Alewya is an acclaimed London-based singer/songwriter, producer and visual artist. Born in Saudi Arabia to an Egyptian-Sudanese father and an Ethiopian mother, Alewya has spent her life surrounded and nurtured by diaspora immigrant communities: she grew up in West London and after spending several years in New York, she returned to London. Upon returning home, the rising Saudi-British artist developed and honed her ear for music through the sounds of the Ethiopian and Arabic music of her parents and the ambient alternative rock albums of her brother.
The Saudi-born, Egyptian-Sudanese-Ethiopian, London-based artist’s name translates from Arabic to English into “most high” or “the highest,” and interestingly enough, her work thematically concerns itself with transcendence. She sees her music as an accessible space for her and her listeners to connect on a deeply spiritual level — with her work challenging the listener to remember the last time that they felt truly connected to themselves and their emotions. “I want to move people to themselves. I want them to feel the same way that I felt when I had a taste of a higher power and felt there was a presence over me,” Alewya says. “I want people to feel that.”
Back in 2020, Alewya burst out into the scene with an attention-grabbing feature on Little Simz‘s “where’s my lighter,” which caught the attention of Because Records, who signed the rising artist and released her critically applauded debut, last year’s Panther In Mode, which featured:
The Busy Twist-produced debut single “Sweating,” a forward-thinking Timbaland-like mesh of trap, reggae and electro pop.
“Spirit_X,” which paired elements of Timbaland, trap and drum ‘n’ bass paired with the rising British artist alternating between spitting fiery bars and sultry crooning.
The sultry and defiantly feminist anthem “Play.”
“Channel High” a slick synthesis of grime, contemporary R&B, dancehall, electro pop and Afrobeats that’s roomy enough for the rising British artist to pull out an incredibly self-assured, Lauryn Hill-like performance. Much like its predecessors, “Channel High” is politically charged, calling for music to bring about a much-needed paradigm shift.
The JOVM mainstay’s latest single “Let Go,” is the first bit of new material since last year’s Panther in Mode EP. Centered around skittering beats and wobbling synths paired with Alewya’s raspy delivery. But where the material on Panther in Mode saw the artist at her most poised and controlled, “Let Go” feels feral and uneasy while self-assured.
“I’m freeing myself up, getting more confident in how lost I feel,” Alewya says. “With Panther In Mode, I was coming from a more poised space. The next phase is more wild. I won’t hold back anymore.”
Directed by Rawtape x Lee Trigg, the accompanying video for “Let Go” stars the rising artist and JOVM mainstay frenetically dancing in a variety of rooms and situations, including what appears to be a mental health institution. The video also features original hieroglyphic-style artwork by Alewya.
Jonty Lovell is a Tottenham-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and creative mastermind behind the rising indie rock project common goldfish. As a musician, Lovell initially made a name for himself busking along the Hackney Wick and playing the London gig circuit. And as a producer and songwriter, under the moniker J Love, the Tottenham-based artist has been credited on songs that have received critical applause from media outlets like Mixtape Madness, New Wave Magazine, and GRM Daily.
With common goldfish, Lovell’s sound and approach is informed by the music of his childhood. “Growing up I was exposed to a lot of music, with my family all having quite different tastes. Deciding who had control of the CD player could often lead to arguments, but as the youngest child, I seem to remember rarely getting to choose. The soundtrack of my early childhood featured the likes of The Beatles, The Police, Moby, Blur, Gorillaz, and Eminem and Dr. Dre – it was quite an eclectic mix that lured me in.”
As a teenager, The xx‘s debut album further inspired Lovell. “I was by no means a great technical guitarist, and so I think this inspired confidence to continue writing music,” he explains. As a a university graduate, he began to take music seriously, honing his craft with an old laptop his friend gave him, which had Abelton on it. At this point of his life, Floating Points, Four Tet, Nightmares on Wax, and Caribou were influences on him and his sound and approach. Lovell then took his self-taught production style, eclectic music latests and finessed live instrumentation and his vocals.
