Category: Synth Pop

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Melbourne’s Pillow Pro Teams Up with Endless Prowl on a Multi-Dimensional Journey

The rising Melbourne-based electro pop duo Pillow Pro — Christobel Elliot and Jude Mills — burst onto Melbourne’s music scene with their 2015 self-released, self-titled debut EP, which quickly established their unique production style and sound: thick bass lines, ethereal harmonies and intertwining vocals. Adding to a growing profile, the rising Aussie electro pop duo have played sets at Gaytimes Festival, Melbourne Music Week, Wetfest, Listen Out and Scienceworks — and they’ve shared stages with Divide and Dissolve, Oscar Key Sung, HTML Flowers and others.

The duo’s highly anticipated full-length debut Forever is slated for a June 3, 2021 through Dinosaur City Records. The album’s latest single “Lucky” is a brooding yet club friendly bop featuring Endless Prowl, centered around skittering beats, wobbling and shimmering synth arpeggios and achingly plaintive vocals. And while the song strikes me as a retro-futuristic take on Larry Levan-era house, the song as the duo explains “is about love and lust and the insecurities and vulnerabilities that come with strong, strong feelings. It’s about being honest with yourself about how you feel.”

Created by Endless Prowl’s Dan Ford, an acclaimed multimedia artist and game designer, follows two young people who develop and maintain a connection through the internet, where they exist together in an Avatar-like dream world. Beginning with footage originally shot and edited by Ford in his studio, he then developed the characters in the artists’ likenesses and created a virtual world. The cuts between real life footage and virtual reality wind up creating a mind-bending multi-dimensional experience.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: L’Impératice Releases an Animated Visual for Slinky and Sultry “Hématome”

L’Impératice — founder Charles de Boisseguin (keys), Hagni Gown (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), Tom Daveau (drums) and Flore Benguigui (vocals) — is a rising Paris-based electro pop sextet that formed back in 2012. And since their formation, the French electro pop act has been extremely busy and prolific: within their first three years together, they released 2012’s self-titled debut EP., 2014’s Sonate Pacifique EP and 2015’s Odyssée EP.

In 2016, L’impératrice released a re-edited, remixed and slowed down version of Odyssée, L’Empreruer, which was inspired by a fan mistakenly playing a vinyl copy of Odyssée at the wrong speed. L’Impératice followed that up with a version of Odysseé featuring arrangements centered around violin, cello and acoustic guitar. During the summer of 2017, the Parisian electro pop act signed to microqlima records, who released that year’s Séquences EP.

2018’s full-length debut Matahari featured “Erreur 404,” which they performed on the French TV show Quotidien. Since then, the Parisian electro pop act have released an English language version of Matahari — and they’ve been busy working on the highly anticipated Renaud Letang co-produced sophomore album Taku Tsubo. Slated for a March 26, 2021 release through their longtime label home, the album derives its name from the medical term for broken heart syndrome, takutsubo syndrome (蛸 壺, from Japanese “octopus trap”). The condition usually manifests itself as deformation of the heart’s left ventricle caused by severe emotional or physical stress — i.e., the death of a loved one, an intense argument with someone you care about, a breakup, a sudden illness or the like. So, in case you were a wondering: yes, an untreated broken heart can actually kill you.

Over the course of the past year, I’ve written about three of Taku Tsubo‘s released singles:

“Voodoo?,” a slinky disco strut featuring a propulsive groove, layers of arpeggiated synths, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar and Benguigui’s sultry, come-hither vocals. Interestingly, one of the few songs written and sung in English on the album, the track features a narrator, who attends a party and decides to leave early to read Torture Magazine instead.
“Peur des filles,” another slinky disco floor strut that’s a scathing and sarcastic ode to the differences between men and women that points out how shitty men are.
Album opener “Anomalie bleue” which was one part Giorgio Moroder-like disco, one part Kraftwerk-like retro-futurism, one part Shalamar-like funk within an expansive, mind-bending song structure. But just under the dance floor friendly grooves, the song’s narrator charmingly describes love-at-first site with a beautiful, blue wearing anomaly that suddenly appears in a lobby full of drab suited con-men, grifters and CEOs and bored business travelers.

ako Tsubo’s fourth and last official single before its release, “Hématome” is a slinky and groovy, Quiet Storm-like bit of synth pop that reminds me of Cherrelle, Evelyn “Champagne” King and others, centered around shimmering analog synths, squiggling funk guitar, a supple and funky bass line and Benguigui’s sultry vocals. Co-written by Fils Cara, “Hématome,” as the band explains in press notes “is a wound of love, all the more vivid, as its inflicted from a distance, by interposed screens.”

