Live concert photography of DJ Rekha’s Basement Bhangra Beyond at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
New Audio: rhythmspitter Shares Hypnotic “Yilan”
Things look a bit different around here. There’s a reason for that: Regular freelance work dried up for me last July. Not much has gone on with full-time work, or anything else. So,. whatever meagre earnings i had have pretty much evaporated. And now, when it came to certain subscriptions — i.e. WordPress — I can’t afford it at all. Admittedly, things are extremely frustrating and discouraging. But I’m trying to keep the show running as best as I can until things get better. Hopefully. But in this environment, who the fuck really knows?
Michael Mosley is a San Francisco-based musician, composer, producer, who may be best known for playing bass in Red Thread Theory. Mosley is also the creative mastermind behind the JOVM mainstay act rhythmspltter. And with rhythmspitter, Mosley explores instrumental indie rock and lo-fi beat-driven material that’s influenced from an eclectic array of sources, including Bill Laswell’s Material and Jah Wobble‘s Invaders of the Heart.
Each rhythmspitter composition sees Mosley weaving together a rich tapestry of instruments and rhythms from across the world. Each composition is meticulously crafted to resonate with listeners while providing a chill and captivating vibe that’s entrancing. With rhythmspitter, Mosley seeks to break down barriers and introduce audiences to a world of sonic exploration that they may not have encountered before — but he also hopes to open minds to the beauty of different styles and instruments.
Mosely’s latest rhythmspitter EP, The Antique Land is inspired by Alexander the Great and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” The EP’s latest single “Yilan,” continues a run of percussive and hypnotic material with shimmering Middle Eastern-styled instrumentation and eerily atmospheric vocal samples ethereally floating through the mix. And much like the previously released material, “Yilan” channels the hypnotic and dreamy beauty of gnawa but with a swaggering and slick, modern production.
New Audio: The Desertones Share Broodingly Cinematic “The Portal”
Things look a bit different around here. There’s a reason for that: Regular freelance work dried up for me last July. Not much has gone on with full-time work, or anything else. So,. whatever meagre earnings i had have pretty much evaporated. And now, when it came to certain subscriptions — i.e. WordPress — I can’t afford it at all. Admittedly, things are extremely frustrating and discouraging. But I’m trying to keep the show running as best as I can until things get better. Hopefully. But in this environment, who the fuck really knows?
Arizona-based instrumental trio Destertones specializes in a sound that they’ve simultaneously described as “hypnotic soul-meets-desert groove” and as feeling “like dry heat, long shadows, and endless sky.
The trio’s recently released full-length debut, The Portal features album title track and opening track “The Portal,” a broodingly cinematic track anchored around a slow-burning and hypnotic grove that recalls JOVM mainstays Tinariwen, The Diasonics and Mildlife. Recorded live and straight-to-tape to get the song a human, imperfect touch, “The Portal” manages to evoke dry and dusty desert heat rising up from blacktop.
Throwback: Happy 76th Birthday, Roger Taylor!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Roger Taylor’s 76th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 82nd Birthday, Mick Jagger!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helm celebrates Mick Jagger’s 82nd birthday.
New VIdeo: Tame Impala Shares Euphoric and Trippy “End Of Summer”
Tame Impala’s latest single “End Of Summer” is the first bit of new material from the acclaimed Aussie multi-instrumentalist, producer, and singer/songwriter Kevin Parker since 2020’s The Slow Rush — and is the first release on his new label home Columbia Records.
“End Of Summer” sees the Tame Impala mastermind pushing his acclaimed project into a completely new direction as the euphoric track channels acid house, deep house while still remaining trippy and mind-bending.
“End Of Summer” is accompanied by a narrative visual directed and edited by multi-disciplinary artist Julian Klincewicz that follows Parker in the creation of the song, while on an abandoned train car and wandering through the streets of a city in a fashion that kind of reminds me of Purple Rain.
New Video: Faetooth Shares Forceful and Stormy “Hole”
Led by Jenna Garcia (vocals, bass), Los Angeles-based outfit Faetooth specializes in a sound that they’ve dubbed “fairy-doom:” a unique and eclectic amalgamation of doom metal paired with vocals that alternate between spellbinding melodies to guttural shrieks and howls.
Last month, the Los Angeles-based outfit announced their highly-anticipated sophomore album Labyrinthine will be slated for a September 5 release digitally through AWAL and on vinyl and CD by The Flenser. Labyrinthine will reportedly see the band further establishing their “fairy-doom” sound while embracing a newly softened, more intimate tone, anchored around emotional rawness.
Throughout the album, the material touches upon themes of loss, self-pity, personal relationships and more. The inmate balance doesn’t dilute their intensity; rather it reframes it, offering listeners a haunting yet delicate atmosphere, layered with entrancing textures that build up to explosive catharsis. The result is an album that’s a hauntingly visceral and disturbing vision, anchored by deep introspection.
