Tag: Brooklyn Steel

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Soccer Mommy Shares Lush and Swooning “Abigail”

Acclaimed Nashville-based singer/songwriter and musician Sophie Allison will be releasing her fifth Soccer Mommy album Evergreen on Friday through Loma Vista Recordings.

Allison’s career started in earnest as a teenager, sharing near-demo form tracks on Bandcamp. The past handful of years, have found her employing the use of synthesizers and experimental production techniques, thanks to the endless studio resources she newly found at her fingertips. But when she started to write the material that would become Evergreen, Allison knew they called for different touch.

Songwriting has always been the acclaimed Nashville-based artist’s way to sort through life and to ground herself. And she was crafting the album in the wake of a profound and personal loss, it felt important to her to keep the material raw and relatable, unvarnished and honest. So, she opted for a much more organic production, which helped to shine a spotlight on her songwriting. The Ben H. Allen III-produced album was recorded at Atlanta’s Maze Studios and is a sonic return to the project’s roots, but recast on a cinematic scale through the use of acoustic guitar and lush string and flute arrangements.

Allison’s intention for the album was “to feel like you’re laying outside, eyes closed, the sun is on you, and you can feel the warmth & flowers & trees.” It’s appreciation that even in your darkest place, a sunny day can wash over you and lift your spirits. And with that as inspiration, this week Allison will be sharing an exclusive early first listen of Evergreen with fans, who can get to a lush outdoor location, like a backyard or a park. Starting tomorrow, Soccer Mommy fans can head to their nearest park and click open this link to access the early album listening experience.

The album’s final pre-release single “Abigail” is a lush and swooning love song that captures the desire, longing and hope of a newfound love — in this case, Allison’s purple-haired wife in the game Stardew Valley — with a lived-in earnestness.

The ConcernedApe-inspired music video, features Allison’s Stardew Valley avatar trying to court her true love.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Shares Brooding and Uneasy “Performance”

Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and producer Robert Alfons is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay project TR/ST. For well over a decade, Alfons has captivated audiences with a unique blend of dynamic vocals, emotive lyrics and late night sensuality. 

Alfons’ fifth TR/ST album, the TR/ST and Nightfeelings co-produced Performance is slated for a Friday release through Dais Records. The album’s title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s intrinsically performative nature. Recorded in Los Angeles, the album’s material reportedly seethes with dread, lust, reckoning and abandon. Sonically, the production pair achieved a thick, smoky balance of eerie synths and fog machine low end paired with bruised, crooning vocals. The result is an album of material that moves between beauty and bitterness, rousing anthems and crushing anguish rooted by emotional turmoil, the lingering ghosts of guilt and the memories of those wronged and those still unforgiven. 

Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night.

Last month, I wrote about the Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings co-produced “Dark Day,” an ethereal yet uneasy track featuring eerily atmospheric and glistening synth arpeggios, skittering industrial clang and clatter serving as a foggy and unsettlingly brooding bed for Alfons’ bruised and aching vocal. “I think there’s something in the song about the flashes that come to you when you try to fall asleep, flashes that show you where you have unfinished business,” Alfons says of the song. “It was such a pleasure working with Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings on production for this track.”

Performance‘s latest single, album title track “Performance” continues a run of brooding and uneasy material, anchored around a foggy, strobe-lit fueled production featuring bursts of glistening synth arpeggios, skittering, reverb-soaked beats. Alfons’ aching and bruised delivery ethereally floats over the menacing soundscape.

Directed and edited by Bryan M. Ferguson and featuring cinematography by George Harwood, the accompanying video for “Performance” follows Alfons as he arrives at a grim karaoke bar. While he’s lost in his own performance, the sparse crowd is lost in their thoughts. You can almost feel the despair through the screen.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Shares Brooding and Foggy “Dark Day”

Toronto-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and producer Robert Alfons is the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed JOVM mainstay project TR/ST. For well over a decade, Alfons has captivated audiences with a unique blend of dynamic vocals, emotive lyrics and late night sensuality.

