Pete Mills is a Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and creative mastermind behind the solo recording project The Sweet Kill. With The Sweet Kill, Mills focuses on the darker and goth side of post-punk.
Constantly recording and producing material at his own studio, Shadow Zone Sound, Mills wrote The Sweet Kill debut album Darkness with the expressed intention to inspire those lost in the shadows of life. Anchored around cold wave-like synths, post-punk drums, atmospheric guitar and melodic bass, the album’s material channels Editors, Fontaines DC, Joy Division and others while thematically exploring the the soul’s journey between two worlds, asking the question: Are we eternally floating in the ether? Or are we never lost and always found?
“Forbidden,” Nowhere‘s latest single is a brooding and anthemic bit of post punk anchored around glistening and angular guitar tones, swaggering and thunderous beats, a propulsive and melodic bass line and enormous hooks and choruses and an atmospheric, acoustic guitar-driven bridge. The arrangement and production serves as a lush, arena rock friendly bed for Mills plaintive baritone. And while sonically seeming to channel White Lies, Editors, Interpol and others, “Forbidden” tackles love, longing and loss through some Romantic tropes and a lived-in specificity.
Directed by Ellen Hawk and shot in a gorgeous, cinematic black and white, features protagonists, who are outcasts and whose love for each other is fiery and passionate yet forbidden. They’re led to a secret world, which is both an escape and exile, and where they can be both consumed by their love. Sounds like an Edgar Allan Poe story doesn’t it?
Born in Hong Kong and adopted by American parents, who worked at a camp for Vietnamese refugees seeking opportunity in the city nicknamed the Pearl of the Orient, the Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and producerChris King may be best known for his work in Cold Showers and his production work for a list of artists that include Tamaryn, House of Harm and Fearing.
Led by King, the Los Angeles-based collective Kai Tak derives its name from the now-retired Hong Kong airport, famously known for its harrowing approach just above and through the city’s skyscrapers. Founded during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when King started to write songs as a vehicle for connecting with his own unconventional roots — and as a platform for collaboration with the numerous musical friends made from his lengthy career as a producer and engineer.
Operating without any deadlines or creative constraints allowed King to use and explore every technique he had learned over the years, incorporating re-sampling, drastic pitch shifting, time-stretching, liberal use of tape delay, recording live drums with MIDI drum triggers, and creating his own sample-based synthesizers using found sounds recorded during various trips to Hong Kong.
The Los Angeles-based collective’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, Designed In Heaven Made In Hong Kong is slated for a June 21, 2024 release through á La Carte Records. The album sees King and collaborators specializing in sculpted, moody soundscapes that draw inspirations from shoegaze, trip hop and electronica. The album will feature three previously released tracks:
“Blush,” feat. Dol Ikara‘s Claire Roddy. The collaboration can be traced back to when the two artists were placed together by chance at a live show. “Blush,” is built around a brooding and cinematic arrangement that — to my ears — sounds like a synthesis of Massive Attack and Cocteau Twins with the song featuring skittering boom bap and a looping glistening string sample paired with swirling shoegazer guitar textures serving as a lush bed for Roddy’s soulful, smoky croon.
“Chris came to me with this transportive instrumental while I was dealing with a bit of a writer’s block,” Roddy explains. “These lyrics are an ode to that very moment of inspiration where suddenly feelings, words, and melodies spring right out from the drought, as instantly and vulnerably as a blush.”
“When Claire explained the meaning behind her lyrics, I almost couldn’t believe it,” Kai Tak’s Chris King explains. “The music also came to me during a bout of writer’s block, which was broken by one of my old tried and true methods – watching a visually stunning movie on mute and composing music inspired by the imagery. In the case of ‘Blush,’ the inspiration was Fallen Angels, which has always made me feel like I’m permanently suspended in the most beautiful fever dream.”
