LOC SLEEPY is an emerging Nashville-based emcee. His latest track “John Wayne” pairs his dexterous and densely worded bars referencing random pop culture ephemera, including King Kong, Jersey Shore‘s GEICO, The Mighty Ducks, and John Wayne, and street shit with a menacing, yet hook-driven production featuring skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling trap triplets, eerily twinkling keys.
What caught my immediate attention was this: “John Wayne” is rooted in the energy of an emerging artist, who seems ready to take over the entire world, one emcee battle, one bar, one hook at a time if he had to.
Chicago-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Elijah Montez is the frontman and creative mastermind behind the rising psych pop project Daydream Review. After relocating from Austin to Chicago, Montez and Daydream Review began catching the attention of Chicago’s leading tastemakers and beyond with the release of 2020’s “Blossom” and 2021’s retro-tinged, self-titled debut EP.
Last summer, the Chicago-based artist released two tracks, an A-side “Sensory Deprivation” and a B-side “Dream Sequence #29,” as a palette cleanser to his Daydream Review self-titled debut EP — and a teaser of new material. That material quickly established Montez as one of Chicago’s most buzz-worthy new artists. Adding to a growing profile, he supported that material with a lot of time touring with a backing band featuring Kaitlyn Murphy (backing vocals and auxiliary percussion) and a rotating group of friends.
Slated for an April 7, 2023 release through Side Hustle Records, Daydream Review’s 13-song full-length debut Leisure reportedly sees Montez aiming to expand upon the layered sonic world he has created — and continuing to push the boundaries of modern psych pop with dynamic production and reflective, existential lyricism. “Leisure is about the ever-present tension between the desire for free time, for personal enjoyment and leisure, and the demands that capitalistic society places on those desires, and how it restricts the ability to enjoy that free time,” Montez explains. ” Your job and work, to me, seem to be consistent specters that haunt your ability to enjoy your free time, knowing that those demands are always awaiting you when your free time comes to an end.”
That uneasy balancing act between work and free time informed much of the album’s creation and its themes. “Leisure,” Montez adds “as a concept, became something almost otherworldly and that much more desirable, something you dream about when you have so much time funneled into work, and the repetitive act of balancing those two ends up being something almost hypnotic, and I tried to channel all of that into the sonic qualities of the album.”
So far I’ve written about two singles:
“Have You Found What You’re Looking For,” a mellow slow-burn centered around painterly, shogeazer-inspired textures created by glistening, delay and reverb pedaled guitars, fluttering synth arpeggios and paired with a trippy groove and Montez’s ethereal delivery. The song sees its narrator asking himself — and in turn, his listener — if they’ve actually found what they’ve been looking for, with the tacit understanding that they may never actually find it anyway.
“No Eternity,” another slow-burn centered around lush, glistening and wobbling synth arpeggios, a mix of blown-out beats and live drumming paired with Montez’s plaintive cooing and his penchant for well-placed, razor-sharp hooks. While sonically, “No Eternity” brings Currents-era Tame Impala to mind, Montez explains that lyrically, the song is inspired and informed by current events: “Lyrically, it may be the closest to a song specifically about COVID–not the pandemic itself, but between the BLM protests in Summer 2020 and this change a lot of people have had to the nature of work, I had a hard time thinking of how things would look on the other side of it, and trying to make sense of the future when the only context you have is the past,” Montez says.
Leisure‘s third and latest single, album title track “Leisure” continues a remarkable run of slow-burning material but this time, rooted in a Quiet Storm-meets-Tame Impala-like groove paired with twinkling keys and Montez’s breathy falsetto cooing. But despite the late night-like groove, the song evokes — and expresses — a world-weary exhaustion and frustration that feels all too familiar.
“This song is about the absolute compression of your soul and destruction of your time that work culture and capitalism has made commonplace. There’s an uncertainty that it creates in terms of how you view your life, and how you’ll look back on it, how you can take care of yourself and your loved ones.” “Sonically,” he continues, “it has elements of psychedelic soul, so there’s a groove in it, but I think the arrangement communicates the exhaustion that’s baked into the lyrics.”
Texas-born singer/songwriter and musician Katy Rea left Texas 12 years ago for the promise and opportunity of New York. Rea auditioned for several television parts and stage plays, occasionally earning a role in someone else’s story, basking momentarily in the flickering glow of rare, unsteady and infrequent success. However, songwriting was her true love and solace, and for her, the only way she could reliably self-soothe.
For years, she floated around the city as if in a daze and found herself drawn to those, who couldn’t love well. After closing bar shifts, she’d return home to write and strum along to the voices and sirens outside, often lulling herself to sleep.
