New York-based trio Triathlon — Adam Intrator, Chad Chilton and Hunter Jayne — will be releasing their fifth album, Funeral Music on May 16, 2025 through Lex Records. The album began taking shape when the […]
Tag: Lex Records
New Video: zzzahara Shares Intimate Yet Anthemic “If I Had To Go I Would Leave the Door Closed”
Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter zzzahara will be releasing her highly-anticipated third album Spiral Your Way Out through Lex Records on January 10, 2025. Spiral Your Way Out finds the Los Angeles-based artist in the aftermath of a relationship spent trying to fit someone else’s mold, being jerked around by indecision and then hitting “emotional rock bottom.”
Written and recorded in a three-month burst that let the rising artist let all their pent-up frustrations loose, the album is partially a work of self-reclamation. But the album also marks both a sonic evolution and an emotional one. Much of zzzahmra’s work has always come wrapped in a warm glow that reflects how they were written — namely at home in their bedroom. They manage to retain that familiar glow while packing an ambitious streak and a gutsy punch.
Spiral Your Way Out sees zzzahara taking a more collaborative approach than ever before, working with a range of producers including Jorge Elbrecht, Sarah Tudzin, Alex Craig, and Halsey touring drummer Franco Reid to help them harness their intimate writing style and blow it up into something much larger.
The album’s latest single “If I Had To Go I Would Leave the Door Closed Half Way” is a sun-dappled track featuring jangling guitars paired with a chugging rhythm section, rousingly anthemic hooks and zzzahara’s achingly yearning vocal. Sonically, the song brings 90s alt rock and 90s shoegeze to mind but while being intimate and lived-in in a way that brings Soccer Mommy and others to mind. ”I was spitting. The guitar chords and the bass playing really meshed together, “says zzzahara. “I already had the lyrical content just built up inside of me. I was in love with the melody and we cleared it out real quick. I let it spit fire.”
The accompanying video for “If I Had To Go I Would Leave The Door Closed” is part lyric video and part music video that follows the rising artist rocking out to the song in their apartment and wandering around Los Angeles.
New Audio: Prefuse 73 Shares Cinematic “Vast Wildlife Poison”
Miami-born, New York-based Guillermo Scott Herren is a pioneering electronic musician, producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project Prefuse 73. Slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Lex Records, Herren’s latest Prefuse 73 album New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 2 serves as a companion album to New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 1, which was released back in March.
New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 2 reportedly continues Herren’s groundbreaking take on experimental composition through the lens of media sensationalism of crime, blended with influences from lost soundtracks, musique concréte and beat-tape music to create something wholly unique yet extremely accessible.
“I always have a movie or some random visuals playing on mute behind me in the studio,” Herren says of his creative process. “It could be horror from any era or just an old Fellini film; they tend to be playing on a loop. I will turn around from the mixing board and just stare at the images to get inspired.”
He adds, “It means that when you do finally hear my music, it’s hopefully created in a way that prompts you to see a whole scene play out in your head.”
New Strategies for Modern Crime, Vol. 2‘s second and latest single “Vast Wildlife Poison” continues a remarkable run of cinematic material that would perfectly complement a true crime series — or French Connection-meets-Mission Impossible-like thriller with the song anchored around a strutting and slithering jazz-inspired bass line, reverb-drenched, plucked guitar bursts, jazz syncopated beats and intermittent synth blasts.
New Audio: Andrew Hung Returns with a Plaintive Ode to Pushing Buttons to Get What You Want
Perhaps best known as one-half of renowned electronic music duo Fuck Buttons with Benjamin John Power, Worcester, UK-born, Bristol UK-based electronic music artist, multi-instrumentalist and producer Andrew Hung much like his bandmate has focused on a number of various side projects including Dawn Hunger, a band he founded with Clarie Inglis (vocals) and musician Matthew de Pulford, production work, co-producing Beth Orton‘s Kidsticks, as well as releasing solo material with his debut EP, Rave Cave.
Now, as you may recall, Hung’s full-length debut Realisationship is slated for an October 6, 2017 release through Lex Records and album track “Animal,” found Hung exploring a more organic, lo-fi-like sound featuring a gorgeous and lush string arrangement, buzzing power chords, hard-hitting electronic beats and slashing synths paired with Hung’s primal, punk rock howling. As Hung explains in press notes “Animal is a warning that oppression brings about consequences; we have bred fear and now we are reaping its effects. We cannot address the external without first addressing the internal.”
Interestingly, “Elbow,” Realisationship’s latest single may arguably be one of the more personal songs on the album, as it’s influenced by an experience Hung had as a small child. As the Worcester-born, Bristol-based electronic music artist, multi-instrumentalist explains in press notes, “Once when I was a small child and wanted to get a fake nose-ring from this shitty shopping-centre stall in Kidderminster but being young, I was really afraid of buying it. Consequently I stood there for a long while trying to pluck up the courage to get said fake nose-ring before the woman came out from behind the stall and told me to fuck off. I went home crying . . . ‘ Elbow’ is about pushing buttons. As for the stall, when my sister found out, she took me back and gave the woman a right bollocking.”
Sonically speaking the song consists of a mischievous and almost childlike production featuring layers of twisting, turning and twinkling synths, swaggering, hip-hop-like drum patterns, trippy blasts of guitar and swirling electronics paired with Hung’s plaintive and yearning vocals to simultaneously express the frustration, fears and humiliation of youth — well, of life, generally. But sometimes, you have to break out of your shell and take a ridiculous risk for the things that you really want in life, and the song serves as a reminder of that.