Earlier this year, I wrote about Lovell’s common goldfish debut single, “Feel The Fuzz,” an upbeat, optimistic and decidedly late 80s-early 90s Manchester-like bop featuring fuzzy guitar lines, blown out breakbeats, a funky and propulsive bass line and common goldfish’s easygoing delivery paired with a euphoric boy-girl led hook and subtly modern production sheen. If you’re a child of the 80s and 90s as I am, “Feel The Fuzz” will bring back nostalgic memories of The Stone Roses, Primal Scream, Stereo MCs and the like, complete with an uplifting much-needed message to the listener.
“The track embodies the sense of dreamer’s optimism (‘the fuzz’) and the feeling that led me to change career paths and pursue my passion in music,” the creative mastermind behind common goldfish explains in press notes. “We only lead one life, ‘Feel the Fuzz’ is about helping people see that they should value their experiences over materials and not always seek the easy options in life.”
Over the summer, Lovell released his sophomore common goldfish single “Shout Louder,” which landed praise from the likes of Backseat Mafia, CULTR, CLOUT, and Lost in The Manor among others.
Building upon the growing buzz surrounding him, the Tottenham-based artist has played a series of public shows in iconic locations across London, including Tottenham’s DIY skate park and on top of a boat, floating down Regent’s Canal.
Lovell’s third and latest single, the expansive “I Don’t Feel Today” continues a remarkable and ongoing run of Brit Pop-inspired material with the song prominently featuring twinkling keys, blown out, skittering backbeats, relentless and propulsive bass line, squiggling guitar lines paired with the Tottenham-based artist’s knack for crafting infectious, feel good hooks. Unlike its immediate predecessors, “I Don’t Feel Today” sees Lovell making a very subtle nod to 60s psych pop with bursts of spacey organ.
Interestingly, the song is rooted astutely incisive social observation, with its narrator feeling lost, confused and dispirited by modern life“We are living more and more on top of each other but for some reason we’re becoming increasingly isolated from one another. The rise of independence and individualism has been at the expense of community and a sense of belonging,” Lovell explains in press notes. “With the pace of life getting faster and faster, we’re spending more and more time in front of screens on a never-ending quest for instant gratification. I do worry that we’re losing our sense of reality and what matters most – human interaction and connection.”
Ryan Lee West is a critically acclaimed, London-based electronic music producer, best known as Rival Consoles. Over the course of his 15-year career, the London-based electronic music producer’s work has diversified from the challenging electronic output of his early EPs to gradually become more conceptual and metamorphic: 2020’s Articulation used drawings and sketches to imagine and developed each track while last year’s Overflow explored themes of the human and emotional consequences of life surrounded by advancing technologies, including social media — and was composed for horeographer Alex Whitley‘s contemporary dance production of the same name.
West’s consistent desire to create a more organic, humanized sound often sees the acclaimed British producer often developing early ideas on guitar or piano; forming pieces that capture and evoke a sense of songwriting behind the electronics. His eighth album Now Is, is slated for an October 14, 2022 release through Erased Tapes. Reportedly featuring some of the most playful and melodic material of his catalog in some time, the album draws from music, as well as art, film, colors, shapes and human emotions.
“The title of the record Now Is interests me because it is the beginning of a statement, but it is incomplete. I like art that is open and suggestive of ideas even if they are inspired by very specific things,” West explains. “With my previous record Overflow being very dark, heavy and almost dystopian, I wanted to escape into a different world with this music and ended up creating a record which is a lot more colorful and euphoric.”
So far I’ve written about two singles off the forthcoming Now Is:
The Autobahn-era and Trans Europe Express-era Kraftwerk-like album title track “Now Is,” which features a a relentless motorik pulse and glistening synth arpeggios that manage to evoke prismatic bursts of color exploding before the listener’s eyes.
“World Turns,” which also features a relentless motorik pulse built from a propulsive bass lines, glistening synths and twitter and woofer rattling industrial thump paired with a gently morphing song structure that sees tempo and tone shifts throughout. The end result is soulful, thoughtful electronic music with a human soul and beating heart.
Now Is‘ latest single, “Running” is a deceptively simple composition centered around a single melodic idea built from a glistening synth line that subtly morphs and bends throughout. The synth melody is paired with skittering thump and a motorik pulse that propels the song towards its conclusion — a gentle fade out.
