JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Willie Nelson’s 89th birthday.
Tag: Baltimore MD
New Video: Trenton’s Joy on Fire Shares Sardonic and Explosive Ripper “Selfies”
Currently based in Trenton, noise rock/no wave/experimental rock/art punk outfit Joy on Fire — founding members John Paul Carillo (guitar), Anna Meadors (saxophone), spoken word artist Dan Gutstein (vocals) and a drummer — can trace their origins to Baltimore‘s art scene, where the band’s founding members originally met and started writing material together.
“Baltimore is a city where musicians of different stripes come together quite readily. With the art college (MICA) [Maryland Institute College of Art] up the road from The Peabody Conservatory, trained jazz / classical musicians come together, in the city’s Station North Arts District, with self-taught musicians who bring other artistic disciplines into their music, a Talking Heads vibe,” Joy on Fire’s John Paul Carillo writes in a statement about Baltimore and its influence on the band. “In my case, while Anna was at Peabody, I was at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, getting a degree in fiction writing. Anna and I met in a basement jam session, and the band began then. We still play the first song we ever wrote together, ‘Red Wave,’ which finally appeared on 2021’s Unknown Cities.”
Meadors’ background as a classically trained saxophonist collided with Carillo’s love of experimental art rock and punk and creative sparks immediately few between the pair. “I knew pretty early on that a career in classical saxophone wasn’t for me; I met John during my sophomore year [at the Peabody Conservatory], and the world of weird rock music opened up for me,” Meadows writes. “I had been listening to this Terry Riley album for saxophone quartet and vocalist, Assassin Reverie, and fell in love with it, and John introduced me to the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, as well as the bands Morphine and King Crimson. There is this saxophone solo on King Crimson’s ‘One More Red Nightmare‘ that changed my life, it is so visceral, and it starts with just a long trill that is so simple and so perfect for the part. When Joy on Fire started, I was able to use the techniques I learned from jazz improvisation over this big chordal electric bass sound that John has, and it was such a thrill.”
Since those early jam sessions between Carillo and Meadors, the band has expanded to a quartet with the addition of Gutstein and a drummer while being remarkably prolific, releasing five full-length albums: 2015’s full-length debut The Complete Book of Bonsai, 2017’s Fire with Fire, 2019’s Hymn, last year’s Unknown Cities and Another Adventure in Red, which landed at #7 on Concrete Islands’ Albums of the Year list for 2021.
The Trenton-based outfit has toured up and down the Eastern Seaboard to support their recorded outfit with stops at Burlington Discover Jazz Fest, Boston’s The Middle East Café, Baltimore’s Metro Gallery, Asheville’s Asheville Music Hall and Shapeshifter Lab.
Joy on Fire’s seventh album, the Carillo and Meadors-produced States of America is slated for a June 11, 2022 release through their longtime label home Procrastination Records. The album’s material can be traced to a joint writing session between the band’s Carillo and Gutstein, which quickly “grew into monsters” as the duo turned loose song structures, ideas and lyrics into fleshed out songs. Most of the album’s material was recored at Princeton University‘s Studio B, where Meadows is currently a Ph.D. student in Music Composition.
The album will feature previously released singles “Anger and Decency,” “Thunderdome,” which originally premiered on Bob Boilen’s All Songs Considered and “Uh Huh,” which has an accompanying video that’s an official selection at 14 film festivals across the world, including LA Rocks Film Festival, London Rocks Film Festival and was a winner at the Obskuur Ghent Film Festival.
States of America‘s latest single “Selfies” is a neurotic, New Wave-meets-No Wave-meets-art punk ripper centered around a menacing Stooges-like groove, thunderous drumming, Gutstein’s sardonic, spoken word lyrics about the emptiness and vapidity of social media narcissism paired with Meador’s saxophone skronk and wailing that initially creeps its way into the arrangement and builds up in intensity as then song ends with an explosive and chaotic coda. The song captures the relentless need to be liked, seen as cool, successful and popular that’s inspired by the social media age in a way that’s startlingly accurate yet wildly hilarious.
