Electro – Page 32 – 7th Level Music

Chelsea Jade’s new single is in “Good Taste.”

Chelsea Jade unveils the new single/video, “Good Taste,” from her new album, Soft Spot, out April 29th on Carpark Records. Premiering via FLOOD, “Good Taste” follows lead single “Optimist,” a calibration of Jade’s skills in passing pop through an R’n’B tinged lens, and is presented alongside a video illustrated by Frances Haszard. “It’s like a miracle // Feeling your charisma getting physical,” Jade begins atop svelte production courtesy of herself and Bradley Hale (Now, Now). “And yeah, I’m miserable // But oh it’s such a mood getting sad, getting sexual.” “Good Taste” features additional vocal engineering and production by Luna Shadows, and sees MUNA’s Naomi McPherson and Josette Maskin lending their guitar prowess.

Of the track, Jade says: “I met someone at a party while I was living in a hotel for a briefly opulent moment in time. The next night they met me in the lobby and eventually we made our way up to my room. It’s an implicitly sexy situation but we parted without touch. As soon as they left I asked if they wanted to come back and when the elevator opened on the ground floor, they got in and ignited the most cinematic make out plus I’ve ever had. This song is about that encounter. I imagine the first half to be an internal fantasy until the real first touch when the production explodes into maximalism.”

On the video, Haszard remarks, “The world already existed- black and white, linear and basey with augmented senses and ripples of distortion. These things translated easily into my frame by frame animation with my awkward impressions of 3D and motion. I’m self taught and a bad teacher so my style suits working with artists who enjoy imperfections and have a sense of humour about what unfolds.”

Watch Chelsea Jade’s “Good Taste” Video

Jade brings her “good taste” to Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater where she’ll perform with Jai Wolfon June 8th. Tickets are available here. A New York City headline show to celebrate the release of Soft Spot will also be announced soon!

Quietly, Chelsea Jade spent 2020 and 2021 skulking around other people’s projects. In tandem with these collaborations, Jade has been funneling her skills into Soft Spot–adding animator, video editor, producer and engineer to her prolific creative résumé.

You can catch her as a dancer in Lorde’s “Mood Ring” music video, or in the credits as Deafheaven’s graphic designer for their 2020 vinyl release 10 Years Gone. She’s choreographed Aotearoa Music Awardwinning videos for Georgia Lines (“No One Knows,” “I Got You”) as well as Los Angeles based Trace Le. Over the years, she’s written songs for artists like The Chainsmokers, Cxloe and more. While it’s not unusual to collaborate in music, it might be considered rare to work with a diverse roster of artists in so many different ways.

Moreover, Soft Spot ventures beyond the exploration of delusions of grandeur that formed the focus of the critically acclaimed Personal Best (2018), a record that enjoyed two years on the shortlist for the APRA Silver Scroll Award in the company of Lorde, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Aldous Harding, and Marlon Williams, for excellence in songwriting for “Laugh it Off” and “Life of the Party”, respectively. A dynamic pre-Personal Best single, “Afterglow,” has made several TV appearances, most recently on the hit Netflix series “Emily in Paris.”

On the strength of this work and more, Jade was presented with an APRA Professional Development Award; signed a publishing deal, and co-founded a fxmale songwriting/producer camp in New Zealand with tutors like Susan Rogers (Prince) and Wendy Wang (Greg Kurstin). Now, Soft Spot aims from rougher terrain. A sonic sketchbook, Chelsea’s production falls on the textural side, a panorama littered with field recordings and conversations with friends as you travel through the record.

Watch “Good Taste” Video

Watch “Optimist” Video

Pre-order Soft Spot

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[Thanks to Yuri at Pitch Perfect PR.]

[Subscribers have good taste in music.]

Review: Psymon Spine – Charismatic Mutations

Coming hot on the heels of their 2021 album, Charismatic Megafauna, Psymon Spine‘s Charismatic Mutations is a remix of the aforementioned album that features guest remixes from collaborators such as Joe Goddard from Hot Chip, Each Other, and Bucky Boudreau.

Goddard’s remix of “Milk” is first, and it’s lovely and peppy – a fine way to kick off a record of highly danceable and spring break road trip tracks. The “Love Injection Euphoric remix” of “Jumprope” is perfectly named because it’s made to boost your vibrational patterns, give you energy, and probably connect you to various luminous beings.

