Following last single ‘Better Late Than Never’ (video here), a song about self-discovery, the ever intriguing Wings Of Desire share new single ‘Choose A Life’, plus announce their new EP Amun-Ra to be released Friday 13th August 2021 on WMD Recordings.
Filmed in 8mm pre-covid, the video for ‘Choose A Life’ is meant to feel freeing from responsibility and life in general. Somehow that feels even more poignant now.
One the track, the duo say: “Choose A Life is about our automated programming which convinced us that once we get ‘there’ we will be happy. That once we’ve acquired the material check list we will be fulfilled, but this is never the case. The song explores finding joy in the smaller moments of the everyday, the mundane, those micro expressions that we take for granted. And realising that you don’t have to bend the world to make your mark. That it’s better to just enjoy it.“
Amun-Ra which is released on 13th August, moves on from the observant nature of debut EP End Of An Age and into a more inwardly focused journey of self-discovery. It is named after the ancient Egyptian deity, the transcendental creator of the universe and the god of light. It represents unlimited and boundless freedom. It explores the trappings of time, ageing, and looks back with a nostalgic glow on past misdealings and successes. Amun-Ra leaves breadcrumbs for anyone growing up and asking the big existential questions on life, lighting the way for the disenfranchised.
Sonically the EP continues the exploration of 60s pop songwriting, noise rock, and euphoric atmospherics, and lifts it into new horizons. Produced by the band and mixed by kindred spirit Vincent Cacchione (Caged Animals). It will include both ‘Choose A Life’, and ‘Better Late Than Never’.
The new EP Amun-Ra is out 13th August 2021 via WMD Recordings
Visual artist and singer-songwriter Morly (aka Katy Morley) announces her debut album ‘Til I Start Speaking, out August 20th on Cascine, and shares new single/video “Dance to You.” Morley’s soft, swooning strain of storyteller pop has distilled across the past half decade into an increasingly hushed and heartfelt private language, as lived in as it is lyrical. Her debut full-length took shape slowly during stints in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and London, stripping back the melodies to their essence, driven by a yearning to “reach ‘the other side,’ to live in and be art and music.” The songs that emerged are time-worn, aching, and acoustically rich, like hymns or traditionals, traced in piano, voice, and percussion. She describes the creation process as almost a “subconscious exorcism,” casting out old ghosts and outgrown loves.
After establishing her singular style with a series of EPs — In Defense of My Muse (2015), Something More Holy (2016) and Sleeping In My Own Bed (2017) — Morley took some necessary time away from the public eye as she battled chronic illness. She returns now with newfound strength and focused sound. Much of ‘Til I Start Speaking revealed itself as she found herself falling in love with someone across the Atlantic. The Minneapolis-born artist relocated from her homebase in Los Angeles to London this year, joining her partner, who was “a beam of light irrupting into the darkness” of her deteriorating health. The album paints a portrait of realizing you’re in love. It’s also the result of Morley finding herself at the crossroads of graduate school and considering pursuing music full time. Morley felt adrift and estranged from herself, but year by year she’s closed that gap in incremental ways: studying piano, pursuing painting (her artwork adorns the sleeves of her entire discography), unlearning self-doubt, trusting one’s inner voice.
Working with frequent collaborator Christopher Stracey, Morley followed a muse of stillness and naturalism, allowing each composition to flower in its own fluid, elegant way – arriving finally at a sequence he quipped as “nine sleep bangers and a bop.” There is indeed a sensuous, low-lidded mood to this music, as though sung at a quiet hour in an intimate setting, a quality she ascribes to her affinity for conscious listening: “It’s in my own silence that the world really comes alive, and I see the deep connections.” Morley’s voice moves in reflective pools, spotlit but subdued, full of lilts and breathy pauses. The effect is one of patience and hidden wisdom, transmuting sorrow into strength, inspired by her hero Nina Simone’s ability to “take the saddest feeling and alchemize it into joy.”
