Tag: synth pop

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Geneva Jacuzzi Shares Sultry and Swaggering “Laps of Luxury”

Geneva Jacuzzi is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist, whose immersive and unhinged performances are considered legendary: they often involve a psychotropic gallery of masks, costumes, confrontation and massive art installations. Her recorded music frequently features catchy hooks and cryptic moods dusted in 4-track grit. 

Earlier this year, the bedroom darkwave stalwart., multimedia artist and performer signed to Dais Records, who will be releasing her third full-length album Triple Fire on Friday.

In the lead up to the album’s release, I wrote about the following tracks:

“Dry,” a brooding and swaying bit of 80s retro-futuristic synth pop anchored around layers of glistening analog synth arpeggios and skittering beats paired with catchy, razor sharp hooks. Jacuzzi’s seemingly detached vocal singing lyrics about disconnection and uncertainty ethereally float over the dreamy arrangement and production. 

“I took a little break from writing music and when I sat down at home to record, ‘Dry’ was the first song to burst out,” Jacuzzi recalls. “The music came together so instantly it’s as if it had been waiting and perfecting itself for years in the ether. The chorus lyrics came that same week after I went on a date with Mike Judge and he never called me back (haha). I wasn’t upset or anything, but I had never been ghosted before and couldn’t help but equate modern love to an appliance you buy on the home shopping network.”

“Scene Ballerina” Triple Fire‘s third single continued a run of remarkably period specific, 80s inspired synth pop, with the song featuring glistening and arpeggiated synths, tweeter and woofer rattling 808s and catchy hooks serving as a lush yet dance floor friendly bed for Jacuzzi’s expressive vocal. Sonically seeming to nod at a synthesis of Jane Child, I Feel For You-era Chaka Khan and Larry Levan house, “Scene Ballerina” describes a very specific, attention craving personality that many of us have come across at some point or another. 

“We all know that person: The Scene Ballerina. Stirring up a whirlpool of drama. Leaping to the center of the spotlight, spinning lies, twisting stories. All for attention,” Jacuzzi shares. “A tragic character. I can name a few ;)”

“Laps of Luxury,” is Triple Fire‘s fourth and final, pre-release single. And as the album opening track, it sets the template for the album’s sound and aesthetic while standing out on its own. Featuring skittering boom bap, glistening synth arpeggios and strutting synth bass paired with Jacuzzi’s sultry, siren-like cooing, “Laps of Luxury” is a strobe-lit, goth-leaning club banger that’s seemingly indebted to Pet Shop Boys, Yaz/Yazoo, New Order and early Depeche Mode.

“‘Laps of Luxury’ is one of my favorite tracks on Triple Fire,” Jacuzzi says. “We spent the most time perfecting it in the studio. I was listening to a lot of Pet Shop Boys at the time and wanted to capture the light/dark ghostly dreamscape of castles and discos from another time. The lyrics are quite haunting and vague. The character is escaping in a car late at night. Processing the experiences that flood her mind and recounting them to the driver. ‘I’ve seen so many things/no one should ever see’… What did she see?!?! Poor thing. Obviously something unspeakable. One could only imagine.”

singer/songwriters by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Bearniez Shares a Slickly Produced, Hook-Driven Bop

Bearniez is an Indonesian-Italian singer/songwriter and sound engineer, whose travels to the major metropolitan areas across the globe has influenced her ability to mix multiple elements from different genres and cultures in her work.

Her latest single, “Safari Motion” is a slickly produced, hook-driven bop featuring dense layers of glistening synths, skittering beats, bursts of squiggling funk guitar a sinuous bas line that serve as a lush bed for Bearniez’s plaintive pop starlet delivery.

According to the Indonesian-Italian artist, the song describes the her creativity as a sort of jungle, a chaotic world of colors, beauty and danger. As you get older, imagination and creativity are supposed to be boxed and put away. The expectation is that you must follow the pragmatic, “adult” path. But the song talks about not letting external pressure to make you “grow up” and stop being creative or imaginative.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Only Twin Shares Cinematic and Swooning “Give You Up”

Initially known for his work with Forgive Durden and Cardiknox, Seattle-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Thomas Dutton is the create mastermind behind the rising, solo, synth pop project Only Twin.

Back in Seattle, every show Dutton went to gave him a sense of longing. It didn’t matter if they were playing to dozens or hundreds, the band was up on that stage tearing their hearts out in front of the world. Dutton knew he wanted to be up there on a stage, like the bands he was catching as a fan. As a teen, carpooling with his friends’ older siblings meant expose to bands and songs he had never heard before. Songs that weren’t played on the radio — and songs that opened his eyes and ears in transformative ways. “I’m always trying to capture that feeling I had when I was discovering music that changed my life,” Dutton says.

