Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Gritty Sounds and Visuals of Frank B’s Collaboration with Heltah Skeltah’s Rock “Brooklyn Vs. All”

Up-and-coming Brooklyn-born emcee Frank B first emerged into the national scene with an appearance on Missy Elliott’s UPN series, The Road to Stardom with Missy Elliott , which resulted with him landing a record deal with Elliott’s imprint Gold Mine Records; however, the Brooklyn-based emcee is now doing things on his own with his own imprint Nobel House — and with his new imprint, the Brooklyn-based emcee hopes to enter 2018 in a big way with the release of his forthcoming album Let Me Be Frank, which will feature guest spots from Pro Era’s Nyck Caution, Onyx’s Sticky Fingaz, Heltah Skeltah and Boot Camp Clik’s Rock and a lengthy list of others. 

Let Me Be Frank’s latest single, the GIT Beats-produced”Brooklyn Vs. All” finds the up-and-coming Brooklyn-born-and-based emcee teaming up with renowned, fellow Brooklynite, Rock. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of its almost eight year history, you’d know that if I usually prefer my hip-hop to be rough, rugged and raw street shit — and “Brooklyn Vs. All” fits that mold, as the GIT Beats production consists of tweeter and woofer rocking beats and ominous instrumentation over which both emcees spit about their hometown with dexterous word play and complex rhyme schemes lovingly and realistically describing the starkness and beauty of their home borough. 

Directed by Mike D. Visuals, the noir-ish visuals manage to emphasize the grittiness and desperation of the song — featuring footage shot in bleak back alleys, basements and industrial areas during dreary Northeastern fall days and nights. But it also nods to the fact that there really ain’t anyplace on Earth like Brooklyn. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Over the past month, you may have come across a couple of posts featuring the  Stockholm, Sweden-based psych rock band Marble Mammoth. Featuring members, who have played in The Unisex, and have collaborated with  The MC5s Mike Davis and The Hellacopters‘ and Imperial State Electric’s Nicke Anderson, the band quickly developed a reputation across their native Sweden for a sound that meshes the bluesy power chords of Led Zeppelin with the dreamy, psychedelia of the likes of Tame Impala — although “Wrecked Ship” reminded me of JOVM mainstays Goat and Black Sabbath, thanks to some blistering guitar pyrotechnics paired with soaring organ chords and rousingly anthemic hooks.

The act followed “Wrecked Ship,” with the gritty and anthemic prog rock-like single “Glitter Amongst Gravel,” which featured some incredible guitar pyrotechnics and an expansive and ambitious song structure, complete with twisting and turning organ chords. However, their latest single “Girl of a 1000 Thrills” while drawing from similar sources as their preceding singles is a bit of a sonic left turn for the Swedish psych rockers as it sounds as though it were influenced by Deep Purple and Steppenwolf but with a subtly modern twist reminiscent of the RidingEasy Records roster.

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Here Lies Man Releases a Psych Rock Cover of Fela Kuti’s “Sorrow Tears and Blood”

With the release of their self-titled full-length debut earlier this year, the Los Angeles, CA-based act Here Lies Man founded by Marcos Garcia, who was a member of renowned Afrobeat act Antibalas and featuring fellow Antibalas bandmates Chico Mann (guitar, vocals) and Geoff Mann (drums), along with Rich Panta (percussion), JP Maramba (bass) and Kris Casto (organ), have developed a reputation for a sound that seamlessly bridges classic, Fela Kuti-era Afrobeat with classic, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin-era rock. 

Building upon a growing national profile, the band will be releasing a 12 inch EP Animal Noises, which is slated for release on Friday through RidingEasy Records, and the EP’s first single is a psych rock cover of Fela Kuti’s “Sorrow, Tears and Blood” that manages to retain the song’s melody and furious outrage while turning into an blistering, arena rock-friendly jam. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Introducing the Soaring and Anthemic Synth Pop of Up-and-Coming Italian Synthwave Act YOOP

Comprised of Luca Sammartini and Valentina Sicco, YOOP are an up-and-coming Vicenza, Italy-based synthwave/synth pop act, who released their full-length debut effort Take Shelter earlier this month, and with the release of slickly produced album single “Rainbow,” the duo’s sound that seems to draw influence from Tears for Fears and contemporaries like Moonbabies, St. Lucia and Washed Out, as they pair soaring and anthemic hooks with a production featuring shimmering arpeggiated synths, propulsive, tweeter and woofer rocking, industrial-like beats, a sinuous bass line and angular guitar chords — and while managing to be arena rock friendly and a club banger, the track possesses an aching yearning at its core.

