Tag: SOFTSPOT Clearing

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Oakland-based dream pop trio There’s Talk — Olivia Lee, Kellen Balla and Young Lee — have developed and honed a sound that balances elements of experimental electro pop and reverb-drenched shoegaze in a way that has drawn comparisons to JOVM mainstays Beach House and M83.

Thematically, the tiro’s work draws from Olivia Lee’s Chinese heritage and queer identity, while specifically touching upon family, both biological and chosen — and divine coincidence. But interestingly enough, their sophomore EP, last year’s Great Falls focuses on mourning, grief, memories and longing inspired by the loss of someone very dear to the band’s frontperson. “Grief does not cease,” Olivia Lee writes on the band’s website, “It becomes a sort of friend to hold, and a reminder that we are alive to honor, to remember, to be present, to have a future and to live it as fully as you could ever dream.”

Great Falls‘ latest single “Ascension” is a hazy and slow-burning track centered around twinkling keys, shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars, Olivia Lee’s plaintive and ethereal vocals and a soaring hook. Bearing a resemblance to Bloom and Thank Your Lucky Stars/Depression Cherry-era Beach House and SoftSpot’s Clearing, “Ascension” feels like a half-remembered yet vivid dream fueled by longing and life’s sad lack of closure in anything.

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Elinor Sterner Bonander is a singer/songwriter, best known as the creative mastermind behind the rising experimental pop act Bonander. Along with a backing band that features Elias Ortiz (drums), Linnea Svedmyr (keys) and Olov Domeij (bass), Bonander crafts incredibly cinematic electronic pop, centered around jazz composition. Lyrically, her work thematically focuses on existential questions about the world, seen through a decidedly feminist lens.

“Backseat,” Bonander’s latest single is centered around shimmering analog synth arpeggios, soaring strings and Bonander’s ethereal and yearning vocals. Sonically BUT bringing Tales of Us-era Goldfrapp and Clearing-era SofSpot, the track sonically aims to evoke the daydreams and imagination of childhood –but while simultaneously evoking the somber gravity of adult life, as well as the uncertainty and fragility of our existence.

“This song is about growing up and the unwillingness to see the world as it is,” Bonander explains in press notes. “As a kid you would fall asleep in the backseat of your family’s car, with that comforting feeling. The night wasn’t scary, it was just…safe. Now, you have to walk home alone with the keys in your fist, looking over your shoulder.”

Bonander is currently working on her new album Things We Don’t Talk About, which tells the stories of women both from history and her personal life whose contributions have previously been overlooked.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: New York-based Artist Kinlaw Releases a Cinematic and Dramatic Visual for Slow-burning “Blindspot”

Kinlaw is a New York-based composer, choreographer, multimedia artist and singer/songwriter who is known locally for her solo work and multimedia productions that feature as many as two-hundred performers and contributions from Devonte Hynes (a.k.a Blood Orange), Caroline Polacheck, SOPHIE, Dan Deacon and others, as well as a number of renowned dancers and performance artists.

The New York-based artist’s full-length debut The Tipping Scale reportedly finds her showcasing her work in a new light. The album’s lyrically bridges the deeply personal with universal themes revealing a songwriter bravely exploring loss, regret, confusion, strength, identity and change. She explains that The Tipping Scale is an ideal metaphor for the record, the idea of an ever-present slipping in and out of change, and an acceptance of this kind of change.

The Tipping Scale finds her unifying her multidisciplinary practice. Writing with the goal for finding entry points for storytelling that felt honest and authentic to her practice, she often saw her music relating to motion. “I would start with a gesture and let it build into something until a memory attached itself to it,” the New York-based artist says. “The memory would become a story and the story would reveal itself as something important that needed to be expressed in this album.”

Sonically speaking, the album’s material features ornate flourishes, dance floor ruminations and slick production with a refined, compositional sensibility. The album’s first single “Blindspot” is a slow-burning, tense, and dramatic track centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, stuttering beats and Kinlaw’s ethereal crooning that reminds me of a atmospheric, synth-based take on Softspot’s dreamy Clearing — with a dark and brooding air.

Director by Kathleen Dycaico, the recently released cinematically shot video shows the adult Kinlaw in a futuristic enclosure, reckoning with her much younger self through an incredible series of dramatic choreographed moves — with the initial interaction being aggressive and forceful before going through a tender acceptance and acknowledgement between the adult and child.