Directed by Roxane Lumeret and Jocelyn Charles, the recently released, animated video for “Hématome” is a surrealist fever dream full of symbolic metamorphoses and transformations: the video begins with a primate/humanoid nurse trying to restore her patients to health — but things get very odd: people transform into animals, animals transform into other animals and even inanimate objects seemingly at will, including the eventual cure for the protagonist’s condition.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Nashville-based singer/songwriter, topliner and pop artist Notelle has worked with an eclectic array of producers and DJs across the globe since 2014. And in that time, her work and contributions as a songwriter and vocalist has amassed well over 12 million Spotify streams with songs appearing on a number of popular playlists, including Spotify‘s FreshEDM, Hot New Dance, Friday Cratediggers, Heart Beats, Sad Beats, Pop Chillout, Study Break, Fresh Finds, Fresh Finds: Poptronix, Italians Do It Better, Shisha Lounge, Stepping Out, New Music Fridays and Deep Delight, as well as Apple Music‘s Pop Rising and Breaking Dance playlists. This wildly eclectic work has seen the Nashville-based artist released material on over labels like Armada, Monstercat, Proximity, Lowly, Hinky, AtLast, Seeking Blue, Thrive Music, Ultra Music, Ophelia and Knight Vision (Warner Music) — while remaining fiercely independent.

After a lengthy and varied career as a go-to collaborator, Notelle decided to step out into the spotlight as a solo artist. Over the past three years, the rising Nashville-based artist has established and honed her own attention grabbing take on dark industrial pop. As a solo artist, Notelle has been named a Nashville Artist to Watch in 2020 by Nashville Scene. Her solo debut “Power” premiered on Lightning 100‘s The 615 and her third “Out of Love” received regular rotation by the station.

Last year, I wrote about two of the rising Nashville-based artist’s singles:

Notelle’s first single of 2021, “Doctor Sign” is heavily influenced by Trent Reznor, Au5 and Flume while further cementing her reputation for boundary-pushing production: in this case, dry and distorted yet seductive lead vocals and almost choral-like harmonic layers are paired with wobbling bass synths, industrial clang and clatter, razor sharp hooks and the sort of enormous bass drop that would make Skrillex proud. Interestingly, much like the rest of her steadily growing catalog. Notelle manages to craft bangers with an intensely unvarnished honesty that’s both intimate and uncomfortable. Our feelings and thoughts about ourselves, the situations we put ourselves in and the people we choose to deal with can be ugly — especially when we’ve been hurt or betrayed, if we’re truly honest about it. Of course, easier said than done!

“When writing ‘Doctor Sign’, I really gave myself permission to lean into some unattractive emotions,” Notelle explains. “I had a lot of anger towards someone who really took advantage of my kindness and natural vulnerability. I felt vindictive after that, and that’s not a particularly good color on me. I didn’t want to act on those feelings, so instead, I threw them in a song. I figured I could save myself the headache and skip out on all the repercussions of getting revenge. To me, this song is about watching someone cruel get their comeuppance. It’s out of character for me to feel satisfaction in watching someone reap what they sow, but in this particular situation…I didn’t mind it. I just pictured them letting their cruelty, and their actions, rot them from the inside out. Pictured them losing their mind because they can’t stand to be alone with themselves, and that was fine with me. Some people are their own punishment, so I can keep my hands clean and just throw my ill-wishes into a song. It’s therapeutic and it’s not my problem anymore.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: Tia Gostelow Releases a Swooning and Heartfelt Ode to Love

With the release of 2018’s full-length debut album Thick Skin, Mackay, Australia-born, Brisbane-based singer/songwriter Tia Gostelow exploded into the national and international scenes. Thick Skin featured smash hit album single “Strangers,” which was certified Gold after amassing over 12 million Spotify streams. And as a result of “Strangers” commercial success, Gostelow’s full-length debut landed a Triple J album feature, a Queensland Music Award for Album Of The Year, opening slots for Ball Park Music, Frightened Rabbit, The Rubens and Gomez and sets at Falls Festival and SXSW. Thick Skin also landed a Triple J album feature, which may have led to her appearing on the station’s covers series Like A Version.

Gostelow went on her first national headlining tour back in 2019. which she followed up with tours across the States, the UK and European Union. While on tour, the rising Aussie artist started work on her sophomore album, last year’s Oscar Dawson-produced Chrysalis. Chrysalis is a bold and decided change in sonic direction that sees Gostelow moving away from the guitar-based indie rock and folk sound her breakthrough full-length debut and crafting 11 songs of lush, 80s inspired, danceable yet thoughtful synth-based pop.

“Before the songs were even finished I knew I wanted Oscar Dawson to produce the record. He’s a gun and I was obsessed with all of the music coming out that he was producing,” Gostelow continues. “I met up with him in Brisbane and we instantly got along so well. Going into record this album I obviously knew a bit more than I did recording Thick Skin and I was a bit more inclined to have more involvement musically. I played bass, piano and synth on some songs which was really important to me and I’m so grateful that Oscar was so patient with me. He really pushed me to go to places vocally and musically that I probably wouldn’t have done without him which I am also super grateful for!”

