Tag: Shanghai China

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Blue Foundation Shares Yearning “Close to the Knife”

Founded back in 2000 by Danish singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Tobias Wilner, Blue Foundation was inspired by The Fall’s Mark E. Smith‘s method of forming bands — with Wilner recruiting a rotation lineup of musicians over the years to fuel creativity. But since 2010, the core lineup has been Wilner and Bon Rande, working between Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Copenhagen.

Throughout the transatlantic project’s two-plus decade history, they’ve been renowned for crafting immersive soundscapes with emotive vocals and intricate production that draws from dream pop and electronic music that evokes melancholy and reflection while touching upon introspective themes.

The band has cemented their distinct sound through a series of critically applauded albums including 2007’s Life of a Ghost, 2012’s In My Mind I Am Free and 2016’s Blood Moon, while collaborating with an eclectic range of artists and producers, including Mew‘s Jonas Bjerre, Au Revoir Simone‘s Erika Spring, Findlay Brown, DJ Krush, Sara Savery and Wang Wen among a growing list of others.

Adding to a growing international profile, the band’s work has been featured in Michael Mann’s 2006 Miami Vice and The Vampire Diaries. The band’s “Eyes on Fire,” was included in the Twilight soundtrack. Additionally, their work has been sampled on Lil Durk‘s “Fly High,” feat., French Montana and Young Thug‘s “She Notice.” They also cowrote Machine Gun Kelly‘s “Taurus.”

“Close to the Knife” is the first single from the transatlantic outfit’s forthcoming album. Written by Wilner and Rande and performed by Helena Gao and Wilner, “Close to the Knife” is one-part Scott Walker-era orchestral psych pop, one-part dream pop anchored around a lush yet atmospheric arrangement featuring mellotron flute, soaring strings, strummed guitar and gentle bursts of feedback pared with yearning and dueling girl-boy vocals, which gives the song a fittingly old-timey feel.

The song tells a familiar and bittersweet tale of love and longing for a connection that for can never fully materialize and will always be a bit unrequited. For both narrators, their lover disappears as quickly as they appear, adding a subtle sense of frustration and heartache to the song.

Directed by the band’s Wilner with cinematougrahy by Hannah Bertram and Erma Feng, the video showcases parallel stories of yearning: We see Tobias Wilner wandering the quiet and desolate late night streets of New York City while Helena Gao explores the vibrant yet isolating alleys of Shanghai. The video emphasizes the ache and longing at the core of the song.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montreal’s Nahash Releases a Euphoric Tribal House-like New Single

Currently based in Montreal, Raphaël Valensi is a rather nomadic electronic music artist, keyboardist, vocalist, and producer, who can trace the origins of his music career back to 2012. That year, Valesni released an oddball beattape under the name Laura Ingalls and they joined the psych rock outfit Death To Ponies as a keyboardist and vocalist. Those early experiences inspired Valensi to experiment further outside the electronic dance music and DJ-focused music they had started to get known for.

Valensi’s latest project Nahash can trace its origins back to 2013. While residing in Shanghai, Valensi started the project as a way to chat the soundtrack for the end of the world. Interestingly, he had started to develop a reputation for being relentlessly experimental, eventually releasing metal-inspired electronic music through Huashan Records, the label home of some China’s freakiest drone and noise acts. Valensi also hosted the “Let’s get naked and listened to a bunch of drones” parties at Shanghai’s Shelter Club.

In 2017 Valensi relocated to Montreal, where he quickly became SVBKVLT’s main mixer and mastered. Valensi also simultaneously released a handful of collaborative tracks and remixes with Shanghai-based electronic artist Osheyack on a handful of labels, including Bedouin and CGI. Interestingly, last year Valensi’s Nahash project went through a radical reinvention that was first single on Valensi’s remix of Gooooose’s “Plasma Sunrise,” a dancehall and jungle house remix, which which featured tribal drums, warm percussion, harsh noise textures.

