Tag: London UK

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Javier Moreno Teams up with Adrian Garcia on Breezy Bop “Enamorado”

Javier Moreno is an emerging Barcelona-born singer/songwriter and guitarist. Moreno started playing guitar when he turned 11, after listening to Dire Straits and Paco de Lucia. In 2006, he relocated to Bristol, then to London, where he wound up fronting Los Amigos, a Latin music band that spent 13 years touring across the UK, Europe and elsewhere.

Moreno is currently working on his Joe Dworniak-produced third album. But in the meantime, his latest single “Enamorado,” a collaboration with Mexican singer and producer Adrian Garcia is a breezy, feel good bop that’s a slick synthesis of modern production, old-school craft and funky Latin groove.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm and Sipprell Team Up on Sultry “The Process”

Over the past few years, the acclaimed Roskilde-born, London-based singer/songwriter, musician, producer and JOVM mainstay Marie Dahlstrøm has proven herself to be one of the most prolific and essential talents in contemporary, underground R&B.

Dahlstrøm continues multitudes, a thousand different selves co-existing and contradicting each other — at once. An acclaimed singer/songwriter and producer. A mother. A partner. “These different pockets of life also create friction,” she acknowledges. “I’ve been figuring out where I belong, what I’m supposed to do and how I fit into all of this — because I am so much more than an artist. When you have big dreams or goals and you see time being taken away from achieving them, and going towards something else — how do you make that a positive experience? There are always challenges, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good life.” Fittingly, the Roskilde-born, London-based JOVM mainstay’s highly anticipated sophomore album A Good Life thematically is about dismantling the idea that your validity as an artist diminishes when it’s not the focal point of your life, that somehow being a parent somehow negates creativity. Hell, this can be even said for those artists, who have to support themselves with a day job.

“I hope that every album I make will convey a sense of honesty to it. This one is based on reflections from a few years of my life with many changes and adjustments,” Dahlstrøm adds. “It’s an album about human interaction in all its complexity.”

A Good Life is slated for a May 22, 2023 release through Dahlstrøm’s JFH Records. But in the meantime, the album’s last single before its release, “The Process” features Dahlstrom’s longtime friend and collaborator Sipprell. Built around twinkling piano, skittering beats, bursts of shimmering guitar, a Quiet Storm-meets-smooth jazz guitar solo, whirring electronics and a sinuous bass line, “The Process” is a seemingly effortless and sultry bop that sees its collaborators soulfully dissecting the intricacies and complications of being an artist — with a lived-in specificity.

“The song is about creativity, and the process of that,” the Roskilde-born, London-based JOVM mainstay explains. “The song is about the creative process. It’s about letting go in order to catch inspiration when it presents itself. Trying to go with the flow rather than forcing it.”

The accompanying video Lennon Gregory features Dahlstrom and Sipprell in a bare studio on an intimate photo shoot/video shoot and captures their friendship with an honesty while they vamp and sing for the camera.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays RVG Share Urgent and Fiery “Midnight Sun”

Acclaimed and rising Aussie outfit and JOVM mainstays  RVG — currently Romy Vager (vocals, guitar), Gregor’s and Hearing’s Reuben Bloxham (guitar), Rayon Moon‘s Marc Nolte (drums), and Isabelle Wallace (bass) — have released two critically applauded albums:

  • 2017’s A Quality of Mercy, which was recorded live off the floor at Melbourne’s iconic rock ‘n’ roll pub, The Tote Hotel. Initially released to little fanfare, the album, much to their surprise received critical acclaim both nationally and internationally, landing on a number of end-of-year Best of Lists. 

  • 2020’s Victor Van Vugt-produced Feral was released by Fire Records globally, excluding Australia and New Zealand, where it was released by Our Golden Friend. The album received breathless praise nationally and internationally, with Rolling Stone Australia calling the album “the record of a lifetime.”

The Melbourne-based band’s highly-anticipated third album Brain Worms is slated for a June 2, 2023 release through Fire Records globally with Our Golden Friend releasing the album in Australia and New Zealand. Between the band’s members, Brain Worms captures the band at their most confident point they’ve ever been in as a band. Sonically, the album reportedly sees the band moving past their influences, trying new things and pushing themselves towards what they believe is their best album of their growing catalog to date. 

“Hype is scary. After two years of COVID it felt like the hype had gone down so we were able to just do stuff,” RVG’s Romy Vager says. “This time around we were like, this is what we’re doing, we’re taking control, we’re taking risks, and we’re going to make an album that sounds big so that when we hear it on the radio we want to hear it again. If we could only make one more album, it would be this one.”

Deriving its title from the hyper-recognizable experience of each day bearing witness to a world of private obsession being aired out in the infinite, Brain Worms may not be wholly new territory for the acclaimed Melbourne post-punk outfit and its frontperson, but there is a newfound radical acceptance. Recorded in London’s Snap Studios with James Trevacus, the ten-song album surges with lush sounds and clear intentions — and the magic of an acoustic guitar, once owned by Kate Bush, given to her by Tears for Fears, who legend has it, wrote “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” on it.

Over the past couple of months I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Nothing Really Changes,” an angular, 80s New Wave-inspired track rooted in enormous arena rock friendly riffage, paired with the Aussie outfit’s long-held penchant for anthemic hooks and choruses and Vager’s lived-in, heart-worn-on-sleeve lyricism: The song features a narrator desperately missing someone while confronting the lingering ghosts of their relationship — with frustration, despair, anger and a begrudging acceptance. As the band’s Vager explains, the song “started off as a songwriting experiment to write something catchy with an obnoxious riff, a cross between Divinyls and ‘Smoke on the Water.‘ It’s a song about missing someone but protecting yourself from being hurt.”

  • “Squid,” a rousing arena rock friendly anthem that brings Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen and Starfish-era The Church to mind: Swirling and shimmering guitar textures are paired with angular guitar attack, thunderous drumming, shout-along worthy hooks and choruses. But while rooted in an absurd, Kafkaesque-like nightmare in which the song’s narrator imagines what might happen if they were to go back in time, step on something and become a squid, Vager’s delivery is so desperately earnest and urgent that it feels very real.

