JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan’s 62nd birthday.
Tag: goth
New Video: The Sweet Kill Shares Brooding and Anthemic “Forbidden”
Pete Mills is a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and creative mastermind behind the solo recording project The Sweet Kill. With The Sweet Kill, Mills focuses on the darker and goth side of post-punk.
Constantly recording and producing material at his own studio, Shadow Zone Sound, Mills wrote The Sweet Kill debut album Darkness with the expressed intention to inspire those lost in the shadows of life. Anchored around cold wave-like synths, post-punk drums, atmospheric guitar and melodic bass, the album’s material channels Editors, Fontaines DC, Joy Division and others while thematically exploring the the soul’s journey between two worlds, asking the question: Are we eternally floating in the ether? Or are we never lost and always found?
“Forbidden,” Nowhere‘s latest single is a brooding and anthemic bit of post punk anchored around glistening and angular guitar tones, swaggering and thunderous beats, a propulsive and melodic bass line and enormous hooks and choruses and an atmospheric, acoustic guitar-driven bridge. The arrangement and production serves as a lush, arena rock friendly bed for Mills plaintive baritone. And while sonically seeming to channel White Lies, Editors, Interpol and others, “Forbidden” tackles love, longing and loss through some Romantic tropes and a lived-in specificity.
Directed by Ellen Hawk and shot in a gorgeous, cinematic black and white, features protagonists, who are outcasts and whose love for each other is fiery and passionate yet forbidden. They’re led to a secret world, which is both an escape and exile, and where they can be both consumed by their love. Sounds like an Edgar Allan Poe story doesn’t it?
Throwback: Happy 65th Birthday, Robert Smith!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates The Cure’s Robert Smith’s 65th birthday.
New Video: OWLS Returns with a Furious Howl of Protest
Emy Collum is a Longford, Ireland-based producer, musician and creative mastermind behind the rising electronic music project OWLS. Starting his career in earnest playing drums for a number of local indie bands, Collum stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist and began crafting darkbrooding songs paring driving rhythms and grooves, dynamic vocals and abrasive textures.
Sonically, his material draws largely from post-punk, techno and synth pop — or as he describes them “songs for the night, for the moon and its shadows” and “dark tunes you can dance to.” Thematically, his work focuses on the uneasy balance between love and brutality.
The Irish producer released his debut single 2021’s “They Kill.” 2022 saw the release of his acclaimed debut EP End Me. Last year was a busy year for the acclaimed and rising Longford, Ireland-based artist: He made the rounds of the national, summer festival circuit. He played headlining shows in Dublin — and he played at a slew of underground events throughout the country. He closed out a busy year with two more singles “Swallow My Love” and “Bury Me,” a brooding and uneasy mix of industrial and post punk built around relentless, twitter and woofer rattling, skittering beats and whirring and wobbling synths and bursts of angular guitar paired with the Irish producer’s furious howls.
Lyrically and thematically, “Bury Me” saw its narrator on a tumultuous dance between life and death, hope and despair with an uneasy, unvarnished honesty.
The acclaimed and rising Irish producer “Body Bags” is an aggressively furious, in-your-face goth meets techno howl of protest featuring skittering tweeter and woofer rattling thump and scorching synth arpeggios with eerily processed and distorted yet strangely beautiful howls attempting to burst out from the chaotic, messy and punishing soundscape.
According to Collum, the song and its accompanying video has been largely informed by the current and unfolding events in Gaza. “‘Body Bags’ looks at humanity turning it on itself,” Collum says. “For all the beauty and harmony in the world, we are chaotic by nature — violent and cruel to our own. It explores the human condition and our ability to inflict pain and suffering upon the most vulnerable.” Throughout the video, violence and cruelty are treated with the mundanity of daily errands.
The events in Gaza has forced the rising and acclaimed Irish artist to look outward instead of inward, as he has previously done. “All of my songwriting up until now has been dealing with internal conflicts and self assessment. It feels selfish looking inwards when being faced with bloodied images daily. I teach history. I had a Palestinian student join one of my classes recently. They presented a project on the ancient buildings of Gaza City only to highlight the fact that they’re no longer there. That hit hard.”
