Blending Los Angeles jazz and funk with Detroit and Chicago jazz and funk with hip hop from both the west and north coasts, Brijean (Brijean Murphy – percussion and vocals, Doug Stuart – beats, synths) make moody dance music, trip hoppy meditations, and shiny summer grooves on their debut album Walkie Talkie.
Murphy’s opening percussion on “Like You Do” mixes so well with Stuart’s electro-grooves that it’s sometimes to tell where one ends and the other begins. “Fundi” seems to mix in conversations you’d overhear on a subway while Murphy sings about taking your time and lying low over Stuart’s space disco beats.
“Drive Slow” is perfect for such activity, especially when cruising along a beachside road or to or from a chillwave afterparty. The underlying hip hop synths are a great touch in it. “Time moves by so slow,” Murphy sings at the opening of the peppy “Show and Tell.” “Just let your body go, it’s easy.” She and Stuart encourage us to dance and forget our troubles, a crucial skill in this day and age. It’s a lovely track that will take you away to that ideal club in your mind, even if just for a little while.
The title track reminds me of some Thievery Corporation tracks with its electro-lounge grooves and feel-good dance beats. The closer, “Meet Me After Dark,” promises a cool afterparty for all of us somewhere in the future, which is actually the present, so celebrate now with Brijean’s sweet grooves, sexy bass, and toe-tapping beats.
Walkie Talkie is lovely. It’s a much-needed dose of sonic bliss in times of self-isolation and changing seasons. Don’t skip this one.
Keep your mind open.
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Colombian musician Ela Minus announces her debut album, acts of rebellion, out October 23rd on Domino. Performed, produced and recorded entirely by herself, acts of rebellion is a complex manifesto on simplicity, a call to fight, to live, to be present. It’s a collection about the personal as political and embracing the beauty of tiny acts of revolution in our everyday lives. This ethos is clear in the dreamy, pulsing new single/video, “el cielo no es de nadie,” “an ode to little, constant, every day acts of love” sung in Ela’s native Spanish.
Following “they told us it was hard, but they were wrong” and “megapunk,” “el cielo no es de nadie” defies the idea that one grandiose act means more than little ones. The video, co-directed by Ela and Pepi Ginsberg, presents striking images of Ela’s machines as she moves throughout the stage and hallways of a club. It gives a feel of Ela’s visceral, intimate world and urges finding a deeper connection to those around you. “‘el cielo no es de nadie’ is about all the love I see in small, everyday acts. It’s an invitation to appreciate unheroic, but constant and meaningful actions,” says Ela. “The song’s title, ‘el cielo no es de nadie,’ refers to the phrase ‘I’ll give you the sky,’ a common expression used in Spanish when in love. In the song, I defy it: ‘you can’t give me the sky’ / it isn’t yours to give.”
Before forging her path as a solo electronic artist, Ela was a drummer in a teenage hardcore band. She joined the band when she was just 12, performing with them for almost a decade. Ela then moved to the United States to attend Berklee College of Music, where she double-majored in jazz drumming and synthesizer design. This roving background instilled in her a belief that we all have the power to change things, and as she delved deeper into her work with synthesizers, she saw a clear connection between the freedom of the DIY scene she grew up in and club culture. “I deeply identify with club culture, and want to make music to dance to,” she says. “I also want to make songs in the more traditional sense, with melodies, lyrics, and singing. I want to make songs that stay with people through the years.” Using only hardware to perform, write and record, Ela creates complex, technical electronic music that exudes a warm vibrancy, along with a darker, almost celebratory understanding that our breaths aren’t infinite. Her sharp, coiled words are cathartic—due in part to her approach to writing them. “I always start writing by improvising alone,” she says. “Once I have some instrumentals I’m happy with, I intuitively grab the mic and sing a phrase with a melody in it. I always keep that initial phrase.”
On acts of rebellion, you sense the stories hidden in everyday things. You feel Ela’s personality and viewpoint; you sense her presence. The cover features a photo of her, most of her face obscured, but her eyes sharply focused. On acts of rebellion, she’s asking us to make contact not just with her, but also the people that inhabit our lives. She’s suggesting we leave our gadgets behind in favor of flesh-and-blood communities. She’s asking us to think, dance, and love, while she coaxes humanity from her hardware—machines that rattle and whirr alongside her and, in turn, make us feel more alive.