Designed In Heaven Made In Hong Kong‘s fourth and latest single, the brooding “Flood The Harbour” seems to sonically channel Garlands and Heaven or Las Vegas-era Cocteau Twins: swirling shoegazer guitar textures are paired with swaggering and thumping, boom bap-like drums and a supple bass line create a lush and dreamy bed for There’s Talk’s Olivia Lee’s gorgeous and expressive vocal fed through a little bit of reverb. Throughout the song evokes the existential unease and dread of our current moment — with the acknowledgment that the our current world is on its death knell, and the hope that we’re on the precipice of a new, fairer world for all.
“The music for ‘Flood The Harbour’ was written on the same day I wrote ‘Blush.’ After feeling uninspired for a long time, I spent the day repeatedly watching Fallen Angels on mute while messing around with instruments, and 90% of both songs were written in a few hours,” King explains. “Whenever I’m working on something new, I always give the songs a temporary working title of the neighborhood that inspired the tune, or that I’m using found samples from, and this song drew from Yau Ma Tei. Formerly a little fishing bay, Yau Ma Tei has been built extensively upon reclaimed land. Because of Hong Kong’s limited usable land and massive population density, land reclamation has been a central part of the city’s growth over the past century – over 60 km of land has been added to the city from land reclamation projects, including part of the old Kai Tak airport, and just thinking about land reclamation and its endless ripples helped shape the song.”
“I aligned on inspiration with Chris – the lyrics came to mind after simmering on the working title for the song, Yau Ma Tei, as well as hazy neon-lit montages from Fallen Angels,” There’s Talk’s Olivia Lee adds. “Sinking into the broodiness of the song, images of a revolution on the heels of the end of the world engulfed in flames and flood came to mind. Perhaps a meditation on the consequences of colonialism and corporate greed, and who will have the last word.”
Phil Pirrone is a Los Angeles-based musician and co-founder of Desert Daze. After spending the previous decade of his life as a touring bassist, Pirrone borrowed and SG and DL4 and began his exploration of writing and recording looped-based music with jjuujjuu back in 2011.
Pirrone’s jjuujjuu debut, 2013’s FRST EP and the follow-up, one-off single “Bleck” helped to build up some early buzz around the project. In the project’s earliest days, the lineup and instrumentation moved in step with Pirrone’s ethos of ephemera and flux: the project would turn in several different configurations with Pirrone at the center.
Pirrone spent the next few years recording material in various spaces around California. Those sessions included collaborations with Vinyl Williams, members of Lumerians, Dahga Bloom and a list of others. The material from those sessions eventually comprised Pirrone’s jjuujuu full-length debut, 2018’s Zionic Mud. The album was accompanied by alternate versions of its tracks remixed or reimagined by many of the band’s most notable fans and supporters, including J. Mascis, Warpaint‘s jennylee, Liars,METZ, and Autolux. JJUUJJUU supported the album by opening for Primus, Mastodon, Kikagaku Moyo, and Earhtless, as well as festival sets at Pickathon, Nelsonville, M3F and others.
During the height of the pandemic, Pirrone taught himself how to produce and record material and sent tracks to longtime bandmembers and collaborators Ian Gibbs and Joseph Assef. Those tracks were sent to a collection of talented friends that included METZ’s Alex Edkins and JOVM mainstays Boogarins and a lengthy list of others.
Pirrone and company started off the year with “SOME,” a collaboration with acclaimed Brazilian psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Boogarins. Built around a hypnotic motorik groove and layers of swirling and howling feedback and reverberated distortion. Boogarins added a dreamy bridge and vocals that seem that oscillating between English and their native Brazilian Portuguese, which gives the song a dreamy, psilocybin-fueled, hallucinogenic air.
Tracked remotely between Los Angeles and Brazil between 2020-2021, Pirrone says: “We sent the track to Boogarins, who added a really beautiful bridge to the song, and vocals oscillating between English and Portuguese. Something in this song recalls early childhood memories of Muppet Babies or Elton John ‘Benny and the Jets’… but in a really weird (but good) way. End result feels like a flower dancing on the sand under a São Paolo sun.”
