Tag: post punk

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Italy’s Way To Blue Shares Broodingly Cinematic “For All The Times”

Vincenzo Del Corno is a Pavia, Italy-born singer/songwriter, musician and producer, who developed a passion for music and film at a young age. As a teenager, he began playing drums, later learning bass and guitar, His passion for film, led to him writing for various film magazines, and by 2004 he became editor of the quarterly publication Buioinsala. Back in 2011, he published Suspira, a monograph on Dario Argento’s 1977 film Suspira.

Between 2020 and 2021, Del Corno co-wrote “Lonely,” “Bones” and “Lullaby” for Italian singer Camilla Wells, all of which received positive responses both in their native Italy and elsewhere. Back in 2024, he founded Way To Blue, a tribute to the music and production of 80s post-punk and New Wave, informed by his love of 80s memorabilia, vinyl and VHS.

Del Corno’s first two singles 2024’s Marco Barusso-produced “Love Again” and “Life Is a Big Joke” were release to positive response, as well as airplay on local and national radio. Building upon a growing profile in Italy, Del Corno released “Voices of Darkness” earlier this year, which was quickly followed by his latest single the Marco Barusso-produced “For All The Times” is a broodingly cinematic bit of synth-driven post punk that channels Depeche Mode — but with a sleek, modern feel.

The accompanying video for “For All The Time” is a shot in a cinematic black and white and evokes the brooding Romanticism and yearning at the core of the song.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: George Aletras Shares Shimmering “Τώρα”

George Aletras is a Greek singer/songwriter and musician, whose work sees him moving between indie rock, post rock and cinematic soundscapes, frequently blurring the boundaries between them. At times, his work leans into experimental territories, not as a statement of style, but a a natural consequence of exploration, where form isn’t followed but discovered,

Aletras’ latest single “Τώρα” is a shimmering, hook-driven bit of 80s-inspired post punk and New Wave that’s cinematic while channeling Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen and contemporaries like PLOHO.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: La Sécurité Shares Punchy, Dance Punk Anthem “Deny”

Acclaimed Montréal-based JOVM mainstay collective La Sécurité — Éliane Viens (vocals, synths, percussion and drums), Félix Bélisle (bass, synths, percussion, piano and production), Kenny Smith (drum, guitar), Laurence Anne Charest-Gagné (guitar, percussion, vocals) and Melissa Di Menna (guitar, synths, vocals, percussion and artwork) — specialize in a brand of art punk that’s equal parts jumpy beats, off-kilter arrangements and minimalistic melodic hooks run through an insomniac filter that’s the result of excessive exposure to the city’s neon-lit late night scene. 

The Canadian art punk collective’s music is about living dangerously and is prefect for being blasted at deafening levels on dance floors. But lyrically, the material is deeply inspired by and shares the ethos of the Riot Grrl movement, celebrating and defiantly advocating for the autonomization of women, friendship and benevolence. 

Since the release of 2023’s full-length debut, Stay Safe!, which landed on the Polaris Music Prize long-list, the Montréal-based art punks have released 2024’s Stay Safe! REMIXED and last year’s “Detour” and “Ketchup.” Along with receiving critical praise both nationally and internationally, the outfit has made the run of the intentional festival circuit, playing sets at M for Montréal, New Colossus Festival, SXSW, End of the Road, The Great Escape, Reeperbahn and Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. They’ve toured as an opener for The Go! Team and The Rapture. And they’ve shared stages with Mauskovic Dance Band and JOVM mainstays Automatic and Death Valley Girls. During that whirlwind period, they also signed with Simon Raymonde‘s label Bella Union. 

The JOVM mainstay act’s highly-anticipated, Emmanuel Éthier and Félix Bélisle co-produced sophomore album Bingo! is slated for a June 12, 2026 release through Mothland in Canada and the States, and Bella Union for the rest of the world. The new album reportedly sees the band continuing to meander in and around the fringes of punk, new wave krautrock and dance punk, while mischievously flouting stylistic form every change they get. While continuing to implement polyrhythm, counterintuitive chord changes and subtle melodic and harmonic dissonance, the album reportedly sees them introducing more New Wave, no wave, noise rock and shoegaze elements to the sound that has won them intentional acclaim. 

The album’s material features songs that tackles knotty themes like mental health, the autonomization of women, dysfunctional relationships with their custom moxie. Other songs playfully muse about food or address everyday mundanity with sarcasm and irony. There’s a song that celebrates unsung heroes, like the elderly. Much like its predecessor, many of the album’s tracks saw the group improvising lyrics in the studio, effectively catching lightning in a bottle. 

The album was recorded with the band playing live off-the-floor, using rare ribbon microphones and vintage compressors. Adding to the overall free-flowing feel and vibe to the album’s material, many of the song’s hooks were improvised through jazz-tinged musical flights during recording sessions. The album was mixed by Bélisle and Étheir before being mastered by Robin Schmidt. 