“‘Selfies’ began with a riff I had hanging around for a while, a riff that has a bit of a Stooges vibe, especially with the reverse delay on it, and when lyricist / vocalist Dan Gutstein joined Joy on Fire, I arranged it for vocals,” Joy on Fire’s John Paul Carillo writes. “Dan has some great lines in it, displaying his edgy sense of humor: ‘Happiest,” goes the refrain, ‘we were happiest / Lying to each other.’ The piece is a critique of narcissistic culture, with ‘Love is like gazing everywhere / Catching an echo with your hands…Why not, why not, why not selfies!’ The impossibility, emptiness, and sadness of trying to catch an ‘echo with your hands’ is (not) relieved by taking selfies, would be one interpretation. Often in Joy on Fire songs, saxophonist Anna Meadors begins the song or at least jumps in pretty quickly. This time, she lays out for the body of the song, and then just kills it over a vamp that drives to the end of the tune, with Dan then sneaking back in, like the sax has driven him mad: ‘La-la-la-la-la Selfies!’ The wild saxophone is a further Stooges connection. The acidy vibe that Iggy Pop asked for from Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay — Anna certainly has it here, and then some.”
The accompanying video for “Selfies” continues in a similar vein as the video for “Anger and Decency,” with heavy amounts of visual distortion and manipulation atop footage of the band performing the song and fittingly cuts to a number of video selfies.
New Video: Ed Schrader’s Music Beat Shares a Cinematic and Eerie Visual for Brooding “European Moons”
Baltimore-based post-punk duo Ed Schrader’s Music Beat — Devlin Rice and Ed Schrader — will be releasing their fourth album, Nightclub Daydreaming is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Carpark Records.
The album and its material can be traced back to 2019 when Schrader and Rice began initially writing song with the idea of making a fun, danceable album. Along with touring drummer Kevin O’Meara, the members of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat road-tested the material while on tour with Dan Deacon in February 2020.
As we all know, the COVID-19 pandemic brought most aspects of our lives to a screeching halt. But as it turns out, sadly, that Dan Deacon tour was one of the last experiences that Schrader and Rice had with O’Mera, who died in October 2020. O’Meara’s death weighed heavily on their minds as they finished working on the album. Understandably, it was an unshakeable moodiness and heartache. As Schrader puts it, “The cave followed us into the discotheque.”
They then went to record and mix Nightclub Daydreaming over a breakneck two-week period with Craig Bowen at Baltimore’s Tempo House. The end result wasn’t the album of “sunny disco bangers” that Rice says the band originally set out for, but something that turned out far deeper and darker. Their long-held reputation for whiplash-inducing stylistic shifts between aggressive and noisy rock and operatic, gloom pop have given way to a single aesthetic that seamlessly fuses those different impulses within propulsive, stark arrangements.
“The fun thing about this record is that it’s all at once informed by our more recent lush productions with Dan Deacon, yet spartan and boiled-down, exuding a coldness wrapped in ecstasy, following our time honored trend of never giving people what they expect, but hopefully what they want,” says Schrader.
The Charm City-based duo started off this year on an explosive and attention-grabbing note: Back in January, they released two singles off the album and announced the dates for an extensive Spring 2022 tour that includes an April 23, 2022 stop at Union Pool.
Last month the pair released Nightclub Daydreaming‘s third single.
As for the singles:
- “This Thirst” is a sleek post-punk ripper centered around angular guitar attack, a forceful motorik groove, a rousingly anthemic synth-led chorus and Schrader’s cool yet urgent delivery. The song’s narrator finds his irresistible urges leading him through a surrealistic, chemical-fueled fever dream of desperate back-alley bartering and scheming, uncertainty and existential threats.
- “Berliner,” is a dark and brooding bit of post-punk centered around rumbling and distorted bass, scorching angular attack and unrelenting four-on-the-floor paired with Schrader’s coolly delivered baritone. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Berliner” evokes flop sweat and bleary-eyed late nights fueled by booze and drugs, lingering ghosts, and fever dreams.
- “Echo Base,” a song that’s one part lingering ghosts, self-flagellation, bitter regret and simmering frustration centered around an icy facade.
Nightclub Daydreaming‘s fourth and latest single “European Moons” is a slow-burning, brooding meditation centered around Schrader’s achingly plaintive and exhausted baritone, shimmering guitars, and dramatic drum rolls. Much like its immediate predecessor, there’s regret and simmering frustration — but it hides a sense of repression and uncertainty.
