JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Susanna Hoffs’ 64th birthday.
Tag: singer/songwriter \
Live Footage: Claritzel Miyares and Adrian Ghiardo Team Up to Cover Bad Bunny’s “Amorfoda”
Claritzel Miyares is a Cuban-Spanish singer/songwriter, who first made waves with a 2012 appearance on La Voz (the Spanish version of The Voice), where she impressed the show’s judges with a unique blend of traditional Cuban music, Reggaeton and modern pop. Since her appearance on La Voz, the Cuban-Spanish artist has been busy: She has spent the past few years touring across the world, her native Spain and the Canary Islands with a 10-to-11 member backing band.
Last year, the Cuban-Spanish artist celebrated her tenth anniversary as a musician and performer with the release of two singles last year:
- “Te Equivocaste,” a single released to widespread acclaim.
- “Vive Y Deja Vivir,” which derives its title from a familiar phrase in Spanish and English — live and let live. The song, which features a highly accomplished cast of collaborators including her brother, Grammy Award– winning Carlos Miyares (sax), Alejandro Delgado (trumpet), Eduardo Sandoval (trombone) and Carlos Reyes Compota (percussion). Naturally, the song is rooted in a much-needed message of peace, respect and understanding. “It really is an honour for me to collaborate with such impressive award winning musicians. I feel we have formed a dream team for this single and have produced a masterpiece with this record. The message is very important too,” Claritizel Miyares said in press notes at the time. “Most Cuban songs are about love and relationships but this has a much wider meaning. I want to encourage people to ‘live and let live’ and stop fighting about things in the world.”
Miyares closed out last year with a piano-led cover of Bad Bunny‘s “Amorfado” with master pianist and producer Adrián Ghiardo that retains the swagger and heartache of the original but paired with an old school pop/jazz feel and the Cuban-Spanish artist’s incredibly expressive and soulful delivery. While further continuing upon her unique blend of Cuban traditional music, pop and Reggaeton, Miyares’ rendition of the Bad Bunny hit is a perfect vehicle to introduce her soulful and expressive vocal to North American audiences.
Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Sade!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Sade’s 64th birthday.
New Audio: SEMH Shares Sultry and Accessible “Please”
Susi Eva Maria Herzberger, best known as SEMH is a German singer/songwriter and pop artist, who crafts electro pop rooted in profound, earnest and lived-in emotions and experiences with the expressed purpose to move the listener to dance and to feel deeply.
Last year, the German artist released four singles, “Best of Me, “Shout It Out (SIO),” “Soul Stealer,” and “Mr. W,” all of which will appear on her self-titled full-length album slated for a March 3, 2023 release.
Herzberger artist starts the new year with her self-titled album’s fifth and latest single, “Please.” Centered around Giorgio Moroder-like synth oscillations and shimmering bursts of guitar paired with SEMH’s sultry delivery and an enormous hook, “Please” is a remarkably accessible pop song rooted in longing for a love that’s unspoken and/or possibly unrequited.
Directed by the German artist, the accompanying video seems to nod at Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle,” as it features SEMH in a sparse, yet well-lit loft studio space, brooding and dancing.
New Audio: N’Faly Kouyaté Returns with a Genre-Defying Banger
Throughout his lengthy career, Guinean-born, Belgian-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist N’Faly Kouyaté has had a long-held interest in bridging two distinct worlds: the ancient and the modern, and his native Africa with the West. Growing up Kouyaté received a rigorous and traditional Guinean musical education. When he relocated to Belgium, he received conservatory training.
Kouyaté has collaborated with an eclectic and diverse array of internationally acclaimed artists including Peter Gabriel, William Kentridge, Phil Manzanera, Ray Phiri and others. But he may be best known for his work with groundbreaking, genre-defying and Grammy Award-nominated act Afro Celt Sound System.
Kouyaté’s forthcoming album sees the acclaimed Guinean-born, Belgian-based artist developing a new genre, which he has dubbed Afrotonix, which mixes polyphony, electronic production and traditional African instruments like the kora, the balafon and regional percussion. Last year, Kouyaté shared the album’s first single, “Free Water,” a slick synthesis of tweeter and woofer rocking beats and traditional Guinean instrumentation paired with a guest spot from Tiken Jah Fakoly. “Free Water” is rooted in a vitally necessary message for all of us — water is life for all of us.
