Category: Video Review

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Les Amazones d’Afrique Share Bold and Swaggering “Flaws”

Founded in Bamako back in 2014 by three renowned and acclaimed Malian artists and social change activists Mamani Keïta, Oumou Sangaré and Amadou & Mariam‘s Mariam Doumbia, Les Amazones d’Afrique is a All-Star collective of female, West African artists that embraces international voices through a meshing of heritage and new generation talent while advocating for the rights of women and girls across the continent and elsewhere.

Since their formation a decade ago, the collective has expanded to involve female artists from across Africa and the African Diaspora, including Angélique Kidjo, Nneka, and rising Malian artist Rokia Koné.

With their first two critically applauded,. Doctor L-produced albums, 2017’s République Amazone, which landed on The Guardian‘s Top 50 of 2017 and 2020’s Amazones Power, which was featured on President Barack Obama’s Spotify playlist, the collective firmly cemented a sound that blends a number of African styles and richly melodic, collaborative harmonies with gritty, contemporary pop. Adding to a growing profile internationally, the members of the pan-African collective have played Glastonbury Festival‘s Pyramid Stage and BBC’s Later . . . with Jools Holland.

Les Amazones d’Afrique’s third album, the forthcoming Jacknife Lee-produced Musow Danse is slated for a February 16, 2024 release through Real World Records. The album reportedly sees the collective embracing a contemporary pop sound that draws from contemporary hip-hop and trap and is driven by 808s and glitchy synths while still vociferously campaigning for gender equality and the eradication of ancestral violence. 

Last year, the Pan-African All-Star collective shared the sleek and hyper modern “Kuma Fo (What They Say).” The track features five members of the collective — longtime members Mamani Keïta, Fafa Ruffino and Kandy Guira and new members Alvie Bitemo, an activist and actress from Congo-Brazzaville and renowned Ivorian artist Dobet Gnahoré — singing in the native languages of Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso, C’ôte d’Ivoire, and Congo-Brazzaville. Built around stuttering 808s, glitchy synths and the collective’s gorgeous powerhouse vocals, “Kuma Fo (What They Say)” is an effortlessly seamless synthesis of the ancient and contemporary that manages to be roomy enough for each artist to showcase their unique vocal stylings while being rooted in a powerfully relevant social message — with the collective boldly advocating for women to step out and seize their place at the table.

“‘Kuma Fo’ is about women’s freedom of expression.” Alvie Bitemo says. “It’s about speaking up — not asking, not waiting for us to be given the floor. We need to seize it.”

When you look at the Amazons of Dahomey, it was female warriors who made the decisions and took power. It feels like since colonization, certain countries in Africa have moved further away from women’s rights. And in this song, we say that if you bring life into the world, you educate, you organize the family, then you should reclaim your power: your female power.”

The acclaimed, Pan-African collective begins 2024 with the boldly in-your-face and slickly produced “Flaws.” Built around tweeter and woofer rattling 808s, skittering trap beats and dense layers of wobbling and oscillating synths, “Flaws” features Mamani Keïta and Fafa Ruffino trading verses with a hip-hop meets punk rock-like swagger and an impeccable sense of harmony and melody for the song’s incredibly catchy hooks. While continuing a remarkable run of material that effortlessly blends the ancient and the modern, the song is rooted in a bold and much-needed message for women — and well, for everyone, really — in the Photoshopped Instagram model/influencer age.

“The song has a simple message,” Malian-born Mamani Keïta explains. “The perfect person does not exist. We all have our flaws and imperfections, which we carry with us through life, but there is beauty in imperfection, and that’s what we want people to realise.”

“Jacknife Lee took time to listen to each of our voices,” Benin-born Fafa Ruffino says. “He doesn’t understand the language, but you can tell that he feels the emotion, understands that our souls are deeply invested in our words. I feel like he entered our minds. What he did is more than musical. It is spiritual.”

Directed by Zambian-born contemporary dance artist and choreographer Kennedy Junior Mutanga, the accompanying video showcases a group of brash and charming teenaged dancers of color from Birmingham UK‘s ACE Dance and Music School, who dance around Les Amazones d’Afrique’s Keïta in the school’s rehearsal studio. The young women in the video seem to take the song’s message of self-acceptance and self-love to heart, and it’s powerful to see.

ACE Dance and Music School’s mission is to promote dance through cultural exchange. The school has worked for over 20 years as a leader in the field of contemporary African and Caribbean dance, nurturing young talent from diverse backgrounds.

It was an amazing experience for our young dancers to work with such thoughtful and inspirational artists from across Africa,” Gail Parmel MBE, ACE Dance and Music’s artistic director says. “It’s exactly the kind of opportunity that we love to be able to offer them, and we’re so proud of what they’ve been able to offer in return.”
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Pissed Jeans Shares Anthemic Ripper “Moving On”

Over the course of their 20-year history together, Allentown, PA-based punks Pissed Jeans — Matt Korvette (vocals), Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums) — has never been known to go halfway: They’ve long been known for material that pairs feral vocals and acerbic, biting lyrics with buzzsaw guitars — and for their unhinged live show.

