JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 83rd anniversary of the birth of Curtis Mayfield.
Throwback: Happy Belated 55th Birthday, B Real!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates B Real’s 55th birthday.
New Audio: San DIego’s Franhaus Shares Breezy and Nostalgia-Inducing “No Puedo Ser”
San Diego-based electronic music producer, singer/songwriter and DJ Franhaus, who specializes in creating what he believes is a new wave of Latin music that combines lived-in, earnest lyrics written and sung in Spanish with slick, dance floor friendly melodic, deeply emotional house.
The San Diego-based artist’s latest single “No Puedo Ser” is a breezy, nostalgia-inducing tune anchored around glistening synths, tweeter and woofer rattling thump, skittering beats and bursts of squiggling guitar. The Ibiza-meets-Tame Impala-like production serves as a lush bed for Franhaus’ yearning delivery while showcasing an artist, who can craft a catchy hook.
New Video: Rising London Outfit World News Shares Jangling and Anthemic “Don’t Want To Know”
Rising London-based post punk outfit World News — brothers Alex Evans (vocals, guitar) and Rory Evans (bass), along with Malte Henning (drums) and Jack Tolman (rhythm guitar) — can trace their origins back to 2018. The Evans Brothers, performing under the name Tinman cut their teeth in Brighton’s grassroots scene, relentlessly chasing opening slots in that city’s busy music scene.
Following a case of badly mistaken identity in which concert-goers arrived expecting an Austrian DJ of the same name — and a chance meeting with Malte Henning at a local Pizza Express, the band, rebranded as the extremely difficult to Google, World News.
The band, now known as World News were quickly gaining momentum, having sold out their first London area headlining show at The Shacklewell Arms when the COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a halt. The band quickly established a sound inspired by 70s and 80s post-punk, indie rock and shoegaze, blending atmospheric guitar riffs with seductive melodies and a penchant for rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses, drawing comparisons to The Smiths, The Clash and Dire Straits among others.
Their debut, 2020’s Job and Money EP was released at their lowest point — COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and was deeply informed by personal experiences: heartbreak, night shifts, desperately hustling to survive and the claustrophobia of living in a windowless London room.
Fueled by restlessness, disillusionment, impatience and yearning for more, the London-based quartet have been busy the last few years, releasing over a dozen singles and three EPs while remaining committed to a firmly held DIY ethos. That busy period included last year, which saw them releasing two EP’s Escape and Mindsnap, along with the addition of Jack Tollman (rhythm guitar). Escape EP saw the band expanding on their now, signature jangling sound. Mindsnap dove into darker, much more gothic territory and marked the first bit of material cowritten by The Evans Brothers.
The rising London-based outfit closed out last year receiving coverage from Stereogum, SPIN, The Fader and KEXP, as well as sold-out shows at London’s The Lexington and Piano’s. Building upon a growing national and international profile, the members of World News are looking forward to releasing their highly-anticipated full-length debut.
Recorded at London-based RAK Studios, the rising quartet’s latest single “Don’t Want To Know” sees the band firmly cementing a sound that immediately recalls Boy, October and The Unforgettable Fire-era U2: jangling, reverb-soaked guitars, driving rhythms, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses paired with earnest, yearning vocals.
Directed by Teddy Hansen, the accompanying video for “Don’t Want To Know” focuses on the band’s Alex Evans as he rapidly goes through a series of costume changes that shows the band’s frontman going through different scenarios — some worse than others.
New Video: JOVM Mainstays Activity Share Eerily Atmospheric “Heavy Breathing”
Acclaimed Brooklyn-based post punk outfit Activity — currently, Grooms‘ Travis Johnson (vocals, guitar), Bri DiGiola (bass), Russian Baths‘ Jess Rees and their newest member The Pains of Being Pure at Heart‘s and Peel Dream Magazine‘s Brian Alvarez — will be releasing their third album, the Jeff Berner-produced A Thousand Years In Another Way on Friday through Western Vinyl.
The ten-song album sees the Brooklyn-based outfit crafting a blend of experimental rock, electronics and found sounds with a sense of paranoia, desperate flickers of hope and a warped reality. Continuing their ongoing collaboration with Berner, the band manipulated sounds and played with room acoustics to create a feeling that’s disorientating and uneasy — like the air is thick and the walls are listening.
Coming out of a period of increased uncertainty, the Brooklyn-based quartet — then Johnson, Rees DiGiola and former drummer Steven Levine — pieced the album together from various fragments, including clipped samples, looping guitar lines and spectral melodies. Johnson, Rees and DiGioia share vocal and writing duties, shaping material that feels both deeply personal and strangely alien. Throughout the album, there’s a sense that things could shift or fall apart at any second — nothing says one thing for long.
In the lead up to the album’s release later this week, I wrote about two of the album’s previously released singles:
- Album opening track “In Another Way” is a brooding and uneasy track that captures the captures an alienated and painfully lonely narrator’s desperate desire to connect with someone while struggling with the chaos and uncertainty within and without. According to the band’s Johnson, the album’s first single is “a way of letting off a bunch of aggression, rage and resentment at things not being the way they hold be, both personal and global (wishing things were ‘another way’), and feeling completely important about it, except when playing the song.”