Directed by Jay Buim, the accompanying visual for “European Moons” features a stylish title card by Susan Juvet and follows a blonde bobbed haired woman entirely clad in black, also played by Juvet, who walks through an abandoned underground bunker facility with abandoned 60s and 70s office equipment. Superficially, she seems bored and disinterested but throughout the video her behavior seems unnatural and forced, as though she’s attempting to repress and then bury something deep within herself.
Right before the members of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat are about to embark on their tour to support the album, Schrader issued a personal statement about their gender identity, which I’ve included in full, below:
“In the past few weeks, I’ve made a big decision. I’ve decided to give you the full me. I’ve decided to speak openly about something that I had never spoken to anyone about. The me that I’ve been repressing in hopes of not making other people feel uncomfortable. But that’s not a life—that’s an inhumane purgatory that I am done subjecting myself to.
That said, I have always felt like a woman and my pronouns are they/them.
“The stage and the studio have always been a safe space for me, where I can share my deepest struggles, joys and laughs. In your art, you can’t lie. That’s why I have always chosen riddles and cryptic lyrics in my art. I could never lie, but I could disguise the truth.
With Nightclub Daydreaming I continued this precedent, essentially telling my autobiography through fictional characters and surreal landscapes. But these are the stories of my fear, my neuroses, my ecstasy and my journey.
The first single off of the record, ‘This Thirst,’ is about the thirst for my true self, and features the first time I ever referred to myself as a woman: “Who will rock you to the fire / Who’s the priestess to ordain?”
On ‘Black Pearl,’ I sing of two lovers disconnected by an ocean, representing the personal dichotamy [sic] between my true self and who I was presenting to the world. In retrospect, you can hear the yearning as I sing “I want to see you really…a foreigner, even home now / I shut in vaults to heal you.” I was the foreigner whom no one had ever met, besides my bathroom mirror. When home alone, I would wear women’s clothing, put on makeup, blast M.I.A. and Yelle, and somehow this felt like a crime that no one would ever accept.
You can hear both my euphoria and trepidation on songs like ‘Berliner.’ Deep down, I was beginning to feel my real self emerging in an undeniable way, and I was horrified by it. It felt as if others held the key to my own self worth through their acceptance, or lack thereof.
On ‘European Moons,’ which we release today, I depict myself as a marionette, at the whims of a puppet master forcing me to present a distorted and untrue version of myself. “My posture’s at your strings / too much of coded sighs / I’d like to see you in the night.” It was my true self that I could only see at night.
I have always felt like a woman and, moving forward, I will begin following that path one day at a time. Only the future knows where exactly that path will lead me, but I’m doing it my way. I will no longer only see my true self at night.
New Video: Ed Schrader’s Music Beat Shares an Eerie and Dream-like VIsual for “Echo Base”
2018’s Dan Deacon-produced album Riddles saw the Baltimore-based post-punk duo Ed Schrader’s Music Beat — Devlin Rice and Ed Schrader — turning heads both nationally and elsewhere.
The duo’s fourth album Nightclub Daydreaming is slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Carpark Records. The album can be traced back to 2019 when Schrader and Rice began initially writing song with the idea of making a fun, danceable album. Along with touring drummer Kevin O’Meara, the members of Ed Schrader’s Music Beat road-tested the material while on tour with Dan Deacon in February 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought everything to a screeching halt. Sadly, that Dan Deacon tour was one of the last experiences that Schrader and Rice had with O’Meara, who died in October 2020. O’Meara’s death weighed heavily on their minds as they finished working on the album. Understandably, it was an unshakeable moodiness and heartache. As Schrader puts it, “The cave followed us into the discotheque.”
They then went to record and mix Nightclub Daydreaming over a breakneck two-week period with Craig Bowen at Baltimore’s Tempo House. The end result wasn’t the album of “sunny disco bangers” that Rice says the band originally set out for, but something that turned out far deeper and darker. Their long-held reputation for whiplash-inducing stylistic shifts between aggressive and noisy rock and operatic, gloom pop have given way to a single aesthetic that seamlessly fuses those different impulses within propulsive, stark arrangements.
“The fun thing about this record is that it’s all at once informed by our more recent lush productions with Dan Deacon, yet spartan and boiled-down, exuding a coldness wrapped in ecstasy, following our time honored trend of never giving people what they expect, but hopefully what they want,” says Schrader.
