‘White Rose,’ the new track from Leeds drum machine-driven racketmongers La Costa Rasa, is about the ‘White Rose Group’ in WWII Germany and specifically about Sophie Scholl.
A German student and anti-Nazi political activist, she was She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother, Hans. For her actions, she was executed by guillotine.
Never Forgive, Never Forget.
Taken from their upcoming debut album, Songs of Abundance, Psalms of Grief, healthyliving now share a second track; the explosive near-mania of ‘Dream Hive’. A tripped out video was made with the help of Ana López Gómez. Vocalist Amaya comments on the track and the song;
“Dream Hive is one of the last songs we wrote for the album and one of the most colourful and energetic. We worked with our close friend Ana López Gómez who captured the energy of the song perfectly with a wild and wonderful video!
The song in itself is about toxic positivity inundating our lives and how it hinders personal growth and perpetuates power imbalances. It attempts to capture a false perception of euphoria.”
Watch here:
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Photo credit: Demelza Kingston – Oculus sinistra photography
Singer-songwriter and visual artist Emma Ruth Rundle has released her new video ‘In My Afterlife’ today. Self-directed with John Bradburn, the visual is “an expiration of insanity, a lot of Sagazan and influence from Julie Taymor’s circa 2000 film rendition of Titus,” Rundle tells.
“I developed the character, makeup and costume myself, which I made by painting and modifying found articles while I was in the UK. This mask or character is supposed to represent what is left after life ends, wandering the halls of their own existence, reliving little joys, and sufferings. They are a demented and unsettled character.”
Watch the video here:
Rundle’s latest and riveting album Engine of Hell is stark, intimate, and unflinching. For anyone that’s endured trauma and grief, there’s a beautiful solace in hearing Rundle articulate and humanize that particular type of pain not only with her words, but with her particular mysterious language of melody and timbre. The album captures a moment where a masterful songwriter strips away all flourishes and embellishments in order to make every note and word hit with maximum impact, leaving little to hide behind.
Rundle has always been a multifaceted musician, equally capable of dreamy abstraction (as heard on her debut album Electric Guitar: One), maximalist textural explorations (see her work in Marriages, Red Sparowes, Nocturnes or collaborations with Chelsea Wolfe and Thou), and the classic acoustic guitar singer-songwriter tradition (exemplified by Some Heavy Ocean). But on Engine of Hell, Rundle focuses on an instrument that she left behind in her early twenties when she began playing in bands: the piano. In combination with her voice, the piano playing creates a kind of intimacy, as if we’re sitting beside Rundle on the bench, or perhaps even playing the songs ourselves.
Photo credit: Ruby Gold
Philadelphia rockers Soraia have dropped a music video for "Jokers, Thieves and Liars" off their recent LP ‘Bloom.’
Check out the video here:
Filmed December 10, 2022, at Kung Fu Necktie in Philadelphia, PA.
"’Jokers, Thieves, and Liars’ is the kickoff track to our newest album, "Bloom" (October 2022). It’s about all the personalities I encountered when I was falling in love with one guy, in particular. And about getting caught up in playing the game back," says front woman ZouZou Mansour.
The band will kick off their ‘Bloom’ Spring Tour on March 9th in Wayne, PA. The trek runs through May 6th, and features support from special guests The Idiot Kids.
Photo: Cassandra Panek
BEBORN BETON reveal ‘Last Chance’, a cool new clip taken from their forthcoming full-length Darkness Falls Again. The performance video of the groovy synth pop hit ‘Last Chance’.
BEBORN BETON comment:”Troubled boy meets emotionally depraved gynoid beneath silvery moon which then, for no adequately explored reason, fails to explode”, vocalist Stefan Netschio writes on behalf of the trio. “Last Chance!”
Watch the video here:
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Beborn Beton by Chris Ruiz
Nothing last forever. Yet moments are timeless and will always have existed. This is the song’s central theme. The video, directed by Jason P. Schumacher features Volstead’s Emporium, an underground speakeasy in Minneapolis. The video plays off of the lyrics which address feeling trapped in a melodrama.