- “Scissors,” the album’s second and latest single is a trance-inducing and decidedly trip-hop inspired song featuring swirling, atmospheric synths, bursts of feedback-driven shoegazer guitars and skittering, reverb-soaked beats serving as a brooding and menacing bed for Jess Rees’ dreamy delivery. “The song is about being intentionally reckless and breaking things apart, knowing you’re doing it. About not being precious, and digging into that pile of parts inside and finding a better way with what you already have,” the band’s Rees says, while adding, “I was listening to Beak> a lot at the time.”
A Thousand Years In Another Way‘s third and final pre-release single “Heavy Breathing” is a brooding and uneasy tune that recalls Depeche Mode‘s “Never Let Me Down Again,” anchored around a glistening and looping guitar line, glitchy and skittering beats and eerily atmospheric synths serving as lush bed for Johnson’s achingly plaintive delivery.
The band’s Travis Johnson says, “The song started off as this very quiet somber lullaby type thing until a friend suggested we ‘go Duran Duran’ with it. Not sure we pulled that off whatsoever but what it turned into felt right. I don’t really want to get into what the song is actually about so I’ll just say it’s to do with wishing things had been better for someone than they were.”
The accompanying video was directed by Yasmeen Night, who says “‘Heavy Breathing’ was a song that really spoke to me. There was a theme of constant movement that I felt in the music that had to make it into the visual. I was so happy when I found out the band was on board to do some stop-motion animation for the video. I expected them to run after explaining how many hours and frames of photos were involved, but they were just as excited as I was. Between the time-lapse shots and the stop motion, I think we took roughly 10,000 individual frames that were then edited into the video. There’s also this concept of playing with time – slowing down seconds and speeding up hours – combined with a metaphor for running away from or conceding to what you fear.”
New Audio: Emerging Artist TomEE Shares Hook-Driven “’bout Time”
TomEE is a mysterious, emerging artist, who over the course of handful of singles has firmly established a DIY, lo-fi bedroom pop sound and approach. Clocking in at a little under two minutes, his latest single “’bout Time” manages to recall JOVM mainstays MUNYA and Kainalu while showcasing an adept and uncanny knack for crafting an incredibly catchy hook.
Throwback: Happy 84th Birthday, Charlie Watts!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 84th anniversary of Charlie Watts’ birth.
Throwback: Happy Belated 51st Birthday, Alanis Morisette!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Alanis Morissette’s 51st birthday.
New Audio: Detroit’s The Lowcocks Shares a Blistering, Politically Charged Ripper
Founded back in 2017, the Detroit-based punk outfit The Lowcocks have established their own sound while sharing stages with several national touring acts, including The Casualties, Total Chaos, Nekromantix, The Koffin Kats, Menstrual Tramps, GBH, The Suicide Machines and The Exploited.
Their latest single “The Forgotten” is a blistering, politically charged, mosh pit friendly ripper, anchored around scorching, power chord-driven riffage, propulsive drumming and a snarled vocal. While “The Forgotten” channels old-school hardcore punk, the song focuses on contemporary concerns with a laser-like, incisive precision: The band explains that the song is centered around immigration detention center at this country’s southern border — and the experience of children who arrive without the safety and protection of relatives.
“The next time you see a four or five year old kid, imagine them running alone, in the dark, scared – and then being put in a cage,” the band’s Annie Oakley says. “Our news cycle moves fast and it’s easy to get burned out, or feel overwhelmed by the world, but these cages are still full of people and these kids are being forgotten, which is where the name of our song came from – it’s a reminder and a promise that we won’t let them be forgotten.”
New Audio: Essex, UK’s Nukie Shares Swaggering “Face like -_-“
Essex, UK-based artist Nukie is an emerging artist, who is gaining momentum within East London‘s underground music scene. And within a short period of time, he has quickly established a sound that’s a bold collision of punk and British electronic subcultures, blending garage, indie rock, drum ‘n’ bass and grunge. Routinely driven by distorted guitars, punchy rhythms and gritty vocal-led hooks, the rising British artist attempts to channel the tension and urgency of his environment while channeling the disillusionment and intensity of modern life.
Operating with a DIY ethos, the rising British artist oversees every aspects of his creative output from production and recording to visual design, bringing a cohesive and authentic quality to his work.
Nukie’s latest single “Face like -_-” is a bold, swaggering anthem anchored around dusty and glitchy breakbeats, distorted and woozy guitars, enormous hooks and choruses paired with an insouciant, extremely British delivery. The result seemingly channels a synthesis of The Streets, Odelay-era Beck and garage while showcasing at an artist with an uncanny knack for catchy and rousing hooks and choruses.
New Audio: Develour Shares Slow-Burning and Yearning “Dealer d’Amour”
The mysterious and mischievous French artist Develour emerged into the Francophone indie pop scene with the release of “La Part des Agnes,” which saw him quickly establishing a sound that he playfully dubbed “French touch disco,” a sound that draws from and features elements of chanson, soul, funk, disco and pop.
“La Part des Agnes” and the French artist’s second single “Un Matin,” which I described as a breezy and summery bop built around a swaggering and infectious 80s-inspired groove, appeared on his debut EP, 2023’s Vert Galant.
Develour’s latest single “Dealer d’Amour” is a slow-burning, Quiet Storm-meets-sophistipop-like ballad anchored around an atmospheric yet sultry groove, bursts of glistening synths reminiscent of Hall & Oates “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” The song’s production and arrangement serves as a dreamy and lush bed for the mysterious French artist’s yearning, achingly plaintive cooing.
Thematically, the song questions our unhealthy relationships with dating apps, while openly discussing the wild mix of addiction, hope, disillusionment and loneliness they inspire. And yet, we keep on swiping because what else is there to do?