JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates David Gilmour’s 78th birthday.
Category: Psych Rock
New Audio: JOVM Mainstay MAGON Shares Pixies-Esque “Solem Sequi”
Over the past handful of years, I’ve spilled a copious amount of virtual ink covering the remarkably prolific, Israeli-born singer/songwriter, musician and JOVM mainstay MAGON. After the release of his fifth album, 2022’s A Night in Bethlehem, the Israeli-born artist, along with his partner relocated to Costa Rica, where he continued his ongoing prolific period with three more albums, 2022’s Enter By The Narrow Gate, last year’s Did You Hear the Kids? and Chasing Dreams.
Chasing Dreams saw the JOVM mainstay collaborating with local indie rock outfit Las Robertas, who acted as his backing band for the recording sessions. Sonically, the album continued a slow-burn expansion of his sound with the incorporation of string arrangements, which add a lush and dreamily cinematic quality to the material.
The JOVM mainstay’s recently released eighth album The Writing’s On The Wall is a bit of a return to form — but while continuing to push his sound in new directions: According to the JOVM mainstay, the material is a fusion of hallucinogenic re-imaginings of 70s soft rock, oddball outsider jams and laid-back indie fare.
Earlier this year, I wrote about the album’s first single “Breakthrough Blitz,” which sees MAGON pairing his laconic and easy-going delivery with a simple yet propulsive backbeat, glistening keys and a bluesy, Keith Richards-like guitar riff with a big hook. Thematically, the song touches upon the freedom and connection found in simple, everyday moments with the sort of contented sigh that can only comes from someone, who has lived a full and messy-life — and understands that he is truly very lucky.
The Writing’s On The Wall‘s second and latest single “Solem Sequi” is Pixies-esque track anchored around a looping, strummed guitar melody, MAGON’s laconic delivery singing dreamily introspective lyrics paired with his uncanny knack for crafting enormous hooks.
New Audio: Population II Shares Mind-bending “R.B.”
Acclaimed Montréal-based psych rock outfit Population II — Pierre-Luc Gratton (vocals, drums), Tristan Lacombe (guitar, keys) and Sébastien Provençal (bass) — can trace their origin back a long way and are inextricably linked to their teenage memories.
After years of jamming to the point of developing a unique sense of telepathy, the trio began recording independently releasing material that caught the attention of Castle Face Records head and The Oh Sees‘ frontman John Dwyer, who released the band’s full-length debut, 2020’s À la Ô Terre, an album that saw the band displaying their mastery of improvised and sophisticated composition. The Montréal-based psych outfit then spent the better part of the next two years touring to support their full-length debut, which included stops at SXSW, Pop Montréal, Toronto, NYC, and Quebec City.
Population II signed with Bonsound‘s label, booking and publishing arms. Bonsound released the French Canadian trio’s l Èthier-produced sophomore album Èlectrons libres du québec late last year. Èlectrons libres du québec‘s much more straightforward than its predecessor and continues to showcase their remarkably adept musicianship with material that sees them effortlessly balancing between challenging compositions and memorable melodies and hooks. Sonically, the material also continues their unique take on heavy psych rock with feverish punk rhythms, early punk energy bursts, hints of jazz philosophy and a love of minor scales informed by heavy metal’s early roots.
In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about four of its singles:
- “Beau baptême,” a song built around a fairly traditional and recognizable song structure — verse, chorus, verse, bridge, coda — that’s roomy enough for buying power chord-driven riffs and mind-melting grooves paired with Gratton’s ethereal crooning. The song sees the trio deftly balancing jazz-inspired improvisational sensibilities with the tight restraint of a deliberately crafted composition. The song explores the psychological journey around inspiration and focuses on the very genesis of ideas — namely how ideas are actually born and the opinions they generate. Throughout the song, the band’s Pierre-Luc Gratton sings about how writing can sometimes happen with ease and spontaneity and sometimes requires deep, long reflection. Fittingly, the song is rooted in a lived-in specificity.
- “C.T.Q.S,” a song that begins with a driving rhythm, dissonant 70s jazz fusion/prog rock organ with a slightly menacing, off-kilter vibe and a relentless punk rock-like urgency before veering into a krautrock-meets-psych ripper around the song’s halfway point. Featuring tongue-in-cheek lyrics, the band’s Gratton taunts those who are too passive and have surrendered in the face of the world’s current, turbulent state. “‘C.T.Q.S’. is the manifestation of the tribulations of the past among today’s youth,” the Montréal-based trio explain. “It’s the calm after the storm, the law of suburbia, the boomer’s victory lap. It’s searching the ‘Local business” category on Amazon.”
