Category: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Monophonics and Kendra Morris Team Up on a Soulful Meditation on Life on the Road

Since their formation, Bay Area-based soul outfit and JOVM mainstays Monophonics —  Kelly Finnigan (lead vocals, keys), Austin Bohlman (drums), Ryan Scott (trumpet, backing vocals, percussion), and Max Ramey (bass) – have developed and honed a sound that continues in the classic and beloved tradition of Stax Records, Muscle Shoals, Daptone Records and Dunham Records, recorded on vintage analog recording gear and paired with a healthy amount of old-fashioned woodshedding and craft. “We’re from the same school as the producers from the studios we love. We use the tools that we have to make the best records we can,” the band explained in press notes. 

Monophonics’ third album, 2020’s It’s Only Us, which featured “Chances,” and “It’s Only Us” received praise from the likes of Billboard, Flood, Cool Hunting and American Songwriter, while selling 10,000 physical copies and amassing over 20 million streams across the various digital streaming platforms. Thematically, It’s Only Us touched upon unity in a fractious and divisive world, strength, resilience, acceptance — and of course, love.

Their fourth album, last year’s Kelly Finnigan-produced Sage Motel derived its title from a real place — The Sage Motel. What started as a quaint motor lodge and common pitstop for travelers and truckers in the 1940s, morphed into a bohemian hang out by the 1960s and 1970s: Artists, musicians and vagabonds of all stripes would stop there, as seedy ownership pumped obnoxious mounts of money into high-end renovations, which eventually attracted some of the most prominent acts of the era. But when the money ran out, the motel quickly devolved into a hot sheet hotel.

If The Sage Motel’s walls could talk, they’d tell you tales of human highs and lows, of a place where big dreams and broken hearts live, and where people frequently have found themselves at a crossroads — often without quite knowing how they wound up there. Thematically, the album tackles all of those subjects — with the band further cementing their reputation as one of the world’s premier psychedelic soul bands.

JOVM mainstay Kendra Morris is a Florida-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician, and multi-disciplinary artist. As a singer/songwriter and musician, Morris can trace the origins of her music career to discovering the joys of multi-tracking and harmonizing with herself on a karaoke machine in the closet of her childhood home. 

Morris went on to play in cover bands in Florida before relocating to New York with her band, which played her original material. Her first band split up and she dealt with the aftermath by writing material alone on an 8-track recorder in her closet. Sometime after, she met longtime collaborator and producer Jeremy Page and signed to Wax Poetics, who released her full-length debut, 2012’s Banshee. 

The Florida-born, New York-based JOVM mainstay self-released her sophomore effort 2016’s Babble. She then went on to collaborate with DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, MF DOOM, Czarface, Ghostface Killah, Dennis Coffey and Dave Sitek among others. And while being a grizzled, New York scene vet, Morris’ work generally embodies a broader sense of American culture, drawing from a wide array of influences across music and film dating back to the mid 20th Century. 

Last year’s Nine Lives was the Florida-born, New York-based JOVM’s mainstay’s first full-length album in about a decade. The album represented a major turning point in her life both professionally and personally for Morris: The album heralds the beginning of a new chapter, an evolution to the next level of adulthood — and the first on her new label,  Karma Chief Records. Thematically, the album’s material encapsulates moments from what could easily be nine lifetimes lived over a chronological time period — or nine lives lived simultaneously in parallel and convergent realties in the multiverse.

Last year, the JOVM mainstays and labelmates toured together and they’ve finally collaborated on a song together — the woozy and trippy soul jam “Untitled Visions.” Built around a strutting yet cinematic arrangement that serves as a perfect vehicle for Finnigan’s and Morris’ soulful vocals, “Untitled Visions” is about the hectic and bizarre lifestyle that comes from being on tour. The song’s narrators dive into the feelings of boredom, anxiety, anticipation, stress, fun and more that one feels while living a life on the road.

The accompanying video feature edited footage of 50s and 60s era cars driving on the highways, byways and streets, flowers bursting to life and then contracting, a Fred Astaire-like dancer performing — and seemingly heading off to the next tour stop.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Portland’s Small Million Shares Anthemic Ballad “FOMO”

Rooted in the collaboration of longtime creative partners Ryan Linder and Malachi Graham, Portland, OR-based indie pop outfit Small Million specializes in pairing deeply affecting sonic production informed by Linder’s background as a filmmaker with smart, lived-in lyrics about intuition and inhibition, losing control and ending up in unexpected places, being willing to fuck up, bodies being joyful, bodies being hurt and more. The end result is work that’s simultaneously intimate yet epic, delicate yet fierce. 

Since 2018’s Young Fools EP, several years of experiencing chronic pain have led Small Million’s frontperson Malachi Graham to deep explorations of embodiment that have changed everything from her singing voice to her dance movies to her observations of human frailty. “There’s one side of chronic pain that leads you towards intuition, self-discovery, and listening closely to yourself. But it also means you end up sitting on the side of the room a lot, watching people and paying attention. Also you’re pissed,” Graham explains. 

Linder and Graham have been writing together as a duo but they recently expanded into a quartet, with the addition of Small Skies‘ Ben Tyler (drums) and Lo Pony‘s Kale Chesney (bass, backing vocals). Fittingly, their evolution into a quartet has resulted in the band’s sound and approach expanding to encompass more rock-based instrumentation and energy. 

Small Million have been releasing material throughout the course of the year, including “Burnout,” a hook-driven bit of pop built around Graham’s ethereal melody, glistening guitar lines and a driving rhythm section. But underneath the infectiousness of the song is a sort of revenge fantasy about the feminine urge to destroy the male self-serving and flat vision of you, and dance in the rubble and flames. “My mom always told me to beware of being a ‘flattering mirror;’ to watch out for people who adore you because they love how you make them feel about themselves,” Small Million’s Malachi Graham explains.