“Two Lovers,” Chrysalis’ latest single is an anthemic, 80s synth pop-inspired, escapist confection centered around shimmering synth arpeggios reminiscent of Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back,” an infectious and enormous hook, thumping beats, an atmospheric and dreamy bridge, scorching guitars and Gostelow’s ethereal yet plaintive vocals. Much like The Money War-written “Always,” “Two Lovers” is focused on affairs of the heart — and rooted in the sort of earnest songwriting that can only come from hard-fought and even harder-won personal experience: in the case of “Two Lovers,” the song’s archetypical central couple is desperately fighting to keep their relationship intact during a particularly difficult patch.

Directed by Dom Gould, the recently released, heartfelt video for “Two Lovers” follows a series of couples, who are different ages, different gender expressions and from vastly different walks of life and highlights the best moments of being with someone you love. And often it’s the most simple and banal moments that mean the most — and are the most memorable and importnat. “We wanted to show couples from all walks of life in different scenes, everyone’s story is so different and we wanted to highlight that,” Gostelow says. ” It felt really nice to showcase other stories within a music video instead of it being mostly about me, this song was meant to resonate with people going through things like long distance and being away from loved ones so it only felt right to showcase the best parts of being with the person you love.”

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Rising Brooklyn-based Artist Quelle Rox Releases a Slow-burning and Shimmering Single

Raquelle, a.k.a. Rocky is a rising Brooklyn-based Latinx singer/songwriter and producer. After graduating from my alma mater, NYU, the rising Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, delved into production with her solo recording project Quelle Rox, which finds Raquelle striving to open doors for female Latinx producers, while specializing in a sound that she has dubbed “soundtracks catered to dreamy, nostalgic memories of the past with a bad bitch twist.”

Since the release of her debut single “Dream Daises” in 2018, the rising Brooklyn artist has had material featured across the blogosphere including Ladygunn, Earmilk, Notion, and HighClouds. Herr work has appeared on Spotify New Music Friday Latin, Spotify Fresh Finds, Spotify Discovery Weekly, Spotify Latinx IndieRising, H&M Global and a number of other playlists. Adding to a growing profile, Quelle Rox has opened for the likes of Homeshake — and she’s headlined at Baby’s All Right.

Continuing upon that momentum, Quelle Rox’s highly-anticipated debut EP Lilac Rush is slated for an April 23, 2021 release. The EP’s latest single “No Surprises” is a lush slow-burning Quiet Storm-inspired, lo-fi fever dream, fueled by a bittersweet mix of longing nostalgia, heartache, betrayal and anger that brings early Washed Out and Prince to mind: the track is all shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, sinuous bass lines, skittering typewriter keyboard-like beats with Quelle Rox’s achingly plaintive vocals.

“I originally wrote this song a few years ago to a ‘type beat’ I found online that I was just playing around with for fun while in my feelings,” the rising Brooklyn-based artist recalls in press notes. “I came across the track randomly in my archive during quarantine and even years later, it still resonated with me and resembled the storyline within the whole EP – a longing for what could have been and also a fuck you. So then I hit up my producer and collaborator Identite Crisis and asked if he could take the demo and turn it into its own version, since I wanted to include it on the EP. Shortly after he sent me this fire new beat and I ended up just keeping the old vocals and boom, ‘No Surprises’ was born.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: L’Impèratice Performs the Slinky and Retro-Futuristic “Anamolie bleue”

L’Impératice — founder Charles de Boisseguin (keys), Hagni Gown (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), Tom Daveau (drums) and Flore Benguigui (vocals) — is a risingParis-based electro pop sextet that formed back in 2012. And since their formation, the French electro pop act has been extremely busy and prolific: within their first three years together, they released 2012’s self-titled debut EP., 2014’s Sonate Pacifique EP and 2015’s Odyssée EP.

In 2016, L’imperatrice released a re-edited, remixed and slowed down version of Odyssée, L’Empreruer, which was inspired by a fan mistakenly playing a vinyl copy of Odyssée at the wrong speed. L’Impératice followed that up with a version of Odysseé featuring arrangements centered around violin, cello and acoustic guitar. During the summer of 2017, the Parisian electro pop act signed to microqlima records, who released that year’s Séquences EP.

2018’s full-length debut Matahari featured “Erreur 404,” which they performed on the French TV show Quotidien. Since then, the Parisian electro pop act have released an English language version of Matahari — and they’ve been busy working on the highly anticipated Renaud Letang co-produced sophomore album Taku Tsubo. Slated for a March 26, 2021 release through their longtime label home, the album derives its name from the medical term for broken heart syndrome, takutsubo syndrome (蛸 壺, from Japanese “octopus trap”). The condition usually manifests itself as deformation of the heart’s left ventricle caused by severe emotional or physical stress — i.e., the death of a loved one, an intense argument with someone you care about, a breakup, a sudden illness or the like. So, in case you were a wondering: yes, an untreated broken heart can actually kill you.