Inspired by the likes of The 1975 and Bon Iver, Only Twin emerged out of necessity. When Cardiknox split up, producing became Dutton’s full-time job, and he wanted to start a project that showed himself as a left-of-center, indie pop aesthete. But as Dutton used music to process both the dissolution of Cardiknox and a breakup, Only Twin took a life of its own. “It started as a way to carve out a little space for myself,” he says. “But as I started reclaiming tracks I’d written for other people, the project gave me closure on a huge chapter in my life.” 

Dutton’s sophomore Only Twin effort, the recently released it Feels Nice to Burn sees him bottling that sense of nostalgia. “I still feel like that wide-eyed 13-year-old at his first show in a lot of ways,” he says. Thematically, It Feels Nice to Burn continues the exploration of love, rebirth and new beginnings that he explored on his Only Twin debut, 2021’s Rare Works. Sonically, the new album sees Dutton finding the sweet spot between left-of-center indie pop and dreamy rock, while marking the next chapter of his life, one that sees him embracing the love of a lifetime and fatherhood. Unsurprisingly, the experience of falling in love, getting married and raising a child has given new meaning to his music and to himself.

When the Night-era St. Lucia-like album single “Give You Up” is slow-burning, seemingly 80s rom-com-inspired song featuring glistening synths, gated reverberated drums, bursts of twinkling keys, bursts of shimmering and squiggling guitars paired with Dutton’s plaintive delivery paired with the Seattle-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s unerring knack for crafting swooningly earnest tracks with big hooks and choruses.

“Give You Up” is rooted in lived-in personal experience with the song describing the moment Dutton and his wife “jumped into the deep end” of their burgeoning relationship.

Directed by The Director Brothers, the accompanying video for “Give You Up” stars Julianne Hough as a bored office drone, who has an odd yet adorable affair with an old office copier that plays on rom-com tropes.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Geneva Jacuzzi Shares Lush and Satirical “Scene Ballerina”

Geneva Jacuzzi is a Los Angeles-based multimedia artist, whose immersive and unhinged performances are considered legendary: they often involve a psychotropic gallery of masks, costumes, confrontation and massive art installations. Her recorded music frequently features catchy hooks […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 70th Birthday, Neil Tennant!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Pet Shop Boys’ frontman Neil Tennant’s 70th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Los Angeles’ King Pari Shares Slinky and Funky “Better The Devil”

Rising Los Angeles-based funk duo King Pari can trace its origins back to a happy accident: Joe Paris Christensen and Cameron Kinghorn had been playing the same Minneapolis area scenes for years, but when Christensen sent Kinghorn a new tune he had created on a tape machine, something clicked. “This sounds how my brain feels,” Kinghorn said. That session became the first King Pari song.

The duo’s Minneapolis funk pedigree anchors their work: Both Christensen and Kinghorn played alongside some of Prince‘s closest associates — and Christensen’s previous band was among the last that Prince personally invited to play at Paisley Park. Additionally, they’ve also been tapped into the national funk and jazz scenes from the beginning: Their first gig together was opening for Kamasi Washington, before they landed on a name.

Having relocated to Los Angeles and signing with Stones Throw, the duo is starting a new chapter. Their latest single “Better The Devil” is the second single from their highly anticipated full-length debut. Anchored around an 80s synth funk-like production and arrangement featuring skittering, gated reverb soaked boom bap, tape saturated synths and squiggling funk guitar serving as a lush and silky bed for achingly tender falsetto vocals and a scorching guitar solo. While sonically nodding at The Whispers, The Gap Band and 80s Chaka Khan, the song reveals an outfit that can effortlessly craft a catchy hook.

Directed and edited by Zach Sulak, the accompanying video for “Better the Devil” featuring the Los Angeles-based duo running late for an audition with — well, the devil. Hell could use some funky tunes, huh?

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Washed Out’s Eclipse Live Session Performance of “Waking Up”

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him. 

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments. 

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life is slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Sub Pop. The album, which reportedly is Greene’s most audacious effort to date, is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self-produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench. 

In the lead up to the album’s release later this month, I’ve written about two previously released singles:

“The Hardest Part,” a bit of classic Washed Out with subtle refinements. The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recent work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show. 

