Tag: Los Angeles CA

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays The Dream Syndicate Share Kaleidoscopic Visual for Brooding “Damien”

Over the past couple of years of this site’s almost 12 year history, I’ve managed to spill a copious amount of virtual ink covering the acclaimed and legendary Los Angeles-based psych rock act and JOVM mainstays The Dream Syndicate. 

Originally formed back in the early 80s, The Dream Syndicate — currently founding members Steve Wynn (guitars, vocals), a critically applauded singer/songwriter and solo artist in his own right, and Dennis Duck (drums), along with Mark Walton (bass), Jason Victor (lead guitar) and newest member Green On Red’s Chris Cacavas (keys) — have managed to split up and reunite a few times throughout their extensive history, including their most recent reunion in 2017, which began a run of critically applauded, forward-thinking, mind-bending releases.

2020’s The Universe Inside marked the first time in their long and storied history in which every song was conceived and written as a collective whole. Sonically, the album’s material was unlike anything they’ve done together or even individually. The material draws from each individual member’s eclectic interests and passions — in particular: 

  • Dennis Duck’s love and knowledge of European avant garde music
  • Jason Victor’s love of 70s prog rock 
  • Mark Walton’s experience in Southern-fried music collectives
  • Chris Cacavas’ interest in sound manipulation 
  • Wynn’s love of 70s jazz fusion. 

The Universe Inside‘s six songs came from one completely improvised recording session in which the band came up with 80 continuous minutes of soundscapes. “All we added was air,” Wynn explains in press notes. Aside from vocals, horns and a touch of percussion here and there, every instrument is recorded live as it happened.

The Dream Syndicate’s fourth post-reunion effort and eighth overall, Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions is slated for a June 10, 2022 release through Fire Records. Continuing to push their sound and approach in new and varied directions, Ultraviolet Battle Hymns reportedly sees the band taking on British glam, German prog rock, krautrock and Brian Eno-like ambient music interwoven into their psychedelic, melodic hues. The album also features guest spots from longtime collaborator and friend, The Long Ryders‘ Stephen McCarthy and Marcus Tenney, who contributes sax and trumpet to the album’s songs. 

“Where I’ll Stand,” the album’s expansive first single clocked in at a little over five minutes begins with a twinkling, synth-led prog rock intro that nods at Trans Europe Express before morphing into a circular chord progression centered around twangy, reverb-drenched guitars and a slow-burning groove.  “It feels like an attempt–via the lyrics and the circular chord progression–to impose some kind of order and logic on a world that was severely lacking in both respects at the time,” The Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn explained in press notes.

“Damian,” Ultraviolet Battle Hymns‘ second and latest single is a brooding and slow-burning song that may arguably be their most AM Rock-inspired song of their extensive — and still growing — catalog: Centered around a shuffling groove, the song has a California beach sheen but with a gritty and lurking sense of evil and unease. Fleetwood Mac meets Steely Dan, perhaps?

“I wanted to write and record something that would have sounded good coming out of the Radio Shack speakers in my Gremlin. . . the sense of mystery and time time was enhanced by Marcus Tenney’s era-perfect sax and trumpet work and then sweetened by a backing vocal arrangement Stephen McCarthy brought to the session,” The Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn says.

Created by Mike Bourne, the accompany video for “Damien” is a kaleidoscopic and lysergic trip. Tune in and zone out, y’all.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Spaceface Share an Anthemic Banger

Formed back in 2012 by Jake Ingalls, a former member of The Flaming Lips, the self-professed “retro-futurist dream rock” outfit Spaceface is currently split between Memphis and Los Angeles, and features a collection of current and past members of The Flaming Lips and Pierced. In the decade since their formation, the members of Spaceface have developed a reputation for crafting catchy songs with elements of dream pop, funk, rock and post-disco.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of the past year, you’d recall that the JOVM mainstays sophomore album Anemoia was released through Montreal-based label Mothland. The album is the result of several months spent back in 2019 at Blackwatch Studios, where the band spent several months working with Jarod Evans writing material inspired by funk rock and the turn of the millennium psychedelia revival.

Although the material can be initially perceived as a feat of efficient and minimalistic songwriting by Ignalls and a cast of friends and collaborators, centered around slick melodies, lush arrangements and effortlessly flowing rhythmic grooves, each spin reportedly will reveal a new layer while painting a positive but somewhat critical portrayal of modern life.

