Tag: Stars

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares Deceptively Upbeat “Beaten to Write”

Electronic music outfit and JOVM mainstays Total Fucking Darkness features: 

Over the past year or so, the trio have released a handful of standalone singles, including four that I’ve written about, “Desolation Boys,” “Take It Easy,” “Give Me Everything You Own” and “Horizontal Rain.”  

The trio’s latest single, “Beaten to Write” is a world weary tune paired with a deceptively bright, playful and hook-driven production that seemingly channels mid 80s New Order. Anchored around a relentless motorik pulse, the song is perfectly designed for getting your energy up for another day of drudgery at a soul-sucking day job. And its core, the song seems to suggest that as adults, we have to find ways to accept and deal with drudgery and bullshit, and then push past it — as much as possible.

Continuing the visual approach of its immediate predecessor, the accompanying visualizer/video for “Beaten to Write” features a masked man in a hoodie dancing and shadow boxing an abandoned factory space, with glitchy imagery projected around him.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Returns with Club Banging “Horizontal Rain”

Electronic music outfit and JOVM mainstays Total Fucking Darkness features: 

Last year, the trio released have released a handful of standalone singles, including three I wrote about on this site, “Desolation Boys,” “Take It Easy” and “Give Me Everything You Own.”

The trio begin 2026 with “Horizontal Rain,” an off-kilter, propulsive, hook-driven banger that recalls the days of sweaty, illegal basement raves. (Those who know, know, you know?) But underneath the good times, is the feverish unease, the sickening sense of sliding into a totalitarian and fascistic hellscape and the desire to connect to others. This is the party music of a dying world.

The accompanying video is a mind-bending blend of a middle aged guy dancing in various locations with video glitch, edited stock footage and more.

New Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Returns with Woozily Hypnotic “Give Me Everything You Own”

Electronic music outfit Total Fucking Darkness features: 

The trio have released two singles, which I’ve written about on this site, “Desolation Boys,” and “Take It Easy.” Their latest single “Give Me Everything You Own” is an unsettlingly woozy and hypnotic fever dream that’s one-part Tweekend-era The Crystal Method rave, one-part brooding dream pop and one-part howl into the void.

“We live in a late-period capitalist wasteland where art is devalued and podcasters are the new creative upper class. What a fucking bore,” the trio share. “‘Give Me Everything You Own’ is a reminder of the intrinsic, anarchic power of our music. We made it to feel like a nice cold wet fish slapping you upside the head to remind you not to fall asleep in your own life, that connection matters, that a dancefloor can be the site of rebellion and dissent. Don’t forget that cunts are still running the world…” 

The accompanying video is a flop sweat-fueled fever dream of nightmarish war imagery and brightly colored summery scenes that captures our ongoing hellscape. But all is not lost, y’all. Go to shows, dance floors, theater and meet like-minded souls. Community is always the solution to fascism.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Total Fucking Darkness Shares a Sardonic and Uneasy Banger

Besides being an awesome band name, Total Fucking Darkness features: 

Earlier this year, the trio shared “Desolation Boys,” a slick yet chaotic synthesis of Tweekend-era Crystal Method and Come With Us-era Chemical Brothers-like big beat, LCD Soundsystem and deep house with glistening synth arpeggios delivered with a nihilistic, tongue-in-cheek absurdity.

Created in the final hours of a manic, 72-hour writing spree with McFall flying in from London, “Desolation Boys” encapsulates the band’s volatile energy. The song is anchored around spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics and a raw vocal take where Campbell can be faintly heard yelling “go fuck yourself,” mid-chorus. Who is he yelling at? Himself, perhaps? 

The song reflects the band’s ongoing exploration of themes like the futility of existence, the exciting pointlessness of class war and the rejection of everything that doesn’t BANG. 

The trio returns with “Take It Easy,” a relentlessly pulsing and unsettling track that pairs propulsive dance floor friendly energy with a tongue-in-cheek and irreverent sense of despair. The song finds the trio daring listeners to embrace the void rather than resist it; to readily acknowledge that the world and everything you know is on fire and there may be little you can do about it. As the old saying goes “Might as well laugh, ’cause it hurts too much to cry.”

The irony of the song’s title isn’t an accident. The song is anchored around a platitudinous phrase used as a bitingly sardonic weapon in an our hellish, at times, Kafka-esque moment.

Written in real-time, “Take It Easy” was born from pure instinct. The trio’s Torquil Campbell wrote the lyrics while listening to the track for the first time, which baffles his bandmates Stephen Ramsey and Tom McFall. And there are sheep. Yeah, sheep.

“There are sheep involved in the track. It’s not the first song I’ve heard with sheep in it this year,” Total Fucking Darkness’ Ramsey says. “If you think about it, songs with sheep in them are an incredibly good sign, because there’s never been a bad song that mentions, or actually features sheep. Think about it.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares a Banger

Besides being an awesome band name, Total Fucking Darkness features:

The trio’s latest single “Desolation Boys” is a slick yet chaotic synthesis of Tweekend-era Crystal Method and Come With Us-era Chemical Brothers-like big beat, LCD Soundsystem and deep house with glistening synth arpeggios delivered with a nihilistic, tongue-in-cheek absurdity. And it slaps so fucking hard that it sounds like it could be played at clubs in Manchester and Berlin back in 1999-2006 or so.

