Tag: Gone

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: AMAARA Releases Two Gorgeous and Dreamy Videos

Kaelen Ohm is a British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and award-winning filmmaker. As an actor, Ohm is known for roles in AMC’s Hell on Wheels, NBC’s Taken, MGM’s Condor, Lifetime Network’s Flint and several others. In 2018, Ohm appeared in Charles Wahl’s short film Little Grey Bubbles, which premiered at ten Oscar qualifying festivals worldwide, including SXSW. The film was featured as a Staff Pick on Vimeo, earned best actress and best short film award nominations and received widespread praise from critics and blogs across the globe. 

Ohm is also the creative mastermind behind the the multimedia project AMAARA. Upon getting the news that she was cast a series regular in the new Netflix original series Hit and Run, Ohm left Calgary with six songs off her forthcoming album Heartspeak completed. Hit and Run was filmed in New York last fall and was filming in Israel and  was put on pause, four weeks out from wrapping up their first season as a result of COVID-19 quarantines and social distancing guidelines. 

Heartspeak, which continues her ongoing collaboration with Reuben and the Dark’s Brock Geier, is the result of ten days of stream-of-consciousness songwriting, recording and production in Geiger’s bedroom studio. Written completely by Ohm, the material can trace its origins to the British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and filmmaker sitting at the piano or with a guitar first thing each morning until a song was found — with the two collaborating on production and instrumental work, spending each day laying down tracks. Written as a culmination of a life-changing heartbreak and the end of a marriage, the album’s material is a meditation on love, grief, freedom and self-evaluation. 

Slated for an August 14, 2020 release through Lady Moon Records, Ohm and Geier have released two singles from the album. “Awake,” a slow-burning and brooding single centered around shimmering guitar, twinkling keys, a soaring hook and Ohm’s plaintive vocals — and “Gone,” a decidedly shoegazey track featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, thumping beats. And while respectively bringing Mazzy Star and Lightfoils to mind, both tracks come from a place of lived-in grief and heartache, accepting them as a natural part of life that one experiences and learns to live with — and through. 

The accompanying videos were directed and by Ohm. “Gone” employs a simple concept of Ohm performing the song by herself in the desert — but the video features a cinematic sweep that makes its creator seem tiny. “Awake,” features Ohm traveling a surreal and unusually empty New York. And while capturing the experience of wandering New York during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a commentary of on how the jarring experience of realizing one’s own illusion of perfection can be an awakening experience. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sophie Strauss Releases a John Hughes-like Visual for Anthemic and Shimmering “Gone”

Sophie Strauss is a a rising, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and pop artist, who identifies as a successful queer child bride and a struggling indie musician. “Gone,” Strauss’ latest single is a swooning pop song centered around atmospheric synths, blasts of shimmering, reverb drenched guitars, dramatic yet propulsive drumming, an enormous and rousing hook and the Los Angeles-born pop artist’s achingly plaintive vocals.

While sounding as though it could be a part of the soundtracks for a John Hughes rom-com or Stranger Things, the song finds Strauss pushing the creative and thematic boundaries of her songwriting — with the song being one of her first truly love songs; a love song that’s a sigh of elation, full of the understanding that finding love can be extremely difficult.  

“’Gone’ is a new kind of song for me — it’s my first real love song.” Strauss explains in press notes. “There’s this mythology that artists need to be in miserable turmoil to create anything good, and though I’ve always believed that to be bullshit, it was nice to be able to try disproving it myself. Not that the world is short on misery to tap into right now, but being really fucking in love was a neat new place to write from and, especially right now, seemed like a small avenue for some much-needed romance and escapism while we’re all stuck inside.”

