Tag: dark wave

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Nice, France-based duo Divine Decadence — Sabrina and Tatiana — can trace their origins back to 2020: With the duo being confined to the home studio as a result of COVID-19 quarantines and restrictions, it allowed them the opportunity to write and then refine songs, while gradually developing a sound that’s informed by film soundtracks and darkwave.

The duo’s self-titled, five song, debut EP was released earlier this year. The EP’s first single “Purple Dress” is a cinematic bit of post-punk/darkwave centered around moody atmospherics, Sabrina and Tatiana’s eerie harmonies, and swirling guitar textures that become stormier as the song progresses to its explosive coda. “Purple Dress” manages to bring both Cocteau Twins and Kælan Mikla, complete with a palpable, creeping dread.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: ZADAR Teams up with Isa Niels on Shimmering and Brooding “Halos On The Moon”

Antonio G is a Philadelphia-based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and creative mastermind behind the goth/darkwave outfit ZADAR. He’s currently working on the project’s first album — and is searching for like-minded musicians to join him in playing the material live.

ZADAR’s latest single “Halos On The Moon” sees the Philadelphia-based Antonio G collaborating with Isa Nielsen, a singer/songwriter and guitarist, who has opened for Rage Against the Machine‘s Tom Morello and John 5, who has played with Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie — and is the newest member of Mötley Crùe. Nielsen has also played on MTV Specials, MTV’s VMB Awards. Built around shimmering guitars, a relentless motorik-like groove, Neilsen’s plaintive vocals and enormous hooks, “Halos On The Moon” may recall The Sisters of Mercy and Cocteau Twins, while being rooted in swooning Romanticism.

“‘Halos’ is a song about regret and loss. It’s a song about somehow coming to terms with your failure and past mistakes and still moving on with your life,” Antonio G explains.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Psykasya Shares Woozy and Darkly Seductive “Fleetingly”

25 year-old, French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adriane is the creative mastermind behind the emerging dark wave recording project Psykasya. Adriane can trace much of the origins of her career to getting vocal and Celtic harp lessons at a very young age. But after discovering MAO last year, the French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist was inspired to write her own material.

Sonically, her work is informed by several different styles and genres — but she cites Aurora, aleah, Myléne Farmer, and Fishbach as major influences. Centered around a dark, mysterious atmosphere, the young and emerging French artist’s work thematically focuses on the night, witches, death and the like.

The French singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s latest single, the retro-futuristic “Fleetingly” is a brooding and darkly seductive track centered around skittering beats and woozy atmospheric synths paired with Adriane’s sultry delivery. The end result is a song that seamlessly meshes elements of trip hop, dark wave and goth.

Fittingly shot at night and in a cinematic black and white and through VHS tape, the accompanying video follows a walk through a suburban office park, to the city and a night out at local pub for pints and then to a crowded, sweaty club and a house party.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Atlanta’s CDSM Performs “666” at Yellow Studio

Atlanta-based collective Celebrity Death Slot Machine (CDSM) — Ben Presley, Tyler Jundt and John Restivo, Jr. along with live accompaniment from Jack Blauvelt, Drew Kirby and Vinny Restivo — features current and former members of local acts like Material Girls, Neighbor Lady, Mothers, and Rose Hotel.

CDSM is a decided sonic departure from its members previous and current projects: The Atlanta-based collective’s sound blends elements of dark wave, psych rock and post punk in an edgy, genre-bending fashion. The act’s debut EP Hell Stairs was released late last week through Mothland and EXAG Records.

Hell Stairs which features the LCD Soundsystem from hell meets No Wave-like “GFH” finds the members of CDSM crafting material that’s simultaneously glamorous and bleak, swanky and derelict, uplifting and crushing. The EP’s latest single “666” is a dance punk song that’s one-part dark wave, one-part no wave featuring relentlessly tight four-on-the-floor, buzzing synth arpeggios and swirling sax lines paired with crooner-esque laments fittingly delivered with a Vincent Price-like campiness while detailing evil, murderous deeds over the course of a bloody, moonlit night.

Sure there’s murder and mayhem but that doesn’t mean you can’t dance the night away. Just make sure you don’t slip on the blood, eh?

The accompanying video features the band playing at the soon-to-be opened Yellow Studios.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Italy’s IC2 Shares an Icy Yet Dance Floor Friendly Single

IC2 is the darkwave/post-punk solo recording project of Ivan Coppola, mysterious Villa Latina, Italy-based producer, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Late last year, I wrote about the brooding yet dance floor friendly “Falling Down,” a track that sonically brought post-punk heavyweights like Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure and Joy Division — as well as contemporaries like ACTORS, Bootblacks and others to mind.

