Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: KOKOKO! Shares Throbbing and Propulsive “Bazo Bango”

The acclaimed Congolese collective KOKOKO!’s highly-anticipated sophomore album BUTU is slated for a July 5, 2024 release through Transgressive Records. BUTU sees the collective continuing to pair a defiantly resistant punk-like energy, informed and inspired by the attitude and thought of a new generation of Congolese artists and young people with their neck-snapping, attention-grabbing block party alchemy — but pushed to new, global heights.

Kinshasa’s after-dark buzz was one of the major inspirations behind BUTU, which means “the night” in Lingala, and the album dives deep into the heart of the chaotic, throbbing city, celebrating and championing the joyful and creative spirit of its inhabits. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Belgian producer Xavier Thomas, a.k.a. Débruit, the forthcoming album sees the collective led by Makara Bianko channeling a more electronic-driven, upbeat sound while replicating the frenetic feel of their hometown’s dynamic nightlife: equipment is pushed to its limits through saturated and distorted speakers and the sonic push-and-pull of nighttime sounds. 

The band employs field recordings, recorded from the city’s nighttime sounds and “ready-made percussion” like detergent bottles, which they fed through distortion to get closer to their city’s nighttime sounds. “Compared to Fongola, this album is intentionally way more intense, because it’s quite upbeat and quite full-on,” Xavier Thomas says. The album’s material also pulls from much wider influences and span across West Africa and South Africa, influenced by Bianko’s global travel, which introduced him to new types of alternative electronic music and punk. 

Over the past couple of months, I’ve written about the following singles:

“Mokili” a house music inspired banger featuring glistening synth arpeggios, relentlessly skittering hi-hats and tweeter and woofer rattling thump serving as a slickly produced bed for Bianko’s crooning and impassioned shouts. Continuing a remarkable run of club friendly material with an in-your-face punk attitude and ethos, “Mokili” captures the frenetic and sweaty energy of their hometown and its nightlife scene with an uncanny, novelistic realism. But along with that, the song is a forceful and joyous reminder that Africa is the present and the future.

“’Mokili’ is about moving the world so much that it’s going to tip over sort of,” the acclaimed Congolese collective explains. “This track was a track we were used to trying live in a more improvised way, we never got the chance to record till recently where we added the right touch for the studio. It was the last addition to our album BUTU and became the first single, so it’s really fresh. It has obviously influences from Kinshasa but also Kwaito and 90’s dance music.”

“Salaka Bien,” a euphoric, trance-inducing banger anchored around percussion created on heavy ceramic pots and pans, glistening house music synth stabs and skittering beats that helps to emphasize Bianko’s punchy and swaggering delivery singing lyrics full of winking sexual innuendo. If this track doesn’t fire you up and get you moving, you’re probably dead — literally and figuratively. 

“It’s a bass line driven track, with a lot of influences, like punk funk meeting old house stabs with a trance feeling!” The acclaimed Congolese collective explain. “When we play it live there are moments of overwhelming feeling building till it explodes and people let go totally. Do it, do it good, do it till you break it”.

BUTU‘s third and latest single “Bazo Bango,” derives its title from a Lingala phrase that translates to English as “they are scared,” a chant sung by crowds as a way to vent frustration, the collective explains. Anchored around a looping and propulsive electric bass line, skittering electronic beats, twinkling and percussive polyrhythm and bursts of woozy synth arpeggios pared with chanted call and response vocals, “Bazo Bango” is a euphoric, riotous banger that captures Kinshasa’s chaotic, throbbing and irresistible energy with a mischievous aplomb.

The accompanying video is a woozy mix of digital and electronic glitch shot in and around Kinshasa that pulsates to the song’s relentless throb.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Los Angeles-based dream pop outfit Nightjacket — currently, founding members Louis Schultz and Jordan Wiggins, along with Andrea Wasse — originally formed back in 2015. The band’s current lineup was solidified when Schultz and Wiggins met Wasse in 2019 and bonded over their mutual love of dream pop and alternative pop from the 80s and 90s.

With the release of 2021’s Following the Curve EP and 2022’s “Don’t Say a Word,” the Los Angeles-based dream pop outfit firmly established themselves in the city’s bustling music scene while firmly solidifying a sound anchored around lush soundscapes with elements of psychedelic Americana, jangly reverberated shoegaze and ambient alt-pope, pulsing beats and soaring vocals that paid homage to teenaged influences like Mazzy Star, The Sundays, R.E.M., and Cocteau Twins. Adding to a growing profile, the band’s material has received critical acclaim from a number of media outlets including Stereogum, SPIN, American Songwriter and Under The Radar, while receiving frequent airplay on KCRW.

