Tag: Downtown Records

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tei Shi and Blood Orange Team Up on a Shimmering and Slow Burning 80s Synth Funk-Inspired Ballad

With the release of her critically applauded full-length debut, Crawl Space, the Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, electronic music artist and electronic music producer Valerie Teicher, a.k.a Tei Shi quickly established her sound — slow-burning and shimmering, ethereal pop.

Since the release of her debut, Teicher has been rather busy — she’s collaborated with Blood Orange and Diddy on the viral hit song “Hope,” which has amassed over 10 million stream and appears in the accompanying video along with Diddy, A$AP Rocky, Tyler the Creator and Empress Of. And early this year, she joined Blood Orange in a performance of the song at this year’s Coachella Festival. She’s also been busy working on her highly-anticipated and long-awaited sophomore album La Linda, which is slated for a November 15, 2019 release through Downtown Records.

After spending several years in New York, Teicher relocated to Los Angeles last year, and as a result she quickly shifted course on her path as an artist. “I felt like I was closing a chapter in my life that was tied up in a lot of negativity, and reconnecting with open space and my own creativity in a way that I hadn’t in a very long time,” she says. “I wanted this whole project to reflect the feeling of stepping into another world that’s almost surreal or fantastical in its beauty.”

The album’s material reflects that change in artistic path with the album thematically and tone-wise is a purposeful departure. While her full-length debut was centered around emotional claustrophobia and confusion, the material off La Linda was written in the yard outside of her Elysian Park home — a sun-drenched space with roes bushes and berry patches, a herb garden and apple tree. Unsurprisingly, the album, which is Spanish for “the beautiful” also finds Teicher connecting to her Latin roots and cultural identity, with the acclaimed singer/songwriter writing and singing lyrics in her native Spanish. “Moving to L.A. made me feel much more connected to my Latin roots and my cultural identity, in a way that feels really loving,” says Tei Shi, who grew up between Colombia and Vancouver.

While creating La Linda, Teicher took on the role one executive producer and assembled an all-star team of producers that included Blood Orange, who has also worked with Sky Ferreira, Solange Knowles and FKA Twigs; Stint, who has worked with Santigold, HEALTH and Gallant; TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek; Noah Breakfast, who has worked with Christine and the Queens, Carly Rae Jepsen and Ty Dolla $ign, among a list of others. For Teicher, working with such an eclectic array of musicians and producers helped to shake her free from creative stagnation. “Part of the motivation to move to L.A. was wanting to be a part of a community of people who were excited to collaborate,” Teicher says in press notes. “I felt like I’d gotten to the point where I wasn’t learning as much or picking up new things, so I wanted to work with lots of different people and take in as much as I could from their processes.”

Sonically, the album was also influenced by a disparate array of artists including German choreographer Pina Bausch and acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. “With Kurosawa, I was so inspired by how each frame is so well-composed that it almost looks like a painting, and how he used these very simple things like rain or a gust of wind to create emotion,” the acclaimed Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter explains in press notes. Interestingly, she also found nature inspiring the album’s material as well. I think I took nature for granted for a long time, but making this album I was so drawn to the mountains and trees and water—I realized how much nature is another form of art,” Teicher says. ““For me this album is about letting go of the past and moving willingly into the future,” Teicher continues. “I hope it can give people a glimpse of something beautiful, and help them look out into the world in a more loving and intuitive way.”

La Linda’s latest single is the slow-burning, 80s synth soul-inspired, Noah Breakfast-produced single “Even If It Hurts.” Continuing Teicher’s ongoing collaboration with acclaimed synth pop artist and producer Blood Orange, the track is centered around thumping 808-like beats, shimmering and arpeggiated synths and Teicher’s and Hynes plaintive vocals trading verses on love — particularly how pain in some way or another is always part of love.  And while being a soulful synthesis of Teicher’s and Hynes work, the song also manages to sound as though it were drew from the likes of Cherelle’s “Saturday Love” and Mtume’s “Juicy Fruit”

“I made this song with two of my closest collaborators — Dev Hynes (Blood Orange) and Noah Breakfast,” Teicher shares in press notes. ” It came together in pieces between LA and New York but sprouted from the lyrics Dev and I kept on singing – ‘even if it hurts…I just don’t mind’. The concept is really the realization and acceptance that pain is a natural consequence of love. It’s a duet about the ways in which we make ourselves vulnerable to those we love, sometimes at a high cost. The video was directed by Cara Stricker and with an incredible and almost exclusively female creative crew. It features a multitude of amazing designers like Collina Strada, Vaquera, Christopher John Rogers, Mugler, Maryam Nassir Zadeh . I wanted to capture the romantic and melancholic elements of the song but put them in a world that feels removed from the every day, its own little odd paradise where Dev and I existed parallel to one another but never really together.”