To celebrate the project’s debut at Coachella, Pirrone shares the latest jjuujjuu single “Up To You.” Anchored around swirling and shimmering feedback-driven guitar textures, a sinuous and propulsive bass line paired with wobbling layers of percussion, the song’s arrangement serves as a lush yet subtly uneasy bed for Pirrone’s reverb-drenched and dreamily yearning delivery to add to the psilocybin fueled haze.
Founded back in 2008, acclaimed Perth-based JOVM mainstays POND — currently, songwriter and producer Jay Watson (vocals, guitar, keys, drums, synths and bass), who’s also the creative mastermind of acclaimed JOVM mainstay outfit GUM and a touring member of acclaimed, Grammy Award-nominated JOVM mainstays Tame Impala; Nicholas Allbook (lead vocals, guitar, keys, bass, flute, slide guitar and drums; Joe Ryan (vocals, guitar, bass, 12 string guitar, slide guitar); Jamie Terry (keys, bass, synths, organs, guitar); and Jamie Ireland (drums, keys) — have released nine critically applauded albums that have seen the band’s sound gradually morph into increasingly synth-driven psych pop.
The Perth-based outfit’s last four albums have been showcases of tidiness and brevity: 10 songs/ideas tucked into 40 minutes or so. Slated for a June 21, 2024 release through Spinning Top Music, the acclaimed JOVM mainstays’ 10th album Stung! sees the band gleefully, madly and willfully lean into the largesse of the double LP, tapping into the spirit of albums like Tusk and Sign ‘O’ the Times with a 14-song effort that may arguably be the most unfettered hour of their career.
Being a band for the better part of two decades, the members of Pond have accepted — with no small joy or relief — that they are no longer beholden to shifting expectations of cool. That idea has greatly empowered them, allowing them to play precisely what they want, to not move toward any goal but being themselves.
Granted, it takes a lot more effort to the band to make a record these days: They’re all adults with relationships, children, professional obligations, hobbies, side-projects and/or some mix of them all. In fact, last year, Allbrook released a solo album and Watson released a fantastic GUM album — and both members went on fairly extensive tours to support those efforts.
The band began making Stung! in piecemeal fashion with a member or two showing up at Watson’s little backyard studio to work on a new idea. They’d thinker joyously and endlessly in Watson’s little workshop, trying out a panoply of machines and widgets to get interesting sounds. This allowed them to let the songs they were working on to sit over time, so that their deeply democratic process could not only siphon and improve the best ones, but also tease out what the album was missing.
Of course, at some time the band realized that they were running the risk of being stuck in that phase — creation, adjustment, addition — forever. So, the quintet went to Dunsborough, a scenic surfing hub on Australia’s southwestern coast, where a friend had recently finished a spacious, state-of-the-art studio. While in Dunsborough, Allbrook would run near the shore every morning. They’d all swim during the day, then record deep in the night. Most of their ancillary gear was left at home, forcing them to drill down on the songs, ideas and sounds they already had, and to make them better without getting overly carried away in endless possibility. After nearly a year of writing and workshopping, the JOVM mainstays had plenty of material for what would be the most expansive album of their career to date.
The album’s title began as an in joke for the band, a reference to having a crush on someone or something that they began to use so often that they felt they just had to call the album that. They still laugh when they hear it now, a silly inside wisecrack suddenly open to the outside world. But for the band, it’s kind of a credo too: Despite the bruises, the callousness and suffering of both every day life and the music industry, they remain stung with music, with the idea of making songs that feel just so and doing it together, as friends. And that they’re still stung with the world, too, even when it bites back.
Stung!‘s second and latest single, “(I’m) Stung” is a defiantly upbeat, big hearted and wearily resilient song anchored around strummed overdriven acoustic guitar, buzzing power chords, big shout along worthy hooks and choruses and a laid-back trippy groove serving as a supple and dreamily bed for Allbrook’s heartbroken yet proud delivery, expressing a bitterly uneasy acceptance.