The acclaimed Guinean-born artist’s latest single “Khili Kané” pairs glistening synths, dancehall -like tweeter and woofer rattling thump and glistening bursts of kora paired with big hooks. “Khili Kané” continues Kouyaté’s long-held reputation for meshing elements of contemporary production with ancient African instrumentation and the acclaimed artist’s expressive delivery. Much like its predecessor, the new single is rooted in contemporary concerns, pointing out universal truths: the song is a deeply philosophical tale about ingratitude and denigration.
New Audio: Lazywax’s Disco-Tinged Remix of DFNSE’s “Getaway” feat. AKA Lui
Rising Paris-based electronic music producer DFNSE specializes in a sound and approach that meshes elements of French touch, funk and pop. Before releasing his debut EP, 2015’s Pandorium, an effort inspired by the SoundCloud Future House scene, he participated in a number of attention grabbing producer battles alongside emerging artists like BlackDoe, Ikaz Boi, and Varnish La Piscine.
Back in 2016, the rising Parisian producer released material through Darker Than Wax, Souletiquettte and Nowadays Records, who released a single on their Oceans compilation, as well as the Moonrock EP, which features one of his biggest songs to date, “Show You.”
Last September saw the release of his most recent EP, Symphony Road, an effort, that featured EP single “Getaway,”a breezy, 80s-inspired summertime bop featuring Australian vocalist AKA Lui’s plaintive falsetto paired with twinkling keys, a strutting bass line, some Nile Rodgers-inspired funk guitar, an irresistible, two-step inducing groove and an infectious hook. While “Getaway” is a club banger, the song is an escapist fantasy, evoking a summer full of seemingly carefree, warm days and nights, hanging out at the beach and rooftop bars and clubs — and of vacation to tropical climes.
After highly regarded remixes of L’Imperatice, Poolside, and Todd Edwards, Aussie electro pop duo Lazywax recently gave DFNSE’s “Getaway” feat. AKA Lui the remix treatment. The Lazywax remix retains AKA Lui’s plaintive vocal and pairs it with a disco-meets-French touch production centered around a funky bass line and glistening synths, turning the chilled out summery bop into a dance floor ready anthem.
Throwback: Happy 56th Birthday, Lisa Lisa!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Lisa Lisa’s 56th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 54th Birthday, Dave Grohl!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Dave Grohl’s 54th birthday.
California-based singer/songwriter and musician Brandon Hoogenboom is best known as the creative mastermind behind HOOGENBOOM. His full-length debut, Good For Nothing (A Spiraling Blackout Montage) is slated for a February 10, 2023 release through Rose Garden, a newly-formed Brooklyn-based artist management company and label, founded by Ethan Converse.
Good For Nothing (A Spiraling Blackout Montage) is reportedly a collection of bold, beatific melodies cut with Hoogenboom’s deeply-lived in, introspective songwriting. “A lot of emotion went into these songs,” the Californian singer/songwriter and musician says. “This is the first collection of recorded music that I’m really proud of, and it feels like it’s just the beginning—but every day I’m pushing myself and my art forward, too.” For Hoogenboom, the album represents a showcase for his talent for crafting songs featuring lush atmospherics and an irresistible tuneless that sounds and feels timeless and immediate. Interestingly, the album sees Hoogenboom reflecting on a dark period in his life that the album’s title gestures towards: “I had a tendency to take things too far in an attempt to cope with what felt like the breakup of a tight-knit family,” he explains. “A lot of this album is me taking the time to address my issues inside and outside of the band, and it’s taken a decade for me to really understand that period of my life and be able to move on. This is me learning how much I need to take the reins of my own life and my own story.”
The album’s latest single “Damn Good” today is a breezy yet deliberately crafted 70s AM radio rock-inspired jam centered around strummed acoustic guitar, fluttering synths, glistening strings and Fleetwood Mac-like multi-part harmonies are paired Hoogenboom’s deceptively easy-going yet plaintive delivery. But the song is rooted in a narrator, who has a newfound security and confidence in the face of criticism.“After spending most of my life feeling incredibly insecure, I finally found confidence in myself,” Hoogenboom says. “I let go of the pressure to conform to what I felt like the world was telling me to be and found the joy in embracing who I am.”
M. Byrd is a German-born and based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalists and producer, who can trace the origins of music career, and his passion for music to when he was three: A young Byrd used to play drums in front of the TV. Eventually, he found his dad’s guitar. Encouraged by a teacher, he picked up electric guitar and attended countless roots jam sessions at local joints. Influenced by Alice Coltrane, Tom Petty, Elliott Smith and David Lynch, Byrd began writing his own material.