New Video: Chopper Shares Brooding “Living for the Night”
Copenhagen-based singer/songwriter and musician Jonatan K. Magnussen is the frontman of Danish goth outfit The Love Coffin, and the creative mastermind of the solo recording project and JOVM mainstay act Chopper. With Chopper, Magnussen specializes in what he has dubbed “shock pop,” a crowd-pleasing sound that draws from Eurodance, glam roc, industrial electronica, disco and B horror films.
Thematically, last year’s Shock Pop Vol. 1 was an exploration of the inherent dualities of the human condition that touched upon love, sexuality and carefree joy. Sonically, the mini-album was influenced by Pet Shop Boys, Skinny Puppy and Underworld — and saw Magnussen attempting to play those influences within a modern context.
The forthcoming mini-album Shock Pop Vol. 2 is reportedly a stark contrast to the exuberant, dance floor friendly material of its predecessor. Shock Pop Vol. 2 sees the Danish artist crating a broodingly atmospheric, cinematic sound that’s seems indebted to Rebel Yell-era Billy Idol, The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Scary Monsters-era Bowie and others.
Last year, I wrote about Shock Pop Vol. 2 single “Moongirl, a slow-burning, cinematic track featuring atmospheric synths, a hypnotic and propulsive bass line, thunderous boom bap-like drum machines, twinkling keys, buzzing bursts of guitar paired with Magnussen’s dramatic delivery — and his penchant for crafting enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks. The song reveals an artist, who is able to recreate that big 80s arena rock-like ballad with an uncanny specificity paired with introspective, melancholy lyrics and a subtly modern take.
Shock Pop Vol. 2’s second and final single “Living for the Night” sonically channels the late 80s-early 90s Madchester scene and “Walk on the Wild Side” — with the song built around a relentless motorik-like grove, twinkling keys, buzzing synths, mournful jazz trumpet and saxophone and skittering beats paired with Magnussen’s breathy croon. Conveying a blend of cool, sleaze and melancholy, the song captures and evokes the essence of being young, reckless and carefree, the irresistible temptation of nighttime activities, and a bit of denial of the inevitability of aging and death.
Filmed by Amalie Maj and Thomas Skjølstrup, the accompanying video for “Living for the Night” follows Magnussen on romp through the seedy underbelly of presumably Copenhagen’s nightlife.
New Audio: Seattle’s Ghost Fetish Shares Brooding, Dance Floor Friendly “C’mon”
With the release of last year’s full-length debut, Almost Touching, Seattle-based post-punk outfit Ghost Fetish quickly established a dance floor friendly sound that draws from New Wave, synth pop and goth in a fashion that’s uniquely theirs.
The album’s latest single “C’mon” is a brooding bit of darkwave/chillwave/post-punk featuring icy synth arpeggios, skittering beats parried with a relentless and propulsive groove and a vocal delivery that reminds me a bit of Whispering Sons while being dance floor friendly.
New Video: JOVM Mainstay Chopper Shares Atmospheric and Brooding “Moongirl”
JOVM mainstay outfit Chopper is the solo recording project of Copenhagen-based singer/songwriter and musician Jonatan K. Magnussen, who is best known in Denmark for being the frontman of the goth band The Love Coffin. With Chopper, Mangussen specializes in what he has dubbed “shock pop,” a crowd-pleasing sound that draws from Eurodance, glam rock, industrial, disco and B horror films.
Pink Cotton Candy Records released the mini-album Shock Pop Vol. 1 earlier this year. Shock Pop Vol. 1 saw the Danish artist continuing to explore the inherent dualities of the human condition while touching upon love, sexuality and carefree joy. Sonically, the material was influenced by Pet Shop Boys, Skinny Puppy and Underworld — but while attempting to place those influences within a modern context.
