Category: Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live footage: Mariaa Siga Performs “Weetay” at Vagh & Weinmann Music

Born Mariama Siga Goudiaby, singer/songwriter Mariaa Siga hails from the Casamance region of Southern Senegal. Back in 2009, Gouidaby won a local talent show and the attention of Senegalese act Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc’s frontperson mentored the young Goudiaby, helping her refine her style and further develop her musical skills. The next year, Siga landed a role in Mon Réve, a film which aired on the national TV network RDV. 

As a musician, Goudiaby grew up with the traditional rhythms of Casamance but curiosity led there to discover and experiment with more Western styles in her work including the blues and jazz. In 2016, the rising Senegalese artist was a winner of the Festival des Vielles Pirogues‘ Tremplin competition. Building upon the growing buzz surrounding her, she released two singles “Ya sama none” and “Asekaw,” the following year.

2018 saw Goudiaby perform in Casamance for the first time with a set at that year’s Kaiyssen Festival. Yoro Ndiyae featured Goudiaby on his Sunu Folk compilation. And she capped off a big year with a French tour in November. Late last year, the Senegalese artist released “Lagne Boote,” a breezy and infectious song that subtly hinted at soca and other Caribbean sounds paired with Afro pop that reminds the listener to never forget their roots. “When you get lost and don’t know where you’re going, go back to your sources,” Goudiaby explained in press notes.

Goudiaby and her backing band recently released a live, acoustic version of Asekaw album single “Weetay,” which translates into “loneliness” was filmed and recorded at Vagh & Weinmann Music in Salernes, France. Filmed in a single take to replicate the conditions of a live concert, the stripped down version of “Weetay” is centered around shimmering acoustic guitar and Siga’s gorgeous vocals, which manage to express desperate loneliness.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Spelljammer Releases a Trippy and Brooding Visual for Bruising “Abyssal Trip”

The members of Stockholm-based doom metal/stoner rock act Spelljammer — currently, Niklas Olsson (vocals, bass), Robert Sorling (guitar) and Jonatan Remsbo (drums) — have developed and honed a unique, attention grabbing sound rooted in their penchant for sludgy, power chord riff-driven dirges with dramatic interludes.

Spelljammer’s third album, 2015’s Ancient of Days was in many ways a rebirth of sorts for the band: it was their first recorded output as at trio — and sonically, the album was a decided move towards a heavier, doom metal-leaning sound. Lyrically, the album was inspired by Swedish author and Nobel laureate Harry Martinson’s epic poem “Aniara,” in which a spaceship leaving an uninhabitable Earth is hurtled off course, sending its thousands of passengers on a steady course in the wrong direction — and there’s nothing they can do about it. The poem ends with the spaceship’s passengers dying as the ship continues on its journey through the vast nothingness of the solar system. 

Released earlier this year through RidingEasy Records, Spelljammer’s fourth album Abyssal Trip is the first batch of new material from the Swedish doom metal band inver five years, and the album finds the band bridging their early desert rock/stoner rock leanings with their recent penchant for slow-burning, massive, sludgy riffs. Continuing Olsson’s long-held obsession with the vastness of everything, Abyssal Trip derives its name from the perpetually dark, cold, oxygen-free zone at the bottom of the ocean. Interestingly, the album’s six songs embody that bleak and dark realm with rumbling and oozing guitars and dramatic melodic interludes. But unlike the band’s previously released material, the album finds the band crafting material that slowly unfurls, which gives the album a brooding and hypnotic quality. 

“The lyrical themes we address, like the ultimate doom of man, and the search and longing for new and better worlds, are still there,” Olsson says. “The concept of something undiscovered out there in vast emptiness is pretty much always present.” Additionally, the band employed a much different recording process: the trio opted to capture the performances live while holed up in a house in the countryside, just outside of Stockholm. “The songs benefitted from the relaxed environment of being away from everything,” Olsson explains. 