“FOMO,” the Portland-based outfit’s latest single is big, heart-worn-on-sleeve ballad built around Graham’s yearning delivery, glistening synths, reverb-soaked drums paired with enormous, shout along worthy hooks. At its core, “FOMO” is an earnest and swooning celebration of devotion — both platonic and romantic.

“This video is a love letter to the fast food napkins in your glove box, to the slice of pie behind hazy glass. It’s a reminder to leave cash tips, and make your friends run errands with you,” Kale Chesney, the accompanying video’s director says of the video. “Life is hard enough as it is, don’t forget to find beauty in the mundane. If I had to summarize Ryan and Malachi’s friendship from the back seat It would boil down to this simple gesture: during a drive, of any length of time, the two of them will constantly show each other songs they love and are inspired by. But every single time they press play, the end up turning the volume down 15 seconds into it because one of them is so genuinely interested to hear what the other is saying. I’ve never seen anything so sweet and and gently chaotic.”

Small Million’s forthcoming album Passenger will be released through Tender Loving Empire. Be on the lookout for it, y’all.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Low Praise Shares Existential Meditation “Time Is Calling”

Oakland-based post punk trio Low Praise — Andrew (drums), Chris (guitar vocals) and Warren (baritone guitar, vocals) — have specialized in the sort of nervous energy paired and chanted hooks that bring late 70s post-punk bands like The Fall and Wire to mind. 

Low Praise’s full-length debut DRESSING was released yesterday. Recorded over the course of two sessions split apart by the peak of the pandemic, the album captures the band being forced to evolve and collaborate remotely, leading to experimentation in song structure and their overall sound. When the band was able to reconvene, they were able to reimagine the material in a stripped down, live band format. The end result reportedly sees the band writing material that’s their most diverse and wide-reaching while touching upon the anxiety and helplessly they individually and collectively felt during the pandemic. 

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the past month or so, you might recall that I wrote about “Forget That It’s Summer,” a single built around looping and angular, reverb-drenched guitar attack and a nervous, motorik groove paired with chanted, mantra-like hooks. Sure it brings Wire, The Fall and even Blessed to mind, while evoking an eerily family existential dread and despair. 

“‘Forget That It’s Summer’ was the first song we wrote together during the Covid depths, during our shared peak fear, anxiety and loneliness,” Low Praise’s Warren says in press notes. “As a band that had always jammed stuff out in person and worked off that energy this song was originally composed through chopping up loops, file sharing and experimentation. We actually built a complete version of this song as a weird loop construct with a ton of layers, mostly as a way to still make something, anything together during that self-imposed separation. We then reconstructed it as a stripped down live band version once we could finally get together again. So I think you kind of still hear that in the song that it was born from a pretty different process.

Thematically, this was a period where I think we were all mega-bumming and at the same time getting the immense appreciation and perspective for all of the little things you take for granted in normal life that we all lost access to during that period. Just being able to see your friends, make music together, have physical contact with the people you love. It was a period of forced reflection and forced appreciation. All put to a dance groove for some reason.” 

“Time Is Calling,” DRESSING‘s second single is built around a decidedly 120 Minutes-era alt-rock take on post-punk featuring a sort of jangling guitar attack, thunderous drumming and the band’s penchant for pairing arena rock friendly hooks with an unerring sense of melodicism. But much like its predecessor, the song is rooted in existential dread — of time and peers passing you by while your life seemingly sputters in front of your eyes. In this line of work, the bitter feeling of failure is all too familiar. 

“This song is about accepting impermanence. Like a lot of folks the past few years (especially), I was riding a wave of anxiety, depression, and uncertainty of what the future was going to be like. At the time I was nearing 40, unemployed due to Covid related layoffs, filled with existential dread, and pondering what I’ve done with my life and what to do with the rest of it,” Low Praise’s Chris Stevens explains. “I’d often wake up in the middle of the night with all of these thoughts and try to find a way to calm myself down in order to get a couple of hours of sleep. I already had the phrase ‘time is calling’ in my head, along with the main guitar riff and vocal melody. So, I would just run through lyric ideas based around that until I’d eventually fall asleep. When we all got together to go over the song idea, we ended up fleshing out the basic structure in one night pretty much. It’s just one of those songs that felt strong and we didn’t want to overthink too much.” 

Directed and edited by Gregory Downing and Bad Acid Presents, the accompanying video for “Time Is Calling” is centered around slickly edited stock footage of old computer and manufacturing technology, time lapse footage of 1970s New York that references the passing of time while nodding at Kraftwerk.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Genesis Owusu Shares Breakneck Anthem “Leaving The Light”

Over the course of the past couple of years, I’ve managed to spill quite a bit of virtual ink covering the acclaimed and rapidly rising Ghanian-born, Canberra-based JOVM mainstay Genesis Owusu. With the release of his debut EP, 2017’s Cardrive, Owusu — born Kofi Owusu-Anash — quickly established a reputation for being a restless, genre-blurring chameleon, whose work is rooted in powerful and deeply personal storytelling. 

Owusu-Anash’s critically applauded full-length debut, 2021’s Smiling With No Teeth as the acclaimed Ghanian-Aussie JOVM mainstay explained is essentially about ” “performing what the world wants to see, even if you don’t have the capacity to do so honestly. Slathering honey on your demons to make them palatable to people, who only want to know if you’re okay, if the answer is yes. That’s the idea, turned into beautiful, youthful, ugly, timeless and strange music.”

Building upon the momentum of Smiling With No Teeth, Owusu released the Missing Molars EP in July 2021. The five-track EP served as an accompaniment to his full-length debut. Recorded during the Smiling With No Teeth sessions, the Missing Molars EP hit the cutting floor and didn’t make the album, but they manage to further continue the soul-baring narrative of its predecessor. “Missing Molars is an extension of Smiling With No Teeth,” Owusu-Anash explains. “A small collection of tracks from the SWNT sessions that take the already established world-building groundwork of the album, and expand that universe into new and unexplored places. These are all tracks that I felt were special in their own right and needed to be shared. This is music without boundaries.” 