Brain Worms‘ third and latest single “Midnight Sun” is an urgent and hurtling ripper built around Vager’s defiant and furious delivery, jangling guitars, a thunderous and propulsive rhythm section paired with the band’s unerring knack for rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses. Fittingly, the song deals with matters of disbelief, and what it feels like to live in a culture — and a world — that often prefers to argue about semantics rather than save the world from burning. If it hits close to home, it fucking should. It’s our current hellscape, where we constantly deal with a seemingly unending and pervasive, cynical, self-serving stupidity and myopia.

“I wrote this around the time of the Australian bushfires in 2019 when it felt like everything precious about this country was being destroyed by climate change,” Vager explains. “There were all these talking heads trying to play down how much of a disaster it was, instead focusing on how much they hate immigrants or queer people. I thought – the world is literally on fucking fire and this is what you choose to use your platform on? The song is contrasting these two things, and how sick we are ideologically that we can’t identify what real problems are.”

Directed by Oscar O’Shea, the accompanying video for “Midnight Sun” shows Vager singing along with the track, as she walks around a house party with attendees, who chat with each other, make out and make drinks while completely oblivious to the RVG frontperson — and to the entire world burning around them.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Alfa Mist Shares Sublime “Foreword”

Throughout the London-based producer, composer, musician and Sekito Records head Alfa Mist’s career, he has steadfastly refused to be boxed into a specific genre or style: his work has spanned everything from hip-hop beatmaking to producing for rappers like Loyle Carner, composing neo-classical works for the London Contemporary Orchestra and reworking tracks for Ólafur Arnalds and legendary jazz label Blue Note. He also hosts the Are We Live podcast with Barney Artist and Jordan Rakei. 

Since the release of his full-length debut, 2015’s Nocturne, the London-based artist and producer has also quickly established himself as one of the UK’s most focused and distinct contemporary musical voices while also working with Jordan Rakei, Tom Misch, Richard Spaven, Lester Duval and Emmavie among others.

The recently released full-length Variables finds Alfa Mist moving forward with a renewed intensity and purpose. “The whole album is more uptempo and influenced by the freedom of returning to gigs,” Alfa Mist explains. “It feels like I’m coming back to my early days of making grime beats and creating tracks that make me want to bop my head fast.” 

Last month, I wrote about “Angel Eyes” featuring longtime collaborator Kaya Thomas-Dyke. “Angel Eyes” is a gorgeous bit of trip-hop-inspired neo-soul built around a finger-plucked guitar melody by Jamie Leeming, a swelling string-driven, cinematic chorus from Peggy Nolan (cello), twinkling keys from Alfa Mist paired with Thomas Dyke’s expressive, gossamer vocal. The arrangement and Thomas Dyke’s vocal express a yearning sense of hope. 

“Foreword” Variables latest single is a sleek and stunning synthesis of bop era jazz and jazz fusion: cascading and twinkling Rhodes is paired with intricate drum patterns, a supple bass line, an enormous Dizzy Gillespie-meets-Birth of the Cool-era Miles Davis horn arrangement and gliding and guitar lines that showcases the buzz-worthy artist’s ability to craft arrangements that are challenging yet remarkably accessible — and are rooted in dexterous and sublime musicianship.

The accompanying visualizer by SPOD features some gorgeously animated watercolor paintings reminiscent of Van Gogh and the Dutch masters while being mindbending.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Nonô Teams Up with Baby Tate on a Swaggering Feminist Anthem

Rising Rio de Janeiro-born, London-based artist Nonô has quickly made a name for herself for a unique brand of pop that pairs Brazilian rhythms with topical lyrics and catchy melodies. She was dubbed “the UK’s freshest talent” by Notion and was selected as one of NME‘s “100” artists last year. She also released two singles through Helix Records, “Lovesick” and “Good Times,” and played headlining shows at The Grace, Colours, and Victorious Festival.

Nonô also hosts the Controversia radio show with Brazilian DJ Alok, and their collaboration together “Sky High” has amassed over 14 million streams. Collectively, the rising Rio de Janeiro-born, London-based artist’s discography has racked up over 200 million streams all the DSPs.

The rising artist’s latest single “ATM” features Baby Tate a hip-hop and R&B wunderkind, who since the age of 13 has honed her skills as a singer/songwriter, emcee, producer and engineer. Baby Tate exploded into the mainstream with 2019’s Girls. Now. a VMA-nominated artist. she has toured with Ashnikko and Charlie XCX. Her work has appeared on Netflix and HBO Max, and as a result has amassed over 88 million streams. Her 2016 hit “Hey Mickey” has recently enjoyed a resurgence in popularity after going viral again on TIkTok. Beginning with tweeter and woofer rattling bass, skittering trap triplets and woozy synths., “ATM” is a club friendly vehicle for Nonô to effortlessly switch between spitting bars and crooning in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. Baby Tate joins in after the seductive and infectious chorus to spit some fire self-assured fire.

The end result is a banger that’s also a defiant yet playfully feminist anthem delivered with a sultry self-assuredness of two artists, who seem set to take over the world right now. “ATM is about being a provider and sharing your material and non-material wealth with your loved ones,” Nonô explains. “It represents what I’ve learned from my family, especially from the women, taking care of each other in every way we can.”Baby Tate adds:“When I heard ‘ATM,’ I was so excited because it’s such a dope song. I know I have a lot of fans in Brazil and to collaborate with a Brazilian artist is exciting. I’m grateful Nonô thought of me and I was able to add my energy to it!”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: JOVM Mainstays Dream Wife Share Kaleidoscopic Visual for Glittery Dance Punk Anthem “Orbit”

Deriving their name from a pointedly satirical criticism of society’s objectification of women, the acclaimed London-based JOVM mainstays Dream Wife — Rakel Mjöll (vocals) (she/her), Alice Go (guitar, vocals) (she/her) and Bella Podapec (bass, vocals) (they/them) — can trace their origins back to 2015 when the trio started the band as a art project, rooted in a unique concept: a band born out of one girl’s memories of growing up in Canada in the 1990s. 

Their 2018 self-titled debut was released to widespread critical acclaim, and led to the JOVM mainstays opening for Garbage, The Kills and Sleigh Bells, as well as their SXSW debut. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, Dream Wife followed up with a series of headlining tours across the European Union and the States, including a Rough Trade stop with New York-based genre-defying artist Sabri. 