Last year, Valensi released his latest Nahash album, the critically applauded Flowers of the Revolution. Inspired by his reading and research into the role that the US played in installing dictators throughout much of Latin America. “The harsh and industrial sounds I used as a way to talk about what happens when the harsh reality of neo-liberalism takes over a country that could do very well without it,” Valensi explains. “I was reading and watching documentaries about Haiti and Cuba and trying to imagine what those countries would be without any western influence. The ‘flowers of the revolution’’ are the flowers that never grew, the fields that were burnt down, the plants that were trampled by boots.”

The album itself features seven original tracks, a a collaboration with frequent collaborator Osheyack, plus a handful of remixes from Elvin Brandhi featuring Duma’s Kanja, Gabber Modus Operandi and DJ Plead. Flowers of the Revolution’s latest single is the El Dusty-like “Sangre y poder.” Centered around thumping and stuttering beats, explosive blasts of airhorns, thick layers of arpeggiated and undulating synths, rousingly anthemic hooks and metallic clang and clatter, “Sangre y poder” is a slick mesh of jungle house, cumbia and industrial music that manages to be accessible and euphoric.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Girl Skin Releases a Moving and Mediative Ballad

A day after covering OctFest and I somehow feel almost every single second of my age. Everything hurts — and in completely different ways: my ankles and feet feel as though they’re on file while my left shoulder throbs and so on. But I had some fantastic international beers, ate a lot of good food, saw some great music, stood in the rain for hours on end and photographed a ton of stuff; so it was worth it in the end. But let’s get to business, eh? 

Led by singer/songwriter and creative mastermind Sid Simons, the Brooklyn-based collective Girl Skin features a rotating cast of collaborators that includes Bailey Blu (drums, piano, vocals), Sophie Cozine (vocals), Al Nardo (bass), Stan Simons (vocals) and Ruby Wang (violin), the act meshes elements of folk and art rock in what the band describes as “lemon pop” — with the material thematically and emotionally drawing from Simons’ personal experiences: Simons was born in Portland, spent his childhood in Australia and New York, his teens in Shanghai, China — and instead of finishing high school, he went on a rambling cross country road trip of the States. 

The band’s latest effort, LoveMore EP was released earlier this year, and it found Sid Simons and company collaborating with his lover and muse Foster James. Reportedly, the band is currently working on a full-length album that is tentatively slated for release early next year; but in the meantime, the band’s latest single “Bite Real Hard” is a moody and slow-burning ballad with a rousingly anthemic hook that recalls Psychic Ills and The Rolling Stones as it shifts from slow-burning ballad to power chord-fueled, arena rock ballad, complete with the bittersweet air that comes from lived-in experience. As Girl Skin’s Sid Simons explains. ” When I was 19, I skipped school and took my Chevy Astro van on a 22 State, 12,000 mile odyssey around the USA. While I was out there, meandering around the back roads of America, I learned my Uncle, who had given me my first lessons on the guitar, had become sick with cancer. There I was searching for stories, looking for songs and myself, and one came right up and found me. Bite Real Hard is my song of respect, hope and an offer of strength to one of the most important people in my life.”

Directed by  Idle House, the recently released video begins with Simons walking through marsh before he encounters his bandmates — with each bandmate handing Simons something: the first hands him a cowboy hat, the second a lit cigarette, the last member a handful of flower before walking together to the shore; but at the shore, the bandmates pick up their respective instruments while Simons continues to walk onward into the sea, where he casually drops the things his bandmates hand him. It’s a remarkably pensive and moody video that emphasizes the song’s moody vibe. 

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of multi-instrumentalist Yan Yulong, Liu XInyu (guitar), Wu Qiong (bass) and Li Zicaho, the Beijing, China-based experimental psych rock quartet Chui Wan, take their name from the Taoist philosopher Zhaungzi’s treatise on inner sageness […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of multi-instrumentalist Yan Yulong, Liu XInyu (guitar), Wu Qiong (bass) and Li Zicaho, the Beijing, China-based experimental psych rock quartet Chui Wan, take their name from the Taoist philosopher Zhaungzi’s treatise on inner sageness and […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Although I was only in Frankfurt am Main for a little over a week, I was reminded on countless occasions of how ubiquitous American culture really is. I had taken a metro from my hotel […]