Category: Video Review

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Denmark’s Sonic Moon Share a Sludgy Ripper

Danish stoner rock/doom metal outfit Sonic Moon features members split between Aarhus and Copenhagen. After spending the better part of the past two years developing and refining their contrasting, riff-based sound, the band will be releasing their seven-song, self-recorded full-length debut Return Without Any Memory on August 4, 2023 through Olde Magick Records.

Return Without Any Memory‘s first single “Give It Time” is built around sludgy power chord-driven rifle paired with thunderous drumming, crooned vocals and a heavy groove. While sonically recalling Soundgarden, The Sword and countless others, the song at its core sees the band evoking a shared feeling of loneliness, despair and frustration that feels familiar to most of us.

Edited by Emil Gam Klinkby, the accompanying video features tableaus shot by the band’s members meant to touch upon themes of passing time, decay, melancholy and cold shot in some stark yet cinematic settings.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: DVTR Shares a Furious and Incisive Ripper

Deriving their name as an acronym for the French phrase “D’où vient ton riz?” (Where does your rice come from?), Montréal-based duo DVTR is a new collaborative project featuring two of the city’s most highly acclaimed artists:

  • Laurence G-Do, the frontwoman of Le Couleur, an act that has toured internationally several times, and has opened for Giorgio Moroder, Polo & Pan and others, while amassing over 18 million streams across digital streaming platforms. 

  • JC Tellier, who has played with Gazoline, an act that has received multiple ADISQ and GAMIQ award nominations. Tellier has also played with Kandle, Xavier Caféine, Gab Bouchard and a lengthy list of others. 

Last week, I wrote about the duo’s debut single “DVTR,” a breakneck, blistering and incisive ripper built around scorching riffage, a relentless motorik-like groove, a shouted mantra-like chorus and mosh pit friendly hooks paired with G-Do’s feral shouts. The result is a song that kind of sounds like a wild yet seamless synthesis of Wild Planet-era The B-52s and La Femme’s “Foutre le bordel.“

The Canadian duo’s second and latest single “Vasectomia” is another breakneck ripper built around scorching guitar riffage, G-Do’s shouted vocals and a relentless groove paired with the duo’s penchant for wildly catchy hooks, anthemic choruses. But underneath the attention to slick craftsmanship, is furious and incisive criticism of the modern condition, delivered with zero fucks given. With the song, it feels as though G-Do would shout “fuck you!” to every man she passes by while suggesting that if men don’t want unwanted pregnancies or truly concerned about overpopulation that maybe they should get a vasectomy.

The accompanying video is set in a hospital room from hell and features the band’s G-Do in a medical gown and in stirrups, happily eating out of a carton of ice cream while her bandmate, playing the role of demented doctor works on her, occasionally taking breaks to sing his parts in the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Divide and Dissolve Share Trippy “Want”

Melbourne-based duo Divide and Dissolve — Takiaya Reed (sax, guitar) and Sylvie Nehill (drums) — have long been focused on Indigenous sovereignty: Reed is Tsalagi (Cherokee) and Black, Nehill is Māori. As a duo, they released two albums 2017’s Basic and 2018’s Abomination through DERO Arcade before signing with Invada, who released their widely acclaimed third album, 2021’s Gas Lit. Gas Lit Remix EP was also released in 2021 and featured reworkings and remixes of Gas Lit material by Moor Mother, Chelsea Wolfe and Bearcat. 

Last year, the duo toured across North America and Europe, opening for Low, which included a stop at Webster Hall, as well as headline dates and festival appearances. 

The acclaimed Aussie outfit’s fourth album, the Ruban Neilson-produced Systemic was officially released today through Invada. Thematically, the album sees the duo exploring the systems that intrinsically bind us — and calls for a system that facilitates life for everyone. It’s a message that fits firmly with the band’s core intentions: to make music that honors their ancestors and Indigenous lands, to oppose white supremacy, and to work towards a future of Black and Indigenous liberation. “This music is an acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence,”  Divide and Dissolve’s Takaiya Reed explains in press notes. “The goal of the colonial project is to separate Indigenous people from their culture, their life force, their community and their traditions. The album is in direct opposition to this.”

Recorded as a duo, the album according to Reed is a continuation of Gas Lit. “Because of what was built with Gas Lit, Systemic is able to express itself.” She adds, “The album is a prayer to our ancestors. A prayer for land to be given back to Indigenous people, and for future generations to be free from this cycle of violence.” 

Reed emphasizes that it’s crucial for their music to be instrumental. “I believe in the power of non-verbal communication,” she continues, “A huge percent of communication is non-verbal. We learn so much without using words.”  There’s one exception on the album, the spoken word track “Kingdom of Fear,” which features writer and artist Minori Sanchiz-Fung, who contributed to previous Divide and Dissolve albums. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two released singles:

  • “Blood Quantum,” a composition built around a dissonant and insistent thumping of crashing cymbals, thunderous snare, Melvins-like guitar sludge, wavering synths and horns paired with mournful yet gorgeously orchestrated passages meant to evoke brief moments of respite. The song is rooted in — and expresses awe-inspiring beauty and heart-wrenching anguish of human existence. “The heaviness is really important,” Reed says. “It’s congruent with the message of the music, and the heaviness feels emblematic of this world’s situation.”

  • “Indignation,” a composition, which begins with a gorgeous introduction featuring looping and mournful saxophone and yearning strings that quickly morphs into the song’s second and longest section, a stormy and forceful dirge featuring power chord-driven guitar sludge, thunderous drumming and wailing strings, before ending with the mournful saxophone and yearning strings of its introduction. Divide and Dissolve’s Reed says that the song “is a prayer that land be given back to Indigenous people. A hope that future generations no longer experience the atrocities and fervent violence that colonisation continues to bring forth.” 