“Running Away,” a cinematic yet intimate and deeply vulnerable track anchored around an alternating quiet verse, loud chorus, quiet verse song structure paired with Greene’s unerring knack for soaring and catchy hooks paired with a lush arrangement of glistening and twinkling synths, skittering and thumping beats that furthers the album’s overall aesthetic.

The album’s third and latest single “Waking Up” features glistening and burbling synth arpeggios, dreamily strummed guitar, finger snap-driven percussion and skittering beats serving as a lush and cinematic bed for Greene’s intimately cooed delivery. Fittingly, the song evokes the sensation of waking up from a pleasant dream — and the wistful desire to go back to sleep to experience just a little bit longer.

After months of research and meticulous planning, the JOVM mainstay and director Jonah Haber collaborated to film a live performance of “Waking Up” in the path of totality of the solar eclipse — on location in Bandera, TX on April 8, 2024.

With a ton of risks and embarrassment involved and no guarantee of success, Haber and Greene have managed to create one of the more unique visuals I’ve seen in some time: Shot in a single take, we see Greene performing the bulk of the song during the four minutes and eight seconds of full totality — the moment the moon crossed in between the Sun and Earth, emulating nighttime.

For the viewer, the effect almost appears as if Greene is taking the stage inside a venue, with the spotlights just on him, as he plays and sings. While it’s a gorgeous and downright perfect moment, there was a lot of things out of their control, reminding the viewer that ultimately nature rules us all.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Fen Doi Shares Upbeat and Anthemic “New Horizon”

Zurich-based producer, musician and singer/songwriter Neil Lauper is the creative mastermind behind the emerging indie electro pop recording project Fen Doi. And with Fen Doi, Lauper has crafted a sound that seamlessly blends elements of post-punk and darkwave with uptempo synth-driven electronica that also manages to be simultaneously retro and futuristic. As Lauper describes it, it’s music that “encourages you to dance into a brighter future.”

Previous releases have received support from several electronic dance music artists including Ellen Allien at Boiler Room Sydney, Curses, Perel and Rena among others. Adding to a growing profile, Lauper’s work has received airplay across Swiss National Radio.

Lauper’s full-length debut, New Horizon was released last week. The album is a nine-song, genre-bending journey of synths and infectious drum beats. The album’s latest single, album opening track and title track “New Horizon” is an incredibly upbeat bit of 80s-inspired synth pop anchored around glistening synth arpeggios, gated reverb-drenched beats, Lauper’s uncanny knack for big, catchy hooks and choruses paired with his reverb-soaked yet earnest delivery.

“New Horizon” was produced and recorded in Lauper’s home studio and initially started off as an organic piece created through improvisation on his keyboard. “‘’New Horizon’  tells a story of tender new beginnings in the aftermath of unexpected change and loss,” Lauper explains. “It is a story of maintaining an attitude of gratitude when much speaks against it.“

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Jessie Berkshires is a Detroit-based singer/songwriter, musician, and visual artist. As a singer/songwriter and musician, Berkshire collaborates with her husband and producer, Nat Plane to craft sleek electronic soundscapes that serve as a fitting vehicle for her songs that tell stories of love, loss, pain and hope.

Released earlier this year, “Enough” is anchored around twinkling keys, oscillating and glistening synths, thumping beats and thumping beats. Berkshires’ plaintive vocal ethereally floats over the decidedly 80s inspired, hook-driven production that brings the likes of Kate Bush, Pet Shop Boys and others to mind.

As Berkshires explains, the song is an exploration of the sort of struggles we all experience with its lyrics delving deep into the weariness of conversing with oneself and the constant retrospective gaze that can leave one feeling trapped within the confines of their mind and self-talk. Throughout the song, the song’s narrator yearns to break free from their own internal struggles and doubts.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Mzzltvv is an emerging and mysterious pop artist and producer, whose mission is to create music that means something to her — with the hopes that it’ll meaning and life for others. Much like countless contemporary artists, Mzzltvv is genre agnostic, and enjoys jumping around genres and styles with a sense of exploration and curiosity.

Their latest single “Burning Bones” is a slickly produced bit of synth pop built around glistening synth arpeggios, skittering thump and a blazing keytar solo that serves as a lush and club friendly bed for the artist’s soulful vocal delivery. While revealing an artist that seems to effortlessly craft a catchy hook, the song sonically recalls The Weeknd and 80s synth pop.

The song as she explains embodies both her personal battles and her inner fire to succeed and evolve — and as a result, the song is part of a larger quest of self-discovery and strength in which every chord and beat is a step towards owning her truth.


Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Félix Mongeon is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter, musician, producer and creative mastermind behind Radiant Baby. Mongeon’s Radiant Baby debut EP It’s My Party caught the attention of Lisbon Lux, who signed him and then released the Montréaler’s 2019 full-length debut, Restless. Restless saw Mongeon creating a sound that meshes crisp electronic sounds with organic instrumentation to convey a more mature and dynamic aesthetic. 

Since the release of Restless, the French-Canadian artist has very busy: He has made the rounds of the provincial and national festival circuit, with sets at Festival Pop Montréal, M pour Montréal, Festival Mode et Design, Picnik Électronik, Festival Fringe de Montréal, Santa Teresa Fest and Canadian Music Week. He also played at New Colossus Festival back in 2019.

2021 saw the release of Mongeon’s sophomore Radiant Baby album, Pantomime, which was followed up with a deluxe edition of Pantomime (Deluxe) last year. 

Earlier this month, Mongeon released his third Radiant Baby album Porcelaine through his longtime label home Lisbon Lux Records. The album features “Mort de Rire,” a slinky bit of synth-driven New Wave-like funk paired with the Montréal-based artist’s dreamy falsetto. “Mort de Rire,” sounds as though it could have been released sometime during the late 1970s and early 1980s. And as the rising Canadian artist explained, the song inspects the twists and turns of our darkest sides — without taking itself too seriously.

Porcelaine‘s latest single “Klondike” continues a remarkably run of slinky, synth-driven and downright dance floor friendly-like New Wave that seems to channel Jef Barbara‘s Soft To The Touch and Contamination, Talking Heads‘ Remain in Light and Le Couleur‘s Autobahn — all while reminding the listener of Mongeon’s unerring knack for crafting insanely catchy hooks.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Perestroika Shares Dance Floor Friendly Bop “Midnight Twilight”

Founded by Shravan back in 2017, Montréal-based goth/synth pop outfit Perestroika was conceived as more than just a band; but as an act of audacious reinvention: The band’s founder fled the sweltering chaos of the American South for the Great North, and he envisioned Perestroika as a mystical assembly where sound met the ethereal.

Mickey Dagger, a former member of Omegas and Gustavo Rodriguez was the first band member to join. Their first release was a demo that saw the pair meshing elements of British post-punk, goth and synth pop, anchored by the Oberheim DMX drum machine and an ever-growing arsenal of synthesizers.

When the world ground to a halt because of the pandemic, the band’s sound — perhaps fittingly — delved deeper into the shadows. With the addition of Jonah Falco, the then-newly constituted trio released 2021’s Monolith EP, an effort that saw the band seemingly pairing the dystopian pulse of Kino, the decadent and swooning harmonies of Roxy Music and Giorgio Moroder‘s disco pulse with eerily delivered lyrics that thematically focused on existential questions and concerns.

Emerging from the bleak desperation of the pandemic, the Montréal-based outfit expanded to a quartet with the addition of Sebastien Page (drums). Their sound went through another evolution with the band drawing from New Order and Pet Shop Boys — and funk-inspired grooves.

The newly-constituted quartet’s latest single “Midnight Twilight” is a hook-driven bit of synth pop that’s seemingly a slick synthesis of Depeche Mode, Human League, early 80s New Order, Electronic and the like with disco and synth funk groove paired with punchily delivered vocals and reverb-gated drums. It’s a dance floor friendly bop that subtly and lovingly modernizes a familiar and beloved sound while tackling familiar themes.

Directed by Alan Hildebrandt, the accompanying video for “Midnight Twilight” features animation by Hildebrant and Studio del Scorpio and follows the band and a collection of “nightlife characters” in the midst of self-destructive narcissism and hedonism, as an escape from the bleakness of modern life. Feels familiar doesn’t it?

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Washed Out Shares Surreal, Dream-like Visual for Achingly Nostalgic “The Hardest Part”

Back in 2021, Washed Out‘s creative mastermind Earnest Greene left Atlanta returned to the countryside he knew when he grew up. Where escapism once flooded his thoughts, today, he’s preoccupied with the universe of wonder in the reality around him.

He named the former horse farm he moved to “Endymion,” after the John Keats poem about a lovesick shepherd. It has shaped all that he’s created there, from his music to his albums’ creative direction to his planned large-scale visual-art experiments.

Greene’s fifth Washed Out Album, Notes From A Quiet Life is slated for a June 28, 2024 release through Sub Pop. The album, which reportedly is Greene’s most audacious effort to date, is anchored around a purity of vision. It’s also the first album of his catalog that Greene wholly self- produced with mixing assistance from Nathan Boddy and David Wrench.

