New Music, Emerging from your Local Scene
Post Punk duo Stalled has released their debut EP, "Blank Conduct", via the Boston label Candlepin Records.
This is the work of Jack Curtin (guitar, vocals, bass, mellotron) and Jonah Murray (percussion, Korg MS-20) who came together last fall after their group Sci-Fi Sleep Cycles dissolved.
Lil Eazzyy has released visuals for "Why" from his recently released debut mixtape "Rookie of the Year".
The video was direct by Henry McGowan and was filmed in Lancaster, CA at the famous Kill Bill church.
Photo courtesy Trick Gum
L.A. duo Trick Gum is the work of producer Justin Raisen (Charlie XCX, Angel Olsen, Yves Tumor) and Jordan Benik of cult LA band Sweaters, and their debut single, “Hot Rifle,” sends out a strong current of left-field 90s indie pop quirk.
The new track marries tasty acoustic drums to a loping, charmingly clumsy fuzz bass, jaunty rhythm guitar touches, and gravely bass vocals. They show some real muscle in the chorus, with lines like “I am cheap perfume/I’m your prince of doom/Come get and eyeful/Of my hot rifle,” but overall the vibe is of two buddies horsing around, while still showing off their considerable skills in the studio.
The band says “‘Hot Rifle’ is about being pushed to the edge and losing your faith in societal norms, the moment you give up on the rules and consider stealing a very large amount of money, and the peace that dwells within you in this moment, freed from the constraints of principle… in other words, a summer jam.”
If only pondering grand larceny had a soundtrack a catchy as this. Gabe Hernandez
Bnny has released their first single, "Time Walk", since signing with their new label Fire Talk. This single was recorded and produced by Jason Balla of Dehd, and is about the clarity you find when in motion.
This is the work of Jess Viscius alongside her twin sister Alexa Viscius, Tim Makowski and Matt Pelkey.
Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius
I Ya Toyah has released visuals for the latest single, "Pray", from her recently released EP "Out of Order".
The EP is a mixture of anthemic synth pop and Industrial, and was composed entirely during quarantine. Thematically, the EP attempts to bring a touch of hope and optimism to return a more familiar way of life.
On Friday there was a message in my inbox from Body Musick which is not to be confused with Body Magick which is an annual festival of sacred sexuality held in Tampa Bay, Florida, whereas Body Musick is a record label based in Envigado, Colombia (near Medellín) specializing in “dungeon electronics & vehicles for the soul.” And while that description’s maybe not as provocative as a sex conference it’s still pretty close if you’re into stuff like EBM, coldwave, darkwave, industrial wave, and other waves yet to be invented. And likewise the label is international in scope having just put out the debut LP by Oakland-based Amusement Machine who by her own account is “always in the red” but I don’t think that’s a sex thing (the Emulator EP below is what first got Body Musick’s attention and indeed it’s an eerie and enveloping tour de downtempo force).
Anyways the label is run by a man named Filmmaker and if you don’t know who that is you should probably check out his video for “Melting Plastic on Frail Skin” below because it’s a sick track and an equally sick video complete with fetish jungle gym and leather-bound chain play and not just one but two adorable snakes. Filmmaker is one of these people who always seems to have more projects going than your average person can keep up with but for one I’d recommend his Kontinent collab with Sad Mafioso from last month if case you’re short of time.
The aforementioned email goes on to say how Columbia is facing “tough times” lately meaning the nationwide protests and strikes provoked by a proposed regressive tax “reform” and which has continued on in a broader fight against malfeasance and poverty and inequality with attendant draconian crackdowns that have left dozens dead plus hundreds injured and disappeared. In other words it’s an especially dark time which is saying something by current standards. The email closes with a modest, direct appeal: “if you’re looking to help during this chaotic situation, this independent label will honestly thank you.”
The past year has certainly driven home just how vulnerable the systems and infrastructures are that shape our everyday lives–some of them clearly and desperately in need of change long before COVID hit–and furthermore just how extra-vulnerable musicians and music venues and electronic musicians in particular are to the ongoing state of collective crisis. But at the same time the resulting trauma has make many of us extra-reliant on music in order to cope, all the while many musicians are simply trying to survive as such. One takeaway being that we all need to be extra-conscious (these days especially) of paying musicians for services rendered when possible. And Body Magick even as a young label renders some serious services when it comes putting out some of the most absorbing and transporting electronic music I’ve encountered lately. Plus they just added four new records to their discography over the weekend.
The first is a full-length release by Panama Papers—a group comprised of Invalid User and GAËL who together founded Piladoras Tapes which is another Colombian electronic label this one based in Bogotá—and it’s called John Doe’s Manifesto. Consistent with their name the music on the album moves with relentless mechanized menace, not unlike the menace of unrestrained and unregulated flows of global capital (call it “trickle-up economics”!) as revealed in the actual Panama Papers. Both sound-wise and concept-wise this would be perfect music for a sequel to They Live if John Carpenter didn’t already score all his own films.
