Tag: The Cure

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Niko Antonucci is a Prague, Czech Republic-born, Los Angeles, CA-based multi-instrumentliast, singer/songwriter, producer and electronic music artist, who can trace the origins of her music career to when she received piano lessons when she was 6. As teenager, the Prague-born, Los Angeles-based artist began stealing her father’s guitar as a teen — and when she turned 15, she had cut her first demo and began singing and playing in a number of local bands for a number of years. But at a young age, Antonucci recognized that in order to get the exact sound she wanted, she would need to do it herself and she began producing herself.

With her solo, downtempo/industrial electronica project Resin, Antonucci’s sound is inspired by many of the influences that have been a part of her creative life including Nirvana, Portishead, Nine Inch Nails , The Cure, Chelsea Wolfe, as well as ambient electronica and classic music, while thematically focusing on spirituality, dark magic, being an outsider. and so on. And with “Hoarse,” the first single off her self-produced full-length effort Fidget, Antonucci pairs swirling electronics, tweeter and woofer rocking beats, stuttering drum programming and a soaring hook with her sultry yet achingly vulnerable vocals — and while clearly nodding at Nine Inch Nails and Portishead, the single also manages to remind me of Version 2.0-era Garbage.

 

New Audio by William Ruben Helms

Over the course of the past couple of years, you’ve likely come across a handful of posts on the Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstay post-punk act The Harrow. Deriving their name from a name of a device used to punish and torture prisoners in the Franz Kafka short story “In the Penal Colony,” the band can trace a portion of their origins back to 2008 when its founding member Frank Deserto (bass, synths and electronics) started it as a solo recording project that expanded into a full band in 2013 when Deserto recruited Vanessa Irena (vocals, synths and programming), Barrett Hiatt (synth, programming), and Greg Fasolino (guitar) to flesh out the project’s sound. As a quartet, the Brooklyn-based act released the “Mouth to Mouth”/”Ringing the Changes” 7 inch and their full-length effort Silhouettes to critical praise across the blogosphere including The Deli Magazine, The Big Takeover, Impose, AltSounds as well as this site for a sound that is deeply indebted to The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and others —  although with Silhouette, the material, which was mixed by friend and frequent collaborator, Automelodi’s Xavier Paradis revealed a band that had been subtly experimenting with and expanding upon their sound, as their sound took on a bit of an industrial feel, as though nodding at Depeche Mode and New Order.

Up until relatively recently, some time had passed since I had written about them; however, in the last few weeks, the band announced that they will be releasing a remix album Points of View, which would be comprised of remixes, re-workings and re-imaginings of the material off Silhouettes by various friends, collaborators and associates as part of a “living” album that will grow as they receive additional contributions to the album.  And fittingly, the album’s first single was Xavier Paradis’ propulsive, dance floor-friendly remix of “Kaleidoscope” in which industrial clang and clatter and tweeter and woofer rocking beats are paired with the original’s shimmering guitars and Irena’s ethereal vocals — and as a result, the remix retained the spirit and mood of the original, while being a subtle new take.

Interestingly enough, if you had been following the site since the early days, you may recall that I wrote about the Brooklyn-based synth pop duo Azar Swan. Comprised of singer/songwriter Zohra Atash, who was a touring vocalist with A Storm of Light and multi-instrumentalist and producer Joshua Strawn, who was a member of Blacklist, Vaura, Vain Warr and others, the duo’s current project can trace its origins to when Atash and Strawn ended their previous project Religious to Damn in 2012. And much like it, The Harrow it had been some time since I had written about them — that is until now, as the duo remixed The Harrow’s “Secret Language,” giving an already stark minimalist song an even moodier, retro-futuristic John Carpenter soundtrack vibe.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Initially members of Swedish melodic punk/dark pop collective Vånna Inget, Karolina Engdahl (vocals/bass) and Tommy Tift (guitar) can trace their latest musical project, the Malmo, Sweden-based post-punk quartet True Moon to a mounting frustration with what they felt was an increasingly sanitized and homogeneous Scandinavian music scene. “Karolina and I are bored with the Swedish music scene at the moment,” Tift explains in press notes. “It feels like everyone has the same blueprint, like there’s an industry rulebook now for how bands must sound. We wanted to do something different. With the last Vånna Inget (2013’s critically acclaimed, Swedish Grammy-nominated Ingen Botten) we got more and more into dark wave and new wave, so we felt we wanted to explore than more.”

