Tag: Concrete

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Miranda and the Beat Share a Feral, New Ripper

New York-based garage punks Miranda and the Beat — currently founding duo Miranda Zipse (vocals, guitar) and Kim Sollecito (drums) with Dylan Fernandez (Farfisa) and Alvin Jackson (bass) — can trace their origins back to a small California town, where the band’s founding duo met. Zipse, a high school dropout, had been working for her mom’s estate sale business going through dead people’s belongings and making up melodies in her head as she went about it to pass the time. Some of those melodies became the band’s first songs.

After playing shows locally, the duo decided to visit NYC, and during that visit, they tried their chops playing shows around town. When they’re friends, The Mystery Lights went on tour, the pair shacked up in their friends’ apartment and simply decided to never leave. The pair gave up their possession and a humdrum, everyday sort of existence in the hopes of making it as a real band.

Zipse and Sollecito shared a bed, looked for work and spent their time honing their craft. They met Dylan Fernandez when he delivered weed to a guy Zipse was dating at the duo’s apartment. Fernandez then joined the band. A years later, after Kate Gutwald’s departure, the band added Fernandez’s little brother Alvin Jackson. The band then continued to play around town, and eventually wrote what would become their highly-anticipated full-length debut. Building upon a growing profile, the New York-based garage punks opened for The King Khan and BBQ Show‘s seven-week long US and Canadian tour, also further cementing their reputation as a must-see live act.

The legendary King Khan, the self-professed “Emperor of R&B” says of the band “I never thought I would see someone be able to play guitar with the ferocity of Link Wray, and sing like Lydia Lunch had a nuclear meltdown and morphed into Etta James and Yma Sumac. Miranda and the Beat ARE the quintessential heirs to our rock n’ roll throne… May the circle remain unbroken. Consider the torch has not only been passed but its fiery tale is ready to set the whole world on fire all over again.”

Miranda and the Beat’s highly-anticipated, self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a May 26, 2023 release through Ernest Jennings Record Co./King Khang’s Khannibalism. The Nick Zinner-produced and-mixed album is reportedly a hallucinogenic ode to the canon of soul, garage punk, pure R&B and mayhem.

The album’s latest single “Concrete” is an old-fashioned sweaty, grimy and downright feral ripper built around fuzzy power chord-driven riffage, a forcefully propulsive rhythmic chug paired with Zipse’s powerhouse vocal range. Swaggering, gritty, nasty garage punk full of booze, piss and spittle ain’t dead y’all — and Ms. Zipse and company are here to get in your face and remind you of it. Play this one as loud as you can fucking stand it!

The accompanying video employs slickly edited footage from Velveeeta cheesy B horror movies, including a Roger Corman-like intro about a haunted house, some childlike drawings of ghosts and other creepy crawlies, eyeballs, a beating heart and more.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Tense and Frenetic Visuals for Crystal Castles’ Concrete

“Concrete,” the latest single off the forthcoming album manages to be tense and propulsive as Kath’s production, which consists of layers of undulating synth stabs, propulsive drum beats, malevolent atmospherics and industrial clang and clatter are paired with Frances’ heavily distorted vocals. And while bleak and murky, the song manages to be dance floor friendly — thanks to an anthemic hook.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of American-born vocalist Rose Suau, best known for her work in synth pop act Shoestrings and Swedish-born multi-instrumentalist and producer  Johan Angergård, best known for his work with Club 8, synth pop side project Djustin can trace their origins to when the duo, who noticed an eerily parallelism in their lives — both are middle children, born in the same year and under the same astrological sign and have identical record collections — started with a mutual admiration of each other’s various musical projects, back in the late 90s. Suau and Angergård started writing each other lengthy letters about love, life, pop music and other subjects. Naturally, those letters turned to emails  –and although both Suau and Angergård went on to form several other musical projects including Pallers, Invisible Twin and The Legends, the duo continued a regular correspondence.

Now as the story goes, although Suau and Angergård had corresponded with each other for years and begun to really know each other, they had never met; however, last fall when Angergård was looking for a vocalist and lyricist for a new musical, side project the first person he thought of was Suau. As Angergård explains in press notes “I love the soulful sensualism in Rose’s voice and figured she’d be perfect for the project. I’m pretty used to writing everything myself and wanted to see what would happen if I did things in new ways. So, I took the chance and sent a couple of tracks over to Rose with me singing gibberish. A week later she dropped a recording of the finished vocals and it was…well, just lovely.”

Tryst, the duo’s soon-to-be released debut EP is slated for a May 13 release through Labrador Records, and the EP’s latest single “Concrete” pairs Angergård’s production consisting of cascading and undulating layers of synths and propulsive boom-bap beats and a razor sharp hook with Suau’s suggestive and sultry vocals in a swooning yet moody song that thematically focuses on lust, obsession and heartbreak. And while nodding at both house music and 80s synth pop, the single possesses a contemporary and radio friendly sheen.