In the lead up to Anemoia‘s release, Spaceface and Mothland released six singles off the album, including “Happens All The Time,” “Earth In Awe,” and “Piña Collider,” which featured samples and choir vocals from actual CERN scientists and “ were all previously released to praise across the blogopshere.

I’ve managed to write about three more released singles:

  • “Long Time:” a woozy and funky contemplation of life choices and alternate realities centered around a strutting bass line, glistening synth arpeggios and infectious hooks paired with guest vocals from Penny Pitchlynn, best known for her work with BRONCHO and LABRYS.
  • “Rain Passing Through:” an Oracular Spectacular era MGMT meets  Nile Rodgers-like bop with guest vocals from  Mikaela Davis about the fleeting moments one may have with former or future lovers in passing turbulent times, and despite knowing that it probably shouldn’t, wouldn’t or can’t happen, that it was okay to feel good and safe, even if it was for a brief, lovely moment. 
  • “Millions & Memes,” a hook-driven ear worm centered a buzzing, phaser-drenched guitar riff and funky boom bap beats that — to my ears, at least — sounds like a slick and seamless synthesis of Currents era Tame Impala, 70s glam rock and funk. Much its predecessors, “Millions & Memes” is rooted in deeply detailed psychological observation and overwhelmingly positive messaging. 

 Anemoia‘s seventh — that’s right seventh! — single “Classic Style” is an anthemic, hook-driven banger, centered around buzzing power chords, thumping beats, dreamy vocals and twinkling keys. While to my ears, sounding as though it were indebted to Lonerism and Currents era Tame Impala, “Classic Style” is a swaggering yet earnest pick up line to that pretty young thang at the club, who just caught your eye.

Directed by longtime collaborator Jarod Evans, the accompanying video for “Classic Style” features cameo from The Flaming Lips’ The Brothers Griiin and employs a rather simple concept: a sort of behind the scenes look at the shooting of a video, fittingly shot in a lysergic haze.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Emerging Artist Poppa Chi Shares Swaggering New Bop

Bryan Manazanres is an emerging Los Angeles-based Nicaraguan-American emcee, poet, photographer, director and entrepreneur, best known as Poppa Chi. His debut single, the Elijah Williams-produced “Me Dicen/The Say” pairs Manazanres’ features dense, rapid-fire Spanish and Spanglish flow over a sleek production that pairs shuffling Reggaeton and trap beats with a wobbling piano sample. The end result is a self-assured headbanger that’s simultaneously club and arena friendly.

Co-directed by Manazanres and Sayder Vision, the accompanying visual for “Me Dicen/They Say” follows the emerging Los Angeles-based artist as he drives around his town and in a number of different sets up — including a wall full of gold and silver records, a 90s Puff Daddy-like room and more.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Los Angeles-based electronic duo Tonoso — Jacob Grabb and Paul Salerno — met in high school jazz band and started working together in earnest back in 2018. Since their formation, the duo have developed and honed a unique take on contemporary electronic music centered around a cinematic and compositional sensibility. 

The duo’s full-length debut Artificial Dreams is slated for release later this year. And if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of this year, you might recall that I’ve written about two of the Los Angeles-based duo’s previously released singles:

  • “Hide,” a lush and breezy single that paired organic instrumentation with atmospheric electronic production paired with Grabb’s yearning and plaintive vocals. But underneath the breezy infectiousness was a brooding quality.
  • “Friction” a woozy and wistful single featuring glistening and oscillating synths, skittering beats and Grabb’s plaintive vocals that reminded 7 a bit of Seoul‘s I Became A Shade and Beacon and others to mind. 

“Hyperstimulated,” Tonoso’s third single of the year is a hook-driven club banger featuring enormous bass drops, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, glistening synth arpeggios, samples of shimmering strings and alarm clocks paired with Grabb’s plaintive vocals and a distorted vocal sample to create a dense feeling of sensory overload. While sonically bearing a resemblance to 90s house and In Ghost Colours era Cut Copy, the song as the duo explains is informed by our instant gratification-fueled, social media world: “We live in a world on constant dopamine hits, never ending phone notifications, endless amount of streaming content, all while trying not to lose yourself to the infinite,” the duo explain.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Pink Mountaintops Cover Black Flag

Founded by British Columbia-born singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and Black Mountain frontman Stephen McBean in 2004, Pink Mountaintops has always supplied him an outlet for his more arcane fascinations and obsessions.