Over the course of the past year, I’ve written about two of Taku Tsubo’s released singles:

“Voodoo?,” a slinky disco strut featuring a propulsive groove, layers of arpeggiated synths, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar and Benguigui’s sultry, come-hither vocals. Interestingly, one of the few songs written and sung in English on the album, the track features a narrator, who attends a party and decides to leave early to read Torture Magazine instead.
“Peur des filles,” another slinky disco floor strut that’s a scathing and sarcastic ode to the differences between men and women that points out how shitty men are.

Album opener “Anomalie bleue” continues a remarkable run of infectious and slinky disco-tinged pop. Centered around an expansive song structure, featuring shimming and glistening synth arpeggios, skittering four-on-the-floor, a strutting wah-wah pedaled bass line, squiggling guitar lines and Benguigui’s come hither vocals, “Anonmalie bleue” is one part Giorgio Moroder-like disco, one part Kraftwerk-like retro-futurism, one part Shalamar-like funk within an expansive, mind-bending song structure. But just under the dance floor friendly grooves, the song’s narrator charmingly describes love-at-first site with a beautiful, blue wearing anomaly that suddenly appears in a lobby full of drab suited con-men, grifters and CEOs and bored business travelers.

Shot late last year as a part of a longer concert stream, this slick and intimately shot footage captures the Parisian sextet wearing Buck Rogers-like outfits while playing their funky grooves.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: People Museum Releases a Brooding Yet Club Friendly Banger

People Museum is a rising New Orleans-based art pop/dance pop act. Inspired by Afro-beat, hip-hop, choral, marching band music, the duo — Jeremy Phipps (trombone, production) and Claire Givens (vocals, keys) — can trace their origins back to 2016: Phipps and Givens were eager to start a music project that incorporated the feelings and vibes of their hometown. Founded with the expressed intention of bringing nature to the future, the New Orleans-based duo’s sound and aesthetic seamlessly meshes their hometown’s beloved and world famous brass band tradition with the Crescent City’s synth heavy, progressive underground scene.

Givens and Phipps’ latest effort I Could Only See The Night EP is slated for an April 9, 2021 release through Community Records and Strange Daisy Records. The EP features a mix of songs made during pandemic-related quarantines last year with songs the duo initially created during the first few months of the duo’s collaboration. Thematically, the EP is reportedly a contemplation on our past, how we are making sense of where we have ended — and as a result, learning how to be more malleable with our visions of what the future could and should be. The songs are an attempt to offer a bit of light in our very dark times while opening space for the listener to reflect, dance or feel joy.

“Forever,” I Could Only See The Night’s latest single is a Larry Levan-era house music influenced club banger that’s full of brooding, late night regret and trepidation centered around shimmering Giorgio Moroder-like synth arpeggios, skittering beats, Phipps’ mournful and melodic trombone played through reverb and delay pedal and Givens’ achingly plaintive vocals. You can literally feel the song’s narrator spiraling into indecision, regret and despair — although they’re desperately trying not to do so.

Directed by Riley Teahan, the recently released video is a brooding fever dream following a series of women trapped within their own thoughts, late at night. Teahan, the video’s director on the video:

“flashing light, thoughts that keep you up at night:
when I think about forever my head starts to spin.
caught in a cycle, the mind is a spiral staircase.
how long did you know it was time to go
before you decided to leave?

“‘Forever’ is a song about cycles and liberation. I know well the feeling of spiraling, how easily you can lose yourself. I asked women to embody a complicated moment of escape, flee, freedom, run, don’t look back.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hungarian Electro Pop Duo Paperdeer Teams Up With Böbe on a Sleek and Futuristic Single and Visual

Paperdeer is an emerging Budapest-based electronic music production and artist duo featuring Benjámin Kiss and Norbert Biró. The duo will be releasing a new album this year, an album that was written and recorded during pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns. The forthcoming album’s latest single “Fortress,” which features longtime collaborator, Hungarian vocalist Böbe Szécsi is a sleek and slickly produced bit of electro pop featuring layered arpeggiated and twinkling synths, atmospheric electronics, skittering beats, Szécsi’s plaintive vocals and a soaring hook with an expansive song structure. Although the song is bracingly chilly, the song is rooted in the tense uncertainty of our moment, with a pent-up frustration and desperation for necessary change — right now.

“It has been an endeavor in distant music-making,” Paperdeer’s Benjámin Kiss says about their creative process in press notes. “Norbert sent me the initial beats a year ago, and I fell in love with it. So, ever since, we have been going back and forth with the ideas until the song came together. We approached the vocal from two directions and then really completed the tune when we worked out the lyrics.”

