Tag: New Audio

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Snowapple is an Amsterdam-based, multi-national, multi-ethnic and multidisciplinary ensemble that specializes in a unique sound that frequently combines diverse and eclectic musical influences, including pop, folk, opera and experimental cumbia among others. Visually, the ensemble uses theatrical elements, extravagant costumes paired with provocative thematic concerns to create epic live sets and videos.

The members of the Dutch ensemble have brought their unique and epic live show to the international festival circuit with sets at Eurosonic Nooderlsag, Cervantino, Ollin Kan, Oerol and Larmer Tree — and they’ve made appearances on a number of TV stations around the world, including Canal11, TV Azteca, and Canal22. Adding to a growing international profile, the act has also received airplay on BBC Radio multiple times.

Snowapple is currently working on their new festival set 4 Lunes, the follow-up to the act’s 2019 theater shows Mr. Moon and Project Lucy and to their political program La Llorona — Ser Mujer (The Weeping One — Being a Woman), which raises awareness of femicides in Mexico. But in the meantime, the act’s latest single, the David Ott-produced “Simple Things” is an adaptation of Armando Tejada Gomez‘s and Cesar Isella’s “Las Simples Coasas,” which has been performed by Chavela Vargas, Mercedes Sosa and countless others. Centered around a cinematic, genre-mashing arrangement that’s one part tango, one part chanson and one part Tropicalia, the Dutch act’s rendition evokes smoky cafes, narrow and foggy European streets and the work of David Lynch but imbued with an aching nostalgia. And as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the song takes on a heightened and deeper meaning: there’s a longing for the things, places and experiences we may never get back — with the acknowledgment that there are things we often say goodbye to way too quickly, not noticing how much they meant to us until they’re gone.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Kidsmoke · The Bluest You (Radio Edit)

Rapidly rising, Wrexham, Wales, UK-based indie act Kidsmoke — Lance Williams (vocals, guitar), James Stickels (bass, vocals), Sophie Ballamy (guitar, vocals) and Ash Turner (drums) — had a massive year last year that included playing at SXSW, among a series of other highlights. Continuing on the momentum of last year, the band recently signed to Libertino Records, who released the band’s latest single “The Bluest You.”

Centered around swirling layers of shimmering guitars, a propulsive rhythm section, a rousingly arena friendly hook and Williams’ plaintive falsetto, “The Bluest You” finds the band bridging elements of dream pop, shoegaze and Brit pop with ambitious songwriting and a self-assured delivery. But just under the gorgeously shimmering surface, the song is a somber meditation on how mental health issues can affect loved ones rooted in empathetic and novelistic observations. Originally inspired by Low and Heroes-era David Bowie, the track was intended to be an instrumental but after intense rehearsals and the addition of some Matt Berninger-influenced lyrics, the song eventually morphed into its current shape.

“This song is a live favourite of ours. It is a fly on the wall look into a household where one person’s depression is affecting everyone else who lives there,” the members of the Welsh band explain. “The song doesn’t address the feelings of the person suffering with depression, it is a sort of commentary from the viewpoint of the rest of the family.”

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

felte · Houses of Heaven – Dissolve The Floor

With the release of their debut EP Remnant, the Oakland-based electronic act, Houses of Heaven — Kevin Tecon, Adam Beck and Nick Ott — quickly established their sound: centered around layers of synths, guitar, electronic percussion and drums, the act meshes early industrial and techno rhythms with shoegaze melodicism and dub-influenced effects.

Building upon a growing profile, the Bay Area-based trio’s highly-anticipated full-length debut, the Matia Simovich-produced Silent Places is slated for a digital release through Felte Records on Friday and a vinyl release on May 22, 2020. The album’s material was written against the backdrop of the Northern California wildfires, expanding tent cities, the rampant greed and gentrification in San Francisco that has resulted in empty, luxury high-rises — and thematically, the album explores the intimate experiences that transpire within the chaotic and uncertain confines of everyday modern life.