“I wrote most of this while mowing someone’s lawn. I went home and put my fingers on the piano and pretty much played the base of it first go,” Pond’s Nicholas Allbrook says. “This is a very rare and special treat and buoyed me for weeks. It’s funny because I had a mad crush on someone, and they dropped me like a sack of shit and this song just flew down and clocked me right in the forehead and I felt totally better. Then Gin and Gum added all their magic – cool sounds, passing chords.
It’s about being totally pathetically stung by someone and just having to be cool with it being unrequited. Being resilient, accepting that you are a bit of a goose, but life goes on.”
Filmed by Pond and Chris Adams, edited by Jamie Terry and color graded by Tom Dunphy is shot on a Super 8 and follows the members of the band on a sand bank: Allbrook is shirtless and in silver body paint from face down to his waist. The rest of the band — Watson, Ryan, Terry and Ireland — are in silver lame outfits. A bee kite flies just above them. And throughout, Allbrook vamps like a mad Mick Jagger. Allbrook and The rest of the band walks the top of the embankment or slides down it, goofing off and in many ways attempting to not get stung — unsuccessfully.
Born Akira Galaxy Ament, the Seattle-born, Los Angeles-based 20-something singer/songwriter and musician Akira Galaxy grew up steeped in eclectic music by her music-loving family for as long as she could remember. Ament cut her teeth as a musician fronting several high school bands in her hometown — before stepping out into the spotlight as a solo artist.
The Seattle-born artist’s five-song Chris Coady and Sam Westhoff co-produced debut EP What’s Inside You was released earlier this year through Bright Antenna Records. The EP sees the rising artist effortlessly blending rock ‘n’ roll edge with synth textures that channel 80s dream pop while also drawing from the magic and beauty of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, where Ament often retreats to write. “I moved to LA as a teen to start my endeavor as a musician, but it wasn’t until I hit the pause button and went back to Seattle at 20 that I discovered my musical and lyrical voice,” the rising artist says. “I remember intending to go back for 2 weeks and ending up staying for 7 months. I like to think it was a perfect combination of things—the guitar, my childhood bedroom, and the state of the world. A fire was ignited beneath me, birthing the first song off of the EP, What’s Inside You.
The EP’s material delves into and touches upon themes of love, yearning and disappointment, resulting in a vulnerable yet self-assured debut effort. EP single and closing track “Silver Shoes” is a dreamy and atmospheric Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac-meets-Beach House-like track centered around glistening synth arpeggios, strummed reverb-soaked guitar and steady backbeat serving as lush bed for the Seattle-born artist’s yearning delivery. Throughout the song, its narrator yearns for and attempts to resuscitate a love that has long since died; so at its core, the song is tied into the sort of foolish, desperate and obsessively nostalgic hope of the lovelorn.
Directed by David Black, the accompanying video is a glittering dream that features the rising singer/songwriter and musician in a glittery jumpsuit and glittery faceprint and shot through kaleidoscopic filters and bright lights.
Los Angeles-based musician Adrian Acosta was trained as a mariachi singer by his father, an established norteño musician, but after finding his older brother’s electric guitar, Acosta quickly got into indie rock and shoegaze. Growing up in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, there wasn’t much for kids to do; but Acosta got involved in the local DIY punk scene as a preteen. Backyard shows happened every weekend by word-of-mouth and through flyers handed out at school — with some shows ending in drive-by shootings from rival gangs.
As a 10 year-old, Acosta recorded songs on a karaoke tape deck. Shortly after, he purposely used warped tapes and dissonant sounds without understanding what he loved about it, but upon discovering acts like My Bloody Valentine, Boards of Canada, and Throbbing Gristle, he began to realize that he wasn’t the only one.
