Category: Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Post Rock/Post Punk Sounds of San Francisco’s The Soonest

Led by San Francisco, CA-based singer/songwriter Young Lee and featuring a rotating cast of collaborators including members of indie rock bands such as WATERS, Hazel English’s backing band, Doe Eye, There’s Talk, and Elsa y Elmar, The Soonest have released a handful of EPs at traditional recording studios that have won attention both locally and regionally for a layered and moody, 80s post-punk/post-rock leaning sound; in fact, Lee was asked to write the score to the documentary Weaving Shibusa.

Mixed by Greg Francis and mastered by TW Walsh, the project’s recently released full-length debut effort, Doors to the City was recorded in an empty Bay Area church, and the high wooden ceilings helped create the enormous, wall of sound like sound that you’ll hear on Doors to the City’s first single “Start a War,” a single that pairs Lee’s lilting and dramatic vocals with layers upon layers of angular guitar chords, a forceful, motorik-like groove consisting of a sinuous bass line and propulsive drumming, and an anthemic hook. Sonically, the song manages to channel Crocodiles and Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen — including deeply urgent and visual lyrics that describe an uneasy and fraught relationship.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Check out the Surreal Animated Video for Kool Keith’s Collaboration with MF Doom and Madlib

“Super Hero,” Kool Keith’s latest single has the renowned and prolific emcee teaming up with MF Doom to trade incredibly visual and narrative bars full of surreal and disconnected pop culture and comic book references over a Madlib production consisting of wobbling and undulating synths, stuttering drum programming and looped chimes around the song’s infectious hook to create a warped comic book world of anti-heroes being incredibly eccentric and badass.

The recently released animated video pokes fun at old cartoons while employing neon bright stop motion animation and Claymation to a trippy, mind-blowing effect.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Playfully Retro-Futuristic, Videogame Inspired Visuals for Kishi Bashi’s “Say Yeah”

Interestingly, Ishibashi’s recently released, third album Sonderlust was produced by Grizzly Bear‘s Chris Taylor and co-engineered by Pat Dillet, who has worked with Angelique Kidjo and David Byrne, and drummer Matt Chamberlain, who has been a member of Morrissey‘s and Fiona Apple’s backing band and a member of Montreal, and the album finds Ishibashi expanding and playing with the sound that won him acclaim across the blogosphere — thanks largely in part to the fact that the album’s material didn’t come about immediately or through his usual creative process. “As I sat down to write songs last summer, I went to all my usual conduits of creation: violin loops, guitar, piano and I came up with the musical equivalent of fumes,” Ishibashi explained in press notes. “I tried to create orchestral pop recordings that I assume were my forte, and in turn, I found myself standing in front of a creative wall of frightening heights.” This period of creative uncertainly, along with significant changes in his personal life, led him experiment with a new musical direction. “I questioned everything about what it means to love and desire…the difference between loving someone and being in love,” Ishibashi says.

The album’s first single “Say Yeah” has Ishibashi pairing twinkling and shimmering synths, lush string and wind arrangements, propulsive drum programming, an incredibly infectious hook and the renowned violinist, vocalist and producer’s tender and aching falsetto in a swooning yet dance-floor friendly song that interestingly enough sounds as though it were indebted to disco and both electro pop — all while still possessing a swooning Romanticism. Lyrically, the song can be seen as a plaintive and urgent plea to a lover to try to make their relationship work, as a charmingly flirtatious come-on to an object of affection in which the narrator is trying to get his lover to finally just be with him — and in another way, as an admission of the sort of perceived (and sometimes real) wrongdoing and misunderstandings that can break up a relationship, and the continued desire to makeup and get it right, even if just for a little while.

