Archive for the ‘Recommended Streams and Videos’ Category

ME LOST ME shares the video for ‘Festive Day’, from her upcoming album, RPG (due 7th July via Upset The Rhythm). A selection of dates in support of Richard Dawson throughout May have also been announced, more details below.

Songwriter Jayne Dent comments on the track;

“’Festive Day’ is a song about being overcome by intense sensory experiences, of nature, the elements and desire. It’s inspired by spending a midsummer festival in Denmark, when the huge bonfires lit along the coast stayed alight through torrential rain and dense sea fog, which left a massive sensory impression on me. It’s about the coming together of all these elemental forces, feeling connected to this seasonal ritual, and connecting it to the English folk traditions around the same time of year, explored in May carols and similar songs, which often celebrate desire, lust and love alongside celebrations of nature and the land. The music video is an overload of artefacts, it’s fast paced and intense in terms of the editing but I wanted to contrast the emotional intensity of the song by framing it almost as an archive or museum of the future, that is documenting folk traditions and trying to reconstruct them and understand them, but missing that vital emotional component. I worked with folk musician and dancer Mark Insley, who choreographed a dance in the Cotswold Morris tradition, to be featured as part of the music video, and made handkerchiefs in the Morris style featuring elemental symbols.”

Watch the video here:

AA

A prolific writer, ME LOST ME has released two crowdfunded albums: Arcana (2018) and The Good Noise (2020), which was included in Electronic Sound Magazine’s Album of the Year list. These in addition to her latest EP The Circle Dance (2021), which was described as “her most textural and sonically adventurous music to date” by NARC Magazine, and an extensive touring schedule around the UK DIY scene, has won her unique sound much support across the musical spectrum. Dent has notably performed live for BBC Radio 3’s After Dark Festival and as part of the 2022 BBC Proms alongside Spell Songs, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the Voices of the Rivers Edge Choir. She recently received the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Composers and was 2020-2021 Artist in Residence at Sage Gateshead.

ME LOST ME LIVE DATES:
03/05 – The Gate Arts Centre, Cardiff, UK w/ Richard Dawson – tickets

04/05 – St George’s Bristol, Bristol, UK w/ Richard Dawson – tickets

05/05 – Barbican, London, UK w/ Richard Dawson – tickets

06/05 – The Bradshaw Hall, Birmingham Conservatoire, UK w/ Richard Dawson – tickets

07/06 – London – EartH Theatre w/ Xiu Xiu

30/06 – Hyper Inverter Festival, Ulverston, UK

15/07 – The Lubber Fiend, Newcastle, UK (ALBUM LAUNCH)

YEi1gOlg

Photo credit: Amelia Read Photography

Industrial bass artist, SINthetik Messiah returns with a controversial new single, ‘Know Your Enemy’.

The greatest threat to democracy in the USA is that of communism – not as a social ideology, but rather, one that is psychological in nature. In communist countries, people do not have freedoms or rights. They are modern day slaves who have been brainwashed to love their government.

But ‘Know Your Enemy’ is not about a war that is fought with a bullet, but rather, a war that starts in the enemy’s mind. That war in our minds is the USA’s greatest threat.

‘Know Your Enemy’ presents a blended sound that is inspired by EBM, Industrial Bass and Power Noise. The single also features remixes by SpankTheNun and Anthony H.
The single is available on all major streaming platforms including Bandcamp.

Watch the video here:

AA

afc8f500-a2b1-7689-10ad-4147857e5887

Now That We Are All Ghosts is the second album from Milwaukee’s Resurrectionists. The project was self-engineered, recorded and produced; it was mastered by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. The album features nine songs of Doom Chamber-Americana, all powerfully cinematic and ripe for video treatments, leading the group to take the unusual and ambitious step of commissioning videos for every one of them.

‘Let Me Talk You Through This One’ is the fourth of these videos, and it accompanies a laid-back, strung-out lo-fi tune reminiscent of Pavement at The Silver Jews.

The video: An exquisite moody piece by animator Eric Arsnow. Floating towards home (maybe) in a small boat lit only by a lighthouse on an ominous night. He gets there in time.

The song: Originally written for the solo project “The Intelligibles” around the year 2000. A song about ambition, moving places and time.