Systemic‘s third and latest single “Want” is a noisy yet yearning composition built around shoegazer like layered textures that include doppler effected-like oscillating feedback and brooding undertones. “‘Want’ is a deep dive into longing within a decolonial framework,” Divide and Dissolve’s Takiaya Reed explains. “We can want many things, but how will it happen? What is necessary, what systems must be broken in order for people to live?”

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with director Sepi Mashiaof, the accompanying video for “Want” features a variety of imagery that spins endlessly to the song’s oscillating tones. “As ‘Want’ is the song that introduces us to ‘Systemic’, the concept for the video emulates this kind of infant yearning for worlds beyond our current heartbreaking reality. There are so many beautiful textures above our heads that are inaccessible (as there are so many desired modes of existence that are inaccessible), and the rotation emphasizes the limbo of what that desire feels like. Trying to reach something, but succumbing to the loop of failure. Still, that infant yearning is persistent, and that compliments the need for hope and cements the importance of idealism as essential tools in our greater struggles for liberation.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: The Sextones Perform Soulful “Without You”

Reno-based soul outfit The Sextones — Mark Sexton (vocals, guitar), Christopher Sexton (piano), Alexander Korostinsky (bass), and Daniel Weiss are childhood friends, and as a result their musical chemistry is effortless and forms the foundation of the band’s longevity and creative process. 

Over the years, the band’s members have also been able to channel their creativity into other acclaimed projects — Mark Sexton and Korostinsky collaborate together in the cinematic soul project Whatitdo Archive Group, which released their critically applauded full-length debut The Black Stone Affair through Italian purveyors of funk Record Kicks back in 2021. Weiss has played with soul jazz outfit Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio. These forays into other projects has not only allowed the members to flex their creative muscle individually but it has also strengthened their collective songwriting chops. 

The Reno-based soul quartet signed to Record Kicks, who will release their forthcoming Kelly Finnigan-produced sophomore album Love Can’t Be Borrowed on September 29, 2023. The album reportedly is a new chapter in the band’s story and sees the band attempting to scale new heights and plumb deeper emotional depths. Drawing from their upbringing steeped in the classic soul sound, the band’s Mark Sexton and Alexander Korostinsky knew they wanted the album to highlight their old-school bonafides while leaving room for innovations. The pair and their bandmates found that balance during marathon recording sessions at Finnigan’s San Rafael, CA-based Transistor Sound Studio. 

“Without You,” the second single off Love Can’t Be Borrowed is an uptempo, two-step inducing jam built around playful call-and-response vocals, twinkling keys, glistening xylophone, reverb-soaked funk guitar, and a locked-in, propulsive rhythm section paired with an incredibly catchy hook. The song sees the band deftly balancing old school attention to craft with earnest, lived in lyricism. But, at it’s core, “Without You” is a sweet, old-timey declaration of love, devotion and profound gratitude that’s a both contented sigh and an acknowledgment that love — much like anything in life — takes hard work. 

The accompanying video features the Reno-based soul outfit performing the song in what looks like a public library — or a hotel lobby. But it captures the seemingly effortless craft at the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kiwi Sibling Duo Clementine Valentine Share Lush and Spectral “Time and Tide”

Kiwi-based sibling duo Clementine and Valentine Nixon have had music and performing embedded in their lineage: Traveling musicians and performers go back hundreds of years on their maternal side — and was documented on recordings such as 1968’s The Traveling Stewarts. As children, the Nixon Sisters were taught to sing traditional balladry by their grandmother, the daughter of revered Traveller musician Davie Stewart, who was recorded by Alan Lomax.

Professionally, the sibling duo have made a career our of music that draws from that nomadic family heritage and conjures a series of contrasts: ancient and modern, beauty an brokenness, the ritual and the fleeting and more. Raised itinerantly between New Zealand and Hong Kong, the Kiwi-based sibling duo cut their teeth performing in renegade gallery spaces and rogue music venues across Hong Kong’s abandoned industrial section, eventually amassing both national and international attention with their acclaimed experimental noise and futuristic noise pop project Purple Pilgrims.

Their Purple Pilgrim material was frequently self-produced and through a series of labels including beloved Kiwi label Flying Nun Records. The sibling duo’s latest project Clementine Valentine, which sees them writing, recording and performing with a fusion of their birth names. The new project, sees the duo refining their craft into a more fully realized and sophisticated sound.

The Kiwi duo’s Randall Dunn-produced Clementine Valentine full-length debut The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor is slated for an August 25, 2023 release through Flying Nun Records, and reportedly marks a pivotal moment in the sibling duo’s creative evolution. The album sees the pair transposing their keyboard-and-guitar driven demos to cello, pedal steel, 12 string guitar and a a collection of vintage synthesizers. Matt Chamberlain, who has worked with David Bowie, Lana Del Rey and Fiona Apple contributed percussion. The result is material that’s lush, shimmering and softly orchestral while being an accumulation of songcraft that has stretched back centuries.

The Coin That Broke the Fountain Floor‘s lush, lead single “Time and Tide” is built around the Kiwi sibling duo’s gorgeous and expressive vocal range paired with soaring hooks and chorus, dramatic percussion, strummed guitar and atmospheric synths. Sonically nodding at Kate Bush, “Time and Tide” aims for the celestial and the timeless, while being one of the more optimistic-leaning songs of their career to date.