Beginning with some ominous film dialogue discussing blood sacrifices, album title track and latest single “Abyssal Trip” is an unrelenting bruiser of a song, centered around rumbling down-tuned guitars, thunderous drumming and howled vocals. There’s a brief respite from that punishing dynamic through a scorching lead solo before the song ends with an abrupt jerk. The song evokes the vast and unfathomable power of nature — and its ability to crush everything and everything in its path. And as a result, the song seems like a desperate howl into the indifferent and uncaring void. 

The recently released video for “Abyssal Trip” features footage of the band performing the song in front of some trippy, lava lamp-like lighting and equally trippy stock footage of wintry forests, of diver struggling to survive in the ocean and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: indie Rock All Star act Piroshka Follows An Adorable Little Girl on a Big Day Off in Visual for “Scratching at the Lid”

Deriving their name from the Hungarian version of Little Red Riding Hood, the acclaimed All-Star act Piroshka — Lush’s Miki Berenyi (vocals, guitar) Moose’s KJ “Moose” McKillop (guitar), Modern English’s Mick Conroy (bass) and Elastica’s Justin Welch (drums) — features members, best known for their work with some of the most acclaimed indie acts of the past 30 years. And their latest project together can trace its origins to the knotted web of connections between them: Berenyi and McKillop are considered shoegaze pioneers, who have released a number of applauded releases before getting married and starting a family. With the release of 1995’s self-titled debut, Elastica quickly became internationally recognized Brit Pop stars — and as a result. Berenyi and McKillop were intimately familiar with Welch and his work. Conroy joined McKillop’s band Moose after Modern English broke up for the second time. Welch eventually joined the reunited Lush in 2015. When Lush needed a bassist for their final show in Manchester, Conroy filled in.

As it turned out, the Manchester show rehearsals are what laid the foundations for Piroshka to exist — but admittedly, I need to add some background here: After Lush’s Chris Acland committed suicide in 1997, his grieving and devastated bandmates felt it was impossible to continue as a band. The band eventually broke up. Berenyi was so heartbroken by Acland’s death that she quit music and spent the next 20 years as a working mother. Because of personal and personal obligations, Berenyi didn’t agree to reunite Lush and tour again until 2015. Welch, who coincidentally was a close friend of Acland was a logical choice to lovingly fill in. At some point, Welch asked Berenyi if she’d be up to doing something new after the final Manchester show. And as Berenyi recalled in press noters, up until that point in her life, she hadn’t made music outside of Lush and solo work never really appealed to her. “I need someone else to motivate me, and in this case it was Justin. He sent drum tracks with guitar parts and odd words, so I wrote some vocals and lyrics, which became ‘This Must Be Bedlam’ and ‘Never Enough.’ When Mick added bass, it sounded great. When Moose added guitar and keyboards — I’d never written like that before, it was such good fun.”

“We sounded great!” Welch added in press notes. “Like a proper punk band. Mick brings a huge amount of enthusiasm and livens up the room, and I thought this is the kind of band I want to be in again.” Conroy agreed, adding “I’d seen Lush so many times, it was like playing with old friends. Miki agreed and it was good fun, too. And with Moose available, we thought, ‘let’s all have a bash, see what happens.’”

Of course, there are several more layers to the entangled and complicated web of personal, professional and creative connections at the heart of Piroshka: Bella Union’s label head Simon Raymonde was among the first people to hear the Brickbat demos and he quickly signed the band to the label. Plus, I should add that Raymonde’s former Cocteau Twins bandmate Robin Guthrie produced Lush’s debut album. And Raymonde’s current Lost Horizons bandmate Richie Thomas was a former member of Moose. In any case, Raymonde introduced Piroshka to Lanterns on the Lake‘s Paul Gregory, who mixed all but one track on the album. Lastly,  Fiona Brice, who was once a Bella Union recording artist, wrote string arrangements while The Higsons and Blockhead‘s Terry Edwards, who played on Lush’s final album played brass.