Brother Michael‘s “Downstairs at Eric’s remix” of “Jacket” gets extra points for referencing Yaz and for being so damn funky. “Modmed” turns into space station lounge grooves with Dar Disku‘s “Balearic Touch” mix of it. Each Other’s remix of “Solution” is almost an industrial dance track. Their synth and drum machine work on it is stunning. The “Safer” remix of “Jumprope” has bass so thick you can almost slice it, and Bucky Boudreaux’s remix of “Different Patterns” almost makes it into a torch song for androids.

There isn’t a weak remix on here, which is not always the case for remix albums. Psymon Spine chose their collaborators and ideas well.

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[Thanks to Cody at Northern Spy.]

Marco Benevento’s new single, “Marco & Mimo,” is a bouncy delight.

This summer, hallucinatory keyboard wizard Marco Benevento pulls back the curtain on his latest studio effort, simply titled, Benevento. Due June 10 on Royal Potato Family, the 11-track collection presents 40-minutes of small-batch psychedelia, bubbled up from his home studio (Fred Short Studios) at the base of the Catskill Mountains in Woodstock, NY. Its title nods to Paul McCartney‘s first solo album and like Macca’s eponymous release, Benevento is a similarly loose, low-key affair where song sketches and sunrise jams share space with more constructed tracks. Benevento plays all of the instruments with exception of percussion from Mamadouba ‘Mimo’ Camara and backing vocals by his wife and kids on a handful of songs. He also produced and engineered the recording. The album’s latest single “Marco & Mimo,” which sets Afro-Caribbean melodic lines and sing-song, earworm vocals against the bump ‘n’ grind of Camara’s percussion, is out today (listen/share), while pre-order is available here.

“This record really acts as a psychedelic window into my studio and my brain,” Benevento explains. “The studio was a good place to be trapped for the last few years. I was surrounded by tape machines and gear. The album started to become this document of a crazy dude losing his mind in the woods—and maybe regaining it.”

Recording was conducted amidst stacks of gear in varying states of repair, all fodder for inspiration during long quarantine-dictated solo jam sessions. In this environment, Benevento unlocked his archives, mining for unfinished song ideas, and surrendered to the machines, coaxing beats and melodies from both go-to favorites and gear that had long been collecting dust. Benevento has since decamped to a new, significantly larger, home studio. As such, the album also acts as a swan song for his former workspace.

“Wall-to-wall keyboards, mics, amps, drums, the place was about to explode,” Benevento laughs.

In contrast to Let It Slide, his minimalistic 2019 full-length collaboration with producer Leon Michels, Benevento is heavily saturated and experimental, built from countless layers of keyboards, bounced to 4-track tape. Deeply indebted to the West African psychedelia of artists such as Francis Bebey, Kiki Gyan and William Onyeabor, the songs are rhythmic and repetitive, built into thick mosaics of sound. Each track features at least one keyboard solo, allowing Benevento ample time to explore sounds from the deepest recesses of his gear collection.

For the five songs with vocals, Benevento collaborated on lyrics with Al Howard, a San Diego-based poet. Howard handed over a 10 pages of lyrical sketches which Benevento worked into his tracks, occasionally chopping and mixing the lines or adding in words of his own.

“It was a new thing for me to dive in to—using someone’s lyrics,” Benevento says. “Or, I should say, finding a way to fit someone else’s lyrics into my tunes. I was a bit fed up with my own lyrical ideas, and was immediately drawn to Al’s writing.”

Despite stresses of the global pandemic, the vibe at Fred Short Studios was deeply peaceful and creative as Benevento patiently worked through years of accumulated ideas, lost, as he says, in the wonder of Woodstock. The experience ended up being so inspiring that—in another nod to McCartney—Benevento II is already in the works.

“I guess all my records are kind of experimental and weird, but this one is really unique,” Benevento says. “Records are snapshots of time, and this is from a time when it was just me, dialing knobs and making mixes and inventing how things could sound.”

As such, Benevento is sonic time capsule, a wormhole beckoning listeners to enter and explore. Throw away your preconceptions of time and space and dive in.