“I am very into classical music and the kind of structures and ideas they often use, and love the works which take a single melodic idea and create multiple variations from it,” West explains. “That is what I tried to do with this piece, where every single thing is a variation on the opening ten second theme. I spent over one year exploring a huge amount of variations from light to very heavy. Over much time I ended up being more inspired by the subtler, gentler variations, which allow the idea to breathe, which is a theme on this record.”
Hagop Tchaparian is a rising British-Armenian electronic music producer, whose music career started in earnest back in the 90s: As a teenager, Tchaparian played guitar in post-grunge, punk outfit Symposium, an act that had a few years of some international success: They toured the States on the Warped Tour. They played Reading Festival‘s main stage and opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica. Then they became disenchanted with the music business, and split up debt-ridden.
After Symposium, Tchaparian contributed to a 2000 compilation Hokis, which featured music by Armenian artists — but he mostly got drawn into London’s club scene, where he quickly became friends with Hot Chip and later a tour manager for both Hot Chip and Four Tet (a.k.a. Kieran Hebden).
“After wanting out of guitar bands and with a massive interest in all things dance music, my first job (mainly due to being broke) was flyering outside many of London’s clubs,” Tchaparian recalls. “I would stand outside all of the main clubs starting at around midnight in East London, ending up outside the Ministry Of Sound around 9am. I would hear the sounds from outside and see the people coming out and really wished I was inside! I began to get inside finally and was checking out as much of it as I could and by a huge stroke of luck, ended up helping out people like Hot Chip and Four Tet on tour. I got to travel and observe them and many others at festivals, clubs and shows creating these special unforgettable moments.”
He would make the occasional remix that friends like Four Tet would play in their DJ sets, but working on new, original music wasn’t foremost on his mind. However, during that time, he kept gathering little snippets of rudimentarily recorded sounds. There was a deep emotional resonance in continuing to fit these samples together into a storyline that made sense to him. On their own, the rhythm tracks could successfully power an underground dance floor, but the elements surrounding the beats were the undercurrents that he felt helped push the music beyond party rituals.
When he played some early bits and pieces for Hebden, the acclaimed producer, musician and DJ encouraged Tchaparian to continue, and turn it into a full body of work if he could. “I love synthesizers and music gear but there are some sounds that I hear around me as I go about my life that make me sit up and really pay attention,” the rising British-Armenian producer says in press notes. “I try to capture as much of them as I can and have used them as the main building blocks of the album. I need music to mean something to me otherwise I’m not as interested. It’s a bit like younger days where I would just gravitate to certain inspiration like oxygen – I just really need it.”
Tchaparian’s full-length debut Bolts is slated for an October 21, 2022 release through Kieran Hebden’s Text Records. Bolts will feature ten songs of hyper-personal rhythm-driven music that mixes techno with field recordings of his travels through Armenian and Mediterranean culture. Essentially, the album combines the audio evidence of a life’s experience with the notion that lo-fi techno can be the appropriate canvas for conveying that experience.
He has been gathering sounds and vignettes for the better part of 15 years, having begun accumulating before smartphones included a record function. The British-Armenian producer would isolate sounds from videos that his friends sent him, like an Armenian wedding clip that showed members of the party jumping over a fire while a drummer played in the background. He would stop street musicians and ask them if he could record their playing, like the women playing the qanun, a harp-like Arabic string instrument; or he would record with professional musicians, who would play instruments like the zurna.
Tchaparian also listed places that were important to his family, like Anjar, Lebanon, where his father’s family took refuge after being driven out of the Armenian-Turkish town of Musa Dagh in 1939. He documented himself following the almost exact footsteps his father took.
The end result is an album that can be described as a man chasing and following his heritage around the world — while sprinkling bits of his everyday life among the manipulated folk instruments of his ancestry. So the album’s material has a deep, emotional power to it.
Last month, I wrote about Bolts single “Round,” a woozy yet contemplative banger, centered around skittering beats, tweeter and woofer rumbling low end and glistening layers of reverb-drenched, pitchy synths paired with bursts of electronic bleeps and bloops, manipulated instrumentation and the rising British-Armenian artist’s knack for hooks and swooning nostalgia.
Bolts‘ latest single “Right to Riot” features layers of rolling, tribal percussion, wobbling synth arpeggios and bursts of Middle Eastern instrumentation in a way that sonically seems like a sleek and anachronistic synthesis of classic Middle Eastern music, Omar Souleyman, and house music.