Alfons’ fifth TR/ST album, the TR/ST and Nightfeelings co-produced Performance is slated for a September 13, 2024 release through Dais Records. The album’s title alludes to a friend’s offhand remark about the Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s intrinsically performative nature. Recorded in Los Angeles, the album’s material reportedly seethes with dread, lust, reckoning and abandon. Sonically, the production pair achieved a thick, smoky balance of eerie synths and fog machine low end paired with bruised, crooning vocals. The result is an album of material that moves between beauty and bitterness, rousing anthems and crushing anguish rooted by emotional turmoil, the lingering ghosts of guilt and the memories of those wronged and those still unforgiven.

Alfons’ voice is the anchor in the storm, singing a collage of impressions and confessions with a smeared, stream of consciousness logic. He’s both observer and instigator, performer and playwright, liberated by the stage and the night.

Performance‘s latest single, the Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings co-produced “Dark Day” is an ethereal and uneasy track featuring eerily atmospheric and glistening synth arpeggios, skittering industrial cling and clatter serving as a foggy and unsettlingly brooding bed for Alfons’ achingly bruised delivery.

“I think there’s something in the song about the flashes that come to you when you try to fall asleep, flashes that show you where you have unfinished business,” Alfons says of the song. “It was such a pleasure working with Cecile Believe and Nightfeelings on production for this track.”

women who kick ass by William Ruben Helms
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Live Concert Photography: Silversun Pickups with Hello Mary at Brooklyn Steel 6/27/24

Live concert photography of SIlversun Pickups and Hello Mary at Brooklyn Steel last month.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hello Mary Shares Furious Ripper “0%”

With the release of last year’s sophomore, self-titled album, New York-based indie rock trio Hello Mary — Helena Straight, Stella Wave and Mikaela Oppenheimer — received praise nationally from the likes of Rolling Stone, who wrote that the album was “one of 2023’s sharpest, nosiest debuts.” Building upon a rapidly rising profile, trio will have an incredibly busy summer: Already developing a reputation for a killer live show, the New York-based trio are currently opening for Silversun Pickups on their Stateside tour, a tour that includes a June 27, 2024 stop at Brooklyn Steel. They’ll play a handful of their own headlining Stateside dates and play a set at Denver‘s Underground Music Showcase, before heading to the UK for a London headlining show, followed by an opening slot for American Football during their UK tour. The band has also confirmed a slot at this year’s Best Friends Forever Fest in Las Vegas this October. (As always, tour dates are below.)

“0%” is the first bit of new material from the rising New York-based trio since the release of last year’s self-titled album. “0%” sees the band pushing their 90s alt rock-inspired sound into a much heavier and distorted direction with the song being featuring thunderously percussive, down-tuned bass, distortion pedaled guitar fuzz, forceful drumming and Stella Wave’s throaty, feral screams — within a classic grunge song structure, alternating impossibly loud choruses, quieter verses and a mischievously dreamy break down with vibraphone and triangle.

Fittingly, the song captures a young woman boldly and defiantly expression an existential frustration — and getting a bit of joy out of the fact that she doesn’t know much of much.

The new single emerged as the trio were jamming in their practice space. After quickly become a crowd favorite live, the song really came to life in the studio, becoming the first time that the band’s Stella Wave had ever screamed on a recording. But when she hopped into the recording booth, she felt emboldened to draw out the vocal shouts the band originally planned, turning them into much longer screams. “0% is one of our favorites to play live,” Hello Mary says. “Our inspirations in the last year have broadened, and we feel like this song reflects that.”

The accompanying video edited by Caroline Knight is from footage the band has had taken over the last couple of tours, and captures the energy and passion of their live show.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Altin Gün Share Bonkers Visual for Disco-Tinged Banger “Doktor Civanim”

Released earlier this year through ATO Records, the acclaimed Amsterdam-based Turkish psych pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Altin Gün‘s fourth album Aşk is a return to the 70s Anatolian folk rock sound that characterized their first two groundbreaking albums while capturing the urgency and power of their famously propulsive live show. Recorded using vintage equipment and techniques, the album’s ten songs feature visionary new interpretations and readings of traditional Turkish folk tunes, revealing how these old, beloved songs remain eternally resonant and ripe for constant reinterpretation. 