The Allentown-based punks’ highly-anticipated sixth album Half Divorced further cements their longtime reputation for crating feral punk with their acerbic sense of humor. Thematically, the material mercilessly skewers the tension between youthful optimism and the sobering realities of adulthood but while still managing to be — perhaps inadvertently — fun. “Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, I don’t want this reality. There’s a power in being able to say, I realize you want me to pay attention to these things, but I’m telling you that they don’t matter. I’m already looking elsewhere,” Korvette says.

Slated for a March 1, 2024 release through Sub Pop Records, the band’s members weren’t in a rush to finish the album, which was recorded and co-produced by Don Godwin at Takoma Park, MD-based Tonal Park. “We’re not the kind of band that bangs out a new record every two years,” Pissed Jeans’ Matt Korvette says. “Pissed Jeans is truly like an art project for us, which is what makes it so fun.” The material’s distilled energy makes the album sound menacing and dangerous — with the song’s unexpectedly veering into classic hardcore punk territory. Korvette says, “We realized we’d never really fucked with pop punk, and we thought, this is something that isn’t going to be immediately recognizable as cool. So let’s challenge ourselves to make it feel cool to us.”

“Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, I don’t want
The word divorce in the album’s title falls in line with the moments of humiliation, shame and defeat that are held up for all to see on the album. “If you say something enough or if you just allow it to exist publicly, then it loses its evil monster-in-the-closet thing,” Korvette says.
 
Half Divorced‘s latest single “Moving On” is a hard-charging, balls-to-the-wall, mosh pit friendly ripper with shout along friendly, mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses, buzzsaw-like power chords, propulsive and thunderous drumming paired with Korvette’s snarled delivery. At its core, “Moving On” seems to be as much about trying to put the best foot forward as it is about throwing your hands up and accepting defeat .

Directed by frequent collaborator Joe Stakun, the accompanying video for “Moving On” features intimately shot footage of the band performing the song in an industrial space with some post-modernist art just behind them while other odd things go on: a woman writes down some of the song’s lyrics of a gigantic note pad, another woman comes in to drop off some groceries, trips and falls with some of the groceries falling out. At another point, Korvette walks over in mid-song to get a cut of coffee, which he clumsily spills — before continuing onward. It’s a mix of the mundane and the surreal.
 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: London’s Rapidly Rising Fat Dog Shares Anthemic Club Banger “All The Same”

Last year, rapidly rising, London-based outfit Fat Dog exploded into the British scene with the band being named “2023’s wildest live band,” by NME for a live show described as “manically riotous and joyous” by BBC 6 Music, which included opening sets for Viagra Boys, Shame, and Yard Act, as well as their own headlining sets.

Their debut single “King of the Slugs” was released by Domino Records to critical praise from the likes of Clash Magazine and countless others. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the British quintet announced their debut US tour, which will see them play sets at SXSW, Trans-Pecos, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, as well as an April headlining set at the 1500-capacity Electric Brixton. Along with that they’re sharing the Joe Love and James Ford co-produced “All The Same,” a propulsive, club rocking, industrial-inspired banger built around glistening synth arpeggios, and orchestral sample-driven hit, industrial clang and clatter paired with skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling boom bap, enormous shout along worthy hooks and a plaintive vocal delivery.

The members of the rising British outfit says about the song “What if you could turn the clock back and make a change? Just a single, well-placed kick, that perhaps could change the whole course of your life. Perhaps the party never has to stop?”

Directed by Dylan Coates and staring Neil Bell, the accompanying visual for “All The Same” is a twisted and absurdist tale of regret, revenge, time travel and fatherhood that sees its protagonist traveling back to 1989.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Germany’s Swirlpool Shares Stormy “Reimagine”

Formed back in 2016, the German-based dream pop/shoegaze outfit Swirlpool — Thomas A. Fischer, Markus Kraus and Chris Atzinger — have remained loyal to the “sounds better with reverb and distortion” maxim, and as a result they’ve managed to win over a loyal fanbase within the global dream pop and shoegaze scenes.

The German dream pop/shoegaze outfit’s highly anticipated full-length debut, Distant Echoes features material inspired by titans like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive while breathing fresh life into the genre.

Distant Echoes‘ first single “Reimagine” is a classic era shoegaze-inspired track built around dense and towering layers of reverb and distortion-laden guitars, thunderous drumming, ethereal and yearning vocals paired with an enormous hooks and choruses. “The single was one of the first ideas Tom came up with on rhythm guitar,” the members of the German band explain. “The lyrics deal with our sometimes too perfectionistic songwriting process, where we would spend days writing new interesting parts and sometimes just get stuck in a loop. It is about the agony of slow change and the need for re-invention.”

