California-born, London -based singer/songwriter and guitarist Jen Chochinov has been crafting catchy, propulsive rock in DIY circles since the 1990s as a solo artist and in a variety of bands. Solo and full adventures throughout her career have included […]
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry’s 79th birthday.
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 76th anniversary of Olivia Newton John’s birth.
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman’s 52nd birthday.
I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering the ridiculously prolific, New York-based producer, DJ, remixer and JOVM mainstay Rhythm Scholar through this site’s almost 15-year history. During that period, the New York-based JOVM mainstay has built a national and international profile for crafting slickly produced, crowd-pleasing mashups and remixes.
2024 has been a rather busy year for Rhythm Scholar. He has remixed a handful of some of the most beloved songs of the 1980s:
To celebrate the 40th — god, 40th! — anniversary of the release of The Police’s “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” one of my favorite Police songs ever, the JOVM mainstay turns the beloved song into an uptempo club banger that retains Sting’s vocal and elements of the song’s melody but paired with skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling beats, glistening synth arpeggios. The song also features some mischievously placed samples from “Synchronicity Part 2,” “Voices In My Head” and more, as well as something from Andy Summers‘ solo work.
Since initially forming in Bloomington, IN over a decade ago, the acclaimed Los Angeles-based psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Frankie and the Witch Fingers — currently founding duo Dylan Sizemore (vocals, guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, […]
Paris-based electro rock outfit Superjava can trace its origins back to when its founding duo Archi and Alex met in 2015 while they were studying at Berklee College of Music. Upon graduation, they relocated to Paris, where they met the band’s then-third member Arnaud. Although the band has gone through a lineup change, the members of the Parisian outfit — currently Archi and Arnaud — have managed to spread their music around the world, as a result of several global advertising campaigns.
After the release of several EPs, which were supported with tours in France and China in 2019, the duo recently released their highly-anticipated full-length debut, Get Sick, Get Better. Drawing influence from the likes of Phoenix, Justice, Jamaica, Air, Cassius, MGMT, Empire Of The Sun and Foster The People among others, the album sees the band embodying the spirit and feel of a new wave of French Touch while featuring elements of rock, pop and electro pop.
“Slowdown,” Get Sick, Get Better‘s latest single is a breezy bop featuring glistening synths, a strutting bass line and the pair’s unerring knack for crafting remarkably catchy, rousingly anthemic hooks. While seemingly indebted to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix-era Phoenix and Oracular Spectacular-era MGMT, “Slowdown” to my ears, also subtly brings Tame Impala to mind, too. And at its core, the song is anchored in a much-needed reminder that we need to slow down and just enjoy the moment — whether it’s with our dear ones or just by ourselves.
Directed by Jules Salters, the accompanying video for “Slowdown” features the duo wandering the French countryside while being part of a pleasant psilocybin trip or while wandering a slightly alien yet familiar world — or perhaps even both.
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates T.I.’s 44th birthday.
Initially formed in Québec City back in 2016 and now currently featuring members split between the Québecois cities of Montréal, Québec City and Gatineau, VICTIME — Ponctuation’s and Pure Carrière‘s Laurence Gauthier-Brown, Album’s Simone Provencher and Corridor‘s and Kee Avii‘s Samuel Gougoux — quickly made waves across the province with 2017’s Mon VR de rêve EP, 2018’s full-length debut La femme taupe and Mi-tronic, mi-jambe EP.
With their first three releases under their collective belts, the trio began to make the rounds of the Canadian festival circuit, playing sets at Sled Island, Up Here, Francos de Montréal, FME and Taverne Tour. Adding to a growing profile across the country, the band opened for the likes of Lydia Lunch, Guerilla Toss, Frigs, Ponctuation and Jesuslesfilles, as well as a series of tour dates in France.
The band’s forthcoming effort, En conversation avec is slated for an October 25, 2024 release through Mothland. En conversation avec is the result of a new creative process for the band, informed and inspired by the band being split across different cities in the province. Written over the course of the past five years, the trio frequently relied on the spontaneity of sporadic get-togethers and remote work in which they shared files among each other.
Reportedly the effort sees the band simultaneously showing a newfound patience while being among their most layered. While still holding on to their post-punk and noise rock roots, the trio explore a wide-spanning spectrum where tensions and openings coexist, colmating breaks and ruptures, cracks and fissures with elements of trip hop, avant rock and IDM. Thematically, the material touches upon feminism, vengeance, violence, being a female, speaking out, obliterating patriarchy and more.