Adding to a breakthrough year, Owusu-Anash made his Stateside late night TV debut and went on several sold-out tours to support both SWNT and Missing Molars EP. SWNT landed on a number of Best of Lists across the globe — with  triple j naming it their album of the year. The album also earned four ARIA Awards. including Album of the Year, Hip Hop Release, Artwork and Independent Release. 

Building upon a rapidly growing profile both nationally and internationally, last year was an even busier year for the JOVM mainstay: He spent much of last year on the road, making stops across the global festival circuit, with sets at Lollapalooza, Osheaga and others. He also made his headlining Stateside debut, which included a high-energy, captivating stop at Bowery Ballroom, which I covered for my friends at Musicology.xyz. The JOVM also opened for a serious of internationally acclaimed and renowned artists including Khraungbin, Thundercat, and Tame Impala.

The JOVM mainstay also managed to release two standalone singles over the past calendar year or so:

  • “GTFO,” a woozy and anthemic song featuring a looped, warbling choir and wobbling bass serving as an eerie yet soaring bed for Owusu-Anash’s rapid-fire flow, military beats, explosive cymbal crashes and a shout-along-worthy chorus. While further cementing his reputation for being a restlessly experimental artist, the song also finds the listener thrown even deeper into the Ghanian-Aussie artist’s innermost world with an unvarnished, unsettling honesty. 

  • “Get Inspired,” a Dann Hume and Andrew Klippel co-produced seamless synthesis of elements of New Wave, EDM, punk and hip-hop centered around an angular and propulsive bass line, a relentless mootrik groove, distorted guitars and the JOVM’s punchily delivered lyrical jabs and uppercuts. Continuing Owusu-Anash’s reputation for boldly defying and mashing genres, there’s even a falsetto delivered breakdown roughly halfway through the song. (A portion of “Get Inspired” was used in an Apple Fitness+ ad campaign. So you’ve probably heard it without realizing it.)

You might also recall that Grammy-nominated musician and producer ZHU remixed “Get Inspired” turning the menacing hybrid punk song into a grimy, club track centered around glistening synth arpeggios, skittering, trap triplets paired with tweeter and woofer rattling beats. ZHU retains Owusu-Anash’s rapid fire lyrical jabs and uppercuts but also contributes a couple of auto-tuned yet swaggering bars to a remix that steps up the world-dominating swagger.

Owusu’s highly-anticipated sophomore album STRUGGLER is slated for an August 16, 2023 release through OURNESS/AWAL. Where Smiling With No Teeth thematically uncovered one Black man’s battles against — and with — depression and racism, STRUGGLER is reportedly an exploration of the chaos and absurdity of life, our ability to endure and how to get through it all. The album’s material is deeply inspired by a close friend hitting the brink and coming through the other side, along with questions of life and beauty that he found himself contemplating during readings of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Recorded between the States and Australia, STRUGGLER‘s producers traverse musical genres — and includes Jason Evigan, who has worked with RUFUS DU SOL and SZA; Mikey Freedom Hart, who worked on Jon Batiste’s 2021 Grammy of the Year Album, We Are; Sol Was, who worked on Beyoncé’s Renaissance; and his long-time collaborators and producers Andrew Klippel and Dave Hammer.

Additionally, Owusu has collaborated with Lisa Reihana on the album’s complete visual identity. Reihana’s work has been showcased in elite institutions throughout the States and the EU, including the Venice Biennale for her critically-acclaimed video installation, In Pursuit of Venus [Infected]. Her work spans across a diverse of media — including film, costume and body adornment and video installation, and as a result she has earned a reputation as a world-renowned artist and producer, who engages in thought-provoking dialogues around the concert of culture.

STRUGGLER‘s urgent first official single “Leaving the Light’ begins with a spine-crawling run of bass notes before quickly morphing into a breakneck Freedom of Choice-era DEVO-like anthem paired with the JOVM’s swaggering, larger-than-life presence and his unerring knack for rousing, shout along worthy choruses with a punk rock snarl. At its core, “Leaving The Light” is a fervent and cathartic song about survival and perseverance that feels necessary.

Directed by Lisa Reihana, the accompanying video for “Leaving the Light” maneuvering through a computer-generated post apocalyptic hellscape.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Altin Gün Share Bonkers Visual for Disco-Tinged Banger “Doktor Civanim”

Released earlier this year through ATO Records, the acclaimed Amsterdam-based Turkish psych pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Altin Gün‘s fourth album Aşk is a return to the 70s Anatolian folk rock sound that characterized their first two groundbreaking albums while capturing the urgency and power of their famously propulsive live show. Recorded using vintage equipment and techniques, the album’s ten songs feature visionary new interpretations and readings of traditional Turkish folk tunes, revealing how these old, beloved songs remain eternally resonant and ripe for constant reinterpretation. 

“These songs have been covered so many times, always,” Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says. “But not really in psychedelic pop versions,” Jasper Verhulst adds. “It’s definitely connecting more with a live sound – almost like a live album. We, as a band, just going into a rehearsal space together and creating music together instead of demoing at home.”

Aşk features:

  • The band’s dazzling reinvention of “Lelim Ley,” a classic song of lost love and exile, which features lyrics written by the late Turkish novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948), taken from Ali’s 1937 short story “Ses.” Lelim Ley” was joined by music composed by Livaneli and released in 1975. Since then, the song has been lovingly embraced as one of the most well-known and beloved songs among Turkish people across the world. 

  • “Rakiya Su Katamam” is a kaleidoscopic, space rock/psych rock-like take on the folk standard composed by Turkish writer/theologian Mustafa Öztürk, featuring a relentless motorik groove paired with wah-wah pedaled guitar, Dasdemir’s plaintive yet sultry delivery, and a scorching guitar solo paired with the band’s unerring knack for razor sharp hooks.