The retro-futuristic and charmingly playful take video-game inspired video manages to capture the spirit and tone of the song as it follows a couple, who meets cute, fall desperately and madly in love, and through chance or fate, they’re separated with the male character going through a variety of obstacles to reunite with his love. Twice within the video a timer appears to remind the video’s central character of how much time is left for the song, and during two other points, the protagonist has instruments miraculously appear that he plays — as part of the game.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dinowalrus Returns to Pair Trippy, Psychedelic Visuals with Their Manchester-Channeling Sound

You may have become familiar with Brooklyn-based psych rock act Dinowalrus, an act that I’ve written a bit about quite a bit over the past few months. Currently comprised of frontman and guitarist Pete Feigenbaum, who has spent some time as a touring guitarist in Titus Andronicus; Max Tucker; Meaghan Omega; Dan Peskin; and John Atkinson, who joins the band as a touring member, the members of the Brooklyn-based band have developed a growing national and international profile for a sound and aesthetic that draws from post-punk, krautrock, shoegaze, synth pop and psych rock as you’ll hear off “Tides,” the first single off the band’s recently released full-length effort FAIRWEATHER. Sonically speaking, the song sounds as though the band had been listening to Join The Dots-era Toy, Primal Scream and the Manchester sound as the band pairs shimmering and undulating synths with a driving, motorik-like groove, guitar chords played through delay and other effect pedal and Feigenbaum’s plaintively cooed vocals.

The recently released video for the song is appropriately psychedelic and begins with Feigenbaum tripping on hallucinogens in a forest, when he stumbles upon four strangers, his bandmates in a variety of situations, and they unite on a singular purpose based on the fact that each of the members of this crew have a portion of a larger piece of art scrawled on their arms. And while in a cemetery, they encounter a guitar pick, which may have mystical powers. Trippy, indeed.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Cinematic Sounds and Trippy Visuals of Sudden Beach’s “The Beast”

Sudden Beach is Guren’s solo side project of sorts and as he explained to me by email, the music he has created with the project, evokes suddenly coming upon a beach while traveling on a desert road. The project’s first single “The Beast” reminds me quite a bit of John Carpenter’s retro-futuristic soundtracks and Pink Floyd’s “On The Run” as the single consists of layers of undulating synths, cascading shimmering synths and samples of children yelling and talking.

As Guren explains of the video, “To feed the feeling of the music I’ve created, I’ve manipulated the footage taken from the cult documentary Koyaanisqatsi, the pictures of empty buildings without any human. I’ve added some sounds from the amazing Stranger Things, like human breath or playing children to this unmanned atmosphere and tried to emphasize to the past and the memory; to the life before the buildings were demolished. ”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Griffith Synder (vocals), Charles Kern (guitar, programming) and multi-instrumentalist Julia Mendiolea, the Denver, CO-bassed indie electro pop/dream pop trio Inner Oceans formed back in 2013 over a mutual desire by each of the band’s three members to create music that’s personal while embodying a spiritual mystery and elegance that’s just out of touch. And with the release of their early singles “8 Cousins” and “Everything’s Alright,” the Denver-based trio received both national and international attention as both singles landed on several high-profile Spotify playlists, and have opened for the likes Tennis, Wild Nothing, Hundred Waters, Big Data, Moses Sumney, On an On, Holy Fuck and Shigeto among others. And of course, since the release of those singles, the trio have received quite a bit of attention from major media outlets and the blogosphere alike including Westword, who named the trio 2014’s “Best New Band,” Idolator and No Fear Of Pop and others.

Earlier this summer, the duo released two singles “Wild” and “Apparition,” which revealed that the trio has increasingly moved towards an aesthetic that’s difficult to pigeonhole or tie down. Interestingly, the trio’s latest single “Call Through The Wire” is a slow-burning bit of synth pop in which Snyder’s plaintive and tender falsetto floats over atmospheric and shimmering synths and a simple yet propulsive rhythm — and in some way, the song nods at Quiet Storm-era R&B and Tame Impala‘s psych-leaning pop.

The recently released music video employs a fairly simple concept –the trio’s frontman Synder singing the song in front of a psychedelic background and in some way, it nods at Michael Jackson‘s “Rock With You.”

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Haunting Visuals and Sounds of Tinariwen’s “Tenere Taqqal” Captures a Rapidly Disappearing Way of Life

Interestingly, Tinariwen’s forthcoming full-length effort Elwan (which translates into English as The Elephants) is slated for a February 10, 2017 release, and the album thematically focuses both on the disappearing traditions of the Tuareg people and of being forced into exile — oddly enough as the members of the band were touring the world. And the album’s gorgeous first single “Tenere Taqqal” possesses an understated longing for a way of life and for a home, which as Thomas Wolfe wisely suggested they can never return to and will never get back. And yet there’s a tacit acknowledgment that life must continue onward and that they have a profoundly important duty of ensuring that something of the old traditions can be preserved and passed on to future generations. As a result, the single while being slow-burning and brooding also manages to possess an understated, quiet urgency — all while feeling older than time itself. Every time, I’ve listened to this track I can picture sitting among the Tuareg or the Bedouins at a campfire, as they tell tales of creation or of the great mystics and teachers, who have led flocks of faithful . .