- “Pourquoi qu’on dort pas,” which sees the trio quickly locking into a scuzzy and forceful Stooges-like groove with dreamy and campy bursts of organ paired with Gratton’s dreamy falsetto. Caribou‘s and Born Ruffians‘ Colin Fisher contributes some forceful saxophone lines, which manage to add soulful harmony and chaotic dissonance to the affair. The result manages to evoke the fuzziness of brain fog and detachment. With a title that translates into English as “Why Aren’t We Sleeping,” “Pourquoi qu’on dort pas” can trace its origins to a number of late-night strolls through the streets of Montréal’s Ahuntsic neighborhood. “During the time we wrote that song, Pierre-Luc (singer/drummer) used to go running at night when he couldn’t sleep, explains the trio. As the flora and fauna of Ahuntsic is very diverse, he often came across geese.” Fittingly, the song thematically explores birds as symbolic figures.
- The album’s third single, album opening track “Orlando” is a scuzzy Black Sabbath-like ripper rooted around some blazing and remarkably dexterous guitar work, woozy and arpeggiated keys paired with Gratton’s punchy delivery and the trio’s uncanny knack for crafting trippy, mind-bending grooves.
The album garnered praise on both sides of the Atlantic from the likes of Rock & Folk, Exclaim!, La Presse, Le Devoir and long list of others. The band also won a Breakthrough of the Year Award at last year’s GAMIQ ceremonies.
The acclaimed Montréal-based outfit are quickly following up with Serpent Échelle EP. Slated for an April 19, 2024 through Bonsound, the EP which will be released on a limited-edition cassette tape and on all digital platforms, sees the band crafting crating material that stands out from their previously released work: Shifting between orchestrated passages and lysergic riffage without warning, the EP’s material is wilder, more adventurous and heavier. Rooted in their remarkable compositional skills, the material displays a newfound commitment to songwriting.
Thematically, the material touches upon the desperate urgency of life in the age of global doom while still enjoying life’s small pleasures — love, friendship, wine, good tunes and the like.
The album also features violin from their acclaimed friend and producer Emmanuel Éthier.
Serpent Échelle‘s first single “R.B.” begins with a gorgeous string intro and an angular and propulsive bass line paired with a quick-paced hi-hat driven bit of percussion before scorching riffs explode around the 35-45 second mark. The song spends it run alternating between breathtaking beauty and scorching power chords. Gratton’s plaintive croon darts in and out of a lysergic and deceptively anachronistic arrangement that sounds as though it could have been released sometime between 1967-1973.
With the release of 2014’s critically applauded mini-album/EP Traitement Deuxluxe, Montréal-based psych rock duo Les Deuxluxes — vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Anna Frances and multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Etienne Barry — quickly exploded in their native Québec. Building upon a rapidly growing profile across the province, the duo followed up with their critically applauded full-length debut, 2016’s Springtime Devil.
Continuing upon that momentum, the French Canadian duo released a French translation of Springtime Devil album title track “Springtime Devil,” “Diable du pringtemps.” The band supported their efforts by making their way across the provincial festival circuit with stops at Montréal Jazz Fest, Festival d’été de Québec, Pop Montréal and M for Montréal. They’ve also opened for Lisa LeBlanc, Marjo, and Jon Spencer among others. They closed out 2016 with a mini-tour of South America that included stops in Santiago, Chile, Valdivia, Chile, Buenos Aires and São Paulo.
The duo isolated themselves in a 19th century church in the remote Québec countryside to write and record 2020’s sophomore album, Lighter Fluid. The album featured material anchored around classic and beloved, power chord riffage and classic psych rock vibes that channeled the likes of AC/DC, White Mystery, The White Stripes and on and on.
Throughout their run together, they’ve also collaborated with a handful of boundary-pushing acts across the province, including ALIAS, Larynx and others. But this year, sees the Montréal-based duo in a period of reinvention: They founded their own label Noble Shit Records, which will release their future releases, including their forthcoming four-song EP, Pleasure Doing Business — and guarantee them much more creative freedom.
Slated for an April 19, 2024 release, the entirely self-produced effort will feature the duo’s latest single “Always on the Run,” a collaboration with fellow Montréal-based rock outfit Les Shirley — Raphaëlle Chouinard, Lisandre Bourdages and Sarah Dion. “Always on the Run” further cements Les Deuxluxes’ swaggering hook-driven, barroom blues take on psych rock — but the addition of Les Shirley add a bit of playful pop-leaning muscle to the proceedings.
Throwback: Black History Month: Jimi Hendrix
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month and pays tribute to Jimi Hendrix.