The German-born and-based artist turned heads back in 2020 with the release of “Mountain” and “Morning Sun,” tracks that amassed millions of streams and praise from Ones to Watch, Earmilk, Atwood Magazine and several others while firmly cementing his sound and approach: Intensely personal songwriting paired with shoegazer-inspired textures and pop-leaning accessibility.
At the end of 2020, Byrd and producer Eugen Koop holed up in Detmold, Germany in a WWII-era British Corps squash hall-turned recording studio, where they worked on The Seed, the German artist’s forthcoming, full-length debut, an effort that sees Byrd personally playing guitar, synths and bass. The album’s material reportedly draws you in to inspire your own evolution. As Byrd says ““When you listen to the album, I hope you feel like you can grow with me. Maybe you’ll find confidence in yourself. We’re planting this thought with The Seed.
Late last year, I wrote about “Over You/Over Me,” a song centered around Byrd’s plaintive and balmy vocal floating over a textured, shoegazer-like soundscape paired with a motorik groove and enormous hooks. Much like his previously released work, the new single is rooted in a bright, hopeful sense of the future. “I dreamt there were snakes all over my apartment,” Byrd recalls. “A snake is a symbol for drastic change in your life and you’re repressing it. There’s a lot of change for me. I’m starting to be a full-time musician. There’s still a pandemic. I tried to dress up this darkness nicely. I talked to a friend who is into interpreting dreams, and she said that snakes in dreams meant that I was going through a profound change in my life. I remembered a quote I once read in an essay by Freud: ‘A dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the restraints of matter.”
The Seed‘s second and latest single, album title track The Seed is an anthemic bit of indie rock seemingly indebted to 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock centered around Byrd’s uncanny knack for crafting rousingly anthemic hooks with earnest, deeply personal songwriting paired with a lush, Toad the Wet Sprocket meets Starsailor-like arrangement.
“We realized then that nothing will ever be, no matter how far away you feel from something that’s happening in the world, independent from the suffering out there,” the German singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist explains. “It was a hard realization but we needed to figure out a way to deal with it. Listening to the whole album reminded me of holding a seed in my hands. It felt like the start of something and symbolized birth in times of chaos. The song and the album, we decided, had to be called nothing more and nothing less – The Seed.”
The Seed is slated a June 16, 2023 release through Nettwerk Music Group.
Lyric Video: Matt Corby Shares Strutting “Reelin'”
Matt Corby is a multi-award winning Australian singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer. Since the release of 2018’s J Award-winning album, Rainbow Valley, the acclaimed Aussie artist and producer has been busy: He launched his own independent label and loaned his production expertise to material by JOVM mainstay Genesis Owusu, Jack River, Great Gable, Bud Rokesky and most recently, his award-winning collaboration with Budjerah. And back in 2020 he released two standalone singles “If I Never Say A Word” and “Vitamin.”
Corby’s highly-anticipated third, full-length album Everything’s Fine is slated for a March 24, 2023 release through UK-based Communion Music.. Marking his first album in five years, Everything’s Fine vividly captures the personal and creative growth of the acclaimed Aussie artist and producer, who like many of us, had life tip him upside down and downside up.
On the day Corby was going to start recoding his new album, he and his family were rescued by a neighbor. Their home had been engulfed by floodwaters that raged through Queensland and New South Wales, Australia. After nervously watching his very pregnant partner and young son be whisked away in a small, inflatable dinghy, he got to work ferrying provisions to stranded neighbors and locals and digging rotting mud out from beneath his home.
With their home inundated by floodwater, the whole family was forced to move into Corby’s Rainbow Valley Studios, during the album’s recording process. Juggling familial responsibilities with his creative and professional pursuits was a one-of-kind pressure cooker circumstance that helped galvanize his artistic evolution.
Firmly fixed on seeing the best of things, Matt reveals “I’m at a really beautiful point in my life. I’m accepting all this stuff: the good and the bad, but particularly the bad. Which is kind of great. It’s a good thing to come to that point. Life isn’t always magical, but the moments that are, well you really value them. I think this record is about that, about managing your actual reality. Sometimes I have those moments when you realize: well I’m still breathing, you still have the gift of life, so everything is fine I guess?”
Within a week of the flood, Corby returned to the studio, and wound up writing and recording “Problems,” a funky R&B-inspired bop centered around a strutting bass line, twinkling keys and boom bap-like drumming paired with the Aussie artist’s plaintive crooning and his unerring knack for well-placed, razor sharp hooks. Sonically, “Problems” sounds indebted to D’Angelo and Mayer Hawthorne — but while rooted in personal, lived-in experience and astute observation of human behavior and character. The song’s message is a simple and profound one: While maybe your own world is on fire or about to sink under water, the most important thing is that you and your loved ones are alive — and mostly well.