“These songs have been covered so many times, always,” Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says. “But not really in psychedelic pop versions,” Jasper Verhulst adds. “It’s definitely connecting more with a live sound – almost like a live album. We, as a band, just going into a rehearsal space together and creating music together instead of demoing at home.”

Aşk features:

  • The band’s dazzling reinvention of “Lelim Ley,” a classic song of lost love and exile, which features lyrics written by the late Turkish novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948), taken from Ali’s 1937 short story “Ses.” Lelim Ley” was joined by music composed by Livaneli and released in 1975. Since then, the song has been lovingly embraced as one of the most well-known and beloved songs among Turkish people across the world. 

  • “Rakiya Su Katamam” is a kaleidoscopic, space rock/psych rock-like take on the folk standard composed by Turkish writer/theologian Mustafa Öztürk, featuring a relentless motorik groove paired with wah-wah pedaled guitar, Dasdemir’s plaintive yet sultry delivery, and a scorching guitar solo paired with the band’s unerring knack for razor sharp hooks.

  • “Su Siziyor,” a lysergic-tinged banger built around a sinuous and propulsive disco-tinged groove, Merve Dasdemir’s plaintive and yearning delivery paired with looping, glistening guitar and the JOVM mainstays unerring knack for crafting ridiculous hooks.

“Doktor Civanim,” Aşk‘s fourth and latest single is a disco-tinged banger, built around glistening synth oscillations that recall Giorgio Moroder‘s legendary 70s output,. relentless four-on-the-floor, a sinuous and ridiculously funky bass line paired with Nile Rodgers-like guitar paired with Merve Dasdemir’s sultry delivery. Simply put it’s breezy and ridiculously fun.

Directed by Ömer Deniz, the accompanying video for “Doktor Civanim” is a gloriously bonkers, sci-fi romp that features a collection of green and white-clad, gold high heel wearing, dancing nurses in a dilapidated hospital, an open heart surgery with a doctor wearing a suit, and plenty of “wait, what did I just see” moments.

“After the sci-fi movie set we all lived through during the pandemic, we wanted to recreate this song as a tribute to all the doctors and healthcare workers,”  Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Altin Gün Shares Groovy “Su Siziyor”

Acclaimed Amsterdam-based Turkish psych pop outfit and JOVM mainstays Altin Gün — founder Jasper Verhulst (bass) with Ben Rider (guitar), Erdinç Ecevit Yildiz (keys, saz, vocals), Gino Groneveld (percussion), Merve Dasdemir (vocals, keys) and Nic Mauskovic (drums) — can trace their origins to Japser Verhulst’s repeated tour stops to Istanbul with a previous band, which led to a deep and abiding passion for ’60s and ’70s Turkish psych pop and folk, and fueled by music discoveries Verhlust couldn’t find in his native The Netherlands. 

Verhlust wasn’t just content to listen to the sounds he loved as an ardent fan; he had a vision of where he could potentially take that sound. “We do have a weak spot for the music of the late ’60s and ’70s,” Verhulst admitted in press notes. “With all the instruments and effects that arrived then, it was an exciting time. Everything was new, and it still feels fresh. We’re not trying to copy it, but these are the sounds we like and we’re trying to make them our own.” 

The Amsterdam-based JOVM mainstays’ sophomore album, 2020’s critically applauded,  Grammy Award-nominated Gece helped to further establish their reputation for re-imagining traditional Turkish folk through the lens of modern psych rock and psych pop. 

