British producer / sound engineer / beat maker Alastair McNeill, also known as Yila, recently decided to stick it to The Man by going back to house music / rave music culture doing what it does best – energize people.
He linked up with French DJ (and sometimes Kasabian drummer) GIOM and drum and bass maestro Christian Croupa, also known as Alleged Witches, for Functional Collaborations and Combinations Vol. 1 – a double-sided single that accomplishes its mission. It will make you move.
“Scam Pan,” the team-up with GIOM, had such a wicked synth-bass beat that sneaks up on you and takes your groove to a different level. The Alleged Witches collaboration, “Murmurs,” has a great horror movie-like synth line running throughout it and that is highly suitable for futuristic disco dance floors.
It’s a sweet addition to any DJ’s set list or any playlist you have for house music.
Keep your mind open.
[Make a functional collaboration with me by subscribing.]
Pioneering producer Tricky shares a new single “Thinking Of” and announces UK and European tour dates for next year (tickets are on sale now). “Thinking Of” is the captivating opening song of his forthcoming album Fall To Pieces, out September 4th via False Idols. As with debut single “Fall Please,” it demands repeat listens, drawing you in further with the unique signature that could still only ever be attributed to Tricky.
The track features Marta Złakowska on vocals – the singer he discovered during a Polish tour when he was left without a vocalist on the opening night: the local promoter suggested a girl who worked in a nearby bar, and when she arrived she had already learned the chorus to Tricky’s song “When We Die”. It sounds fortuitous – much like when Tricky encountered his original female vocalist Martina Topley-Bird by chance when she sang outside his front door. But of course he has an intuition too. “Yeah, I can tell when someone is humble and down to earth. Marta doesn’t care about being famous, she just wants to sing.”
Fall To Pieces was recorded in Tricky’s Berlin studio in late 2019. Tricky is keen to point out that the tracks on the record can be deceptive; often short, ending abruptly and moving on to the next without warning. Although instrumentation varies from bursts of tense synths, distorted dial tones, and samples, the song’s lyrics can be dark and dense.
Tricky might be over three decades deep into his music career but he’s currently on an especially prolific run. In the last year, he dropped the enchanting 20,20 EP and put out an acclaimed autobiography, Hell Is Round The Corner. Watch Tricky’s Video for “Fall Please”
2021 Tour Dates Feb. 2 – Copenhagen, DEN @ Hotel Cecil (SOLD OUT) Feb. 3 – Oslo, NOR @ Parkteatret – TICKETS Feb. 6 – Hamburg, GER @ Elbphilharmonie – TICKETS Feb. 8 – Cologne, GER @ Gebäude 9 – TICKETS Feb. 9 – Berlin, GER @ Metropol – TICKETS Feb. 16 – Warsaw, POL @ Praga Centrum – TICKETS Feb. 17 – Poznan, POL @ TAMA – TICKETS Feb. 18 – Krakow, POL @ Kwadrat – TICKETS Feb. 19 – Cluj-Napoca, ROM @ Form Space – TICKETS Feb. 20 – Bucharest, ROM @ Quantic Club Outdoors – TICKETS Feb. 23 – Belgrade, SER @ Dom Omladine – TICKETS Feb. 24 – Zagreb, CROA @ Močvara – TICKETS Feb. 26 – Budapest, HUNG @ A38 – TICKETS Feb. 27 – Milan, ITA @ Magazzini Generali – TICKETS March 1 – Amsterdam, NETH @ Paradiso – TICKETS March 3 – Bordeaux, FRA @ Le Rocher De Palmer – TICKETS March 9 – Paris, FRA @ Le Trianon – TICKETS March 10 – Strasbourg, FRA @ La Laiterie (Club) – TICKETS March 12 – Lyon, FRA @ Ninkasi Kafé – TICKETS March 13 – Tourcoing, FRA @ Le Grand Mix – TICKETS March 14 – Brussels, BEL @ Botanique Orangerie – TICKETS March 16 – Manchester, UK @ 02 Ritz – TICKETS March 17 – London, UK @ Electric Brixton – TICKETS March 23 – Helsinki, FIN @ Ääniwalli – TICKETS March 24 – St. Petersburg, Russia @ Kosmonavt – TICKETS March 26 – Yekaterinburg, Russia @Fabrika – TICKETS March 28 – Moscow, Russia @ GlavClub – TICKETS March 29 – Minsk, Belarus @ Re:Public Club March 30 – Kiev, Ukraine @ Atlas – TICKETS
Earlier this year, Katie Gately released her new album Loom on Houndstooth. The album is a haunting collection of songs in which Gately channels the loss of her mother, using loaded sound samples including earthquakes, explosions, wolf howls, peacock screams, grinding stones and more.