“It’s about how funny humans are creating our own problems and issues that we then have to solve. Or creating problems so difficult we then can’t solve,” Corby says. “And how people talk so much shit and don’t do anything – how we’re setting ourselves up for failure. People want to point the finger but nobody wants to carry anything themselves.”
Everything Fine‘s second and latest single “Reelin'” is a strutting bop featuring light yet propulsive percussion, twinkling keys and warm horn bursts paired with Corby’s effortlessly soulful crooning. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Reelin'” is rooted in lived-in personal experience and astute observation. The new single sees Corby reflecting on the inherent push-and-pull dynamic of long-term romantic relationships. Throughout the song, the acclaimed Aussie artist makes the observation that the cornerstone of every successful committed relationship is communication, compromise — and a bit of forgiveness and healing, too.
New Audio: Lonnie Holley Teams Up with Michael Stipe on Atmospheric Meditation “Oh Me, Oh My”
Lonnie Holley is an acclaimed, Birmingham, AL-born and-based multi-disciplinary artist, art educator and musician. Holley has had a profoundly difficult life, which has been well-documented: He was taken away from his family as a child by a burlesque dancer, who ultimately left him in the care of the proprietors of a whiskey house on the state fairgrounds. He then lived in several foster homes, before spending time at the notorious juvenile facility the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children in Mount Meigs, where he suffered terrible abuse.
From the time he was a small boy — about five or so — Holley has managed to work a variety of jobs: He has picked up trash at drive-in movie theater, washed dishes, picked cotton, was a chef and was even a gravedigger.
Holley’s creative and artistic life began in earnest back in 1979: Heartbroken by the death of his sister’s two children, who tragically died in a house fire, he carved tombstones out of a soft sandstone-like byproduct of metal casting, which was discarded by a foundry near his sister’s house. He firmly believes that divine intervention led him to the material — and inspired his art.
He went on to make other carvings and began assembling them in his yard with various found objects. Locally, he began to occasionally be known as The Sand Man.
In 1981, Holley brought a few examples of his sandstone carvings to Birmingham Museum of Art director Richard Murray. Murray was so impressed that the museum displayed some of those pieces immediately.
Murray then introduced Holley to the organization of that year’s “More Than Land and Sky: Art from Appalachia” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.This led to the Birmingham-based multi-disciplinary artist’s work being acquired by several institutions including New York’s American Folk Art Museum, Atlanta’s High Museum of Art and others — and he has had his work displayed at The White House.
By the mid 1980s, Holley’s work had expanded to include paintings and recycled and found-object sculptures. His yard and the adjacent abandoned lots near his home became an immersive art environment, that was highly celebrated by the larger art world. Unfortunately, that art environment was frequently threatened by scrap metal scavengers. Tragically, his work was torn down as a result of the expansion of the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport.
Holley sued and eventually won a settlement in which the airport authority paid $165,700 to move his family and work to a larger property in Harpersville, AL. (It shouldn’t be surprising that the acclaimed artist is a primary subject of Unreformed, a new podcast from the folks at iHeartMedia.)
His first major retrospective Do We Think Too Much? I Don’t Think We Can Ever Stop” Lonnie Holley, A Twenty-Five Year Survey was organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art, and eventually travelled to the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK.
From 2003-2004, Holley created a sprawling, sculptural environment at the Birmingham Museum of Art’s lower sculpture garden as part of their “Perspective” series of site-specific installations. The creation of the installation was documented in Arthur Crenshaw’s film, The Sandman’s Garden and by photographer Alice Faye “Sister” Love.
He also installed sculptural work for the exhibition Groundstory: Tales from the shade of the South at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery, which ran from September 28, 2012 to November 17, 2012.
2012 was a very busy year for Holley: He also released his full-length debut album Just Before Music. He followed that up with 2013’s Keeping a Record of It. His third album, 2018’s MITH, which was released by Jagjaguwar Records, saw Holley cementing a sound and approach informed and inspired by the blues, soul, avant-garde jazz and spirituals.
Holley’s fourth album, the Jackknife Lee-produced Oh Me, Oh My is slated for a March 10, 2023 release through Jagjaguwar. Oh Me, Oh My reportedly is a sharpening and refinement of the work contained on MITH, Stirring in one moment and a balm the next, Oh Me, Oh My details histories both global and personal. The album features an acclaimed collection of collaborators including Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Otten, Moor Mother, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Rokia Koné, who serve as choirs of angels and co-pilots, assisting in giving Holley’s message flight, while reaffirming the man as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force.