“The lyrics of ‘Fortress’ can be interpreted in many ways. In my opinion, it is a cry for help,” Böbe Szécsi says in press notes. “It is enough if you look around: climate change, COVID-19, and political tension are the things that we are faced with and also the burden of uncertainty that it suggests. In the middle of this chaos, I would just want to shout at the top of my lungs to make it stop and to seek meaningful changes otherwise, the consequences will be fatal.” Norbert Biró adds that the song described a feeling of drifting and helplessness which comes around when you are so lost and so little in a massive crowd. You have no other option but to follow because they allow no say in the directions. Böbe, the young woman in the music video, embodies just that.

Directed by Márton István Szabó, who also collaborated on the song’s lyrics, the recently released video features his own technique of reversed digital projection. “We took pictures with a black backdrop, and we made them half-transparent,” Szabó explains. “In this state, we layered them digitally with colors to enhance the character’s body and clothing. My technical approach tied in with the meaning of this song: we mixed drone and studio footages just as we mixed fiction with reality in the story while also portraying the exhaustion that comes from escapism.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: JOVM Mainstays Altin Gün Performs “Ordunun Dereleri” with Metropole Orkest

Amsterdam-based Turkish psych pop act and JOVM mainstays Altin Gün — founding member founding member Jasper Verhulst (bass) with Ben Rider (guitar), Erdinç Ecevit Yildiz (keys, saz, vocals), Gino Groneveld (percussion), Merve Dasdemir (vocals) and Nic Mauskovic (drums) — can trace their origins to Japser Verhulst’s repeated tour stops to Istanbul with a previous band and a deep and abiding passion for ’60s and ’70s Turkish psych pop and folk, fueled by music discoveries Verhulst couldn’t find in his native Holland.

But as the story goes, Verhulst wasn’t just content to listen as an ardent fan, he had a vision of where he could potentially take the sound he loved. “We do have a weak spot for the music of the late ’60s and ’70s,” Verhulst admitted in press notes. “With all the instruments and effects that arrived then, it was an exciting time. Everything was new, and it still feels fresh. We’re not trying to copy it, but these are the sounds we like and we’re trying to make them our own.”

Altin Gün’s sophomore album, last year’s Grammy Award-nominated, critically applauded Gece further established the band’s reputation for re-imagining traditional Turkish folk through the lens of psych rock and pop. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of months, you may recall that the Dutch JOVM mainstays’ highly-anticipated, soon-to-be released third album Yol will be teh third album from the band in three years. And much like its predecessors, the album continues their long-held reputation for drawing from the rich and diverse traditions of Turkish and Anatolian folk. But because of pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns, the members of Altin Gün were forced to write music in a new way for them: virtually — through trading demos and ideas built around Omnichord, 808 and other elements, including field recordings and New Age-like ideas by email.

“We were basically stuck at home for three months making home demos, with everybody adding their parts,” Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says in press notes. “The transnational feeling maybe comes from that process of swapping demos over the internet, some of the music we did in the studio, but lockdown meant we had to follow a different approach.” As a result of the new approach, which featured Ommichord and 808 driven arrangements, the album finds the band crafting material that’s a bold, new sonic direction: sleek, synth-based, retro-futuristic Europop with a dreamy quality, seemingly informed by the enforced period of reflection. Additionally, the album finds the Dutch act working with Ghent, Belgium-based production duo Asa Moto — Oliver Geerts and Gilles Noë — to co-produce and mix the album, marking the first time that the band has collaborated with outsiders.

I’ve written about three of Yol‘s released singles:

“Ordunun Dereleri,” a mesmerizing re-imagining of an old folk standard and a fitting example of the act’s new sound: glistening synth arpeggios, four-on-the-floor and motorik groove. While the song finds the acclaimed Dutch act taking their sound to the dance floor, there’s an underlying brooding and dreamy introspection to the song.
“Yüce Dağ Başında,” a coquettish, dance floor friendly strut featuring Nile Rodgers-like guitar, glistening synths, a sinuous bass line, bursts of mellotron, copious cowbell and percussive polyrhythm centered around lead vocals from frontwoman Merve Dasdemir. Sonically, the infectious new single — to my ears, at least — reminds me of Evelyn “Champagne” King’s “I’m In Love” and “Love Come Down,” and Patrice Rushen‘s “Forget Me Nots.”
“Kara Toprak,” a sleek reworking of a classic folk song by Turkey’s legendary and beloved, blind poet and musician Âşık Veysel featuring wah wah-pedaled funk guitar, sinuous disco-influenced bass lines, shimmering and atmospheric synth arpeggios, copious amount of cowbell serve as a lush bed over which Merve Dasdemir’s gorgeous and sultry lead vocals, ethereally float over. Much like its predecessors, the song is swooning and coquettish seduction — a gentle tug of the sleeve from a new, potential lover/a new situationship that says “Come on, let’s dance already! Show me what you’ve got!” But ironically enough, while it’s an infectious, dance floor friendly rework, the song is about life’s transience and the inevitability of death.