Deriving its name for a slang term for missile, the band’s 2019 full-length debut Brickbat managed to have a deeper symbolic meaning for the band: the title also hit upon the fact that the album was a marked departure from the individual members’ best known work. Written through the anxious prism of parenthood in a world gone made, the album lyrically and thematically touches upon the fear, loathing, envy and strife at the heart of our current — and ongoing — sociopolitical moment.

The band’s highly-anticipated sophomore album Love Drips and Gathers derives its title from a line of a Dylan Thomas poem. Slated for a July 23, 2021 release through Bella Union, Love Drips and Gathers reportedly follows a more introspective line, with the album thematically focusing on the ties that bind us — in particular, as a lovers, parents, children, friends. Berenyi and McKillop split lyric writing duties, and the album features songs about Berenyi and McKillop’s relationship, their family, the deaths of McKillop’s mother and father and the death of longtime friend and 4AD in-house art director Vaughan Oliver, who died suddenly at the end of 2019. Sonically, the album finds the indie rock legends employing a much more ethereal sound while still reveling in energy and drama. “If Brickbat was our Britpop album, then Love Drips And Gathers is shoegaze!” Piroshka’s Miki Berenyi says in press notes. “It wasn’t intentional; we just wanted a different focus. I’ve always seen debut albums as capturing a band’s first moments, when you really have momentum, and then the second album is the chance for a more thoughtful approach.” The band’s Mick Conroy adds “Brickbat was a classic first album; noisy and raucous. On Love Drips And Gathers, we’ve calmed down and explored sounds, and space.”

“Scratching at the Lid,” Love Drips and Gathers is a shimmering and ethereal pop anthem centered around Berenyi’s imitable vocals, twinkling keys, a rousingly anthemic hook and a motorik groove. But underneath the euphoria inducing hooks and breakneck gallop, the song is a conflicted meditation on McKillop’s father and one’s relationship to their parents that sonically sounds a bit like a synthesis of Brit Pop, indie rock and shoegaze.

Directed by Connor Kingsley at Home Picture Films, the recently released video for “Scratching at the Lid” follows a rambunctious and energetic little girl, who’s one of the best things a kid can heart — there’s no school today. Throughout her day, she does all the things that kids do: running around the house causing chaos; plays with her dog, puts on makeup and pretend she’s an adult singing star. And in this girl’s world, we rarely see an adult, which probably allows her to be even more of a kid. The main thing for me is that the girl is adorable — and in some way, a reminder of our own childhood and childhood dreams.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Watch Rising Artist Faye Webster Hangs Out with Real Bike Life Only Crew in Visual for “Cheers”

Faye Webster is a rapidly rising 23 year-old, Atlanta-based multidisciplinary artist: Webster is an acclaimed photographer, who has shot campaigns for the likes of Killer Mike, Offset, D.R.A.M., Nike and several other brands. She’s a sometimes model — and known for being a full-time yo-yo enthusiast. Of course for our purposes, the Atlanta-based Webster is an acclaimed singer/songwriter and self-taught guitarist, who grew up in a highly musical family: her family has a long-held tradition of bluegrass and country.

Webster released her full-length debut Run & Tell when she was 16. Despite her relative youth, the album revealed a self-assured and stunning lyrical and artistic clarity. While her Southern roots were obvious, Webster was inspired by a number of things outside of country music: she was deeply embedded in the city’s hip-hop scene. Lil’ Yachty was one of her classmates. She was sneaking out to see underground shows. And she managed to befriend rapper and producer Ethereal while she was in high school. The rising Atlanta-based artist eventually signed with Awful Records, the label home of Father, Playboy Carti and Ethereal. Although superficially it seemed like an odd fit, Webster shared the weirdo art-kid ethos of her labelmates — impossible to peg, endlessly experimenting, making cool shit, doing stuff and being genre-fluid.