New Video: JOVM Mainstays Sunglaciers Share Punchy Post Punk Ripper “Fakes”
Regular Nature, Calgary-based post-punk/psych pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Sunglaciers‘ highly-anticipated third album is slated for a March 29, 2024 release through Montréal-based label Mothland. While the material sees the band further continuing to blur the boundaries between polished melodcism and opaque experimentation, the material also blurs the lines between auspicious Romanticism and unbridled dissent. Firmly anchored in the strange and uneasy reality of our time, the album’s songs are laced with a certain optimism, through well-calculated psych elements and vibrant rhythms, creating a unique strange of kaleidoscopic pop.
Continuing their ongoing collaboration with co-producer Chad Van Gaalen, the Calgary-based JOVM mainstays’ forthcoming third album was purposely designed to be enjoyed in many ways, from solitary headphone listening to a crowded live venue, while sonically seeming to nod at Deerhunter, Ought, MGMT, DEVO, Talking Heads and others. The album also features a guest spot from acclaimed Zoon creative mastermind Daniel Monkman.
“We wanted to make a concise yet explosive record, continuing to find the balance between familiar and novel sounds and approaches. We have not and may never make ‘dance music,’ but we make continued efforts to bring sounds that we like from dance and electronic genres into our own, delighting in the process as much as the product,” the band explains. “We love to play and experiment, defying expectations and discovering new sounds. This record shows how these novel (to us) elements interact with the rock and roll world we comfortably inhabit.
“We want to make you dance. We want to make you think. We want to make you think while you’re dancing and dance while you’re busy thinking. This is an album for the body, brain and heart. It’s compassionate, frustrated, communal and dreadful. In a world of information overload, where everything comes at you at once, Regular Nature is trying to normalize the phenomenon. This is chaotic music for a chaotic world, a three-way conversation between outer self, the subconscious and the mad world. As expressed on penultimate track ‘One Time or Another:’ ‘There’s always somebody talking.’”“We wanted to make a concise yet explosive record, continuing to find the balance between familiar and novel sounds and approaches. We have not and may never make ‘dance music,’ but we make continued efforts to bring sounds that we like from dance and electronic genres into our own, delighting in the process as much as the product,” the band explains. “We love to play and experiment, defying expectations and discovering new sounds. This record shows how these novel (to us) elements interact with the rock and roll world we comfortably inhabit.
“We want to make you dance. We want to make you think. We want to make you think while you’re dancing and dance while you’re busy thinking. This is an album for the body, brain and heart. It’s compassionate, frustrated, communal and dreadful. In a world of information overload, where everything comes at you at once, Regular Nature is trying to normalize the phenomenon. This is chaotic music for a chaotic world, a three-way conversation between outer self, the subconscious and the mad world. As expressed on penultimate track ‘One Time or Another:’ ‘There’s always somebody talking.’”
Late last month, I wrote about “Cursed,” a woozy dream pop-meets-psych pop-meets-post-punk track that features glistening and fluttering synth arpeggios, a motorik rhythm section, an Avalon-era Roxy Music-like guitar solo and hazy and yearning vocals. The achingly nostalgic song sees its narrator discussing a love passing them by with a weary and bitterly resigned sense of regret. “Oh, if I had only known what I know now,” the song’s narrator seems to say.
“‘Cursed’ is quite probably Sunglaciers’ biggest downer to date. It is a piece about shattered, unsaid expectations, and reflecting on the reality of a situation after it has passed, and all that remains is its memory,” the band explains. “It is a slow dance between regret and acceptance, a song about lost love and lost potential. It is being caught in a moment, blinded by short-term desires, only to wake up on the other side when everything has passed and it is too late to reconcile (“You wish your head could unremember this/ But memory is all there ever is”).
“Fakes,” Regular Nature‘s second and latest single is a Freedom of Choice-era DEVO and Remain in Light-era Talking Heads like ripper built around a relentless four-on-the-floor, angular chorus pedal-drenched baselines and squiggling guitars and atmospheric synths paired with Resnik’s punchily uneasy delivery and bursts of gossip and shit-talking. The song captures the inner monologue of someone struggling to keep up with appearances and with keeping up with others, while recognizing — with an excoriating sense of humor — that practically everything in our lives has a veneer of phoniness.
“‘Fakes’ is a song about performance, artifice, and image,” the Calgary-based outfit explains. “Partly a direct narration of a social scene, partly an inner monologue. It is about how our priorities have changed or are distorted. Instead of who we truly are, the importance seems to be on what we appear to be or how we act. Sometimes these intersect, but oftentimes are at odds. We are desperate to mold a certain self-image, a certain perception from the outside, despite what we really think about a situation. We run a risk of being seen as ‘all style, not a lot of substance.’ All social interactions are performative. We are striving to be seen as having a certain character, whether or not that’s who we truly are or how we believe we “ought” to be. ‘Fakes’ is like the subconscious taking over the controls of someone engaging in society (‘Don’t tell me your thoughts about the weather’), then abruptly turning its focus back inward (‘I’m anxious, always acting up’).”