The result is an album that harnesses the Montréal-based art punks’ natural sound, a sound that fuses calculated musical chaos and musicality with high decibels. 

Bingo! will feature the previously released “Detour” “Ketchup,” album title track “Bingo,” “Snack City,” and the album’s last pre-release single “Deny.” “Deny” is arguably Bingo!‘s most dance floor friendly song, anchored around a driving four-to-the-floor rhythm, funky polyrhythmic bass lines, slashing guitar volleys, squiggling synth blasts paired with the occasionally complex yet groovy drum fill paired with a punchy yet stern vocal exposing a noxious, dysfunctional relationship before bolting from it.

“Initially written in French and translated to English, the song deals with dysfunctional relationships and getting rid of burdens in your life. Standing up for yourself. This doesn’t work for me; I’m out,” the band explains. “The bass hook was stolen from Standard Emmanuel, Félix’s solo project…”

Directed by Béatrice Cuierrier-Legualt, the accompanying video showcases the uniqueness of each band member — with a playful nod at Tumblr and other digital creation methods. “I wanted to visually create tableaus for each character, based on different homogeneous æsthetics, centered around the concept of denial,” Cuierrier-Legault explains. “It was by delving into the band’s intimacy and consulting their personal archives that five characters were born, each representing a member and their unique traits. I wanted each character to embody elements from their real lives amidst the alter ego.Since La Sécurité is mainly composed of millennials, I wanted to highlight 90s and post-punk influences, but also the arrival of the internet and new digital creation methods.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 67th Birthday, Ian McCulloch!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Echo and the Bunnymen frontman and co-founder Ian McCulloch’s 67th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 48th Birthday, Paul Banks!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Interpol frontman Paul Banks’ 48th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Philly’s Sri Lanka Shares Brooding “Eventide”

Sri Lanka is a Philadelphia-based band that originally formed back in 1986. The band quickly established a sound that draws from goth and post-punk, as well as elements of alternative rock and psych rock. They saw extraordinary popularity in the Philadelphia and New York underground music scenes of the late 1980s and 1990s before going through a series of tumultuous lineup changes following the departure of founding member and the tragic death of frontman Brett Turner

Suffering from depression, Turner took his own life back in 1989, when he was 20. The band went on to try out several vocalists before landing on Jose Maldonado. And with Maldonado, the Philadelphia-based post punk outfit went on to record and release 1992’s Shadow and Ivy EP and 1993’s Here. Friction between band members Erb and Maldonado started early on and ultimately led to the band splitting down the middle shortly after the release of Here with Erb and Chairs going in one direction, Maldonado and Stein going in another. Rob Studt retired from music altogether.

Erb went on to rejoin his original founding partner Lee Daniels and formed the band [needle] in 1995.

Back in October 2020, the band announced the forthcoming release of Leviathan on their Facebook Fan page, after a 25 year hiatus. And that November, they released the album’s title track “Leviathan.” They also released two live recordings from Christmas 1998 at Philadelphia’s Club Memphis and February 1989 at Philadelphia’s Revival.

Late last year, the band shared “Solstice,” a driving with of goth-tinged post punk that seemingly channels Cocteau Twins and contemporaries like ACTORS, while showcasing the band’s ability to craft a driving and rousingly anthemic, catchy hook and chorus.

Leviathan‘s latest single “Eventide” continues a run of driving goth-leaning post punk — but unlike it’s immediate predecessor, there’s a more of a shoegaze element to the proceedings that adds to the song’s brooding, late night vibe.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Copenhagen’s Bending Backwards Shares Yearning “i See You From Here”

Copenhagen-based trio Bending Backwards — Frederik Blæsild Vuust (vocals), Halfdan Stefansson (guitar) and Johannes Østlund Jacobsen (drums) — specialize in a distinctly contemporary take on alternative rock that sees sees the trio moving fluidly between dream pop, shoegaze, grunge post-punk, noise rock and folk.

Thematically, the Danish trio’s work touches upon recurring and uneasy dichotomies: the longing for home and stability and the pull of the outside world, and intimacy and disorientation. Their work also touches on love, especially between siblings, as well as reflections on distance, memory and everyday tenderness. Lyrically, Blæslid Vuust’s lyrics draw on a wide range of literary influences and references, including biblical passages, the work of T.S. Eliot, László Kraszenahhorkai and more.

As part of Copenhagen’s experimental and alternative music scenes, a loosely connected network of band and artists including the Movement Shaped Like A Heart Collective.