Acota initially started the rising shoegazer outfit Draag nas a solo recording project but after meeting Ray Montes (guitar), Nick Kelley (bass) and Eric Fabbro (drums) through their many years in the local music community, the band began to coalesce as the full realization of what Acosta had always dreamt of creating while connecting with like-minded artists, who were also deeply involved in the local scene.
Jessica Huang (synth, vocals) joined the band after replying to a Craigslist ad, completing the band’s lineup. Huang’s background was different than her four bandmates: Huang is classically trained in piano, and she played the alto sax in marching bands. And instead of hanging out at backyard shows, she spent her free time on Tumblr. The band iinitially set about reviving songs from a karaoke tape deck that Acosta recorded when he was 10. They quickly became a buzz-worthy local act, playing shows with Wednesday, Reggie Watts, Mint Field and a lengthy list of others. Then the Los Angeles-based shoegazers released two critically applauded EPs, 2018’s Nontoxic Process and 2020’s Clara Luz and last year’s full-length debut Dark Fire Heresy.
Slated for a May 17, 2024 release though They Are Gutting A Body of Water’s label Julia’s War Recordings, Actually, the quiet is nice is the follow-up to Dark Fire Heresy while marking the first release through their new label home. The EP reportedly explores the liminal space between albums and the far reaching corners of the band’s sound. Inspired by TikTok slides of anonymous Flickr uploads of someone’s friends, neighborhoods on a summer day, their bedroom and the like, the EP’s material delves into an obsession with a particular feeling in childhood, while knowing that you could be back. but no one would be home. The EP is also informed by the experience of growing up with immigrant parents in the suburbs in the 90s.
Actually, the quiet is nice‘s first single “Orb Weaver” is a nostalgia-inducing track that brings back memories of120 Minutes MTV-era alt rock and warm, carefree summer days without much to really do besides bullshit, get high and listen to your favorite tunes. The song’s warped and densely textured guitars provide a laconic and buzzing backdrop for Haung and Acosta’s dreamily yearning harmonies.
“Jess and I go on night walks in our neighborhood often, probably because there’s no one around and we are obsessed with the eerie nostalgic quality of empty neighborhoods,” Draag’s Acosta explains. “One summer, it was very hard to walk without running into a big orb weaver web. I have a severe fear of spiders. I used the night walks as a form of therapy but it got me in a fearful state instead and dwelling on dark thoughts.”
Rialto, CA-based soul outfit Brainstory — siblings Kevin (vocals, guitar) and Tony Martin (bass) and Eric Hagstrom (drums) — can trace their origins to the shared common denominator of jazz: With no real music scene in California’s Inland Empire, Kevin Martin and Eric Hagstrom both landed in music school, where they met. Tony Martin, however, relocated to San Francisco, where he studied jazz bass in a more traditional fashion — gig-by-gig, learning trial-by-fire.
By the mid-2010s, the trio relocated to Los Angeles, where they started with a more jazz-tinged take on soul. “”That’s what we were all into at the time—jazz,” Brainstory’s Kevin Martin explains. “And that’s what we wanted to do with our first EP in 2014—take our songs and expand them, improvise, weld jazz onto them. We wanted to trick people into listening to jazz, basically.”
Since then, the trio’s sound and approach has evolved from their self-released EPs and the opening slots of their earliest days. Growing as musicians and people, the trio don’t want to be pigeonholed as jazz heads — although the transcendent and freeing nature of that genre is crucial to their sound.
For the members of Brainstory, the “genre-bending” band distinction is a celebration of what sets them apart in a very busy and crowded field. Anchored by Kevin Martin’s songwriting and real, studied-but-humble musicianship, the result is something new yet familiar. But it’s more than just top-notch musicianship and songwriting; the band also has some proper influences. In their formative days, some of their most significant influences came from a few places: their parents (who were musicians in their own right) and their household record collections, and then later, Chicano Batman‘s Eduardo Arenas.