Dream Wife’s 2020 Marta Salogni-produced So When You Gonna . . . saw the JOVM mainstays writing and recording some of their most urgent and direct material to date. Thematically touching upon abortion, miscarriage and gender equality, the album’s material is fueled by a “it’s-now-or-never” immediacy with the album’s material being a call to action to the listener to get up off their ass, and do the work to make a morally bankrupt world better.

Additionally, the album was a critical and commercial success — especially in the UK: The album landed at #18 on the UK Albums Chart, making it the only album in the Top 20 to be produced by an all womxn/non-male production and engineering team — and the only non-major label release to chart that high. 

The London-based outfit’s highly-anticipated and long-awaited third album Social Lubrication is slated for a June 9, 2023 release through Lucky Number. Throughout their career, the trio has been remarkably adept at merging the political and the playful, and Social Lubrication continues that reputation. Forcefully vital statements are hidden within hot and heavy dance floor anthems about making out, having fun, staying curious. In the band’s words, the album is: “Hyper lusty rock and roll with a political punch, exploring the alchemy of attraction, the lust for life, embracing community and calling out the patriarchy. With a healthy dose of playfulness and fun thrown in.”

“There is a sense of fun and openness that is central to Social Lubrication, as well. “There’s a lot of lust in this album and taking the piss out of yourself and everyone you know,” Rakel Mjöll says. “It’s almost quite juvenile in that way.”

Perhaps more than ever, the live show is at the core of the album and its material. “The live show is the truth of the band,” Alice Go says. “That’s at the heart of what we do and of the statements we’re making.” That energetic, pedal-to-the-metal sound explodes through the album’s material — and you can hear it through the loud, dirty riffs and choruses specifically built for dancing and shaking asses together in shared spaces. For the band’s Go, who produced the album, it was important to capture and bottle that joyful, frenetic feeling the band’s members all felt. “We wanted to get that rawness and energy across in a way that hadn’t been done before,” she says. 

For the band, the live show is where the band and fans can come together in a shared moment of community. And to that end, the album is a celebration of community and a big ol’ middle finger to the societal barriers enforced to sever connection, playfulness, curiosity and even sexual empowerment. “Music is one of the only forms of people experiencing an emotion together in a visceral, physical, real way,” says Go. “It’s cathartic to the systemic issues that are being called out across the board in the record. Music isn’t the cure, but it’s the remedy. That’s what Social Lubrication is: the positive glue that can create solidarity and community.” 

“The album is speaking to systemic problems that cannot be glossed over by lube,” the band’S Bella Podpadec says. “The things named in the songs are symptoms of f-ed up structures. And you can’t fix that. You need to pull it apart.”

So far, I’ve written about two of Social Lubrication‘s singles:

“Leech,” an urgent, post-punk inspired ripper that saw the band’s Mjöll alternating between spoken-word-like delivery for the song’s verses and feral shouting for the song’s choruses. Mjöll’s vocal delivery is paired with an alternating song structure that features looping and wiry guitar bursts for the song’s verses and explosive, power chord-driven riffage for the song’s choruses. The song is a tense, uneasy and forceful, mosh pit friendly anthem for our uncertain, fucked up time, that addresses the inherent double standards of power — while urgently calling for more empathy.” 

“It’s an anthem for empathy. For solidarity,” the JOVM mainstays explain. “Musically tense and withheld, erupting to angry cathartic crescendos. The push and pull of the song lyrically and musically expands and contracts, stating and calling out the double standards of power. Nobody really wins in a patriarchal society. We all lose. We could all use more empathy. As our first song to be released in a while, we wanted to write something that feels like letting an animal out of a cage. It’s out. And it’s out for blood…”

“Hot (Don’t Date A Musician),” a Gang of Four-like, tongue-in-cheek ripper inspired by Mjöll’s grandmother’s sage advice — despite the fact that she herself, dated many musicians in her day — while wryly poking fun at musicians and the music adjacent, the band included. “Dating musicians is a nightmare,” Mjöll explains. “Evoking imagery of late night make-outs with fuckboy/girl/ambiguously-gendered musicians on their mattress after being seduced by song-writing chat. The roles being equally reversed. Having a laugh together and being able to poke fun at ourselves is very much at the heart of this band. This song encapsulates our shared sense of humour. Sonically it is the lovechild of CSS and Motorhead. It has our hard, live, rock edge combined with cheeky and playful vocals.”

Tha album’s third and latest single “Orbit” is a dance punk ripper. built around a a propulsive disco-inspired post punk rhythm, bursts of wiry guitars paired with enormous hooks and Mjöll’s sultry rock goddess-like delivery that recalls Fever to Tell-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Echoes-era The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem among others. Much like its predecessor, the song is fun and rooted in a sense of youthful adventure and possibility.

“Written through the joy of jamming together and locking into the groove like a multi limbed space age organism, ‘Orbit’ has a dance rock edge from the early noughties of bands like New Young Pony Club and Yeah Yeah Yeahs,” the band explains. “Lyrically, it was inspired by post-lockdown London coming back to life and sharing a space through friendship and community. And how each day you never know what’s in store for you or how a stranger can become someone close to you – for a day, a heartbeat, a phase, or a lifetime.”

Directed by Sophie Webster, the accompanying video for “Orbit” is a kaleidoscopic and trippy visual that features the trio rocking out with a youthful abandon — and plenty of fans to blow around their hair, because rock ‘n’ roll, right?

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bodywash Shares Woozy and Buzzing “Perfect Blue”

Montréal-based JOVM mainstays Bodywash — Chris Steward and Rosie Long Dector — can trace their origins back to when the pair met while attending McGill University. But when they met, the pair didn’t immediately share a common musical language: Steward grew up in London listening to celestial dream pop while Dector grew up in Toronto listening to folk and Canadiana. The music they began writing together saw the pair bridging their influences. With the release of 2016’s self-titled EP and 2019’s full-length debut, Comforter, the Montréal-based duo firmly established their sound — slow-burning and dreamy material centered around ethereal vocals, intricate guitar lines and pulsating synths. 