“We thought we were only capable of writing sad songs — but found optimism creeping in during the writing of this album,” Clementine and Valentine Nixon explain. “Without ruining the mystery, ‘Time and Tide’ is about the release that comes in too brief moments of relinquishing overthinking, fret and regret. It’s coloured with melancholy, but cheerful by our measure.” 

Directed by Auckland-based photographer and filmmaker Greta van der Star, the accompanying video for “Time and Tide” has a painterly quality while nodding at 80s-era music videos, Romantic poetry and more. “We’re always inspired by [and identify with] outsiders,” the Kiwi sibling duo say. “For this video we were influenced by three in particular: the photography of Francesca Woodman, the cover image of Brett Smiley’s album [Breathlessly Brett], and Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’. Trapped in a tower, looking out over a pastoral scene, waiting for life to begin again (if you squint you’ll see Camelot in the distance). The idea of merging with four walls, or being suffocated by them (as felt in Woodman’s photos) resonated with us, and no doubt countless others, at the time this song was written.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweeping Promises Shares Horror-Themed Visual for Brooding and Uneasy “Good Living Is Coming for You”

Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry. 

The duo’s full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch.”

Slated for a Friday release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, the duo’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English punks spat “NO FUTURE” at germ-free adolescents. Ohio New Wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard carrying riot grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat. 

While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release I’ve managed to write about two of its singles:

  • Album opener “Eraser,” a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, and distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”

  • “You Shatter,” a synth punk ripper that sounds like a synthesis of Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Memphis synth punks Nots and the Go-Go’s. “‘You Shatter’ is our ode to being a hammer,” the duo say of the song. 

The soon-to-be released album’s third and latest single, album title track “Good Living Is Coming for You” is a brooding and uneasy track built around a metronomic-like groove, wiry guitar blasts paired with Mondal’s forceful croon. The result is a song that manages to sound a bit like Wire — but while evoking an encroaching sense of doom. The end is very much nigh, folks.

Directed by experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley, the accompanying video for “Good Living Is Coming for You” draws from 70s and 80s horror films. “For this video, we collaborated with one of our closest friends, experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley (Life Without Dreams, Goodbye Thelma),” the members of Sweeping Promises explain in press notes. Drawing from the glamorous and bloodthirsty aesthetic of ‘70s and ‘80s horror films (Daughters of Darkness, The Hunger, The Lair of the White Worm, Dream Demon), the visual companion to ‘Good Living Is Coming for You’ channels the song’s unshakable feeling of discontent and encroaching domestic doom through the confines of a DIY horror flick as seen by some nameless sleepless soul on late-night cable, the line between movie and infomercial blurred to infernal effect.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Demons My Friends Share an Expansive Face-Melting Ripper

Currently split between Austin and Mexico City, Demons My Friends features members of Washington, DC-based outfit Fellowcraft and well-regarded Mexico City-based rock band QBO, and can trace their origins to an impromptu recording session at last year’s SXSW. Conceptually, the trio explore the inner journey its members have been on since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, confronting inner demons and battling anxiety, depression, self-doubt and rage while teaching themselves how to turn these demons into their “friends.”

The Mexican-American trio’s Jeff Henson-produced and mixed Demons Seem To Gather is slated for a September 8, 2023 release through Gravitoyd Heavy Music. Sonically seeming to draw from the likes of Monolord, King Buffalo, All Them Witches, Soundgarden, Baroness and a lengthy list of others, the trio’s full-length debut is reportedly features material that pairs drop-tuned grunge riffs, doom song structures, soaring melodies, groove-driven rhythms and psychedelic harmonies — but while rooted in the band’s musicianship.

Demons Seem To Gather‘s latest single “Make Them Pay” is built around a face-melting mix of sludgy power chords, thunderous drumming, Black Sabbath-meets-Soundgarden/Alice in Chains-like solos and crooned vocals with an expansive song structure. While touching upon some familiar styles, “Make Them Pay” is powered by dexterous and impassioned musicianship and earnest purpose.

Directed by Lu Salinas, the accompanying video for “Make Them Pay” was generated using AI, and it captures a fiery hellscape that sort of resembles the one we’re marching lockstep into right now.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Small Million Shares Slick and Trippy Visual for “Burnout”

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, 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. 

The Portland-based outfit have been releasing new music throughout the course of the year, including their latest single “Burnout,” which will appear on their forthcoming album Passenger, slated for release through Tender Loving Empire. “Burnout” is a hook-driven bit of pop built around Graham’s ethereal vocal 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.

Created and directed by Emma Josephson, the accompanying video for “Burnout” stars Sammy Rios as a woman struggling to burst out of being reduced to flattened, two-dimensional rendition of a person — while appearing as though she’s losing her own mind.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Brighton’s Tigercub Shares “120 Minutes” MTV-like Visual for Arena Rock Anthem “Show Me My Maker”

With the release of 2016’s full-length debut Abstract Figures in the Dark, the Brighton-based rock trio Tigercub — Jamie Hall (vocals, guitar), Jamies Allix (drums) and Jimi Wheelwright (bass) — exploded into the scene, with the band quickly earning praise for dynamic songwriting and a bruising sound influenced by a diverse range of influences including Led Zeppelin, Slipknot, Sonic Youth and Frédéric Chopin. 

The Brighton-based trio’s acclaimed sophomore album, As Blue As Indigo saw the band broadening the massive sonic palette that won them attention while incorporating a deeply personal introspection with lyrics that thematically explored anxiety, depression, toxic masculinity, the death of Hall’s grandmother and the suicide of a close friend. As Blue As Indigo turned out to be the British outfit’s breakthrough: The album rose to #11 on the UK Albums Charts while receiving praise from the international media, including Guitar.com and Kerrang!