Notes From A Quiet Life‘s first single “The Hardest Part” is classic Washed Out with subtle refinements: The atmospheric and achingly dream-like and nostalgia-inducing production is anchored around twinkling and arpeggiated keys, glistening bass synths, bursts of strummed guitar paired with Greene’s penchant for crafting catchy hooks and swooning choruses. And much like the JOVM mainstay’s most recently work, the song has Greene’s vocal front and center, with the song’s tale of love lost being the heartbroken star of the show.

Unabashed and unafraid to pioneer and incorporate new technologies within his art, Greene enlisted multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and director Paul Trillo to direct the music video for the album’s lead single, “The Hardest Part.” Created using OpenAI’s Sora, “The Hardest Part” marks the first collaboration with an artist and filmmaker to be generated entirely utilizing this technology.

Before I forget some background here: OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Their mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI’s Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative videos from text instructions. Although the model isn’t publicly available as of this writing, OpenAI is currently working with a number of visual artists, designers and filmmakers to gain feedback on how to advance the model to be the most helpful for creative professionals.
 
“I had the seed of this video concept 10 years ago, where we do an infinite zoom of a couple’s life over the course of many decades, but I have yet to attempt it because I figured it’d be too ambitious for a music video,” Paul Trillo says. “While the technology is experimental and cutting-edge, I wanted to do something that also felt like a classic music video that would hold your attention no matter what tech was being used in the process. I was specifically interested in what makes Sora so unique. It offers something that couldn’t quite be shot with a camera, nor could it be animated in 3D, it was something that could have only existed with this specific technology. The surreal and hallucinatory aspects of AI allow you to explore and discover new ideas that you would have never dreamed of.  Using AI to simply recreate reality is boring. I wasn’t interested in capturing realism but something that felt hyperreal. The fluid blending and merging of different scenes feels more akin to how we move through dreams and the murkiness of memories. While some people feel this may be supplanting how things are made, I see this as supplementing ideas that could never have been made otherwise. Many artists in this industry are constantly compromising and negotiating their ideas with the reality of what can be made. This offers a glimpse at a future where music artists will be given the opportunity to dream bigger. An overreliance on this technique may become a crutch and it’s important that we don’t use this as the new standard of creation but another technique in the toolbelt.”
 

“‘The Hardest Part’ is a story about nostalgia and love lost.  With the video, I wanted to bring this narrative to life in a sincere way that was also exciting and unexpected. I’ve been a fan of Paul for a long time and he is amazingly skilled at incorporating cutting-edge visual effects that elevate a story instead of simply supplementing it with shock and awe,” Washed Out’s Ernest Greene says. “He was at the top of my list of potential collaborators. 
 
“What he’s come up with is nostalgic, sad, uplifting, and often quite strange.  However, he still manages to make you feel for the characters and invested in the journey of how their lives progress.

“I think that Paul is right when he says that this video could only be made using this new AI technology.  In my opinion, the hallucinatory quality of Sora clips feels like the beginning of a new genre unto itself – one that is surreal and unpredictable and entirely unique to traditional cinema or even animation.”
 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

BOVIY is an emerging and rising Hamburg-based alt-pop artist. And with her work she addresses important social issues and advocates for marginalized people while loudly expresses the demands, desires and thoughts of a strong, confident and vibrant young woman. Last year, Vogue Germany named her as one of the top six up-and-coming female artists — and bolstering that achievement, she has already opened for the likes of Jessie Ware and James Morrison.

The German artist’s latest single “Berlin Is A Liar” is a slickly produced, hook-driven bit of 80s inspired pop that recalls St. Lucia, Haerts, ACES, Jef Barbara and others: Pulsing bass synth oscillations, glistening synths stabs, bursts of strummed guitar and stuttering beats and a sparse, almost minimalist bridge featuring twinkling keys serve as a lush soundscape for BOVIY’s achingly tender, yearning delivery. While being a Top 40 radio friendly bop, “Berlin Is A Liar” reveals an artist, who seems to effortlessly craft a remarkably catchy hook while anchoring the song in seemingly lived-in, bittersweet experience.

As the German artist explains, “Berlin Is A Liar” is a walk through late-night/early-morning Berlin: The burst of sunrise just on the horizon, and the streets full of revelers returning home. But at that point of the night, the sense of fun and freedom began to fade, and a sense of loneliness and melancholy beings to take hold.