The Amsterdam-based JOVM mainstays have quickly established themselves as a must-see live act, selling out headlining shows across the US and the European Union, and playing sets across the major global festival circuit, including Coachella and Bonnaroo before the pandemic. Now, as you may recall Yol was officially released today through ATO Records/Cadence Music Group — and to celebrate the occasion, the band released a highly desired taste of a concert they recorded with the Grammy Award-winning Dutch jazz orchestra Metropole Orkest at Amsterdam’s Koninklijk Theater Carré last October.

So we have some live footage of the JOVM mainstays performing a gorgeous and incredibly cinematic rendition of album single “Ordunun Dereleri” — and the footage is very much a glimpse of a world that seems so far away.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Camila Fuchs’ Brooding and Uneasy “Mess”

(WARNING: If you have epilepsy, this video employs the use of constant and repetitive flashes that could be dangerous to watch. )

Lisbon-based electro pop duo Camila Fuchs — Camila De Laborde and Daniel Hermann-Collini — formed in London back in 2012. With the release of their first two, critically applauded albums, 2016’s Singing From Fixed Rung and 2018’s Heart Pressed Between Stones, the Lisbon-based electro pop duo quickly established their sound and approach: experimental electro pop with spectral vocals and avant-garde sensibilities. Adding to a growing profile, the members of Camila Fuchs have opened for the likes of Plaid, Actress, Aleksi Perälä, Starcrawler, Charles Hayward, William Basinski, BRAIDS and The Orb — and they’ve played sets at festivals like Mutek Mexico, Primavera Sound and All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Last year’s Peter Kember (a.k.a. Sonic Boom)-produced Kids Talk Sun was recorded near the sea, wilderness and misty, castle-peaked hills of Sintra, just outside of Lisbon. During the recording sessions, the members of the acclaimed Lisbon-based duo shifted back and forth between the wilderness and the studio. And as a result, the album’s nine songs thematically is an abstract meditation on childhood that touches upon the exchanges between humans and humans and nature. Imbued with a youthful sense of light and wonder, Kids Talk Sun sonically finds the duo sonically reimagining natural phenomena in sonic form.

Kids Talk Sun’s latest single “Mess” is a mesmerizing yet uneasy track, centered around brooding and atmospheric electronics, crunchy and skittering beats, shimmering synth arpeggios and achingly plaintive vocals. While sonically the song may draw some comparisons to Bjork, it manages to evoke the sensation of something creeping from out the shadows, of a slow-burning anxious dread that you can’t quite put a finger on.

“‘Mess’ brings the shadows. It’s the lonely place from where to watch. A social heartbreak where one doesn’t fit in and is always shifting trying to find connections,” the Lisbon-based electro pop duo explain in press notes. “It’s about the lack of communication and the possible void that it can create. It’s about language as the way to get to know each other. It’s such a precise tool. If we don’t use it, are we truly getting to know each other? ‘Love is where we go first with the word but it’s not just about something light and happy and pleasurable. The word calls us deep, deep responsibilities,’ said Elizabeth Alexander. This song is about a place where we’ve all been. It welcomes the sharing, the questioning, the urge and nature of talking, it’s about being open to actively get to know each other.”

Directed by Camia Fuchs’ Camila De Laborde and her sister Manueal De Laborde is an equally brooding and uneasy visual, featuring the duo holding weirdly shaped cut outs in rapidly flashing strobe light, split with footage of the duo standing in front of a plain brick wall. Of course, as the duo move through the flashing strobes, they move about it in a slow motion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Athens-born, Barcelona-based singer/songwriter, classically trained pianist and visual artist Evripdis Sabatis is the creative mastermind behind the solo recording project Evripidis and His Tragedies. The project, which finds the Athens-born, Barcelona-based multimedia artist crafting devastatingly confessional, self-deprecating and often darkly humorous pop songs centered around a queer sensibility can trace its origins back to 2004. When Sabatis relocated to Barcelona, the Greek-born multimedia artist started playing solo sets, accompanying himself on piano in small local bars before becoming a fixture in the local underground scene as a performer, DJ and independent promoter.

Since 2004, Sabatis has been rather busy. He has released four albums 2007’s self-titled debut, 2011’s A Healthy Dose of Pain, 2016’s Futile Games in Space and Time, 2019’s Mia Triti stin Cantina and an EP . . . And It Was Good While It Lasted Baby while also writing scores for short films. Those releases were primarily melancholy, piano-driven indie pop with a joyous beat, unconventional song structures, lush chord progressions and vocal harmonies that found Sabatis collaborating with an eclectic and diverse array of local and international artists, including Sarah P., The Magnetic Fields‘ LD Beghtol, and fellow Greek artist Nalyssa Green.

Sabatis has opened for internationally acclaimed artists like John Grant, Jens Lekman, Peter Bjorn and John and Arab Strap. Adding to a growing profile, he has toured internationally, playing shows in Spain, the UK, Germany, France, the US, Portugal, The Netherlands and his native Greece. The Greek multimedia artist has also made the rounds of the international festival circuit making stops at Primavera Sound Festival, FIB Festival, Indietracks, Eurosonic Nooderslag and Synch Festival.

