Tag: Wake Up

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Denver’s Jordan Lucas Shares a Hook-Driven Bop

Jordan Lucas is a Georgia-born, Denver-based singer/songwriter and musician . Lucas can trace the origins of his music career to high school, when he discovered both the guitar — and the guitar heroes. Once he was obsessed with guitar, Lucas started to discover all the things the instrument could do and the pedal effects, endless possibilities opened up for him.

Lucas began to brach out to different styles, genres and instruments, and began to realize that it isn’t necessary to hew your sound and approach to what’s heard on the radio — or even deemed popular. During what was an eye-opening stage of his life and career, the Georgia-born, Denver-based supported other acts, joined bands and did studio work. Moving around a bit, he started a band with a few friends called My Instant Lunch, in which he played guitar and contributed backing vocals and some songwriting. His experience with My Instant Lunch helped to lay the foundation of his own songwriting.

Once My Instant Lunch split, Lucas relocated to Denver, where he started to build a life, while establishing himself as a songwriter and musician. And while he loved working and writing with other artists, he wanted to focus on his own work. In 2020, he began focusing on his own work as a solo artist. Back in 2020, Lucas started working on his full-length debut, Serious Musician, which touches upon his professional journey, his mental health, life experiences and hopes for the future while evoking the outward expression of all the different musical influences and experiences over the years.

Centered around shimmering guitars, glistening keys and a propulsive backbeat paired with Lucas’ plaintive vocals and a rousingly anthemic hook”Wake Up,” Serious Musician‘s first single brings Danish JOVM mainstays Palace Winter to mind — with the song being rooted in deliberate attention to craft.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Beirut’s Sandmoon Shares a Cinematic Visual for Slow-Burning and Shoegazey “Wake Up”

Beirut-based outfit Sandmoon — Sandra Arslanian (vocals, guitar), Sam Wehbi (guitar), George Flouty (bass) and Dan Shurki (drums) — have developed and honed a unique take on indie rock that draws from the Arslanian’s multicultural, international background: the Sandmoon frontperson is Armenian-Lebanese and was born in Beirut and spent her formative years in Belgium.

Throughout their growing catalog, which includes 2014’s full-length debut, Home, 2016’s #InTheEnd EP, 2018’s Put A Gun/Commotion EP and 2020’s Fadi Tabbal-produced sophomore album Put A Gun/Commotion, the members of the Beirut-based quartet have infused Western indie rock with subtle Middle Eastern intonations and melancholy and an unerring sense of melodicism.

Adding to a growing profile in Lebanon, the band wrote the soundtrack to Phillipe Aractingi’s 2016 film Listen, which received Best Soundtrack Award at 2017’s Lebanese Movie Awards.

Sandmoon’s Sandra Arslanian has also been very busy with a number of side projects including “Odyssée, Ode to the City” with poet Corinne Boulad, which has been selected in festivals in Beirut, Germany, Italy, Greece and California — and has won Best Spoken Word Poetry Award at the Monologues & Poetry International Film Festival.

Sandmoon’s highly-anticipated third album While We Watch the Horizon Sink is slated for release later this year. The album’s first single, the slow-burning and atmospheric “Wake Up” is centered around painterly and shoegazer-like textures: twinkling synth arpeggios, slashing, reverb-drenched guitars, Arslanian’s plaintive vocals, cinematic keys paired with a soaring hook. While the band describes the song as sounding “like a crossover of Radiohead and Laura Marling with an imperceptible Middle Eastern flavor,” the song sonically to my ears recalls shoegaze titans like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive.

The band explains that the song is “about looking beyond the surface, going to the essence of things.”

Directed by Selim Mourad, the accompanying video for “Wake Up” is shot in a gloriously cinematic black and white and captures small every day details — a woman and her child folding laundry on the terrace, clothes in the spin cycle of a washer before following what appears to be a religious cleansing ceremony, complete with women patiently whispering comforting things.

“I believe suffering stops when we open our eyes,” Mourad explains. “As most of us keep struggling, we can rest assured that we are nonetheless never unattended, never alone. Beautiful beings, often through their feminine energy, are patiently whispering the sweet words of remembrance in our ears.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Besnard Lakes’ Sheenah Ko Shares a Dance Floor Friendly Anthem

Montreal-based singer/songwriter and synth pop artist Sheenah Ko may be best known for being a core member of acclaimed Montreal-based shoegazer outfit Besnard Lakes. Interestingly, as a solo artist Ko has gained a reputation for being a fearless musical warrior, who marches to the beat of her own drum.

Ko’s recently released nine-song, sophomore album Future Is Now was written to encourage listeners to broaden their horizons, break the cycle, effect change and to live life to the fullest. Future Is Now‘s latest single “Wake Up” is a glittery dance floor banger seemingly drawing from Ray of Light-era Madonna and 90s house music: Thumping beats are paired with Giorgio Moroder-like oscillating synths, wobbling bass synths, Ko’s sultry pop star delivery, relentless four-on-the-floor and infectious hook.

But while being a dance floor friendly banger, the song is rooted in a much-needed, positive message: the time to change the world is now! There’s no time to waste!

Produced by Ken Atwind and Martine Groulx, the accompanying video for “Wake Up” follows a collection of corporate worker bee types, who are bored and dissatisfied automatons at their boring jobs. They slowly begin to wake up and connect back to their more youthful, fun loving selves in an epic dance party in the snow and in a club. But more important, by connecting with their youthful selves, they have hopes and dreams of a better world.

Uncategorized by William Ruben Helms

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