“‘Blindspot’ is an excavation of the psychological mind that analyzes the link between our relationships with the people around us and our acceptance of self,” the New York-based artist explains in press notes. “I started doing a really cool therapy called EMDR while in process of developing this video with director Kathleen Dycaico and was able to recognize that the refusal to accept time, mainly myself during some of those times, was reflected in the way I was speaking about relationships. Our child selves are so brilliant — they are resilient, tricky, explosive, expressive. I needed to start off this album by giving a nod to the dynamic ways we perceive not only the people around us, but our integrated self.”


Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Acclaimed Singer Songwriter and Producer Yohuna Releases a Hazy and Gorgeous Meditation on Confusing Boundaries and Relationships

Johanne (Yo-HUN-ah) Swanson is a Eau Claire, WI-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer, who has been writing and releasing music since 2011 with her solo recording project Yohuna, including her full-length debut, 2016’s Patientness, an ode to patience, endurance, and duality.  Swanson’s long-awaited and forthcoming sophomore full-length, Mirroring is slated for a June 7, 2019 release through Orchid Tapes and Fear of Missing Out Records, and reportedly, the album thematically is a reflection on how relationships can distort and refract our sense of self, often creating confused boundaries that allow someone else’s life to become your own — and the difficulties of untangling yourself from all of that. Interestingly, the album’s material was primarily written on guitar and is centered around sweeping and mostly organic arrangements featuring cello, harp, trombone, drums, atmospheric synths and her ethereal vocals. 

The album’s latest single, album title track “Mirroring” is a slow-burning, atmospheric and almost shoegazer-like track built around shimmering guitars, a simple but propulsive backbeat, a languorous hook and Swanson’s ethereal vocals. And while sonically bearing a resemblance to SOFTSPOT’s gorgeous Clearing, the song’s narrator evokes a desperate cycle of being (and feeling) completely lost in a relationship — to the point that she’s forced to wonder if she can remember where she began and where the other ended. 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of “Superego,” which received nearly 3 million streams on Spotify, the Vienna, Austria-based indie electro pop duo Leyya, quickly emerged into both the national and international scenes. Adding to a growing profile, the duo comprised of Sophie Lindinger and Marco Kleebauer played sets across the European Union’s festival circuit. including The Great Escape, Liverpool Sound City, Tallinn Music Week, Primavera Sound, Reeperbahn Festival, Iceland Airwaves and a headlining set at Popfest. Along with that the duo have received airplay on Huw Stephens‘ and Phil Taggart‘s BBC Radio 1 shows and Lauren Laverne‘s BBC Radio 6 show, been playlisted on Germany’s Radio 1, as well as praise from Pigeons and Planes, Wonderland Magazine, Clash Magazine, Konbini, The 405 and Consequence of Sound among others.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past year or so, you’d know that the duo’s sophomore effort Sauna was released earlier this year, and from album single “Drumsolo,” the duo further cemented a growing reputation for crafting ambient and moody electro pop while expanding upon their sound with elements of hip-hop, R&B and jazz in a way that reminded me of Flourish//Perish-era BRAIDS and Clearing-era Softspot but with a coquettish and swaggering self-assuredness. Interestingly, “Wannabe,” is a standalone single, released as a follow up to their critically applauded sophomore effort and the track is a breezy and summery track that finds the duo’s sound nodding at JOVM mainstays Sylvan Esso, as Lindinger’s coquettish and ethereal vocals float over a slick production consisting of layers of stuttering and staccato beats, bubbling synths, gently swirling electronics and an anthemic hook. Lyrically, the song manages to walk a tightrope between spirited animation and deep introspection, which gives the danceable song a palpable yet subtle emotional heft.

As the duo says of the single, “After releasing our second album Sauna we tried to avoid the post-release-down with being creative and writing new music straight away. The song is circling around a problem almost everyone can relate to: Wanting to be like somebody else. Ironically – we find – its often also the other way around.“

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Gorgeously Expressive and Surreal Visuals for SOFTSPOT’s “Habits”

If you’ve been frequenting this site for the past few months you may recall that the Brooklyn-based indie rock act SOFTSPOT was initially founded in 2009 as a duo featuring its founding members Sarah Kinlaw and Bryan Keller, Jr. And other the past few years, the act has gradually evolved into a quartet featuring some of the NYC’s more accomplished and talented musicians, who have a history of collaborating with each other in a wild, almost unfettered creativity; in fact, as the story goes, Kinlaw and Keller, Jr. recruited long-time friends Blake Bateh, a member of JOVM mainstays Bambara (drums), who joined the band for the recording of MASS and Jonathan Campelo, a member of Pill (synths), who joined the band during the tour to support MASS.