The 12-song Peacock Pools, the first batch of new material from Pink Mountaintops in over eight years, is sparked from his self-described magpie-like curiosity for a diverse and wild array of pop culture: the sci-fi boy horror of David Cronenberg, Disney Read-Along Records from the 1970s, early Pink Floyd, mid-career Gary Numan, John Carpenter movies, Ornette Coleman live videos, a 1991 essay on the cult of bodybuilding by postmodern feminist writer and thinker Camille Paglia, and more.

Featuring contributions from Redd Kross‘ Steven McDonald, Melvins‘ Dale Crover recorded live in the studio, the Peacock Pools‘ material took shape from a bath of songs McBean first pieced together during the pandemic’s early days: “I’d moved into this cool little ’50s rancher house outside L.A. and was just mucking about in my bedroom studio, and pretty soon I started reaching out to some friends who were also shacked up and craving broadband sonic collaboration,” Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops’ Stephen McBean recalls.

Over the next few months, McBean began working remotely with an All-Star lineup of indie rock, psych rock and garage rock players that included Destroyer and Black Mountains’ Joshua Wells (drums, piano); Feels and Death Valley Girls‘ Leana Myers-Ionita (violin, vocals); Ryley Walker and Steve Gunn‘s Ryan Jewell (drums); Ty Segall‘s and Emily Rose & The Rounders’ Emily Rose Epstein (vocals); and Black Mountain’s and Sinoia Caves‘ Jeremey Schmidt (keys).

Produced by McBean and mixed in Vancouver by Dave “Rave” Oglivie, Pink Mountaintops‘ fifth album may arguably be the most eclectic, strangest and unpredictable batch of songs to date.

Peacock Pools‘ second and latest single sees McBean and company crafting a piano-laced and bluesy, garage psych take on Black Flag‘s pent-up and wiry “Nervous Breakdown” that unspools with a cool, surfer dude on shrooms-like insouciance.

“Steven McDonald used to always play a disco version of that bassline to annoy [Black Flag co-founder] Keith Morris when they were sound-checking for OFF!, and it ended up fitting perfectly with the demo I’d made,” McBean reveals, referring to McDonald and Morris’s hardcore supergroup. Speaking of Morris, he emphatically approves of the Pink Mountaintops cover, sharing the following: “Great job taking a song that’s been beaten to death by numerous punker dunkers and turning it into your own song! BRAVO!!!!”

McBean created a mischievous accompanying visual for “Nervous Breakdown” that features found footage and appearances from McBean, Red Kross’ Steven McDonald, Feels and Death Valley Girls’ Leana Myers-Ionita, Destroyer and Black Mountain’s Joshua Wells and Ryley Walker’s and Steve Gunn’s Ryan Jewell rocking out in their respective homes.

Peacock Pools is slated for a May 6, 2022 release through ATO Records and Cadence Music Group.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Yumi Zouma Share a Hallucinogenic Visual for New Single “Astral Projection”

If you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of its almost 12 year history, you may recall that the acclaimed indie synth pop outfit and longtime JOVM mainstay outfit Yumi Zouma signed to Polyvinyl Record Co back in 2020. That same year, they JOVM mainstays released their critically applauded, self-produced third album Truth or Consequences, an album that thematically focused on distance — both real and metaphorical; romantic and platonic heartbreak; disillusionment and feeling (and being) out of reach. 

For the overwhelming majority of the bands I’ve covered over the past 12 years, touring is often the most important — and necessary — part of the promotional campaign for an artist’s or band’s new release. Before they hit the road, that artist or band will figure out how to re-contextualize their new material and even previously released material for a live setting, imagining how a crowd will react to what — and how — they’ll play the material in a live set. Like all of the acts across the world, who were touring — or were about to tour–- as COVID-19 struck across the world, the members of Yumi Zouma were forced to end their tour, which included their first ever sold-out, headlining North American dates, and quickly head to their respective homes, leaving scores of their most devoted fans without the opportunity to hear the new album in a live setting. 

That October, the JOVM mainstays released Truth or Consequences (Alternate Versions), an album conceived as the band’s response to the lost opportunity to re-contextualize and explore the boundaries of the original album’s material through live engagement with fans.