“Dissolve The Floor,”Silent Places first single is the arguably the album’s most dance floor friendly song. Centered around a pulsing synth arpeggios, industrial clang and clatter, muscular techno beats, woozy tape delay, an enormous hook and  emotionally detached vocals, “Dissolve The Floor” recalls early Depeche Mode, Factory Floor and others — but with an underlying  and shadowy sense of menace and unease.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: New Orleans’ Video Age Releases an 80s Synth Pop-Inspired Banger

With the release of their first two albums, 2016’s full-length debut Living Alone and 2018’s sophomore album Pop Therapy, the New Orleans-based act Video Age — founding members Ross Farbe and Ray Micarelli, along with Nick Corson and Duncan Troast — received attention for crafting hook-driven material with a decidedly 80s synth pop-inspired sound. 

Following the release of Pop Therapy, the band’s songwriting partners and co-founders Farbe and Micarelli were eager to write new material and continue upon the momentum they had just started to build up. The quartet convened at Farbe’s home studio to begin to work on their highly-anticipated third full-length album, which will be released through Winspear, who recently signed the band. 

Video Age’s first single of 2020, “Shadow On The Wall” further establishes the band’s 80s synth pop-inspired sound as its centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, a sinuous bass line, vintage drum machine, some cowbell and an infectious hook. Sonically, the song reminds me of Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads and early Madonna with a subtle hint at 70s AM rock — and while dance floor friendly, the song manages to hint at something much darker under the surface. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: French Electronic Project VAPA teams up with VoxAxoV’s Charlotte Cegerra on a Sultry Club Banger

Formed in 2017, VAPA (an acronym for the French phrase Vous n’Avez Pas d’Avis, which translates into English as “You Have No Opinion”) is an emerging French electronic music collective that’s inspired by what the French journalist Jean-Yves Leloup has dubbed “conscious dance floor,” the project aims to bring people together through music but while addressing larger social issues, linking the hedonism and freedom of the party to the seriousness of our age — with a hint of optimism.  

The project’s sound draws influences from Thylacine, Jon Hopkins, Agoria, and Essaie Pas but paired with the voices of personalities, fellow musicians and journalists as a way to  to take an honest look at the world, to raise questions and our fears as a way to push the listener into action. “An introspective quest put into words and melodies!” VAPA’s mysterious creative mastermind says in press notes. 

VAPA’s latest single “Nuages Oranges” is an eerily atmospheric track and sensual track centered around shimmering and squiggling synth arpeggios, rapid-fire beats, a dance floor rocking hook and the dreamily sultry French vocals of VoxAxoV’s Charlotte Cegarra. And while sonically bearing a resemblance to Octo Octa’s Between Two Selves and From Here to Eternity and From Here to Eternity . . . And Back-era Giorgio Moroder, the track focuses on the climate crisis, exile, existential anguish in the face of the world that’s adrift — and then hope. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montreal’s KROY Releases a Slick and Darkly Seductive New Single

Camille Poliquin is a Montreal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music artist and producer who’s the creative mastermind behind the rising indie electro pop recording project KROY. Over the past couple of years, Poliquin has released material written and sung in both English and French, including her Max-Antoine Poulin-Gendron co-produced single “Chevy 85.”

Poliquin’s first KROY single of this year, “OPINEL” continues her ongoing collaboration with Poulin-Gendron, who returns to co-produce the new single. Centered around a lush, and hyper modern production consisting of twinkling keys, shimmering synth arpeggios, rumbling low end, stuttering beats, Poliquin’s plaintive vocals and an enormous bass drop, the track reveals intense contradictions rooted in heartache and bitterness with the song describing the push and pull of a dysfunctional and confusion relationship.

The track derives its name from a brand of pocket knives that Poliquin is fond of, Opinel, which can be used “for a lovely picnic in the park with Manchego and two-year-old Louis d’Or cheeses or as a murderous weapon of self-defence,” Poliquin says. “It’s a choice accessory for a Gemini, if you ask me.”