The recently released animated video was directed by Axel Digoix and it vividly depicts the desert’s harshness, cruelty and beauty, and the profound spiritual and physical connection that the Tuareg people have towards it, while pointing out that their traditions and their world is being violently torn apart.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: clipping Performing “Taking Off” at Moog Sound Lab

clipping’s latest effort “Splendor & Misery”, is a Sci-Fi dystopian concept album that is both futuristic and yet describes our increasingly frightening and bizarre time. And since the release of the album I’ve written about its first three singles “Baby Don’t Sleep,” “Air ‘Em Out” and “A Better Place” and each single manage to further cement the trio’s reputation for pairing minimalist and industrial productions with Diggs’ rapid fire rhyming — but at points the material reveals a subtle refinement of their sound in which at times the material is both melodic and radio-friendly, while evoking the impending apocalypse or the immensity, senselessness and indifference of the universe, the nature of man’s mind and so on.

Recently the trio was invited to Moog Sound Lab to perform “Taking Off” off Splendor & Misery and the video reveals how the trio creates their eerily fucked and hellish sonic vision live — in the case of this song clattering and clinking synths, stuttering drum programming are paired with Diggs ridiculously dexterous rhyming, in which he rhymes about gangstas riding rockets into the sky by getting fucked up in a parking lot, late at night, surreal, almost disconnected violence. And of course they do so while using a ton of really awesome Moog gear.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Slick and Decadent Visuals for Sofi Tukker’s “Awoo”

Soft Animals’ second single “Awoo” is a mischievous song that features guest vocals from Betta Lemme and the single pairs a tribal house/classic house music-inspired production in which tribal drum programming and stuttering samba-like keys are paired with Lemme’s and Hawley-Weld’s alternating sultry vocals and child-like shouting in what may arguably be the duo’s most buoyant, dance floor friendly and mischievous song they’ve released to date.

The recently released video for the song is a slick and vividly colored bit of decadence and ostentatious wealth that seems to draw from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Cruel Intentions and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leech.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Brooding Visuals for Ten Fe’s R&B-Leaning “Turn”

Over the past year or so, I’ve written a bit about London-based indie duo Ten Fe. Comprised of comprised of Ben Moorhouse and Leo Duncan, the indie pop duo took the blogosphere by storm with the release of their critically praised single “Make Me Better,” before closing out last year with the equally anthemic and atmospheric “In The Air.” Interestingly, the duo’s latest single is a subtle but discernible expansion of the duo’s sound, as the slow-burning single gently nods at R&B and soul, as swirling, ambient electronics are paired with shimmering guitar chords and plaintive vocals that express vulnerability within a turn of a phrase, and stuttering drum programming in what may arguably be one of the duo’s most restrained single they’ve released to date. And while being a taste of what the duo’s forthcoming and highly-anticipated full-length debut, the song lyrically speaks about a relationship fraught with bitterness, uncertainties, miscommunications and deceit — both real and perceived. As a result, the relationship is filled with suspicion, with the song’s narrator openly questioning everything his lover is telling him, while wondering if there’s someone else.

The recently released music video features the duo of Moorhouse and Duncan, along with their backing band playing the song in several different locales and appropriately brooding about London.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The 120 Minutes-Channeling Sounds and Visuals of Minihorse

Comprised of Ben Collins (vocals, guitar), Christian Anderson (bass, vocals) and John Fossum (drums, vocals), the Ypsilanti, MI-based indie rock trio Minihorse specialize in a power pop sound that seems to draw from the work Bob Pollard, Bob Mould and others — but paired with a half-despairing, half-shrugging ironic lyrics as you’ll hear on the 80s and 90s alt rock channeling new single off their forthcoming Big Lack EP, “Drink You Dry,” a single with a narrator who openly pokes fun at there even being a purpose at anything and the notion of belonging, as Collins’ ethereal coos are paired with scuzzy power chords, and propulsive drumming.