Created in the final hours of a manic, 72-hour writing spree with McFall flying in London, “Desolation Boys” encapsulates the band’s volatile energy. The song is anchored around spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics and a raw vocal take where Campbell can be faintly heard yelling “go fuck yourself,” mid-chorus. Who is he yelling at? Himself, perhaps?

The song reflects the band’s ongoing exploration of themes like the futility of existence, the exciting pointlessness of class war and the rejection of everything that doesn’t BANG.

The accompanying video features edited footage of a concert somewhere in Berlin, pro Palestine protests and UCLA’s dance team, a country dance team, an old pun rock show and other pop detritus.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Back in 2016, the Toronto-based pop rock act Jane’s Party — comprised of Devon Richardson (bass, vocals), Tom Ionescu (guitar, vocals), Jeff Giles (keys, vocals) and Zach Sutton (drums)  — opened for Tom Odell during the singer/songwriter’s 2016 No Bad Days Tour across Europe. The experiences the band had while on the road wound up inspiring a set of home studio demos that would eventually become the backbone to their latest album Casual Island. As the story goes, after returning home, the members of the band called up producer Derek Hoffman, who’s known for his work with likes of The Trews, Arkells, The Elwins, Willa and others, to set up the recording sessions for their latest album.

Casual Island finds the band collaborating with a handful of acclaimed Toronto-based artists including DJ Skratch Bastid, BADBADNOTGOOD‘s Leland Whitty and Fast Romantics‘ Kirty and Matt Angus. “For the four of us, writing and recording music has always been a collaborative process,” the band’s Zach Sutton says in press notes. “Bringing in Skratch, Leland and Kirty is our way of expanding the family and getting fresh creative juices into the mix. Every collaboration has been a huge source of inspiration that challenges the way we approach music making.” The band’s Jeff Giles adds, “This album feels very personal to us, like we’re sharing that initial intimate experience when you’re first coming up with the song and recording it in your bedroom.”

The up-and-coming Canadian act, which has played with Arkells, LIGHTS, Blue Rodeo, Stars, The Trews, Sam Roberts Band, Lowest of The Low, Matt Mays, Tom Odell, Manic Street Preachers and Lord Huron recently released a re-imagined and subtly re-worked version of “Straight from the Heart.”  The re-worked version, which features Skye Wallace as a lead vocalist and backing vocalist manages to retain the original’s hook while being a slow-burning and ethereal fever dream that’s one part yacht rock, one part R&B and one part pop.

Interestingly, the reworked version finds the thematically content shifted a bit, with the song exploring love from balancing the excitement and mundanity of being with someone, and the compromise and empathy required to sustain any relationship whether romantic or plutonic. And as the band notes, the duet strives to evoke the feeling one should get, knowing that the little things in a relationship are ultimately there to teach us about the importance of empathy, love and partnership.

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Although he’s probably best known as the keyboardist of the acclaimed Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based indie rock act Wintersleep, Jon Samuel is also a solo artist and multi-instrumentalist in his own right, releasing his debut album First Transmissions back in 2012. His forthcoming solo record Dead Melodies is slated for a February 1, 2019 release through Hidden Pony Records/Believe Digital, and the album is reportedly a much more collaborative effort than First Transmissions as Samuel and his Wintersleep bandmate/producer Loel Campbell recruited Wintersleep’s Tim D’Eon (guitar), Halifax-based roots rocker Matt Hays (guitars), Stars‘ Chris Seligman (French horn) and Walrus‘ Keith Doiron (bass) as the Dead Melodies session band. Sonically, the album is reportedly centered around adventurous musical eclecticism and an emboldened songwriting process, revealing an artist, who is willing to wade into difficult subject mater; but more important, the album is Samuel’s pledge to do better — both as an artist and as a human being with the hopes that the album and its material will inspire you as a listener to do the same. (Lord only knows, we all should be doing so much better.)

Dead Melodies latest single, album title track “Dead Melodies” is a rousingly anthemic track based around arena rock-like power chords, a propulsive rhythm section and a soaring, shout along worthy hook that actually turns the song’s title into a proud, defiant badge of stubborn defiance and survival rather than defeat. “When I wrote the song, it was a couple of years after I had finished making a record that nobody listened to,” Samuel explains in press notes. “I just wanted to write a song about how art and music are undervalued—it’s literally worth nothing in a lot of cases. You make a record, spend a lot of time and money on it… and then it’s basically just free. And disposable, too, because there’s just so much of it. So that was the basic idea of ‘Dead Melodies’—I’m going to put this out there, and maybe nobody hears it, and it might be worth nothing!”

 

 

 

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

The Suits are a Bronx-based indie electro pop trio that formed back in 2011 when Eddie Gore (vocals and keyboards) Mike Sanz (producer and drum machine) and Eric Grossman (guitar/multi-instrumentalist) met in their freshman dorm […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Although little known to most casual music fans, Patrick Cowley may be one of the more influential and important figures of American electronica music, as he was responsible for crafting what was then known as […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

Montreal-based band Stars have won over fans with a sound that’s at times earnest, delicate and a pop sensibility reminiscent of 1980s New Wave – in particular, a sunnier, warmer New Order. They’re great live […]

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

California Wives, Diamond Rings, and Stars at Webster Hall 9/22/12

With a much-deserved and much-needed vacation from the day job, I’ve been attempting to catch up on a bunch of work here to close out 2012. God only knows if i’ll be able to do […]