The Charm City-based duo started the year on an explosive note: Last month, they released two singles off the album and announced dates for an an extensive Spring 2022 tour that the duo optimistically put on the books. The tour includes an April 23, 2022 stop Union Pool. (As always, those dates will appear below this review.)
As for the singles:
- “This Thirst” is a sleek post-punk ripper centered around angular guitar attack, a forceful motorik groove, a rousingly anthemic synth-led chorus and Schrader’s cool yet urgent delivery. The song’s narrator finds his irresistible urges leading him through a surrealistic, chemical-fueled fever dream of desperate back-alley bartering and scheming, uncertainty and existential threats.
- “Berliner,” is a dark and brooding bit of post-punk centered around rumbling and distorted bass, scorching angular attack and unrelenting four-on-the-floor paired with Schrader’s coolly delivered baritone. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Berliner” evokes flop sweat and bleary-eyed late nights fueled by booze and drugs, lingering ghosts, and fever dreams.
“Echo Base,” Nightclub Daydreaming‘s third and latest single is propelled by breakneck drum fills, a relentless bass line and glistening guitar. Much like its immediate predecessor, the song is one part lingering ghosts, self-flagellation, bitter regret and simmering frustration centered around an icy facade.
“A few years ago, I saw Carrie Fisher speak, and she referenced a Paul Simon song from Graceland where he compares her eyes to cold coffee. Her voice cracked as she spoke, and the whole theater went silent,” Ed Schrader recalls. “This lyric from a decades-old song about a decades-old relationship still hurt her. This moment showed the brilliant, sharp-shooting woman of my childhood dreams as a real, vulnerable, wildly misunderstood and underappreciated human being. I wanted to make a song befitting a princess, our Carrie.”
Directed by Devon Voelkel, the new video for “Echo Base” is a haunting and uneasy fever dream that’s split between a robe wearing Rice microwaving cut up limes and dancing on his bed — until he gets sucked into a portal, where he unites with his bandmate in a cobweb covered, dank cavern, where they perform in front of no one in particular.
Daniel Feldman is a Rockville, MD-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, musician, who has had a lengthy and varied music career: He’s best known for a seven-year stint as the frontman of Baltimore-based indie rock outfit Yo No Say. He’s currently one-half of synth pop duo Airplane Man with lifelong friend and creative partner, Tim Sommers.
Since its formation, Airplane Man has released a handful of singles that have earned over a million streams each — all while receiving praise from Billboard and landing on Spotify playlists like New Music Friday.
Feldman’s solo recording project Sleepy Gary derives its name from two different sources: “I first heard the name Sleepy Gary in the context of a TV show called Rick and Morty,” Feldman explains. “In the episode, a suburban family becomes infested with brain parasites that present themselves as old friends via fond yet false memories. One of those parasitic cerebral manifestations is a nonexistent family friend named Sleepy Gary who wears a classic sleeping cap and pajamas and never opens his eyes more than halfway.
“The character resonated with me because I myself am simply a mental parasite made of false memories.. ehem.. I mean, because I have always felt sleepiness was part of my identity” Feldman continues. “As a teenager I would start my pre-high school shower and end up napping on the bathroom floor, only to awake to an Amazonian climate and the sound of my mom pounding on the door, yelling that I was about to miss the bus again.
“In college I slept through nearly every one of my 8am literature classes. The sleepiness grew and grew until it became a monster that kept me up all night and ruined every morning. Something about that character in Rick and Morty nudged me subconsciously to own it. I am sleepy and that’s ok. I used to lay awake at night before playing shows with my old band. I figure, now with a name like Sleepy Gary if I don’t sleep.. I’ll just be that much more in character. Maybe it’s a way to lean into my anxiety around sleep. I also have to admit there’s just something to the way it sounds. It reminds me of a character you might meet in a gangster movie by Martin Scorcese or something.”
Feldman’s Sleepy Gary debut 21 Love Songs is a three-volume collection that took over seven years to complete and was written in three different cities —DC, Baltimore and New York. The album was completed last year while Feldman was quarantined in a 600 square foot Bushwick apartment with roommate and producer, Gabriel Stanley. Stanley co-produced the album. Grammy-nominated Dave Weingarten mixed the album. Grammy Award-winning Alex DeTurk.