‘Til I Start Speaking represents a stylistic movement towards organic sounds that was hinted towards in Morley’s previous works, blending her love of classic acoustic songwriting and minimal electronic music. This manifests in new single “Dance to You,” the follow-up to previously released single “Twain Harte.” “Dance to You” opens with piano before expanding with Morley’s soothing voice and a velvety bass line and a mellow beat. Morley elaborates: “‘Dance to You’ is about the need for–and is the vehicle for–a benevolent exorcism. It sprang from an encounter with someone so radiant to me that they helped light my way, but that I had to outgrow in order to see my own brilliance: I can’t grow/inside your glow.”
The incredible accompanying video, directed by Lawrence Pumfrey and choreographed by Katya Bourviski, explores the sort of dream state and rush of inspiring infatuation, but also its malleability and destabilizing effect. “Katya and I talked about my experiences as a young artist finding my feet in a difficult industry, especially with flagging health, and the constant pressure to define and sell yourself which helped to inform the structure of the piece,” says Morley. “It’s also partially inspired by Pina Bausch’s dance, Kontakthof.” Watch “Dance to You” Video
Stream “Twain Harte”‘Til I Start Speaking Tracklist 1. Til I Start Speaking (I & II) 2. Dance to You 3. Sleeping in My Own Bed 4. Wasted5. Twain Harte 6. Up Above 7. Jazz Angel (Bill) 8. Savior Mind Tattoo 9. Superlunar 10. Eliogy 11. Feels (Bonus Track)
Keep your mind open.
[Dance on over to the subscription box while you’re here.]
Part-krautrock, post-house, part-funk, part-art rock, part…I don’t know what, Museum of Love‘s Life of Mammals is weird and wild.
“Your Nails Have Grown,” for instance, starts the album with Pat Mahoney and Dennis McNany‘s mechaniker krautrock synths for beats and lyrics about someone lost to time, and the extended, haunting saxophone solo by Peter Gordon is outstanding. The title track brings in ambient synths to blend with funky bass and hand percussion beats. It’s a song about facing reality and casting out illusions (“It’s a shocking truth. You were raised by wolves, but never told that rabbits eat their youth.”).
“Marching Orders” is a highly danceable track (those killer beats!), with a whistled chorus and lyrics about retreating into stability and walking away from chaos and the rat race. “Hotel at Home” could be a song about touring or living in quarantine with lyrics like “Everything you’ve done is washed away. This room wasn’t really yours anyway. Curl up and watch. Lockup extended stay.”
“Cluttered World” is a sauntering, sexy track about cutting away attachments in hopes of filling up the space in our homes and heads with better pleasures. “Ridiculous Body,” with its swaying bass and tense drums, is a witty take on toxic beauty and the ravages of time. “Flat Side” has dark-wave elements in its synths and lyrics about patience in love. The guitar on it soars like a robot hawk.
“Army of Children” is a song about regret, and not being able to fix bad habits (“When we met I was a picturesque wreck hanging around your neck…Why can I ever seem to stick to the plan?”). The addition of country guitars and Edwyn Collins-like vocals gives a cool, bluesy feel to the track, even when dance drums walk into the room. Bold horns and bouncing synth-beats propel “The Conversation,” which tells the tale of a talk going out of control in rapid time. The album closes with “Almost Certainly Not You,” in which we hear the tale of a relationship in which someone claims they’ve been telling the truth the whole time, not the other. The song is punctuated by finger snaps and synths that feel like sunlight breaking through cigarette smoke.
A lot of the album sounds like that image feels: Mysterious, yet bright. Angry, yet cheeky. Stealthy, yet bold. It’s a winner any way you slice it.
Producer and musician Kelly Lee Owens is “reclaiming space for women in dance music in really powerful and important ways” (NPR Music). Last year, she released Inner Song, one of 2020’s best albums, via Smalltown Supersound. Today, she announces a UStour in support of the album — tickets are on sale. Kicking off at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, Owens will play across the states, including appearances at Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival and Miami’s III Points Festival. Additionally, she will release the Inner Song Remix Series EP this Friday. It features remixes by Loraine James, Coby Sey, Roza Terenzi, Elkka, Breaka,Yazzus, and Haider.