The recently released video follows a dream-like logic in which a woman wakes up to find herself tied to a chair and as soon as she escapes, where she spends a dizzying period seeking something just out of her grasp through a series of rooms and staircases.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Cal Young is a Hobart, Australia-based electronic music producer and artist, who began his career as one-half of the applauded The Scientists Of Modern Music, an act that once received praise for an energetic and engaging live set, playing at some of their homeland’s biggest festivals, opening for national touring acts, as well as headlining clubs across Australia.

Although they received some success, The Scientists Of Modern Music split up with its members going on to pursue their own creative pursuits with Young famously collaborating with fellow Hobart, Australia-based singer/songwriter Asta, who received national acclaim with “My Heart Is On Fire,” a track helped her win Triple J’s Unearthed High and landed at number 50 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 Countdown, and its follow up “I Need Answers.”

Building upon the success he received working with Asta, Young felt inspired to go solo with his own recording project KOWL, a project that finds Young combining the creativity of hardware and select sound formats from other projects and melding them together with a pop sensibility in what he believes is a fresh, new approach to songwriting and production. Young’s latest single as KOWL, “You & Me” is a swaggering and slickly produced track which features a looped, funky bass line, stomping beat, shimmering arpeggiated synths — and interestingly enough, the track manages to sound as though it nods at 80s synth funk, Illumination-era Miami Horror and others.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Jono Ma’s Lysergic Remix of The Babe Rainbow’s Sweaty Dance Floor Friendly Single “Monkey Disco”

Earlier this fall, I wrote about the Bryon Bay, Australia-based band The Babe Rainbow. The up-and-coming act which is comprised of Bryon Bay, Australia-born and-based founding members Jack “Cool-Breeze” and Angus Darling The Hothouse Flower and Venezuelan-born pianist Lu-Lu-Felix Domingo can trace their origins to when its founding duo started a songwriting partnership while in middle school; however, the project started in earnest in late 2015 when the founding duo met Venezuelan-born pianist Domingo while they were traveling in France.

Now, as you may recall, the trio’s self-titled debut was produced by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Stu Mackenzie, and from album single “Johny Stays Cool,” the band specializes in lo-fi, off-kilter funk inspired by African Diaspora-like rhythms and a breezy, Tropicalia-like melody and much like The B52s, the song found the trio managing to mischievously evoke 60s psych pop and surf rock. However, album single “Monkey Disco” finds the trio nodding at sweaty, tribal house, Afropop and Fear of Music-era Talking Heads, with the Australian band pulling their lo-fi sound into the early 80s while retaining its off-kilter, quirky quality. 

Interestingly, Jagwar Ma’s Jono Ma recently remixed the song and while retaining the sweaty tribal house feel of the song, he adds thumping drum beats and extends the song’s infectious hook and driving groove, adding a lysergic sheen to an already dance floor friendly song. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of their debut single Spanish Disco, the Vienna, Austria-based indie electro pop duo Leyya, comprised of Sophie Lindinger and Marco Kleebauer quickly received both national and international attention, thanks to the success of viral hit single “Superego,” which received nearly 3 million streams on Spotify. Adding to a growing profile, the duo played some of the European Union’s biggest music festivals including The Great Escape, Liverpool Sound City, Tallinn Music Week, Primavera Sound, Reeperbahn Festival, Iceland Airwaves and a headlining set at Popfest. Along with that the duo have received airplay on Huw Stephens‘ and Phil Taggart‘s BBC Radio 1 shows and Lauren Laverne‘s BBC Radio 6 show, been playlisted on Germany’s Radio 1, as well as praise from Pigeons and Planes, Wonderland Magazine, Clash Magazine, Konbini, The 405 and Consequence of Sound among others.

The duo’s highly anticipated sophomore effort Sauna is slated for a January 26, 2018 release, and the album’s latest single “Drumsolo” will further cement their reputation for crafting ambient and moody electro pop but while revealing that the duo have expanded their sound quite a bit, as the song finds the duo with a subtly layered sound nodding at hip-hop, R&B and jazz in a way that reminds me of BRAIDS and Softspot but with a coquettish and swaggering self-assuredness.

“‘Drumsolo’ is one of our favourite tracks of the new album, ” the duo told NOISEY. “On the one hand, it’s very complex (at one point, it doesn’t even make sense ‘music theoretically’). But, on the other hand, the melody is very catchy, so you don’t notice its quirkiness; that’s what we always wanted our tracks to be like: different layers to discover depending on the listener’s mood.”