Last year, Yumi Zouma released two singles: 

  • “Give It Hell,” a wistful and bittersweet song centered around a classic Yumi Zouma breezy arrangement. But underneath the aching melancholy is a subtle but necessary celebratory note, a reminder that we will find a way to survive and thrive in the most difficult and unusual circumstances — and as someone far wiser than I once sang “all things will pass.” 
  • “Mona Lisa,” an expansive and breezy pop confection that’s one part New Order and one-part Bruce Springsteen that manages to convey a complicated, shifting emotional state, seemingly influenced and informed by our weird and uncertain moment. 

Both of those tracks will appear on the band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Present Tense. Dedicated to an embattled past, Present Tense is the JOVM mainstays’ offering to a tenuous future. With the members of the band forced to go their separate ways and return to their homes, Yumi Zouma found themselves in an unusual place: “It was disorientating,” the band’s Charlie Ryder says in press notes. ““We generally work at a quick clip and average about a record a year, but with no foreseeable plans, we lost our momentum.”

In response, the members of the band went to work, setting a September 1, 2021 deadline for the album to be finished, regardless of world events. What initially began in fits and starts became a committed practice again as the band worked on new material, digging through demos from as early as 2018 and making them relevant to that particular — and peculiar — moment in time. “Someone brings in a seed,” the band’s Josh Burgess says, “and through collaboration, it grows into a song that is vastly different from its original form.”

“The lyrics on these songs feel like premonitions, in some regards,” says Yumi Zouma’s Christie Simpson says. “So much has changed for us, both personally and as a band, that things I wrote because the words sounded good together now speak to me in ways I didn’t anticipate.”

The album’s material evolved through remote and in-person sessions in Wellington, New Zealand, Florence, Italy, Los Angeles, NYC and London. Those sessions found the band exploring a broader sonic palette that includes pedal steel, piano, sax, woodwind and string arrangements played by friends around the globe.  The complex scope of the recordings were then fine-tuned by an array of top mixes including Ash Workman, Kenny Gilmore, Jake Aron with mastering by Antoine Chabert. 

“This is our fourth album, so we wanted to pivot slightly, create more extreme versions of songs,” Ryder says. “Working with other artists helped with that and took us far outside of our normal comfort zone.”

Last month, I wrote about “Where The Light Used To Lay,” a single that continued a remarkably run of bittersweet pop confections, centered around Christie Simpson’s achingly tender vocals, shimmering guitars, glistening keys and the JOVM mainstays’ unerring knack for crafting a razor sharp and infectious hook. Interestingly, “Where The Light Used To Lay” has a hopeful, adult perspective on heartbreak, one that seems to say that while you may be down in the dumps today, this too, like all other things, shall end. And you shall yet again find love in all of its complicated, conflicting, nonsensical glory in its due time. 

“‘Where The Light Used To Lay’ eventually revealed itself as a bittersweet song about the agony of detangling your life as you break up and the enticing future, clarity, and lightness that the end of the tunnel can offer,” the band’s Josh Burgess explains. “When we first started writing the song in 2019, we were all in long-term relationships. By the time the final mix was completed in the Fall of 2021, only one of those remained (thanks COVID). It’s funny how songs can end up revealing themselves in surprising ways, even to their writers. It’s equal parts confronting and calming, knowing that the subconscious starts processing long before the conscious comes to it. Regardless, it’s nice to have a moment with a song where you go ‘damn, ain’t that the truth.’”

Present Tense‘s latest single “Astral Projection” is a decidedly 80s inspired song centered around glistening, reverb-drenched guitars, gently oscillating synths, jazz-like syncopation, Simpson’s imitable vocals and an infectious hook. The song’s narrator seems to have come to a wobbly sort of acceptance of the end of their relationship and what it means for them and their life,.

“’Astral Projection’ is about leaning into bad feelings and the mixed results it brings,” Yumi Zouma’s Christie Simpson explains. “Learning to sit with the reality of a relationship not working out as you hoped. Looking towards the future and knowing there will be others, there will be better times, but sitting in the present moment, trying to make peace with that.”

Directed by Alex Ross Perry, the accompanying video is the third and final part of a narrative trilogy featuring our familiar trio of protagonists. They’re trapped in the apartment. One of the rooms turns into a forest, where the individual members lose their minds and have wild hallucinations while trying to escape. Some of the experience is playful and hilarious; some of it is terrifying and dark. Once they stop fighting their feelings, the weird experience clears up — and they’re able to finally leave. Their friendship seems tighter than what it was at the beginning as a result.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Casual War Shares a Cathartic New Single

Currently split between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., emerging indie duo Casual War — Maria Law (vocals) and Erik Mattingly (guitar) — have been playing together since 2018. The duo initially made a name for themselves playing clubs in Milwaukee and D.C., before gradually evolving their sound towards a dreamier, desert rock-inspired sound — with the duo continuing work on the project remotely.