Labyrinthine will feature the previously released, “Death of Day” which to my ears channeled the likes of Tool and JOVM mainstays Slumbering Sun, and “White Noise,” a bruising ripper rooted in a palpable and unsettling mix of anguish, despair, loathing and fury that feels both lived in and deeply familiar.
“Hole,” the album’s latest single is a slow-burning and meditative doom metal dirge that slowly builds up into a bruising and stormy intensity, fueled by a lived in urgency and desperation to get away from a seemingly fucked up past and fucked up cycles of dysfunction, abuse, etc. And much like the previously released singles, “Hole” does so with an innately empathetic sensibility that says to the listener “I’ve been there. You aren’t alone.”
“’Hole’ is a meditation on the choice of confronting the past, or burying it,” the band’s Jenna Garcia explains. “Sobering, waking, realizations of cycles find themselves bared, culminating in an invocation-like verse that declares severance to all ties to a creeping past.”
Directed by Joe Mischo, the cinematically shot visual for “Hole” follows a a woman frantically running through a wooded countryside that includes madness, regret, possession and witches.
Throwback: R.I.P. Chuck Mangione
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the life and music of Chuck Mangione.
New Audio: Street Eaters Share Furious and Impassioned “Tempers”
Oakland-based post punk outfit Street Eaters — co-founders Megan March (vocals, drums) and John No (bass, vocals), along with Joan Toledo (guitar) — will be releasing their long-awaited and highly-anticipated fifth album, Opaque on September 5, 2025 through Dirt Cult Records. The seven-song album reportedly sees the trio attempting to stitch up the bloody wounds of their past while being a meditation on birth, death, excavated trauma, and trying to find steadfast kinfolk in a world that’s increasingly splintered, fucked up and cruel.
Much like all of us, Street Eaters have been through the wringer a bit since 2017’s The Envoy.
The band’s guitarist Joan Toledo, left a transphobic family and government in her native Florida, eventually relocating to San Francisco, where they became an editor at Maximum Rocknroll Magazine and a radical union organizer at the world famous City Lights Books.
The band’s front woman Megan March had a child. And while becoming am other was, as she puts it, “and incredible joy and opportunity to rewire emotional pathways and deep wounds,” it was also a reminder of her own childhood: March’s mother was violently homophobic and eventually threw Megan and her teenage sister — both queer — from their childhood home.
For March, childbirth was both a traumatizing and transformational experience. Ironically born on July 4, her baby immediately entered a world steeped in bureaucracy: The hospital was so understaffed that March was neglected until the last moment and was forced to endure an emerging C-section. “I was borderline dehumanized by the toxic, misogynistic nature of the American medical system and its focus on efficiency and profit before care,” she says.
“Opaque is a record that gets deep into the stark and beautiful reality of growth and transition from trauma and loss,” Street Eaters’ March explains. “What does it mean to wake up one day and realize you are living the way you have always demanded to live — yet with all those jagged piles of emotional, physical, and social/political baggage still slicing through the veil?” The album isn’t just confrontational; it’s complicated. It sees the band, much like the rest of us, groping towards identity, understanding, and a place in the world in the process of being curated. “It’s a transition into finding peace with the world — a resonant connection with community and chosen family, getting beyond a lot of the pain and hurt,” the band’s John No says. “We’re trying to suture up wounds at this point and create something that’s healthy.”
Opaque‘s first single “Tempers” is a furious, adrenaline pumping ripper featuring scuzzy, serrated power chords, thunderous guitars and March’s urgent and impassioned vocals. March says, the song is about “being in isolation and not being sure what the future is going to be like and how things will be when the storm is over.”
The accompanying video directed by Krista Wright and Theo Garvey, in a hospital waiting room, where no one ever seems to get helped with anything. The band turns the hospital room into a stage that they rip up with a furious performance of the song.
New Audio: Lomotor Returns with Scorching “Second Sun”
Josh Rathburn is a Northern Massachusetts-based electronic music producer best known as Lomotor. Drawing comparisons to Boards of Canada and JOVM mainstay Rival Consoles, and inspired by the hills and valleys of his rural surroundings, Rathburn’s work sees him blending modular and analog synthesizers with found sounds and early childhood cassette recordings to create songs that often feel like a scratched and faded memory of a melody heard long ago.
The Northern Massachusetts-based producer’s latest single “Second Sun” is a broodingly hypnotic track built around a glitchy, growling and warped synth melody paired with skittering beats. While seemingly channeling Tobacco and Black Moth Super Rainbow, “Second Sun” evokes sun-scorched landscapes and grainy, analog fuzz, making the song sound as though it was a distant transmission from a malfunctioning satellite.