Directed by the band’s Evan Resnik, the accompanying video is inspired and informed by 90s MTV/Muchmusic music video aesthetics, while also nodding at some of DEVO’s videos from the 80s. Featuring the band playing a sparse, white studio space, at points we see some uncanny mash-ups of their faces and bodies that seem startlingly real and unsettlingly weird.
“Everyone in the band grew up on the aesthetics of 90s MTV/Muchmusic, so it’s no surprise that many of our videos look like they belong to that era,” Resnik says. “When conceptualizing the ‘Fakes’ video, Mathieu (Blanchard) told me he wanted it to be our ‘Big Bang Baby,’ a music video by Stone Temple Pilots. I hadn’t seen the video in years, but the vibe is unforgettable. I freshened it up to fit our weirdness, and adjusted for our complete lack of budget. I tend to go off the rails during the editing process, so I spliced our faces to exaggerate the fakeness. And there are parallels to ‘Big Bang Baby’ that found their way in without my realizing (the old TV, neon colours in the bridge). I think Scott Weiland passed these elements to me from the great beyond.”
New Video: MAGON Shares Hauntingly Gorgeous “The Writing’s On The Wall”
Over the past handful of years, I’ve spilled a copious amount of virtual ink covering the remarkably prolific, Israeli-born singer/songwriter, musician and of course, JOVM mainstay MAGON. If you’ve been frequenting this site in that period of time, you’d remember that after the release of his fifth album, 2022’s A Night in Bethlehem, the Israeli-born artist, along with his partner and children relocated to Costa Rica, where he continued his reputation for being profile, with three more albums, 2022’s Enter By The Narrow Gate and last year’s Did You Hear the Kids? and Chasing Dreams.
The JOVM mainstay began the year with the announcement of his eighth album The Writing’s On The Wall, which will feature “Breakthrough Blitz,” a song that saw MAGON’s laconic and easy-going delivery paired with a simple yet propulsive backbeat, glistening keys and a blues Keith Richards-like guitar riff with a big hook. Thematically, the song touched upon the freedom and connection found in simple, everyday moments with the sort of contented sigh that can only comes from someone, who has lived a full and messy-life — and understands that he is truly very lucky.
The Writing’s On The Wall‘s second single, album title track “The Writing’s On The Wall” is a slow-burning, Inner Journey Out-era Psychic Ills-like bit of country-tinged psych rock with a hauntingly gorgeous bit of wailing pedal steel by Cary Morin paired with MAGON’s meditative delivery. Rooted in seemingly lived-in experience, the song’s narrator describes the sensation of knowing when your time with a situation and place are over, and picking up your life and starting anew.
The accompanying video features footage of flowers and trees blooming shot on over-saturated film stock, which gives the proceedings a surreal yet dreamy air.
New Video: Meatbodies Share Groovy “Billow”
Over the course of the past decade or so, Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Chad Ubovich has developed a reputation as a highly-sought after collaborator and mainstay of his hometown’s fertile music scene: Ubovich had a lengthy stint playing guitar in Mikal Cronin‘s backing band. He currently plays bass in Fuzz with Ty Segall and Charlie Moothart. And he’s also the founding member and frontman of the experimental noise rock/freak rock outfit Meatbodies.
By 2017, Ubovich reached a crossroads. After years of increasingly insane shows in front of heaving crowds with an ever-evolving and rotating door of personal, fatigue had taken its toll, and he realized that another change was just on the horizon. “It was like the car had run out of gas in the middle of the road, and I knew I had along walk ahead of me,” Ubovich recalls. He retreated to Los Angeles’ seedy underbelly — in search of meaning and a much-needed reset. But Ubovich gradually escaped into that world, ignoring his own physical and mental well-being, licking his wounds and trying to forget his successes. “I was living like a 90’s vampire out of a comic book. Stumbling around LA with the socialites, partying away my sorrows, trying to forget,” the Los Angeles-born and-based artist explains.
Around this time, the material that would eventually comprise Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom, a project conceived and written by a man searching for new beginnings and his own sense of self. After getting sober, writing sessions began at Ubovich’s home and various studios with longtime collaborator Dylan Fujioka (drums). The official production for the album began back in 2019, but due to discrepancies with the studio and high tensions, the plug was pulled. With only about half an album, it seemed that Flora was shelved — perhaps permanently.
After some time away, cooler heads eventually prevailed and there were many discussions about the album’s future. Ubovich finally got the green light to finish production on Flora back in 2020. But he hit another snag — the COVID-19 pandemic. And with everyone’s lives and plans at a forced, indefinite halt, so did the idea of Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom.