The Canadian shoegazers’ sophomore album I Held the Shape While I Could is slated for a Friday release through Light Organ Records. When touring to support Comforter was cut short by the pandemic, the duo used the unexpected hiatus to write new material, which was darker, more experimental and more invigorating than its predecessor. The new material also manages to reflect on Steward’s and Long Dector’s separate and shared experiences of losing a sense of place, the way something once solid can slip between your fingers, and their attempts to build something new from the psychological and emotional fallout. 

Over the past handful of months I’ve managed to write about the forthcoming album’s first three singles: 

“Kind of Light.” the sophomore album’s expansive first single. Beginning with a slow-burning and elegiac intro featuring glistening organ and a skittering yet propulsive kick pattern that slow builds up and breaks into a high energy boom bap-like breakbeat paired with scorching guitar squealing and wobbling bass synths. Long Decter’s ethereal and achingly plaintive vocals expressing profound, heart-wrenching despair — and hope. The song suggests that while loss is natural and sadly expected there can be hope; that there are only a handful of things in our lives that are truly permanent. And that ultimately for the most part, it can get better. 

“I wrote ‘Kind of Light’ in bed,” Long Decter says. ““It was the fall of 2018 and Chris and I were both going through experiences of learning not to trust what feels like home. He sent me a plugin for a new organ sound, suggesting it might provide inspiration. I sent him back chords, a kick pattern, and some vocals about trying to pull your legs back; trying to take your energy out of the wreckage and put it into yourself. The process of deciding what’s worth keeping, what can be reworked and what gets tossed in the fire. A process that is devastating and also weirdly invigorating, because you can see new possibilities opening up in front of you. And you can start to look for light somewhere else.”

“Massif Central” a woozy track that features glistening synth bursts, shimmering and angular post punk-meets-shoegaeze-like textures paired with a relentless motorik groove, stormy guitar feedback and Steward’s ethereal whispers recounting an experience of Kafka-esque, bureaucratic purgatory: a typo in a government letter caused Steward to lose his legal work status in Canada. The song manages to evoke the sensation of having your life flipped upside down, then being hopelessly stuck and having no say or agency in your situation. 

“After eight years living in Canada, in the Spring of 2021, a government clerical error caused me to lose my legal status here,” Steward explains. “As a UK national, I lost my right to work. My savings trickled away during months where I could do little but pace the corners of my apartment. I was prepared to pack my bags and leave as the life I’d hoped to construct for myself seemed to vanish into a bureaucratic abyss.”
 
“‘Massif’ is the sound of wailing into a cliff and not knowing if you’ll hear an echo,” continued Steward. “The spoken word is inspired by a squirrel that was trapped in the wall behind my bed, clawing its way to salvation. With the help of friends, family, music, and a few immigration lawyers (and the rest of my savings), I’m now a permanent resident here. But this song remains as testament to my experience with an exploitative institution.”

“No Repair” is a slow-burning and melancholy ballad featuring strummed acoustic guitar, Long Dector’s achingly tender, bruised delivery, Country Western-tinged percussion by Ryan White, atmospheric synths and swelling bursts of lap steel by Micah Flavin. The end result is a song that’s a gorgeous mix of classic country and brooding shoegaze rooted in the lived-in, confusing experience of heartbreaking loss — in particular, the lingering ghosts despite their newfound absence. 

“In my early 20s I found myself in a disastrous love triangle,” Long Dector explains. “It was a mess of bad decisions and repressed queer longing and those things you chase because you hope they will prove you are real. I found myself writing repetitively about light and air and the absence of tactility. ‘No Repair’ came from the decision to let all that go…”

I Held the Shape While I Could‘s fourth and latest single “Perfect Blue” is arguably the most My Bloody Valentine-like song of the entire album. Built around bursts of fluttering synths, buzzing power chords and paired with a chugging motorik groove and Steward’s aching falsetto, “Perfect Blue” is a tumultuous storm, evoking the churn and wooziness of a deeply internalized conflict; the sort held by those who share a part of different cultures and are never fully fit in either.

“‘Perfect Blue’ takes its name and its inspiration from Satoshi Kon’s 1997 animated film,” Bodywash’s Chris Steward explains. “The themes of internal conflict and losing one’s sense of self really resonated with me when I first watched it during the winter of 2021. ‘Perfect Blue’ (the song) is an exploration of the many facets of my own cultural identity. Being both British and Japanese has often felt like a compromise. While it might be easy to romanticize this duality, the reality is that it’s impossible to wholly belong to either culture. What has brought me some solace in the past is their shared appreciation for shoegaze and ‘Perfect Blue’ is an ode to this common cultural heritage. We stacked breathy digital synths (inspired by Masahiro Ikumi’s ominous soundtrack) atop a wave of viscous fuzz guitars, in search of a “perfect blue” – a color the shade of renewal.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Crocodiles Shares Fuzzy and Anthemic “Upside Down In Heaven”

Crocodiles — Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell — have had a nearly 25 year history: After initially becoming acquainted at a local Anti-Racist Action meeting, Welchez and Rowell found their respective teenage bands booked on the same bill at a punk gig hosted at a Mexican restaurant in their native San Diego. As their mutual friend Russell Cash, who wrote their bio describes it, “Young Brandon watched in awe as a teenage Charlie clambered up a confused family’s table and proceeded to bash the living hell out of his cheap guitar. When his set was through, young Charlie melted back into the crowd and found himself awestruck as the pubescent Brandon took the ‘stage’ (floor) and proceeded to shriek, croon, howl and spit his way through his own band’s allotted 20 minutes. Once the noise was over, the two found each other, expressed their mutual admiration and over a shared Coca-Cola agreed to dissolve their respective bands and join forces.”

After a few false starts, the duo found their footing with the noise-punk outfit The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower. They spent five years traversing the country, building up a cult following, while playing every backwoods dump that would have them. They met and inspired other like-minded freaks — an occasionally they’d get beaten up by feral rednecks. Eventually, the band imploded in a cloud of poverty and addition. But Charlie and Brandon agreed to keep their partnership going.