Shock Pop Vol. 2 is a stark contrast to the exuberant, dance-floor friendly material on its immediate predecessor with the forthcoming effort seeing the Danish artist crafting an atmospheric and cinematic sound that’s seemingly indebted to Rebel Yell-era Billy Idol, The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, Scary Monsters-era Bowie and others.
“Moongirl,” Shock Pop Vol. 2‘s first single is a slow-burning and remarkably cinematic track featuring atmospheric synths, a hypnotic and propulsive bass line, thunderous boom bap-like drum machines, twinkling keys, buzzing bursts of guitar paired with Magnussen’s dramatic delivery — and his penchant for crafting enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks.
The song reveals an artist, who is able to recreate that big 80s arena rock-like ballad with an uncanny specificity paired with introspective, melancholy lyrics and a subtly modern take.
Shot by Amalie Maj and Thomas Skjølstru and edited by Magnussen, the accompanying video for “Moongirl” features some fittingly brooding footage of lightning strikes, graveyards, Magnussen looking like a young Robert Smith with a lit candle in that graveyard, childhood and family photos of a dear one, who may no longer be with us, and lastly Magnussen walking along the shore. For those of you, who like me, were alive and conscious during early 80s MTV’s heyday, this one will bring back some fond memories.
New Audio: Montréal’s AN_NA Shares Uneasy, Industrial “So Far”
Formed over three decades ago, French-born, Montréal-based married couple and electronic music duo AN_NA have had a lengthy career in which they’ve used their experiences in electronic music, industrial and experimental music to create a unique sound of their own while playing with different styles and genres. They’ve found that their penchant for experimentation has given them the space to evolve as artists while keeping them open to new ideas and influences that could be incorporated into their own sound and approach.
Now, if you’ve worked in the music industry long enough, you’d begin to recognize that surviving for longer than a few minutes in a cutthroat industry is extremely difficult. The members of AN_NA have managed their lengthy careers by being true to their art — and making music that they’re passionate about.
At the end of 2022, the French-Canadian duo began to write and record new material, which they began releasing as a series of singles across the following calendar year, before being officially released as their forthcoming album More Pills.
Their sixth and most recent single of the year “So Far” is a brooding yet dance floor friendly bit of industrial electronica built around glistening synth arpeggios, a relentless motorik groove and twitter and woofer rattling thump paired with icily detached vocals and anthemic hooks and choruses. The result is a song that channels Detroit-based electronic music legends ADULT., complete with a similar sense of unease.
New Video: SPELLES Shares Brooding and Uneasy “Night Terrors”
SPELLES is a mysterious Los Angeles-based band that has released two EPs, 2015’s self-titled EP and 2021’s Machete, as well as a standalone single, 2017’s “Dead in the Water.” Their material has amassed over 5 million streams across DSPs while being praised by the likes of Consequence, CLASH, BBC, NME, NPR and others. And adding to a growing profile, they’ve had songs appear on shows like Good Girls, Pretty Little Liars and several others.
Their full-length debut, Diving Into the Arms of the Divine is slated for a November 15, 2023 release. The Los Angeles-based outfit’s latest single, the anthemic and brooding “Night Terrors” sees the bad pairing powerhouse soulful vocals with a bluesy bass synth riff and propulsive, pulsating drums. The song’s choruses feature glistening organ textures and eerie string, which emphasize a creeping and uneasy sense of dread throughout. Sonically, the song sounds like a trippy synthesis of The White Stripes, The Black Angels, Amy Winehouse and Suicide while rooted in seemingly lived-in lyricism.
As the band explains, the song touches upon a familiar dichotomy: “the feelings of hope and hopeless that one inevitably experiences when chasing an elusive dream.”
Fittingly, the accompanying video features occult and creepy imagery, stock imagery of eclipses, the band’s lead vocalist being chased by an unseen and elusive attacker and more.
New Video: Drab Majesty Shares Shimmering and Cinematic “Cape Perpetua”
Initially known for his work drumming in Marriages, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Clinco founded Drab Majesty back in 2011 as a way to create music as a solo project, with him recording every instrument himself. Clinco created the androgynous character Deb Demure for himself, as the face of the project. Alex Nicolaou, a.k.a. Mona D (keys, vocals) joined on in 2016, expanding the project into a duo.