Arenas produced the trio’s first EPs and then introduced them to Big Crown Records and the label’s co-owner Leon Michels, who would eventually produce their full-length debut, 2019’s Buck. Michels also was a major influence on the band’s 2021 EP Ripe: Of the seven-song EP, two featured lyrics while the remaining five were instrumental compositions rooted in heady, vibey atmospherics.
Much like the countless bands and artists across the globe, the pandemic kept the members of Brainstory out of the studio, away from Big Crown’s East Coast operations — and of course, put their plans to play live shows on pause for a while. Feeling the need to establish and maintain some momentum during the pandemic, the trio decided to do something drastic: Spearheaded by the band’s Eric Hagstrom, the band built their own studio in Long Beach and quickly got to work recording music. “We didn’t really set out to make a record,” Hagerstrom clarifies. “We were learning how to record and playing around to figure out what was working. But we were also sending the stuff to Big Crown, and they were like, ‘Let’s make this record.’”
The trio’s Leon Micehls-produced sophomore album Sounds Good is slated for an April 19, 2024 release through Big Crown Records. The album will feature:
“Gift of Life,” a lush, old-school, Quiet Storm-like, show-topping ballad built around a shimmering and vibey arrangement featuring fluttering, ethereal flute paired with Kevin Martin’s emotive, falsetto croon and some incredibly catch hooks. While the song see the band pulling from classic soul, psych soul and dub in a way that sounds like it could been released sometime between 1968-1974, “Gift of Life,” manages to feel remarkably modern.
Thematically, the song sees the trio ruminating on the complexity of the human condition with a hard-earned, weary wisdom. “This song is somewhat of a prayer to the inevitable decay that surrounds us and the pain that follows. It alters our perspectives and ways of life,” Brainstory explains. “It’s a powerful natural force that guides us. In this life, we lose and eventually must let go of life itself but, when we learn to surrender, we give ourselves a chance to change and adapt. Though it is often painful, the reward is simply to see another day with new eyes full of gratitude for the opportunity to live.”
Last month, the trio celebrated the official announcement of their sophomore album with the release of the “Listen”/”Too Young” double single, which featured “Listen,” a song anchored around a classic, two-step groove paired with shimmering analog synths, an overdrive-fueled guitar solo and some dreamy falsetto melodies and harmonies. While sounding as though it could have been a Mandrill or Isley Brothers B side, the song sees Martin expressing modern day frustrations over how technology can distract people from being fully present in our daily lives and from spirituality. The song’s narrator is encouraging the listener to spend some time enjoying the present moment, because it’s all too short and remarkably fleeting.
Sounds Good’s fourth and latest single “Peach Optimo” is a slow-burning and summery bit of psych soul anchored around a strutting and wobbling bass line, glistening keys, some funky drum rhythm patterns and an expressive guitar solo paired with some retro-futuristic synths. Seemingly channelling JOVM mainstays Mildlife and L’Eclair, “Peach Optimo” derives its title from a favorite cigar wrap that the band’s members used for blunts as teenagers. The song sees the trio diving into the banality and simple pleasures of teenaged suburban life — full of the nostalgia of cul-de-sac hangs and bullshit sessions with the homies.
Rialto, CA-based soul outfit Brainstory — siblings Kevin (vocals, guitar) and Tony Martin (bass) and Eric Hagstrom (drums) — can trace their origins to the shared common denominator of jazz: With no real music scene in California’s Inland Empire, Kevin Martin and Eric Hagstrom both landed in music school, where they met. Tony Martin, however, relocated to San Francisco, where he studied jazz bass in a more traditional fashion — gig-by-gig, learning trial-by-fire.
By the mid-2010s, the trio relocated to Los Angeles, where they started with a more jazz-tinged take on soul. “”That’s what we were all into at the time—jazz,” Brainstory’s Kevin Martin explains. “And that’s what we wanted to do with our first EP in 2014—take our songs and expand them, improvise, weld jazz onto them. We wanted to trick people into listening to jazz, basically.”