The album sees Feldman quickly establishing a sound and songwriting approach that meshes elements of bedroom pop and psych pop. Thematically, the album is an ode to the many iterations of love we experience throughout our lives: unrequited, sensual, half-hearted, budding, obsessive and long-lost but while occasionally expanding upon what a love song actually is and focuses on.
In keeping with the album’s title, Feldman will release a song off the album every 21 days over the course of a year. The album’s latest single, the Tame Impala-like “W.D.I.L.Y.” Centered around tweeter and woofer rocking beats, reverb drenched guitar, glistening synth arpeggios, an enormous hook “W.D.I.L.Y.” sees Feldman pairing arena rock and club rocking bombast with intimate and achingly vulnerable lyricism: The song’s narrator longs for the old-school love song sort of love. But he finds himself alone, after yet another unrequited love. And yet it’s not completely hopeless; it’s the sort of song in which you see yourself in — and recognize that it’s a profoundly universal experience.
New Video: Los Angeles’ Lauren Lakis Releases a Brooding and Uneasy Examination of a Dysfunctional Childhood
Lauren Lakis is a Baltimore-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and musician, who specializes in a brooding and churning take on shoegaze paired with authentic and honest lyricism. So far her work has been praised by Earmilk, who said that her material are “a refreshing change from today’s polite rock . . .”
The Baltimore-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and musician and her backing band have toured the West Coast extensively, playing bills with Drowse, Coastland, Elizabeth Colour Wheel’s Emmet Palaima, Flor and Winnetka Bowling League. Lakis and her band have played in front of a sold-out Doug Fir Lounge and at Santa Cruz’s The Catalyst. Adding to a growing profile, Lakis has played two solo sets opening for Grammy Award-nominated rocker Tracy Bonham.
Much like countless other acts, Lakis and her backing band had plans for a momentum changing 2020: they were scheduled to play at this year’s cancelled SXSW and they had hopes of setting up further tour dates. However, they’ve remained busy, releasing new material, including their latest single “Sail Away.” Centered around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, dramatic drumming, a sinuous bass line, darkly Romantic vibes and Lakis’ plaintive yet ethereal vocals,” Sail Away” is a brooding track that reminds me — to my ears at least — of PJ Harvey, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Chelsea Wolfe.
Interestingly, the song is an uneasy and brooding examination of Lakis’ own dysfunctional and painful childhood and a desire to reconnect to a lost yet much-needed innocence. “Thematically, ‘Sail Away’ explores the idea of running away with my inner child, protecting and parenting her,” Lakis explains in press notes. “It’s me becoming my own mother, which was something I had to do at a young age.
“As the daughter of my mother, I had to learn how to take care of myself and grow up quickly. She struggled with addiction until I was almost 10 years old; I don’t have many memories of my childhood before that age. I’ve spent some years in Alanon, connecting to my inner child and learning how to ‘re-parent’ her as a way of healing those wounds,” Lakis continues. “The inner child is the part of us that is innocent, vulnerable, playful, full of wonder, freely trusting and loving. It hasn’t always been easy to connect with that side of myself.
“I didn’t feel like I had a voice as a kid, and I had no control over what was happening around me. In spite of, or perhaps because of this, I grew into an extremely strong, resilient, capable adult. This song explores my longing for having had an adult like me around, when I was a child…as well as the anger I’ve carried with me for having missed out. I’ve had to accept that no one can go back in time and fix that for me.”
The recently released video is a cinematic and equally brooding visual with a fever dream-like quality that finds Lakis is a lace full-body suit.
New Audio: Baltimore’s Native Sunz Releases an Atmospheric and Menacing New Single
Native Sunz is a Baltimore-based production, engineering, licensing and sonic branding agency featuring Frank “R.E.I.G.N.” Reed (songwriting, production, engineering and graphic design), STIXX (production), Lipp J. Allen (writer/artist) Jimmy “Jimmy Proton” a.k.a. “Astronomix” […]
New Video: Lower Dens Releases a Psychedelic Visual for “Hand of God”
Formed back in 2010, the acclaimed Baltimore-based dream pop act Lower Dens can trace its origins to when its primary songwriter and founding member Jana Hunter had grown tired of touring and decided to take a hiatus. For what was supposed to be their final tour as a solo artist, Hunter recruited a backing band which featured Geoff Graham, Abram Sanders and Will Adams. Finding that playing with a band was much more enjoyable to them than playing as a solo artist, helped Hunter form Lower Dens. “During that tour, I realized that it wasn’t the touring life that I hated, but more so that the kind of music I wrote as a solo artist wasn’t something I felt entirely comfortable sharing in performance setting. Lower Dens then was the eventual result of the decision to make music with the specific intention of sharing and enjoying it with others,” Hunter said at the time.