After a year years experimenting with their songwriting and sound and trying out various lineups and names, they decided to kick out the half-committed losers and jokers they were working at the time, and replaced them for a beat up, old drum machine. Immediately, they set to work on the batch of songs that would become Crocodiles debut album, 2009’s Summer of Hate.

Over the course of the band’s 15 year history, they’ve released seven albums and a handful of EPs while going through a flurry of changes: Their recorded output has seen them change their sound — art punk, psych rock, 60s-inspired pop and trashed-out glam. They’ve changed personnel several times, starting out as a duo, then they were a quintet, then they were a duo again and more recently as a quartet. They’ve also relocated multiple times — residing in San Diego, New York, Paris, Mexico City, London, and Los Angeles. But two things have remained the same: they’ve toured incessantly, bringing their unique brand of rock to fans in almost every corner of the globe — and the band’s core duo have never wavered on their teenage mission to help each other escape a life of drudgery, boredom and expectation through music, art, friendship and of course, adventure. After all, why not do something really fucking interesting and perhaps kind of crazy with your best friend, right?

Crocodiles’ eighth full-length album, the Maxime Smadja-produced Upside Down In Heaven was released yesterday through Lollipop Records. After a prolonged hiatus, the band finally reconvened at St. Jean de Luz, France’s Quicksilver Studios to put their eighth record on wax. Atef Aouadhi (bass) and Diego Dal Bon (drums) were recruited to flesh out the material for teh sessions. The album sees the band continuing in their long-held fashion to zig-zag cohesively from one style to the next and back again. As Russell Cash describes the album’s material, “The songs are direct, cut to the chance and leave listeners thirsting for more.”

Upside Down In Heaven‘s third and latest single, album title track “Upside Down In Heaven” is a pop-inspired anthem, rooted in the duo’s unerring knack for pairing melody, scuzzy guitars. and razor sharp hooks with lyrics that express heartache, regret with a weary and bitter, lived-in burn.

“Maybe I was chasing that elusive Stiff Records sound or simply trying something that would make Westerberg smile,” Crocodiles’ Charles Rowell says of the single. “Either way it’s pure pop for heads who appreciate lyrics and melody. It’s a little sad but triumphant and true. If you’ve ever felt like you’re a little too far from home, like you’ve chased the dream until it’s turned into a nightmare, then here’s another song burning with regret and wasted wisdom.”

Directed by Sam Macon, the accompanying video for “Upside Down In Heaven” starts off with an old Pizza Hut commercial and quickly takes the viewer to an 80s-influenced tele-evangelist show featuring the band’s Brandon Welchez as a Jim Baker-type preaching to folks as they get the Holy Spirit. Naturally, our preacher has an angel and a devil on both shoulders whispering to him (the band’s Charles Rowell). But eventually Welchez’s preacher listens to the devil, and things take a playfully satanic turn — as it should!

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Island of Love Share Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper “Fed Rock”

Rising London-based outfit Island of Love — Karim Newble (guitar/vocals), Linus Munch (guitars/vocals) and Daniel Giraldo (bass) — can trace their origins to meeting through London’s hardcore punk scene, while playing in other bands, including Newbie’s Powerplant. They’ve all shared bills with bands like Chubby and the Gang and High Vis. Informed by their work in their previous project, the trio have continued to proudly adhere to a long-held DIY ethos: they book their own shows, print their own merch, design their own very distinct artwork and self-released their material, which was recorded at Fuzzbrain, an East London studio dedicated to fostering the underground music community by making high-quality studio and rehearsal space accessible to artists under 25 years-old at all price points. 

They released their debut collection of demos, Promo Tape back in 2020. By the time they had written and recorded last year’s Songs of Love EP, the trio had gotten much tighter. “Promo Tape was us trying to learn to write songs individually but Songs of Love was us trying to learn to write songs as a band,” Island of Love’s Karim Newbie says. 

Back in September 2021, Island of Love were invited to perform at the opening of Third Man Records’ The Blue Basement. It’s a good thing that the band showed up to the gig at all, given that they didn’t even think the email invitation they received to play was real. The very real and definitely not spam offer led to their on-the-spot signing to the label, opening slots for Jack White — and their self-titled full-length debut. 

Slated for a May 12, 2023 release, the London trio’s Ben Spence-produced, self-titled full-length debut reportedly sees the band crafting material that pinballs back and forth between tones and styles while rooted in crunchy guitars and the intrinsically melodic sensibility that brings Hüsker Dü and Dinosaur Jr. to mind while featuring the shared vocal and songwriting duties of Newbie and Munch. At the core of the material is a great deal of restraint and consideration, the sort that belies their relative youth as musicians — and as a band. While the material is loud and noisy, it’s built around push-pull dynamics that results in moments of tenderness and quiet that then elevates the crunch and power of the rousingly anthemic, noisier parts. The album shows the balance of it being written in bedrooms but being honed in live shows,” says Munch. “It captures a contrast.” 

Fittingly, the album explores duality, balance and contrast — sonically and thematically. Sure, there are crunchy power chords exploding out of the gate and into your eardrums one moment but there are also melodic, sugary pop hooks paired with introspective, considered songwriting. “This album exceeded our expectations,” says Newble. “I’m really proud of it.” What we’ve done on this album is much more of an accurate representation of us and where we’re at,” Island of Love’s Daniel Giraldo adds. “The EP sounds good but the difference on the album is huge.”

When the band set about making the album, they wanted to carry over as much of that DIY spirit as possible. They continued their relationship with Ben Spence and Fuzzbrain, who helped the band record their early demos. For the band, Spence, Fuzzbrain and the community both have fostered have proven invaluable to the band. “Growing up I couldn’t afford equipment,” Newble says. “But Fuzzbrain was this space where you could go to practice and use insane equipment. We never had to bring guitars, pedals or leads. You could just show up and plug in. We would have struggled to be a band without that place.” According to Giraldo , “It’s very much [Spence’s] record as much as it is ours.”

Last month, the trio shared the first taste of their full-length debut with the double A-side single “Grow”/”Blues 2000.” “Grow” is a decidedly 120 Minutes-era MTV-like bit of alt rock centered around crunchy power chords, thunderous drumming and the sort of enormous, melodic-driven hooks that immediately brings Dinosaur Jr. and others to mind. “Grow”is the first song the trio ever wrote together, and has been pulled and reimagined from their demo release, Promo Tape. “Blues 2000” continues the 90s alt rock vibes but is rooted in dueling guitar riffage and thunderous drumming. 