One day during a rehearsal, Rea’s drummer and friend Joshua Jaeger, audibly observed that she’d be happier without her habits, but warned that it would take courage to overcome them. She knew in her heart that Jaeger had been right, so two weeks before recording her full-length debut The Urge That SavesYou, Rea quit drinking.
Slated for a November 11, 2022 release, The Urge That Saves You was recorded at Figure 8 Recording entirely live, including main vocals, all in one go. It was during the album’s recording sessions that Rea realized, for the first time with complete certainty that making music was exactly what she needed — and should — be doing.
Sonically, the album is reportedly hook-driven empath rock that splits off into cinematic, dark psychedelia in a seamless and effortless fashion. Her backing band, which features members, who have played with Angel Olsen, Fleet Foxes, Widowspeak and a lengthy list of others play with a touching restraint and makes for a collection of Rea calls “premonitions, prayer and warnings.”
The album’s songs reflect Rea’s life journey in a way that’s not exactly autobiographical and isn’t always obvious. As a songwriter, Rea prefers to use characters and metaphors in her stories. But they’re rooted in a gritty, psychological realism that feels novelistic.
During quarantine, the Texas-born, New York-based artist took it upon herself to learn how to engineer and mix her own album after an inspiring phone call with musician and producer Sam Evian, who urged to make the work her own in every way that she could. She spent countless hours at Phil Weinrobe’s Rivington 66 overdubbing and mixing. Learning to mix wasn’t without difficulty. At times, Rea felt like she was learning a different language. Luckily, she had engineers like Spencer Murphy, Andrew Forman and others around to answer questions and help along the way.
The post-production process was just as rewarding as the recording sessions because Rea succeeded in making the album sound exactly how she wanted it to, while also proving to herself that she was more than capable of taking the reins. So it’s understandable that Rea celebrates the album’s completion with a well-earned pride. She’s also inspired to continue engineering and producing future albums on her own.
Earlier this month, I wrote about “Lord Try,” a song that evokes the seemingly inescapable and lingering ghosts of regrets, old selves, bad memories of bad people and bad places, centered around a lush and expansive arrangement and Rea’s gorgeous vocal.
“Happiness,” The Urge That Saves You”s latest single is a shimmering and seamless synthesis of elements of classic Nashville country, troubadour pop, and shoegazer textures paired with Rea’s gorgeous vocal, expressing aching yearning. The song is an urgent plea for a rare, hard-won inner peace and security; the sort that comes as a result of digging out of old habits, bad thinking, trauma and your own bullshit.
“When I was writing ‘Happiness’ I was looking for a kind home within myself. I was one of these people who gave tender guidance to friends but couldn’t follow my own advice,” Rea explains. “I had the idea that living as a songwriter was inherently chaotic, a constant battle with sadness, and mysterious rendezvous. I realized this mindset was built on fear and false heroes; you can only read so much Rimbaud before thinking maybe there’s a healthier way. I realized finding self respect had to do with taking actions that really reflected my values. I began to reroute, to organize, and finally made a plan to record. Getting the songs out of my room was the thing that saved me. Making The Urge that Saves You gave me personal agency and a peace that I had never known. It taught me that my fear of not being good enough really didn’t matter; I’d survive it through doing, through making, through collaborating and slowly the fear would quiet to almost nothing. When I listen to ‘Happiness’ I can hear her digging out of an old and cruel system of belief. ‘If you could know war may be coming from the inside, if you could know love may be hollowed out before her, before him.’ This song is about taking responsibility. And In a way it was a kind of premonition, the message came before I knew what I needed to be happy but now it is very clear.”
Deriving its name from the Spanish word for “kite,” JOVM mainstay Nick Hakim‘s fourth album Cometa was recorded between studios and domestic spaces throughout Texas, North Carolina, California and New York. Featuring contributions from Alex G. (piano) and Abe Rounds (drums), and collaborations with DJ Dahi, Helado Negro and Arto Lindsay, the 10-song album is a collection of romantic songs written through different lenses, guided by Hakim’s experience of falling in love that made him feel like he was floating.
That dizzying, out-of-body sensation is the central theme that anchors the album’s material, with Hakim using the extreme distance between a kite and a comet as a metaphor for the depth of one’s love for someone else — and being humbled by it. “The key is to find that extremity of love for yourself,” Hakim says in press notes. “It’s about growing into someone you want to be; it’s about finding pure love within yourself when the world around us seems to be crumbling.”