2017’s self-titled album caught the attention of Secretly Canadian, who then signed her and released her third album, 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club to widespread critical acclaim. Webster’s fourth album, the Drew Vandenberg-produced I Know I’m Funny haha is slated for a June 25, 2021 release through Secretly Canadian. Reportedly, I Know I’m Funny haha is her most fully-realized and honest effort to date. Though she has previously recorded material through a song-by-song approach, 2020 necessitated a much more intensive process than before with a hand-picked collection of Athens best players including Harold Brown (drums), Bryan Howard (bass), Nic Rosen (keys) and Matt “Pistol” Stossel (pedal steel).

So far, Webster has released two singles off the album: “Better Distractions,” which was included on President Obama’s playlist of his favorite songs and “In A Good Way.” The album’s third and latest single “Cheers” is a slow-burning, New Wave-like track featuring buzzing and shimmering guitars, an angular bass line, propulsive drumming and Webster’s intimate and expressive vocals. While seemingly neurotic and confessional, the song lyrically is rooted around a central irony — a relationship that’s uncertain and confusing that could be something but maybe isn’t. “Cheers to whatever this is!”

“Right after the first take it felt different to me and it made it feel like I was entering a new era and chapter for myself,” the Atlanta-based multi-disciplinary artist says of the album’s third and latest single. “It’s kind of the outlier on the record but at the same time is still so original and identifying to myself. Also it just makes me feel like a badass for once.”

Directed by Matt Swinksy, the recently released video has Faye hanging out with Atlanta bike scene king SIG and the Real Bike Life Only riders. Throughout the video, we see the self-professed yo-yo enthusiast doing some of her favorite tricks while SIG and the Real Bike Only crew tear up the pavement all across Atlanta. “I’ve known SIG and the Bike Life guys for many years now,” Swinsky says in press notes. “People love what they do and ye there are still many people, who are so quick to judge and label them in a hateful way. Everyone of them that I’ve met has been kind, welcoming and hospitable to us, so that inspires me to continue documenting them the best I can.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mannequin Pussy Releases a Feral Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

That same month, the band had thirteen songs released on a split tour cassette with Idaho-based band Art Fad titled Banditos, released through Trash Palace Tapes. The band expanded to a trio with the addition of Drew Adler (drums) — and as a result, Paul moved to guitar. With that lineup, the band released their full-length debut, 2013’s Gypsy Pervert as a limited edition, cassette only released through Rarebit Records.

In 2014 the members of Mannequin Pussy signed to Tiny Engines, who re-released their full-length debut. Over the next two years, the band went through a series of lineup changes: 2015 saw Reading replace Adler on drums and in the following year Regisford returned to the band. The lineup of Missy, Reading and Regisford and Paul released their critically applauded, breakthrough album Romantic, which featured “Romantic,” a trace that landed on Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Songs of 2016 list.

In March 2019, the band signed with Epitaph Records, who released their third album Patience that June. Much like a handful of bands across the world, last year was looking up for the members of the band: they had started touring to support Patience — and after a decade as a band, they were finally able to turn music into a full-time job. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a massive monkey wrench into everyone’s plans, making touring, let alone playing anywhere impossible and dangerous. The band announced that Athanasios Paul had left the band to “start a new chapter in his life” and that they would continue forward as a trio.

After spending much of last year in anxious, pandemic-related isolation, the remaining members decided to reconvene and book studio time with Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip to work in person. They brought two previously written songs into the sessions, but they were so excited from their reunion, that they decided to write new material together on the fly. “We just figured if we forced ourselves into this situation where someone could hit ‘record,’ something might come out,” Missy says. “We’d never written that way before.” The end result is the band’s forthcoming EP Perfect.

Inspired by months of social isolation and anxiety-fueled doom scrolling, the EP and its title track in particular, thematically examines the practice of condensing your daily life into a manicured stream of images for social media consumption. “Last year, I found myself spending more time on my phone than I ever had in my life. Physically separate from other people, I spent hours of time watching other humans perform on my rectangle. I realized that through years of social media training, many of us have grown this deep desire to manicure our lives to look as perfect, as aspirational as possible,” the band’s frontwoman Missy explains in press notes. ““We want to put ourselves out there, share our lives, our stories, our day to day – and these images and videos all shout the same thing: ‘Please look at me, please tell me I’m so perfect.’ It’s simultaneously a declaration of our confidence but edged with the desperation that seeks validation from others.”