Benevento is out June 10 on Limited Edition Bubblegum Pink 180-Gram Vinyl,
Classic Black 180-Gram Vinyl and Digital formats from Royal Potato Family.
Pre-order available HERE

Marco Benevento
Tour Dates:

4/7 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
4/8 – Burlington, VT – Higher Ground
4/9 – Fairfield, CT – Stage One
6/22 – Rochester, NY – Abilene
6/23 – Pittsburgh, PA – Thunderbird
6/24 – Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom
6/25 – Rothbury, MI – Electric Forest Festival
7/1 – Scranton, PA – Peach Music Festival
7/3 – Quincy, CA – High Sierra Music Festival
9/3 – Portland, ME – Ghostland Festival

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Kevin at Royal Potato Family.]

Local Suicide create another remix of Alberto Melloni’s “Red Siren.”

Local Suicide make a second pass of the Alberto Melloni’s Red Siren which gained support and praise from the likes of Sean Johnston, Justin Wilson (No Strings Attached), Erol Alkan (Phantasy Sound), and Curses.

Berliners, Local Suicide return to the helm, offering up their hypnotic superpowers to concoct an alternative to their cobra wave anthem. This one’s entitled “Blood Red Siren” and will be released digitally through EPM on the 8th of April.

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[Thanks to Paradise Palms Records.]

Live: Gary Numan and I Speak Machine – March 21, 2022 – Park West, Chicago, IL

This was my third time seeing Gary Numan live, and it was the smallest venue I’ve seen him in so far. It was good to see a crowd of people happy to be experiencing live music again, and even better to see Numan and his band having a good time on stage.

His opening act was the one-woman band I Speak Machine, who came out looking like a Black Widow assassin and throwing down a set of darkwave mixed with kabuki, opera, and industrial grind. One of the best parts of her set was watching the reactions of some in the audience who didn’t know what to make of her, and of her not giving a damn what people thought.

I Speak Machine belting out operatic vocals for a dumbfounded crowd.

Mr. Numan came out to an appreciative crowd and proceeded to belt out a loud, sometimes furious set that mixed classics with hot tracks from his last two albums, Savage and Intruder.

It was great to see him and his four-piece band having a good time. There were many moments when they were smiling or laughing. You could tell they were excited to be on tour. Numan’s guitarist, Steve Harris, was all over the stage, often mixing shredding solos with performance art antics. I’m fairly certain he broke a string or two just a few songs into the set from playing so hard.

It was a great set, with standouts like “The Promise,” “Films,” “Ghost Nation,” “Love Hurt Bleed,” “Bed of Thorns,” “My Name Is Ruin,” “A Prayer for the Unborn,” and “Are Friends ‘Electric’?” Catch him if you can. He’s having a blast right now, and so will you.

Thanks to the woman who let me snap this photo of the set list she scored.

Keep your mind open.

Alister Fawnwoda, Suzanne Ciani, Greg Leisz, and Ghost Marrow take part in a “Snow Ritual” with their new single.

AKP Recordings is excited to announce the expanded Milan (Deluxe) from Alister Fawnwoda, Suzanne Ciani, Greg Leisz to be released digitally on April 15th. Today the first single “Snow Ritual (feat. Ghost Marrow)” is available and features vocals from singer and multi-instrumentalist Aurielle Zeitler.

Listen to the new single HERE, and pre-save the digital release HERE.

The song opens with a mass of sparkling, effervescent synth arpeggios, flitting through the air like snowflakes. The lush, plaintive pedal steel undulations of Greg Leisz emerge and float past like clouds in the sky, billowing above the electronic crystalline mesh. Deep sub bass undertones rise up from beneath the earth, fortifying this imaginary sonic landscape. Aurielle Zeitler, under the moniker Ghost Marrow, contributes a wash of soft, tranquil vocal layers, imbuing the song with a wordless nostalgia. “On “Snow Ritual,” I wanted to join the “drifting by on a cloud” sensation of the beautiful performances by Greg and Suzanne.” says Zeitler. “I recorded two improvised vocal tracks using a delay/loop pedal in an attempt to contribute to the emotional immediacy that I hear in the song.”

Milan is a bracing and expansive collaboration between generations of musical adventurers. Conceived and led by Detroit-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Alister Fawnwoda, the project includes major contributions from legendary 5 time Grammy-nominated synthesizer pioneer Suzanne Ciani, and Grammy-winning pedal steel maestro Greg Leisz.