Arrowhawk Records, the label home of Bambara, Cinemechanica and White Laces, released the band’s latest effort Clearing last week, and the album is the first recorded effort featuring the band’s current (and expanded) lineup — and interestingly, the album finds the band refining their sound and songwriting approach. Clearing’s first single “Abalone,” was a spectral yet tense single that featured a tightly syncopated rhythm section, shimmering guitar lines and twinkling synths and Kinlaw’s ethereal and expensive vocals. “Heat Seeker,” Clearing’s second single continues in a similar vein as it possesses an equally haunting and specetal quality while drawing from New Wave as the song features slashing guitar attack with propulsive metronomic-like drumming and Kinlaw’s vocals expressing the difficulties and frustrations in attaining true and lasting connections with others — while revealing a novelistic approach to its narrator psychological makeup. “Habits,” the album’s third and latest single is an atmospheric, slow-burning, and moody track that seems to draw from jazz, psych rock, indie rock, and pop while being roomy enough to allow Kinlaw’s expressive and ethereal vocals room to dance and roam through an equally gorgeous arrangement. And throughout, there’s a visceral ache as the song focuses on loss and memory — but with a dark, uneasy undercurrent.

Produced and filmed by New Media, Ltd, the gorgeously cinematic black and white video has Kinlaw, who interestingly enough is a choreographer, room to expressively dance in empty rooms and negative spaces. At points, her movements are edited like a stop-motion film, and it gives the video a surreal, dream-like logic before showing Kinlaw’s long and seemingly final descent into darkness.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Originally founded in 2009 as a duo by founding members Sarah Kinlaw and Bryan Keller, Jr., the Brooklyn-based indie rock act SOFTSPOT has gradually evolved into a quartet of friends and fellow musicians with a history of collaborating with each other and wild, almost unfettered creativity; in fact in 2012, Kinlaw and Keller recruited long-time friends and renowned musicians Blake Bateh, a member of JOVM mainstays Bambara (drums), who joined the band for the recording of MASS and Jonathan Campelo, a member of Pill (synths), who joined the band during the tour to support MASS.

Slated for an April 7, 2017 release through Arrowhawk Records, the label home of Bambara, Cinemechanica and White Laces, Clearing is the first recorded effort featuring the band’s current lineup and the album finds the band refining their sound and songwriting approach. Now, if you had been frequenting this site for a while, you may recall that I wrote about Clearing‘s first single “Abalone,” a spectral yet tense and urgent song that featured a tightly syncopated rhythm section, shimmering guitar lines and twinkling synths paired with Kinlaw’s gorgeous and ethereal vocals. The album’s second and latest single “Heat Seeker” continues in a similar vein as its predecessor but manages to sound as though it draws from New Wave, 80s synth pop and prog rock as the band pairs slashing guitar attack with propulsive metronomic-like drumming, Kinlaw’s plaintive and ethereal vocals, twisting, turning and shimmering synths and a soaring hook within a gently morphing song structure. And much like “Abalone,” Clearing‘s latest “Heat Seeker” possesses a hauntingly spectral quality but there’s an underlying tenseness at its core, stemming from the difficulties and frustrations in attaining true and lasting connection with others, while revealing a song with a novelistic approach to its narrator’s psychological makeup.

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Originally founded as duo by its founding members Sarah Kinlaw and Bryan Keller, Jr., SOFTSPOT has evolved over the years into a quartet of friends with a long history of collaboration and creativity. Blake Bateh (drums) was recruited to join the band during the writing and recording of last year’s MASS, while Jonathan Campolo (synths) was recruited to flesh out the band’s live sound during the tour to support MASS.

Clearing, the quartet’s forthcoming full-length album, slated for release later this year will mark the band’s first full-length effort as a quartet as the material reportedly focuses on themes of exposition and openness as a means for connection and progression.

As the band explains in press notes, the forthcoming album’s first single “Abalone” stems from a desire for solitude and stillness and a tension between that desire and the urge for outside connection — and as a result, the single is a tense yet spectral song comprised of persistent drumming paired with syncopated bass chords, shimmering guitar chords, twinkling synth chords reminiscent of The Buggles‘ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” swirling electronics and Kinlaw’s lilting and ethereal vocals floating over the tense instrumentation to craft a song that feels like a feverish dream before it dissipates like smoke into the ether.