Next up is Fragmentos by LA-based producer Machino. Opening track “California Evil” acts a mood-setting overture for an album (or extra-long EP?) “full of ruthless industrial wave footwork with thick phantasmagorical ambiences” to the point it’ll probably break the needle on your seismometer if you actually live in Cali because everyone there owns one I hope. And then there’s the Transmutative Discipline EP by Black Dahlia comprised of “two banging Darkwave tracks” from the “Australian EBM queen” plus “two remixes by label founder Filmmaker.”
And finally there’s Manipulations which is where we started, the debut full-length by Amusement Machine that’s “loaded with classy coldwave techno and dungeon-esque minimal synth” that essentially takes the downtempo sound of the debut EP and blows it up to widescreen sonic proportions with a resulting vibe that’s like speeding down a deserted back highway at 3 in the morning where you completely forget where you’re even going and just become one with road and it’s hard to tell if you’re totally wired or pleasantly wrung out or both at the same time somehow (note to reader: your loyal blogger is probably projecting here because the last time I drove I got a speeding ticket in Staten Island). And with tracks like “Empathy” and “Healing” you should take a cue from their titles and head over to Body Musick’s Bandcamp and you know what to do from there. (Jason Lee)
Elektra Monet isn’t just another Juilliard-trained viola and violin player from Texas who performs the occasional DJ set at Burning Man because yes she is one of those but one who also creates original electronically generated pieces combining 4AD/This Mortal Coil style avant/ambient floatiness with modern glitch beats and the kind of wraithlike female vocals favored by the likes of David Lynch and Serge Gainsbourg among other inspirations and influences.
You can listen to her latest full-length release titled Angels of Sweat from late 2020 below if you doubt me (recommended tracks: “Love is a Diamond Lie,” “In A State,” “Trash Humper,” “1995”) or better yet the new album-teasing EP released just today called Transience on which Ms. Monet steers her ship into more Tangerine Dreamy waters. And there’s truly some transience happening on Transience what with the brighter, sharper synth timbres and mind-melding arpeggiations that may possibly have some of us fantasizing about riding a real train with Tom Cruise or Rebecca De Mornay or both or is that just me.
The one caveat that may exist for some fans is the lack of vocals on the three tracks because of Elektra’s especially spectral voice but then again singing may have somewhat broken the “Late Night Tales” spell cast so perfectly by the EP. And anyway you can check out some recent vocalizing by Elektra on two tracks where she’s featured as lead vocalist on Jeremy Bastard’s Everyone Is History, There Is No Memory from earlier this year, reviewed on the DELI blog not long ago, where she adapts the crystalline hushed high-register school of female vocalizing and stirs a little grit into the mix.
And hey wouldn’t you know it, Elektra and Jeremy are labelmates on Somewherecold Records based out of Shelbyville, Kentucky, and while he’s clearly no Dyna Girl they do make seem to make a good musical team, especially since they both record for a label specializing in all thing slowcore, gothic, shoegazy, darkwavey, post-rocky, and ambient-but-not-New-Agey. (Jason Lee)
In her own words, San Antonio artist, claire rousay (stylized in all lowercase) “is a person who performs and records.” She is a skilled percussionist and composer who makes use of her excellent ear for recorded sound to conjure sonic landscapes from the material of everyday life — sounds from a kitchen, garage, desk, bathroom, or just outside the living room window. Her music prioritizes emotional immediacy, and on “a softer focus,” she has chosen to ruminate on the strange ways that isolation has intensified our fractured relationship to space in the digital era. Much of her discography can be placed within a broader tradition of experimental collage-based music, but “a softer focus” is a more composed release which explores diverse instrumental stylings in service of something more grounded; a classical album which seeks to stimulate the humanity often buried within digital experience.
The first time I heard claire rousay’s music was at Me Mer Mo Monday, a weekly event once held at Volstead Lounge which served as an informal hub for Austin’s underground experimental music scene. The awkward tension between Me Mer Mo and the rest of East Sixth Street would make itself apparent whenever a bachelorette party or frat crew would stumble upon a free jazz or noise set by accident, yet on occasion these two worlds would converge amicably. In the middle of a particularly spacey duet with more eaze, claire set her White Claw down and began scrolling through her phone, but instead of a field recording or a sample, Charli XCX came blaring out of the Aux cord. claire proceeded to play the entirety of Charli’s debaucherous electropop anthem “5 In The Morning” before eventually transitioning back into an abstract jam.