The trio supported the album with an extensive touring schedule that included a sold-out UK headline tour, dates with longtime friends Royal Blood and a North American run with Clutch and Eyehategod. Last summer saw the band celebrating its signing to Stone Gossard‘s Loosegroove Records with sets at Reading and Leeds — and an opening slot for Pearl Jam during their two-night run at London’s BST Hyde Park. 

The band’s third album, the recently released The Perfume of Decay sees the band confidently embracing all the contradictions, counterpoints and catharsis of modern-day rock. “It’s all about opposites,” Tigercub’s Jamie Hall says. “Sweet-and-salty popcorn tends to taste better than regular popcorn, even though those are two opposing forces. I wanted to nail that concept with our heavy guitars, softer-sung vocals, Can-style grooves, and a bit of shoegaze. Counterpoints can come together and make a powerful connection. I’ve crossed the threshold from my 20s to my 30s, so I’m getting older, but I’m also entering my prime. This record is a reflection of that.”

The album sees Tigercub’s frontman drawing the curtains shut to embrace a moody, nocturnal sound. “The Perfume of Decay is set at night,” says Jamie Hall. “It was written at night, I recorded all the vocals at night, and it is at night when my thoughts race and uneasiness pours through me like running water. Under the glimmer of moonlight, my apprehension ebbs and flows like the tide and it doesn’t stop until the morning. Perfume is a diary of my emotional journey from dusk to dawn, an anxiety-fueled voyage through the storm. Lyrically, at points, it is almost a stream of consciousness. I sat up late and wrote the words down as they flashed before my eyes.

“I use my songwriting as a form of catharsis,” he adds, “a tool to examine my anxiety and insecurity about growing older and how those emotions seem to lead me towards turmoil. I pour those feelings into my lyrics and only then can I move on from them.”

The album’s latest single “Show Me My Maker” is a swaggering, arena rock banger built around enormous, overdrive-fueled, Soundgarden-like power chords, thunderous drumming paired with enormous hooks and a nihilistic refrain. Play it loud, it’s Friday, y’all — and it’s time to headbang. 

“‘Show Me My Maker’ speaks for itself,” Pearl Jam’s and Loosegroove Records head Stone Gossard says. “This song has classic guts. The opening cobra strikes of a guitar riff… it’s seriously in the running for ‘mother of all riffs’ to the nihilistic exultation of the chorus refrain. I love it. Thank you Tigercub.”

Fittingly, for such a 90s grunge-inspired song, the accompanying video for “Show Me My Maker” is shot in what appears to be grainy and processed Super 8 and features the members of the band performing the song in a bare studio.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: LavBbe Shares A Sultry, Genre-Defying Banger

LavBbe is a rising Romanian-born, British-based artist, who can trace her passion for music and dance to her childhood growing up in a performing household: She received her first bellydancing costume as a special present from her grandmother — and she quickly began to show her talent to everyone around her. Her father was a singer, and she grew up surrounded by an eclectic array of music including rock, jazz and soul — with Amy Winehouse and Sade being major inspirations.

When she turned 16, LavBbe relocated from Romania to Newcastle to continue her studies. Inspired by some of the world’s great dancers and performers, she attended classes in contemporary dance, acting and singing for a year.

Upon graduation, she became a flight attendant at Virgin Atlantic. She wound up taking a break from her dancing routine but when the pandemic broke out back in 2020, she started to create dance videos on TikTok, dancing from morning to evening. In a few months, she quickly amassed over one million followers and became a highly sought-after influencer, with a deep love of Afrobeats. Her dance videos, which reveal effervescent dance moves went viral, and she has now amassed over 4.6 million followers on TikTok, and tens of millions of comments.

After the lockdown, she traveled to New York, Los Angeles and Nigeria for work, but her music career began in earnest a few months ago, when multiple Grammy-nominated, Romanian producer Costi Ionita discovered her on TikTok. “Lavbbe is talented, valuable and multilaterally developed, with a a great voice which impresses me”, Ionita says.

LavBbe’s second and latest single, the Ionita-produced, Ionita, LavBbe and Silviu Dimitriu-co-written “Pumping” seamlessly meshes elements of Afrobeats, reggaeton, Balkan, pop and dance music in slick, club friendly production that serves as the perfect vehicle for the Romanian-British artist’s sultry, self-assured delivery. I’m certain of one thing: this artist is a certified global star, and we’ll be hearing more about her in the future.

Directed by Alex Ceaușu, the accompanying video for “Pumping” follows the Romanian-British artist through a variety of brightly colored backdrops while revealing her playful yet self-assured and undeniable sex appeal.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s DVTR Shares a Breakneck Ripper

Deriving their name as an acronym for the French phrase “D’où vient ton riz?” (Where does your rice come from?), Montréal-based duo DVTR is a new collaborative project featuring two of the city’s most highly acclaimed artists:

  • Laurence G-Do, the frontwoman of Le Couleur, an act that has toured internationally several times, and has opened for Giorgio Moroder, Polo & Pan and others, while amassing over 18 million streams across digital streaming platforms.

  • JC Tellier, who has played with Gazoline, an act that has received multiple ADISQ and GAMIQ award nominations. Tellier has also played with Kandle, Xavier Caféine, Gab Bouchard and a lengthy list of others.