For Hakim, the purpose of Cometa is less about constructing a narrative around romance and more about exploration through 10 complex compositions woven with aching metaphors throughout. Of course, while for Hakim there are special memories attached to each song, he prefers to leave them open to interpretation, offering the listener a comfortable space to develop their own connections to the material. “I think it’s nice to have love in your life and to have people that are sharing and wanting that,” Hakim explains. “It’s my interpretation of a really romantic way to express love in my own way.”
So far I’ve written about two of Cometa‘s single:
Centered around a sparse and unfussy arrangement of strummed guitar, bursts of twinkling keys, atmospheric synths and cymbal-driven percussion paired with Hakim’s breathily cooed delivery, “Happen,” sees the JOVM mainstay subtly pushing his sound and approach in a new direction while still maintaining the dreamy and earnest essence at the core of his work. But ultimately, the song evokes the sensation of weightlessness — and then gently floating away beyond your control.
“Vertigo,” a woozy song centered around a dusty, analog-like production featuring an arraignment of strummed guitar, skittering boom bap and layers of whirring synths paired with Hakim’s achingly tender vocals. The song depicts the dizzying sensation of trying to stay focused on someone when it feels like the world around you in spinning out of control.
Cometa‘s third and latest single, the DJ Dahi co-produced “M1” is centered around a breezy arrangement consisting of a skittering beat loop, choir-like synth stabs paired with wobbling low-end. The arrangement serves as a silky and ethereal bed for Hakim’s achingly plaintive and soulful falsetto. Interestingly “M1” is an easy-going laid back bop that captures Hakim having fun — while capturing the sweet, swooning ache of love.
“I’ll never forget when Nick was opening up sessions he had previously been creating for the album and ‘M1’ was just a DJ Dahi drum loop, a choir synth take plus a sub bass sound with minimal editing,” producer Andrew Sarlo recalls. “It was an immediate head turner and we knew we had to mine it. Later that night Nick delivered an insane scratch vocal take that still gives me chills just recalling the first moment I heard him ascend melodically during the chorus refrain. We tend to have one song during the final stages of the album process that is a hard one to crack and the adrenaline rush of finishing ‘M1’ in time was very gratifying. It’s definitely solidified as one of my favorite Nick songs”
Cometa is slated for an October 21, 2022 release through ATO Records.
Hakim has three album release shows in NYC (TV Eye), Los Angeles, and London to celebrate the album — and those three shows sold-out immediately. He also announced a headline North American tour throughout January and February 2023, and a headline European tour in March.
The Winter North American tour features a January 21, 2022 stop at Brooklyn Steel. Tickets for all the dates go on sale Friday at 10:00am local time.
Live Dates
Album release shows
10/20 – Nick Hakim presents COMETA – New York, NY @ TV Eye (SOLD OUT)
10/24 – Nick Hakim presents COMETA – Los Angeles, CA @ Zebulon (SOLD OUT)
10/27 – Nick Hakim presents COMETA – London, England @ Avalon Café (SOLD OUT)
Originally founded in beautiful Amsterdam, the rising indie duo Donna Blue — romantic couple and muses, Danique van Kesteren and Bart van Dalen — quickly established a dreamy and cinematic sound seemingly influenced by Phil Spector, Wall of Sound-like pop, Pasty Cline, yè yè and David Lynch‘s Twin Peaks with the release of 2017’s self-titled debut, which featured “Sunset Blvd,” a track that received airplay on Elton John’s Apple Music radio show Rocket Hour.
Back in 2020, Dutch indie label, Snowstar Records, released the duo’s self-produced and self-recorded five-song EP Inbetween saw the duo continuing upon the sound that quickly won them attention nationally and internationally — while also drawing from Roy Orbison, Julee Cruise, Nancy Sinatra, Patsy Cline. The end result was an effort that evokes late nights wandering narrow European streets, daydreaming in smokey cafes, sitting in bars reflecting on your life while nursing a drink. Personally, the EP’s material immediately brings back very specific memories: walking through Amsterdam’s Centrum and Red Light Districts late at night, the prostitutes summoning men with a wink and a wry smile, and passing drunk revelers on the street; and walking through Frankfurt-am-Main’s Haupwatche and Romer Districts with the surreal and lonely ache of being a foreigner.
Donna Blue’s highly-anticipated full-lengths but Dark Roses is slated for a May 13, 2022 release through Snowstar Records. The album is reportedly features 11 dreamy and cinematic tracks that feel like a film score for a romantic, film noir. While playing with the feeling of being alive, yet in a carefully sculpted parallel world, the album’s material finds the duo taking on a decidedly twangy Western sound inspired by Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni and John Barry paired with dreamily sensual vocals.