  • “Su Siziyor,” a lysergic-tinged banger built around a sinuous and propulsive disco-tinged groove, Merve Dasdemir’s plaintive and yearning delivery paired with looping, glistening guitar and the JOVM mainstays unerring knack for crafting ridiculous hooks.

“Doktor Civanim,” Aşk‘s fourth and latest single is a disco-tinged banger, built around glistening synth oscillations that recall Giorgio Moroder‘s legendary 70s output,. relentless four-on-the-floor, a sinuous and ridiculously funky bass line paired with Nile Rodgers-like guitar paired with Merve Dasdemir’s sultry delivery. Simply put it’s breezy and ridiculously fun.

Directed by Ömer Deniz, the accompanying video for “Doktor Civanim” is a gloriously bonkers, sci-fi romp that features a collection of green and white-clad, gold high heel wearing, dancing nurses in a dilapidated hospital, an open heart surgery with a doctor wearing a suit, and plenty of “wait, what did I just see” moments.

“After the sci-fi movie set we all lived through during the pandemic, we wanted to recreate this song as a tribute to all the doctors and healthcare workers,”  Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: RVG Shares Shimmering and Earnestly Defiant Ballad “Common Ground”

Acclaimed and rising Aussie outfit and JOVM mainstays  RVG — currently Romy Vager (vocals, guitar), Gregor’s and Hearing’s Reuben Bloxham (guitar), Rayon Moon‘s Marc Nolte (drums), and Isabelle Wallace (bass) — have released two critically applauded albums:

  • 2017’s A Quality of Mercy, which was recorded live off the floor at Melbourne’s iconic rock ‘n’ roll pub, The Tote Hotel. Initially released to little fanfare, the album, much to their surprise received critical acclaim both nationally and internationally, landing on a number of end-of-year Best of Lists. 

  • 2020’s Victor Van Vugt-produced Feral was released by Fire Records globally, excluding Australia and New Zealand, where it was released by Our Golden Friend. The album received breathless praise nationally and internationally, with Rolling Stone Australia calling the album “the record of a lifetime.”

The Melbourne-based band’s highly-anticipated third album Brain Worms is slated for a June 2, 2023 release through Fire Records globally with Our Golden Friend releasing the album in Australia and New Zealand. Between the band’s members, Brain Worms captures the band at their most confident point they’ve ever been in as a band. Sonically, the album reportedly sees the band moving past their influences, trying new things and pushing themselves towards what they believe is their best album of their growing catalog to date. 

“Hype is scary. After two years of COVID it felt like the hype had gone down so we were able to just do stuff,” RVG’s Romy Vager says. “This time around we were like, this is what we’re doing, we’re taking control, we’re taking risks, and we’re going to make an album that sounds big so that when we hear it on the radio we want to hear it again. If we could only make one more album, it would be this one.”

Deriving its title from the hyper-recognizable experience of each day bearing witness to a world of private obsession being aired out in the infinite, Brain Worms may not be wholly new territory for the acclaimed Melbourne post-punk outfit and its frontperson, but there is a newfound radical acceptance. Recorded in London’s Snap Studios with James Trevacus, the ten-song album surges with lush sounds and clear intentions — and the magic of an acoustic guitar, once owned by Kate Bush, given to her by Tears for Fears, who legend has it, wrote “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” on it.

Over the past couple of months I’ve written about three of the album’s singles: 

  • “Nothing Really Changes,” an angular, 80s New Wave-inspired track rooted in enormous arena rock friendly riffage, paired with the Aussie outfit’s long-held penchant for anthemic hooks and choruses and Vager’s lived-in, heart-worn-on-sleeve lyricism: The song features a narrator desperately missing someone while confronting the lingering ghosts of their relationship — with frustration, despair, anger and a begrudging acceptance. As the band’s Vager explains, the song “started off as a songwriting experiment to write something catchy with an obnoxious riff, a cross between Divinyls and ‘Smoke on the Water.‘ It’s a song about missing someone but protecting yourself from being hurt.”

  • “Squid,” a rousing arena rock friendly anthem that brings Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Starfish-era The Church to mind: Swirling and shimmering guitar textures are paired with angular guitar attack, thunderous drumming, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses. But while rooted in an absurd, Kafkaesque-like nightmare in which the song’s narrator imagines what might happen if they were to go back in time, step on something and become a squid, Vager’s delivery is so desperately earnest and urgent that it feels very real.

  • “Midnight Sun,” an urgent, hurtling ripper built around Vager’s defiant, furious delivery, jangling guitars, and a thunderous and propulsive rhythms action paired with the band’s unerring knack for rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses Fittingly, the song deals with matters of disbelief, and what it feels like to live in a culture — and a world — that often prefers to argue about semantics rather than save the world from burning. If it hits close to home, it fucking should. It’s our current hellscape, where we constantly deal with a seemingly unending and pervasive, cynical, self-serving stupidity and myopia. 

Brain Worms‘ fourth and latest single, album opening “Common Ground” is a shimmering and anthemic ballad rooted in heart-worn-proudly-on-sleeve earnestness and lived-in personal experience. And at the center, Vager’s commanding presence, delivering the song’s lyrics with a mix of heartache, weariness, resignation, yearning, acceptance that can only come with the recognition of a relationship being over — irrevocably and irreparably over. “Common Ground” is in many ways about heartache and those moments of begrudging acceptance in our lives; but it’s also about the resolve to defiantly and proudly dust yourself off and figure out what’s next. If you’ve been there — and I have been many times in my life — the song speaks of the experience with a profound wisdom, unvarnished honesty and deep sense of hope.

“I think that there’s something relieving in knowing that no matter what you do you can’t sway certain peoples feelings for you,” says Vager. “I wrote ‘Common Ground’ in a deep depression but it has evolved into a mantra to tell myself that there are some things I am unable to change, and that’s okay.”