Kelly Lee Owens Tour Dates Wed. Sept. 8 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg Fri. Sept. 10 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival Sat. Sept. 11 – Philadelphia, PA @ Making Time Mon. Sept. 13 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair Tue. Sept. 14 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage Thu. Sept. 16 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Fri. Sept. 17 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall Sat. Sept. 18 – Seattle, WA @ Nuemos Sun. Sept. 19 – Portland, OR @ Holocene Wed. Sept. 22 – Oakland, CA @ Starline Sat. Sept. 25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room Fri. Oct. 22 – Sat. Oct. 23 – Miami, FL @ III Points Festival
Summers in Anniston, the new album by Splash ’96 (AKA Jason LaRay Keener), is a time machine turned into a record. It takes us back to a time when you could still hang out at the pool, mall, record store, or a friend’s back yard patio and not have to worry about as many killer viruses, angry political conversations, or everyone talking on their damn phone all the damn time.
The bright synths of opening track “CD Baby” are like a blast of cool air that hits you while walking into the mall vestibule from the hot July day. “Our Camcorder” has some classic-sounding processed beats that would fit in fine on a Janet Jackson jam. “The Video Store” is a loving tribute to something that no longer exists (apart from a lone Blockbuster out west and specialty stores here and there), and captures the background music of such a place and the constant looping of advertising videos played there.
“Pool Water,” complete with sampled splashing sounds, is a fun bubbly track perfect for the opening of an early 1990s summer coming-of-age comedy. “Waterbed Nap” is as relaxing as its namesake. “Local Radar” is the sound of the local TV station’s 24-hour weather channel that you watch like a hawk all summer to see if your ballgame, pool party, or trip to the beach is going to be rained out.
“Splurgin’ at the Mall” sounds like a lost Pet Shop Boys cut and has a fun, fat bass lick throughout it to accompany your spending spree at the hot pretzel stand, Spencer’s Gifts, Sam Goody Records and Tapes, and the arcade. “Quintard Cruising” is a straight-up mid-1990s house track (referring to a shopping mall in Oxford, Alabama), and so good that Splash ’96 should consider putting out a house record (if he isn’t already creating one).
“Late Night Drive-Thru” is a perfect song for late night drives with the windows open and three pals in the car with nowhere to go and nothing to do but enjoy the warm night air and listen to the cool new CD one of them just bought with the money they earned at the video store. The album ends with the mellow, slightly warped “Please Adjust Your Tracking,” a phrase familiar to anyone who has ever owned a VCR. I’m surprised the phrase hasn’t transformed into a version of “Step off!” by now.
It’s a fun record, and one that brings back a lot of memories if you were at least a teenager in the 1990s.
Keep your mind open.
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Combining jazz, hip hop, funk, and “atmospheric melodies,” El Jazzy Chavo‘s Aspects of Dystopia is a cool, mood-altering record that can be experienced in different moods, on different days, and through different listening systems all to various effects.
The overriding theme of the album is the day-to-day struggle of the lower class living in places with people (and buildings) who overlook them. “Futurama” is like the opening track to a film about a renegade graffiti artist in a totalitarian regime and a place where “the deep snow buries any sound.”
The groove of “Slap of Realism” is rooted in electro-bass and and processed beats that sound almost like they’re coming from the back of a bodega down the street. “Below the City” is surprisingly bright, as if you went into the sewers to hide from killer robots and discovered a vibrant colony of other survivors there. “Delusion” would fit well into a horror film with its simple synth stabs and ethereal chords.
“Where the Stars Don’t Shine” is the track that introduced me to El Jazzy Chavo. The wicked beats, sampled horns, and lounge vibraphone sounds hooked me right away. “The voice you hear is not my speaking voice,” a woman says at the beginning of “La Sirena de la Salva,” and then siren-like calls emerge from your speakers alongside smooth guitars and snappy beats. “Threshold of Sensation” has a neat warped sound to it that almost makes you feel drunk.
“Swallowed by Normality” has a neat switch near the end that shakes you out of your relaxation, but not in a harsh way. The sampled brass on “Hemispheres” is a great accompaniment to the vaporwave synths. “Return to Forever” is waiting for a rapper of mad skills to come along and use it in his next track. “Andromeda” has some of the best use of sampled raps on the record.