Vincent Bugozi is a Tanzanian-born, London-based artist and bandleader. Along with his backing band, Bugozi specializes in a genre-defying and infectious take on Afro Pop that meshes elements of of Afrobeat, reggae, Afro-Cuban music and pop among others. The Tanzanian-born, London-based artist and his backing band aim to combine the sounds of different cultures to connect people through music and an energetic live show — and help bring positivity and unity in a world that desperately needs it.
Bugozi and company will be releasing their latest album AFRICAN SEBA! later this year. Inspired by Tanzanian Tinga Tinga art, AFRICAN SEBA! sees the act drawing inspiration from an eclectic array of sources and collaborating with a collection of musicians from the United Kingdom and European Union, while still deeply rooted in the sounds and styles of Africa. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon the “big themes” — love, sorrow and joy. Interestingly enough, the album will be his first multilingual album.
Earlier this year, I wrote about the breezy and summery bop “Tinga Tinga,” a genre-smashing, banger featuring skittering dancehall-meet-trap beats, 80s Quiet Storm soul-like saxophone and twinkling keys paired with Bugozi’s plaintive vocals and an infectious, razor sharp hook. While pulling from sounds across the African Diaspora, “Tinga Tinga” manages to be distinctly African while simultaneously being and pop-leaning, accessible banger that will get a lounge and/or a club rocking and grooving.
AFRICAN SEBA!‘s latest single “Bossa Nova” is a slickly produced, breezy bop that seamlessly meshes elements of Afro-pop, reggaeton and Bossa Nova while cementing Bugozi and company’s unerring knack for infectious hooks. As Bugozi explains, the song tells a nostalgic tale about an Afro-Latina woman named Fatuma, who had the ability to make people dance to bossa nova.
Acclaimed London-based post-punk act and JOVM mainstays White Lies — Harry McVeigh (vocals, guitar), Charles Cave (bass, vocals) and Jack Lawrence-Brown (drums) — released their sixth album, the Ed Bueller and Claudius Mittendorfer co-produced As I Try Not To Fall Apart earlier this year.
Recorded over two breakneck studio sessions, As I Try Not To Fall Apart features what may arguably be White Lies’ most expansive material to date with the songs possessing elements of arena rock, electro pop, prog rock and funky grooves paired with their penchant for enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks.
If you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of this year, you might recall that I’ve written about four of As I Try Not To Fall Apart singles
“As I Try Not To Fall Apart,” a rousingly anthemic yet psychologically precise character study of a desperate man, who feels hopelessly stuck in a socially prescribed “appropriate” gender role, while also trying to express his own vulnerability and weakness.
“I Don’t Want To Go To Mars,” one of the most mosh pit friendly, guitar-driven rippers the band has released in some time that tells a story of its main character being sent off to a new colonized Mars to live out a sterile and mundane existence. The band goes on to say: “Fundamentally the song questions the speed at which we are developing the world(s) we inhabit, and what cost it takes on our wellbeing.”
“Am I Really Going To Die,” a glittery, glam rocker centered that seemed inspired by Roxy Music and Duran Duran, but thematically touches upon mortality and the uneasy acceptance of the inevitable
“Blue Drift,” an expansive prog rock-like song centered around the rousingly anthemic hooks that White Lies has long been known for, a relentless motorik groove, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, thunderous drumming and glistening synths paired with McVeigh’s yearning delivery. The song captures a narrator, who’s a gaping wound of heartache and despair, uncertain of their footing and on the verve of a breakdown.
The London-based JOVM mainstays latest single “Trouble In America,” was recorded during the As I Try Not To Fall Apart sessions, but was ultimately cut from the album. However, “Trouble In America,” along with three other songs recorded during the AITNTFA sessions will appear on a bonus edition of the album that [PIAS] will release on October 21, 2022.
Centered around a John Taylor-like disco-friendly bass line, glistening and squiggling synths, thunderous drumming and a bombastic cock rock-meets-arena rock chorus paired with some incisive and politically charged lyrics about the current state in America that may remind folks a bit of American Psycho.