Directed by Tom Campbell and shot in a gorgeous black and white, the accompanying video for “Common Ground” features the members of RVG performing the song in the round at a local gym while dancer Jayden Lewis performs striking choreography by Zoee Marsh that sees Lewis physically struggling — first to get up off the floor, and then against his own body.

“Together we wanted to do something that was stripped back, reduced to its simplest form, with only the most basic and essential features,” Campbell explains. “There is no contrivance, no attempt to cover up or hide the infrastructure of the band’s instruments or our film gear, we embrace that chaos, but we also wanted to play with our audiences expectations to land somewhere in the middle of narrative and performance. Visually, I wanted to represent the struggle I heard in the lyrics in a physical way. How we fight these feelings, how we try to beat them down, or free ourselves from them. These feelings get inside us, under our skin – ridding ourselves of them, or exorcising them from within, becomes a kind of exercise in healing.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Mike Rogers Shares Anthemic and Urgent “Live Out Loud”

Amsterdam-based indie dance trio Mike Rogers features three of the country’s rising electronic music artists: Mike Mago, TWR72, and Kita Menari mastermind Micha de Jonge. The project can trace its origins two decades ago, back to the early 2000s: Mago and TWR72 met while DJ’ing Dutch underground electro parties. That raw and energetic scene saw the pair playing a mix of electro pop, French touch and French house, fidget and techno.

Naturally, as the years passed by, the pair individually developed their own unique sound and approaches — but they realized that they had long held a similar dream: to start a live act inspired by the bands they grew up with, as well as Miike Snow, Foals, Editors, Van She, and Goose among others. Mago and TWR72 started Mike Rogers as a way to challenge themselves creative and professionally, while further developing as producers and DJs. The duo then recruited Kita Menari’s Micha de Jonge, who contributes his big, plaintive vocals to their hook-driven, rousingly anthemic, crowd-pleasing sound.

The trio’s full-debut Live Out Loud is slated for release this year. The album reportedly sees the Dutch trio crafting material that’s a slick mix of analog, digital and retro sounds with a decidedly modern feel. During the album’s creative process, they all agreed that it felt like second nature for them to be bold and make big musical gestures without sensationalism. Interestingly, that creative approach wound up informing the album’s central thematic concern. “Why do people always have to choose between black and white?” The Dutch electro pop trio asks. “You don’t have to choose between extremes. You can be modest in your opinions but still live out loud!”

“Go out there and live in the moment. You don’t always have to choose sides. The music represents this throughout,” the trio add. “All styles from opposite sides are mixed to create a perfect balance in the middle or leave the listener with an ambiguous feeling. 

Last year, I wrote about album single “Can’t Stop,” an anthemic bit of post punk/dance punk built around angular guitar tack, de Jonge’s achingly plaintive delivery and a motorik groove paired with euphoria-inducing hooks. While sounding a bit like Radio 4, Interpol, and Editors, “Can’t Stop” as the trio explains is about a lonely man, who looks back at his life: As a young man, he tries to do everything right, but always feels as though he is failing since people don’t seem to understand him. Battling a personal struggle with his past, the lonely man protests against this feeling, with the hopes that he can get rid of those negative thoughts. 

Written in 2021, the trio explain, “In our minds that year was a year where we had a lot of questions. Like, what is freedom, what should one fight for, how should one fight for something, how do we move forward as a society and also, how do we judge our past behaviour. We believe questions are the biggest inspirator. We’re trying to ask questions more than to send a message, although that’s also a bit of a vision we want to share.” 

Live Out Loud‘s latest single, album title track “Live Out Loud” is a rousingly anthemic bop built around glistening synths, shimmering guitar lines that bring A Flock of Seagulls to mind and de Jonge’s earnest delivery paired with the Dutch trio’s unerring knack for enormous, rousingly anthemic, shout-along worthy choruses.

“The song was written during a period where, we felt, far sides of the political spectrum were very present,” Mike Rogers explains. “We wanted to motivate the group known as the silent middle to stand up for their (slightly more nuanced) thoughts/visions/ideas. We also wanted to seek overlap in standing up for your idea and being outgoing whilst losing oneself in the moment. We all have to live out loud more. If you don’t live life fully, you don’t live life at all. You have to live it out loud to make sense of it, because otherwise ‘you’ll never know what it’s all about.’ And if you know what it’s all about, you have to fight for it.” 

The trio adds “We encourage to ask questions out loud. To share your uncertainties out loud. To say, I don’t know, yet I care. To forgive out loud. To live out loud.”

Directed by Rens Polman, the accompanying video for “Live Out Loud” is a slick and trippy mix of A.I. that follows a series of characters escaping reality for a digitally processed world. “If you don’t live life fully you don’t live it,” the Dutch trio say. “You have to live it loud to make sense of it, because else ‘you’ll never know what it’s all about’. And if you know what it’s all about you have to fight for it. “‘Live Out Loud’ is about the current situation where social media and A.I. are increasingly taking over our lives. Reality is slowly being lost and we mainly experience happiness in the digital world. As a result of A.I. and social media, reality is becoming increasingly fused. However, we are experiencing it more and more as reality and getting further immersed in it. We are losing control over what it truly means to ‘really’ experience something. The digital world acts as a shot of dopamine. With the music video, we are demonstrating how people are literally being swallowed up by a fantasy world. A world that makes our brains happy. A world where we can experience everything we could possibly want. It is limitless. However, this is contrasted with the fact that we often forget about our own real lives. The life where we can truly experience things.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Dream Wife Share Urgent and Incisive “Who Do You Wanna Be?”

London-based punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Dream Wife — Rakel Mjöll (vocals) (she/her), Alice Go (guitar, vocals) (she/her) and Bella Podapec (bass, vocals) (they/them) — will be releasing their highly anticipated and long-awaited third album Social Lubrication through Lucky Number on June 9, 2023.