The band’s latest single “All of My Friends” is a Laurel Canyon-like take on dream pop rooted around shimmering and twangy acoustic guitar, gorgeous, layered three-part harmonies, remarkably catchy hooks and a driving groove before ending with a dreamy slow-burn fade out with bursts of twinkling keys. While recalling FRANKIIE’s gorgeous Between Dreams, “All of My Friends” is inspired by the sense arrested development and adroitness that only comes about as you get older, and you see your friends seemingly moving on to “more adult” lives without you. Written by the band’s Andrea Wasse, a self-proclaimed queen of arrested development, the song was written as a response to the band’s friends leaving Los Angeles over the last handful of years as a result of the writer’s and actor’s union strikes, the pandemic and housing crisis. Fittingly, Wesse felt like she was getting left behind — and perhaps as though she was in a state of perpetual adolescence.

“We really tried to make the song a journey, so that it grows and has new elements that pop in and pull your attention as you listen along,” the band’s Jordan Wiggins says. “Hopefully it’s a ride for people, like rolling down Sunset Blvd., passing neon signs, peering into bars and turning in and out of alleyways until you get to where it’s bright again.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Draag Shares Ominous “Microgravity tank”

Los Angeles-based musician Adrian Acosta was trained as a mariachi singer by his father, an established norteño musician, but after finding his older brother’s electric guitar, Acosta quickly got into indie rock and shoegaze. Growing up in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, there wasn’t much for kids to do; but Acosta got involved in the local DIY punk scene as a preteen. Backyard shows happened every weekend by word-of-mouth and through flyers handed out at school — with some shows ending in drive-by shootings from rival gangs. 

As a 10 year-old, Acosta recorded songs on a karaoke tape deck. Shortly after, he purposely used warped tapes and dissonant sounds without understanding what he loved about it, but upon discovering acts like My Bloody Valentine, Boards of Canada, and Throbbing Gristle, he began to realize that he wasn’t the only one. 

Acota initially started the rising shoegazer outfit Draag nas a solo recording project but after meeting Ray Montes (guitar), Nick Kelley (bass) and Eric Fabbro (drums) through their many years in the local music community, the band began to coalesce as the full realization of what Acosta had always dreamt of creating while connecting with like-minded artists, who were also deeply involved in the local scene.  

Jessica Huang (synth, vocals) joined the band after replying to a Craigslist ad, completing the band’s lineup. Huang’s background was different than her four bandmates: Huang is classically trained in piano, and she played the alto sax in marching bands. And instead of hanging out at backyard shows, she spent her free time on Tumblr. The band initially set about reviving songs from a karaoke tape deck that Acosta recorded when he was 10. They quickly became a buzz-worthy local act, playing shows with Wednesday, Reggie Watts, Mint Field and a lengthy list of others. Then the Los Angeles-based shoegazers released two critically applauded EPs, 2018’s Nontoxic Process and 2020’s Clara Luz and last year’s full-length debut Dark Fire Heresy. 

Slated for a May 17, 2024 release though They Are Gutting A Body of Water’s label Julia’s War Recordings, Actually, the quiet is nice is the follow-up to Dark Fire Heresy while marking the first release through their new label home. The EP reportedly explores the liminal space between albums and the far reaching corners of the band’s sound. Inspired by TikTok slides of anonymous Flickr uploads of someone’s friends, neighborhoods on a summer day, their bedroom and the like, the EP’s material delves into an obsession with a particular feeling in childhood, while knowing that you could be back. but no one would be home. The EP is also informed by the experience of growing up with immigrant parents in the suburbs in the 90s. 

Last month, I wrote about the EP’s first single “Orb Weaver,” a nostalgia-inducing track that brought back memories of 120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock and warm, carefree summer days without much to really do besides bullshit, get high and listen to your favorite tunes. The song’s warped and densely textured guitars provide a laconic and buzzing backdrop for Haung and Acosta’s dreamily yearning harmonies. 

“Jess and I go on night walks in our neighborhood often, probably because there’s no one around and we are obsessed with the eerie nostalgic quality of empty neighborhoods,” Draag’s Acosta explains. “One summer, it was very hard to walk without running into a big orb weaver web. I have a severe fear of spiders. I used the night walks as a form of therapy but it got me in a fearful state instead and dwelling on dark thoughts.”

Actually, the quiet is nice‘s second and latest single “Microgravity tank” is a brooding and ominous track anchored around detuned and buzzing guitars, bursts of twinkling keys, a laconic groove paired with Acosta and Huang’s eerily spectral harmonies. “Microgravity tank” evokes a lingering sense of dread, and the acknowledgement of getting older.