Dark Roses‘ fourth and latest single “The Beginning” is a slow-burning, lush, and cinematic track centered around shimmering and twangy guitars, soaring keys, propulsive, hi-hat driven rhythms paired with van Kesteren’s aching vocal. Fittingly, “The Beginning” sounds as though it should be part of the opening credits of a gorgeously shot and surreal film set in the Amsterdam or Berlin suburbs that’s one part social commentary, one part Romantic mediation, one part love story and one part psychedelic freak out.
The project can trace their origins back to the early 2000s: Mago and TWR72 met while DJ’ing Dutch underground electro parties. That raw and energetic scene saw the pari playing a mixture of electro pop, French house, fidget and techno. As the years passed by, they individually developed their own unique sounds — but they realized that they had long held a similar dream: to start a live act inspired by the bands they grew up with, as well as the likes of Miike Snow, Foals, Editors, Van She, and Goose.
Mike Rogers was a way for the pair to challenge themselves creatively and professionally — and to further develop themselves as producers and DJs. The duo recruited Kita Menari’s Micha de Jonge to his big, plaintive vocals to their hook-driven, crowd-pleasing sound.
Their full-length debut, which is slated for an early 2023 release will see reportedly see the trio crafting material that’s a mix of analog, digital and retro sounds with a modern feel. But in the meantime . . . The Dutch trio’s latest single “Can’t Stop” is an anthemic bit of post punk/dance punk centered around angular guitar attack, de Jonge’s achingly plaintive vocals and a motorik-like groove paired with enormous, euphoric hooks. While to my ears recalling the likes of Radio 4,Interpol, and Editors, “Can’t Stop” as the trio explains is about a lonely man, who looks back at his life: As a young man, he tries to do everything right, but always feels as though he is failing since people don’t seem to understand him. Battling a personal struggle with his past, the lonely man protests against this feeling, with the hopes that he can get rid of those negative thoughts.
Written last year, the trio explain, “In our minds that year was a year where we had a lot of questions. Like, what is freedom, what should one fight for, how should one fight for something, how do we move forward as a society and also, how do we judge our past behaviour. We believe questions are the biggest inspirator. We’re trying to ask questions more than to send a message, although that’s also a bit of a vision we want to share.”
Cloud Cukkoo is an emerging Dutch-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter and producer. According to the Dutch-born, Berlin-based artist, she “writes, produces and performs songs for blue-tinted nights. Nights of rained upon ashtrays and repressed melancholia; nights that are blinding, deafening and paralyzing; nights that are as comforting as they are disconcerting. It’s the cutting winter cold that feels like an embrace after spending hours in an overloaded club. . .”
The emerging Dutch-born, Berlin-based artist’s latest single, the slow-burning and moody “The Game” pairs Cloud Cukkoo’s soulful vocals, oscillating and atmospheric synths, fluttering electronics, strummed guitar and twinkling keys. While revealing a songwriter who can evoke a brooding, late night melancholy, “The Game” is an earnest, pop confection rooted in what feels like lived-in personal experience: The song’s narrator struggles with being tempted by lust and loneliness, knowing that she will probably get burned — badly.
Organic Mood is an emerging and mysterious Ukrainian electronic music producer. His latest single “Fields,” which features Alexander P. is a melodic deep house jam centered around glistening synth arpeggios, tribal beats and chopped up operatic vocals. The end result is a song that sounds both lounge and club friendly while nodding at slick synthesis of Between Two Selves era Octo Octa and Enya.
Filligar — Casey Gibson (piano, keys) and the Mathias Brothers: Johnny (guitar, vocals), Teddy (bass) and Pete (drums) — established a reputation during the early 00s and 10s for being remarkably prolific, releasing seven critically applauded albums between 2006 and 2015.
Nationally, Filligar has played sold-out shows at Los Angeles’ The Troubadour, Bowery Ballroom, DC’s Wolf Trap and Chicago’s Lincoln Hall — and they’ve opened for Counting Crows, Alabama Shakes and The Black Keys. And over the better part of the past decade, the US Department of State has designated the band as cultural ambassadors, sending them six times on tours to perform worldwide as emissaries of American arts and aspirations. And as a result of those tours, Filligar has built up an international profile, winning over fans across the States, Europe, Australia, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Asia.
The indie outfit’s recently released eighth album, the 11-song Future Self is the first batch of original material in seven years. The album’s material sees the band pairing the big sound that has won them fans nationally and internationally with lyrics that thematically explore life and love.
Future Self single “The Fire in the Sun” is centered around squiggling funk guitar, a sinuous bass line and shimmering synths paired with gospel-tinged call and response vocals and a handclap accented coda. And while being slickly produced, “The Fire in the Sun” manages to capture post-modern, existential ennui with an uncanny precision.