“We gave up on b-sides years ago, and went into making an album with the sole aim to fit the most cohesive 40mins of music onto two sides of a 12″ that we could,” White Lies explains. “Unfortunately, that means some music is sidelined at the final hurdle. ‘Trouble In America’ was the hardest song to leave off. It was written a couple of days after ‘Am I Really Going to Die’ and lives in the same world and energy. Desperation Funk? In this song we jump between the mind of a serial killer, and his good Christian teenage daughter as she realizes who…or what her father is and always has been. ‘My old man’s making trouble in America! Oh, lord, take the weight off me!’ she pleads over a cock-rock, Todd Rundgren-esque chorus. We have a history of bonus tracks becoming live favorites, and we’re putting a bitcoin on this horse to keep up tradition.”
Directed by the band’s Charles Cave, the accompanying video for “Trouble In America” is split between some surreal and disturbingly edited stock footage and the band’s McVeigh in what appears to be a coffin. Much like the song, the video happens to be an incisive critique on America and American capitalism.
With the release of 2020’s Interzone through London-based psych label Fuzz Club, the Brooklyn-based psych duo The Vacant Lots — Jared Artaud (vocals, guitar, synths) and Brian McFayden (drums, synths, vocals) — crafted an album’s worth of material that saw the duo blending dance music and psych rock while maintaining the minimalist approach that has won the band acclaim across the international psych scene.
The duo’s highly-anticipated fourth album Closure is slated for a September 30, 2022 release through Fuzz Club. Written during pandemic-related lockdowns, the eight-song Closure clocks in at 23 minutes and continues the Brooklyn-based duo’s established “minimal is maximal” ethos — all while being a soundtrack for a shattered, fucked up world.
“During the pandemic the two of us were totally isolated in our home studios,” The Vacant Lots’ Jared Artaud says. “I don’t think the pandemic directly influenced the songs in an obvious way, but merely amplified existing feelings of alienation and isolation. We found ourselves writing in a more direct and vulnerable way than ever before.”
So far I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:
“Chase:” Written on a Synsonics drum machine and a Yamaha CS-10 synthesizer, “Chase” is firmly rooted in their long-held “minimal is maximal” ethos but while seeing the Brooklyn-based duo pushing their sound in a club friendly direction while still being lysergic. Arguably one of their most dance floor friendly songs, “Chase” is centered around what may be the most vulnerable and direct lyrics of their growing catalog with the song subtly suggesting that at some point we will all need to dance away our heartache — if only for a three or four minutes.
“‘Chase’ is a song about longing, about the struggle of love across time zones,” The Vacant Lots’ Brian MacFayden explains in press notes. “It’s about the desire to close that gap of separation, but also the anticipation and excitement that builds between each encounter. It’s about a sense of knowing how it should be before it is.” The band’s Jared Artaud adds, “‘Chase’ has this duality that strikes a balance between wanting to dance and taking a pill that plunges you on the couch.”
“Thank You,” a dance floor friendly banger centered around a relentless and angular, arpeggiated baseline paired with a four-on-the-floor drum machine pattern, glistening synths, angular guitar buzz and sneering vocals. But while being a New Order-like banger, “Thank You” is a bitter tell-off to a people (and situations) that have wasted valuable time.
“‘Thank You’ was built in the framework of simplicity,” The Vacant Lots Brian MacFayden says. “It has a relentless pace driven by an angular arpeggiated bassline and drum machine pattern. A Juno-6 was used for chords throughout, a Korg M500 for the leads, and the track is brought to another level with guitars layered on top. The process of crafting this song was done entirely remotely due to the pandemic and the layers over time became more and more refined until we were satisfied with each sound source.”
“Consolation Prize,” Closure‘s third and latest single continues the Brooklyn-based duo’s long-held minimal is maximal ethos but while leaning heavily towards industrial goth with the track being centered around droning synths, wiry bursts of guitar, some efficient thump paired with vocals expressing aching heartbreak and frustration. Sonically, the song sounds like a narcotic synthesis of Suicide, Iggy Pop, and New Order.
Filmed and edited by Alexander Schipper, the accompanying video follows a leather jacket-clad Katerina Samar walking through a park. Shot in grainy Super 8 black and white film, the video employs kaleidoscopic filters and old film stock to give the proceedings a slow-burning yet trippy air.