The album’s third and latest single “Fed Rock” features the band’s co-frontman Linus Munch taking on vocal duties, which also highlights the way the band’s co-frontmen seamlessly share songwriting, guitar and vocal duties. “Fed Rock” features the dueling guitar-driven power chord riffage, paired with enormous, saccharine pop hooks. And much like the previously released singles, the song is rooted in riotous, mosh pit friendly energy — all while still bringing back fond memories of Thin Lizzy, Dinosaur Jr., Weezer, and 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock.

Shot and directed by Cole Flynn-Quirke, the accompanying video for “Fed Rock” playfully riffs off Beastie Boys “Sabotage” and Planet of the Apes in a delirious DIY fashion.

“We wrote this song about a lot of the bands we were seeing around us when we first started gigging in London. It was one of the first songs written for the album and has always been a highlight of our set, and I think the faster pace of the song reflects the time it was written – the summer when we played our very first shows,” Linus Munch explains. “We were moving from Ben’s studio (Fuzzbrain in London) to small venues for the first time and our set was still heavily weighted on the side of stoned jams like ‘Tall Boots’ (from 2020 EP Promo Tape) and ‘Head Case’ (from 2022 EP Songs of Love). We all felt this new creeping influence of bands like Thin Lizzy and Ramones which gave ‘Fed Rock’ a different energy, while having a song in the set that said what we felt about certain bands we played alongside always made playing with them that little bit more bearable. The video was shot around Fuzzbrain with a small group of friends and family on a sunny day in February. The camera is shaky and the narrative is loose, but the spectacle of Dan’s Rambo-style blaze of glory at the mercy of two banana-wielding monkey detectives is alone worth the price of admission.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New VIdeo: Bodywash Shares Heartbreaking “No Repair”

https://youtu.be/sR3IFjv-YgA

This week will be extraordinarily as I’ll be covering the fourth edition of The New Colossus Festival this week. Look for various portions of my coverage to be coming within the upcoming weeks — including some potential interviews, live concert photography and other thoughts. But I’ll be trying my best to squeeze in my regular coverage of all things within my world — musically and otherwise.

So let’s to business, right?

Montréal-based shoegazers (and JOVM mainstays) Bodywash — Chris Steward and Rosie Long Dector — can trace their origins back to when the pair met while attending McGill University. But when they met, the pair didn’t immediately share a common musical language: Steward grew up in London listening to celestial dream pop while Dector grew up in Toronto listening to folk and Canadiana. The music they began writing together saw the pair bridging their influences. With the release of 2016’s self-titled EP and 2019’s full-length debut, Comforter, the Montréal-based duo firmly established their sound — slow-burning and dreamy material centered around ethereal vocals, intricate guitar lines and pulsating synths. 

The Canadian shoegazers’ sophomore album I Held the Shape While I Could is slated for an April 14, 2023 release through Light Organ Records. When touring to support Comforter was cut short by the pandemic, the duo used the unexpected hiatus to write new material, which was darker, more experimental and more invigorating than its predecessor, and managed to reflect on Steward’s and Long Dector’s separate and shared experiences of losing a sense of place, the way something once solid can slip between your fingers, and their attempts to build something new from the psychological and emotional fallout. 

Over the past handful of months I’ve managed to write about the forthcoming album’s first two singles:

“Kind of Light.” the sophomore album’s expansive first single. Beginning with a slow-burning and elegiac intro featuring glistening organ and a skittering yet propulsive kick pattern that slow builds up and breaks into a high energy boom bap-like breakbeat paired with scorching guitar squealing and wobbling bass synths. Long Decter’s ethereal and achingly plaintive vocals expressing profound, heart-wrenching despair — and hope. The song suggests that while loss is natural and sadly expected there can be hope; that there are only a handful of things in our lives that are truly permanent. And that ultimately for the most part, it can get better. 

“I wrote ‘Kind of Light’ in bed,” Long Decter says. ““It was the fall of 2018 and Chris and I were both going through experiences of learning not to trust what feels like home. He sent me a plugin for a new organ sound, suggesting it might provide inspiration. I sent him back chords, a kick pattern, and some vocals about trying to pull your legs back; trying to take your energy out of the wreckage and put it into yourself. The process of deciding what’s worth keeping, what can be reworked and what gets tossed in the fire. A process that is devastating and also weirdly invigorating, because you can see new possibilities opening up in front of you. And you can start to look for light somewhere else.”

“Massif Central” a woozy track that features glistening synth bursts, shimmering and angular post punk-meets-shoegaeze-like textures paired with a relentless motorik groove, stormy guitar feedback and Steward’s ethereal whispers recounting an experience of Kafka-esque, bureaucratic purgatory: a typo in a government letter caused Steward to lose his legal work status in Canada. The song manages to evoke the sensation of having your life flipped upside down, then being hopelessly stuck and having no say or agency in your situation. 

“After eight years living in Canada, in the Spring of 2021, a government clerical error caused me to lose my legal status here,” Steward explains. “As a UK national, I lost my right to work. My savings trickled away during months where I could do little but pace the corners of my apartment. I was prepared to pack my bags and leave as the life I’d hoped to construct for myself seemed to vanish into a bureaucratic abyss.”
 
“‘Massif’ is the sound of wailing into a cliff and not knowing if you’ll hear an echo,” continued Steward. “The spoken word is inspired by a squirrel that was trapped in the wall behind my bed, clawing its way to salvation. With the help of friends, family, music, and a few immigration lawyers (and the rest of my savings), I’m now a permanent resident here. But this song remains as testament to my experience with an exploitative institution.”

I Held the Shape While I Could‘s third and latest single, “No Repair” is a slow-burning and melancholy ballad featuring strummed acoustic guitar, Long Dector’s achingly tender, bruised delivery, Country Western-tinged percussion by Ryan White, atmospheric synths and swelling bursts of lap steel by Micah Flavin. The end result is a song that’s a gorgeous mix of classic country and brooding shoegaze rooted in the lived-in, confusing experience of heartbreaking loss — in particular, the lingering ghosts despite their newfound absence.