“I used to live in a house that had this very unusual energy,” Draag’s Adrian Acosta explains. “It’s the kind of energy I could only connect to that specific house. It was quite haunting. Every few months or so, I’ll have a Deja vu moment that brings me back to that house. When it fades, all I can think about is how my better years are behind me.” 

The accompanying visualizer is unsettling, surreal and hypnotic, as it features a person wearing a Dora the Explorer costume playing in a playground. The band’s Jessica Huang is Dora’s caretaker/babysitter or something.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Zoë Fromer is a New York-born and-raised singer/songwriter, who spent stints in Boca Raton, FL. Fromer can trace the origins of her career to growing up listening to and being inspired by her mother’s CD collection, which featured Blondie and Queen, before she found heaven in The Kills, The White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age among others.

In pursuit of a musical landscape that could provide more space for her, Fromer relocated to New York, where she immersed herself in the city’s bustling music scene and honed what she has dubbed a toothsome,. emotional iteration of soulful indie rock.

Fromer’s sophomore EP, the four-song, John Young-produced Velvet was recorded in Ridgewood, Queens-based Magnetar Sound. The EP sees the Boca Raton-born, New York-based artist pushing her own boundaries emotionally, lyrically and sonically. Thematically, the material follows the pendulum of ill-fated flings and bleeding heart love, touching upon love, sex, anger, rage desire, loss and sorrow. The central message of it all: the power of feminine emotion — and of fully owning it.

The EP’s lead single “No Questions” is a slithering rocker featuring buzzing power chords, a relentless, chugging motorik-like groove punctuated with forceful drumming paired with rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses. The song’s arrangement seems to channel Desert Sessions Vol. 9 & 10 while serving as a gritty soundscape for Fromer’s sultry delivery.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Half Waif Shares a Breathtakingly Gorgeous Meditation on Grief and Loss

Back in May 2022, Nandi Rose, the creative mastermind behind the critically applauded Half Waif, was standing on the ridgeline in northeastern Wyoming, looking at the landscape, a layer cake of strata, the colors representing compressed geologic time. She was at an artist residency, where she found herself grappling with loss and looking for answers in the sagebrush.
The previous winter in Upstate New York, Rose’s life had been riddled with blows as she faced losing a family member to illness and moved through a medical recovery of her own.

As she was gazing out at the wide plains, she felt the beneficence of the passing of time. “I’m not a failure,” she thought to herself. “I’m an ephemeral being.”

Rose’s latest EP, the five-song Ephemeral Being EP is slated for a May 31, 2024 release through ANTI- Records. Recorded between the winter 2021 and into the following spring, the EP looks at the transience of life while celebrating the continuation of nature’s infinite cycles. The EP’s material, the first part of a larger body of work scheduled later this year, Rose finds comfort and hope in the natural world.

Sonically, the EP’s arrangement boldly blend elements of contemporary classical with indie rock and synth pop. And while being at turns fierce and delicate, the songs reportedly set e as a reminder of scale: that we are ephemeral and tiny in midst of geologic and cosmic time. It’s also a reminder that when you feel paralyzed by life’s disruptions, and when we are often at most desperate, that nature offers us perspective.

Ephemeral Being EP‘s first single “Big Dipper” is anchored around a breathtakingly lush arrangement of twinkling keys, skittering gated reverb-soaked beats, atmospheric synths, bursts of guitar. The Kate Bush-like arrangement serves as a satiny bed for Rose’s vulnerable and yearning delivery. And while the song conveys an overwhelming sense of loss and grief, the song’s viewpoint is not of devastating heartache, but of hope and resolve.

“This is a song about looking for answers, and finding none, and looking again,” Rose explains. ““It was written at a time when I was feeling very stuck in my body and overwhelmed by compounding griefs. I was inspired by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who had just passed away, and his idea of continuation–how we are not bound by our forms. We continue on. ‘This body is not me,’ he said. ‘So laugh with me, hold my hand, let us say good-bye, say good-bye to meet again soon.’”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Ren Harvieu Shares Swooning Baroque Pop Anthem “Black Wig”

Ren Harvieu is an emerging Manchester, UK-based singer/songwriter and producer. Harvieu’s work is inspired by a life altering brush with death when she was 20 — and by the Northern English working class penchant for finding humor within despair.

The Manchester-based artist’s single, the Romeo Stodart and Harvieu co-written and co-produced “Black Wig” is a baroque, chamber pop anthem reminiscent of Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Kishi Bashi and Vanille but anchored in an off-kilter yet swooning arrangement of strings, marxophone, harpsichord and musical saw paired with Harvieu’s ethereal Kate Bush-like delivery.