The Athens-born, Barcelona-based multimedia artist’s fifth album Neos Kosmos reportedly finds Sabatis crating material that goes in a much more decidedly straightforward and sparse synth-driven direction with lyrics written and sung in English, Spanish and Greek while still displaying his immense love of Doo Pop, 60s girls groups, New Wave, indie pop and bedroom pop. The album’s latest single “Bitter,” which features guest vocals from The Ballet‘s Greg is a decidedly 80s inspired synth pop confection featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, a propulsive motorik groove, and a razor sharp yet infectious hook. Interestingly, “Bitter” reveals a songwriter, who has an uncanny ability to write a song that’s centered around complex and contradictory emotions: through heartfelt and earnest songwriting dripping with a bit of campy sarcasm, the song points out the fact that that love — and the search for love — can be fleeting, capricious, embittering and exhausting. And yet, love is so necessary that you can’t quite give up on it either.

“I wanted to convey a little bit of the feeling that The Smiths‘ songs gave me when I was younger — this mixture of romanticism, cynicism, and humor that is kind of camp, but also deeply heartfelt.,” Sabatis explains in press notes. “I am, after all, bitter and hopeful, grumpy and funny, all together at the same time, and I wanted to connect with those who feel these strong contradictions. I invited Greg to sing with me because I imagined an encounter of two like-minded souls who never give up on love. “

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Emerging Vienna-based electronic music production and DJ duo Oszillator is comprised of two classically trained pianists, who have been friends for the better part of the past decade — 21 year-old Max McManus and 20 year-old Benedikt Meschik. Last year, the duo got together to produce Anima‘s debut single a cover of “Naima,” that was a lush synthesis of atmospheric jazz, skittering techno beats, chopped up vocal samples and glistening synth arpeggios centered around Anima’s ethereal yet soulful crooning.

The duo’s remix of Anima’s “Naima” is a thorough reworking of their original production. Centered around an expanded version of the trip hop meets house music bridge from the original, the remix features Anima’s achingly plaintive melodic wailing and her spoken word-like chants paired with bruising industrial clang and clatter, glistening synth arpeggios and relentless, tweeter and woofer rattling thump to create a song that evokes a hallucinogenic and tribal ritual for a seemingly all-too-soon dystopian future.

The Vienna-based duo are currently working on new material with Anima, which will be released this year; but they also have plans to release their own original material, as well.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Amsterdam-based Turkish psych pop act and JOVM mainstays Altin Gün — founding member founding member Jasper Verhulst (bass) with Ben Rider (guitar), Erdinç Ecevit Yildiz (keys, saz, vocals), Gino Groneveld (percussion), Merve Dasdemir (vocals) and Nic Mauskovic (drums) — can trace their origins to Japser Verhulst’s repeated tour stops to Istanbul with a previous band and a deep and abiding passion for ’60s and ’70s Turkish psych pop and folk, fueled by music discoveries Verhulst couldn’t find in his native Holland.

But as the story goes, Verhulst wasn’t just content to listen as an ardent fan, he had a vision of where he could potentially take the sound he loved. “We do have a weak spot for the music of the late ’60s and ’70s,” Verhulst admitted in press notes. “With all the instruments and effects that arrived then, it was an exciting time. Everything was new, and it still feels fresh. We’re not trying to copy it, but these are the sounds we like and we’re trying to make them our own.”

Altin Gün’s sophomore album, last year’s Grammy Award-nominated, critically applauded Gece further established the band’s reputation for re-imagining traditional Turkish folk through the lens of psych rock and pop. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of months, you may recall that the Dutch JOVM mainstays’ highly-anticipated, soon-to-be released third album Yol will be teh third album from the band in three years. And much like its predecessors, the album continues their long-held reputation for drawing from the rich and diverse traditions of Turkish and Anatolian folk. But because of pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns, the members of Altin Gün were forced to write music in a new way for them: virtually — through trading demos and ideas built around Omnichord, 808 and other elements, including field recordings and New Age-like ideas by email. 

“We were basically stuck at home for three months making home demos, with everybody adding their parts,” Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says in press notes. “The transnational feeling maybe comes from that process of swapping demos over the internet, some of the music we did in the studio, but lockdown meant we had to follow a different approach.” As a result of the new approach, which featured Ommichord and 808 driven arrangements, the album finds the band crafting material that’s a bold, new sonic direction: sleek, synth-based, retro-futuristic Europop with a dreamy quality, seemingly informed by the enforced period of reflection. Additionally, the album finds the Dutch act working with Ghent, Belgium-based production duo Asa Moto — Oliver Geerts and Gilles Noë — to co-produce and mix the album, marking the first time that the band has collaborated with outsiders. 