The trio’s latest single “I See You From Here” is also the first single off their full-length debut still and quiet, brother, are you still and quiet. Sonically channelling a synthesis of brooding post punk, indie rock and folk featuring Blæsid Vuust’s achingly tender, vulnerable delivery ethereally floating over the arrangement, “I See You From Here” describes the push and pull of an new relationship between two dysfunctional, deeply human people,

Bending Backwards describes the song as beginning with “the image of an apartment in Berlin . . . and a large park just down the road,” where two figures are placed within the scene. What follows is loose yet recurring sequences of events: They meet. They sit in the apartment just down the road rom the park .They took a walk in the park, then separate and return. The song captures that seemingly endless push and pull.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 66th Birthday, Roger Taylor!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Duran Duran drummer Roger Taylor’s 66th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 69th Birthday, David J.!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Bauhaus bassist David J’s 69th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Genesis Owusu Shares Breakneck “LIFE KEEPS GOING”

Acclaimed multi-ARIA Award-winning Ghanian-born Canberra-based JOVM mainstay Genesis Owusu will be releasing his highly-anticipated third album REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE through OURNESS on May 15, 2026.

REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE reportedly sees one of Australia’s most celebrated and visionary contemporary artists construct an exposed state-of-the-day record that’s experimental yet cohesive, desolate yet ecstatic, unflinching yet free. Duality is at the core of an album that sees the JOVM mainstay layering musings on an unsettled world with piercing reflections of his, and our own places within the world. Rich in lyricism and earnest in its message, REDSTAR WU & THE WORLDWIDE SCOURGE is a resolute effort that confronts a divisive era in which humanity and its institutions seem to be ripping apart at the seams and heeds a desperate need for unity.

Sonically drawing from and meshing elements funk, neo-soul, Brit rock and alt pop the album’s overall sound feels both sprawling and deliberate.

“The world hasn’t ended yet,” Owusu. says. “We’re still moving, we’re still jumping, we’re still living, and so we shall continue. Through rain, shine, exploitation and warfare. We, the people, will always stubbornly persist, and hopefully persist hand in hand.”

“LIFE KEEPS GOING,” the album’s latest single is a gritty, club friendly tune anchored around a propulsive, drum ‘n’ bass-like production featuring rapid-fire skittering beats, thumping, organ rattling low end and atmospheric synths. The track’s production evokes seemingly unstoppable force and movement and over the breakneck instrumentation, Owusu muses on time and the motions of life, finding strength and inspiration in their relentless, disobedient nature. Birth, love, war, heartache, despair, time cycling forward and death will continue well after all of us — and in turn, all of this — will be gone.

Directed by Isaac Brown, the frenetic accompanying video for “LIFE KEEPS GOING” was shot in Accra‘s massive Black Star Square, which was built for their independence and is steeped in national unity. We see Owusu by himself dancing and rocking out in the square and in a gorgeous, dream-like sequence on the beach at sunset. And although Owusu is a larger-than-life figure, his smallness in the face of such immense settings, the sea rolling in and out, the sky above are all serve as reminders of the song’s central themes — and why we need more unity in our world.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 67th Birthday, Robert Smith!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates The Cure frontman Robert Smith’s 67th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Crá CroÍ Returns with Brooding “Flesh Machines”

Deriving their name from the Gaelic phrase for “heartache,” or “vexation of spirit,” County Cork-based duo Crá Croí — RG (songwriting, production, mixing and mastering) and CD (vocals and visuals) — have employed a fiercely DIY ethos while establishing a sound that meshes elements of 1980s New Wave, post-punk and goth, featuring melancholic synths, dark melodies, angular guitars and sharp, hook-driven vocals. 

The Irish duo’s work explores themes of nihilism, love and destruction, dystopian collapsed and nuclear annihilation, often wrapped in irony and paired with post-apocalyptic metaphors. 

The Cork-based duo’s self-produced, 12-song, full-length debut, Tá brón orm is slated for an October 30, 2026. The album’s title derives its title from the Irish phrase for “sadness” or “sorrow is on me.” The album will feature 12 completely new tracks, but to build up buzz for the band and the forthcoming album, the Irish JOVM mainstays have released a handful of standalone singles including “Radiation Romance,” “Fires At Dawn,” “Feeding The Fear,” and “Lost In The Electric Blood.” 

The duo’s latest single “Flesh Machines” continues a remarkable run of material that meshes elements of goth with Joy Division and Interpol-like post punk that showcases their ability to pair socially conscious lyrics with their unerring knack for razor sharp hooks and rousingly anthemic choruses. Thematically, the new single as the band explains, paints a picture of modern existence that invites the listener to reflect on their own relationship with the digital world.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 73rd Birthday, Peter Garrett!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett’s 73rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 68th Birthday, Will Sergeant!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant’s 68th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Simon Raymonde!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Simon Raymonde’s 64th birthday.