Today, Gately shares the video for “Flow;” a delicate, ghostly track in which she sings from her mother’s perspective with an otherworldly sense of acceptance and calm. Gately says, “Five years ago I was up in the middle of the night and out of nowhere ‘Flow’ came into my head. It arrived all at once – melody, harmony, lyrics, structure – and I jumped out of bed to record it. As I sang the lyrics, I had an eerie feeling but assumed it had to do with insomnia and nothing else. I saved the session, went to sleep and forgot about the song for three years.
The next time I opened up the session my mother was nearing the end of her life. I made a cartoonish gasp as I listened to my vocals realizing that while the voice recorded was my own, the narrator of the song was definitely not me. It was my mother. My mom moved through the world with her rib cage cracked right open: heart out front and center. When you live this way, armor-free, you get zapped often but you also get to feel life as fully as it can be felt. Every little miracle is allowed in to have a party. There is a real muscularity to this kind of vulnerability and this song tries to capture it. In part, to make a pretty song. In whole, to keep my mother’s voice loud and bright.”
Director Jola Kudela gives the track a suitably celestial visual treatment, commenting, “I particularly loved the tone and the subject of Katie’s song, it’s hauntingly beautiful, it’s about how to find peace in your grief and pain, and how to accept it. As I was visualizing the video, I imagined a sort of journey of a spirit that doesn’t despair after death but continues its movement through the world.I have used volcanic and snowy landscapes as a base, and worked graphically on them to create a sensation of the world being transformed by a vision of someone who is not from our dimension anymore. I wanted to achieve the feeling of open space and silence, a sort of transcendental calm.” Watch “Flow” Video: https://youtu.be/0hoC6iOwv4g Following remix work for Björk and Zola Jesus, productions for serpentwithfeet, and her debut album on Tri-Angle, Loom is a remarkable album, dedicated to Katie’s mother who passed away in 2018 due to a rare form of cancer. Gately channels her loss through a multitude of sounds and samples, including seismic rumbles and earthquake recordings alongside her signature adventurous sound design and unexpected earworm melodies, signifying how grief like this is like the shifting of the earth.
Where her debut album, 2016’s Color, deployed fractured rhythms, fierce licks, bold samples and paintbox pop hooks, Loom reveals crepuscular textures. Her voice is more forward in the mix, often densely layered in choral laments above a coarse foundation of hard and brittle sound design, the latter of which is rooted in her film school training. As well as earthquake sounds, Loom includes more samples chosen for their associative power – pill bottles shaking, wolves howling, a shovel digging, a paper shredder and heavily processed audio from her parent’s wedding. Watch “Flow” Video: https://youtu.be/0hoC6iOwv4g
Chicago-based musician, activist, and organizer RicWilson and GRAMMY-nominated producer Terrace Martin are thrilled to share their new video for “Don’t Kill The Wave,” a standout track off the pair’s collaborative EP, They Call Me Disco, a “jubilant six-song burst of summertime grooves and throwback funk” (Pitchfork) out this past May on Free Disco/EMPIRE/Sounds of Crenshaw. “Don’t Kill The Wave” is joyful and motivating. Its accompanying video, directed by A Solo Vision, is reflective of its energetic spirit as Wilson and his friends have a living room dance party. “I made this song for the dance floors at the block party, the cookout, the weddings, the rallies, the covid19 living room clubbbbbbbbs,” says Wilson.
2020 is shaping up to be another busy year for Wilson. Shortly after the release of They Call Me Disco, Wilson dropped his acclaimed protest song “Fight Like Ida B & Marsha P”. Produced by Norbert Bueno, “the song combines a funky, bouncy bass line, a little Detroit house influence and handclaps with powerful subject matter,” according to Cool Hunting.