Casual War’s latest single “No Help” is is a cathartic and incredibly anthemic song built around a classic, grunge rock song structure — dreamy, contemplative verses with shimmering guitar lines and stormy choruses with buzzing and distortion pedaled power chords. And at the heart of the song is Law’s plaintive, power house vocals singing lyrics about a reckless, terrifying and dangerous love — the sort of love that burns out quickly and leaves you a devastated and heartbroken shell.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Los Angeles-based electronic duo Tonoso — Jacob Grabb and Paul Salerno — met in high school jazz band and started working together in earnest back in 2018. Since their formation, the duo have developed and honed a unique take on contemporary electronic music centered around a cinematic and compositional sensibility. 

The Los Angeles-based duo’s music can be heard in a number of different media, including the award-winning film Summertime and the hit video game Cyberpunk 2077. The duo hope to continue upon that momentum with the release of their full-length debut Artificial Dreams later this year. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Hide,” a lush single that featured a slick blend of organic instrumentation including live drumming, glistening, reverb-drenched guitar, a sinuous bass line paired with an ethereal and deliberately crafted and breezy production centered around driving, skittering beats, atmospheric synth arpeggios and chopped up vocals. The production is roomy enough for Jacob Grabb’s plaintive and yearning vocals to be interwoven within the lush mix — but while adding a brooding quality to the song. 

The duo’s latest single, the woozy and wistful “Fiction” continues a run of ethereal and slickly produced indie electro pop centered around glistening and oscillating synths and skittering beats paired with Grabb’s plaintive vocals and a razor sharp, infectious hook — and in a way brings Seoul‘s I Became A Shade, Beacon and others to mind.

But as the Los Angeles-based duo explain in press notes, “Fiction” . . .”is a song about the narratives we create while dealing with loss, broken relationships and heartbreak. Ruminating over what could have been done differently, and how if only I had say “this or that” the heartbreak could have been avoided.

“‘Fiction’ is an indie-dance track with a blend or vintage/retro and modern production. Soaked in lush analog synth pads and ethereal sound design textures, ‘Fiction’ takes you on a journey through your fictional dreams and justifications.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: LEVITATION Sessions: Mint Field Performs “Contingencia” at Centro Cultural Otomí

Initially founded in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, by founding members Estrella del Sol Sanchez and Amor Amezcua, the Mexican shoegazer outfit  Mint Field exploded into the international shoegaze and psych rock scenes with their debut EP Primeras Salidas.

The Mexican shoegazers supported Primeras Salidas with stops at Coachella and SXSW and others across the North American festival circuit, as well as venues across their native Mexico and the states. Building upon a rapidly growing international profile, their full-length debut, 2018’s Pasar De Las Luces found the then-duo imbuing material drawing from dream pop, krautrock, stoner rock and shoegaze with sorrow and nostalgia.

The two year period after Pasar de Las Luces were extremely eventful: Mint Field toured extensively across North America, Mexico and the European Union, playing over 100 shows to support their debut. 2019 saw the release of the Mientras Esperas EP, which they supported with further touring across the States, Canada and Mexico — with two sold-out shows in Mexico City .

During that period, the band relocated to Mexico City. And upon relocating to the Mexican capital, the band went through a massive lineup change: Amor Amezcua left the band. But the band then expanded into a trio with the addition of Sebastian Neyra and Ulrika Spacek’s Callum Brown. They then signed to  Los Angeles-based post punk label Felte Records, who released their last full-length effort, 2020’s Syd Kemp-produced Sentimiento Mundial.

Recorded at  London-based Wilton Way Studio, the band’s third album saw the band’s sound shifting towards decidedly minimal, rhythmically focused approach. “Contingencia,” the album’s second single features a a propulsive and relentless motorik groove, shimmering guitars and del Sol Sanchez’s ethereal cooing to create a trance-inducing song that gently rises upward with an achingly plaintive yearning.