Not wanting to sit still at home, Ubovich began combing through his previous demos with Fujioka while writing for Flora. And through those efforts, came Meatbodies’ third album, 2021’s 333. However, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom was never far from his mind, and he once against resisted the idea of completing the album.
As restrictions were gradually lifted, Ubovich along with engineer Ed Mentee and a team of colleagues and friends, headed to Los Angeles-based Gold Diggers Sound to complete the album. But he now faced a new crisis, one that was more dire and terrifying than anything he had faced before: The home he had spent the past eight years in had been deemed uninhabitable and he wound up spending the next month of his life in a hospital bed.
Having to not only learn to walk again but also learn to play again, Ubovich used an upcoming tour with FUZZ as a motivating factor and hit the road for a year trying to regain a sense of normalcy. By the time he returned from that tour, he felt centered, energized and ready to conquer his own white whale – Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom.
Armed with a new home and a new studio, The Secret Garden, Ubovich mixed the album himself, recruited Magic Garden’s Brian Lucey to master the material — and finally Flora was completed, five years after those original demos with Fujioka. “A lot happened with this record – it took me five years, I was out of a band, I had a drug problem, the album almost didn’t happen, the pandemic made it almost not happen again, and then in the end I almost died in the hospital, lost my house, and had to learn to walk again. It’s been quite a road, but I could not be more thrilled with the final output. I guess the juice was worth the squeeze?” laughs the Meatbodies frontman.
Slated for a March 8, 2024 release through In The Red Records, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloomis in many ways a story of iron clad will and steely determination. Sonically, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom is a massive step forward, both by conventional standards and considering its tumultuous path towards completion. The album reportedly recalls the Blue Cheer-meets-Iggy Pop-wtih-psychedelia that permeated the band’s previous releases, but with elements of shoegaze, alternative rock, Brit Pop, drone and even hints of country — without ever sounding forced or alien. But the album sees Ubovich crafting an eclectic yet unmistakably cohesive work.
Thematically, the material touches upon love and loss, escapism, defeatism, hedonism, psychedelics and much more — informed by Ubovich’s own life. “The last record was more of a cartoon version of who we were– simple and fun without delving into heavy concepts,” recalls Ubovich. “The whole thing before with Meatbodies was never sit down, next part, next part, but I wanted to make something with more depth. After everything that had happened, and my personal life, I was left with this feeling of emptiness and loss. So I wanted to make music that was absent from things– songs that were more about conveying feeling.”
So far, Ubovich has shared two singles off the forthcoming album:
- The Siamese Dream-like Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom album track “Hole,” a song that saw the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and his collaborators pairing fuzzy power chord-driven hooks and choruses with his dreamily yearning falsetto and a driving groove. The result was a song that will appeal to shoegazers while featuring enough guitar pyrotechnics for headbangers while possessing a power pop-like emphasis on melody. “That was one of the first songs I wrote, and I think it’s really indicative of that time,” says Ubovich. “How I was thinking and feeling and what I wanted to accomplish with this LP before I even knew it.”
- The Sonic Praise-era Ecstatic Vision-like “Move,” which clocks in at 7:30 and begins with a circular synth baseline before quickly morphing into a menacing, krautrock-inspired motorik groove and ending with a lysergic-fueled, power chord-driven coda. “I wanted to make a hypnotic driving song that felt kind of dangerous,” Ubovich says. “There’s an energy to it that is undeniable.”
“Billow,” Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom‘s third and latest single is built around a spacey Stone Roses-meets-Ritual De Lo Habitual-era Jane’s Addiction-like motorik groove, gently buzzing guitars, relentless tambourine and layers of dreamy, reverb-drenched harmonies paired with some remarkably catchy hooks and choruses. It’s arguably one of the brightest, more optimistic songs on the album, seemingly evoking a pleasant psilocybin trip on a sunny, summer afternoon.
The accompanying video by CAU plays with 120 Minutes-era MTV music video tropes and captures the band goofing off and rocking out with mischievous abandon.
New Video: JOVM Mainstay MAGON Shares Meditative and Introspective “Breakthrough Blitz”
I’ve managed to spill a copious amount of virtual ink covering the remarkably prolific, Israeli-born singer/songwriter, musician and JOVM mainstay MAGON. After the release of his fifth album, 2022’s A Night in Bethlehem, the Israeli-born artist, along with his partner relocated to Costa Rica, where he continued his ongoing prolific period with three more albums, 2022’s Enter By The Narrow Gate, last year’s Did You Hear the Kids? and Chasing Dreams.
Chasing Dreams saw the JOVM mainstay collaborating with local indie rock outfit Las Robertas, who acted as his backing band for the recording sessions. Sonically, the album continued a slow-burn expansion of his sound with the incorporation of string arrangements, which add a lush and dreamily cinematic quality to the material.