“I hear people quoting a lot of black men who were freedom fighters, which is valid,” says Wilson, who has spent time organizing with the likes of We Charge Genocide, Black Youth Project 100, Chicago Freedom School, and much more. “But when I think about next level courage to ball your fist up and look bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia right in the eye and fight against it, I feel like blk women like Ida B. Wells and non-binary folks like Marsha P. Johnson are of the bravest of us all and if ima fight any injustice I wanna have the courage of freedom fighters like them. The liberation of black womxn and black trans womxn lead to the liberation of all black people.”
Brijean – the Oakland-based duo of Brijean Murphy and Doug Stuart – announces signing to Ghostly International and shares new single “Moody.” The easy-grooving, ephemeral cut “Moody” captures Brijean’s signature sound in just over two minutes: the dazzling, golden-hued haze of percussive beats and honeyed vocals. Stuart says the track is “a quick gentle trip” that started in a living room — recording with Murphy’s drum mentor Pepe Jacobo — windows open, stream-of-consciousness lyrics flowing.
Murphy, an accomplished DJ, session and live player in Oakland’s diverse music scene has emerged as one of indie’s most in-demand percussionists (Poolside, Toro Y Moi, U.S. Girls). In 2018, she began recording songs with multi-instrumentalist and producer Stuart, who shares a background in jazz and pop in bands such as Bells Atlas, Meernaa, and Luke Temple. Murphy’s musical talents are family heirlooms: her father, percussionist and engineer Patrick Murphy, taught Brijean her first patterns on a pair of congas that she inherited from the late Trinidadian steel drum legend Vince Charles (Neil Diamond). Growing up in LA’s Glassell Park, Murphy was raised by a cadre of honorary aunts and uncles – a deep bench of jazz, latin and soul musicians in their own rites. This meant she grew up regaled by musical lore – larger than life tales of jazz luminaries, psychedelic trips and obscure cultural enclaves – sampling some of those family stories and weaving them into her work.
Growing up outside of Chicago, Stuart found his way into jazz clubs and festivals as a teenager, frequently going to hear Jeff Parker, Fred Anderson, and other members of the AACM. While attending the University of Michigan, he studied under Detroit jazz royalty, Robert Hurst and Geri Allen. After college, Stuart became intrigued by the music of J Dilla and Moodymann, and began learning production and exploring the connections between jazz, house, and hip hop.
Eventually dubbed Brijean, the project grew out of marathon sessions at their intimate home-studio, wedged between touring schedules that rarely-overlapped. Their first effort, Walkie Talkie(released by Native Cat Recordings in 2019), found Murphy taking the mic for the first time to deliver dreamy dance tracks that felt home-cooked and effortlessly chic. Her layered percussion and hypnotic, expressive vocals coupled with Stuart’s production and harmonic palette evoked shades of disco, ‘90s house, and a sly pop sensibility. Ghostly International has also re-released Walkie Talkie alongside “Moody” which is the first taste of new, forthcoming material.
Rituals of Mine – the immersive, hybrid R&B electronic project of Los Angeles-based songwriter Terra Lopez – will release her new album, HYPE NOSTALGIA, on September 25th via Carpark Records. Today, she shares the new single/video “Free Throw (feat. KRIS),” which follows lead single “Come Around Me.” Through the dark pop and noisey beat of “Free Throw,” Lopez urges equality for BIPOC artists in the music industry. Lopez and KRIS (King Woman, Miserable, NGHTCRWLR) recorded the song in the studio last summer with Wes Jones. The accompanying video, animated by AvaantGarbDesign, is futuristic and matches the track’s noir tone.
“Kris and I talk a lot about our experiences being women of color in the music industry and how time and time again, we’ve been fucked over by either white women musicians or white guys and that shit takes a toll on you,” elaborates Lopez. “It takes a toll on your mental health, your confidence, your perseverance. It also limits your access to opportunities within the industry in a very real way. We wanted to address how we were feeling and have been feeling for years in ‘Free Throw’ by airing it all out, putting it all out there because at this point this needs to be addressed. These disparities within the industry have to be examined and ultimately broken down. Kris and I want to help change the industry and music is just going to be one of the ways in which we shed light on issues. We have a lot of things in the works to help even the playing field when it comes to BIPOC artists. ‘Free Throw’ is just the introduction to that.“
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.