“It was a long process, the sum of three minds in three different cities. We felt the urge to create in a new way, to break out of our guitar-bass-drums mold, to be less of a rock band,” the band explains. “So, we started from sounds and sonic explorations, finally recentering everything around a more simple songwriting process. And though it is packed with weird sounds and whatnot, we feel this is the best music we have ever written. It is informed by the many projects, contracts, experiences, etcetera each of us took on over the past few years, a logical follow-up to our individual paths.
We were inspired by many things, namely: the Sisters with Transistors documentary film, Kim Gordon and everything she represents, the sadness of roadkills; electronic prototypes, breadboards and sonic experimentations; musique concrète [or concrete music], mechanisms, eye (but also other parts of the body) surgeries, Giacometti, The Da Vinci Code, the total solar eclipse, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.”
“We produced the album ourselves. We recorded everything way too hot, so it’s distorted. Also, we didn’t use a grid when tracking, so we struggled with the sessions quite a bit. Amongst the files we sent to Simon Labelle, who mixed the album, there are easily 47 tracks with takes we had no business keeping and well over a dozen tracks named “Noise 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8…”, so he probably hates us now. I guess we kept our reckless-kids-playing-in-the-back-alley mentality, all the way to the financial means. Simone [Provencher] builts effects pedals with Fairfield Circuitry, which meant we could use breadboard prototypes on a few tracks, so that’s pretty legit, right?”
En conversation avec‘s latest single “Résonne encore,” is the band’s first ever love song. Anchored around a propulsive and forceful, tribal drum pattern, “Résonne encore” features reverb-soaked vocals, angular guitar stabs and bursts of synth oscillations for the song’s first two-and-a-half minutes, before abruptly stuttering into a glitchy trip hop-like bridge seemingly inspired by Portishead’s “Machine Gun.” The song’s coda features bursts of guitar dissonance, the introductory section’s propulsive and forceful tribal drum pattern paired with an ethereal and dreamily sung vocal incantation. The result is a song that feels feverish, woozy and a bit heartsick, much like an uneasy yet new love.
Boonton, NJ-based shoegazers High. can trace their origins back to 2021 when Christian Castan (vocals, guitar) and Bridget Bakie (bass, vocals) met while playing across the Garden State’s DIY and college circuit, building Bakie’s reputation as “The Queen of The Quarter Note” and Castan’s profile as an unforgettable guitarist. After the pair played in a band together, they longed fora project that would be their sole creative focus and could tour as far and wide as possible. A few weeks and two weeks after their proper formation with the addition of Jack Miller (drums) and Danny Zavala (guitar), the quartet made their live debut at Saint Vitus. They followed that up with shows across the Tristate DIY circuit.
The New Jersey-based quartet’s highly-anticipated Matthew Molnar-produced sophomore EP Come Back Down is slated for a January 24, 2025 release digitally and on vinyl through Kanine Records. The EP’s first sessions started last June when the band, along with Molnar went to Chairlift‘s Patrick Wimberly‘s Greenpoint studio to test new material with engineer Sam Darwish. They also brought tracks to Shane Furst and his Cloud Factory Recording to review their recent work and begin the next stages of completion.
Come Back Down marks the beginning of the band’s partnership with Kanine Records — and a key period in the band’s development. With a greater expression of sonic range, the EP sees the band offering more noise, more hooks, more heaviness and much more emotion: The sad is much sadder and the love is more swooningly in love. There are more song about loss and being lost. For the band, it’s the culmination of their growth after the release of their well-received debut EP Bomber, which was released through Julia’s War and Suburban Creep.
Last fall, the band took a break from the sessions to do a week-long tour with Austin-based outfit STAB, as well as opening slots for DIIV, Glare, Lowertown, A Place To Bury Strangers, as well as a Midwest run with Chicago’s Smut. After touring across the nation, the band finished the EP with Jeff Ziegler at his Philadelphia-based Uniform Recording. Zeigler’s work on Nothing.’s Guilty of Everything has been a major inspiration for the New Jersey-based group.
Come Back Down‘s lead single “In A Hole” is a decidedly 120 Minutes MTV-era take on shoegaze anchored around a towering wall of stormy guitars, thunderous drumming and ethereal boy-girl harmonies. The song’s brooding soundscape evokes the stormy emotions, trauma and unease that inspired it — but also the comfort of finding friendship and a community that truly understands where you’re coming from.
“’In A Hole’ is inspired by meeting our group of friends,” High.’s Christian Castan explains. “It’s about being depressed and the people close to you dragging you out of it. It’s about the peace and belonging I used to dream about during childhood trauma and finally finding it. There’s a lyric – ‘These are the new stars, they burst alive.’ It’s about living life at its best and never wanting that feeling to end.”