The accompanying video by Daniel Dueckminor is a fittingly 120 Minutes MTV era-inspired video shot on cassette tape that features secures of the band’s core members walking around at dusk or in the dark together, performing the song in a suburban and very stylish house and in an abandoned garage. Throughout the video switches between grainy VHS-styled color and a gorgeous, cinematic black and white.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: D1V4 Shares Minimalist “WINTERSPORT”

Featuring members split between Berlin and Yberg, D1V4 is a German New Wave duo — Luis (vocals) and Cosy Mo (production) — that officially formed not too long ago, and can trace its origins back to when the duo met while collaborating in film: Luis worked as a filmmaker and director and Cosy Mo as a sound designer. In an attempt to enhance their work, the duo experimented with their own beats, gradually developing a common musical language – which resulted in their debut single “WINTERSPORT.”

“WINTERSPORT” is a minimalist bit of synth pop built around skittering beats and twinkling synth arpeggios and chanted mantra-like vocals that sounds a bit like Kraftwerk and John Carpenter soundtracks with a mischievously anachronistic quality.

The accompanying video features slickly edited footage of what appears to be Olympic Ski Ballet shot during the 1984 Winter Olympics. Each of the competitors manages to move almost in time to the accompanying song’s beats.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Youth Lagoon Shares Meditative and Compassionate Ode to Failure “Football”

Boise-based singer/songwriter Trevor Powers is the creative mastermind behind the critically applauded psych/dream pop recording project Youth Lagoon. After a lengthy hiatus, which saw him recording under his own name, Powers returned with the critically applauded Heaven Is a Junkyard, the first Youth Lagoon album in eight years.

Powers begins 2024 with “Football,” the follow-up to Heaven Is a Junkyard, which sees him continuing his collaboration with co-producer Rodaidh McDonald. “Football” is a dreamily minimalistic track built around twinkling keys, a supple bass line, jazz-inflected four-on-the-floor-like rhythms and bursts of bluesy guitar paired with Powers’ gentle croon waxing metaphysically while telling tales of damaged people and failure with a compassionate, knowing sense of empathy.

“‘Football’ is really a celebration of failure,” Powers says. “Society has a terrible habit of only recognizing achievement while glossing over the greatness in the shadows. We’re so distracted trying to earn love, worth and value that we forget it’s something we inherently already have. I wanted to play with this idea through the lens of sports ‘cuz, in a lot of ways, sports are the truest religion. When I was young, it was the only way I knew how to connect with my dad. We didn’t have a lot in common, but we could both throw the ball. There were rules and rituals we could see eye-to-eye on. We didn’t have to argue over who was right or wrong. The difference in my family was, it didn’t matter how good I was. The act of just throwing a ball was communion. It didn’t matter if I caught it. I love my Dad for that.”

“Football” is accompanied by a video by Caleb Halter that’s nostalgia-inducing and charmingly old-timey as we see footage from old parades set in the screen, much like an old photo book.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: New Orleans’ Britti Shares Lush and Yearning “Lullaby”

New Orleans-based singer/songwriter Brittany Guerin, best known as the mononymous moniker Britti was gifted with a voice that has been described as bridging the distance between delicacy and flint — and like many singer/songwriters can’t remember she can’t remember a time when she wasn’t singing. “According to my mom, I was singing before I could talk,” Guerin says, likening herself to a Disney character. “I would sing throughout the halls of the house, throughout the aisles of the grocery stories, in my car seat,” the Louisiana-born artist recalls. “I was just a little bird, doing what came easy.”

Raised by her mother and grandmother — whom she does dubs “brown sugar and cayenne pepper,” respectively — Guerin continued to nurture her talent everywhere, sining in the school chorus and the church choir, between learning dance steps and playing soccer. “Singing is my passion,” she says. “But simultaneously, it’s also my purpose.”

Guerin relocated to the Crescent City and earned a degree in music performance from Loyola University in the mid 00s. But shortly after, was when when the clock began to slow down to a crawl on her vision, with her diploma collecting dust, as she landed into a retail grind that was both tantalizingly and depressingly performance adjacent. She spent a decade selling instruments and sheet music to aspiring musicians and artists while deferring her own. “For this 10-year span, I just stayed in that safe space of just thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll get to it. I’ll live my dreams eventually. I’m young.’” 

While singing always came naturally, promoting herself just didn’t. But when a long-term relationship ended just before the pandemic, ironically her former partner’s parting gift was to urge her to pursue what she was clearly meant to do, proving that sometimes the wrong person can have the right idea. “He broke my heart into pieces that you would need a magnifying glass to find,” Guerin says, but it also set on a path to creativity for the first time in several years.