The duo’s debut single “DVTR” is a breakneck, blistering and incisive ripper built around scorching riffage, a relentless motorik-like groove, a shouted mantra-like chorus, mosh pit friendly hooks paired with G-Do’s feral shouts. The result is a song that kind of sounds like a wild yet seamless synthesis of Wild Planet-era The B-52s and La Femme’s “Foutre le bordel.“

Directed by Jean-Vital Joliat, the wildly kinetic accompanying video features the members of DVTR, acting as a paramilitary force in a pickup truck, driving in a suburban parking lot as they pull off a heist — of a 5LB bag of rice.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Acclaimed Inuk Artist Elisapie Shares Hauntingly Gorgeous Rendition of Metallica’s “The Unforgiven”

Acclaimed Montréal-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and activist Elisapie was born and raised in Salluit, a small village in Nunavik, Québec’s northernmost region. In this extremely remote community, accessible only by plane, she was raised by an extended, yet slightly dysfunctional adoptive family. Growing up in Salliut, she lived through the loss of cousins who ended their lives, experienced young love, danced the night away at the village’s community center and witnessed first hand, the effects of colonialism — i.e., poverty, hopelessness, alcoholism, suicide, and more. 

A teenaged Elisapie began performing on stage with her uncles, who were members of Sugluk (also known as Salliut Band), a famous and well-regarded Inuit rock band. She also worked at TNI, the village’s radio station, which broadcast across the region. And while working for the radio station, the teenaged Issac managed to secure an interview with Metallica. 

Much like countless bright and ambitious young people across the world, the Salliut-born artist moved to the big city — in this case, Montréal to study and, ultimately, pursue a career in music. Since then, her work whether within the confines of a band or as as solo artist constantly displays that her unconditional attachment to her native territory, its people, and to her language, Inuktitut is at the core of her work. Spoken for millennia, Inuktitut embodies the harshness of its environment and the wild yet breathtaking beauty of the Inuit territory. Thematically, her work frequently pairs Intuit themes and concerns with modern rock music, mixing tradition with modernity in a deft, seamless fashion. 

She won her first Juno Award as a member of Taima, and since then Issac’s work has received rapturous critical acclaim: 2018’s The Ballad of the Runaway Girl was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, and earned her a number of Association du disque, de l’industrie du spectacle Québeécois (ADISQ) Felix Awards and a Juno Award nod. She followed up with a performance with the Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal — at the invitation of Grammy Award-winning maestro Yannick Nézet Séguin — at Central Park SummerStage, a NPR Tiny Desk Session and headlining or festival sets both locally and internationally. 

In her native Canada, she is also known as an actor, starring in the TV series Motel Paradis and C.S. Roy’s experimental indie film VFC, which was released earlier this year. She has also graced the cover of a number of magazines including Châtelaine, Elle Québec and a long list of others. And as a devoted activist, she created and produced the first nation-wide broadcast TV show to celebrate National Indigenous People’s Day. 

Slated for a September 15, 2023 release through Bonsound, her fourth solo album Inuktiut features inventive re-imaginings of songs by Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, Metallica and more. Each of the acts and artists covered have warmly given their blessing to receive the acclaimed Canadian artist’s unique treatment. Fittingly, each song is imbued with depth and purpose, as the album’s material is an act of cultural re-appropriation that reinvigorates the poetry of these beloved songs by placing them within Inuit traditions. Along with that, all of the album’s songs are linked to a loved one, to her community or is rooted to an intimate story that has shaped Issac as her a person and as an artist, giving the material a deeply personal touch.

Through the album’s 10 songs, the acclaimed Inuk tells her story and offers these songs as a loving gift to her community, making her language and culture resonate well beyond the borders of the Inuit territory. But the album is also a testament to the power and remarkable universality of pop music, a reminder of the universality of human life, and fittingly an ode to the experiences, memories, places and people, who have shaped us.

The album’s first single “Uummati Attanarsimat (Heart of Glass),” caught the attention of the legendary Debbie Harry. And if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past handful of months, you might remember that I wrote about “Taimangalimaaq (Time After Time),” a gorgeous and fairly faithful Inuktiut adaptation of Cyndi Lauper‘s 1983 Rob Hyman co-written smash hit “Time After Time” that retains the familiar beloved melody of the original paired with a percussive yet atmospheric arrangement and Issac’s gorgeous, achingly tender delivery. 

Much like her previous single, “Taimangalimaaq (Time After Time)” was inspired by a childhood memory of Elisapie’s aunt Alasie and her cousin Susie:
 
“I was able to get through my pre-teen years, thanks to my Aunt Alasie, as my mother had neither the knowledge nor the experience to give me a crash course on puberty, fashion or social relationships,” Isaac recalls. “In addition to entering a new chapter in my life, we were in the midst of the 80’s and modernity was shaking up our traditional methods. My mother’s generation had lived in Igloos, and the cultural changes were too swift. 
 
“Despite her struggles, my aunt ensured I felt accepted and exposed me to new and modern things like TV, clothes, dancing, Kraft Dinner and make-up! 
 
Whenever I went to my aunt’s house, I was in awe of my older girl cousins. They were all so cool and stylish, and they loved pop music and the crazy makeup of the 80s and early 90s.  One of my favorite memories is listening to the radio with them and hearing Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ for the first time. It was like a lightning bolt, and I couldn’t separate the song or the artist from my older cousin Susie. For me, the song was all about her search for beauty, connection, love, and rising above pain.”

Inuktiut‘s third and latest single “Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)” is a hauntingly gorgeous, dream-like re-imagining of Metallica’s “The Unforgiven” that retains the song’s familiar melody but featuring an arrangement of traditional drums and flute and acoustic guitar paired with Issac’s equally gorgeous, yearning delivery, some brooding synths and the incorporation of Inuktiut throat singing.

“Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)” finds the acclaimed Canadian artist paying tribute to the Inuit men of Salliut and nodding to the time she interviewed Metallica’s Kirk Hammett in the early 90s:

“When I was 14 years old, I applied for a job at TNI, the first Inuit TV-radio broadcaster, and I was thrilled when I was chosen for the position! Everyone at the station dreamed big, and they put in a request for an interview with Metallica. The band was so loved in Salluit that we had to give it a shot. Metallica accepted only two interviews on their Québec tour, and TNI was chosen. In my boys’ eyes, I was the coolest!
 
As a teenager, I only wanted to hang around the gang of boys in my village. We would all go to my cousin’s house and smoke weed while listening to Metallica. The band’s music allowed us to delve into the darkness of our broken souls and feel good there. Men’s roles in our territory had been challenged by colonization, and it had become confusing what life was supposed to look like for a man. My boys were seeking new roles, and subconsciously, I allowed them to be my bodyguards so they could feel strong. Looking back, I was trying to give them the strength to find their place.
 
“‘Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)’ incorporates throat singing, known as katajjaq in Inuktitut. It felt like katajjaq was so appropriate, says Elisapie. It is Inuit women who throat sing. Inuit women, mothers and grandmothers had to be the nurturing ones during the hard times, as men were struggling emotionally due to colonialism. Through this song, I wanted the feminine strength to balance the men’s challenges.”

Directed by Phillipe Léonard, the accompanying video for “Isumagijunnaitaungituq (The Unforgiven)” was shot in Nunavik abroad a canoe, using a camera attached to end of a pole, much like a fishing rod. “The footage oscillates between the emerald seabed bursting with light and the deep blue sky, which makes the sensual silhouettes of the tundra mountains stand out,” explains the director.
 
The acclaimed Canadian artist will be playing an extensive series of tour dates to support the forthcoming album. Sadly, the tour doesn’t currently include any Stateside dates as of yet. But if you’re in Québec, you should catch her.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Slowdive Shares Breathtakingly Gorgeous “kisses”

Deriving their name from a dream that that their co-founder Neil Halstead (vocals, guitar) had once had, and “Slowdive,” a single written and recorded by co-founder Rachel Goswell’s (vocals, guitars) favorite band, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Reading, Berkshire, UK-based shoegazer band Slowdive, which is currently comprised of its co-founders Halstead and Goswell, along with Nick Chaplin (bass), Christian Savill (guitar) and Simon Scott (drums) can trace its origins to when its co-founders, childhood friends started the band in 1989.

According to both Halstead and Goswell, their initial demos were highly derivative My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth-based songs that they recorded for fun, until the the addition of Christian Savill, a former member of Eternal joined the band. “We advertised for a female guitars, but only Christian replied. He writes a sweet letter though, he said he’d wear a dress if necessary,” the members of the band recall. Their second official demo as a band was a leap forward for the band — while their previous demo found the band heading towards noisy No Wave and experimentalism, “Avalyn,” was a gentle and steady flow of nearly white noise; in fact, the demo caught the attention of fellow Reading-based act Swervedriver, who helped bring the band on to their label Creation Records. Interestingly, the demo single eventually became the band’s debut single as the band couldn’t recreate the same atmosphere and sound in a professional studio.

Once they signed to Creation Records, the band went through the first of a series of lineup changes as their original drummer Adrian Sell left the band to go back to school. As the members of Slowdive recall, their original drummer didn’t quite fit in — he didn’t share the same aims and tastes of the others, and it made touring uncomfortable. He was first replaced by Neil Carter, who played on the Morningrise EP before being replaced by Simon Scott, a former member of Charlottes, who joined the band and played with them for about four years before leaving to pursue a career in jazz. Ian McCutcheon joined the band before the band’s self-financed 1994 North American tour, a tour they had to pay for themselves, as their American distributor SBK Records had gone out of business.

Throughout their first run together, Slowdive released three full-length albums 1991’s Just for a Day, 1993’s Souvlaki and 1995’s Pygmalion and a number of EPs,  and initially, the band saw quite a bit of commercial and critical success: 1990’s self-titled EP, 1991’s Morningrise EP and Holding Our Breath EP were released to critical praise from the likes of NME, Melody Maker, and others — with Holding Our Breath landing at #52 on the UK Albums Charts, thanks in part to the commercial success of UK Indie Chart topping single “Catch the Breeze.”

Work on Slowdive’s full-length debut began shortly after the band’s primary songwriting Halstead convinced Creation Records label head Alan McGee that the band had enough songs written for an album; however, they didn’t. They had to hurriedly write songs the studio — experimentation with marijuana and sounds occurred during the music, with lyrical inspiration coming from the abstract nature of the music. As Halstead recalls “[We] went into a studio for six weeks and had no songs at the start and the end we had an album.” The result was their full-length debut Just for a Day was released to praise from NME and landed in the Top 10 of the UK Indie Charts; however, the band had the misfortune of releasing their full-length debut when the British music press had started to backlash against shoegaze — with a number of critics panning the album. The backlash got even worse when critics began re-evaluating the genre after the release of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless later that year. Consider the time period:  Massive Attack‘s Blue Lines was released in April; Pearl Jam’s Ten and Metallica‘s Black Album were released that August; Nirvana‘s Nevermind was released that September; Primal Scream‘s Screamadelica, Soundgarden‘s Badmotorfinger and A Tribe Called Quest‘s Low End Theory were released about a week after Nevermind; U2‘s Achtung Baby was released a few weeks after Loveless. While critics can be shortsighted and biased, there was one thing that was obvious — a seismic shift in music was occurring. Let’s not forget to mention Ice Cube’s Death Certificate, Public Enemy‘s Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black, Cypress Hill‘s eponymous debut, De La Soul’s De La Soul Is Dead were also released that year, as well. Yes, 1991 was an insane year for music — and  for me, many of those albums changed the course of my music listening life. (As for the shortsightedness of music critics, Slowdive has become one of the more influential acts of their day with Souvlaki being considered a classic of the genre — but I’m jumping ahead.)