“This song came to me in a very strange moment, while I was in the process of recovering from depression,” Poliquin adds. “I was an emotional wreck, and I felt like I didn’t have control over anything. It was also the first time I felt like I was writing something from a place of pain. It’s my favourite sensation.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Surreal and Psychedelic Animated Visuals for Joe Wong’s “Dreams Wash Away”

Joe Wong is a Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, who has created the scores for acclaimed TV series like Master of None, Russian Doll, Ugly Delicious, Awkafina is Nora from Queens, and others — and for being host of The Trap Set podcast. Interestingly, Wong will be releasing his full-length debut Nite Creatures this year and the album’s first single is the Man Who Sold The World-era David Bowie-like “Dreams Wash Away.” Featuring an arrangement of shimmering, reverb-drenched guitars, soaring strings, thunderous drumming, a sinuous bass line, twinkling keys, Wong’s mellifluous baritone and an enormous hook, “Dreams Wash Away” is an ambitious and cinematic song centered around a hazily lysergic escapism and longing. 

The song is featured in the emotional season finale of Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward’s and comedian Duncan Trussel’s Netflix original series, The Midnight Gospel, during the episode’s most emotional and important scene: a heartbreaking and intimate conversation between Trussell and his mother Deneen Fendig, who was dying from metastatic breast cancer at the time of the recording. Trussell describes “Dreams Wash Away” as an atomic blast of mystical sonic light!” And in many ways, the song encapsulates the episodes overarching themes of ego death and coming to terms with mortality — of both yours and that of your loved ones. 

The themes of the episode managed resonate very deeply with Wong, whose father died as The Midnight Gospel began production. “This project came into my life at precisely the right time. A few days after our first meeting, Duncan called me to discuss music as I was unexpectedly driving to the airport to say goodbye to my dad. Later, I came to learn that our experiences and philosophies around death mirrored one another. Working with this extraordinary team and writing ‘Dreams Wash Away’ helped me work through the loss.” 

Directed by Titmouse, Inc. and edited by Megan Love, the recently released animated video for “Dreams Wash Away” is centered around themes of ego death, mortality, reincarnation, family and love within alien worlds that closely resemble ours. It’s surreal yet gorgeous and heartbreaking simultaneously. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Zoë Moss is an up-and-coming New York-based singer/songwriter and pop artist. Six weeks after she moved to New York, Moss got hit by a cab — and in many ways that was when her creative life truly began. The following years were a blur: partially as a result of the concussion she suffered when she got hit by that cab, and as a result of her involvement in New York’s music and art scenes.

Moss entered into a highly experimental period in which she found her sound and aesthetic transforming as she began meshing the production styles of hip-hop and pop with indie rock melodicism, eventually landing upon a sound that’s a seamless synthesis of grunge rock and electro pop. “New York City – more than anything – inspires the way I make music,” Moss says in press notes. “I love embracing the grittier sides of the city in my music. I feel like it parallels my personality. There’s a side to New York that is social and dynamic. But then there is an underbelly that will devour you if you’re not careful.”

Back in 2014, Moss attended the Clive Davis Institute and while there, she landed her first label placement, writing the folk pop tune “Sinner” for Andy Grammer. The following year, she was hospitalized for an Adderall overdose and was committed to a mental ward for several hours, swearing she didn’t do “it” — whatever “it” was. Since then, the New York-based singer/songwriter and pop artist has co-written, co-produced or lent her vocals for tracks for Grace VanderWaal, Brooks,Mothica, Jordyn Jones, Fly By Midnight and has participated in sessions with Larzz Principato, Ido Zmishlany,Andy Seltzer, Scott Harris, SoFly and Nius, Mike Campbell, The XI/The Eleven and Daytrip.