“I remember saying this out loud in prayer, ‘What if I actually try believing in myself?’ I had this whole dialogue with my ancestors, my spirit guide, and the divine like ‘What if I try?’,” she recalls. During a two-month furlough in the midst of the pandemic, Guerin began running meditating and — after buying her dream Martin guitar — writing songs.

“I was perfecting these songs at 2:00 in the morning, because there was no time limit because I wasn’t working.” Except, she was. “I started treating myself like a business and putting myself out there and posting videos at least once a week, and just really building my self-confidence,” she says of early clips that saw her covering some of her favorite songs like Sheryl Crow’s rendition of “The First Cut Is the Deepest” and Lainey Wilson‘s “Rolling Stone.”

The Wilson cover caught the attention of a country A&R executive, who saw her talent but also understood that Guerin was a little too left-of-center for Music Row. Others expressed interest but didn’t quite have a handle on her sound. “There were a lot of nights sitting on the floor crying and thinking ‘Okay. These darts are going forward, but they’re not hitting anything,’ and feeling very discouraged.”

Then she decided to cover her favorite Dan Auerbach song “Whispered Words (Pretty Lies).” “I’ve always really enjoyed his writing style, the New Orleans-based artist says of The Black Keys frontman and producer. “As joyful of a person as I am, I love a good melancholy song.”

“I was praying every single day that I would find somebody who would be able to hear my voice, see my potential, and have the resources to help me cultivate my dream,” she says. No one was more surprised than Guerin that that person turned out to be actually be Auerbach.

“I saw a video of her singing and strumming the acoustic guitar in her bedroom,” Auerbach recalls. “I thought she had an intriguing delivery, and I wanted to learn more. So we flew her up to Nashville to meet.” “

“You know when something feels wrong, and you know when something’s meant to be,” Guerin says of the meeting. “This is who I had been praying for.” On the day she flew up to Nashville, Auerbach says “we instantly hit it off.” And the pair began writing right away with The Black Keys frontman and producer brining in various co-writers, who he thought would complement the direction the two were heading and “lend an interesting flavor to the album,” including Roger Cook, Bobby Wood and Pat McLaughlin.“For someone who hadn’t done any of this, she took to it really quickly, and we just hit the ground running as soon as we started these writing sessions.

”“I’m sure he’s great with everybody, but we definitely vibe,” says Britti of the locked-in nature of the collaboration. “To the point where I’m just like, ‘Can I write with him until I’m 115, please?’”She also was thrilled by the speed with which the album came together, and the remarkable group of players Auerbach convened to bring the songs to life. “I felt like I was being heard, seen, and felt. I’m still in awe,” she says of the estimable group which included Robert Plant & Alison Krauss‘ and Sharon Van Etten‘s Jay Bellerose (drum), Sheryl Crow’s and Stevie Nicks’ Tom Bukovac (guitar), Yola‘s and Don Henley’s Mike Rojas (keys), Auerbach himself and a talented cast of collaborators. “I just pick people who I really respect and are very talented and get them in the room together,” says Auerbach of this first-time configuration of players. “Very rarely do bad things happen. They fed off her energy ultimately.”

And although she’s a relative newcomer, Auerbach believes that Britti was ready. “She grew up in the most musical environment in the world. It’s in her DNA,” The Black Keys frontman and producer says of Britti’s Louisiana upbringing. “She knows more about music than she ever realizes.”

Guerin points out that she honed her ear listening to contemporary R&B stations driving in the car and then signing hymns with friends and family in church. She would delve into blues, Zydeco and Motown with her grandmother and then switch to classical music with her grandfather. An uncle played jazz and schooled her in its intricacies on forays to and from New Orleans.

All of those sounds and more inform her 11-song, Dan Auerbach-proruced full-length debut, Hello, I’m Britti, which is slated for a February 2, 2024 release through Easy Eye Sound. Naturally, the New Orleans-based artist is heartened by what she sees as “progress in the world of understanding fluidity.” ”When I got together with her, it was clear that she was interested in all types of music. We talked about Sade a little bit, how much she loved her stage presence. And we talked about Aretha’s songs, Blues Brothers’ stuff, New Orleans music, we talked about all kinds of stuff,” adds Auerbach on the album’s varied influences and moods.

Fittingly, Hello, I’m Britti‘s 11 tracks tell their own compact stories with the album’s material rooted in the spectrum of emotions flowing from the haze of heartbreak to the electricity of new love to the quest for self-understanding and self-acceptance. The continuous thread that holds it all together is the New Orleans-based artist’s unique delivery.

Hello, I’m Britti‘s latest single, the gently swaying “Lullaby” pairs shimmering and yearning pedal steel, twinkling keys and understated percussion with the New Orleans-based artist’s vulnerable, heart-worn-on-sleeve vocal in a way that’s hauntingly gorgeous and cinematic. The song is an old to the comfort and security of a hard-won — and perhaps harder-earned — intimacy.