“Barefoot in the Storm” has a groove as relaxing at the title implies, and “Stealing in the Moonlight” is just as slick. The album ends with, appropriately, “Oblivion.” The track isn’t gloomy, however. It’s more of a blissful peace one finds as you fall into a well-deserved rest. The album ends with the sampled lyrics of, “I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I’m on a different wavelength than everybody else.”
He is, and Aspects of Dystopia will put you onto El Jazzy Chavo’s wavelength.
With his new album ‘Dragons‘ set for release June 25th via Houndstooth, Throwing Snow is sharing his new single & video “Traveller“, which follows on from previous singles “Brujita“ and “Halos“.
Speaking about the track, Ross Tones, aka Throwing Snow said “The etymology of the word ‘travel’ originates in ‘to toil’ or ‘labour’.In a modern context, movement is easy for some and near impossible for others, so the word still encapsulates this duality. ‘Traveller’ is journey music and was made from recordings loaded on to the SAMPLR app then manipulated and sequenced.”
Throwing Snow’s fourth album is the audiovisually-augmented Dragons, a work that occupies the space between science and ancestral wisdom. It links music back to its prehistoric capacity for transmitting knowledge to new technology that can untangle the complexity of the contemporary world. Dragons’ ten tracks of heavy primal rhythmic productions incorporate the physicality of acoustic sources, from ancient ritual instruments to modern drum kit, and each track is accompanied by visuals generated by machine learning.
Throwing Snow, aka Ross Tones developed Dragons’ neural network with artist, designer and technologist Matt Woodham. The structures and changes in Tones’ music trigger corresponding changes in accompanying moving images, which combine life in three scales, from microscopic views of rocks to large scale maps. “Everything that happens musically triggers the algorithm to do something,” Tones explains. “This isn’t controlled or predictable, and the music becomes an instruction for the algorithm to make its own decisions about datasets, images, speed, movement and other manipulations.”
The tracks on Dragons match Tones’s ambitions for the album in weight but not complexity. They are intentionally dazzlingly simple in their means, for maximum effect, with repeating motifs, locked basslines, cosmic patterns and full-frequency mids. Often built from four or fewer elements, Tones allows sound to accumulate into his unique take on ritual music for the 21st century. Throbbing ritual dances contain half-remembered earworms revealing glittering night skies of synthesizer patterns – ‘Halos’ stabs and stutters like a dance atop a longbarrow; ‘Purr’ reverberates in silky vibrational motifs; the heavyweight ‘Brujita’ is nu-metal for a past-future ceremony of uncertain purpose.
Tones says he often uses his music as allegory and container for the concepts and theories he’s immersed in – he studied astrophysics, and is fascinated by crafts, archeoacoutics, history, evolution and psychology. In Dragons, he wanted to explore the purpose of music from the beginning of human history. “We have Palaeolithic minds but find ourselves in an increasingly complex and interconnected world,” Tones explains. “Music and art have always been ritualised as a tool for memory, knowledge and emotion, and humans make sense of existence by using tools. Songs were tools of understanding, passed down from our ancestors. Now, things are complex and interrelated, so we can’t use that ancestral knowledge, and need to invent new tools – that’s where machine learning comes into it.”
As is typical for Tones’ Throwing Snow project, the album contains a bold and eclectic mix of instruments, from a bodhrán and daf to cello, with their uses rooted in their inherent acoustic properties. Tones also essentially built his own sample pack for the percussion patterns, working with drummer Jack Baker (Bonobo, Kelis, Alice Russell, Planet Battagon) on an intensive two-day session.
Tones is a Houndstooth stalwart, and Dragons is his fourth full-length album on the label, along with a string of 12”s and EPs. His first album was Mosaic in 2014, followed by Embers in 2017, and Loma in 2018. Originally from the North Of England, for the last few years he has worked from The Castle, his studio an hour outside Bristol/Bath, where he can both forage his own food and find the headspace to make music and experiment with modern technology. He is currently recording a new album with his trio Snow Ghosts, and a soundtrack for a Netflix documentary.