I had heard Blanck Mass (AKA Benjamin John Power) before with his work in Fuck Buttons, but had unknowingly heard songs from Dumb Fleshfive years ago not knowing who had created them. So, hearing this album in its entirety for the first time was a real treat because it reunited me with songs I didn’t realize were my introduction to his solo work – which I have come to enjoy through multiple albums like World Eater and Animated Violence Mild.
Opener “Loam” is a weird backwards vocal track that lets you know you’re in for something out of the ordinary. No Blanck Mass album is necessarily “normal.” They’re all soundscapes that range from strange and sometimes creepy dreams (like “Loam,” which almost seems to be the sound of a possibly haunted lava lamp) to industrial dance tracks to ambient psychedelia.
“Dead Format” is the first Blanck Mass song I ever heard, and I was elated to be reunited with it on this album. I actually first heard it when I saw Blanck Mass perform at the much-missed Levitation Chicago in 2016. The thumping electronic beats and futuristic bounty hunter synths are a wicked combination that get you moving and absolutely kill live.
The title of “No Lite” is a bit misleading because it’s full of shimmering synths that fade in and out like sunlight breaking through rolling storm clouds as wickedly subtle beats pound underneath them. “Atrophies” mixes synth swirls with karate chop-like processed beats. “Cruel Sports” would be a perfect theme for some sort of cyborg octagonal cage fight. The bass hits hard, the beats sound like metal clashing with metal, and the synths gleam like stark overhead lights.
“Double Cross” is a great synth-wave dance track that’s dark-wave at the edges with break-beat subtleties. It belongs in the next video game you’re designing or playing. “Lung” pops and chirps like some sort of alien machine. It becomes somewhat hypnotizing after a short while.
The album ends with “Detritus,” which is a wild eight minutes and thirteen seconds of what at first sounds like some kind of excavation machinery running with almost no oil in the gears. The synths slowly build, like a creature rising from a junkyard to see the sun for the first time in a century.
It’s a powerful record, and just one of many such records Blanck Mass has put out there. Brace for impact before you hear it.
Keep your mind open.
[Blogging isn’t a dead format yet, so be sure to subscribe.]
Neon Coven, the darkwave, alternative rock band from Los Angeles, CA, featuring Jacob Bunton (Mick Mars, Adler, Lynam) and Ace Von Johnson (LA Guns, Faster Pussycat) has released its brand new single “Blame It On The Drugs” today via New Ocean Media. The song is the first single from the band’s upcoming debut full-length album Future Postponed. The lyric video is available on the band’s official YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1hhGIA50jE
Neon Coven is comprised of Anthony Montemarano (vocals), Jacob Bunton (Keyboards/guitar/bass), Ace Von Johnson (guitar), and Kyle Cunningham (drums). The band’s debut full-length album Future Postponed will be released October 30th. Produced by Jacob Bunton, the album features 11 tracks ranging from songs about survival and balance to emotionally charged anthems of empowerment. The songs live in the space between challenging the need for certainty and, ultimately, learning to accept uncertainty. “Future Postponed is set to inspire, intrigue and terrify all at once,” states guitarist Ace Von Johnson. “The material within runs a musical gamut, in which we as a band proudly exercise our ability to take bold strides in diversity. From dance-pop to goth rock, each song will take you twisting down a new road. I’ve worked on a lot of albums in my career, and thus far, this is the one I’m most proud of.”
FUTURE POSTPONED track listing: 01. Blame It On The Drugs 02. Every Part Of Me 03. A World Without You 04. I’m The New Hit 05. Manic 06. Purgatory 07. Kiss Of Death 08. Spirits In The Hall (feat. Ramsey) 09. You’re Never Getting Out Alive 10. Dead To Me 11. The Other Side Of Nowhere
From Los Angeles, CA, Neon Coven abandoned much of the ethos of the tradition of heavy rock to create an intellectual and theoretical sound, linked to an emphasis on anthemic, synth-heavy dance-music. The band came together when Von Johnson, Bunton, Montemarano and Cunningham formed the band as a side project on the suggestion of a mutual friend. “We were all on the Monsters Of Rock Cruise,” explains Bunton. “Our mutual friend April Lee said, ‘you guys should start a band.’ Ace and I had been friends for years, and we both met Anthony on the cruise. After we got back to LA, we started writing songs whenever our schedules would align.” The band released their first EP Risen in 2017 containing the songs “Bleeding Love” and “No One Knows You’re Dead,” both appearing in the horror movie Hesperia. The band followed the EP with a cover of Depeche Mode’s “Never Let Me Down Again” in 2018. In 2019, the band released its second EP, The Haunting.