Intuitively tracing a slowly evolving journey through time, Milan is deep listening music reminiscent of some of the best work of Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois, and Pauline Oliveros.

As Ghost Marrow, California singer and multi-instrumentalist Aurielle Zeitler created a space to process her ongoing struggle with a rare bone marrow disease that both inspired the Ghost Marrow moniker and sequestered her to prolonged periods of isolation and loneliness, feelings palpable in her music.

After several years of writing and touring with Sacramento-based doom/indie band Giant Squid, Zeitler embarked on her solo project and recorded the hauntingly transcendent Ghost Marrow (Untitled) in 2012 before presenting different facets of her artistry by making appearances on Tera Melos’ X-ed Out, Emma Ruth Rundle’s Marked For Death, and serving as touring lead guitarist for Chelsea Wolfe. In 2016, Zeitler returned to the Ghost Marrow project, expanding on the wistful sounds of Ghost Marrow with the dispiritedly tender and delicately interwoven Bunraku Warrior, and synth-driven single “Form-a” in 2020.

Zeitler currently lives and works as a high school therapist in Oakland, California and is finishing a new Ghost Marrow record in 2022.

Alister Fawnwoda melds an abundance of influences into a sound that is expansive, ambitious, and authentic to its core. With a creative practice that flows between painting, production, DJ’ing, and beyond, Alister is committed to exploring the boundaries of his talents and potential. Alister is persistently building his repertoire as he makes a name for himself as one of the most promising artists in the City of Detroit. For lovers of classic house, experimental ambient, and everything in between, Alister’s music presents the possibilities of creative exploration.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Scott at AKP Recordings.]

Review: Jon Hopkins – Music for Psychedelic Therapy

How do you follow up releasing two records of house music, club beats, and dub tracks? If you’re Jon Hopkins, you do it by releasing Music for Psychedelic Therapy – a gorgeous record of ambient meditations that doesn’t have a single beat on it.

As Hopkins said in the liner notes from the press release I received for this album, “I feel I explored that particular sound (house and club music) as much as I could. Next, I wanted to make something that faced the opposite direction, something very far away from a cosmic party or a set of festival-ready bangers…Something looking inwards, something egoless, with no attempts made to ‘fit in.’ It felt like time for a total reset, to wait for music to appear from a different place.”

I don’t think I can put it better than that, and this album is already difficult to describe. It’s more of an experience than a record. “Welcome” sets you up for chakra alignment and to get you into your meditation space. After that follow three tracks called “Tayos Caves, Ecuador,” which put you into a cool, quiet place suitable for dreaming, sleeping, or the “total reset” he mentioned.

The entire record is a reset for whatever is bothering you at the time. “Love Flows Over Us in Prismatic Waves” feels like light hitting you through a window as you watch a rabbit bounce across your lawn. “Deep in the Glowing Heart” reflects the place we all hope to find and reside in at some point in our lives, hopefully in this plane and the next. These are the first two tracks of a thirty-five-minute uninterrupted journey that continues with the hopeful “Ascending, Dawn Sky,” the cosmic energy-tinged “Arriving,” and the beautiful, tear-inducing “Sit Around the Fire” – in which music is set to a recording of the spiritualist Ram Dass.

It’s a record that’s stunning with its simplicity and subtlety. Let it calm and warm you.

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[Thanks to Jessica at Domino Records.]

Carmen Villain releases two versions of “Subtle Bodies” from her new album out now.

US-born, Norwegian-Mexican artist and producer Carmen Villain (aka Carmen Hillestad) shares a new single, “Subtle Bodies,” from her forthcoming album, Only Love From Now On (out now on Smalltown Supersound), and in addition, presents a second version of the song by Huerco S. Only Love From Now On showcases Villain’s aesthetic blossoming into something unexpected, benevolent in its composure and altogether luxuriant in its sensuality. In turn, “Subtle Bodies” begins with minimalistic instrumentation, blooming with finely rich layers. Just like how lead single, “Gestures,” refers to Hannah Wilke’s video piece of the same name, “Subtle Bodies” pays tribute to the performance/sculpture of Ana Mendieta, who Hillestad responded deeply to in that artist’s rage, protest, and love for nature in connection to the female body.