On one level, this was simply a fun moment — I love Charli XCX and I was also drinking White Claws — and everyone in the room was smiling. But I was also blown away by the boldness of this decision to insert an untouched pop song into claire and more eaze’s exercise in sonic manipulation. There is a moment on the track “peak chroma” which took me back to this avant-pop crossover: after two and a half seamless tracks of typewriter field recordings, wistful piano and swelling strings, claire’s heavily autotuned voice enters the mix and she begins to sing a melodic verse by crooning “I’m trying not to miss you / I put on the newest blackbear song”.
A staged eavesdropping ensues, and we hear two or three auto-tuned voices whirl around one another as they casually express different attitudes towards posting on social media. One of them has a habit of deleting her posts as soon as they go up online, as she feels uncomfortable extending her sense of self into online space. More bluntly, the final track “a kind of promise” pokes at similar anxieties of technological representation — a beautiful melancholy piano and string miniature is brought to a violent halt by a warbling cassette tape.
On “a softer focus,” recorded space is not limited to the conventional set of environmental sounds (oceans, insects, birds, traffic, etc.) which conventionally signify space or nature, though it does make extensive use of them. As social media usage has further settled into the environments where we live and listen, music which honestly depicts (or perhaps creates) the experience of being present must also include or reference the prepackaged and processed sounds that have found themselves more and more omnipresent in our lives. To me, the title of “a softer focus” deliberately evokes the unconscious experience which underpins the act of scrolling: staring into your screen in motion as sound peaks out at arrhythmic intervals, hinting at other places which arise from our shared topology.
By musicalizing the feeling of scrolling, claire rousay has beautifully illuminated the inner processes which guide that banal habit, and while what we do with this perspective is a bigger question, we are better off having heard it for ourselves. It’s important to note that none of these ideas would hit home were it not for the timeless beauty of the compositions that carry them.
– Blake Robbins
Photo: Joseph McMurray
LA artist Jonny Kosmo has built a dedicated following fusing immaculately-produced 70’s-vintage funk/soul tunes with an at-times truly surreal visual sense that evokes contemporaries Unknown Mortal Orchestra, albeit with a seemingly more playful and innocent heart. But with his latest video, “Fool,” which also serves as a preview for his upcoming album, “Pastry” (out June 4th on Feeding Tube Records in the States), he’s upped his game on both fronts.
The track itself is a warm, pleasantly viscous slab of gently psychedelic slow-funk steeped in 70s Stevie Wonder-era synths, shimmering tremoloed guitars with occasional wah-wah lead flourishes, a bass line as thick as hash oil, and soulfully gauzy close-mic’d vocals.
The accompanying video, however, left us questioning our sanity in the best way. Set in a hilly beige meadow that could’ve served as a Windows ’95 desktop background, Kosmo sings the title track while intently at work with a metal detector. He ends up crossing paths with an unusual new friend, and the dance party ensues. It’s simultaneously hilarious and unsettling, another example of the David Lynch-lite vibe that is quickly becoming a Jonny Kosmo signature. Gabe Hernandez
Bryan Away has released the first single, "The Lake", from his forthcoming album, Canyons to Sawdust, which is due out of July 9th. The single is accompanied by a beautifully animated video from Qianwen Yu.
This is the project of Elliot Korte, and he had this to say about the new single; "The Lake" began in an email poem with the subject "Hello new email freestyle" to my then girlfriend who I was in a long distance relationship with. It was when I first registered the bryanaway.com domain, and I wanted to show off my new email. Somehow in about 30 minutes I ended up writing most of the lyrics for what would eventually become The Lake. I was open with her about feeling like I was not experiencing the full breadth of human emotion, something I’ve yearned for and which forms the theme of the song. Repeatedly I echo this desire/longing and use nature imagery and the water cycle to describe its scale and my thirst. I ended my poem to her "it will be love, and you will be the lake", imagining all other emotions will be born out of love, and that she will be this infinite reservoir flooding my world".
R&B artist Olivia Royal has released her debut mixtape called "Psyche". The mixtape shows the three sides of Royal with Isabela being the heart, Cassie being the brain, and Yummy representing the gut. Not only does she embody these aspects of her personality, but she also takes on the singing, songwriting, and production for the entire project demonstrating that Royal is truly a triple threat.
HIDE has released a second single, "Nightmare", from their forthcoming third album, Interior terror, which is due out on May 28th via Dais Records.
This is the electronic duo of Heather Gabel and Seth Sher, and this new single is 54 seconds of aggression. The single is accompanied by a fitting freak out of a video. Gabel had this to say about the track; "I didn’t write these lyrics, they came from my Mother’s mouth. She called and said, ‘Last night I had a vision of you, I’m scared, the pain is never-ending.’ This track is as much about generational trauma as it is about healing, and is dedicated to my كسبنة جده, who is always with me."
The duo released the album’s lead single, "Do Not Bow Down", back in March along with another visually intense video that can also be viewed below.