The JOVM mainstay begins 2024 with the announcement of his eighth album The Writing’s On The Wall. The album’s first single “Breakthrough Blitz,” pairs MAGON’s laconic, easy-going delivery with a simple yet propulsive backbeat, glistening keys, and a bluesy, Keith Richards-like guitar riff with a big hook. Thematically, the song touches upon the freedom and connection found in simple, everyday moments with the sort of contented sigh that can only comes from someone, who has lived a full and messy-life — and understands that he is truly very lucky.
Shot in the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, the video stars MAGON and his family — and features the JOVM as a sort of magical taxi driver, who picks up a woman and her young kids (the JOVM mainstay’s partner and two kids) on a dreamy and slow-burning trip through the verdant green, golden yellows and mountainous Mexican countryside.
Throwback: R.I.P. Wayne Kramer!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of the MC5’s Wayne Kramer.
New Audio: jjuujjuu Teams Up with Boogarins on Hazy “SOME”
Phil Pirrone is a Los Angeles-based musician and co-founder of Desert Daze. Back in 2011, after spending the previous decade of his life as a touring bassist, Pirrone borrowed and SG and DL4 and began his exploration of writing and recording looped-based music with jjuujjuu.
Pirrone’s jjuujjuu debut, 2013’s FRST EP and the follow-up, one-ff single “Bleck” helped to build up some early buzz around the project. In the project’s earliest days, the lineup and instrumentation moved in step with Pirrone’s ethos of ephemera and flux — with the project touring in several different configurations with Pirrone at the center.
Building upon a growing profile, Pirrone and company shared stages with a number of nationally and internationally known acts, including The Claypool Lennon Delirium, Tortoise, Allah-Lahs, Temples, Tinariwen and a list of others.
Pirrone spent the next few years recording material in various spaces around California. Those sessions included collaborations with Vinyl Williams, members of Lumerians, Dahga Bloom and others. The material from those sessions eventually comprised Pirrone’s jjuujuu full-length debut, 2018’s Zionic Mud. The album was accompanied by alternate versions of its tracks remixed or reimagined by many of the band’s most notable fans and supporters, including J. Mascis, Warpaint‘s jennylee, Liars, METZ, and Autolux. JJUUJJUU supported the album by opening for Primus, Mastodon, Kikagaku Moyo, and Earhtless, as well as festival sets at Pickathon, Nelsonville, M3F and others.
During the height of the pandemic, Pirrone taught himself how to produce and record material and sent tracks to longtime bandmembers and collaborators Ian Gibbs and Joseph Assef. Those tracks were sent to a collection of talented friends that included METZ’s Alex Edkins and JOVM mainstays Boogarins and a lengthy list of others.
Now, if you were frequenting this site over the course of 2023, you might remember that I wrote about
- “Nowhere,” a track built around a relentless motorik pulse, rolling drum beats, bursts of feedback and distortion paired with wailing vocals buried in the mix that recalls Connect the Dots-era To and Deleters-era Holy Fuck.
- “No Way In,” a track built around propulsive, polyrhythmic percussion, a sinuous bass line and falsetto wailing drenched in reverb and delay that manages to be among the funkiest songs of Pirrone’s catalog while retaining the mind-bending and hallucinogenic quality he’s known for.
Pirrone and company start off 2024 with “SOME,” a collaboration with acclaimed Brazilian psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Boogarins. Built around a hypnotic motorik groove and layers of swirling and howling feedback and reverberated distortion. Boogarins added a dreamy bridge and vocals that seem that oscillating between English and their native Brazilian Portuguese, which gives the song a dreamy, psilocybin-fueled, hallucinogenic air.
Track remotely between Los Angeles and Brazil between 2020-2021, Pirrone says: “We sent the track to Boogarins, who added a really beautiful bridge to the song, and vocals oscillating between English and Portuguese. Something in this song recalls early childhood memories of Muppet Babies or Elton John ‘Benny and the Jets’… but in a really weird (but good) way. End result feels like a flower dancing on the sand under a São Paolo sun.”
New Audio: TEKE::TEKE and Mirah Tackle The Clash For The Clash Tribute Album “Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats”
As of last September, more than 114 million people globally have been forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict persecution and human rights violations. By the end of this year, that number is expected to reach 130 million people across the globe. Benefiting the International Rescue Committee (https://www.rescue.org) and their work with refugees, The Clash compilation tribute album Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats invites artists, bands and visual artists to create work inspired by the legendary punk band The Clash — and to celebrate their music and human rights messages.