-Joe Cannon/Resurrectionists

Check the video here…

AA

Resurrectionists pc Brian Theisen

Alien Creation returns after hibernation and consolidation with their previously unreleased track, ‘Red Pill’.  

Taken from a well-known phrase in ‘The Matrix’ movies, ‘Red Pill’ confronts the modern world and our inability to see an obvious scam in our internet-obsessed, neon-lit, high-tech society.

Lyrics in the song address the one mantra we should say to ourselves in the mirror every morning; there is a ‘scam in just about everything’ and no matter what happens in the world, someone somewhere is making money from the misery of others. “Wise Up Sucker!” Take the Red Pill and see the scam in everything.

‘Red Pill’ is a catchy tune enveloped in textured synthesized layers of hard-hitting sound carefully crafted to deliver an incredibly infectious dance track. The song probes deeply into the senses with the power of the bass drum and catchy lyrics, the driving force behind Alien Creation’s unique sound.

Listen to ‘Red Pill’ here:

AA

a2272165980_10

Prague-based gothic rock band, Cathedral In Flames presents their new single, ‘Release The Pain’ – a hypnotic ballad about coping with pain and death. Gatsby’s throbbing bass and Ambra’s angelic vocals complement Phil’s vocals about the contemporary unlearning of the perception of death and pain through social media.

Vocalist, Phil Lee Fall says,  “When the song was written, I was having a pretty bad time. I was taking long night walks through old Prague and I realized that all the people I meet are going to die sooner or later.”

And Gatsby adds: “’Release The Pain’ is a catharsis for our whole band. For me, there is so much emotion in this song that if it doesn’t knock you on your back, nothing will.”

A narrative music video was also created for the track, showing the band in the abandoned magical corners of Rudolphine’s Prague combined with the mystical hills above the contemporary city. Both sceneries are connected in the image and lyrics of the number 9 in various forms. 9 is the number of fulfilment, closure and completion. It also symbolizes the coming of age and the connection between dimensions and worlds on all levels.

Watch the video here:

AA

23ee6bd8-12b8-f634-756f-7ddb327adcb2

French experimental rock duo Erei Cross, featuring Adrien Grousset from Hacride and Carpenter Brut have recently revealed a music video for a new track from their forthcoming first full-length album The Widow and The Others, due out on May 5th via Klonosphere/Season of Mist.

Watch ‘The Others’ here:

AA

The duo was born in 2019, when the two founding members Adrien Grousset (Hacride, Carpenter Brut) and Laetitia Finidori, with a mutual passion for rock and metal music, decided to join forces and work on a new project. Later on Matthieu Guérineau (Microfilm, Myra lee, Captain Parade, etc..) joined them as their live drummer.
In the first year of their existence, Adrien Grousset, composer and guitarist worked on a couple of songs and six of them were recorded and released as an EP titled "The Widow" in 2021. 

Now in 2023, Erei Cross returns with their first full-length album The Widow and The Others, which  sees the band offering an eclectic, dark and engaging sound encompassing a wide variety of styles, that is hard to describe in a single genre or style. Their music floats between heavy rock, goth, electronic and alternative bringing to mind names like Queens Of The Stone Age or Royal Blood, but with a enchanting vocals performance that recalls PJ  Harvey at times.

57a8b7db-2c36-bbaa-d4a1-3b3e48d07af1

Ky is the new ‘solo’ project of Ky Brooks, best known as vocalist and lyricist of noise-punk trio Lungbutter and a slew of other Montréal-based out-music projects, including 8-person queer punk collective Femmaggots and experimental/improv trio Nag. Ky is a long-standing and shining figure of Montréal’s music underground: they co-founded essential Montréal DIY space La Plante a decade ago, and alongside playing and performing in all sorts of projects and contexts ever since, they’re also a recording and front-of-house sound engineer about town (and on the road with acts like Big|Brave).

