house music, and New Order/Manchester sound centered around enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks paired with Olinsky delivering dance floor friendly cliches in a series of non-sequiturs before the song breaks sown and remixes itself.

“It is sort of a meta take on song form that folds the remix into the song itself.” notes Olinsky. “I was also inspired by how House music samples guitars, and wanted to build a punk song that not only had dance elements, but was inherently self sampling as well. This approach leant itself lyrically to the themes of modern, fragmented consciousness but in bite size, iconic statements more inspired by the glossy, abstracted surface simplicity of Ed Ruscha’s or John Baldersarri’s artwork than by any narrative.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Calgary’s Sunglaciers Release A Feverish Visual for Breakneck Ripper “Avoidance”

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 addition 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 psychedelic purveyors 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 Bodies and 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,.

Subterranea‘s latest single is “Avoidance,” a woozy and uneasy ripper full of guilt and recrimination delivered with a breakneck freneticism and featuring a nagging and persistent synth line-driven groove, angular guitar attack, driving four-on-the-four, dryly delivered vocals and screams by Louis Cza. Sounding a bit like JOVM mainstays 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.

Directed by the band’s Evan Resnik and Ryan Kostel, the video is a paranoid and uneasy fever dream in which the video’s protagonist is tormented by figures that he thinks are his friends — but prove to be in his own head.

“The video depicts a nightmare scenario with the protagonist in a panic as he is tormented by figures he thought were his friends, ultimately coming face-to-face with himself,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik explains. “The fogged-out rooms, varied lighting, and overlaid shots pull the viewer inside this dreamscape and accentuate the anxiety and trepidation we explore in the song.”

“When filming ‘Avoidance’ I really wanted to mimic the anxious, unsettled mind,” Ryan Kostel adds. “Constantly shifting angles, I used long fluid shots and shifts in time to create an unbalanced sensation. Rapid fluctuations of light and color layered over kinetic and sometimes violent imagery help to convey the subject’s mental unease.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Baltimore’s Ed Schrader’s Music Beat Releases a Surreal Visual For New Ripper “This Thirst”

With the release of 2018’s Dan Deacon-produced album Riddles, the Baltimore-based post-punk duo Ed Schrader’s Music Beat — Devlin Rice and Ed Schrader — turned heads nationally and elsewhere.

The Baltimore duo’s fourth album Nightclub Daydreaming is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Carpark Records. The album’s origins can be traced back to 2019 when Schrader and Rice began writing material with the idea of making a fun, danceable album. The duo, along with touring drumming Kevin O’Meara road-tested the album’s songs while on tour with Dan Deacon in February 2020.

Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a halt. Sadly, that tour with Dan Deacon was one of the last experiences that Schrader and Rice had with O’Meara, who had died in October 2020. O’Meara’s death weighed heavily on their minds as they finished working on the album. It was understandably, an unshakeable moodiness and heartache. As Schrader puts it, “The cave followed us into the discotheque.”

They then went to record and mix Nightclub Daydreaming over a breakneck two-week period with Craig Bowen at Baltimore’s Tempo House. Interestingly, the end result isn’t the album of “sunny disco bangers,” that Rice says the band set out for, but something far deeper and darker. Their long-held reputation for whiplash-inducing stylistic shifts between aggressive and noisy rock and operatic, gloom pop have given way to a single aesthetic that seamless fuses those impulses in propulsive, stark arrangements.

“The fun thing about this record is that it’s all at once informed by our more recent lush productions with Dan Deacon, yet spartan and boiled-down, exuding a coldness wrapped in ecstasy, following our time honored trend of never giving people what they expect, but hopefully what they want,” says Schrader.

Along with the album announcement, the Baltimore-based duo released two singles off the forthcoming album and dates for an extensive Spring 2022 tour that the duo (optimistically) have on the books. (The tour includes an April 23, 2022 stop at Union Pool. As always, those dates will be below the proverbial jump.) But first I’ll talk about one of those singles:

“This Thirst,” Nightclub Daydreaming‘s lead single is a sparse and uneasy song featuring angular, power chord-driven guitar attack, propulsive drumming and a roaring, rousingly anthemic, synth-led chorus paired with Schrader’s coolly delivered, reverb-drenched, lyrically dense verses. The song’s narrator finds his irresistible urges lead him through a surrealistic, chemical-fueled fever dream of desperate, back-alley bartering and scheming, uncertainty and constant existential threats.

Directed by Gillian Waldo, the recently released video for “This Thirst” stars Schrader and Rice as waiters and Nicole Sexton as a waitress during the overnight shit at a small town, Carvel-like diner. The trio are bored to tears, because nothing ever seems to happen. Schrader and Rice’s waiters seem barely competent: the video begins with Schrader nodding off at the counter while Rice does the crosswords or play a mean mop handle bass. Sexton’s waitress absent-mindedly files her nails and wishes she was someplace else. Sexton’s waitress seems to the be the most competent of the three, and at one point she seems to view her coworkers as braindead daydreamers.

When we see Schrader and Rice performing at an abandoned bandshell, Sexton roller-skates around them in circles. While being surreal, the video has a sense of menace, just under the ridiculous surface.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Brooklyn’s SAVAK Follows a Down-On-His-Luck Loser Through Brooklyn in Visual for New Ripper “Cold Ocean”

Brooklyn-based post-punk outfit SAVAK — multi-instrumentalist and co-vocalists Sohrab Habibion and Michael Jaworski, along with Matt Schultz (drums)– formed back in 2015. And since their inception, Habibion and Jaworski have shared vocal and songwriting duties, often taking turns singing their respective songs while playing guitar or other instruments.

There Brooklyn-based trio have been busy releasing a string of rippers — including their latest single “Cold Ocean”/”Adolescence Obsolete.” Penned by the band’s Jaworski, who also takes up lead singing duties, “Cold Ocean,” the A-side is centered around a relentlessly driving bass line, darting and wiry guitar blasts paired with Jaworski’s deadpan delivery before turning into a rousingly anthemic, ripper during the song’s hook. While seemingly inspired by Wire, “Cold Ocean” manages to evoke a neurosis and frustration that’s familiar to me as a native New Yorker.

The members of SAVAK will be releasing their fifth album later this year. But in the meantime, the recently released video for “Cold Ocean” was directed by Rob Kassabian and stars Mark Weills as “Walker Slim.” The band’s Michael Jaworski and Sohrab Habibion have supporting roles as “Babyshoes” and “Sniffles” respectively. They play two hustlers on the grind, scamming and scheming on to another payday.

Shot on a cold November day, the video features Weills/Slim, a down-on-his-luck loser, who must hawk a prized possession to buy a ring for a lover, who never shows. We follow Weills/Slim through several locales in Brooklyn, including the Brooklyn Museum, Prospect Park, and empty Brighton Beach and Coney Island Boardwalks, where we see poor, stood up Walker Slim, frustrated by — and facing both unrequited love and dreams of what will never be. Heartbreak is endless, like the tide.