Throughout their career, the trio has been remarkably adept at merging the political and the playful, and Social Lubrication further cements that reputation. Forceful, vital statements are hidden within hot and heavy dance floor friendly anthems about making out, having fun and staying curious. In the JOVM mainstay act’s words, the album is: “Hyper lusty rock and roll with a political punch, exploring the alchemy of attraction, the lust for life, embracing community and calling out the patriarchy. With a healthy dose of playfulness and fun thrown in.”

There is a sense of fun and openness that is central to Social Lubrication, as well. “There’s a lot of lust in this album and taking the piss out of yourself and everyone you know,” Rakel Mjöll says. “It’s almost quite juvenile in that way.”

“The album is speaking to systemic problems that cannot be glossed over by lube,” Dream Wife’s Bella Podpadec says. “The things named in the songs are symptoms of f-ed up structures. And you can’t fix that. You need to pull it apart.”

Perhaps more than ever, the live show is at the core of the album and its material. “The live show is the truth of the band,” Alice Go says. “That’s at the heart of what we do and of the statements we’re making.” For the members of Dream Wife — and of any band, really — the live show is where the band and fans can come together in a shared moment of community. And to that end, the album is a celebration of community and a big ol’ middle finger to the social barriers that are enforced to sever connection, playfulness, curiosity and sexual empowerment. “Music is one of the only forms of people experiencing an emotion together in a visceral, physical, real way,” says Go. “It’s cathartic to the systemic issues that are being called out across the board in the record. Music isn’t the cure, but it’s the remedy. That’s what Social Lubrication is: the positive glue that can create solidarity and community.” 

An energetic, pedal-to-the-metal sound explodes through the album’s material. And you can hear it the loud, dirty riffs and shout-along worthy choruses specifically crafted for shaking asses, bouncing around and yelling joyously in shared spaces with friends and strangers. For the band’s Go, who produced the album, it was important to capture and bottle that joyful, frenetic feeling the band’s members all felt. “We wanted to get that rawness and energy across in a way that hadn’t been done before,” she says. 

 In the lead-up to Social Lubrication‘s release next month, I’ve written about three of the album’s released singles to date:

“Leech,” an urgent, post-punk inspired ripper that saw the band’s Mjöll alternating between spoken-word-like delivery for the song’s verses and feral shouting for the song’s choruses. Mjöll’s vocal delivery is paired with an alternating song structure that features looping and wiry guitar bursts for the song’s verses and explosive, power chord-driven riffage for the song’s choruses. The song is a tense, uneasy and forceful, mosh pit friendly anthem for our uncertain, fucked up time, that addresses the inherent double standards of power — while urgently calling for more empathy.” 

“It’s an anthem for empathy. For solidarity,” the JOVM mainstays explain. “Musically tense and withheld, erupting to angry cathartic crescendos. The push and pull of the song lyrically and musically expands and contracts, stating and calling out the double standards of power. Nobody really wins in a patriarchal society. We all lose. We could all use more empathy. As our first song to be released in a while, we wanted to write something that feels like letting an animal out of a cage. It’s out. And it’s out for blood…”

“Hot (Don’t Date A Musician),” a Gang of Four-like, tongue-in-cheek ripper inspired by Mjöll’s grandmother’s sage advice — despite the fact that she herself, dated many musicians in her day — while wryly poking fun at musicians and the music adjacent, the band included. “Dating musicians is a nightmare,” Mjöll explains. “Evoking imagery of late night make-outs with fuckboy/girl/ambiguously-gendered musicians on their mattress after being seduced by song-writing chat. The roles being equally reversed. Having a laugh together and being able to poke fun at ourselves is very much at the heart of this band. This song encapsulates our shared sense of humour. Sonically it is the lovechild of CSS and Motorhead. It has our hard, live, rock edge combined with cheeky and playful vocals.”

“Orbit,” a dance punk ripper. built around a a propulsive disco-inspired post punk rhythm, bursts of wiry guitars paired with enormous hooks and Mjöll’s sultry rock goddess-like delivery that recalls Fever to Tell-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Echoes-era The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem among others. Much like its predecessor, the song is fun and rooted in a sense of youthful adventure and possibility. 

“Written through the joy of jamming together and locking into the groove like a multi limbed space age organism, ‘Orbit’ has a dance rock edge from the early noughties of bands like New Young Pony Club and Yeah Yeah Yeahs,” the band explains. “Lyrically, it was inspired by post-lockdown London coming back to life and sharing a space through friendship and community. And how each day you never know what’s in store for you or how a stranger can become someone close to you – for a day, a heartbeat, a phase, or a lifetime.” 

The album’s fourth and latest single “Who Do You Wanna Be” continues a remarkable run of scuzzy post punk rippers built around slashing power chords, relentless four-on-the-floor and rousingly anthemic, shout-along worthy choruses paired with Mjöll’s delivery, which sees her alternating between flirty and bitterly sarcastic within a turn of a phrase. The song sees the band taking on capitalism and faux-activism — with a lived-in annoyance and bemusement. As they explain, the song is “about running on the capitalist treadmill and falling face first on the pavement. Hollow slogans, social media activism without action, leftist infighting, monetising feminism, ‘girl boss,’ all soul crushing nonsense. Capitalism consumes everything. We should tear down the unreachable, anxiety filled idea of perfectionism, and move from hyper individualised narrative to collective action to create hopeful, rebellious, collective, systems of care. This is a call to arms for change.

The accompanying stylishly shot video features the band performing the song in an abandoned leisure center pool in East London, and captures the frenetic energy of their live show.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays The Murlocs Share Soulful “Queen Pinky”

Melbourne-based psych punks and JOVM mainstays The Murlocs — King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard‘s Ambrose Kenny-Smith (vocals, guitar, harmonica) and The Orb‘s Callum Shortal (guitar), Beans‘ Matt Blach (drummer), Crepes‘ Tim Karmouche (keys) Pipe-Eye’s and King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard’s Cook Craig (bass) — will be releasing their highly-anticipated sixth album, Calm Ya Farm Friday through their longtime label home ATO Records.