Directed by Vanessa Pla, the cinematic, mostly black and white visual for “Lullaby” is a retro-chic and glamorous look at the artist’s private and public life that explodes into lush color for the last third, in which we see Guerin on stage performing.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Paris’ Hoorsees Shares Anthemic “Ikea Boy”

With the release of their first two albums, 2021’s self-titled full-length debut and 2022’s A Superior Athlete, the Parisian indie quartet Hoorsees — Alex Delamard (vocals, guitar), Zoe Gilbert (vocals, bass), Thomas Gachod (guitar, keys) and Nicolas Coste (drums) — received rapturous praise for a 90s-inspired sardonic guitar pop sound that’s steeped in equal parts melancholy and nostalgia.

The French outfit’s Joseph Signoret-produced third album Big is slated for a January 12, 2024 release through Howlin’ Banana and Kanine Records. Big reportedly sees the acclaimed Parisian band channeling Pavement and Weezer much less, and embracing their French roots. While evolving a synth pop-driven sensibility, they don’t completely shake their adoration of American guitar pop and indie rock: Electronic pads are paired with the sort of angular riffs that seemingly recall Is This it-era The Strokes.

Their third album is more than a stylistic shift for the Parisian band; it sees a major shift in duties within the band: The album sees the band’s Delamard sharing vocal duties with Gilbert. Whereas their first two albums were written, recorded and made in an expeditious fashion, their third album took three years to write and complete.

For the recording of the album’s instrumental parts, the band isolated in a house in the middle of the Southern French region of Ardeche and turned it into a homemade studio. Unlike the mandatory isolation of the pandemic, which seemed to heighten the slacker pop vibe, the self-imposed isolation of the Big sessions was to shut out outside distractions in favor of harnessing the buzz of fresh creativity.

Taking up production duties, Keep Dancing Inc’s Joseph Signoret helped to infuse energy into their live takes and add electronic accents inspired by French touch and Motorboats Studio’s Phillipe Zdar. Studio Noir’s Maxime Maurel was enlisted to mix the album’s material.

While sonically the material is rooted in a fresh, new sound, the band has maintained the absurdist lyrics they’ve been most known for, although they tackle social concerns while pointing out the irony of being in an overly marketed society, where appearances and consumerism take precedence over all. In fact, the album’s overall tone seems fatalistic about our future prospects — with the material deliberately giving way to long instrumental passages where the simplicity of the motifs blends with the rich production, seemingly as though the words had run out and they were unable to carry out the conversation.

Big‘s latest single “Ikea Boy” is built around an alternating quiet-loud-quiet song structure that features dense layers of buzzing, angular guitars and thunderous drumming for the song’s enormous and remarkably catchy hooks and choruses, and lush, wobbling synths for the song’s verses while Gilbert’s yearning and plaintive vocal floats over and then darts in and out of the mix. Sonically, the song sees Hoorsees crafting a sound that’s a sleek synthesis of Phoenix, Air and The Strokes, while revealing a band that can craft a seemingly effortless, anthemic hook.

The accompanying video by Guilliame Dufour and Lucas Martin is a hazy, yet gorgeous nostalgia-induced dream partially shot in a garage and in front of and in cars.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: SPRINTS Shares Feral and Frenzied “Heavy”

If you had been frequenting this site as we closed out 2023, you might have come across a handful of pieces on rapidly rising Dublin-based punks SPRINTS. The Dublin-based quartet — Karla Chubb (vocals, guitar), Colm O’Reilly (guitar), Jack Callan (drums) and Sam McCann (bass) — formed back in 2019, and since then they have quickly developed and crafted an abrasive punk rock sound, influenced by early Pixies, Bauhaus, Siousxie Sioux, King Gizzard, Savages, and LCD Soundsystem. 

Their first two EP’s, 2021’s Manifesto and last year’s A Modern Job were released to rapturous praise from UK music outlets like DIY, The Guardian, NME, Loud & Quiet, Dork, and Clash. They also received airplay from BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6 Music.

The Irish punks highly-anticipated full-length debut Letter To Self is slated for a Friday release through City Slang Records. According to the band’s Karla Chubb, the album “is a deeply personal and autobiographical lyrically and in its key themes, while sonically it explores a space inspired by our love of early 80s gothic, 90s noises rock and more modern influences. It revisits our most vulnerable moments and imbues them with visceral garage-punk. It aims to take the things that are considered inherently negative – feelings of anxiety, anger and rage, and turning them into a positive. Using our experiences to fuel us and pouring them into a positive outlet. It’s cathartic, it’s honest, it’s raw.” While pain is used to fuel growth, at its core, the album is rooted in a message of self-acceptance. 