“I found Ana Mendieta’s work deeply moving in many ways, in an emotional sense but also in the way she fully immersed herself into her art, connecting her humanity, strength, rage and vulnerability with nature,” says Villain. “It’s a deeply layered immersion. I had her, and especially her ‘Silueta’ series, in mind when I made ‘Subtle Bodies.’ Making music is for me about a complete immersion into sound, a continuous conversation between an idea and what comes back to me from what develops sonically. While I certainly consider Mendieta’s work and what she was communicating was far more important than what I do, she continues to be a big inspiration in many ways.”

Of the Huerco S version, Villain elaborates: “I have been a big fan of Brian’s work for a good while. He’s got an impeccable approach to sound and texture and communicates a lot with his music I think. So I was very happy he was into doing a version for me when I asked him. I asked him to choose whichever track he wanted from the album, and he went for Subtle Bodies. The result is deep and fizzy, I love it.”

Listen to Carmen Villain’s “Subtle Bodies” and “Subtle Bodies” (Huerco S. version)

Only Love From Now On is fueled by the sense of scale in feeling small in the face of things so large, the contemplation of how the biggest impact we can have is in the people close to us, the attempt to make sure that impact is a positive one, and the choice to try to focus on love instead of fear.

Listening to Only Love From Now On is simultaneously comforting and alluringly strange, with Hillestad engaging themes both philosophical and occasionally abstract. Hillestad describes it as “wishing to maintain a sense of careful optimism for the future, while on the cusp of something unknown.” Employing a panoply of instrumentation – such as woodwinds – field recordings, the studio, jam, and careful composition, Hillestad invokes a conversation with sound that occurs in her deliberate attempts to experiment with new methods, like granular synthesis, for her music-making. The emotional tenor of her music is clear and purposeful. It makes sense that her key musical touchstones are dub, ambient, and cosmic jazz – flexible vehicles for tranquil wonder.

Listen to “Gestures” (with Arve Henriksen)

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Chelsea Jade’s sexy new single exudes “Good Taste.”

Watch Chelsea Jade’s “Good Taste” Video

Jade brings her “good taste” to Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheater where she’ll perform with Jai Wolf on June 8th. Tickets are available here. A New York City headline show to celebrate the release of Soft Spot will also be announced soon!

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Yuri at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Vicky Farewell’s new single, “Kakashi (All of the Time),” is good all of the time.

Orange County-bred Vicky Farewell releases a new single/lyric video, “Kakashi (All of the Time)” from her debut album, Sweet Company, out April 8th on Mac’s Record Label. The anime-inspired standout “Kakashi” came about during a COVID lockdown binge of the Naruto series. “It’s probably the most fun I ever had writing a song,” says Farewell. “It’s also the most embarrassing and I thought I’d never share this with anyone, but here we are.” Elongated synth acts as the song’s backbone, as Farewell’s saccharine voices sparkles across.

Watch Vicky Farewell’s Video for “Kakashi (All of the Time)”

Farewell’s emergence as a solo act is the latest chapter in an already impressive career. A classically-trained pianist, songwriter, and producer, Farewell began to flourish at the epicenter of the funk-addled and deeply experimental Angeleno musical ecosystem alongside The Free Nationals in the studios of Shafiq Husayn (of Sa-Ra Creative Partners) before graduating to the legendary hip-hop producer Dr. Dre’s. She also boasts writing credits on Anderson.Paak‘s acclaimed GRAMMY-nominated album Malibu (Best Urban Contemporary Album) and the GRAMMY-winning album Ventura (Best R&B Album). With this rare combination of elite musicianship and singular vocal performance, Farewell produced, arranged, and engineered Sweet Company herself. Her particular knack for pocket-driven ear worms match the album’s melancholy tone with whimsical notions and unbridled joy.

Sweet Company cements Farewell as a true record producer, complete with the confidence to let the music do the talking. For Farewell, it’s “all about the music and the music is fucking good.”Sweet Company is a bold statement of artistic capacity delivered in feather-light refrains, bursting phasers, and robust arpeggios that conjure pastels and the tender nostalgia of a childhood crush. Farewell finds herself fully realized in the span of eight tracks painstakingly designed to shatter industry norms.

Pre-order Sweet Company

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