Since then, the trio’s sound and approach has evolved from their self-released EPs and the opening slots of their earliest days. Growing as musicians and people, the trio don’t want to be pigeonholed as jazz heads — although the transcendent and freeing nature of that genre is crucial to their sound.
For the members of Brainstory, the “genre-bending” band distinction is a celebration of what sets them apart in a very busy and crowded field. Anchored by Kevin Martin’s songwriting and real, studied-but-humble musicianship, the result is something new yet familiar. But it’s more than just top-notch musicianship and songwriting; the band also has some proper influences. In their formative days, some of their most significant influences came from a few places: their parents (who were musicians in their own right) and their household record collections, and then later, Chicano Batman‘s Eduardo Arenas.
Arenas produced the trio’s first EPs and then introduced them to Big Crown Records and the label’s co-owner Leon Michels, who would eventually produce their full-length debut, 2019’s Buck. Michels also was a major influence on the band’s 2021 EP Ripe: Of the seven-song EP, two featured lyrics while the remaining five were instrumental compositions rooted in heady, vibey atmospherics.
Much like the countless bands and artists across the globe, the pandemic kept the members of Brainstory out of the studio, away from Big Crown’s East Coast operations — and of course, put their plans to play live shows on pause for a while. Feeling the need to establish and maintain some momentum during the pandemic, the trio decided to do something drastic: Spearheaded by the band’s Eric Hagstrom, the band built their own studio in Long Beach and quickly got to work recording music. “We didn’t really set out to make a record,” Hagerstrom clarifies. “We were learning how to record and playing around to figure out what was working. But we were also sending the stuff to Big Crown, and they were like, ‘Let’s make this record.’”
The trio’s Leon Micehls-produced sophomore album Sounds Good is slated for an April 19, 2024 release through Big Crown Records. The album will feature “Gift of Life,” a lush, old-school, Quiet Storm-like, show-topping ballad built around a shimmering and vibey arrangement featuring fluttering, ethereal flute paired with Kevin Martin’s emotive, falsetto croon and some incredibly catch hooks. While the song see the band pulling from classic soul, psych soul and dub in a way that sounds like it could been released sometime between 1968-1974, “Gift of Life,” manages to feel remarkably modern.
Thematically, the song sees the trio ruminating on the complexity of the human condition with a hard-earned, weary wisdom. “This song is somewhat of a prayer to the inevitable decay that surrounds us and the pain that follows. It alters our perspectives and ways of life,” Brainstory explains. “It’s a powerful natural force that guides us. In this life, we lose and eventually must let go of life itself but, when we learn to surrender, we give ourselves a chance to change and adapt. Though it is often painful, the reward is simply to see another day with new eyes full of gratitude for the opportunity to live.”
To celebrate the official announcement of their sophomore album, the California trio shared a double single “Listen”/”Too Yung.” “Listen” sees the trio crafting a classic, two-step inducing groove-driven song with shimmering analog synths, an overdrive-fueled guitar solo paired with some dreamy falsetto melodies and harmonies. While sounding as though it could have been a Mandrill or Isley Brothers B side, the song sees Martin expressing modern day frustrations over how technology can distract people from being fully present in our daily lives and from spirituality. The song’s narrator is encouraging the listener to spend some time enjoying the present moment, because it’s all too short and remarkably fleeting.
The trio will be hitting the road this week for some Northern California shows with The Budos Band before embarking on a headlining U.S. tour in April, and UK and European Union dates in May with Lady Wray. Tour dates are below.