The trio filmed a LEVITATION Sessions at Centro Cultural Otomí, a monumental cultural complex in Temoaya, Mexico. It’s a gorgeous and fitting location for their sprawling, cosmic take on shoegaze and dream pop. And it may arguably be the most beautiful setting for a LEVITATION Session to date.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Tempers Share a Hallucinogenic Visual for Dreamy “Sightseeing”

New York-based synth duo Tempers — Jasmine Golestaneh (vocals) and Eddie Cooper (production) — have diligently carved out their own niche within dark indie, electronica and synth pop circles since their formation. After a series of digital singles released back in 2013, the New York duo began to solidify their sound and approach, a sleek, brooding, nocturnal take on synth pop and dark wave.

The duo’s self-produced album New Meaning is slated for an April 1, 2022 release through Dais Records. As the duo explain, the album is about navigating the unknown, coping mechanisms and exploring the nature of choice. The album’s ten songs reflect on the creation of meaning as a way to access liberation in times of transition and loss while speculating on the transformative potential that exists alongside the grief of living in a world that is an ongoing state of crisis. Much like their previously released material, New Meaning continues a run of nocturnal music, that’s introspective yet quietly intense. 

So far, I’ve written about two of New Meaning‘s previous released singles:

  • “Unfamiliar,” a song that sounded indebted to 80s New Wave while evoking our current moment — living in a world that’s gone even madder and more uncertain than ever before. 
  • “Nightwalking,” a brooding, hook-driven song centered around icy synth arpeggios, thumping beats, a relentless motorik groove and Golestaneh’s achingly plaintive vocals floating off into the ether. The song manages to evoke late nights wandering around with your thoughts as your only company. 

“Sightseeing,” New Meaning‘s latest single is centered around glistening synth arpeggios, thumping kick and Golestaneh’s achingly plaintive and ethereal vocals. And much like its immediate predecessor, the Soft Metals-like “Sightseeing” evokes nocturnal stills through sleeping cities with your own thoughts and regrets, in that liminal space between dreaming and being alert.

“‘Sightseeing’ looks at the thrill and struggle of urban life,” Tempers’ Jamine Golestaneh explains in press notes. “It’s a song about finding meaning by constantly dissolving, renewing, and redefining oneself, amidst the machinery of the city. The video explores how psychic traces left by memory can transform architecture, and animate parallel worlds. It’s also a continuation of an ongoing theme in our work, investigating the relationship between public and private space.”

The accompanying video by Los Angeles-based Clayton McCracken features a hallucinogenic mix of touch designer programming, vintage video technology, 3D animation and live improvisation that focuses on a journey through a city at night. His work predominantly deals with the role of natural forces in virtual environments, utilizing lights, liquids, and vapors to explore themes of entropy and technological impermanence which thematically fit hand in hand with “Sightseeing”. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Yumi Zouma Share a Gorgeous and Trippy Visual for Bittersweet Yet Hopeful “Where The Light Used to Lay”

Acclaimed indie synth pop outfit and longtime JOVM mainstay outfit Yumi Zouma, which features members residing in New Zealand, the States and the UK signed to Polyvinyl Record Co back in 2020. That same year, the acclaimed act released their critically applauded, self-produced third album Truth or Consequences, an album that thematically focused on distant — both real and metaphorical; romantic and platonic heartbreak; disillusionment and feeling (and being) out of reach. 

For the overwhelming majority of the bands I’ve covered over the past 12 years, touring is often the most important — and necessary — part of the promotional campaign for an artist’s or band’s new release. Before they hit the road, that artist or band will figure out how to re-contextualize their new material and even previously released material for a live setting, imagining how a crowd will react to what — and how — they’ll play the material in a live a set. Like all of the acts across the world, who were touring — or were about to tour– as COVID-19 struck across the world, the members of Yumi Zouma were forced to end their tour, which included their first sold-out North American dates, and quickly head home, leaving scores of their most devoted fans without the opportunity to hear the new album in a live setting.

That October, the JOVM mainstays released Truth or Consequences (Alternate Versions), an album conceived as the band’s response to the lost opportunity to re-contextualize and explore the boundaries of the original album’s material through live engagement with fans. Last year, Yumi Zouma released two singles:

  • “Give It Hell,” a wistful and bittersweet song centered around a classic Yumi Zouma breezy arrangement. But underneath the aching melancholy is a subtle but necessary celebratory note, a reminder that we will find a way to survive and thrive in the most difficult and unusual circumstances — and as someone far wiser than I once sang “all things will pass.”
  • “Mona Lisa,” an expansive and breezy pop confection that’s one part New Order and one-part Bruce Springsteen that manages to convey a complicated, shifting emotional state, seemingly influenced and informed by our weird and uncertain moment.