The band’s frontperson Karla Chubb has never been afraid to confront inner turmoil. Born in Dublin, she spent a portion of her early childhood in Germany, initially turning to music as a consequence of feeling out-of-step with the world. “I lived in a constant state of existential crisis,” she recalls. “Music became an outlet for emotion, and a way for me to understand myself and society.”

Recorded in France’s Loire Valley with Gilla Band‘s Daniel Fox over the course of 12 days, Letter to Self will feature previously released singles “Adore Adore Adore,” “Literary Mind,” its lead single “Up and Comer,” and what may arguably be the album’s most vulnerable and raw track “Shadow of a Doubt.”

Letter To Self‘s latest single “Heavy” is a brutally furious, mosh pit friendly ripper built around scorching riffs and thunderous drumming paired with anthemic, shout along worthy hooks and Chubb’s urgent, feral delivery. ”The brutally cacophonous sound communicates how it feels to be paralyzed and inspired by anxiety, pairing intrusive thoughts, panic and intensity with that anxiety inducing build,” SPRITS’ Chubb explains. “Heavily inspired my early Bauhaus records and PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire?, it draws a heavy influence from 80s gothic – the purposeful space reflecting the isolating nature of panic.”

Featuring live footage shot by Glen Bollard and Fern Rose, and edited by Annie Walsh and Colin Peppard, the accompanying video for “Heavy” captures the energy of a SPRINTS set — both before the show and in the green room, and then the actual, sweaty, frenzy of the show.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Terciopelo Shares Brooding and Slickly Produced “Your Love . . . “

Terciopelo is the solo recording project of a mysterious and emerging Costa Rican-born and-based electronic music producer and artist, who blends diverse instrumental elements, trap beats, jazz and soulful melodies into a unique and moody sound that has been described as thought provoking.

The mysterious Costa Rican-born and-based electronic music producer and artist’s forthcoming full-length debut, The Breakaways reportedly sees him collaborating with a talented and diverse group of female vocalists. Thematically, the album focuses on women and their journeys through life — with each vocalist singing lyrics that detail the trials, tribulations and joys of their life through their perspective. The album’s material delves into the depths of passion, love and all of the various aspects of human life.

“This album represents a significant chapter in my musical journey,” the mysterious producer and artist says. The Breakaways is not just a music album, it’s a celebration of life, love and the magnetic power of music. We poured our hearts into every note, and we hope it resonates with our audience on a profound level.”

“Your Love . . .,” The Breakaways‘ latest single is a brooding and slickly produced synthesis of Portishead-like trip hop, trap beats and contemporary electro pop paired with yearning vocals and evocative lyrics. The song thematically is a deep dive into the lives of women trapped in abusive romantic relationships. The song’s narrator paints a poignant and haunting picture of the internal and external struggles that domestic abuse victims face with a seemingly lived-in specificity.

The accompanying video captures a series of women, who are at their breaking point emotionally, physically and mentally with an unsettling and uneasy realism.

We can all take a stand against domestic violence and create a safer world for everyone. If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence and need help, please go to: nomoredirectory.org.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Marta Vega Shares A Sultry, 80s-Inspired Anthem

Marta Vega is a Milan-born, London-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who taught herself how to play guitar as a teenager, and then started to write her own songs. Over the past several years, Vega has been playing gigs across London and Milan, developing an emotive, dark pop sound, influenced by PJ Harvey, Portishead, Massive Attack and The Cure. During that same period, she also has developed a reputation for a captivating stage presence that sees her accompanying herself on synth, guitar and electronic percussion.

Vega’s debut single “Underwater” was released back in 2021. She recently released her sophomore single, the Andrea Tripodi-produced “The Kill,” is a melodic and brooding bit of hook-driven, 80s inspired pop that sounds a bit like a sleek and seamless synthesis of Stevie Nicks‘ smash hit solo work of the early 80s, Garbage and The Kills with Vega’s haunting, pop goddess vocal floating over a pulsating synth bass line, staccato beats, buzzing power chords.

“The lyrics explore the internal battle between logic and passion, reason and impulse,” Vega explains. “It’s about being aware of self-destructive behaviours but not being able to escape them.”

Directed by Luke Shelley, the accompanying video for “The Kill” is shot in a gorgeously cinematic black and white, that capture the longing, lust, and the never-ending battle between reason and impulse that’s at the heart of the song.

Vega’s forthcoming debut EP is slated for release in 2024 and will feature a collection of material that she has been working on while splitting her time between the studio and work.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: CZARFACE Shares Mischievous Animated Visual for “Czarchimedes’ Death Ray”

CZARFACE, the collaborative project featuring beloved underground hip-hop duo 7L & Esoteric and the Wu-Tang Clan’s Inspectah Deck. The project’s name is derived from a fictional character that the trio created that’s patterned after comic book super villains with aspects of the personalities and quirks of each individual member.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past handful of years, the trio can trace their collaboration back to when 7L & Esoteric and Inspectah Deck toured together in the early 00s. That tour led to a series of collaborative singles including “Speaking Real Words” off 7L & Esoteric’s 2001 album, The Soul Purpose and “12th Chamber” off their 2010 album 1212, and a number of other singles.