Directed by Aleko Syntelis, the accompanying video for “In A Hole” was shot and is set in Brooklyn and features the band playing a rooftop show and hanging out with their crew. The video captures the feeling of being young, of seemingly infinite possibilities ahead of you, of the pure joy of hanging out with your dearest ones, who will hold you down when you need them most.
“We shot this video during a rooftop show in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the first night of our tour with Birthday Girl,” the band’s Castan recalls. “It was the last weekend of summer with hella New Jersey heads, some new friends, Keg stands, and the New York Skyline. Sh*t was nuts, someone downstairs tried to shut us down. Aleko captured our live set and we hope anyone who sees this gets what that night felt like.”
New York-born and-based singer/songwriter Rebecca Haviland has deep musical roots: Her grandparents were professional musicians in Westchester’s vibrant supper club scene in the 1950s. “Their house was a musical sanctuary,” she recalls, where impromptu family jam sessions lit the spark of her passion for music.
After high school, Haviland pursued music studies and interned at Mamaroneck-based Acme Studios. There, studio owner Peter Denenberg discovered her talent and offered her the chance to record an EP. “That single experience changed the course of my life,” Haviland says. Her debut gig at The Bitter End — where Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan also started their careers — marked the start of Haviland’s career.
Over the course of her two decade career, Haviland, along with her backing band Whiskey Heart — Martin Sexton‘s Chris Anderson, Dispatch‘s Kenny Shaw, Cross, Stills & Nash‘s Todd Caldwell and Nicky Barbato have captivated audiences with their pairing of Haviland’s powerhouse vocals and introspective songwriting with an effortless blend of roots rock, soul and Americana.
Whiskey Hearts 2013 full-length debut garnered awards in the International Songwriting Competition and Unsigned Only Competition. 2018’s Don DiLego-produced Bright City Lights, which featured “Bright City Lights” and “You and I” was released to praise from Paste Magazine, who wrote that the album was “hauntingly beautiful.” The video for “Bright City Lights” also earned an International Songwriting Competition nod.
In 2019, Haviland and Whiskey Heart recorded two live albums at Memphis‘ iconic Sun Studios. The albums featured both originals and covers like John Prine’s “Angel From Montgomery.” 2022’s holiday album, A Holiday to Remember featured both classic and original holiday tunes.
Over the past decade, Haviland has nurtured young musicians as a professor at SUNY Purchase’s Music Conservatory, where she shares her industry insights and inspires students to push their creative boundaries.
Currently Haviland and her Whiskey Heart bandmates are working on their forthcoming Paul Loren-produced album. Slated for a 2025 release, the ten-song album draws inspiration from the likes of Aretha Franklin, Linda Ronstadt, Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell. To build up buzz for the album, the band will be releasing the Late Nights EP on November 15, 2024.
The album’s first single “Monday Nights” is a gritty and soulful rocker featuring a glam rock-inspired riff, rousingly anthemic, raise-your-beer-in-the-air-and-sing-a-long hooks and choruses, a strutting bass line paired with Haviland’s Ronnie Spector-like delivery. It’s the sort of song that should amp you up for a night of hijinks, carousing and rabble-rousing. But it also captures a sadly-lost sense of infinite possibilities and weirdness that you used to encounter on a random night out in New York. (I think of this one time, where I met these two British brothers. One of them was trying to score coke in the bar. I was standing by them, thinking “Should I even be here?” I wound up bar hopping with one of the brothers. He had a fistful of $20 bills and he was willing to pay for everything.)
“I really wanted to write a song with a heavy riff and an Elvis Costello meets the Stranglers vibe; old school New York with a don’t give a fuck attitude,” Rebecca Haviland says. “The lyric and production of this song really capture the vibe and inspiration behind the entire EP. It’s about the old music scene in New York, a time when you could go out on Monday nights, also known in the New York music scene as ‘Musicians Night Off,’ and bang around on Bleecker Street or in the East Village hanging at different music venues and meeting up with friends, seeing some killer music, or playing your own show that everyone in the scene would come out and support. Sometimes we would even have multiple gigs on the same night, just walking down the street to the next club and playing another set. Every club would feel so alive and inspiring. You could feel the musicians and audience feeding off each other. It was a time before social media, when you would just head out to the neighborhood to find out what was going on. This is the New York that made me who I am, and even now 20 years later, the city has changed a lot, but it’s still my favorite night to play a gig or go out and see music.”