Since signing to Dais Records, the Los Angeles-based duo have released three albums, 2015’s Careless, 2017’s The Demonstration, 2019’s Modern Mirror, which saw the project combining androgynous aesthetics and commanding vocals with futuristic and occult lyrics, to create a style and sound that the band’s Demure refers to as “tragic wave.”
Released earlier this through their longtime label home Dais Records, and clocking in at 32 minutes, the duo’s latest release An Object in Motion sits somewhere between an EP and mini-album while also marking a new chapter in the project’s story: Written during a 2021 retreat to the remote costal Oregon town of Yachats, the band’s Deb Demure leaned into the neo-psychedelic resonance of a uniquely bowl-shaped 12-string Ovation acoustic/electric guitar.
After early morning hikes in the rain, Demure would record ambient guitar experiments the rest of the day, tapping into “flow states,” in which he would let the sound lead the way. Those sessions were then refined or recreated and then later elevated with contributions from Slowdive‘s Rachel Goswell, Beck’s, M83‘s and Air’s Justin Meldal-Johnsen, and Uniform’s Ben Greenberg. Fittingly, the EP reportedly holds true to its title, as it captures Demure and Drab Majesty in a transitional state, and evolving while showcasing a series of potential futures from the project.
I’ve managed to write about three of the EP’s singles:
- The effort’s first single, “Vanity,” featuring Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell. Built around shimmering, reverb-drenched, 12 string guitar and gated reverb-soaked drum patterns. Demure’s plaintive yet commanding baritone is paired with Goswell’s imitable and expressive vocal, which seamlessly intertwine in an uncannily gorgeous, swooning harmony. To my ears, “Vanity” seemed like a synthesis of Lita Ford and Ozzy Osbourne‘s “Close My Eyes Forever,” Sisters of Mercy, Disintegration-era The Cure and Goswell’s work with Slowdive — or in other words, something that will warm the cold hearts of any goth.
- “The Skin and The Glove,” a lush, Smiths-meets-Slowdive/RIDE-like song built around reverb-soaked, shimmering 12 string guitar, a driving groove paired with the Los Angeles-based duo’s uncannily unerring knack for gorgeous harmonies and catchy hooks. But under the lush soundscapes is a song that thematically touches upon the endless march of time, and our inevitable mortality.
- Clocking in at a little over 15 minutes, An Object in Motion‘s closing track, the expansive “Yield To Force” is built around glistening, cycling strings, ominous slide guitar and shimmering synthesizer. The result is a composition that’s intuitive yet meditative with the instrumentation that spirals, sways, crests and ebbs like waves crashing into the shore.
Coincidentally, the EP’s last single “Cape Perpetua” is also the second instrumental track on the effort. Built around sparkling acoustic finger-picked guitar melody played through delay pedal, “Cape Perpetua” sonically is one-part brooding flamenco, one-part reverie, one-part raga with melodies and mood crash, congeal and dissipate throughout. The result is a something gothic, melancholy and cinematic.
Direted by John Elliott and shot on Super 8, the accompanying video for “Cape Perpetua” is a fittingly a brooding slow-burn that’s meditative, and mind-bending.
“‘Cape Perpetua’ is a slow-rolling track with tessellating psychedelia which inspired me to channel my Joseph Cornell and late-era Brakhage appreciation,” John Elliott says. “The goal was to capture simple objects moving in and out of stillness reflecting the ebb and flow of the widescreen guitar patterns. Upon discovering a partially dilapidated cemetery near my house, I found spinning pinwheels askew in the ground and late blooming flowers laced with synthetic flowers, all against a backdrop of partly cloudy skies and autumnal foliage. We explored this simple and profound surrealism by performing in-camera lap-dissolves and double exposures in an attempt to marry the ethereal magic of the song with the film we shot. The simplistic nature of Super 8 camera lenses paired with the imperfect nature of Super 8mm film creates a window into a world that feels like a distant cluster of memories, or a dream-like state complete with blurred edges and extemporaneous world-building.”