The recently released music video for “Drink You Dry” reminds me quite a bit of the videos I used to catch while watching 120 Minutes as it cuts between footage of the band brooding before projection of themselves and playing the actual song, and awkward party featuring the video’s female lead. Initially, she spends time hooking up with a fellow partygoer before she goes about lifting people’s cell phones.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Following Young People Hanging Out and Partying in JOVM Mainstay Lust For Youth’s “Tokyo”

Now over the past few years, the Danish electro pop trio have become JOVM mainstays — and you may recall that I wrote about that I wrote about “Better Looking Brother,” and “Sudden Ambition” the first two singles off the their sophomore effort Compassion, which was releaesd earlier this year. And both singles further cemented their reputation for crafting melancholic and aching synth pop that was simultaneously dance floor-friendly. The album’s third single “Tokyo” continues on the same vein of the album’s preceding singles but lyrically the song evokes the sense of confusion, loneliness and disconnectedness and wonder of being on the road, as the song’s narrator describes a life of hotel rooms, hotel room food, a brief chance to wander around a town and get a sense of it, the late night crowds and neon lights, the longing for someone who you either can’t have — or is thousands of miles away, removed from your unusual life on the road.

The recently released video for the song was shot by Tokyo residents, who filmed themselves and their daily lives in their hometown — late nights with Lust For Youth fans, who catch their idols playing at a local club, and then speeding off to the next thing, the next adventure or just goofing off with your crew. And in many ways, the video seems to capture young people almost anywhere.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Smoke Season’s Sultry, Synth Pop Cover of Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”

Just in time for the Halloween season, the members of Smoke Season released a minimalist synth pop cover of one of my favorite Talking Heads songs “Psycho Killer” in which Wortman’s sultry vocals are paired with cascading layers of shimmering synths, glitchy and stuttering drum programming and wobbling low end. And while the Talking Heads version conveyed a tense and anxious neurosis, the Smoke Season version makes losing one’s mind and killing darkly sexy — much like the visuals for the song, which features Wortman and Rosen dressed in tuxedos with scenes of modern dancers, dancing to the song, footage of trees coming into and out of shadow and the like.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Jangling and Anthemic Guitar Rock of French Singer/Songwriter Pamela Hute

Pamela Hute is a Paris-based singer/songwriter, who began her music career in earnest at a very young age — as a teen she formed The Mashed Potatoes before going solo in 2006. And as a solo artist, she’s released two albums, 2010’s Tales From Overseas and 2013’s Bandit, with Bandit being mixed by John Agnello, who has worked with the likes of The Kills, Sonic Youth and Cyndi Lauper. Interestingly both albums revealed that Hute specialized in jangling guitar pop and synth pop with rousingly anthemic hooks paired earnest lyrics as you’ll hear on The Breeders and 90s alt rock channeling “Banshees,” the second and latest single off her self-produced effort Today. But at its core, Today manages to reveal what may arguably be Hute’s most personal songwriting, influenced by a trip she took to California.

The recently released music video is shot in a gorgeous and cinematic black and white, and captures Hute with her backing band performing “Banshees” live at La Fourmi in Limoges, France.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Creepy, Grindhouse-Inspired Visuals for ExSage’s Anthemic “Tripwire”

Interestingly, the duo’s soon-to-be released EP Out of the Blue was produced by Alain Johannes, who has collaborated with Mark Lanegan, Them Crooked Vultures, Brody Dalle, and Queens of the Stone Age, and as you’ll hear on Out of the Blue’s first single “Tripwire,” the band sonically speaking sounds as though they were indebted to The Raveonettes and The Kills. In other words, enormous blazing power chords are paired with thunderous and propulsive drumming and harmonized vocals led by Clover’s pop star-like vocals, and a rousingly anthemic hook — all of which gives the song a larger than life swagger just underneath the song’s bluesy psychedelia.

The recently released video for the song is indebted to creepy, Grindhouse movies and includes a deranged doctor performing surgery without anesthesia, and his bandaged victims walking around like mummies before being driven around in the duo’s sweet Dodge Charger.