“We were listening to artists such as Joy Division, Killing Joke, Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Sisters of Mercy, The Mission and early Cure,” Tift notes. “There is a purity and honesty and integrity to that music that’s missing from the current scene. Those bands weren’t making music to be pop stars or rock stars, it is pure expression and pure art, and that’s the aesthetic we were pursuing.” Once the duo settled on the band’s overall aesthetic, they recruited  Frederik Orevad (drums) and Linus Segerstedt (guitar) to complete the band’s lineup.
The Malmo, Sweden-based quartet’s self-titled full-length debut was recorded by producer Jari Haapalainen, known for his work with Ed Harcourt and The (International) Noise Conspiracy live to analog tape at Tift’s Studio Motion with the producer and band actively aiming for a raw, unpolished feel and sound reminiscent of Martin Hannet’s legendary work with Joy Division — and in a similar fashion to those legendary recordings, the members of True Moon recorded their debut album’s material in single takes, which gives the album’s material a forceful immediacy; in fact, Engdahl completed the vocals for the album in about 90 minutes.
Slated for an April 28, 2017 release through Lovely Records, the band and their label recently released the album’s first single “Sugar,” and while sonically speaking the song — to my ears, at least — sounds like what would happen if Siouxsie and the Banshees had covered Joy Division, complete with a roaring and rousingly anthemic hook, and an undeniably forceful, almost primal and explosive “you-were-there” immediacy that sets them apart from they countrymen and from their counterparts internationally.

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Moody Visuals for The Away Days “Places To Go”

With the release of their How Did It Start? EP to critical praise both nationally and internationally from the likes of The Guardian, SPIN Magazine,and Noisey, as well receiving airplay from renowned Seattle, WA-based radio station KEXP, the Istanbul, Turkey-based quartet The Away Days quickly established a reputation for being a the forefront of an extremely Western-influenced indie music scene, thanks in part for a sound that’s largely inspired by The Cure, Tame Impala and others. And adding to a growing international profile, the members of the Turkish indie rock quartet have toured across the UK, played at two consecutive SXSW Festivals and have played festival dates opening for Portishead, Massive Attack, Belle and Sebastian and others.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of years, you may recall that the Istanbul-based quartet have released a handful of singles that have received international attention — including this site — since the release of their debut EP. However, the band’s long-awaited full-length debut Dreamed at Dawn was released earlier this year, and landed at number 5 on the Turkish album charts, marking it both a commercial success and the highest ever chart position for a Turkish indie rock album. The Turkish indie rock band’s commercial and critical success in their homeland and elsewhere shouldn’t be surprising as Dawn’s first two singles “Less Is More” and “World Horizon” paired atmospheric and moody yet lush instrumentation and ethereally shimming synths with material that thematically and lyrically drew from the band members’ own lives in a society in which their creative desires and efforts are viewed as being suspicious and seditious.

“Places to Go,” Dreamed at Dawn’s third and latest single continues along a similar vein as its two preceding singles as it’s a lush and plaintive song featuring shimming guitar chords played through a bit of reverb and delay pedal, an angular and propulsive bass line, twinkling synths and a rousingly antthemic hook,. and in some way, sonically the song manages to mesh dance floor friendly post-punk, electro pop and shoegazer rock; however, despite the seemingly upbeat tone, the song is a look into their lives and their cohorts as it touches upon the weight their homeland’s young people feel from an oppressive and seemingly capricious regime that demands oppression and a restlessness from the lack of meaningful opportunities.

Interestingly, the recently released music video for the song is based upon a deceptively simple concept of the band performing the song in a dramatically lit studio but throughout there are vivid bursts of animation that explode across the screen.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

With the release of their self-titled full-length debut, the Welsh quintet Chain of Flowers have quickly established a growing national and international reputation for a dense, noisy and punishing shoegazer-like sound that’s been compared favorably to The Smiths, Joy Division, Eagulls, Iceage, Ceremony and The Cure — and as a result, the band has received extensive airplay on BBC Radio 6 and KEXP and have toured across the UK with The Fall, The Chameleons, Ceremony,  JOVM mainstays A Place to Bury Strangers, Nothing, Eagulls and others. Building upon 2016’s massive buzz, the members of the band will be releasing a 7″ through Blackest Ever Black Records sometime this month and next month, will be in Austin, TX playing a number of SXSW showcases celebrating and promoting both British and Welsh artists. In the meantime, “Crisis,” off their self-titled debut is a murky and pummeling shoegazer track in which thunderous and propulsive drumming is paired with towering layers of shimmering and swirling guitars fed through delay and reverb pedal and submerged, distorted vocals. Indeed, much like The Jesus and Mary Chain, the aforementioned A Place to Bury Strangers, Slowdive and even Grave Babies, the Welsh band’s sound is muscular yet enveloping, murky yet stunningly beautiful — and evokes a contemporary anxiousness and powerlessness.