I stumbled upon Los Angeles trio Automatic while listening to a radio station from somewhere in southwestern France. I was immediately hooked by their goth / no wave sound and had to find more. Luckily, their new album Signal was already available. I knew after one listen that I had to own it.
Halle Saxon‘s fretless, fuzzy bass opens the album on “Too Much Money,” and Izzy Giuadini‘s synths add a buzzy air of menace throughout it while Lola Dompé‘s drums are as precise as an auto assembly line. “Calling It” was the track I heard on French radio that made me sit up and think, “Who is this?” Dompé’s drums take center stage on the track and the echoed vocals are cold and sexy at the same time. “Suicide in Texas” is a goth-wave / David Lynch movie dream track. Automatic have cited Mr. Lynch and Dario Argento as major influences, so that already makes them great in my book.
“I Love You, Fine” is one of the best song titles I’ve heard all year, and the lyrics might be the best ones about female empowerment in a relationship since The Waitresses‘ “I Know What Boys Like.” “Highway” is a danceable industrial gem suitable for your next late night drive to an after-party. Saxon’s bass groove on the title track is undeniable.
“I see you turn into humanoid,” they sing on “Humanoid,” which I can’t help but think is influenced by Gary Numan‘s work. Giaudini’s synths and Dompé’s percussion on it sound like some of Numan’s work with Tubeway Army – which is never a bad thing. “Damage” is another killer goth-wave track as Automatic sing about walking away from a relationship that they know isn’t going to end well.
“Electrocution” has Dompé and Saxon in perfect synch on an upbeat track about what can be a downbeat subject – emptiness (“The sound of laughter, and then it’s over. There’s nothing after.”). “Oh no! We’re goin’ nowhere!” they sing on “Champagne,” which I think is a song about superficiality. The closer, “Strange Conversations,” is like something out of a goth prom night with its romantic bass line, slightly bright synths, and almost-slow dance drumming. Lyrics like “I thought I told you, I can’t stand anyone at all.” and “I’ve lost my patience. All you do is let me down.” also help boost the goth feel of the track.
The album mixes goth, synth wave, and no wave so well it’s difficult to tell where one influence begins and another ends, but who cares? Automatic blend everything so well that Signal becomes a lovely, hypnotic record that will surely be among my top releases of 2020.
Keep your mind open.
[Subscribe and updates automatically come to your e-mail inbox.]
Techno producer/musician Kelly Lee Owens unveils a new single/video, “On,” from her forthcoming album, Inner Song, out August 28th on Smalltown Supersound. Following “Night” and “Melt!,” “On” is a rustling electro-pop glimmer that gives way to yo-yo synths and a tough-as-nails techno backbeat. It’s the alpha and omega of the Kelly Lee Owens experience, reflective of her ability to contain sonic and emotional multitudes within just one song. Shot on the Norwegian coastline, its accompanying video sees Kelly collaborating once again with Kasper Häggström, who also directed her “Throwing Lines” video. Like the song, it tells the story of a breakup.
“This is perhaps the most intimate and personal song I’ve written so far – the two halves of the track reflect upon sad acceptances of the truth and then the joyous aftermath of liberation that can come from that,” says Owens. “This can definitely be heard in the production and arrangement of the track – the first half sonically connecting to the inner revelations and the second half, the liberation in action, the forward motion.” Watch Kelly Lee Owens’ “On” Video Inner Song is the follow-up to Owens’ self-titled debut, which “introduced an extraordinary artist packing a hefty one-two combination of intimate, powerful electronic pop and cavernous, brain-melting techno” (MOJO), and was recognized as one of the most critically praised albums of 2017. It finds Owens diving deep into her own psyche—working through the struggles she’s faced over the last several years and exploring personal pain while embracing the beauty of the natural world. Sonically, Inner Song’s hair-raising bass and tickling textures drive home that, more so than ever, Owens is locked into delivering maximal aural pleasure, whether it be on a techno banger, covering Radiohead, or collaborating with fellow Welsh artist John Cale on a psychedelic lullaby. Listen to “Night” by Kelly Lee Owens