Since the act formed back in 2013, they’ve released a handful of critically applauded albums: their 2013 self-titled debut, 2015’s Every Hero Needs a Villain, 2016’s A Fistful of Peril, 2018’s, Czarface Meets Metalface with the late MF DOOM and Czarface Meets Ghostface, with Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah, 2019’s The Odd Czar Amongst Us and 2021’s posthumously released collaboration with MF DOOM, SuperWhat?

The trio’s ninth album CZARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE was released earlier this month through Virgin Music and is an action-packed odyssey that continues a run of material influenced and informed by comic books, and features guest spot from Logic, Kool Keith, Nems, Frankie Pulitzer and a cast of others. “We’re back with that off-kilter, no filter,” CZARFACE’s Esoteric says. 

The album sees the trio continuing to weave the unfiltered essence of OG braggadocio, introspective story-telling — and as always, the exploits of superheroes and supervillains that’s as engaging as when you used to flip through the pages of your favorite comic book or graphic novel. The album’s guests join CZARFACE on missions and side-quests — and the result is material that playful and lovingly explores the intersection of cosmic hip-hop and comic book culture. “The new album comes equipped with chaos, order and everything in between,” Esoteric explains. “It’s like a swirling vortex of cosmic carnage, but we bring it down to earth in places. We are, after all, in a new era. I hope what we made resonates with the people.”

CZARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE‘s latest single “Czarchimedes’ Death Ray” is built around a trippy production featuring boom bap beats paired with woozy, reverb soaked psychedelic guitars and old-school scratching. Each of the super talented emcees spits mischievously dexterous and swaggering bars full of pop culture and comic book references, while referencing the supervillain’s unique stash of weaponry. “Czar never resorts to conventional weaponry, thus the illustrious Death Ray – a sonic homage to the Greek mathematician Archimedes,” Esoteric says. 

Directed by Hoku Uchiyama and Adam Bolt, a.k.a. Hoku & Adam, the accompanying video for “Czarchimedes’ Death Ray” employs animation and live-action footage to capture and evoke the boundless imagination of a young comic book reader, who mischievously inserts her favorite arch-villain Czarface into the adventures of The Power Partners to hilariously chaotic and imaginative effect.

“We needed a visual that captured Czarface’s brand of justice and a kid’s boundless imagination,” Esoteric says of the video. “But also one that also kept a comic-like pace to match the track.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Stockholm’s Don Gog Shares Hazy and Menacing “Q”

Don Gog is a mysterious and enigmatic Stockholm-based DJ and producer, who spent a handful of years between the late 90s and early 2000s heavily involved in Gothenburg‘s hip-hop scene, working as a DJ and producer, who worked with an array of Swedish, French and American emcees, including Jeru the Damaja, Looptroop Rockers and Astma, who’s best known for his work with NoNoNo. He has also worked on TV and film scores, winning a number of international film festival awards throughout the course of his lengthy career.

The mysterious Stockholm-based DJ and producer finally steps out into the spotlight as a solo, hip-hop and electronic music artist with the forthcoming Cybernetics EP, which sees the Swedish artist and producer crating music that blends an eclectic array of influences, including Massive Attack, Portishead Aphex Twin and others, paired with visuals to create a trippy multimedia experience. By purposefully keeping the artist behind the project as ambiguous as humanly possible, the idea is that listeners and viewers can focus more on the art, as opposed to the person behind it.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “I Feel Love,” a narcoleptic and trippy fusion of dub and trip hop built around rubbery, tweeter and woofer rattling low end, staccato and percussive synths and skittering beats while Uma E’s sultry vocal sample singing “I Feel Love” bursts out of the haze. “I wanted it to feel like a trip, a journey in your head,” Don Gog explained. “To mix electronica with dub and blend the two styles… the complicated thing was to find the electronica melody that would work with the dub beats… It was challenging to blend two diverse elements into a single cohesion.”

Cybernetics EP‘s latest single, “Q” continues a run of narcoleptic and hazy, dub-inspired trip-hop that features a soulful jazz trumpet solo paired with reverb-soaked beats, atmospheric and fluttering synths and a gently vocodered vocal. The result is a song that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Massive Attack record — but with an added sense of uneasy, creeping menace. “I worked with a jazz trumpet player who improvised and then took different bits and ‘sampled’ them and created new melodies and recorded them to tape and then back to the MPC3000,” the mysterious Swedish producer explains. “And from that into the DAW again, to edit it even more.”