Ela is sharing DIY printable posters and projection art for fans to use and share as a means of embracing these tiny acts of revolution in our everyday lives. Please visit the participate section of elaminus.com to download the art. Pre-order acts of rebellion
acts of rebellion Tracklist 1.N19 5NF 2. they told us it was hard, but they were wrong. 3. el cielo no es de nadie 4. megapunk 5. pocket piano 6. dominique 7. let them have the internet 8. tony 9. do whatever you want, all the time. 10. Close (ft. Helado Negro)
Ela Minus Tour Dates: Thu. Feb. 18 – Zurich, CH @ Bogen F Fri. Feb. 19 – Paris, FR @ Boule Noire Sat. Feb. 20 – Brussels, BE @ Rotonde Sun. Feb. 21 – Amsterdam, NL @ Melkweg Tue. Feb. 23 – Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA Ideal Bar Wed. Feb. 24 – Hamburg, DE @ Turmzimmer Thu. Feb. 25 – Berlin, DE @ Silent Green Sat. Feb. 27 – Vienna, AT @ B72 Sun. Feb. 28 – Munich, DE @ Strom Tue. March 2 – London, UK @ Electrowerkz Wed. March 3 – Madrid, ES @ El Sol
Ziemba — project of songwriter René Kladzyk — releases a new single/video, “Harbor Me, from her forthcoming album, True Romantic, out September 25th on Sister Polygon. Following lead singles “True Romantic” and “If I’m Being Honest,” synth-heavy “Harbor Me” was written and demoed while docked on the S.S. Vallejo, a haunted ferry in Sausalito, CA. where, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and Allen Ginsberg used to host their “Houseboat Summit.” The accompanying single-take video was filmed in downtown El Paso, just a few blocks from the Mexican border. It features Kladzyk and dancer Pablo Delgadillo-Espinoza, dancing throughout the night in empty streets.
“Vocals and nearly all synths were recorded on the boat, that first day that I wrote it,” says Kladzyk. “This song took me by surprise, it has an energy to it that I don’t entirely understand, and it doesn’t fully feel like it came from me. I guess that’s why I feel tempted to credit the boat itself as a co-author. I wanted the music video to have that same immediacy and visceral presence that the song has. It was exciting and fun and a little scary at times, dancing through the streets at night. We rehearsed over the course of two evenings until we got it right. I think ‘exciting, fun, a little scary’ is how I’d hope this song would be described, or at least is how I perceive it, so the video is fitting.”
Following 2019’s ARDIS, a multisensory science fiction adventure, True Romantic is a radical shift in that it’s only one thing: a record. For True Romantic, Kladzyk’s vocal-and-piano driven songs were brought to life in the studio, her first time credited as a producer on every track. She worked with two different groups—one in NYC and one in DC—who hail from vastly different corners of the music world: co-producer Don Godwin (Too Free, Gauche, Clear Channel), and contributors including guitarist Mike Haldeman (Moses Sumney, Altopalo) and saxophonist Jeff Tobias (Sunwatchers, Thee Reps, Modern Nature), producer/synthesist Kiri Stensby (Eartheater), and many others.
“I made this record because it felt good on a gut level,” Kladzyk explains. But it is no less ambitious than her previous work, it’s just that here, her intricate conceptual project seems to be processing the surreal experience of realizing you’re a person with feelings that you cannot ignore any longer. In a way, it also serves as a sort of meta commentary on the ways pop love propaganda has seeped its way into her subconscious ideas about romance and relationships, told through her own surreal study of the bombastic power ballad. True Romantic finds her channeling her childhood love of Celine Dion, referencing the 1998 romantic fairy tale drama Ever After, and singing lines pulled straight from her diary. In her own words, it’s about “sitting with really embarrassing feelings, and then giving myself a pep talk that it’s okay to do that.” WATCH THE VIDEO FOR “TRUE ROMANTIC”
On September 4th Hannah Georgas who, over the years has been an active touring member of The National and Kathleen Edward’s backing band, will release her new LP All That Emotion on Brasslandand Arts & Crafts. Produced by Aaron Dessner, founding member of The National and producer of Taylor Swift’s latest LP folklore, the album has already attracted an enthusiastic critical response with the mesmeric lead single “Dreams,” the calmly enveloping “Just A Phase” and pre-announce singles “That Emotion” and “Same Mistakes,” earning praise from outlets like FADER, Stereogum, The Guardian, Uproxx, The Line of Best Fit, Clash, American Songwriter, BrooklynVegan, Exclaim, Earmilk, World Cafe and Consequence of Sound who dubbed Georgas “a new generation’s Feist.”LISTEN: to Hannah Georgas’ All That Emotion LP Private Stream [download available on request]
Today, Georgas is sharing her final single from the LP, a slow-burning synth pop gem entitled “Easy.” Introduced by pulsing arpeggiators and a subtle blend of electronic drums and organic percussion, the track builds towards a glittering crescendo, with Georgas’ weaving in and out of harmonized vocal parts as she chronicles a search for closure at the end of a relationship.