The Italian singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer will be releasing the Bad Moon Light EP this year. The EP’s latest single, title track “Bad Moon Light” continues a run of dance floor friendly yet icy post punk centered around reverb-drenched and guitars, atmospheric synths, thumping beats, the Italian artist’s detached vocals placed within a hook-driven song structure. Interestingly, “Bad Moon Light” manages to bring Garlands era Cocteau Twins to mind, revealing an artist gently expanding upon his sound.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Canadian/American Duo Ritual Wave Share Sultry “My Sin”

This week is an extraordinarily busy week as I’ve been covering this year’s New Colossus Festival. So I haven’t been posting with the same regularity as I’d normally would. But I’m seeing live music and doing that valuable in-person networking one has to do to get by. And I’m having a ton of fun doing so. But as always, let’s get to the business at hand . . .

Ritual Wave is an emerging post-punk/dark wave duo featuring Toronto-based Judy Karacs and San Diego-based John Goodman. The Canadian/American duo bonded over a mutual love and appreciation for similar styles of music, which led to their collaboration together. Although they’ve been working on material since 2018, the duo’s work sonically sees them combining elements of old school post-punk with melodic dark wave undertones.

“My Sin” their second official single together as Ritual Wave features Karacs’ sultry cooing over glistening and icy synth arpeggios, a propulsive, angular bass line and subtle industrial clang and clatter. Sonically, “My Sin” — to my ears at least — recalls Cocteau Twins, Depeche Mode and the like, but fueled by a desperate, obsessive desire.

“My Sin” as the Canadian/American duo explain uses religious themes as a metaphor to express the psychological torment and destruction of a person willing to sacrifice everything in order to be loved. And as a result, the song explores the darkest sides of obsession, control and desire as is relates to romantic affairs.

“This track was really a labour of love for us. We actually wrote ‘My Sin’ very quickly, in 2018, but ended up re-working, re-recording and re-editing it ’till we finally decided it was ready,” Ritual Wave’s Judy Karacs explains in press notes. “With the lyrics and melody I really wanted to explore the subject of obsession and how that impacts the human psyche. I likened these feelings to a strong religious devotional experience. It was the idea of having such a profound faith in someone that you were willing to sacrifice everything just to hold onto what they made you believe was love. Obviously, this belief was based more on unhealthy fixation and desire instead of genuine love.”

Edited by Ritual Wave’s Judy Karacs, the accompanying visual is shot in a gorgeous and sultry black and white, and evokes the song’s central themes: lust and obsession through religious metaphors.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Atlanta’s CDSM Shares Menacing and Feverish “GFH”

Atlanta-based collective Celebrity Death Slot Machine (CDSM) — Ben Presley, Tyler Jundt and John Restivo, Jr. along with live accompaniment from Jack Blauvelt, Drew Kirby and Vinny Restivo — features current and former members of local acts like Material Girls, Neighbor Lady, Mothers, and Rose Hotel.

CDSM is a decided sonic departure from its members previous and current projects: The Atlanta-based collective’s sound blends elements of dark wave, psych rock and post punk in an edgy, genre-bending fashion.

Their latest single, the LCD Soundsystem from hell meets No Wave-like “GFH” is centered around swirling synths, wobbling disco-like bass lines, driving four-on-the-floor, copious cowbell, swirling synths and saxophone skronk paired with irony drenched baritone vocals. Underneath the dance floor rocking thump is a menace and paranoia-fueled fever dream of a tale that follows a troubled young man, who gets busted by the cops and makes a deal to reduce his sentence. The troubled young man agrees to become an undercover agent and wear a wire. During an operation, his cover is busted and he’s brutally killed. But through a weird bit of fate, he’s fittingly reincarnated as a rat.

The accompanying animated video by Anna Firth is fittingly a hallucinogenic and uneasy fever dream that follows the song’s story in an immersive fashion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lunar Twin Releases a Brooding Late Night Visual for Trip Hop-like “Leaves”

Deriving their name from a scientific theory that suggests that Earth may have had a second moon, a twin moon that was destroyed in a massive collision during the earliest moments of our solar system, Lunar Twin, which is comprised of vocalist Bryce Boudreau and multi-instrumentalist and producer Chris Murphy can trace their origins back to 2011’s Denver Underground Music Festival when Boudreau joined Murphy’s goth band Nightsweats as a guest vocalist. And by 2013, the duo started collaborating together full-time.