Directed by high fashion photographer and videographer Fofo Altinell, the hazy accompanying video for “Q” is inspired by 90s underground art and the work of directors like Chris Cunningham and David Lynch. “The visual inspiration is coming from disassociation,” Altinell explains. “Our protagonist is clearly confused, maybe traumatized or intoxicated, walking the rough streets and suddenly the daydreamy glitter comes and she’s mentally somewhere else. The things happening in her head is our fictional protagonist’s personal dreams and fears”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Eve Machines Share Hook-Driven And Anthemic “In The Garden”

Eve Machines is a solo, DIY folktronica recording project. The project’s self-titled full-length debut sees Eve Machine walking a tightrope between acoustic and electronic sounds, grungy and smooth tones, catchy hooks and experimental tangents — all held together by an emphasis on tight grooves.

The self-titled album’s latest single “In The Garden” pairs strummed acoustic guitar, hip-hop inspired boom bap and atmospheric electronics with Eve Machine’s effortlessly soulful, yearning delivery and remarkably crafted, catchy hooks. The result is a song that sonically recalls Radiohead‘s “Paranoid Android,” Incubus‘ “Drive” and Hoobastank‘s “The Reason” — while possessing an uncanny pop accessibility.

“The song was born in one night and started what would become a y year project, because it convinced me that folky guitar, hip hop drums and electronics could be actually fused in a natural and cohesive way, which up to that point had seemed impossible,” Eve Machine’s creative mastermind explains. “It’s not a sound I’ve really heard before, and I think that’s where original music comes from– from creating what you want to hear but aren’t finding yet. That’s when your subconscious imagination or whatever gets to work and poof, the song appears. Then you just have to lock yourself in a basement for 7 years to make the damn thing presentable and viola, what you want to hear is now there for everyone to hear, too.”

Directed by Jeremiah Heiss, the accompanying video for “In The Garden” features the project’s creative mastermind in a suburban basement conceiving, writing and then recording the song with various electronics in the background, including a synthesizer, a desktop computer and more. Despite the modern take on a familiar sound, the video manages to bring 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock to mind.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Still Corners Share Lush and Dreamy Visual for “Secret World”

Throughout their nearly two-decade career, acclaimed JOVM mainstays Still Corners — vocalist and keyboardist Tessa Murray and multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Greg Hughes — have managed to bounce between chilly and atmospheric pop and shimmering guitar-driven, desert noir through five albums: 2012’s Creatures of an Hour, 2013’s Strange Pleasures, 2016’s Dead Blue, 2018’s Slow Air and 2020’s The Last Exit. 

Since the release of The Last Exit, the acclaimed dream pop duo released two stand alone singles:

  • 2021’s “Heavy Days,” which struck me as a synthesis of Dead Blue, Slow Air and The Last Exit — but while arguably being one of the more optimistic and sunnier songs of their catalog. 

  • Last year’s “Far Rider,” an expansive song that to my ear, sounds as though it could have been part of the Slow Air and The Last Exit sessions — but with a subtle modern, production flourish that features Murray’s smoky croon being chopped up and distorted. 

The JOVM mainstays’ long-awaited sixth full-length album Dream Talk is slated for an April 5, 2024 release through the band’s own label, Wrecking Light Records. The album’s material was written in Southern France, East Sussex, UK and Woodstock. “The songs came together quickly and being able to write from anywhere kept up our momentum,” Still Corners’ Tessa Murray says. 

Produced by the band’s Greg Hughes at their Woodstock-based studio, Hughes says, “We tried various things like different mics, amps and effects before committing to anything. Everything was mixed analog through our new SSL console, there’s a gleam to the sound”

Dream Talk features ten carefully-crafted songs that sees the acclaim duo further mastering a sound and body of work that is focused, stylish and incredibly seductive. “The genesis for a lot of these songs came from dreams. Every night I would write down the dreams I could remember,” Still Corners’ Murray says. “While recording I would pull out my book of dreams and sing over various looped phrases Greg had been working on. The repetitive nature of the looping and singing almost felt like going into a trance. A lot of the songs came from that process, it was fun and what I thought were sort of ramblings ended up surprising us with their various meanings and imagery.”

Dream Talk‘s first single “Secret World” pairs Murray’s imitable smoky croon with a shimmering and looping Western-tinged guitar line, twinkling and atmospheric synths and a gently driving rhythm. While continuing a remarkable run of dreamy yet alluring material with a subtle hint of danger — like the mythical sirens on the rock seducing sailors to their eventual doom. Thematically, the song ruminates upon the perils of obsession. 

“Sometimes the thought of someone, wanting to know them, get into their world is dangerous,” Tessa Murray explains. “The real person doesn’t matter anymore, just the fantasy of them, which is totally wrong but feels right.”

South in Southern England, the accompanying video for “Secret World” follows Still Corners’ Tessa Murray in a lush and verdant garden, in which she encounters some strange and fantastical creatures. “And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles,” the band says of the video.