Lower Dens’ full-length debut, Twin Hand Movement was released to critical praise from the likes of Pitchfork, who compared Hunter’s vocals to those of PJ Harvey and Beach House’s Victoria Legrand and Dusted Magazine, who praised the album’s lyrics for being “delivered without irony, yet self-aware enough to appreciate the obviousness.” While touring to support Twin Hand Movement, the band began writing on the road — but the limitations of writing on the road forced Hunter to work through a laptop and keyboard rather than a guitar, which lead to an increasing presence of synths on what would become their sophomore album Nootropics.
After they completed the tour to support Twin Hand Movement, the band chose to record their sophomore album at The Key Club Recording Company in Benton Harbor, MI. Hunter cited the studio’s remote location as an imperative part of the writing and recording process. Geoff Graham added that the amount of time spent in the studio allowed them to add extra dimensions to the material to make it lusher and thicker. Largely influenced by Kraftwerk‘s Radioactivity, Fripp and Eno and David Bowie‘s production on Iggy Pop‘s The Idiot, Nootropics was released to critical praise from the likes of Pitchfork. Rolling Stone and Spin.
Building upon a growing profile, Lower Dens opened for Beach House and indie rock legends Yo La Tengo at the Baltimore stop of the legendary act’s 2013 Fade tour. The following month, they released “Non Grata” on a split 7″ with Baltimore-based band Horse Lords, an effort that was released as part of the Famous Class LAMC series, which benefited VH1’s Save The Music Foundation.
2015 saw the release of the band’s third album Escape from Evil, which continued a run of critically applauded albums. Since then the band has gone through a series of lineup changes — with the band now being a duo featuring its founding member and primary songwriter Jana Hunter and Nate Nelson. And during that period, the members of Lower Dens had been working on their highly-anticipated follow up to Escape from Evil, The Competition.
Released last September through their longtime label home Ribbon Music, the album is a pop album with an emotionally and politically urgent concept at its core. Competition, by design is the driving force of modern capitalism and the title is Hunnter’s term for a socio-psychological phenomenon that competition generates — a kind of psychosis that accelerates and amplifies our insecurities and anxieties to the point of overload. And as a result our intimacies, our communities and even our senses of self are corroded and distorted. “The issues that have shaped my life, for better or for worse, have to do with coming from a family and a culture that totally bought into this competitive mindset. I was wild and in a lot of pain as a kid; home life was very bleak, and pop songs were a guaranteed escape to a mental space where beauty, wonder, and love were possible. I wanted to write songs that might have the potential to do that.”
Last year, the members of Lower Dens opened for hit-making act Of Monsters And Men, and they’ll begin this year with a headlining tour to support the album that starts on February 13, 2020 and includes a March 19, 2020 stop at Music Hall of Williamsburg. (You can check out the rest of the tour dates below.) In the meantime, the album’s latest single, the glistening and propulsive “Hand of God” is centered around Hunter’s achingly expressive vocals, shimmering synth arpeggios and four-on-the-floor drumming and a rousingly anthemic hook. Sonically, the song bears a subtle resemblance to Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” and Songs from the Big Chair-era Tears for Fears — but centered around feelings of arrogance, humility and shame.
“It’s like Cowboy Krautrock,” Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter says about the song in press notes. “Imagine a wild west adventure, like City Slickers with the star, a wealthy white man. He’s devised a way to conquer God. He has some kind of vaguely dangerous journey, then comes upon God and declares victory. In his hubris, he goes to shake God’s hand, at which time he is psychedelically humbled, his little brain imploding.”
Directed by Aaron Brown and Robby Piantanida, the recently released video, manages to employ a decidedly DIY approach with a bright psychedelic colors — with Hunter seeing the hands of God.