Holley’s creative work is much more about our place in the cosmos, than the cosmos itself. It’s often about how we overcome adversity and bitter heartache and pain with our dignity intact; about how we develop and maintain an affection for our fellow spacetime travelers about how we need to stop wishing for some “beyond” and start caring for the one life and the one rock we have. Oh Me. Oh My sees the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. During each session Holley and Lee would discuss the essence of the song and distill the acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist’s word to their most immediate and earnest center. And as a result, the central message of his work may arguably be the most clear and concise on this album.
The album’s first single, album title track “Oh Me, Oh My” is a hauntingly gorgeous, spectral, piano-led meditation featuring Michael Stipe’s imitable plaintive wailing and Holley’s achingly soulful crooning. Sonically seeming to mesh elements of Brian Eno‘s ambient work and Gil Scott-Heron‘s Pieces of a Man and I’m New Here, “Oh Me, Oh My” deals with mutual human understanding with a earnest yet beguilingly Zen-like profundity.
“My art and my music are always closely tied to what is happening around me, and the last few years have given me a lot to thoughtsmith about,” Holley says. “When I listen back to these songs I can feel the times we were living through. I’m deeply appreciative of the collaborators, especially Jacknife, who helped the songs take shape and really inspired me to dig deeper within myself.”
New VIdeo: La Bronze Shares Sultry and Atmospheric “Viens”
Nadia Essadiqi is a Montreal-based, Moroccan-Canadian singer/songwriter, musician and actor. An as actor Essadiqi has appeared in the French language, Canadian series Trauma, season 3 of ICI Radio-Canada Télé’s Unité 9, the TOU.TV webs series Quart de vie, the short film Forêt Noire and the sci-fi project, Projet-M,
Essadiqi is best known as the acclaimed pop artist La Bronze. 2014’s self-titled, full-length debut received an Emerging Artist of the Year Award nomination at the 2015 Canadian Music Week Awards. Although she may be best known for singing lyrics in French, in 2016, he released a Maghrebi Arabic rendition of Stromae’s hit “Formidable,” which garnered quite of buzz across Canada and elsewhere. She followed that up in 2017 with the release of her sophomore album, Les corps infinis.
The Montreal-based artist’s third album Vis-moi was released by Montreal-based label Audiogram last March. The album’s latest single “Viens” is a slow-burning and atmospheric pop ballad centered around skittering beats and glistening synth stabs paired with Essadiqi’s ethereal cooing, a soaring choral-driven hook and a woozy bridge. The song thematically focuses on something many of us have experienced at some point — the attraction towards someone or something that isn’t necessarily right for us. And as a result, the song evokes an uneasy and irresistible push and pull, full of carnal longing.
Directed by Eli Jean Tahchi, the accompanying video for “Viens” was shot during a recent trip to the small town of Salé, Morocco. The video begins with the Moroccan-Canadian artist laying down near an open window, presumably attempting to stay cool on a blistering hot morning. We later see the Montreal-based artist in a white gown, running through the town and towards a cemetery. Eventually we see La Bronze at a cliff with the waves crashing below, followed by seeing her dance at the seashore with the sun setting. While surreal, the video also manages to capture the push, pull and collision within the song.
Throwback: Happy 52nd Birthday, Mary J. Blige!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Mary J. Blige’s 52nd birthday.
New Audio: Stockholm’s Me & Melancholy Shares a Brooding Banger
Peter Ehrling is a Stockholm-based electronic music producer, musician and creative mastermind behind the solo electro pop recording project Me & Melancholy. Inspired by Depeche Mode, New Order, Camouflage, and Swedish synth acts like The Mobile Homes and Elegant Machinery, Me & Melancholy focuses on melancholy synth pop that blends retro and contemporary sounds to create a nostalgically upbeat yet introspective vibe.
Since starting the project last year, Ehrling has been rather prolific: he has released three singles, an EP and his full-length debut, You and me, Melancholy.
“I let you down (Dark Version)” is a brooding bit of goth-meets-industrial synth pop centered around tweeter and woofer rattling thump, glistening synths and guitar paired with Ehrling’s plaintive delivery and enormous hooks. Sonically, the song brings Violator-era Depeche Mode while rooted in self-flagellation, disgust, despair and heartache.
Ehrling explains that “I let you down (Dark Version)” is a complete and thorough remake of the the original, which appears on You and me, Melancholy.