New Video: Golem Dance Cult Shares Brooding and Anthemic “21 Century Dogs”
Split between France and England, the emerging, self-described “industrial heavy rock dance” duo Golem Dance Cult features longtime friends and experienced musicians: producer, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Charles Why, who has played in Lotsa Noise, Nexus and L-Dopa and vocalist Laur, who has played in Sparkling Bombs, Kevin K Band, Vague Scare and Other-ed. The pair’s latest project can trace its origins back to when they were teenagers, playing in the first band together, a band in which Laur played drums.
During most of the band’s short run together, the pair have written and worked on material remotely, as a result of pandemic-related restrictions and distance. Their work in Golem Dance Cult is structured around a couple of simple, agreed-upon parameters:
- They had to work spontaneously, with each member following their instincts.
- Mistakes should be expanded upon.
The duo eventually settled on a rock-inspired approach with electronic production but without holding to the formal structure — or strictures — of either genre.
Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year or so, you might recall that the duo released their debut EP 2021’s Grotesque Radio, an effort that featured the Bauhaus-like “Nosferatu Waltz,” a goth/horror track with a playful nod to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.
The duo’s full-length debut, Legend of the Bleeding Heart was released earlier this year. The album’s latest single “21st Century Dogs” sounds like a glammy, Bowie-like take on Bauhaus built around their penchant for enormous, arena rock like hooks and hours. The song is written and sung from the perspective of a dog and fittingly both the song and video ifeautres references and allusions from Luis Buñuel’s Le Chien Andalou and George Cheesbro’s Wolf Blood: A Tale of the Forest. But by doing so, the song and video explores people’s darkest, most feral impulses and desires.
Throwback: Happy 66th Birthday, Siouxsie Sioux!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Siouxsie Sioux’s 66th birthday.
New Audio: VERTÈBRE Shares Goth-like “T’as Du Voulour La Mort”
Ron Kring is a Rennes, France-based singer/songwriter and creative mastermind behind the emerging French electro rock/cold wave recording project VERTÈBRE. With collaborator and producer Zach Spectre, King released VERTÈBRE’s 2020 self-titled, full-length debut, which she quickly followed up with standalone single “Hungry” and a remix of “Last trip, baby.”
During pandemic-enforced lockdown, Kring experimented with video directing and editing and released a handful of music videos on YouTube. By 2021, the Rennes-based singer/songwriter had began writing what would be her sophomore album. She enlisted She-Wolf‘s Marie-Claude Martine to mix the album and her friend, Ivan Muńoz, an acclaimed Chilean electronic music artist and DJ best known as Vigilante to master the album. Much like her previously released material, the writing process begins with synth sounds that presses particular emotional buttons. She then goes on to build the framework of a song to release the energy within. Then she adds guitar and bass when the song calls for it. “VERTÈBRE is more in the cold wave/post punk genre. Some tracks are rather danceable and can sound electro pop rock. Others would be more dark wave. In any case, I think that a good dose of unease and anger remains present even when the song tries to defend itself against it. I like that the songs are never completely happy or completely sad. It must be said that in life nothing is ever gained but… that all is not lost either,” Ron Kring says.
The sophomore album’s first three singles “Basic instincts,” “I Can’t You Can,” and “Maniac Mansion” were released through the digital stream platforms and feature homemade accompanying videos.
At the end of last year, Kring decided to continue VERTÈBRE without Zach Spectre. She recruits bassist Julien Marien, and along with a guitarist, they’re currently working on their live show. But in the meantime, the sophomore album’s fourth and latest single “T’as dû couloir la mort,” is a goth-like take on post punk built around tweeter and woofer rattling 808s that would make Rick Rubin proud, glistening synth oscillations, Kring’s forceful delivery paired with arena rock level bombast. The end result is a song that sonically seems to mesh Depeche Mode and Ministry.
Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Robert Smith!
JOVM’s WIlliam Ruben Helms celebrates Robert Smith’s 64th birthday.