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of years, you’ve likely come across a handful of posts on the Brooklyn-based, JOVM mainstay post-punk act, The Harrow. Deriving their name from a name of a device used to punish and torture prisoners in the Franz Kafka short story “In the Penal Colony,” the band can trace a portion of their origins back to 2008 when its founding member Frank Deserto (bass, synths and electronics) started it as a solo recording project that expanded into a full band in 2013 when Deserto recruited Vanessa Irena (vocals, synths and programming), Barrett Hiatt (synth, programming), and Greg Fasolino (guitar) to flesh out the project’s sound. And over a period of a couple of years, the quartet released the “Mouth to Mouth”/”Ringing the Changes” 7 inch and their full-length effort Silhouette to critical praise from the likes of The Deli Magazine, The Big Takeover, Impose, AltSounds as well as this site for a sound that is deeply indebted to The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, and others — although Silhouette, which was mixed by friend and frequent collaborator, Automelodi‘s Xavier Paradis revealed a band that had expanded upon the sound that first won the attention of the blogosphere, as lush and shimmering guitar chords, played through layers of reverb, delay and other effects pedals were paired with sinuous bass lines, propulsive drum programming that frequently nodded at  Depeche Mode and New Order, swirling electronics and Irena’s plaintive and ethereal vocals.

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve last written about them; however, the band’s frequent collaborator and friend, the aforementioned Xavier Paradis recently remixed “Kaleidoscope” as part of the band’s remix album Points of View, which will be comprised of remixes, reworks and interpretations of songs off Silhouettes by various friends, collaborators and associates — as part of a “living” album that will grow as they receive additional contributions. The original version of the song is a slow-burning, hazily atmospheric track featuring shimmering guitar chords, four-on-the-floor like drum programming and Irena’s plaintive vocals ethereally floating over a moody, 4AD Records-lenaing mix.

 

Paradis’ Automelodi Sonnambula Mix of “Kaleidoscope is a propulsive, Depeche Mode and New Order-inspired, dance floor remix in which industrial clang and clatter and propulsive and forceful beats are paired with the original’s shimmering guitars and Irena’s ethereal vocals floating over the mix. Interestingly, while being dance floor friendly, Paradis’ remix manages to retain the original’s moody feel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Turkish JOVM Mainstays The Away Days Return With Their Most Politically Charged Single to Date

Now, over the past couple of years, the Turkish indie rock quartet have released a series of singles that have that have seen international attention across the blogosphere, including this site where the band has added their name to a growing list of mainstay artists. Up until recently, it had been about a year since we had last heard from the renowned Istanbul-based quartet; but as it turns out, the band had been busy working on the material, which will comprise their highly-anticipated full-length debut effort. The album’s first two singles “Less Is More” and “World Horizon” were atmospheric yet lush tracks in which plaintive vocals were paired with ethereal and shimmering synths — while drawing from the band members’ lives as musicians in a society in which their efforts are viewed suspicious and seditious.

“Places to Go,” the third and latest single off the band’s forthcoming full-length debut is a lush and plaintive song featuring layers of shimmering guitar, a tight motorik-like groove and a soaring, anthemic hook — and in some way it makes the song sound as though it were inspired by classic shoegaze and contemporary pop and indie rock; however, the song manages to possess a deeply held tension as lyrically, the band draws from their lives and the lives of Turkish young people as the song touches upon the sense of frustration, boredom, oppression and conformity, lack of opportunity and their overall restlessness.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Inspired by The Cure, Tame Impala and others, Istanbul, Turkey-based quartet The Away Days have developed a reputation in their homeland for being at the forefront of a contemporary and extremely Western-inspired indie music scene — and interestingly enough, the How Did It Start? EP, the Turkish indie rock band was released to critical praise from internationally recognized media outlets including The Guardian, SPIN Magazine,Noisey and received airplay from renowned indie station KEXP. Adding to a growing international profile, the band has toured the UK, made appearances at two consecutive SXSW And with a growing international profile, the quartet went on a tour of the UK and made appearance at two consecutive SXSW Festivals and have opened for the likes of Portishead, Massive Attack, Belle and Sebastian and others.