Calm Ya Farm derives its title from “something my partner always says to me when I’m feeling stressed-out or anxious. It made sense with the whole country theme of the record, but it’s generally a good reminder for day to day life,” The Murlocs’ Kenny-Smith explains. Fittingly, the album, which sees the band twisting their sharply crafted psych-punk sound with country rock-conventing and pairing it with pointed commentary on the vicious tone of current political discourse, the brain-addling effect of conspiracy theories, and more. Arguably, their most collaborative effort to date, the album features more elaborate and sophisticated arrangements and sees the band’s individual members creating space to pursue their own eccentric impulses. With this record we tried to steer away from all the distortion and dirt and grit, or at least let the grit come off a bit more clean-sounding,” says Kenny-Smith.

While they still deal with the frenzied tension they’ve long been known for, the album’s material also meant to ease the listener into a much-needed and more serene state of mind. The album’s last single before its release, “Queen Pinky” is built around a funky strut, twinkling keys and Kenny-Smith’s yearning vocal, Calm Ya Farm is slow-burning, Quiet Storm-like take on their sound — and arguably, the most earnest and sincere song of their growing catalog: The song is Kenny-Smith’s sprawling, spacey and heartfelt serenade to his newlywed wife. And as a result, it exudes an enviably deep contentment.

Directed by Hayden Somerville, the accompanying video for “Queen Pinky” sees the members of the JOVM mainstays classing it up, performing the song in suits at a jazz club-like performance space along with an evil Kenny-Smith and good Kenny-Smith

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: m o k r o ï e Shares Post-Apocalyptic “Natural”

Francesco Virgilio is a French electronic music producer and artist, best known as the creative mastermind behind m o k r o ï e, an electronic music project that specializes in a sound that features elements of electro pop, electro soul and industrial that sees him pairing music with unique imagery and video through three releases, Global System Error, Machines & Soul and Works2k21.

Released earlier this year, Virgilio’s latest m o k r o ï e single “Natural” is cinematic bit of electronic music built around layers of glistening and glitchy synths and skittering beats that brings John Carpenter soundtracks to mind.

The accompanying video by Virgilio features two characters in a post-apocalyptic world trying to escape an ongoing natural disaster, which is heading towards them. Even then they think they’ve escaped into an idyllic paradise, nature’s brutal force is inescapable.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Woolley Shares Retro-Futuristic Banger “Funky Noises”

Patrice Woolley is a Monégasque-born multidisciplinary artist. After completing his studies, he spent a few years as a decorator in his native Monaco but then relocated to Nice, where he experimented with Art Deco. and then became a decorator/scenographer — and then a finally a theater manager for Galabru, Lagerfeld, Gilbert and others. He then steps out into the spotlight as an actor, with a a decade-long stint at Nice’s Théâtre du Fou.

Woolley eventually relocated to Paris, where he worked a decorator, stage manager, actor, draftsman actor and painter. He spent some time as a decorator at the Monte Carlo Opera when it was in Paris, and was a temp at the French School of Press officers (EPAP3), where he taught design and editing courses.

Back in 2019, the Monégasque-born multidisciplinary artist releases his full-length debut, SILLIS, a pop/rock effort under the moniker Woolley. His sophomore album PULSATIONS MIND’S features the swaggering”Funky Noises,” banger built around buzzing synth oscillations and tweeter and woofer rattling thump that sounds like a synthesis of Tweekend-era The Crystal Method, Out of the Black-era Boys Noize and Daft Punk.

Fittingly, the video by Woolley features a collection of dancing robots, explosive lights and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Berlin’s Wind Mile Shares Dreamy and Atmospheric “Alone”

WIND MILE is a Berlin-based emerging and mysterious singer/songwriter, musician and photographer, also known as Antonin Côme. Music allows the emerging Berlin-based artist to shut down the scientific/logical mind and follow his instincts.

Côme debut EP was written during a rather liminal period of his life: between Germany and France, and between his time as a student and adulthood. The EP’s material is rooted in the ambition to craft a coherent batch of songs that the listener can dive into repeatedly — built around guitar arpeggios, glistening synths and propulsive bass lines paired with dreamily delivered vocals.

The EP’s latest single, the dreamy”Alone” is built around glistening guitar arpeggios, twinkling synths, the Berlin-based artist’s dreamy and plaintive delivery and enormous hooks. While sounding indebted to 80s pop, “Alone” is rooted in a lived-in earnestness — and is inspired by personal experience: The one was written between two different conversations with his six new roommates, who were — thankfully for him — becoming his friends. And as a result, the song is an ode to socializing and meeting new friends while reflecting his own need to be surrounded by people.

The accompanying video is comprised of footage of Côme hanging out with friends at various locales in Berlin, playing a house show and pensively hanging out on rooftops. The end result is an intimate visual portrait of a young, emerging artist.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Bubba Brothers Return with Shimmering and Euphoric “Black Beach”

Portuguese DJ and production duo Bubba Brothers — Eliseo Correia and Justino Santos — formed back in 2015. And since their formation, the JOVM mainstays have developed a reputation for being amazingly prolific, releasing a growing collection of club friendly bangers, which I’ve covered extensively over the past couple of years.

“Black Beach (Visions),” the third single released by the JOVM mainstays this year sees the duo pairing deep house with Balaeric house with the song featuring glistening synth arpeggio-driven melodies, skittering beats, twinkling percussion and euphoria-inducing hooks. “Black Beach,” as the duo explains was inspired by and written on Iceland’s famous Black Beach — but somehow manages to evoke sweltering summer nights and sweaty clubs.