The video’s director Cara Stricker adds, “I wanted to explore the iconography of love in art history through a modern yet romantic lens. Creating stillness and emotive movement to reflect the physical or emotional space in love… vulnerability, numbing immersion, knowing the truth, becoming closer, fighting for it, letting them in…even if it hurts. It’s a conversation between opposing perspectives in a relationship.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Lola Kirke Releases a Cinematic Yet Intimate Visual for New Single “Mama”

Over the past year couple of years, I’ve written quite a bit about the London-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician and actress Lola Kirke. Perhaps best known for her roles in Noah Bambauch’s Mistress America and the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, and David Fincher’s Gone Girl, the London-born, New York-based JOVM mainstay is the daughter of drummer  Simon Kirke, who was a member of the 70s hit-making rock bands Bad Company and Free and Lorraine Kirke, the owner of Geminola, a New York-based vintage boutique known for supplying outfits for Sex and the City.  She’s also the sister of singer/songwriter Domino Kirke.

During that same period of time, Kirke has developed a reputation as singer/songwriter and solo artist, releasing last year’s Wyndham Garnett-produced full-length debut Heart Head West, a deeply personal effect that Kirke said at the time was “about basically everything I thought about in 2017 — time, loss, social injustice, sex, drinking, longing — essentially everything I’d talk about with a close friend for 40 minutes.” Building upon a rapidly growing profile, Kirke will be releasing an EP of country duets, Friends and Foes and Friends Again through Downtown Records on September 13, 2019. The EP reportedly finds Kirke further developing the honky tonk country sound that has her won her attention across the blogosphere — while subtly updating it, a smidge. 

The EP’s first single is the gorgeous and achingly mournful “Mama.” Penned by Kirke herself and featuring Wet’s Kelly Zutrau, the  song about the painful complexities of the mother/daughter relationship, written from lived-in, deeply personal experience. And as a result, the song’s narrator expresses remorse, regret and longing for a relationship that’s been tainted by the pride, idiosyncrasies, misunderstandings, different perspectives of two stubborn, hurting, foolish and very human adults, who love each other — but also know how to wound each other. 

Lola’s older sister, Jemina Kirke offered to direct the video. And originally, Jemina and Lola intended to have their mother star in the video. But when their mom politely declined, they decided to age Lola to create their own mother figure. The cinematically shot yet intimate visual follows our mother figure in her some of her deepest, most private moments — getting dressed and going through her daily beauty routine, fussing about through an enormous mansion before eating a cheeseburger and washing it down with a beer. Is she preparing for some sort of gathering? We don’t know. But what’s obvious is that the mother figure in the video is painfully lonely — and the video suggests that she is going through some sort of emotional breakdown. 

“It’s a perverse not mine to want to see people in their private moment,” Jemina Kirke says of the video. “I would’ve loved to her be defecating on the toilet but decided ravenous eating was just as good, just as grotesquely human. This story is about a character of stature and prestige, whose live is all about appearances, engaging in an act that puts her on the level with everyone else. And then the relief (and the horror) that comes from that.” 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay Lola Kirke Teams Up with Wyndham Garnett on a Gorgeous Cover of Ted Lucas’ “Baby Where You Are”

Last year, I wrote quite a bit about the British-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician and actress Lola Kirke. Although she may be best known for starring roles in  Noah Bambauch’s Mistress America and the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, and a supporting role in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, the British-born, New York-based singer/songwriter and actress is the daughter of drummer of drummer Simon Kirke, who was a member of the 70s hit-making rock bands Bad Company and Free and Lorraine Kirke, the owner of Geminola, a New York-based vintage boutique known for supplying outfits for Sex and the City.  

As a solo artist, Kirke’s Wyndham Garnett-produced full-length debut, Heart Head West was released last year through Downtown Records, and  the album, which was tracked live to tape was a deeply personal effort that was as Kirke said in press notes “about basically everything I thought about in 2017 — time, loss, social injustice, sex, drinking, longing — essentially everything I’d talk about with a close friend for 40 minutes.” 