2021’s Yol, their third album, in three years, found the band continuing to draw from the rich and diverse traditions of Anatolian and Turkish folk but because of pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns, the members of Altin Gün were forced to write in a completely new fashion for them: virtually — through the trading demos and ideas built around Omnichord, 808 and other elements, including field recordings and New Age-like ideas by email. “We were basically stuck at home for three months making home demos, with everybody adding their parts,” Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir explained in press notes. “The transnational feeling maybe comes from that process of swapping demos over the internet, some of the music we did in the studio, but lockdown meant we had to follow a different approach.”

The new songwriting approach, which featured arrangements built around Omnichord and 808s resulted in a bold, new sonic direction for the JOVM mainstays: sleek, synth-based retro-futuristic Europop with a dreamy quality, seemingly informed by an enforced period of uneasy reflection. Along with the change in sound and approach, Yol was the first album of the band’s growing catalog that saw them working with outside producers, Ghent, Belgium-based production duo Asa Moto — Oliver Geerts and Gilles Noë — to co-produce and mix the album.

Just before the acclaimed JOVM mainstays went on an extensive North American tour, which included a two-night run Music Hall of Williamsburg last year, they shared the two-song digital single “Badu Sabah Olmadan”/”Cips Kola Kilit.” Both songs originally appeared in some fashion or another on the previous year’s Bandcamp-only album Âlem.

  • “Badu Sabah Olmadon” may arguably be one of the harder rocking songs the Dutch JOVM mainstays have released in some time, featuring a relentless motorik groove, some scorching guitar work, glistening synths and yearning vocals. “‘Badİ Sabah Olmadan’ is a traditional love song from the town of Kırşehir, where the poet begs his lover to come to him before the night ends,” the band explains in press notes. “We recorded an electronic version for our charity album Âlem, and then started to play it live with the band. We liked it so much that we decided to record a live band version. Happy to play it for our fans this spring!”

  • “Clips Kola Kilit” is a dance floor friendly, decidedly 80s synth bop centered around 808-like beats, glistening synth washes and wobbling bass synth paired with a coquettish and sultrily delivered spoken word/rap-like vocal. For those children of the 80s — like me — “Clips Kola Kilit” brings back memories of acts like Whodini, The Human League, Nu Shooz, Cherelle, and others. And interestingly enough, it sound as though it could have been on Yol but was cut from the album.

Slated for a Friday release through ATO Records, Altin Gün’s highly-anticipated album, Aşk reportedly is a return to the ’70s Anatolian folk rock sound that characterized their first two groundbreaking albums while capturing the urgency and power of their famously propulsive live show. Recorded using vintage equipment and techniques, the album’s ten songs feature visionary new interpretations and readings of traditional Turkish folk tunes, revealing how these old, beloved songs remain eternally resonant and ripe for constant reinterpretation. 

“These songs have been covered so many times, always,” Altin Gün’s Merve Dasdemir says. ““But not really in psychedelic pop versions,” Jasper Verhulst adds. “It’s definitely connecting more with a live sound – almost like a live album. We, as a band, just going into a rehearsal space together and creating music together instead of demoing at home.”

Aşk will include:

  • The band’s dazzling reinvention of “Lelim Ley,” a classic song of lost love and exile, which features lyrics written by the late Turkish novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist Sabahattin Ali (1907–1948), taken from Ali’s 1937 short story “Ses.” Lelim Ley” was joined by music composed by Livaneli and released in 1975. Since then, the song has been lovingly embraced as one of the most well-known and beloved songs among Turkish people across the world. 

  • “Rakiya Su Katamam” is a kaleidoscopic, space rock/psych rock-like take on the folk standard composed by Turkish writer/theologian Mustafa Öztürk, featuring a relentless motorik groove paired with wah-wah pedaled guitar, Dasdemir’s plaintive yet sultry delivery, and a scorching guitar solo paired with the band’s unerring knack for razor sharp hooks.

Aşk‘s latest single “Su Siziyor” is built around a sinuous and propulsive disco-tinged groove, Merve Dasdemir’s plaintive and yearning delivery paired with looping, glistening guitar and the JOVM mainstays unerring knack for crafting ridiculous hooks. And much like their previously released material, the new single manages to be simultaneously lysergic and wildly anachronistic.