I’ve written about two of Yol‘s released singles:

  • “Ordunun Dereleri,” a mesmerizing re-imagining of an old folk standard and a fitting example of the act’s new sound: glistening synth arpeggios, four-on-the-floor and motorik groove. While the song finds the acclaimed Dutch act taking their sound to the dance floor, there’s an underlying brooding and dreamy introspection to the song.
  • “Yüce Dağ Başında,” a coquettish, dance floor friendly strut featuring Nile Rodgers-like guitar, glistening synths, a sinuous bass line, bursts of mellotron, copious cowbell and percussive polyrhythm centered around lead vocals from frontwoman Merve Dasdemir. Sonically, the infectious new single — to my ears, at least — reminds me of Evelyn “Champagne” King’s “I’m In Love” and “Love Come Down,” and Patrice Rushen‘s “Forget Me Nots.”

Yol’s third and latest single “Kara Toprak” is a sleek reworking of a classic folk song by Turkey’s legendary and beloved, blind poet and musician Âşık Veysel featuring wah wah-pedaled funk guitar, sinuous disco-influenced bass lines, shimmering and atmospheric synth arpeggios, copious amount of cowbell service as a lush bed over which Merve Dasdemir’s gorgeous and sultry lead vocals, ethereally float over. Much like its predecessors, the song is swooning and coquettish seduction — a gentle tug of the sleeve from a new, potential lover/a new situationship that says “Come on, let’s dance already! Show me what you’ve got!”

Interestingly enough, the song’s title translates into English as “black soil” and the song is about life’s transience and the inevitability of death. And as a result, the Altin Gün take manages to be sensual and rapturous. And in a world, in which every one of our actions is seemingly imbued with death, it’s a hauntingly gorgeous reminder of the fact that our mortality is inescapable.

Yol is slated for a February 26, 2021 release through ATO Records/Cadence Music Group.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montreal’s Paupiére Releases a Shimmering Synth Pop Confection

Seemingly deriving their name from the French words for skin peau and stone pierre, the rising Montreal-based indie electro pop duo Paupiére, visual artist Julia Daigle and Polipe’s and We Are Wolves’ Pierre-Luc Bégin, have firmly established a sound that meshes elements of 80s English synth pop and New Wave — i.e., The Human League, Depeche Mode and others — with French chanson through the release of 2016’s Jeunes instants EP, 2017’s full-length debut À jamais privé de réponses and 2019’s Jettatura EP. But just under the breezy pop melodies and catchy hooks, the duo’s work thematically touches upon naive, adolescent and hedonistic romanticism and a contemporary disenchantment.

Slated for a May 7, 2021 release, the duo’s sophomore album Sade Sati continues their ongoing successful collaboration with We Are Wolves’ Vincent Levesque, who produced their previously released work. Interestingly, the album’s latest single “Coeur Monarque” is an infectious and sugary sweet pop confection centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, skittering polyrhythmic beats and boy-girl harmonies. Sonically, the song is a playful, hook-driven mix of Phil Spector-era pop and Ace of Base-like synth pop — but thematically, as the duo explain the song is much darker: “‘Coeur Monarque’ is an imaginary tale about a girl, who lives her life according to her moods. Her freedom contributes to her isolation and she loses herself in it. ‘Coeur Monarque’ is a light and poppy piece, just like the protagonist of the story.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of Oceans EP, Blonde Maze, the acclaimed recording project of New York-based singer/songwriter. electronic music artist and producer Amanda Steckler received attention from this site and elsewhere across the blogosphere for slickly produced synth pop centered around earnest lyricism, documenting her experiences, feelings and thoughts. Since Oceans EP, Steckler has released a handful of singles including “Antartica,” “Thunder” and others to praise from Billboard Pride, DJMag, XLR8R, Impose Magazine and many others, as well as love and support from BBC1, MrSuicideSheep, and MTV Radar.

Adding to a growing profile, Steckler’s material has landed on several Spotify and Apple Music playlists, including Spotify’s US Viral 50, as well as landing at #1 on Hype Machine‘s No Remixes chart. LADYGUNN named her an “artist you should’ve seen at SXSW 2018″ — and she’s opened for the likes of The Shadowboxers, Elderbrook and Vallis Alps. During that same period of time, the JOVM mainstay also released collaborations with a number of established and up-and-coming electronic music producers including including the Iowa City, IA-born, Duluth, MN-based electronic music artist and producer Kyle Stern, best known as Attom. 

The New York-based electronic music artist, electronic music producer and JOVM mainstay begins her 2021 with a cover of Mazzy Star‘s beloved, 1993 smash hit “Fade Into You.” While replacing the jangling guitars, twinkling keys and tambourine of the beloved original with shimmering and atmospheric synths, synth click and skittering beats, the Blonde Maze cover retains both vocal melody and the swooning and urgent yearning of the original — but the end result is more of a contented sigh.

“IMO it’s kind of a blissful/happy take on the beautifully yearning original,” Steckler wrote to me in an email. “I’ve been listening to the original for years — probably a decade now — and still love it. Hope Sandoval and David Roback really created a gem.”