Dragons is a new form of inter-disciplinary album, which is neither wholly electronic nor acoustic, sonic or visual, and pulls from an equally diverse range of inspirations, from texts such as Steven Mithin’s The Singing Neanderthals and Margo Neale and Lynn Kell’s Songlines to the 1982 animated film Flight of Dragons. “I’m into putting music back into history,” Tones explains. “I want to make you think about what music is, what its purpose has been. I’m asking about the scientific aspect to folklore and ancient knowledge, and looking at why it’s still useful. This album is a doorway – if you choose to listen like that.”
Alberto Melloni‘s Red SirenEP was already a hot double-shot of house and trance music, and now two remixes of the EP’s title track have been released from Paradise Palm Records.
The first remix, by Berlin’s Local Suicide, bubbles with industrial bass and dark dance club synths. It’s the kind of track that will instantly awaken you from an early morning groggy state (as it did to me) and keeps you bumping and grooving.
The second remix is by Jacuzzi General, and is a great example of his poolside, luxurious, hedonistic style of house and disco. The synth-bass thuds are pretty much made for slow motion videography of glamorous women walking around, lounging in, and making out by a rooftop pool.
It’s good stuff, and Paradise Palms seems to be hitting everything up the middle for at least a double right now.
Anika – the project of Berlin-based musician Annika Henderson who is also a founding member of Exploded View – announces Change, her first new album in over a decade, out July 23rd on Sacred Bones & Invada, and shares the “Change” video directed by Sven Gutjahr who also directed the video for recent single “Finger Pies.” The follow-up to cult favorite Anika (2010), Change is beautifully fraught. The intimacy of its creation and a palpable sense of global anxiety are seemingly baked into the album’s DNA. Spread across nine tracks, the central feeling of the record is one of heightened frustration buoyed by guarded optimism. The songs offer skittering, austere electronic backdrops reminiscent of classic Broadcast records or Hi Scores-era Boards of Canada, playing them against Anika’s remarkable voice—Nico-esque, beautifully plaintive, and—in regards to the record’s subject matter—totally resolute.
Having worked collaboratively in the past with the likes of BEAK> and Exploded View, Change was ultimately the product of necessity. After recording the initial ideas by herself at Berlin’s Klangbild Studios, Anika was joined by Exploded View’s Martin Thulin, who co-produced the album and played some live drums and bass. “This album had been planned for a little while and the circumstances of its inception were quite different to what had been expected,” says Anika. “This colored the album quite significantly. The lyrics were all written there on the spot. It’s a vomit of emotions, anxieties, empowerment, and of thoughts like—How can this go on? How can we go on?”
Recorded at a time when literally everyone in the world was being forced to take stock, rethink, and reimagine their own place in the cosmos of things, Anika provides the wizened perspective of an outsider. It’s a perspective that is not lost on the British ex-pat and former political journalist, and despite the subject matter and the circumstances around its creation, Change itself is ultimately a treatise on optimism. The title track presents the album’s message writ large: “I think we can change, we all have things to learn, about ourselves and about each other.” To end the record on such a sanguine note might be one of Change’s most revolutionary gestures.
“There’s a lot of stuff I want to change,” says Anika. “Some things I sat down and decided last year, I had to change about myself and my life. Sometimes it feels helpless because the things we want to change are so huge and out of our control. Starting with yourself is always a good place. I think we can change.” Watch “Change” Video
London & Manchester-based duo Oh Baby are set to release their new album ‘Hey Genius‘ on July 23rd via Burning Witches Records The pair, made up of distant cousins Rick Hornby & Jen Devereux met via a chance meeting at distant relatives funeral. Today they’re sharing their new single “I Need Somebody To Love Tonight“.
Speaking about the track, the band said “I Need Somebody To Love Tonight is a cover of an obscure track by Patrick Cowley who was a composer and electronic musician/producer in 70’s San Francisco and who’s music formed part of the New York underground post-disco scene of the early 80’s. When we discovered his early instrumentals and demos had been re-released we devoured all that homemade analog charm. Finding out that the original track was part of music commissioned for gay porn films gave the sound even more beautiful late-night sleaze.”