BRAINSTORY TOUR DATES
Feb 23 – The Fillmore – San Francisco, CA*
Feb 24 – Felton Music Hall – Felton, CA*
Apr18 – Lodge Room- Highland Park, CA
Apr 22 – Valley Bar – Phoenix, AZ
Apr 23 – Love Buzz – El Paso, TX
Apr 25 – Tandem – San Antonio, TX
Apr 26 – Psych Fest – Austin, TX
Apr 27 – Norman Music Festival – Norman, OK
Apr 30 – Sister Bar – Albuquerque, NM
May 01 – Larimer Lounge – Denver, CO
May 02 – The Atrium – Fort Collins, CO
May 03 – DLC – Salt Lake City, UT
May 04 – Neurolux – Boise, ID
May 07 – High DIve – Seattle, WA
May 08 – Mississippi Studios – Portland, OR
May 16 – Knust – Hamburg, Germany +
May 17 – Franz Mhelhose – Enfurt, Germany +
May 18 – Lido – Berlin, Germany +
May 20 – La Maroquinerie – Paris, France +
May 26 – Cross The Tracks Festival – Brockwell Park, UK
26-year-old Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Austin Feinstein has spent the past decade or so following his own arrow, doggedly reinventing and honing his work across a diverse array of material with Slow Hollows: 2015’s Atelophobia and 2016’s Romantic saw Feinstein and his bandmates exploring the fringes of indie rock, and caught the attention of Frank Ocean, who recruited him to sing the chorus of Blonde track “Self Control.” 2019’s Actors saw the band’s sound further expanding through the incorporation of R&B, dance music and production from Tyler the Creator. (Feinstein has appeared on Tyler the Creator albums since 2016.)
Despite enjoying a breakthrough moment, Feinstein and his bandmates decided the project had run its course, and announced that the band split up. A few years have passed and Slow Hollows returns as Feinstein’s solo recording project with his fourth album, Bullhead. The album reportedly sees Feinstein stripping things back to an element place. There are shades of Neil Young and Elliott Smith at the core the album’s material but the arrangements are lush and reveal an artist afraid to pair big guitar riffs with rich strings, moody synths.
Slated for a March 8, 2024 release through Danger Collective, Bullhead captures the young artist at his most confident and self-assured to date, while marking a new chapter for Feinstein both personally and professionally. “The last album felt like an effort to shed any identity Slow Hollows may have formed with our previous music,” explains Feinstein, “When it comes to Bullhead, making a sonic shift towards the sounds of early Slow Hollows records felt like something I needed to do for myself.”
“Soap,” Bullhead‘s latest single is a woozy yet smolderingly anthemic track built around whirring and jangling guitars, a propulsive rhythm section driven by off-kilter syncopation paired with power chord-driven hooks and hooks and Feinstein’s yearning delivery. “Soap” manages to be a slick synthesis of 2000s indie rock with some old-fashioned craftsmanship.
“I was staying at a friend’s house by myself for a few weeks right before recording this new record,” Feinstein recalls. “I remember feeling like I wanted to write a song that paid homage to the music that excited me as a kid. Most of that was guitar music, and I’ve fallen out of love with guitar lots of times but really wanted to force myself to explore that world again. Around that time I was starting to fall in love with someone so the words came pretty quick. Ultimately, this song is my homage to Modest Mouse.”
Cisco Bluff is an emerging Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His second single, which also is the first official single off his forthcoming EP “Second Sight” is a slickly produced and funky 80s-inspired synth pop track built around glistening synth arpeggios, lush synth pads, a sinuous bass line and skittering beats paired with Bluff’s melancholy and yearning delivery and an uncanny sense of catchy hooks.
While sonically “Second Sight” reminds me a bit of Rush Midnight, St. Lucia, and others, the song as Bluff explains “essentially began as a ballad about sexual desire. It’s about falling into rapture, fantasy taking hold and being pulled into a hypnotic state of longing.”
“The song was originally written on guitar and later arranged around a rhythm I had programmed on my Oberheim DX drum machine, the same one used on many 80s classics,” the Los Angeles-based artist adds. “What you hear in the song is that original hardware. Everything else came together around that beat, which I immediately knew wanted big arpeggiated synth bass and lush pads.”