“In my early 20s I found myself in a disastrous love triangle,” Long Dector explains. “It was a mess of bad decisions and repressed queer longing and those things you chase because you hope they will prove you are real. I found myself writing repetitively about light and air and the absence of tactility. ‘No Repair’ came from the decision to let all that go…”

Directed by Derek Janzen, the accompanying video sees Bodywash’s Long Dector cleaning up the mess of a party — by herself. There’s a sense of sad, wearied determination. In a surreal turn, we see Long Dector move some of her possessions out into a snowy — and very cold– Montréal winter.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Alfa Mist Teams Up with Kaya Thomas-Dyke on Soulful and CInematic “Aged Eyes”

Throughout the London-based producer, composer, musician and Sekito Records head Alfa Mist’s career, he has steadfastly refused to be boxed into a specific genre or style: his work has spanned everything from hip-hop beatmaking to producing for rappers like Loyle Carner, composing neo-classical works for the London Contemporary Orchestra and reworking tracks for Ólafur Arnalds and legendary jazz label Blue Note. He also hosts the Are We Live podcast with Barney Artist and Jordan Rakei. 

Since the release of his full-length debut, 2015’s the London-based multi-hyphenate has also quickly established himself as one of the UK’s most focused and distinct contemporary musical voices while also working with Jordan Rakei, Tom Misch, Richard Spaven, Lester Duval and Emmavie.

Building upon the success of 2017’s Antiphon, which has amassed over 10 million streams of YouTube, 2019’s Structuralism and 2021’s ANTI- Records debut, Bring Backs, the forthcoming Variables finds Alfa Mist moving forward with a renewed intensity and purpose. “The whole album is more uptempo and influenced by the freedom of returning to gigs,” Alfa Mist explains. “It feels like I’m coming back to my early days of making grime beats and creating tracks that make me want to bop my head fast.” 

Variables‘ latest single “Aged Eyes” featuring longtime collaborator Kaya Thomas-Dyke is a gorgeous bit of trip hop-inspired neo-soul built around a finger-plucked guitar melody by Jamie Leeming, a swelling string-driven, cinematic chorus from Peggy Nolan (cello), twinkling keys from Alfa Mist paired with Thomas Dyke’s expressive, gossamer vocal. The arrangement and Thomas Dyke’s vocal express a yearning sense of hope.

The accompanying video by SPOD features some gorgeously animated watercolor paintings reminiscent of Van Gogh and the Dutch masters.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Baaba Maal Teams Up with The Very Best on Mesmerizing “Freak Out”

Acclaimed Senegalse singer/songwriter and guitarist Baaba Maal is a member of the semi-nomadic Fulani people. He first left his home in Podor, Senegal to perform music hundreds of miles away as a teenager — and he has been a wanderer ever since. “It’s part of my culture,” Maal says. “The songs travel from village to village, from country to country. It’s something natural to my tribe and this part of Africa.”

Since then, Maal has followed his music, as it traveled around the world, starting from his young travels around West Africa, performing with mentor Mansour Seck, to the Paris conservatory, where he studied music theory and then eventually across the rest of the globe, while collaborating with an eclectic array of acclaimed, contemporary artists including John Leckie, Brian Eno, Damon Albarn’s Africa Express, and Mumford & Sons. Maal has worked on the soundtracks for The Last Temptation of Christ and Black Hawk Down. He has also worked with soundtrack composer Ludwig Goransson to create the soundscapes for both Black Panther films, essentially making him the voice of Wakanda.

Throughout his career, the acclaimed Senegalese artist has spread the word of an idealistic, energetic Africa — to the entire world. “I could bring my Africa to this other, abstract Africa, and both places collided together beautifully,” he says of Black Panther, “I brought this mythical Africa back to Podor, extending my reality, my hometown, and my music. I didn’t know whether I would make another album after The Traveller, but I did know my thinking about music was still changing. And once more something stirred inside me at home in Podor. I found myself once again. It was time for a new album.”

Maal’s forthcoming album Being is slated for a March 31, 2023 release through Marathon Artists. The album reportedly is the latest stage in the development of a highly distinctive, ecstatically melodic sound that meshes traditional African instruments and rhythms with modern, electronic production, The album is a set of confrontational and contemplative stories in which Maal mixes evocative, personal local concerns with grand universal themes to produce a unique form of deep, immersive soul music, taking the listener to new places via his birthplace of Podor, Senegal, where his music always begins — and his travels always end. “However far I travel, whatever direction, I will always return home,” the acclaimed Senegalese artist says. “It is the nomadic nature. To wander, but to return home, eventually. Home is where you start from, where you begin to learn what really matters, and home is where you finish. Podor is the perfect place for me when I need some time to think, to see my music with a fresh eye, to surprise it, snare it, catch it unawares as if coming across it for the first time.”

The album is also deeply informed by experiences Maal had before, during and after the pandemic. The album is about being African, being a songwriter, being a romantic, being realistic, being wary, being online, being at the mercy of the elements, being caught between two worlds, being on your way somewhere — and ultimately about his being from Podor while being connected to a constantly turbulent and shifting world through his art. “Each song of this album has its own personality. A song is like a person. It has a life, name, a character, and it has a position in life,” Maal says in press notes. “I think that’s what makes this album so powerful – it is totally about now and where I am now, the dreams I have of the past and the future.”

The album’s material also reflects Maal’s need to continually move forward with his work. Much like the acclaimed Senegalese artist’s previously released work, there wasn’t a set deadline: Songs were finished when they ere finished, emerging out of a combination of both fast and slow work. There were intense improvisational studio sessions in Brooklyn, Podor, and London, where things moved quickly and songs took place over a few days. After energetic bursts of activity, both artist and producer took time to process their work, and songs would reveal themselves over many months. Some would be recorded by the ocean, in the ocean air, with the sound of crickets, dogs, donkeys, birds, traffic, rain and people being captured nearby. 

Last year, I wrote about album opening track “Yerimayo Celebration,” a joyous and percussive stomp centered around layers of thunderous percussion, African traditional instrumentation and enormous, ebullient hooks. The song which features contributions from Cheikh Ndoye (bass ngoni) and Momadou Sarr (percussion) is celeebration of music — and of music’s power to open the mind and heart in deeply troubled times, and of its power in fighting cynicism and chaos.