Slated for digital and vinyl release on International Clash Day, February 7, 2024, Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats was mastered by Ted Jensen, known for his work with The Rolling Stones, Green Day, Norah Jones, Madonna, Alice In Chains and a lengthy list of others, the album will feature contributions from The Dandy Warhols, Smokey Brights, Seán Barna, Warren Dunes‘ Julia Massey, The Gotobeds, Big League, Labasheeda, The Rust & The Fury, acclaimed Montréal-based JOVM mainstays TEKE :: TEKE and Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Mirah. (Track listing is available below.)
Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats Tracklist
1. The Dandy Warhols – Straight To Hell
2. TEKE::TEKE – Bankrobber
3. Mirah – I’m Not Down
4. The Rust and The Fury – Guns of Brixton
5. Labasheeda – Deny
6. Smokey Brights – Train In Vain (Stand By Me
7. Seán Barna – Hitsville U.K.
8. The Gotobeds – I’m So Bored with the USA
9. Julia Massey (Warren Dunes) – Rock The Casbah
10. Big League – Lost In The Supermarket
International Clash Day was established back in 2013 by KEXP DJ John Richards. The holiday marks a global, annual celebration of The Clash’s influential and important message and legacy. To celebrate the 11th International Clash Day, KEXP DJs Kevin Cole and Kid Hops will transition the station’s all-day International Clash Day programming on-air to the Gathering Space for International Clash Day Live, where Smokey Brights will play a live set of Clash covers and originals. Tickets and more information are available here.
Mirah, Seán Barna and TEKE: TEKE will play a special album release show on February 2, 2024 at Brooklyn Made. Tickets and more information are available here.
Proceeds from album sales will go to the International Rescue Committee’s global fund, supporting their vital work in responding to humanitarian crises and helping impacted individuals rebuild their lives.
Today Mirah and TEKE:: TEKE shared their contributions to Hearts & Minds & Crooked Beats.
TEKE:: TEKE’s “Bankrobber” is a restrained mind-bending interpretation that’s part Spaghetti Western and partially inspired by a sound and approach that was developing in Japan during the 70s, n parallel to the UK’s punk scene with avant-garde outfits like Tokyo Kid Brothers and JA Seazer, which inspired them to sing the bulk of the song’s lyrics in Japanese. The result is something that’s familiar but somewhat alien, yet still deeply human and universal.
TEKE :: TEKE’s Maya Kuroki felt an immediate connection to “Bankrobber,” upon hearing the same words that her late father used to jokingly say “someday I’ll become a bank robber.” She wanted to represent the meaning of the lyrics as the voice of the “community” striving to counter the increasingly widening wealth gap. I envision a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from rich, greedy capitalists and giving their ill-gotten gains to the poor and needy.
The band’s Sei Nakauchi Pelletier adds, “‘Bankrobber’ was the first ever song I heard from The Clash, it was on a compilation tape a dear friend of mine had made for me in my early 20’s. The Clash went on to become one of my favorite and most-inspiring rock bands of all-time, way beyond their musical genius but also for their political stances and DIY approach.” Pelletier’s dear friend, Malcolm Baud, was enlisted to take part on the TEKE:: TEKE cover singing verses in English — a profound collaboration and full circle moment.
Brooklyn-based artist’s Mirah recruited Erica Freas and Karl Blau for a slow-burning, sultry yet deeply sweet take on “I’m Not Down” that maintains the original’s guitar-driven heart and kookiness while seemingly drawing from The Shangri-Las. “One of the best things about being asked to work on a project like this is the opportunity it gave me to play a bunch of Clash albums all at once and to pay close attention as I was listening,” the Brooklyn-based artist explains. “I wanted to pick one that felt right for my voice, with words which reflected something about me and my own experiences. Like a lot of people, I began having some run-ins with anxiety and depression during the pandemic. I wasn’t playing shows or making much music and I was spending nearly every waking hour with a tiny person who I’d given birth to 15 months before the pandemic started. ‘I’m Not Down’ was written as a sort of F you to hard times and depression, and that felt, and feels, pretty relevant.”
New Video: Meatbodies Share Menacing Psych Freak Out “Move”
Over the course of the past decade or so, Los Angeles-born and-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Chad Ubovich developed a reputation as a mainstay of his hometown’s fertile music scene: Ubovich had a lengthy stint playing guitar in Mikal Cronin‘s backing band. He plays bass in Fuzz with Ty Segall and Charlie Moothart. He’s also the founding member and frontman of the experimental noise rock/freak rock outfit Meatbodies.