When the members of Credence Clearwater Revival stepped onto the stage at London‘s Royal Albert Hall on April 14, 1970 — coincidentally, just days after The Beatles announced their breakup — the California band had arguably just become the biggest rock band in the world. In the preceding year, CCR had five Top 10 singles and three Top 10 albums — Bayou Country, Green River and Willy and the Poor Boys — on the American charts, outselling The Beatles. They had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and played to over a million people across the country, including Woodstock.
The band’s Southern fried, “swamp rock” sound” permeated global airwaves throughout 1969: “Proud Mary,” “Green River,” “Fortunate Son,” and “Down on the Corner” were in the Top Ten across Europe, North America and Australasia, while “Bad Moon Rising: hit #1 in the UK and New Zealand. The band managed to be both commercially and critically successful: Rolling Stone named them the “Best American Band.” The band started out the next year (and decade) with a hometown show at the Oakland Coliseum. Less than four months later, in April, CCR embarked on their first European tour, an eight show run that included stops in The Netherlands, Germany, France and Denmark.
The members of CCR considered their two sold-out London shows to be a test of sorts, to measure the success of their first European tour. The first night of the two-night run, they opened with “Born on the Bayou.” And as they closed out the show with “Keep on Chooglin’.” the band was met with a 15-minute standing ovation from the the crowd. The next day, they received rave reviews from The Timesand NME, who at the time, wrote “Creedence Clearwater Revival had proved beyond a doubt that they are, in more opinions than mine, the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. In their capable hands, not only is the true spirit of rock music alive and well, but it is kicking like a mule.”
Just two years later, the band split up. But speculation around a live recording of the Royal Albert Hall show began to permeate through their fanbase in 1980. That same year Fantasy Records released a live album by the band, mistakenly titled The Royal Albert Hall Concert. But it was quickly discovered that the audio was from the Oakland Coliseum show a few months earlier. The label was forced to quickly sticker the album with corrections — and then they renamed the the January 1970 show, The Concert for later production runs.
Interestingly as it turns out, those rumors about a long-lost recording of the Royal Albert Hall show are indeed true. Craft Recordings will be releasing the long-awaited live album Credence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall on 180-gram vinyl, CD and cassette tape on September 16, 2022. Select retailers will offer a variety of exclusive color variants on vinyl — Walmart will sell “Tombstone Shadow” colored vinyl, while Target will sell “Green River” colored vinyl. The album will also be available across the digital platforms. including in hi-res and Dolby ATMOS immersive audio formats. After spending almost 50 years in storage, the original multitrack tapes were meticulously restored and mixed by the Grammy Award-winning team of producer Giles Martin and engineer Sam Okell, who have worked on The Beatles’ 50th-anniversary editions of Abbey Road and Sgt, Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and countless others. The LP was masted by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios using half-speed technology for the highest-quality listening experience.
The live album presents the Royal Albert Hall show in its entirety while capturing CCR at the apex of their career. The set features:
A furiously breakneck, live rendition of “Fortunate Son,” which features hard-hitting, incisive social commentary that still resonates 50 years after its release. And as a special peak of the documentary, live footage of the band performing the song at Royal Albert Hall was released.
The live album’s latest single is al loose and jammy rendition of CCR’s smash-hit “Proud Mary” paired with more live footage from the forthcoming documentary.
Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall will also be released concurrently with the Bob Smeaton-directed documentary concert film Travelin’ Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall. Narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Jeff Bridges, the film takes viewers from the band’s earliest years in El Cerrito, CA through their rise to fame. Featuring a treasure trove of previously unseen footage, Travelin‘ Band culminates with the band’s Royal Albert Hall show — marking the only known live concert footage of the original CCR lineup.
By the way, on November 14, 2022 both the album and the film will be released in a Super Deluxe Edition Box Set. The 2-LP/2-CD/1-Blu-ray collection includes Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall on two 45-RPM 180-gram vinyl LPs as well as on CD. A second CD features music from the film, including formative recordings from the band’s earliest incarnations (including Tommy Fogerty and the Blue Velvets and The Golliwogs). The Blu-Ray offers the complete documentary film, plus the digital album in hi-res and Dolby ATMOS immersive audio. Limited to 5,000 copies globally, each individually numbered set is housed in a 12″ x 12″ box, with embossed gold foil detail and includes a reproduction of the original 1970s tour program, a 17″ x 24″ and a 16-page booklet, featuring an excerpt of Bridges’ voice-over script.