In early 1992, the band were touring to support Blue Day, a re-release of their early EP material and in a rather busy year, they were also writing songs for their sophomore album. But as the band noted the negative coverage they had received in the press had began to affected their songwriting to the point that they were increasingly self-conscious and worried about how their material would be received. They wrote, recorded and re-recorded 40 songs that Creation Records’ McGee loathed. The band scrapped the album and started over. Interestingly, the band wrote to Brian Eno and requested that he produce their sophomore album; however, Eno told them that while he liked their music, he wanted to collaborate, not produce. Halstead later called the recording sessions “one of the most surreal, stoned experiences of [his] life.” But the end result was two songs which appeared on the album “Sing,” a co-write with Eno and “Here She Comes,” which Eno contributes keys.

Creation Records wanted a much more commercial sounding album. Halstead agreed and at one point, he suddenly left, seeking seclusion a Welsh cottage while the remaining members of the band were left in a recording studio waiting for Halstead to return.When Halstead returned, he had some new music, including “Dagger” and “40 Days.”  Souvlaki, which derives its name from a Jerky Boys skit, was released in 1993 to critical panning. Much to their misfortune, Suede released their self-titled debut, which was a critical and commercial success, and an album generally credited as beginning the Brit pop movement.

With increasing issues between their label and distributor, who had been delaying the release of Souvlaki and an EP, the band went through several more lineup changes as they released Pygmalion. The band was then dropped by the their label, and the band’s founding duo along with Ian McCutcheon formed Mojave 3. “After that (Pygmalion), Slowdive didn’t so much split as take a shift in direction, one that a couple of the other members weren’t comfortable with. It didn’t seem right to carry on with the same name, we needed to get a fresh start and all the pieces fell into place for us to get one,” the band’s Goswell explains in their bio.

Since then Scott went on to form Televise, an act that added electronics to the ambient, shoegazer sound. He  also joined Lowgold in 1999 before releasing solo albums through 12k, Miasmas, Sonic Pieces and Kompakt Records before cowriting and performing with Seattle’s The Sight Below. Savill went on to form Monster Movie, a dream pop act with former Eternal bandmate Sean Hewson that specializes in an early Slowdive-like sound. Along with Mojave 3, Halstead and Goswell have released solo albums with Halstead forming side project Black Hearted Brother in 2012 while Goswell joined supergroup Minor Victories in 2015.

In 2014, the members of Slowdive reunited to play dates across the global festival curious and it included stops at that year’s Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, Spain and Porto, Portugal, Electric Picnic Festival, FYF Fest, Fortress Festival, Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Roskilde, Radar Festival and Off Festival, which they promptly followed up with a 20 date North American tour.

The band’s fourth album, 2017’s self-titled album was their first new batch of material in 22 years, and they supported the album with a stop at the dearly departed House of Vans.

The shoegaze pioneers’ fifth album everything is alive is slated for a September 1, 2023 release through Dead Oceans. The highly-anticipated everything is alive is their first album in over six years, and the material reportedly sees the British outfit finding ever more contours of its immersive, elemental sound. The songs themselves contain the duality of a familiar internal language mixed with the exaltation of new beginnings.

The record began with the band’s Halstead in the role of writer and producer, working on demos at home. Experimenting with modular synths, Halstead originally conceived everything is alive as a “more minimal electronic record.” The band’s collective decision-making ultimately saw them drawing back to their signature reverb-drenched guitar sound — but the synths seeped their way into the compositions. “As a band, when we’re all happy with it, that tends to be the stronger material. We’ve always come from slightly different directions, and the best bits are where we all meet in the middle.” Halstead says. “Slowdive is very much the sum of its parts,” Goswell adds. “Something unquantifiable happens when the five of us come together in a room.”

The album was recorded over a couple of years, starting in the fall of 2020 at Courtyard Studio, where they’ve historically recorded. Sessions moved to Oxfordshire, and then the Wolds of Lincolnshire and then to Halstead’s Cornish studio. Early last year, the band enlisted Shawn Everett to mix six of the album’s eight tracks.
 
Because of their deep and lengthy history, there’s a palpable familial energy to the band — and fittingly to to the album: The album is dedicated to Goswell’s mother and Scott’s father, who both died in 2020. “There were some profound shifts for some of us personally,” Goswell says. Life’s profound shifts and uneasy crossroads are often reflected in the many-layered emotional tenor of their music. And while everything is alive is informed by some of life’s heaviest experiences, the material sees the band poised, wizened and pitching themselves to hope. Sure, there’s sadness, but there’s gratitude and uplift, coming from the acknowledgement that life is complicated yet profoundly beautiful in itself.

Thematically, the album is in many ways an exploration into the shimmering nature of live and the universal touch points within it. Sonically, the album reportedly sees the acclaimed British outfit boldly pushing their sound towards the future with the material touching upon the psychedelic soundscapes they’ve long been known for with 80s electronic elements, and John Cale-inspired journeys.

everything is alive‘s breathtakingly gorgeous first single “kisses” strikes me as a gentle refinement of the classic, enveloping Slowdive sound that I adore: reverb-drenched guitar textures, Goswell and Halstead’s uncannily precise yet yearning harmonies, soaring hooks and choruses and gently driving groove but paired with atmospheric synths. The end result is a song that — for me, at least — evokes a waking dream full of yearning, nostalgia and hope. “It wouldn’t feel right to make a really dark record right now. The album is quite eclectic emotionally, but it does feel hopeful,” Halstead says.