By 2017, Ubovich reached a crossroads. After years of increasingly insane shows in front of heaving crowds with an ever-evolving and rotating door of personal, fatigue had taken its toll, and he realized that another change was just on the horizon. “It was like the car had run out of gas in the middle of the road, and I knew I had along walk ahead of me,” Ubovich recalls. He retreated to Los Angeles’ seedy underbelly — in search of meaning and a much-needed reset. But Ubovich gradually escaped into that world, ignoring his own physical and mental well-being, licking his wounds and trying to forget his successes. “I was living like a 90’s vampire out of a comic book. Stumbling around LA with the socialites, partying away my sorrows, trying to forget,” the Los Angeles-born and-based artist explains.
Around this time, the material that would eventually comprise Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom, a project conceived and written by a man searching for new beginnings and his own sense of self. After getting sober, writing sessions began at Ubovichs’ home and various studios with longtime collaborator Dylan Fujioka (drums). The official production for the album began back in 2019, but due to discrepancies with the studio and high tensions, the plug was pulled. With only about half an album, it seemed that Flora was shelved — perhaps permanently.
After some time away, cooler heads eventually prevailed and there were many discussions about the album’s future. Ubovich finally got the green light to finish production on Flora back in 2020. But he hit another snag — the COVID-19 pandemic. And with everyone’s lives and plans at a forced, indefinite halt, so did the idea of Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom.
Not wanting to sit still at home, Ubovich began combing through his previous demos with Fujioka while writing for Flora. And through those efforts, came Meatbodies’ third album, 2021’s 333. However, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom was never far from his mind, and he once against resisted the idea of completing the album.
As restrictions were gradually lifted, Ubovich along with engineer Ed Mentee and a team of colleagues and friends, headed to Los Angeles-based Gold Diggers Sound to complete the album. But he now faced a new crisis, one that was more dire and terrifying than anything he had faced before: The home he had spent the past eight years in had been deemed uninhabitable and he wound up spending the next month of his life in a hospital bed.
Having to not only learn to walk again but also learn to play again, Ubovich used an upcoming tour with FUZZ as a motivating factor and hit the road for a year trying to regain a sense of normalcy. By the time he returned from that tour, he felt centered, energized and ready to conquer his own white whale – Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom.
Armed with a new home and a new studio, The Secret Garden, Ubovich mixed the album himself, recruited Magic Garden’s Brian Lucey to master the material — and finally Flora was completed, five years after those original demos with Fujioka. “A lot happened with this record – it took me five years, I was out of a band, I had a drug problem, the album almost didn’t happen, the pandemic made it almost not happen again, and then in the end I almost died in the hospital, lost my house, and had to learn to walk again. It’s been quite a road, but I could not be more thrilled with the final output. I guess the juice was worth the squeeze?” laughs the Meatbodies frontman.
Slated for a March 8, 2024 release through In The Red Records, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloomis in many ways a story of iron clad will and steely determination. Sonically, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom is a massive step forward, both by conventional standards and considering its tumultuous path towards completion. The album recalls the Blue Cheer-meets-Iggy Pop-wtih-psychedelia that permeated the band’s previous releases, but with elements of shoegaze, alternative rock, Brit Pop, drone and even hints of country — without ever sounding forced or alien. But the album sees Ubovich crafting an eclectic yet unmistakably cohesive work.
Thematically, the material touches upon love and loss, escapism, defeatism, hedonism, psychedelics and much more — informed by Ubovich’s own life. “The last record was more of a cartoon version of who we were– simple and fun without delving into heavy concepts,” recalls Ubovich. “The whole thing before with Meatbodies was never sit down, next part, next part, but I wanted to make something with more depth. After everything that had happened, and my personal life, I was left with this feeling of emptiness and loss. So I wanted to make music that was absent from things– songs that were more about conveying feeling.”
Last year, Ubovich shared the Siamese Dream-like Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom album track “Hole,” a song that saw the Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and his collaborators pairing fuzzy power chord-driven hooks and choruses with his dreamily yearning falsetto and a driving groove. The result was a song that will appeal to shoegazers while featuring enough guitar pyrotechnics for headbangers while possessing a power pop-like emphasis on melody. “That was one of the first songs I wrote, and I think it’s really indicative of that time,” says Ubovich. “How I was thinking and feeling and what I wanted to accomplish with this LP before I even knew it.”
Clocking in at a little over 7:30, Flora Ocean Tiger Bloom‘s second and latest single, the Sonic Praise-era Ecstatic Vision-like “Move” begins with a circular synth baseline before quickly morphing into a menacing, krautrock-inspired motorik groove and ending with a lysergic-fueled, power chord-driven coda. “I wanted to make a hypnotic driving song that felt kind of dangerous,” Ubovich says. “There’s an energy to it that is undeniable.”
Directed by The Erickas, the accompanying video for “Move” is a delirious B movie-inspired romp that featured four all-black clad women, a mysterious suitcase, and a badass car driving through the desert before they all lose their minds.