‘The Dancer’ is one of the album’s standout electro tracks—in this case melded with the ‘band’ configuration that also features sporadically on Power Is The Pharmacy: guitarist Mat Ball (Big|Brave), bassist Joshua Frank (Gong Gong Gong), and drummer Farley Miller (Shining Wizard) join Ky and the album’s core electronics collaborator Nick Schofield on a song anchored by crisp, phased synth arpeggiation and ghostly pads. As the band kicks in with a wicked little whiplash rhythm, Ky walks a fine line between bemused irony and unadorned sincerity (as their abstemious poems-turned-lyrics so often do) while synth ostinatos and sheets of whitenoise guitar add momentum to the inexorable groove.

The video by Ky’s friend Eric Bent features an animated child learning to move and crawl and walk, through dance: an ode to the primordial immanence of moving to music, and a fitting companion piece to the album’s most danceable track and its lyrical literalism.

Listen to ‘The Dancer’ here:

AA

8cff8db5-5561-3790-119a-f9f77930a68c

Ky photo by Stacy Lee

The inimitable four piece OXBOW are announcing their first new music in six years with the anticipated release of Love’s Holiday, to be released via Ipecac on the 21st July. The album is preceded today by the lead single ‘1000 Hours’ – a song featuring Roger Joseph Manning Jr (Jellyfish, Beck) and with a video directed by John David Levy.

About the track vocalist and lyricist Eugene Robinson comments, “1000 Hours for the OXBOW completist, 100 percent ties in to our other song 1000, thematically in my mind. But filming the video, given that I just had surgery a few days before felt very much like Mann’s Death in Venice to me. You know where waiting to die never felt more beautiful. Which really feels like the essence of love. Or at least one of them.”

Guitarist Niko Wenner adds, "’1000 Hours’ began life with the bright extroverted feel you hear most, but inevitably the darker introspective mood of the coda and intro emerged. Both qualities are essential to Love’s Holiday. Roger (backing vocals), John (video director), and Joe Chiccarelli (co-producer) all did extraordinary work to heighten these emotions."

Watch ‘10000 Hours’ here:

AA

4xA13J7Q

Photo: Phil Sharp

The track is from the album Stewart Home Comes In Your Face (Sabotage Editions 1998). The song was written in mid-80s and performed live then. It has a cameo in Stewart Home’s first novel Pure Mania (Polygon Books 1989). The first studio recording wasn’t until the late 90s. Pure Mania (which goes for anything from £30-£85 on the secondhand market now) and Stewart Home Comes In Your Face are being reissued in 2023 by Leamington Books and New Reality Records respectively.

This follows on from New Reality Records stepping up to publish Home’s riotously funny and ultra-kinky novel Art School Orgy after no conventional book publisher would release it.

Ahead of the reissue of the album, in true punk style, Stewart’s produced a DIY zero-budget promo video for ‘Destroy the Family’, shot entirely on location in Motherwell, Scotland.

Watch it here:

AA

13524127195379657666

Austere are back. The Australians return with their third album – and they are as laconic and without any pretensions as when they went into extended hibernation after the release of their sophomore full-length To Lay like Old Ashes in 2009.  

Entitled Corrosion of Hearts, the new tracks stay true to the path that Austere have carved for themselves out of solid black metal bedrock. The multi-layered and harsh yet often dreamlike guitar tapestries woven by Mitchell Keepin are complemented by the emotive drumming of Tim Yatras, who also contributes keyboard splashes and cinematic soundscapes. Both also contribute vocals that cover the full spectrum of their genre and range from throat-ripping growls via desolate screams to clear voices. In the typical manner of these Australians, their songs are still meandering, flowing streams of musical thought of epic proportions.

The sonic heritage of Austere is apparent. Their inspiration derives from the early Norse black metal scene and its depressive offspring, but also stretches further to the gentler and more emotional approach of blackgaze. Despite or maybe even because of the width of the influences, the Australians have found their own answers to the musical paradox inherent in this style, which is both fast and slow, aggressive and melancholic.

On Corrosion of Hearts, Austere ‘s brand of black metal has evolved into a more mature and defined form of expression, which is hardly surprising as both musicians were active in other bands during their hiatus. The duo also took more time to craft their new songs into exactly what they were supposed to sound like than before. With greater experience comes more determination.

As a taster, they’ve unveiled ‘A Ravenous Oblivion’.

Watch ‘A Ravenous Oblivion’ here:

AA

hTHCfgNo

Pic by Stefan_Raduta