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Portland, OR-based indie folk/psych rock/indie rock act The Parson Red Heads, and as you may recall the band, currently comprised of husband and wife duo Evan Way and Brette Marie Way, along with Sam Fowles, Robbie Auspurger and a rotating cast of collaborators and friends can trace their origins to when its founding core members met in Eugene OR in 2004, where they all were attending college and studying for degrees that as the band’s frontman Evan Way jokes in the band’s official bio “never used or even completed.” “We  would rehearse in the living room of my house for hours and hours until my roommates would be driven crazy — writing songs and playing them over and over again, and generally having as much fun as a group of people can have,” Way recalls. “We weren’t sure if we were very good, but we were sure that there was a special bond growing between us, a chemistry that you didn’t find often.”

The following year, the band’s founding members relocated to Los Angeles, where they hoped that they would take music much more seriously and become a real band, with the members of the band eventually moving into and sharing a 1 bedroom apartment in West Lost Angeles. “Eventually the population of our 1 bedroom ballooned to 7 — all folks who played in our band at that point, too,” Way says. And while in Los Angeles, the members of the band quickly became stalwarts of a growing 60s-inspired folk and psych folk scene based primarily in the artsy Silverlake and Echo Park sections. “We played every show we could lay our collective hands on, which turned out to be a lot of shows. We must have played 300+ shows in our first two years in L.A.  . . . . We practiced non-stop and wrote a ton of songs, and eventually recorded our debut album King Giraffe at a nice little studio in Sunland, with the help of our friends Zack and Jason,” Way reminisces.

After the release of King Giraffe, the band spent the next three years writing, and touring, and during that three year period they released an EP and their sophomore effort Yearling, which was partially recorded at Red Rockets Glare with Raymond Richards, who had then joined the band to play pedal steel and in North Carolina at Fidelitorium with The dB’s Chris Stamey. Once they had finished the album, the members of the band decided to quit their day jobs and their apartments and go on a lengthy tour with their friends in Cotton Jones before relocating to Portland. Interestingly around the same time, The Parson Red Heads had developed a reputation for an uninhibited live show, as they could easily morph from earnest rock to ass-kicking rock mode, which shouldn’t be terribly surprising as the band cites The Byrds, Teenage Fanclub, Big Star, Crosby, Nash, Stills and Young and Jackson Browne as major influences on their sound. Unsurprisingly, with their third full-length album Orb Weaver, the band actively wanted to capture the energy and sound.  “We’re always made records that were more thought-out,” says Way. “When we play live, we play more like a rock band. We wanted to show that more aggressive side of us, the more rock-oriented side.”
Blurred Harmony, The Parson Red Heads’ fourth album was released earlier this year through renowned Portland-based label Fluff and Gravy, and as Way explained, the band intended to do things differently than they did before — with the band recording and tracking themselves, frequently setting up drums and amps, and furiously recording after everyone had put their kids to sleep, and trying to finish that day’s sessions before it got too late. And as a result, Way says  “the record is more a true part of us than any record we have made before — we put ourselves into it, made ourselves fully responsible for it. Even the themes of the songs are more personal than ever — it’s an album dealing with everything that has come before. It’s an album about nostalgia, about time, change, about the hilarious, wonderful, bittersweet, sometimes sad, always incredible experience of living. Sometimes it is about regret or the possibility of regret. These are big topics, and to us, it is a big album, yet somehow still intimate and honest.”
December 8, 2017 will mark the release of the Expanded Edition of Blurred Harmony and it’ll feature two bonus tracks, which were originally recorded during the initial recording sessions and didn’t make the final cut, including the band’s latest single “TV Surprise.” As Way explains in press notes “‘TV Surprise’ is a song that’s been around for probably 10 years at least, maybe one. It’s got a real Felt/The Feelies vibe to it that I really like — those are two bands that we were just starting to get into around the time I wrote the song, so it’s no surprise that was coming through. The abstract feel of the lyrics is the thing that ended up making it not a perfect fit for inclusion on the Blurred Harmony album sequence, but Danny (O’Hanlon, who mixed the record) did a really great job creatively mixing the song — he added a lot of the textures that make this recording of the song have such a cool atmosphere and mood.”Sonically speaking, the song sounds as though the band were drawing from Fleetwood Mac, Southern rock and psych rock, as the song possesses the easy-going, self-assuredness of a bunch of old pros getting the old band together and jamming and while it sounds as though it would have been a perfect fit for the album, I agree with Way in the sense that the song doesn’t feel as personal as previous single “Coming Down” — and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the song captures the band exploring a theme from a slightly different angle, and managing to get a similar yet distinctly different result.