Clocking in at a little over 2:30, “Perfect” is a hardcore punk-inspired, feral bludgeoning, centered around thunderous drumming, howled vocals and explosive power chords and a mosh pit friendly break. Play this one loud. Play it so loud that it frightens your neighbor.

Directed by the band’s Missy, the recently released video for “Perfect” is inspired by the 1997 cult comedy Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. Taking viewers to Sugarbush High’s 10-year anniversary, the video reveals the rot, unease and freakishness under the veneer of perfection. The freaks who uproot everything are the heroes and the norms are awful — and that’s generally the case, isn’t it?

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Jujuboy Star Releases a Summery Club Banger

Osaretin Rock Akhib is a 25 year-old Nigerian singer/songwriter and producer, best known as Jujuboy Star. Hailing from the the same city in Edo State as contemporaries Rema and Santi, the Nigerian singer/songwriter and producer can trace the origins of his music career to joining the local church choir when he turned eight. As a teenager, he learned about music production from a neighbor — and by the time he was 16, he was producing his own beats at his grandmother’s house, using Fruity Loops and a USB mic.

From those rather humble beginnings, Jujuboy Star has gone to collaborate with Jidenna, Adekunle Gold, Simi, Gospelonthebeatz. Seyi Shay and a lengthy list of others. Adding to a growing profile, the Edo State, Nigeria-based artist has become the first artist to be signed to the recently formed partnership between Aristokrat Records, the Nigerian entertainment company that discovered and developed international superstar Burna Boy and Universal Records. “Juju is by far one of the most exciting artists I’ve come across over the past decade and represents the next generation of African superstars,” Aristokrat Records founder and CEO Priye Isokari says in press notes. “We are glad to finally be introducing him to the world.”

Quickly following up on “I Dey There,” the rising Nigerian artist’s latest single, the Kel-P-produced “Enjoyment” is a sexy, feel-good club anthem centered around a slick production that meshes elements of Afrobeats, R&B and reggae: the listener will hear skittering and shuffling polyrhythm, squiggling synths, warm blasts of Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, a strutting bass line paired with Jujuboy’s self-assured yet achingly vulnerable vocals. To me, it’s the sort of song that you’d likely hear in the club while you’re trying to pick up that pretty young thing.

Directed by Earthboi, the recently released video for “Enjoyment” follows the rising Nigerian artist as he wakes up bleary-eyed and staggering from a wild house party with some of the most beautiful Black people I’ve ever set eyes on — including a gold clad woman, who plays the stunning love interest.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Gaz Newton Releases A 90s Alt Rock Inspired Anthem

Gaz Newton is a French singer/songwriter and musician, who started his career in earnest in a series of various bands. But by 2012, Newtown decided to step out from behind the band set up and be a solo artist in his own right.

In 2013, Newtown collaborated with longtime friends Jérémy Rassat and David Grrumel, who produced his first two EPs, The end of the day and The White EP. Both EPs found Newton establishing a sound and approach that’s heavily indebted to 90s alt rock and indie rock — and won the praise of critics. The French singer/songwriter and musician supported those releases with a series of live shows.

Newton’s full-length debut album, 2019’s Wu Wei was arguably the darkest batch of material he had written and recorded, centered around a sound that drew equally from indie rock, grunge and power pop. Last year, Newton enlisted musician and producer Pamela Hute to produce his sophomore album, Loveheroin. Written and recorded remotely, with Newton and Hute exchanging files through email, the 10 song album, which was released earlier this year through My Dear Recordings continues upon the French artist’s reputation for crafting 90s alt rock inspired guitar-driven anthems.