Both of those tracks will appear on the band’s highly-anticipated fourth album, Present Tense. Dedicated to an embattled past, Present Tense is the JOVM mainstays’ offering to a tenuous future. With the members of the band forced to go their separate ways and return to their homes, Yumi Zouma found themselves in an unusual place: “It was disorientating,” the band’s Charlie Ryder says in press notes. ““We generally work at a quick clip and average about a record a year, but with no foreseeable plans, we lost our momentum.”

In response, the members of the band set to work, setting a September 1, 2021 deadline for the album to be finished, regardless of world events. What initially began in fits and starts became a committed practice again as the band worked on new material, digging through demos from as early as 2018 and making them relevant to that particular — and peculiar — moment in time. “Someone brings in a seed,” the band’s Josh Burgess says, “and through collaboration, it grows into a song that is vastly different from its original form.”

“The lyrics on these songs feel like premonitions, in some regards,” says Yumi Zouma’s Christie Simpson says. “So much has changed for us, both personally and as a band, that things I wrote because the words sounded good together now speak to me in ways I didn’t anticipate.”

The album’s material evolved through remote and in-person sessions in Wellington, New Zealand, Florence, Italy, Los Angeles, NYC and London with a broader sonic palette that includes pedal steel, piano, sax, woodwind and string played by friends around the globe. The complex scope of the recordings were then fine-tuned by an array of top mixes including Ash Workman, Kenny Gilmore, Jake Aron with mastering by Antoine Chabert.

“This is our fourth album, so we wanted to pivot slightly, create more extreme versions of songs,” Ryder says. “Working with other artists helped with that and took us far outside of our normal comfort zone.”

“Where The Light Used To Lay” Present Tense‘s latest single continues a run of lush yet bittersweet pop confections centered around Christie Simpson’s achingly tender vocals, shimmering guitars, glistening keys and the JOVM mainstays unerring knack for crafting an infectious hook. And much like its predecessors, “Where This Light Used To Lay” has a hopeful, adult perspective on heartbreak, one that seems to say that while you may be down in the dumps today, this too, like all other things, shall end. And you shall yet again find love in all of its complicated, conflicting, nonsensical glory in its due time.

“‘Where The Light Used To Lay’ eventually revealed itself as a bittersweet song about the agony of detangling your life as you break up and the enticing future, clarity, and lightness that the end of the tunnel can offer,” the band’s Josh Burgess explains. “When we first started writing the song in 2019, we were all in long-term relationships. By the time the final mix was completed in the Fall of 2021, only one of those remained (thanks COVID). It’s funny how songs can end up revealing themselves in surprising ways, even to their writers. It’s equal parts confronting and calming, knowing that the subconscious starts processing long before the conscious comes to it. Regardless, it’s nice to have a moment with a song where you go ‘damn, ain’t that the truth.’”

Directed by Alex Ross Perry, the accompanying video for “Where The Light Used To Lay” is the second of a trilogy series, and it features three women — Jessie Pinnick, Lily Sondik and Michaela Brown — trying to enter an apartment. When they do eventually enter, they all walk into a room with velvet curtains, palm fronds and a disco ball. They spend most of the time gently swaying and dancing to music. Each of the women seem locked into their own memories, as though they were dancing the heartache away. They try to leave the apartment only to discover that they’re locked in. And they seem to accept with it a fated shrug.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Los Angeles’ Faux Real Shares an Infectious, Over-The-Top Banger

Faux Real is an emerging, Los Angeles-based electro pop duo, who specialize in bringing a swaggering American edge to Europop aesthetics. Their latest single “The United Snakes of America,” Faux Real’s latest single is an infectious and raucous party banger centered around autotuned harmonies, shimmering synth arpeggios, slapping Bootsy Collins like bass lines and shout-along-with-your-pals choruses.

While seeming like a slick synthesis of LMFAO and La Femme — there’s a fucking banjo solo after all! — “The United Snakes of America” is a politically-charged celebration of the power of community that revels in its hilarious, ridiculously over-the-top nature.