With the release of their debut, 2014’s self-titled EP and 2017’s Night Tides EP, the duo which is currently split between Hawaii and Salt Lake City have developed a unique take on chill wave/dark wave that draws from and possesses elements of synth pop, shoegaze, dream pop and others. A couple of years have passed since I’ve written about Lunar Twin — and as it turns out, the duo’s Chris Murphy has been busy sharing the stages with a growing list of acclaimed and renowned artists including Grimes, Bonnie Prince Billy and Peaches through other projects he’s worked in. But the duo have also been working on their long-awaited third EP Ghost Moon Ritual, which is slated for a February 16, 2020 release through  the band’s own imprint, Tropical Depression/Desert Heat. 

Ghost Moon Ritual reportedly finds the duo expanding upon the sound that caught the attention of this site and elsewhere with some of the material nodding at psych folk and desert noir-themed late night moon music. The EP’s latest single, the moody and atmospheric “Leaves” is centered around Boudreau’s sonorous, Mark Lanegan-like baritone, layers of buzzing and shimmering synths and thumping beats. And while simultaneously nodding at trip hop and dream pop, the song evokes — for me, at least — a a specific late night loneliness I’ve known — wandering a new town, a new country on your own, as a stranger, a man from far away. 

Directed by San Francisco-based Zoey Nyguen, the recently released video is set in a raw, late night, neon cityscape — her neighborhood of Russian Hill. ” I wanted to embody the song with visuals from my within my neighborhood and local surroundings and to include basically a collage of clips from different time periods and eras of the City,” Nyguen says in press notes. “I made the video as a simple Creative Commons project and then approached the group about a possible collaboration and then filmed them performing to add to the story I had built around their song into something more” 

“Collaboration with a new person is always a surprise creatively and I thought her vibrant and imaginative approach visualizing the song to be just right .. to curate this version of this songs story,” Bryce Boudreau says of the video. “Her choice of imagery really melds with the track. I’m very happy with the way the video develops and encapsulates everything we are trying to express musically” Chris Murphy adds in press notes. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

True Moon is a Malmo, Sweden-based post-punk/dark wave quartet, comprised of founding members Karolina Engdahl (vocals, bass) and Tommy Tift (guitar) — both of whom are former members of Swedish Grammy-winning act Vånna Inget, along with Linus Segerstedt (guitar) and Fredrik Orevad (drums). The Malmo, Sweden-based quartet can trace their origins to when its founding duo of Engdahl and Tift felt a desire to create something more raw and visceral than the material they were working on with their then-primary gig. “Karolina and I are bored with the Swedish music scene at the moment,” Tift explained at the time. “It feels like everyone has the same blueprint, like there’s an industry rulebook now for how bands must sound. We wanted to do something different.” Vånna Inget’s 2013 full-length effort Ingen Botten found the band sonically exploring New Wave and dark wave, and as Tift went on to say they felt a need to explore it more themselves.  “It was like an urge and we just had to do this,” True Moon’s Engdahl adds.

“We were listening to artists such as Joy Division, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Sisters of Mercy, The Mission and early Cure. There is a purity and honesty and integrity to that music that’s missing from the current scene,” the band’s Tift said back in 2017. “Those bands weren’t making music to be pop stars or rock stars, it is pure expression and pure art, and that’s the aesthetic we were pursuing.” Segerstedt and Orevad were recruited to complete the band’s lineup, and they began working on their 2016 self-titled debut, an effort that received attention across Scandinavia and elsewhere for crafting material that actively went for the sort of raw, urgent and unpolished feel and sound reminiscent of Martin Hannet‘s work with Joy Division.

As a result of attention they received from their self-titled debut, the Malmo-based post-punk act played shows across Sweden, the UK and the States, opening for Killing Joke, King Dude, MCC, Against Me! and a number of others. Building upon a growing national and international profile, True Moon’s highly-anticipated sophomore album II is slated for a November 1, 2019 release through Lövely Records —  and the album finds the band continuing their ongoing collaboration with with producer Jari Haapalainen, who also contributes guitar to the proceedings. Interestingly, the album’s first single “Poison” continues the raw and urgent aesthetic and feel of their full-length debut — and while clearly being indebted to Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees and others, the track reveals some ambitious songwriting, as it possesses an enormous, arena rock-like quality.

 

 

 

 

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Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Arizona’s Body of Light Returns with a Brooding Yet Dance Floor Friendly New Single

Earlier this year, I wrote about the Arizona-based sibling, electronic duo Body of Light. And as you may recall, the act — comprised of Andrew and Alexander Jarson — can trace their origins to the Jarsons’ involvement in the acclaimed Ascetic House collective.  Interestingly, what hat initially began as a vehicle for the duo to explore noise and sound during their early teens has gradually evolved into an established electronic production and artist unit that crafts music that draws from New Wave, freestyle, goth and techno — and from the Jarsons’ individual and shared experiences. 