Loveheroin’s second and latest single “The River” is a Pavement-like guitar rock anthem centered around layers of shimmering and buzzing guitars, Newton’s detached and insouciantly delivered vocals, propulsive drumming and a rousingly anthemic, mosh pit friendly hook; but thematically, the song and its accompanying video focus on a rather dark, fucked up subject: the infamous and still-unsolved murder of a French boy in 1984.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Liverpool’s Monitors Release a Trippy and Mind-Bending Visual for Dance Floor Banger “The Drill”

Liverpool-based indie trio Monitors is centered around the friendship of three men from completely different cultures — a Brit, a Frenchman and a Bosnian. With the release of 2019’s Notes from the Aftermath EP, the trio established an overall aesthetic that pairs lyrics inspired by the works of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard and Edgar Allan Poe with a sound that meshes elements of punk, pop and electronica.

Released earlier this month, the Liverpool trio’s sophomore EP The War Office derives its title from a room in Liverpool- based pub Ye Cracke, known as The War Office. Famously, The War Office was where pubgoers had heated discussions about The Second Boer War and British Colonialism. In the 50s, John Lennon and painter Stu Sutcliffe were regulars. Perhaps inspired by The War Office, the EP continues and expands upon the themes that 2019’s Notes from the Aftermath — in particular isolation, addiction, political corruption and ecology. But the EP finds the act addressing those thematic concerns with a much more confrontational and direct approach than its predecessor, paired with a richer melodic sensibility.

The EP’s first single “The Drill” is a propulsive, dance punk banger centered around fuzzy yet funky bass lines, four-on-the-floor, punchily delivered lyrics and enormous hook. Sonically, the song reminds me of Echoes-era The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem. But the song’s inspiration and thematic concerns come from a far darker place — August Natterer’s descent into madness. “He had a hallucination of 10,000 images in 30 minutes,” the band’s Chris explains, ““to the point where after committal he believed he was the illegitimate child of Napoleon and a ‘redeemer of the world’. This song deals with the instability of the mind and its power over the body to inspire, enlighten but potentially to also destroy.”

The recently released video for the song finds the trio in a mental health ward, treating each other — while hallucinating and in the throes of complete madness. Who’s the patient? Who’s the doctor? Are they all insane? That I’ll leave to you. But it’s an appropriately trippy and mind-bending take.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rising French Act Pastel Coast Releases a Satirical Send-Up of Love and Heartbreak

Led by their Boulogne-sur-Mer, France-based creative mastermind Quentin Isidore (vocals, guitar) and featuring Benjamin Fiorini (drums), Ingrid Letourneau (keys), Marion Plouviez (guitar, vocals) and Renaud Retaux (bass), the rising French dream pop act Pastel Coast has received attention both nationally and internationally for developing and honing a melancholic and nostalgia-including sound deeply indebted to the early 90s Manchester scene. 

2019 was an enormous year for the French indie act: their full-length debut Hovercraft landed on Dream Pop Magazine‘s Top 100. Adding to a the growing buzz surrounding them, the band wound up landing a slot at last year’s Inouïs du Printemps de Bourges, which was cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Continuing upon that momentum, the band has been working on their highly-anticipated sophomore album Sun, which will feature the attention grabbing singles “Rendezvous” and “Dial,” an infectious and summery track, which brought New Order and Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix-era Phoenix to mind, while evoking the swooning euphoria of new love.

The French act’s first single of 2021, “Sunset” is hook-driven and breezy bit of glistening jangle pop that sonically — to my ears, at least — is a carefully crafted synthesis of New Zealand jangle pop and Phoenix. And much like its predecessors, the song focuses on affairs of the heart: in this case, capturing lovelorn folks racing against time and trying to find love before sunset.

Directed by Robin Laroque and Quentin Marinello, the recently released and gorgeously shot video for “Sunset” is a satirical look at love and heartbreak that stars Samya Arrat as a lovelorn woman, who winds up falling for a houseplant. And although initially she’s wildly in love, she gradually gets increasingly annoyed with the one-way nature of her affair.