I could picture Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette twerking to this. But as the emerging Manchester-based artist explains, “‘Black Wig’ is an ambitious baroque pop for all the unhinged out there, who are just far too fabulous and tortured for this world.”

Directed by Romeo Stodart, the accompanying video for “Black Wig” visually plays on the Marie Antoinette vibes of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 65th Birthday, Ian McCullouch!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Echo and The Bunnymen’s Ian McCullouch’s 65th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Aquafox Shares a Cathartic Ode to Heartbreak and Revenge

Rachel Mae Perry is an Orange County, CA-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. Perry’s career started in earnest when she was signed to the WME Agency, alongside the likes of Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber when she had turned 15. As a teen, she shared stages with The Beach Boys, The Eagles, Jan and Dean, John Stamos, Dick Dale, Jim Belushi, The Bangles, Berlin, and a long list of others.

The Orange County, CA-based artist is the creative mastermind behind the emerging indie, solo recording project Aquafox. Perry’s Aquafox debut single “Party Girl,” was written during a hospital stay and delves into her tumultuous years of drug and alcohol abuse with an unvarnished, raw honesty and captivating harmonies while offering a glimpse into her journey of self-discovery, sobriety and healing.

The latest Aquafox single, the Jon O’Brien and Perry co-produced “Hurt You” continues a run of remarkably crafted material. Built around a lush, arrangement of jangling acoustic guitar, bursts of twinkling glockenspiel, fuzzy power chord-driven hooks and choruses paired with a driving groove, the 90s Riot Grrrl-inspired track is a cathartic and relatable anthem focused on the desire for revenge after a bitter betrayal and breakup. If you’ve been scorned, fucked over or done wrong by someone you’ve cared about — or loved — the sentiment at the song’s core, is both lived-in and deeply familiar.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 82nd Birthday, Tammy Wynette!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 82nd anniversary of the birth of Tammy Wynette.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Nick Kizirnis Returns with 120 Minutes MTV-era Alt Rock Anthem “Through The Motions”

Nick Kizirnis is a Dayton, OH-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, who has spent the past two-plus decades writing genre-twisting and genre-defying material on over ten solo albums, while also collaborating and playing in bands like The Mulchmen, Tobin Sprout’s Eyesinweasel, Cage and others with a collection of up-and-coming local musicians. 

Over the past decade or so, the Dayton-based artist has been primarily focused on guitar-driven compositions, but his last solo album The Distance saw Kizirnis returning to writing lyrics and arrangements while also simultaneously being a step forward stylistically. As Kizirnis explains, he had a desire to push himself beyond anything he had previously done. “I wanted it to be new and different from what people had heard from me,” the Dayton-based artist said.

Kizirnis’ forthcoming album Every Moment sees the Dayton-based artist collaborating with an All-Star cast including The Breeders‘ and Guided by Voices‘ Jim Macpherson, Foxy Shazam‘s and Lung‘s Daisy Caplan, Tod Weidner and Kate Wakefield and guest spots from Trashcan Sinatras‘ Paul Livingston and Guided by Voices’ Tobin Sprout. Sonically, the album’s material reportedly builds on a range of influences including Link Wray, The National, Guided by Voices, Neko Case and others paired with Kizirnis’ probing lyrics and textured, guitar atmospherics throughout. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about album title track “Every Moment,” an anthemic track that recalls Starfish-era The Church and Reckless-era Bryan Adams-like rock featuring some big fuzz and distorted pedaled guitar riffs, a driving rhythm section, big, incredibly catchy hooks and choruses paired with Kizirnis’ easy-going yet earnest croon. 

Recorded remotely during the depths of COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns and restrictions and later finalized in-person with Macpherson, Caplan, Wakefield, Weidner and Kyleen Downes, “Every Moment” as Kizrnis explains is about staying present during impending existential crises and the brink of collapse.

“Through the Motions,” Every Moment‘s third and latest single, continues a run of 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rockers, anchored around big fuzzy riffs, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with Kizrinis’ yearning yet easy-going croon. And much like its immediate predecessor, the song is deeply inspired and informed by the strangeness of our lives during the pandemic.

“Through the Motions” is about wanting to experience real wonder and possibility again during a time we were all living in isolation and watching both the mundane and unbelievable take place every day, while we just did our best to exist,” Kizirnis explains. “It’s also a song about finding love in the middle of it and the hope that it might lead to a way out.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 68th Birthday, Sharon Jones!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 68th anniversary of Sharon Jones’ birth.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 87th Birthday, Ron Carter!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 87th birthday of the legendary Ron Carter.