Body of Light’s third album Time to Kill is slated for a July 26, 2019 release through Dais Records and the album reportedly finds the Arizona-based sibling duo refining their sound with a bolder sonic palette while thematically, the duo focus on love and obsession within an era of increasing technological bondage and fleeting exhilaration. The Power, Corruption and Lies-era New Order and Upstairs at Eric’s-era Yaz-like album title track “Time to Kill” was centered around a brooding yet relentless, dance floor friendly production and a brooding Romanticism. Time to Kill’s latest single, the Depeche Mode-like “Don’t Pretend” is centered around and industrial/goth-like production featuring insistent and relentless beats, layers upon layers of shimmering and arpeggiated synths, a soaring hook and plaintive vocals — but unlike its immediate predecessor, the album’s latest single is an urgent, desperate plea. As the duo explain in press notes. “We are all hostages of need; we struggle to free our minds from confinement.” They add that the new single is “a song for those imprisoned by their own desires.” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Synth Pop Act Body of Light Pair a Decidedly 80s-Influenced Single with Slick Cinematic Visuals

Comprised of sibling duo Andrew and Alexander Jarson, the Arizona-based synth pop act Body of Light can trace their origins to Jarsons involvement in the acclaims Ascetic House collective. Initially, what began as a vehicle for the duo to explore noise and sound during their early teens has evolved into an established electronic production and artist unit that specializes in music that draws from the Jarson’s individual and shared experiences and possesses elements of New Wave, freestyle, goth and techno. 

Slated for a July 26, 2019 release through Dais Records, Body of LIght’s forthcoming, third album Time to Kill finds the Arizona-based duo refining their sound with a bolder sonic palette while thematically  weaving stories of love and obsession in an era of technological bondage and increasingly fleeting exhilaration. Interestingly, Time to Kill’s latest single, album title track “Time to Kill” is centered around a broodingly cinematic and dance floor friendly production consisting of relentless, tweeter and woofer thumping beats, shimmering and arpeggiated synths and a soaring hook paired with plaintive vocals. And while the decidedly 80s goth/synth pop track recalls early Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, Power, Corruption and Lies-era New Order and Upstairs at Eric’s-era Yaz, the song possesses a modern, studio sheen — without polishing away the swooning Romanticism at the core of the song.

Directed by Travis Waddell, the gorgeously shot, recently released video for “Time to Kill” is split between slow-motion, live footage of the duo performing in s small, sweaty basement club in front of ecstatic fans — and footage of the duo brooding in a studio in front of moody lighting. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Manchester UK-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Nathan Till is the creative mastermind of the buzz worthy dark wave recording project Ghosts of Social Networks. Citing the likes of The Cure, Bauhaus, Echo and the Bunnymen, Nick Cave, The National and Radiohead, the project according to Till upcycles old-school forms of songwriting while applying a fresh sonic veneer to them, reportedly pairing innovation with a timeless sense of melodicism.

Till’s Ghost of Social Networks debut single “Love Potion” began a string of acclaimed singles praised for their production and overall sound from the likes of BBC Introducing, several zines across the UK and the blogosphere — and he’s received airplay from Steve Lamacq‘s program and BBC 6 Music. All of this built up quite a bit of buzz before the release of his debut EP, My Lucifer.  Interestingly, Till’s latest Ghost of Social Networks single “Don’t Let Me Down” manages to effortlessly recall Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, as its centered around a brooding and forceful rhythm section, angular guitar lines, an anthemic hook, the song captures a tempestuous and swooning love affair — the sort in which the song’s narrator may recognize will end in disaster.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Up-and-Coming New York Duo Death by Piano Releases Futuristic Visuals for “The Countdown”

Death by Piano is an up-and-coming New York-based dark wave duo comprised of Kalen Lister (vocals, keys) and Greywolf, a multi-instrumentalist and producer. With the release of their latest EP, The Countdown, the duo have established themselves with an atmospheric sound that’s centered around sleek and minimalist electronic production, including skittering beats, chopped up samples, soulful blasts of guitar, moody strings and synths, and Lister’s pop star belter vocals. Interestingly, EP title track “Countdown” is a perfect example of the sound that has begun to win the duo attention, complete with an infectious, radio-friendly hook that reminds me a bit of the classic 4AD Records sound mixed with JOVM mainstay Holy War. However, as the duo explain “‘Countdown’ is the first song we wrote together. It’s about leaving behind what you thought life might be and embracing the now. It’s about embracing change. External and internal. Facing what you fear to find more freedom.”  

Directed by Robert Lester, the recently released video is a decidedly retro-futuristic and New Age-y treatment that features Lister dressed as a cyborg/alien along with her bandmate, performing the song in front of a screen, playing psychedelic imagery. It’s interspersed with a humanoid character, wandering the woods. It’s trippy yet futuristic take on the familiar, much like the duo’s sound.