Tag: Cecile Believe

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.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Forever Releases DIY Visuals for Bittersweet and Triumphant New Single

Born on a remote Canadian island, June Moon is a poet, provocateur and pop artist, known as Forever. Moon started the Forever project around 2013. “I was going through a very dark time because my father had passed away, and I actually quit making music, quit performing, quit writing — I quit everything. Then I met Michael Brock [Mind Bath], and he asked me to open for him at one of his shows. I’ll never forget that moment — he was texting me about it, and I was at a library and an angel whispered in my ear and told me to say say, and that my new name was ‘Forever.’ Two weeks later, I played my first Forever show. ”

So after spending a nomadic decade of traveling, Moon relocated to Montreal to pursue a music career and shape her recording persona of Forever. With the help of Brock and her friend Patrick Holland (Project Pablo), she wrote and released her 2016 self-titled debut, an effort that was a mix of pop and downtempo influences paired with her effortless and ethereal vocals. 

Reeling from the breakup of a lengthy and complicated relationship, Moon went to work, hoping to find healing from songwriting. Working with her frequent collaborators Brock and Holland, she also turned to fellow Montreal artists Ouri,Cecile Believe, formerly known as Mozart’s Sister and TOPS’ David Carriere on the material that would eventually comprise her forthcoming EP Close to the Flame.“Ouri was so influential in her ability to facilitate the development of my sound on this EP,” Moon says in press notes. “Patrick helped me alchemize my heartache by turning my sad songs into dance tracks. David was a special collaboration for me because I really look up to him and Jane [from TOPS] as songwriters.”

Slated for a February 14, 2020 release through Cascine Records, the six song EP reportedly captures the beauty and ugliness of love and loss, centered around a dysfunctional and troubled relationship. “I was in a relationship that was killing me, and I had to plan an escape to save my life,” Moon explains in press notes. “The record is haunted by a ghost. I sing about her murder on the first track ‘Blur,’ but then she turns into a angel on the last song ‘Adonis.’ I channeled her one night when I was writing because I was so scared to talk about what happened to me; I didn’t know how to tell my story. She came to me and told me to use her story as a channel for my own pain. This release is dedicated to her.” 

The EP’s first single is the propulsive, 90s house-inspired “Make It Happen.” Centered around shimmering and arpeggiated synths, a sinuous bass line, stuttering beats, Moon’s plaintive and ethereal vocals and a guest verse from Just John, the song’s narrator expresses relief and joy over the end of a relationship that has held her back personally and emotionally. The song’s narrator releases that it’s time to move forward and better herself — and a result, it’s triumphant but subtly bittersweet. After all, life’s a series of transitions from one situation, one circumstance to another, until the end. 

Directed and edited by Moon, the recently released video is set in a small cafe. Although there’s a brief cameo by Just John, the video primarily focuses on its protagonist and coworkers as they get their cafe ready for a small gathering of friends for coffee and cake before ending with a passionate reunion.