Ryan Lee West is a critically acclaimed, London-based electronic music producer, best known as Rival Consoles. Over the course of his 15-year career, the London-based electronic music producer’s work has diversified from the challenging electronic output of his early EPs to gradually become more conceptual and metamorphic: 2020’s Articulation used drawings and sketches to imagine and developed each track while last year’s Overflow explored themes of the human and emotional consequences of life surrounded by advancing technologies, including social media that was composed for choreographer Alex Whitley‘s contemporary dance production of the same name.
West’s consistent desire to create a more organic, humanized sound often sees the acclaimed British producer often developing early ideas on guitar or piano; forming pieces that capture and evoke a sense of songwriting behind the electronics. His eighth album Now Is, is slated for an October 14, 2022 release through Erased Tapes. Reportedly featuring some of the most playful and melodic material of his catalog in some time, the album draws on music, as well as art, film, colors, shapes and human emotions.
“The title of the record Now Is interests me because it is the beginning of a statement, but it is incomplete. I like art that is open and suggestive of ideas even if they are inspired by very specific things,” West explains. “With my previous record Overflow being very dark, heavy and almost dystopian, I wanted to escape into a different world with this music and ended up creating a record which is a lot more colorful and euphoric.”
Earlier this year, I wrote about the Autobahn-era and Trans Europe Express-era Kraftwerk-like album title track “Now Is,” track that was centered around a relentless motorik pulse and glistening synth arpeggios that evoked prismatic bursts of color exploding before the listener’s eyes.
“World Turns,” Now Is‘ third and latest single continues a remarkable run of material featuring a relentless motorik pulse — built from a propulsive bass line, glistening synths, and tweeter and woofer rattling, industrial thump — paired with a gently morphing song structure in which tempo and tone shift throughout its run time. It’s soulful, thoughtful electronic music with a human soul and beating heart.
“The essence of ‘World Turns’ is built around this pendulum-like bass, that constantly drives the piece forward,” West describes. “I like having parts in music which are repetitive but everything else is changing around it, almost like a kind of hidden structure, because the repetition becomes more subliminal.”
“I think of this music as being like industry, the industry of stuff having to be made. The world carrying on doing things whether or not it is good or bad, relentlessly moving forward — sometimes chaotic, sometimes more ordered.”
Hong Kong-based shoegazers outfit JOVM mainstays Lucid Express — Kim (vocals, synths), Andy (guitar), Sky (guitar), and siblings Samuel (bass) and Wai (drums) — can trace their origins back to 2014: the then-teenagers started the band, initially known as Thud, in the turbulent weeks before the Umbrella Movement, the most recent in a series of tense pro-democracy protests against the increasingly brutal state-led suppression in the region. Amidst the constant scenery of tear-gassed, bloodied and beaten protestors, politically-targeted arrests and death threats from government officials, the five Hong Kong-based musicians met in a small practice space in the remote, industrial Kwai Hing neighborhood.
Despite the ugliness of their sociopolitical moment, the Hong Kong-based outfit manages to specialize in an ethereal and shimmering blend of indie pop, dream pop and shoegaze with their practice space being someplace where they could escape their world. “At that time, it felt like we have [sic] a need to hold on to something more beautiful than before. Like close friendships, the band, our creation,” the band’s Kim says in press notes.
The band’s current name can be seen as a relatively modest mission statement describing the band’s intent: their use of the word lucid is in the poetic sense of something bright and radiant. Essentially, Lucid Express operates as the service to take the listener on a journey through their lush, dreamy and blissful sound. Interestingly, their material often manages to evoke the mood of its inception: with the band’s members working late-night shifts, their rehearsal and recording schedules found the band playing, writing and recording material between midnight and 4:00AM — and then crashing for a few hours in the studio, before heading back to their jobs.
Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year or so, you might recall that the Hong Kong shoegazers released their 10-song, self-titled, full-length debut last year. The album’s material thematically touched upon being young, being in love and maneuvering through heartache in difficult and desperate times.