New Video: Rapidly Rising Artist Julien Chang Releases a Lysergic Visual for “Memory Loss”
Over the past couple of moths, I’ve written a bit about the rapidly rising, 19-year-old Baltimore-born multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, producer and current university student Julien Chang (pronounced Chong). Chang surprised his peers when he quietly began releasing original music during his senior year in high school. Initially only thought of just as a trombone player, the Baltimore-born, singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer’s earliest material found him playing multiple instruments while meshing pop-leaning melodicism, psych rock and jazz fusion-leaning experimentation and improvisation with a sophistication and self-assuredness that belied his relative youth.
Now as you may recall, those early releases caught the attention of Transgressive Records, the label home of SOPHIE, Let’s Eat Grandma and JOVM mainstay Neon Indian, and the label recently released Chang’s highly anticipated full-length debut Jules last Friday. So far I’ve written about the album’s two previously released singles — “Of The Past,” a sleek, early 80s-like synth funk-based track centered around dexterous musicianship and pop melodicisim and the slow-burning, Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles-like “Butterflies from Monaco.” Interestingly, the album’s third and latest single “Memory Loss” is centered by syncopated blips and bloops, a sinuous bass line, shimmering synths and Chang’s plaintive falsetto and a yearning for an unreachable and halcyon-tinged past. And while seemingly influenced by 80s synth funk, the song continues a run of incredibly self-assured singles featuring some dazzling musicianship and big hooks.
“A worsening memory is something I’ve always been worried about,” Chang explains. “The song was made with a kind of structural rigidity in mind, and about memory’s natural lack of it when having trouble putting faces to names, for example. It’s easy to be frustrated by that feeling, but being left with a sudden emotional reaction sparked by some stimulus for an unclear reason can be as lovely as it is disorienting.”
Directed and shot by Haoyan of America, the recently released video for “Memory Loss” is shot through a disorientating and lysergic haze with a wistfully nostalgic air, as it’s centered around memories of a lover, dreamy and easygoing summer days and trippy imagery. “The ‘Memory Loss’ video was shot by Haoyan of America. The vision was totally his, arrived at after spending some time talking to each other about the song,” Chang explains. “That’s what I wanted to do when we first started looking for video directors—find an artist that I trust and have them commit to their own path of inspiration. I think a lot of music videos require the visual artists to bend to the will of the musician. It was really exciting to see Haoyan work as an artist creating something that both augmented my song and stood on its own an independent and magnificent visual piece.”
New Audio: Julien Chang Releases a Shimmering and Nostalgic Synth Funk-Driven Single
Over the past couple of moths, I’ve written a bit about the rapidly rising, 19-year-old Baltimore-born multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, producer and current university student Julien Chang (pronounced Chong). Chang surprised his peers when he quietly began releasing original music during his senior year in high school. Initially only thought of just as a trombone player, the Baltimore-born, singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer’s earliest material found him playing multi-instruments while meshing pop-leaning melodicism, psych rock and jazz fusion-leaning experimentation and improvisation with a sophistication and self-assuredness that belied his relative youth.
Now as you may recall, those early releases caught the attention of Transgressive Records, the label home of SOPHIE, Let’s Eat Grandma and JOVM mainstay Neon Indian, and the label will be releasing Chang’s highly-anticipated full-length debut Jules on October 11, 2019. So far I’ve written about the album’s first two singles — “Of The Past,” a sleek, early 80s-like synth funk-based track centered around dexterous musicianship and pop melodicisim and the slow-burning, Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles-like “Butterflies from Monaco.” Interestingly, the album’s third and latest single “Memory Loss” is centered by syncopated blips and bloops, a sinuous bass line, shimmering synths and Chang’s plaintive falsetto and a yearning for an unreachable and halcyon-tinged past. And while seemingly influenced by 80s synth funk, the song continues a run of incredibly self-assured singles featuring some dazzling musicianship and big hooks.
“A worsening memory is something I’ve always been worried about,” Chang explains. “The song was made with a kind of structural rigidity in mind, and about memory’s natural lack of it when having trouble putting faces to names, for example. It’s easy to be frustrated by that feeling, but being left with a sudden emotional reaction sparked by some stimulus for an unclear reason can be as lovely as it is disorienting.”