Moss is stepping out into the limelight as a solo artist  with the release of debut EP Stories through her own label She’s No Good. Thematically, the EP’s even songs give the listener an intimate look into the life of a 20 something musician and free-spirit. The soon-to-be released EP’s first single, “Operator” swaggering and self-assured track centered around a slick, club friendly production consisting of thumping beats, synth arpeggios, twinkling keys and an enormous hook.  But what makes the single interesting to me is how the song finds Moss boldly and unapologetically announcing — and asserting — her presence. Moss is here and she’s gearing up to kick ass and take names.

“The Operator is a song about confidence,” Moss explains. “Before writing Stories I was writing music for other artists in New York and Los Angeles. Very happily I may add. I’ve been fortunate enough to write across many genres with many different perspectives. But for the longest time, I was unconsciously searching for an artist to create this particular sound. It dawned on me finally, that I can be that artist. So I decided to find the confidence to be that artist myself.”

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Toronto’s Pantayo Releases a Cinematic and Modern Take on an Ancient Folk Sound

Pantayo is a rising, Toronto-based Filipino-Canadian quintet that aims to explore and expand upon what’s possible for contemporary kulintang music, a traditional and ancient folk music, centered around arrangements of percussive instruments, including gong, sarunay, gandingan, bendir, dabak and others by blending the atonal sounds of the instruments with electronic production in a way that nods at punk and R&B. 

The Filipino-Canadian quintet’s self-titled, full-length debut is slated for a May 8, 2020 release through Telephone Explosion Records was produced by Yamantaka//Sonic Titan’s Alaska B. Written and recorded between 2016-2019, the material is centered around discussions diasporic Filipino and queer identity. Each of the act’s five members have different experiences of settling in Canada — and naturally, that has filtered into their songwriting and art. “One way that we can make this world feel like home for folks like us is to mix the kulintang music that we learned with different sounds and song structures that feel familiar to us,” Pantayo’s co-founder Kat Estacio says in press notes. 

The album’s material is a sort of audio diary, revealing how the act has grown together as songwriters and performers during the period of time it was written. Much of their self-titled album can trace its origins to when the members began workshopping and performing traditional kulintang pieces while adapting kick drums and synths to the modal tuning of the gongs — and as a result, allowing the band to incorporate modern sounds and techniques. “If you listen to the recordings of our rehearsals and songwriting sessions, you can hear us deconstructing the kulintang parts section-by-section and practicing our songs in different styles,”the band’s Eirene Cloma (keys, vocals) explains. 

The self-titled album’s latest single is the atmospheric and cinematic “V V V (They Lie).” Centered around syrupy slow and droning synths, complex polyrhythm and plaintive vocals and harmonizing, the track — to my ears — reminds me quite a bit of early 80s Peter Gabriel and fellow Canadian electronic act Doomsquad while being an inventive way to bring the ancient into a modern day context. 

Interestingly, the track was written and put together one the course of a single day with the group finding inspiration, to an extent, in bubble tea. “The composition of the song was as a lot like a cup of bubble tea,” says the band. “We added 2 cups of blended percussion as the base, then some analog synth tapioca pearls to keep the texture interesting and fun, and finally topped it off with a few tablespoons of fresh tropical vocal fruits for some added sweetness.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Ninety’s Story · APO (Unplugged)

Tracing their origins back to when its members — Guillaume Adamo and Florian Deyz — met in grade school, the Nice, France-based indie pop duo Ninety’s Story have developed a warm, sophisticated and sensual music inspired by the French Riviera and the likes of Phoenix, Daft Punk and Air. The duo released their debut single “KIKUKYU” and their debut EP through Kitsuné Musique in 2017. The band has opened for Archive, Morcheeba, Pale Waves and Puggy among others.
Ninetys-Story-picture-0
Building upon a growing profile, the duo wrote the music for the new Citroën C4 Aircross TV commercial in China and represented the company at the Paris and Hangzhou Motor Shows. Interestingly, the duo’s latest single is an acoustic rendition of “APO.” Centered around twinkling keys, strummed guitars, an enormous hook and gorgeous melodies and harmonies, the track is a breezy and crafted bit of pop that’s anthemic and radio friendly.