Directed by Noel Paul, the accompanying video for “kisses” was shot in Naples primarily at night, and is a dreamlike portrait of a Neapolitan teen giving rides to everyone he knows on his motorcycle. Throughout the video, both driver and passenger express longing, loneliness, heartache, ennui, weariness, pride, flashes of jealousy and more with a fearlessly honest vulnerability. “If this video evokes emotion, it’s largely due to our excellent cast. In particular Charlie and Claudia, two courageous and beautiful souls who threw themselves into their roles and set a tone of fearless vulnerability,” Noel Paul says.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Friendship Commanders Share “120 Minutes MTV”-like “High Sun”

Today will be a busy day with a lot of running around: First I’ll be heading down to Coney Island for the Mermaid Parade. And then eventually, I’ll be at Clem’s for my second-ever DJ set. But there’s still business and the show must go on as best as it could, right?

So let’s get to it.

Nashville-based melodic, heavy duo Friendship Commanders — Buick Audra (vocals, guitar) and Jerry Roe (drums, bass) — have released two albums 2016’s Dave, 2018’s  Steve Albini-produced Bill and two EPs 2020’s Hold On To Yourself and last year’s Release The Rest, an exclusive vinyl compilation of singles released since 2020, including “Stonechild”/”Your Reign Is Over,” which continued their ongoing collaboration with the engineering and mixing team of Kurt Ballou and Brad Boatright. 

The Nashville-based duo’s forthcoming Kurt Ballou and Friendship Commanders co-produced third album MASS was recorded in Ballou’s Salem, MA-based studio, GodCity.

Last month, I wrote about album single, “Fail,” a grunge-inspired ripper built around fuzzy power chords, thunderous drumming and enormous mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses paired with Buick Audra’s expressive, Ann Wilson-like delivery. “Fail” manages to simultaneously evoke a cry for help and a desperate attempt to connect with another that just seems to fall a bit short.

The duo explained that the song was written to honor the memory of Spore‘s and Sunburned Hand of the Man‘s Marc Orleans, who committed suicide in June 2020. “We chose to make the song energetic, dissonant, and big, just as he would like it. Bit of a departure for us from our usual doomy vibe, but it’s still the same band, we think,” the band says. 

MASS‘ third and latest single “High Sun” sees the Nashville-based duo adopting a 120 Minutes-era MTV alt-rock/shoegazey sound. While being a bit of a departure from the doomy heaviness they’re best known for, “High Sun” continues a run of a material rooted in lived-in experience with the new single further establishing the album’s overall concept: leaving a place you no longer feel welcome.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JJUUJJJUU Shares Trippy and Mind-Bending “No Way In”

Phil Pirrone is a Los Angeles-based musician and co-founder of Desert Daze. After spending a decade as a tourist bassist, Pirrone back in 2011 borrowed an SG and DL4 and began his exploration of recording looped based music with JJUUJJUU.

His JJUUJJUU debut, 2013’s FRST EP and the follow-up standalone single “Bleck” helped build up buzz about the project. Throughout that initial period, the lines and instrumentation of JJUUJJUU moved in step with the project’s ethos of ephemera and flux with the project touring in several different configurations with Pirrone at the center. During that period, Pirrone and JJUUUJJUU shared stages with the likes of The Claypool Lennon Delirium, Tortoise, Allah-Lahs, Temples, Tinariwen and others. 

Pirrone spent the next few years recording material in various spaces around California. Those sessions included collaborations with Vinyl Williams, members of Lumerians, Dahga Bloom and others, and the material they recorded eventually comprised his JJUJJUU full-length debut, 2018’s Zionic Mud. The album’s release was accompanied by alternate version of its tracks remixed or reimaged by many of the band’s most notable fans and supporters, including J. Mascis, Warpaint‘s jennylee, Liars, METZ, and Autolux. JJUUJJUU supported the album with opening slots for Primus, Mastodon, Kikagaku Moyo, and Earhtless, as well as festival sets at Pickathon, Nelsonville, M3F and others. 

During the height of the pandemic, Pirrone and his collaborators went on to record two follow-up efforts to Zionic Mud. And with the extra time on his hands, he taught himself how to record material, and then sent tracks to longtime band members Ian Gibbs and Joseph Assef. The tracks were then sent around to Boogarins, METZ’s Alex Adkins and a collection of friends that will be revealed in the future. When it was safe to do so, the band wound up at Rancho De La Luna with Dave Catching and Jon Russo and put finishing touches on the material. 

Earlier this year, Pirrone shared “Nowhere,” a track that sonically brought Connect the Dots-era Toy, Deleters-era Holy Fuck to mind, as its built around a relentless motorik pulse, rolling drum beats, bursts of feedback and distortion paired with wailing vocals buried in the mix.

JJUUJJUU’s latest single in a recent string of singles is “No Way In.” Built around propulsive, polyrhythmic percussion, a sinuous bass line and falsetto wailing drenched in reverb and delay, “No Way In” may arguably the funkiest track Pirrone has released in some time, while still retaining the mind-bending drippiness that he’s best known for. “This is what would happen if JJUUJJUU was the soundtrack of 90s video game ToeJam & Earl,” Pirrone says.

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Micah Buzin, the accompanying video for “No Way In” brings some of the trippy animated sequences of Pink Floyd‘s The Wall to mind — but while seemingly under a psilocybin-like haze: Geometric and lifelike shapes twist, turn and morph before your eyes to the song’s propulsive, motorik-like pulse.