Directed by Gregory J.M. Kasunich, the recently released and incredibly cinematic video for “Gone” emphasizes the song’s swooning and nostalgic-tinged vibes: featuring Strauss and her husband Brendan Stephan, the video begins with Strauss’ character in a miserable, loveless relationship that she’s desperate to escape. Seemingly on a whim, she runs out of her house to a local tattoo shop, where she meets a tattoo artist, who immediately catches her attention. The pair begins a love affair in which both parties are swept off their feet with youthful passion and abandon. It’s a much-needed bit of escape and longing for sweetness in a bleak world. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay TR/ST Releases a Shimmering and Anthemic New Single

  Over the past few years, I’ve written quite a bit about the Toronto, ON-born, Los Angeles, CA-based JOVM mainstay Robert Alfons, best known for his solo electro pop recording TR/ST. Alfons has released two […]

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of last year’s debut EP Playing Dead, the somewhat mysterious Bristol, UK-based quartet The Desert quickly received attention for a sound that some have described as being a mix between Little Dragon and Portishead. Building upon a growing profile, the act’s highly-anticipated sophomore EP is slated for release sometime early next year, and from the EP’s first single “Gone,” the act has revealed a decided evolution of their sound and approach — while possessing a cinematic quality, the track is centered around a urgent and desperate air, with a hint of uneasy hope at the end ; in fact, as the band explains, “’Gone’ is about losing something or someone abruptly and how that can make you go a bit crazy. Gina’s voice is quite hoarse in the recording, which helps convey the desperation& frustration. There’s also a kind of excitement in that ‘fuck it’ feeling. The track is overall more positive than negative with each chorus ending ‘but I’ll find somewhere to put it.'”

 

 

 

 

.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Los Angeles-based Quintet Ancestors Release a Slow-buring Shoegazer Take on Doom Metal

Currently comprised of founding duo Justin Maranga (guitar, vocals) and Nick Long (bass, vocals) along with Jason Watkins (organ, piano, electric piano, mellotron, vocals), Matt Barks (modular synthesizer, Moog synthesizer, guitar, vocals) and Daniel Pouliot (drums), the Los Angeles-based metal/doom metal/psych rock/stoner rock quintet Ancestors can trace their origins back to 2006 when Maranga, Long, and Brandon Pierce began the band as a trio; Englishman Chico Foley, who had met Pierce shortly after relocating to Los Angeles joined the band. Jason Watkins joined to complete the band’s initial line up. Their full-length debut was released in 2008 through North Atlantic Sound Records in Europe and Tee Pee Records in the States — and the album featured artwork by Arik Roper, who has done artwork of the likes of Sleep, High on Fire, and Earth. Their 2009 sophomore Of Sound Mind was produced by the band and Pete Lyman and featured collaborations with Melvins’, Unwound and Slug’s David Scott Stone, Black Math Horseman’s Sera Timms and cellist Ramiro Zapata.

2010 saw the first of several lineup changes as Chico Foley left the band and was replaced by Matt Barks and with a new lineup, they went into the studio to write and record the Kenny Woods-produced Invisible White EP.  And despite, a series of lineup changes, the band’s sound generally draws from prog rock, psych rock, stoner rock and doom metal — but they’ve also at points increasingly incorporated elements of experimental rock and musique concrete among others.  The Los Angeles-based rock quintet’s forthcoming album Suspended In Reflections is slated for an August 24, 2018 release through Pelagic Records, and from the album’s latest single “Gone,” the new single and the album itself reportedly reflects a different take on their sound and approach as the single is a slow-burning dirge that manages to bridge shoegaze and doom metal as it features enormous power chords, played through tons of effects pedals, soaring and ethereal synths within an expansive yet moody song structure that nods a bit at prog rock.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Samuel Joseph Kim is a Canadian-born, San Francisco, CA-based singer/songwriter producer and multi-instrumentliast, arguably best known as a member of San Francisco-based band Museums and for a solo recording experimental side project, Mount Vermont. He also works as a freelance soundtrack composer, who has clients like Canon, Deloitte, TED, and others. Kim also recently released material under his own birth name — and that music as he describes on his website “is an evolving blend of organic guitars and electronic experimentation. Whatever the instrumentation or approach, it retains its melodic and emotive nature: haunting, intimate and sincere.”

“Gone” the EP opening single off Kim’s 2016 effort Lost/Found EP is a hazy post-punk-inspired song featuring a sinuous bass line, lush, swirling layers of shimmering synths and precise drum programming paired with Kim’s crooning vocals. Sonically speaking, the song nods at The Harrow, the 4AD Records sound, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division and others and while possessing a similar swooning and urgent Romanticism — and much like its (presumed) influences, the song focuses on visceral and profound heartache and confusion that has enveloped its narrator.