WATCH: Hannah Georgas’ “Easy” lyric video on YouTube
“I was going through a break up around the time that I wrote this song and I felt like I kept searching for some sort of closure or definitive ending to the relationship,” says Georgas. “I found myself feeling frustrated that I couldn’t communicate well with this person and whenever I tried to reach out I was left feeling more alone in the end. I was going through this hard time and it felt like they found it easy to let it go.”
——
Hannah Georgas began creating the album All That Emotion about a year after the release of her celebrated 2016 album For Evelyn —starting with an intensive process of writing and demoing songs in her Toronto apartment, and finishing with a month long retreat in Los Angeles. She began the record making process in the middle of 2018 when she traveled to Long Pond, the upstate New York studio & home of producer Aaron Dessner of The National.
“Before each session, I would make the long drive from Toronto to Hudson Valley in Upstate New York.” Says Hannah. “It was really special getting the opportunity to work in such a remote space with Aaron and Jon and I was always itching to get back whenever we had breaks. At the same time, I appreciated the space in between and coming back with fresh ears.” Hannah continues, “Aaron and I agreed the production needed to bring out the truth in my voice. During these sessions we musically found a new depth and, vocally, a delivery that was more raw and expressive, allowing the emotional texture of each song to shine through.”
The writing of the album found Hannah creating her most personal album to date. “All That Emotion’s album cover is an old family photo,” says Hannah. “I love the image because it captures this calm confidence. It looks like people are watching a performance and it seems like he’s diving in without a second thought. Similarly, I find that it parallels the approach needed within art. The calm confidence of expressing yourself without the thought of consequence, regardless of anyone watching.”
On the album, you’ll hear about bad habits and prayerful families—right and wrong love—mistakes and moving on—casual cruelty and most of all, change. Plotting the boundaries of where to place this music it’s emotionally fraught but warm & fuzzy. “An indie-minded avant-pop artist” was the Boston Globe’s formulation for her charms. Think of Fleetwood Mac meets The National; Kate Bush-sized passion with the earthiness of Cat Power or Aimee Mann. The album grows inside you and sticks to your insides. The songs are big tent anthems, rough at the edges but relatable.
Hannah continues: “I still have long conversations with my friends over the phone, talking about love and relationships, pain and heartbreak, our upbringings and the hardships that come along with that.” In an era of social media quips and hollow memes, maybe it’s this kind of one-on-one contact a form of communication worth getting back to?
“In this way, I get a lot of lyrical inspiration through the individuals I interact with in my everyday life,” she says. “Then music becomes the forum where I work out these feelings, embrace and express pain and love, joy and anger, frustration and fear and hope. It’s where I can be uncensored, not hold back, and say what I want to say. In that way, making music is a cathartic and cleansing process. It’s always the best feeling when someone tells me my music has helped them out in some way. That keeps me going.”
All That Emotion will be released September 4, 2020 on Arts & Crafts/Brassland. It is available for preorder here.
Keep your mind open.
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It takes guts to open your new album with a Radiohead cover, but that’s exactly what Kelly Lee Owens does on her (no shocker, if you’d heard her amazing self-titled debut – which was my top album of 2017) excellent new record, Innner Song. Owens has stated in press releases that Inner Song follows “the hardest three years of my life,” and one could view the record (and her) as a phoenix rising from ashes.
That aforementioned Radiohead cover is “Arpeggi” (from 2007’s In Rainbows) and she starts it with subtle, humming bass that’s almost subliminal. Owens sings about letting go of things in the past that cannot be fixed on “On” – which has her voice moving and sounding like birds released from a cage. It builds into a thumping, bumping floor-filler. Owens excels at tracks like this that take you on a journey from peaceful meditations to booty-shaking workouts.
“Melt!” – a song about global warming that samples collapsing glaciers and people ice skating – deserves to be on every DJ’s hot list of dance tracks this year. “Free yourself with the truth that’s already in you,” Owens sings on the haunting “Re-Wild.” It’s advice all of us can use, and Owens’ use of echoing synths helps it sink in like acupuncture needle. “Jeanette” is all bouncy synths and beats that make you want to dance and then hug everyone and then dance some more.