The accompanying video by Eduardo Raposo is shot in a cinematic and stunningly gorgeous black and white and features Iceland’s famed Black Beach, a woman seemingly at the end of her rope in a hotel room, another woman swimming presumably off the coast of the Black Beach, and the Portuguese duo on the decks rocking out.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm and Sipprell Team Up on Sultry “The Process”

Over the past few years, the acclaimed Roskilde-born, London-based singer/songwriter, musician, producer and JOVM mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm has proven herself to be one of the most prolific and essential talents in contemporary, underground R&B.

Dahlstrøm continues multitudes, a thousand different selves co-existing and contradicting each other — at once. An acclaimed singer/songwriter and producer. A mother. A partner. “These different pockets of life also create friction,” she acknowledges. “I’ve been figuring out where I belong, what I’m supposed to do and how I fit into all of this — because I am so much more than an artist. When you have big dreams or goals and you see time being taken away from achieving them, and going towards something else — how do you make that a positive experience? There are always challenges, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good life.” Fittingly, the Roskilde-born, London-based JOVM mainstay’s highly anticipated sophomore album A Good Life thematically is about dismantling the idea that your validity as an artist diminishes when it’s not the focal point of your life, that somehow being a parent somehow negates creativity. Hell, this can be even said for those artists, who have to support themselves with a day job.

“I hope that every album I make will convey a sense of honesty to it. This one is based on reflections from a few years of my life with many changes and adjustments,” Dahlstrøm adds. “It’s an album about human interaction in all its complexity.”

A Good Life is slated for a May 22, 2023 release through Dahlstrøm’s JFH Records. But in the meantime, the album’s last single before its release, “The Process” features Dahlstrom’s longtime friend and collaborator Sipprell. Built around twinkling piano, skittering beats, bursts of shimmering guitar, a Quiet Storm-meets-smooth jazz guitar solo, whirring electronics and a sinuous bass line, “The Process” is a seemingly effortless and sultry bop that sees its collaborators soulfully dissecting the intricacies and complications of being an artist — with a lived-in specificity.

“The song is about creativity, and the process of that,” the Roskilde-born, London-based JOVM mainstay explains. “The song is about the creative process. It’s about letting go in order to catch inspiration when it presents itself. Trying to go with the flow rather than forcing it.”

The accompanying video Lennon Gregory features Dahlstrom and Sipprell in a bare studio on an intimate photo shoot/video shoot and captures their friendship with an honesty while they vamp and sing for the camera.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Night Beats Shares Soaring and Groovy “Thank You”

Texas-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Danny Lee Blackwell is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed psych rock outfit Night Beats. With Night Beats, Blackwell creates music like one might assemble a puzzle: He builds his work from one moment, an initial spark that for him, must fit a specific criteria — it must give him goosebumps. If he gets goosebumps, then he will purse that idea relentlessly until he has a new song; if not, he moves onto the next moment, constantly looking for the perfect molecule of a song. 

Rajan, Blackwell’s fifth Night Beats album is slated for a July 14, 2023 release through Suicide Squeeze/Fuzz Club. The album began much like every other Night Betas album before it: Shortly after the release of 2021’s Outlaw R&B, Blackwell had the familiar itch to create new music. Writing isn’t a process that Blackwell has to sit down and engage with, rather it’s something he’s always doing. The only differentiation between creative periods is what makes it on certain albums and what winds up falling victim to the cutting room. “Whenever my writing gets to a point where songs begin to take shape, it begins to feel like a faucet,” Blackwell explains. “As soon as Outlaw R&B was finished, I began writing and very quickly fell in love with a few ideas that encapsulated the feeling of Rajan. I think writing is a constant cycle in that it never really begins or ends, but there are definitive points where the writing is leading somewhere.” 

Early on, Blackwell felt that the album would be dedicated to his mother. Although thematically, it doesn’t always reflect his tribute, the material is informed by the familial tie. “This isn’t a concept album, because every album has a concept. That term never made sense to me. But if it’s about one thing, it’s about this pursuit of freedom that was instilled in me by my mother,” Blackwell says. “In the arts, I’m very lucky in that I have 100% control over what I want to say, and how I do it,” he explains. Fittingly, the album’s material is wildly diverse and lands somewhere between Spaghetti Western film score and psych pop opus — while being among Blackwell’s most cohesive works to date. Some of the album’s songs nod at Anataolian funk and Western tinged R&B. Others with 70s Brazilian psychedelia, Chicano soul, rock steady — and even Lee “Scratch” Perry-inspired dub. “Rajan is just one of six examples of me doing exactly what I want, and not caring about whether it’s checked out or not. I’m a journeyperson. I want to make things for the sake of making them,” Blackwell says. 

And while clearly indebted to its influences, Rajan is wildly innovative and finds Blackwell pursuing his wildest musical whims. “I’m here to explore. I think exploration is the underlying reason in a way, of why we do the things we do,” Blackwell explains. “I feel lucky. What can I say? I feel blessed.”

Last month, I wrote about Rajan‘s first single, album opener “Hot Ghee,” which simultaneously sets the stage for what to expect sonically from the album and establishing a scalding hot take on the interaction of psych rock, jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop and more. Built around bluesy and sultry guitar lines, swinging drumming, layers of intertwined harmonies, subtle bursts of twinkling piano, “Hot Ghee” sounds like a synthesis of Altin Gün, Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles and Free Your Mind . . . And Your Ass Will Follow-era Funkadelic that’s mind-bending while displaying Blackwell’s unerring and deft craftmanship. 

“Thank You,” Rajan‘s second single is a soaring and groovy bit of gospel-tinged psychedelia built around Blackwell’s yearning falsetto, twinkling keys, dense layers of bluesy wah wah pedaled guitar, towering feedback, paired with a gospel backing chorus. Sonically nodding at a bit at Sly and the Family Stone “Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself” and Parliament Funkadelic’s “Testify,” “Thank You” expresses a sense of profound gratitude.

Directed by Vanessa Pla, the accompanying video for “Thank You” is a slick and cinematically shot visual that visually tackles the themes of the song — gratitude and transformation, as we see Blackwell physically transform by the video’s conclusion.