Beings latest single, “Freak Out” feat. The Very Best is a mesmerizing and woozy alchemy of traditional African folk instrumentation and modern production through the form of skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling beats and percussion that effortlessly bridges the ancient and the modern — while being boldly and defiantly African. Lyrically, the song explores the complex dynamic of social media and its effects on both African and the wider world.

“It became a song about being careful what you put on the internet,” says Baaba Maal, “It might seem funny or popular when you do it, but it might have consequences and you will have to live with those all your life.

“There are things you should keep to yourself. Mystery is important in life; you don’t need to shine a light on every little thing you do. You don’t have to give away your soul for the sake of a little bit of attention.

“The internet should be used to make humanity feel good about themselves. It is so powerful, it can be dangerous and sometimes it just seems the internet has just caused a constant freak out.”

The accompanying video is a gorgeous and sensitive slice of the complexity of African life that’s life-affirming and necessary as it captures a mix of ancient traditions and modernity. But along with that, there’s a reminder of the fact that people are generally the same.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Los Bitchos Share Mischievous and Boozy Cover of “Tequila”

London-based instrumental outfit Los Bitchos — Australian-born, Serra Petale (guitar); Uruguayan-born Agustina Ruiz (keytar); Swedish-born, Josefine Jonsson (bass) and London-born and-based Nic Crawshaw (drums) — can trace their origins to meeting at various late-night parties and through mutual friends. Inspired by their individual members’ different upbringings and backgrounds, Los Bitchos have developed a unique, genre-blurring and retro-futuristic sound blends elements of Peruvian chicha, Argentine cumbia, Turkish psych, surf rock, and the music each individual member grew up with: 

  • The Uruguayan-born Ruiz had a Latin-American music collection that the members of the band fell in love with. 

  • The Swedish-born Jonsson “brings a touch of out of control pop,” her bandmates often joke. 

  • Aussie-born Serra Petale is deeply inspired by her mother’s 70s Anatolian rock records. 

  • And the London-born Crawshaw played in a number of local punk bands before joining Los Bitchos.

“Coming from all these different places,” Los Bitchos’ Serra Petale says, “it means we’re not stuck in one genre and we can rip up the rulebook a bit when it comes to our influences.”

Los Bitchos’ Alex Kapranos-produced full-length debut, last year’s Let The Festivities Begin! was recorded at Gallery Studios, and saw the band further cementing heir reputation for crafting maximalist, trippy, Technicolor instrumental party starting jobs — with a cinematic quality.

The London-based JOVM mainstays capped off a momentous year with with two singles “Los Chrismos,” their first Christmas-themed composition and “Tip Tapp, which were co-produced by the band’s Serra Petale and Javier Weyler and recorded at 5db was released digitally and physically on a flexi-disc, bundled with a red vinyl re-press of their debut. “Los Chrismos” is a celebratory party-starting romp built around a psych rock-inspired, dexterous, looping guitar line, atmospheric synths cheers and shouts paired with cumbia rhythms. The end result is a much-needed joy and hope bomb that’s just pure unadulterated joy.

Los Bitchos’ forthcoming two-track EP PAH! is slated for a digital and 7″ release in mid-March through their label home City Stand — and the EP coincides with their upcoming UK and European tour opening for JOVM mainstays King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard. PAH! features a mischievously rowdy and boozy cover of The Champs‘ “Tequila,” a song that has become a fan favorite during the band’s live shows. The EP also features a reworking of the Gizz’s “Trapdoor.”

Filmed by Los Bitchos and Lea Emmery, the accompanying video for “Tequila” follows the members of the JOVM mainstay act stopping at a liquor store to buy a bottle of tequila, which they bring with them through a night of partying with friends new an old. And much like the cover, it’s a mischievous, rowdy night through London.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Jonas Shares Slow-Burning and Yearning “Too Much To Mention”

Primarily Copenhagen-based singer/songwriter  and multi-instrumentalist Jonas (born Jonas Rendbo) has been hailed by the international music press as the Godfather of Scandinavian soul. Throughout the course of his 20+ year career, the Danish artist has developed and maintained a reputation for being remarkably prolific, releasing copious amounts of original material, which he has supported touring with Omar, John Legend, Joss Stone, Lynden David Hall and Bilal among a lengthy and growing list of others. Adding to his accolades, Rendbo won Artist of the Year and Best Video at the 2016 Scandinavian Soul Music Awards.

Since 2004, Rendbo has split time between Copenhagen and London, where he met his wife and started a family. And while in London, he started collaborating with London-based multi-instrumentalist and producer The Scratch Professer, who coincidentally is Omar’s brother. Rendbo and The Scratch Professor had an instant musical simpatico and a couple of songs they wrote together wound up on Jonas’ sophomore album 2009’s W.A.I.T.T. 

That collaboration also managed to produce a handful of songs that Rendbo kept in the vault for the better part of a decade or os — until the four-song EP, 4ward Fast To Future, which was recorded, produced, mixed and mastered during COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in April 2020. The EP, which featured “Pick Me Up” and “What’s Cooking” was a return to the warm, vibey neo-soul sound of his earliest work paired with Rendbo’s sultry and yearning falsetto and his uncanny knack for infectious hooks.

The EP was released to widespread praise across the blogosphere including SoulBounce.com, ScandinavianSoul.com and was a featured album on SoulTracks.com. Adding to a growing profile nationally and internationally, 4ward Fast To Future‘s material received airplay on soul music radio stations across the globe.

Building upon that momentum, the Danish singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist released the 4ward Fast to Future (Remixes) EP, an effort that features remixes of the EP’s material by friends and musical collaborators done in completely different styles.

“Too Much To Mention” is the first single from a forthcoming full-length album from the acclaimed Scandinavian soul artist. Featuring twinkling synths, a wobbling bass line, skittering beats and Rondo’s yearning delivery, the slow-burning “Too Much To Mention” is rooted in earnest, lived-in lyricism and Rendbo’s unerring knack for razor sharp hooks.