“L.I.N.E.” (“Love Is Not Enough”) has Owens realizing that “love is not enough to stay…love is not enough alone” as she walks away from a dead-end relationship with someone offended by truth. “Corner of My Sky” features none other than John Cale on vocals singing and speaking poetry over Owens’ lush synths. “Night” blends house, ambient, and chill wave, and “Flow” is perfectly named as it bumps, grooves, sways, and, yes, flows along like a happy balloon bouncing down the street on a summer wind. The album ends with sort of a reverse lullaby on “Wake-Up.” The soft song is great for relaxation, but Owens tells us (and herself) to open our eyes and move forward (the only direction we can move in this life, really).
That fact that Owens could create an album as lovely as Inner Song after “the hardest three years of my life” is a testament to her fortitude. I’m glad she made it through the trials and came out, like a phoenix, stronger.
Rituals of Mine – the immersive, hybrid R&B electronic project of Los Angeles-based songwriter Terra Lopez – shares the new single/video, “Exceptions,” from her forthcoming album, HYPE NOSTALGIA, out September 25th on Carpark Records. It follows previous singles “Free Throw (feat. KRIS)” and “Come Around Me.” For the bedroom pop-tinged “Exceptions,” Lopez wrote with a TC Helicon vocal effects pedal to reflect the track’s vulnerable lyrics and make her voice more of an instrument. It deals with the heavy realization that some people aren’t meant to be in each other’s lives forever. The accompanying video, directed by Leo Pfeifer, is based on Lopez’s childhood.
“During this time I had a big falling out with some key people in my life (including my longtime bandmate), friends that had been family for over a decade. I honestly thought I’d grow old with these people by my side and it was a heavy realization coming to terms that we just didn’t belong in each other’s lives anymore,” says Lopez. “It’s a song that acknowledges that in these situations, it’s a two-way street. There’s no need to shift blame on anyone, that won’t undo what happened. The chorus, ‘Take all of my pride, throw it out’ is me admitting that I was also part of the reason for the connection ending.”
In addition to her WNBA History Club podcast, Lopez announces HYPE NOSTALGIA TV, a podcast that reflects on nostalgia and how it directly impacts artist’s work. The first episode features Tegan Quin (from Tegan & Sara) and future guests include Chino Moreno (from Deftones), Nico Turner (from Cat Power) and KRIS.
HYPE NOSTALGIA follows 2019’s SLEEPER HOLD EP, which was filled with emotional intensity and self-reflective songwriting, confronting the emotional rollercoaster that came with the death of her father and later, her best friend.
On HYPE NOSTALGIA, Lopez didn’t want to solely focus on the heaviness of her life. Instead, she opted to create an album written from a pre-loss perspective. There are dark moments and devastation throughout, but what largely transpires is Lopez’s ability to reconcile with her emotional trauma by reimagining her past in a way that isn’t shrouded in total darkness, but glimmers of light and hope.
Between St. Augustine, Florida and Los Angeles, Lopez collaborated with producers Wes Jones and Dev the Goon on HYPE NOSTALGIA. The result is a self-assured 13-track album interspersed with future R&B, electronic and pop, and layered with the softness of Lopez’s ethereal vocals. From tackling what it’s like to be a woman of color in the music industry to exploring intergenerational trauma, HYPE NOSTALGIA is an all-encompassing look at Lopez’s personal growth and resilience.
With HYPE NOSTALGIA, Lopez offers a glimpse into her own experience in the hopes that it will open the door for listeners to confront their own mental health challenges and serve as a touchstone as they find their own way to process and heal. Watch “Exceptions” Video: https://found.ee/GlXc
Following in the footsteps of his highly acclaimed debut album, Loud Patterns, Makeness invites us to jump aboard his latest single release – a laid-back downhill anthem.
A crafty blend of; east coast house, jazz laced chords, soaring leads and a lazy groove combine to give the track an effortless feel while the bridging elements and rhythmic breakdown create a euphoric path, awash with pathos and emotion. All this lays the foundation perfectly for Molleson’s ethereal vocal which floats over the top and drags you in even deeper.
Makeness, AKA Kyle Molleson, lives in South East London but has his roots in Scotland’s remote Outer Hebrides. These contrasting environments can be heard through his music with driving rhythms against a laid back pace and the embrace of both pop and the avante-guard. “Friend Credits” takes the listener on a journey of blissful fascination with its relentless building energy and sets a steady course for a summer classic.
Look out for remix duties by South East London’s prolific Ben Hauke released on 4th September, offering a definitive high octane flip to this original cosmic banger. “Friend Credits” was mastered at the Green Door Studios and is released digitally through EPM & Xelon (AU) on the 28th of August.
Keep your mind open.