 

Over the past couple of years, the Istanbul, Turkey-based quartet have released a batch of singles that have received attention across the blogosphere, including this site; however, the band has been working on the material which, will comprise their highly-anticipated full-length debut effort. Much like the album’s lush and atmospheric first single “Less Is More,” the album’s latest single “World Horizon” is a slow burning, moody and atmospheric ballad consisting of plaintive vocals paired with ethereal and shimmering synths, stuttering, four-on-the-floor drumming and equally shimmering guitars that’s largely inspired by the band members’ own lives in Istanbul,  living in “never ending lies . . .” And as a result, the song possesses a mournful air, as the song’s recognizes a loss of innocence and belief in innocence and goodness.

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Tense and Frenetic Visuals for Crystal Castles’ Concrete

“Concrete,” the latest single off the forthcoming album manages to be tense and propulsive as Kath’s production, which consists of layers of undulating synth stabs, propulsive drum beats, malevolent atmospherics and industrial clang and clatter are paired with Frances’ heavily distorted vocals. And while bleak and murky, the song manages to be dance floor friendly — thanks to an anthemic hook.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Xu Xu Fang’s Murky and Doom-Laden Visuals for Their The Cure and 4AD Records Channeling New Single

Comprised of Sinosa Micik (vocals), Bobby Tamkin (drummer, production and songwriting), Devin Johnson (guitar), Lisa Fendelander (keyboards), Kyle Hines (bass), and Derek Muro (synths) Mar Vista, CA-based sextet Xu Xu Fang have developed a local and national […]

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

As an unabashed child of the 80s, Depeche Mode holds as much of a place in my heart as New Order; after all, so much of their material has managed to be part of my life’s soundtrack. More than enough ink has been spilled throughout the act’s influential career, so delving into their biography is largely unnecessary. Interestingly, over the past 20 years, an in impressive and growing number of artists have covered, remixed and reworked Depeche Mode including Smashing Pumpkins, Deftones, A-ha, Monster Magnet, Scott Weiland, The Cure (yes, seriously, The Cure!), Tori Amos, Nada Surf, Linkin Park‘s Mike Shinoda, Breaking Benjamin, Royskopp, Placebo and more.

Comprised of Paris-born and London-based duo Axel Basquiat (composer, vocals, bass) and Vincent T. (production, sound engineering and keys), The Penelopes are an indie electro pop act, production and DJ duo who have developed a reputation for propulsive, Giorgio Moroder-like remixes of Lana Del Ray, Pet Shop Boys, We Have Band, Night Drive, The Ting Tings, Alt J  and a growing list of others, and for their own original material — which critics internationally have compared to Daft Punk, M83 and Air, among others. The Parisian-born, London-based duo add their names to a growing list of artists, who have covered Depeche Mode with their rendition of “Never Let Me Down Again,” which turns the slow-burning and moody industrial/goth song into a shimmering and anthemic, club-banger with a sinuous bass line and propulsive drum programming with Basquiat’s breathy baritone.  And although The Penelopes uptempo rendition is warmer and dance floor friendly, it retains the original’s sense of longing and desire.

 

Check out how The Penelopes cover compares to Depeche Mode’s original below.

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Typically, the majority of most Americans — hell,  most Westerners, really — are largely unfamiliar with music scenes and artists outside of the usual bastions of popular music — i.e., the US. the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, Iceland and maybe a few outside of that sphere, such as Nigeria, South Africa, Mali and a few others. Now, if you’ve been frequenting JOVM over the past couple of years, there has been a increasing focus on presenting and covering artists from diverse backgrounds from all over the globe. And interestingly enough, one of those acts has been the Istanbul, Turkey-based indie rock/dream pop quartet The Away Days. Inspired by The Cure, Tame Impala and others, the quartet have developed a reputation in their homeland as being among the forefront of a Western-inspired indie rock scene. Their How Did It Start? EP was released to critical praise internationally from the likes of Seattle‘s renowned indie radio station KEXP, The Guardian, SPIN Magazine, Noisey, and the blogosphere. And with a growing international profile, the quartet went on a tour of the UK and made an appearance at SXSW.

It’s been close to 18 months since I’ve last written about them but in that time, they’ve been working on the material, which would eventually comprise their long-awaited and forthcoming full-length debut, slated for release sometime next year. The yet unnamed debut’s first single “Less Is More” is a lush and atmospheric song that features plaintive vocals paired with four-on-the-floor drumming, shimmering guitar chords, brief bursts of cascading synths, a sinuous bass line and soaring, anthemic hooks that sounds indebted to 80s New Wave and post-punk.

2016 looks to be a big year for the Turkish quartet as the band has been confirmed to make a return appearance at SXSW in March and will be announcing additional tour dates to support their debut. Hopefully, there will be a New York tour date or two!