Wyndham Garnett is a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who first made a name for himself as an original member of Elvis Perkins in Dearland and a touring member of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. And as a result, he has shared stages with the likes of My Morning Jacket, Cold War Kids, Levon Helm, Pete Seeger, Dr. Dog, The Felice Brothers, Marco Benevento and a lengthy list others. 2016 saw the release of his self-produced full-length debut WYNDHAM and the Gus Seyffert-produced EP Double You, which featured lead single “Gypsy,” a track that landed on Elle’s “Best New Songs of December 2016” with singles by the legendary Neil Young and Childish Gambino. Now, as you may recall Garnett is a frequent collaborator with Kirke that has included her self-titled EP, last year’s Heart Head West and a pair of Christmas-themed songs. 

Garnett and Kirke continue their ongoing and extraordinarily successful collaboration with two Valentine’s Day-themed singles “Lights On” and a cover of Ted Lucas’ “Baby Where You Are.” The Garnett and Kirke cover of Lucas’ “Baby Where You Are” is a fairly straightforward and atmospheric rendition of the song with a twangy 12 bar blues-like solo, the song is rooted in cold and lonely nights, longing for that special someone, who’s far away — although the song hints at the hope of being with that person again. “When we first got together, Wyndham and I rented a house in upstate New York and spent the majority of our time drinking too much wine and learning songs we liked on guitar so we could at least sing them at parties and maybe one day even record them,” Kirke says in press notes. “Ted Lucas’ ‘Baby Where You Are’ came into our lives then and has remained a staple because of how simply it expresses the truth of love and longing. I’m always excited by art that achieves that balance, which is why I fell so in love with Wyndham’s song ‘Lights On.’ I feel like the two songs express different sides of desire, one that is more certain and the other less, but both hopeful and both very known.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Lola Kirke Releases a Gorgeous Acoustic Version of “Monster”

Over the past year, I’ve written a bit about the British-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician and actress Lola Kirke. And as you may recall, while she may be best known for starring roles in Noah Bambauch’s Mistress America and the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, and a supporting role in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, the British-born, New York-based singer/songwriter and actress is the daughter of drummer of drummer Simon Kirke, who was a member of the 70s hit-making rock bands Bad Company and Free and Lorraine Kirke, the owner of Geminola, a New York0-based vintage boutique known for supplying outfits for Sex and the City.

Downtown Records released Kirke’s Wyndham Garnett-produced full-length debut Heart Head West earlier this year. The album which was tracked live to tape is a deeply personal effort that she says was “about basically everything I thought about in 2017 — time, loss, social injustice, sex, drinking, longing — essentially everything I’d talk about with a close friend for 40 minutes.”  “Sexy Song,” which I wrote about earlier this year was a slow-burning and meditative honky tonk country song that subtly recalled Chris Issak and Roy Orbison with a feminine and self-assured sultriness. “Supposed To” was a rollicking country stomper, that recalled Sun Records country and early rock — in particular Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, and Patsy Cline but centered around the social pressure that her — and in turn, countless other women — experience and feel in daily life, to be and do things that they don’t want to ever do. 

Heart Head West’s first single “Monster” was a meditative, honky tonk ballad featuring an arrangement of reverb-drenched twangy guitars, a soaring hook that’s centered around a yearning desire to belong, to fit in somewhere in the world, when you’re truly a stranger. After a successful UK tour that saw her playing in front of sold out shows, Kirke announced three holiday season shows in California — and that she’ll be opening for Australian singer/songwriter Alex Cameron’s North American tour. The tour will include a March 1, 2019 stop at The Bell House. You can check out the rest of the tour dates below. But in the meantime, Kirke released an acoustic version of “Monster,” which features a gorgeous string arrangement that turns the song into an old-timey ballad, while retaining the song’s aching yearning to fit in somewhere. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lola Kirke Returns with Sultry and Expressive Visuals for “Sexy Song”

Lola Kirke is a British-born, New York-based singer/songwriter, musician and actress, best know for starring roles in Noah Bambauch’s Mistress America and the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle, as well as a supporting role in David Fincher’s Gone Girl; but interestingly enough, she’s also the daughter of drummer Simon Kirke, who’s best known for stints in Bad Company and Free and Lorraine Kirke, the owner of Geminola, a vintage boutique known for supplying outfits for Sex and the City. Now as you may recall, last year I wrote about “Not Used,” off her self-titled EP, a song about learning to live with a lover’s absence and their lingering ghosts. 