The recently released video for “The United Snakes of America” fittingly features the duo vamping and bopping around various sights in Los Angeles in a souped up limo — and fittingly a shit ton of snakes, both real and fake. Because snakes and ‘Murica.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Collapsing Scenery Shares Woozy and Uneasy “You Already Know”

Collapsing Scenery — long-time friends, New York-based artist and musician Don De Vore (Ink & Dagger, Sick Feeling, Lilys, The Icarus Line and Amazing Baby) and Los Angeles-based artist and musician Reggie Debris — can trace their origins back several years back: De Vore and Debris initially began collaborating in programming events with the Lower East Side-base D’agostino and Fiore Gallery.

Their first collaboration was a video installation, which led to a month of music and visual programming called “Rebuild Babylon.” That turned into a traveling residency series, which led to the duo’s musical project Collapsing Scenery.

Through their multimedia-based work, De Vore and Debris have been passionate about challenging and subverting perceptions in both the worlds of outsider art and political protest — and embracing the joyous, carnivalesque aspects of both. A 2016 artistic residency in New York saw Collapsing Scenery create a psychedelic immersive art installation that incorporated projections, layers of colorful plexi-glass, a reading from Genesis P-Orridge and performances from De Vore and Debris. Meanwhile in a clash of the old and the new, the gallery upstairs hosted a Picasso exhibition.

As a musical outfit, the duo started back in 2013 “in a pall of paranoia and disgust.” De Vore and Debris put their guitars away and began acquiring and assembling as much analog electronic equipment as possible, including samplers, step sequencers, synths and drums machines, and plugged them into a variety of effects pedals.

Their initial writing and recording sessions were largely improvised and were accompanied by Ryan Raspys (drums). The material they wrote managed to express their rage and frustration at the stage of the world, while drawing from punk rock, industrial electronica and techno, hip-hop, free jazz, disco, folk and more. Since they started the music project, De Vore and Debris have been restlessly prolific while also collaborating with Ninjaman, Money Mark, and James Chance among others.

The duo’s recently released Acid Casual EP is the first batch of material released from many hours of recordings they made during the pandemic. And with Acid Casual, the members of Collapsing Scenery sees the pair pushing deeper into sonic and genre experiments while finding beauty — and even joy — hiding within the cracks of the existential dread we’ve all felt in the past couple of years.

“You Already Know,” Acid Casual‘s latest single is a woozy and uneasy song centered around glistening and blown out electronic percussion, a mournful horn sample, live drumming wobbling synth arpeggios, Debris’ dreamily plaintive vocals, a chanted hook and bursts of scorching guitar before gently fading out. Sonically, “You Already Know” seems to nod at Tour de France era Kraftwerk, psych pop, trip hop and psych rock in a seamless and mind-bending fashion.

Directed, shot and edited by Kansas Bowling, the video stars Floyd Cashio, Park Love Bowling, Lo Espinosa and Kathy Corpus in a surreal fever dream fueled by obsession, slow-burning dread, violence. The video features a cameo from the members of Collapsing Scenery as inept and goofy hotel bellboys.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Hannah Stone Shares Dreamy “It’s Raining”

Hannah Stone is a Cape May, NJ-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, who has written and recorded under a number of pseudonyms and with a number of different projects, included Painted Pale. Stone’s voice has appeared in countless TV and Netflix series that you love — or are currently watching, like Search Party, Never Have I Ever, Vanderpump Rules and Emily in Paris among a lengthy list of shows.

In May 2020, Stone stepped out from the pseudonyms and various projects and released material under her own name — her first two singles, “It’s Raining” and “Sleep Through The Summer.” The Cape May-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter then followed up with her debut EP God’s Against This.

Thematically, the material on God’s Against This touches upon love, loss and the thrill of being alive and living in the present. The EP was recently re-released and will serve as Stone’s re-introduction as a solo artist, ahead of the forthcoming EP, which is currently in the works. In the meantime, God’s Against This single “It’s Raining” is a slow-burning, David Lynchian-like single centered around shimmering and reverb-drenched guitar twang, gently padded drumming, twinkling bursts of keys paired with Stone’s sultry cooing. The end result is a song that brings Mazzy Star and Amsterdam‘s Donna Blue to mind — a mist covered, lingering, half-remembered dream of a lazy, rainy day with nothing in particular to do but daydream and think.

Shot and edited by Jayden Becker with visual effects by Becker, the recently released video for “It’s Raining” fittingly employs a hazy, dream-like logic: We see a flannel wearing Stone walking near a pool, before jumping in, a brewing pot of tea, Stone eating fruit and squeezing it in between her hands and psychedelic visual effects.