In the lead-up to the self-titled debut’s release, I wound up writing about four of the album’s singles:
“Wellwave,” a sculptured and lush soundscape centered around Kim’s ethereal vocals, glistening synths, skittering four-on-the-floor and a motorik groove — with the end result being a song that reminded me quite a bit of Lightfoils, Palm Haze and Cocteau Twins but while feeling like a lucid fever dream.
“Hollowers” the only collaborative track on the album as it features The Bilinda Butchers‘ Adam Honingford, who contributes his baritone to the song’s chorus. Interestingly, the track found the Hong Kong-based outfit pushing their sound towards its darkest corners. While prominently featuring shimmering synth arpeggios and shimmering guitars, the song’s emotional heftiness comes from its stormy, feedback driven chorus.
“Hotel 65” a song that alternates between shimmering and ethereal verses and anthemic choruses featuring thunderous drumming and feedback drenched power chords. And while evoking a brewing storm on the horizon, the song lyrically name drops the guesthouse where Lucid Express’ frontperson Kim Ho stayed in while visiting the UK — and speaks of a relationship that should have never happened between two strangers, who both know that their time together will only be brief moment.
“North Acton,” the album’s opening track and fifth single, which continued a run of lush, sculptured and painterly soundscapes but paired with a propulsive and energetic four-on-the-floor. And while seemingly nodding at 4AD Records beloved heyday, “North Acton” serves as the perfect introduction to the band and their sound while arguably being one of the album’s most upbeat and hopeful singles.
Several years before, their full-length debut, the Hong Kong-based JOVM mainstays, then-known as Thud released an EP, 2015’s Floret. The EP made an instant splash among local music lovers — and in a short period of time, they landed coverage from the likes of international publications like Time Out and NME. As a result of a growing national and international profile, the JOVM mainstays opened for the likes of Nothing, The Cribs, and Beach Fossils.
Floret was the first bit of original material that the JOVM mainstays wrote during a period that was understandably turbulent, both personally and politically. Surrounded by increasing politically-fueled violence and threats, an oppressive and weighty depression spread to the music scene. And with shows being canceled and releases stalled, Floret EP quietly slipped offline.
For the first time in years, Floret EP is set to return. Pressed onto vinyl for the first time, the EP’s material is fully remastered, repackaged with new artwork and expanded with remixes from some of the band’s favorite artists. The remixes bring an international flair to an EP originally tracked in Hong Kong with remixes of from Austin-based Ringo Deathstarr frontman Elliott Frazer, New York-based Orchin, Tokyo‘s For Tracy Hyde, Bavaria’s The B.V.’s and London-based Yuck‘s Max Bloom.
The expanded and reissued EP’s first single, EP opener “Lime” is a lush and dreamy bit of shoegaze featuring reverb-drenched guitar jangle, glistening, ambient synth arpeggios, and a motorik groove paired with ethereal vocals and an expansive, hook-driven song structure. Sonically, “Lime” may remind some listeners of Slowdive‘s 2018 self-titled album meeting Lightfoils’ 2014 effort Hierarchy — with the end result being a song with a gorgeous yet vulnerable song with enormous hooks.
Ringo Deathstarr’s Elliot Frazier’s remix of “Lime” removes the ambient guitar textures and gives the song a gritty feel by dialing up the bass into an insistent, warm crunch. The end result leaves Kim’s vocals exposed in the vocals, giving the song a visceral vulnerability, just as the song’s explosive choruses come.
The JOVM mainstays will be embarking on a lengthy Stateside tour — with most of the dates, opening for fellow JOVM mainstays Blushing. The tour includes an October 21, 2022 stop at Berlin Under A. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.
10/21 | NYC, NY @ Berlin Under A 10/22 | Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie 10/23 | Ann Arbor, MI @ Blind Pig 10/24 | Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle 10/25 | Memphis, TN @ Growlers 10/26 | TBA 10/27 | TBA 10/28 | San Antonio @ TBA 10/30 | Austin, TX @ LEVITATION (Empire) 10/31 | El Paso, TX @ MONA 11/1 | Phoenix, AZ @ Linger Longer 11/2 | Los Angeles, CA @ Resident