Kirk’s full-length debut Heart Head West is slated for an August 10, 2018 release through Downtown Records, and the Wyndham Garnett-produced album, which was tracked live to tape, is a deeply personal album that Kirke says is “about basically everything I thought about in 2017 — time, loss, social injustice, sex, drinking, longing — essentially everything I’d talk about with a close friend for 40 minutes.” Heart Head West’s latest single “Sexy Song” is a slow-burning and meditative bit of honky tonk that’s reminiscent of Chris Issak and Roy Orbison, but with a feminine and self-assured sultriness at its core. 

Directed by Mara McKevitt, the intimate, recently released video for “Sexy Song” features expressive and sultry choreography by Elizabeth Sonenberg, and as Kirke told Harper’s Bazaar, “I think that understanding what the core and the truth of women’s sexual desire is really tricky. Is it something that’s just like a man’s? Is it totally different? is it something that is just a like man’s because men told us exactly how it should be or what they would like it to be?” 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Acclaimed Russian Electro Pop Act D-Pulse Perform “Get Lost” at Moscow’s New Space

Initially formed in Izhevsk, Russia, when its members Anton Kochnev, Semyon Perevoshikov, Klim Suhanov, and Sam Konyakhin were teenagers, the acclaimed St. Petersburg, Russia-based electro pop act D-Pulse have largely been influenced by French and Scandinavian electro pop, and disco — namely, the likes of Daft Punk, Phoenix, Air and others but with their own unique take, as they’ve been known to experiment with combining live recording sessions, complete with analog synthesizers, guitars and machines with sampling, cutting and processing from their own material.  In fact, when the quartet moved to St. Petersburg, they found their disco-leaning sound out of place within a scene that has been largely dominated by sparse techno but within a relatively short period of time, their sound and approach set them apart; in fact, over the past fe years, the members of the St. Petersburg quartet have released material on Island, Tirk, OM, Kitsune and Ministry of Sound — and they recently signed to Nick Murphy’s Detail Co. Records.

Detail Co. and Downtown Records released D-Pulse’s sophomore effort Serpentine earlier this year, and adding to their growing internationally recognized profile, the quartet recently released a remix EP featuring remixes of album single “Get Lost” by acclaimed electronic music artists and producers Juan Maclean, Photay, Attic Chefs and Babak — but in the meantime, album single “Get Lost” is an incredibly sleek and slick single that features a disco era influenced bass line paired with shimmering and arpeggiated synths, a soaring, feel good hook and a tight groove within a song that finds the act nodding at funk, disco, psych pop and electronica simultaneously.  Interestingly, the song reveals a deliberate attention to craft while being ambitiously crowd pleasing in a “why not have a little bit of everything and make it funky while you’re at it?” fashion.

The live footage of the band performing “Get Lost” at Moscow’s The New Space features the band pairing their dreamy yet funky sounds with a vivid audio-visual display.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Currently comprised of founding member and primary songwriter Ellis Ludwig-Leone (keys), Allen Tate (vocals), Charlene Kaye (vocals), Rebekah Durham (vocals, violin), John Brandon (trumpet), Stephen Chen (sax), Tyler McDiarmid (guitar) and Michael Hanf (drums), the renowned indie pop collective San Fermin can trace its origins to when Ludwig-Leone had attended Yale University. While at Yale, Ludwig-Leone had studied composition and assisted renowned composer Nico Muhly, known for his critically applauded work with Antony and the Johnsons, Sufjan Stevens and Grizzly Bear, on several film scores and operas. And although Ludwig-Leone had been in a number of bands throughout high school and college, he didn’t decide to focus on pop music until the end of his college career. As San Fermin’s primary songwriter has publicly mentioned he put on a concert with some pieces written for female vocalists and the night ended with the backing band playing some pop tunes with over-the-top arrangements. And as he has noted, at the time he realized that he could mesh both his interests in a seamless fashion.

Shortly after graduating from Yale, Ludwig-Leone relocated to secluded Banff, Alberta, Canada, where he would write the material, which would eventually comprise San Fermin’s self-titled debut, an effort that was widely praised for musicianship that   the New York Times‘ Paul Krugman described as delivering “epic and emotion-laden rock, with glorious and operatic vocals, electronic break beats, horns, strings, and other flourishes.” And as a result of the band’s growing live reputation and wide critical praise, the album reached #18 on Billboard‘s Top Heatseekers album chart. After the release of the San Fermin’s self-titled debut, the band built upon their growing profile with the release of their highly-anticipated sophomore effort Jackrabbit, an album which garnered further praise from NPR, Rolling Stone and others, as well as national TV appearances on CBS This Morning and Last Call With Carson Daly. With the growing attention on the Ludwig-Leone and company, their sophomore effort was even more commercially successful than its predecessor, as it landed at number 8 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers album chart.