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Producer/musician Kelly Lee Owens collaborates with John Cale on a foreboding new single, “Corner Of My Sky (feat. John Cale),” from her forthcoming album Inner Song, out August 28th on Smalltown Supersound. The two Welsh artists first met in London while working on a song for Cale, which prompted a future collaboration for Inner Song. In “Corner Of My Sky,” Cale sings in both English and Welsh over Owens’ droning, psychedelic lullaby. The track follows a string of previously released singles and videos – “On,” “Night,” and “Melt!”
Cale comments, “It’s not usually this immediate that a productive afternoon brings a satisfying conclusion to a task. Kelly sent me a track she’d written – an instrumental that was a gentle drift – something comfortably familiar to what I’d been working on myself. On the first listen, the lyrics came with ease and a chorus and melody grew out of it. Even the Welsh phrases seemed to develop from a place of reflective memory which was a surprise since I hadn’t written in Welsh for decades. Once finished, I realized there existed a built-in thread we’d created together and apart – and her kind spirit pulled it all together and in quick order.”
Owens elaborates, “I knew with this album I needed to connect with my roots and therefore having the Welsh language featured on the record felt very important to me. Once the music for the track was written and the sounds were formed, I sent the track straight to John and asked if he could perhaps delve into his Welsh heritage and tell the story of the land via spoken-word, poetry and song. What he sent back was nothing short of phenomenal. The arrangement was done during the mixing process and once I’d finished the track, I cried – firstly feeling incredibly lucky to have collaborated with John and his eternal talent and secondly for both of us to have been able to connect to our homeland in this way.”
Inner Song is the follow-up to Owens’ self-titled debut, which was recognized as one of the most critically praised albums of 2017. Inner Song finds Owens diving deep into her own psyche—working through the struggles she’s faced over the last several years while embracing the beauty of the natural world. Sonically, Inner Song’s hair-raising bass and tickling textures drive home that Owens is locked into delivering maximal aural pleasure, whether it be on a techno banger, a glimmering electro-pop number, or a Radiohead cover. Watch “On” Video
Colombia-born/raised and Brooklyn-based musician Ela Minus debuts her new single, “megapunk,” via Domino. It follows “they told us it was hard, but they were wrong,” an invigorating single Minus released this spring that was recently remixed by Fort Romeau, DJ Python and buttechno. “megapunk” is on the same motivating wavelength. It’s driven by an array of shifting instrumentation – blipping techno, a thumping drum beat, and Minus’ tempered vocals. Written last year and prescient given today’s progressive social movements, “megapunk” is defiant, and an encouraging reminder to surge forward, despite resistance: “you don’t want to understand // you’re choosing to lead us apart // but against all odds // you still won’t make us stop.”
Ela comments, “When I wrote this song last year, I was worried it would lose context if not released immediately. I could not have been more wrong. This is the perfect time to put this out. We have to keep going. Ánimo y fuerza.” Watch Ela Minus’ Video for “megapunk”
Preceding her path of making electronic music, Ela drummed in a teenage hardcore band. She joined the band when she was just 12 and played with them for almost a decade. Then, Ela moved to the United States, where she attended Berklee College of Music and double-majored in jazz drumming and synthesizer design. This expansive background instilled in Ela a belief that we all have the power to change things, and as she delved deeper into her work with synthesizers, she saw a clear connection between the freedom of the DIY scene she grew up in and club culture.
Christopher Schou of the Norwegian dream pop band Remington Super 60 recently asked me to check out his band, which he described as being “inspired by everything from the Beach Boys to New Order with a little dash of Stereolab and Velvet Underground in the middle.” How could I pass that up? I decided to check out their cheekily-named record, New EP.
It turned out to be a smart decision because it’s a lovely record. The opening track, “The Highway Again,” has those Velvet Underground synths and driving-around-at-3am drums that are always perfect for such endeavors. “I Don’t Wanna Wait” is perfect dream pop with subtle, sexy vocals from Elisabeth Thorsen. The psychedelic-tinged guitars of “Fake Crush” provide a bit of a hedonistic backdrop to lyrics about lust and erotic confusion.
The perfectly named “Tropical Drone Pop” is ideal for that space station Tiki bar you’ve been designing in your head since you began reading rediscovered issues of Omni magazine. “Dreaming of Summer” puts Schou’s love of The Beach Boys on full display with Thorsen’s vocal styling, mellow southern California guitar, and hypnotic synths. The closer, “Dina Hender” (“Your Hands”), pops and bubbles like a happy robot toddler.
Remington Super 60 plan for another record to be released this autumn, and having a record as bright and lovely as New EP land in the time of falling leaves, pumpkin spice, and further COVID-19 blues seems like a great idea. I’m eager to hear it.
Keep your mind open.
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