Belong, Sen Fermin’s third, full-length effort is slated for an April 7, 2017 release through Downtown/Interscope Records and reportedly the material on the album reflect a marked shift in Ludwig-Leone’s songwriting approach with songs focusing on a much more personal perspective — with the album’s material thematically focusing on feelings of disconnection, displacement and everyday anxiety, among other things.  “No Promises,” Belong‘s first single was as Ludwig-Leone explains in press notes “the last song I wrote for this record, and it’s addressed directly to my bandmates. We’ve spent the past few years together; I just realized how much of their lives they’ve devoted to being in this band. It’s overwhelming to think about. The verses are about how touring can go from this exciting thing to feeling like you’re quite literally going in circles. The bridge is a rapid-fire list of things they’ve been required to do: early flights, all-night drives, maintaining long-distance relationships, etc. But really the song is about the fear of disappointing the people you love.” Along with the change in songwriting approach, “No Promises,” reveals a subtle change in sonic direction as Ludwig-Leone and company pair gorgeous and ethereal female melodies with a production that begins with a dramatic minimalism the builds up to a swooning, soaring and anthemic hook. Interestingly, the song to my ears, reminds me a bit of St. Lucia‘s breezy, pop confections.

San Fermin will be touring extensively throughout the Spring and Summer to support Being and the tour includes a May 13, 2017 stop at Brooklyn’s newest venue, Brooklyn Steel. Check out tour dates below.

Spring 2017 Tour Dates

04.11.17 – Toronto, ON – Great Hall
04.12.17 – Chicago, IL – Thalia Hall
04.14.17 – Minneapolis, MN – Cedar Cultural Center
04.15.17 – Winnipeg, MB – The Park Theatre
04.17.17 – Calgary, AB – Festival Hall
04.18.17 – Edmonton, AB – The Needle
04.20.17 – Vancouver, BC – Biltmore Cabaret
04.21.17 – Seattle, WA – The Crocodile
04.22.17 – Portland, OR – Doug Fir Lounge
04.24.17 – San Francisco, CA – The Independent
04.26.17 – West Hollywood, CA – The Roxy Theatre
04.27.17 – San Diego, CA – Casbah
04.28.17 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar
04.29.17 – El Paso, TX – Lowbrow Palace
05.01.17 – Dallas, TX – Sons of Hermann Hall
05.02.17 – Austin, TX – Antone’s
05.03.17 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall
05.05.17 – New Orleans, LA – Gasa Gasa
05.07.17 – Atlanta, GA – Park Tavern
05.09.17 – Charlotte, NC – Visulite Theatre
05.10.17 – Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
05.11.17 – Pittsburgh, PA – Andy Warhol Museum
05.12.17 – Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live
05.13.17 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel
05.15.17 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
05.16.17 – Boston, MA – Brighton Music Hall
05.18.17 – Dublin, IE – The Sugar Club
05.20.17 – Amsterdam, NL – Bitterzoet
05.22.17 – London, UK – Village Underground
05.25.17 – Berlin, DE – Grüner Salon
06.02.17- Louisville, KY – Headliners Music Hall
06.03.17 – Bunbury Music Festival – Cincinnati, OH
07.15.17 – Green River Festival – Greenfield, MA

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Jean Deaux is a Chicago, IL-based electronic music artist, whose sound draws from house, R&B and hip-hop. Her latest single “Father Time” is the first single released off Downtown Records‘ newest imprint Downtown Singles Club, a carefully curated selection of singles that are sent directly to subscribers via email, and the single pairs skittering drum programming, gently undulating synths, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and industrial clang and clatter  with Deaux’s sultry vocals and swaggering rhyming before ending with some soulful yet shimmering synths. The song and its production defy easy categorization — it clearly possesses elements of R&B, house, hip-hop, neo-soul, industrial house and industrial techno but it’s a slickly produced, trippy and sonically experimental work that manages to be approachable and dance-floor ready. And it does so while possesses a deeply existential bent, with its narrator exploring her complex and ambivalent relationship with time.

You can catch the up-and-coming electro pop artist when Deaux and friends play Elvis’ Guesthouse on March 26.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Trippy and Stylistic New Video for Chet Faker and Marcus Marr’s “The Trouble With Us”

  London-based DJ, producer, electronic music artist and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Marr is an internationally recognized artist, who has released a number of critically acclaimed singles through renowned electro pop/dance music/dance punk label DFA Records. His two best known […]