"It’s about my divorce and all. The whole album is. I was feeling like a character at the time, like I was stuck in a movie where the end was clear, and my feelings were larger than life. I realize now I did have control and responsibility but in a lot of ways it feels like fate too.” – Carrellee
‘Stay’ is the hazy, electro-ballad from electronic artist Carrellee’s latest album, Scale Of Dreams. Watch the video here:
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CARRELLEE’S 2023 SCALE OF DREAMS TOUR
2/23 Indianapolis, IN @ State Street Pub
2/24 Louisville, KY @ Art Sanctuary
2/25 Lexington, KY @ The Green Lantern
2/26 Johnson City, TN @ The HideAway
2/27 Savannah, GA @ Lodge of Sorrows
3/1 Gainesville, GA @ Portal 4
3/2 Orlando, FL @ Will’s Pub w/ Vision Video
3/3 St. Augustine, FL @ Sarbez!
3/4 Tampa, FL @ New World Music Hall w/ Vision Video
3/5 Jacksonville, FL @ 1904 Music Hall
3/8 Tallahassee, FL @ The Bark
3/9 Mobile, AL @ Alabama Music Box
3/10 Atlanta, GA @ Sweetwater
3/11 Huntsville, AL @ Gold Sprint w/ Snooper
3/12 Chattanooga, TN @ Exit Off Main Street
3/13 Nashville, TN @ The East Room
4/1 Madison, WI @ Mickeys Tavern w/ Scott Yoder
4/22 Madison, WI @ Crystal Corner
4/27 Tulsa, OK @ Sound Pony
4/28 Norman, OK @ Opolis
4/29 Wichita, OK @ Private Party
4/30 Colorado Springs, CO @ Fritzys
5/3 Albuquerque, NM @ El Rey Mezzanine
5/4 Tucson, NM @ Groundworks
5/5 San Diego, NM @ The Comet
5/6 Los Angeles, CA @ Luna Negra Goth Nights
5/7 Oakland, CA @ The Golden Bull
5/9 Eugene, OR @ Old Nick’s Pub
5/10 Olympia, OR @ Le Voyeur
5/11 Seattle, OR @ The Cherry Pit w/ Scott Yoder
5/14 Vancouver, Canada @ Verboden Festival
5/18 Portland, OR @ Coffin Club
5/20 Boise, ID @ Boise Hive
5/23 Salt Lake City, ID @ Kilby Court
5/24 Fort Collins, CO @ Lyric Cinema
5/25 Denver, CO @ The Crypt
5/26 Kansas City, MO @ recordBar
5/27 Omaha, NE @ The Sydney
5/28 Ames, IA @ The London. Underground
ME LOST ME led by Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent announces a new album RPG via Upset The Rhythm on 7th July, and is touring across the UK including support dates with Pigs x7 (dates and details here). RPG (recorded in Blank Studios with Sam Grant of Pigs x7) is ME LOST ME’s fourth outing as a collective, having transitioned from an ambitious solo project in 2017, Jayne now regularly collaborating with acclaimed North-East jazz musicians Faye MacCalman and John Pope.
ME LOST ME delights in experimenting with songwriting and storytelling, creating a beguiling mix of soaring vocals and atmospheric electronics that playfully weave together disparate genres, drawing influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music. Hauntological in part, RPG is concerned with tales and with time – are we running out of it? Does insomnia cause a time loop? Do the pressures of masculinity prevent progress? Jayne Dent asks these questions and more on RPG, her homage to worldbuilding and the story as an artform, calling back to those oral traditions around a campfire, as well as modern day video games – bringing folk music into the present day as she does so.
Watch the video here:
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Photo credit: Amelia Read Photography
‘Terzo’ : an Italian word translating as ‘the third’, it represents an additional presence that new darkwave/shoegaze/post-rock duo Terzo sensed inhabiting their most creative moments when they began working together.
Karl Clinton (former bassist in post-punk act Diskoteket, plus co-founder of improvisational project Tsantsa) and Billie Lindahl (lead singer and guitarist in dream pop/dark folk act Promise and the Monster) share a mutual penchant for dark sounding music in all its forms. They have also both been itching to free the shackles binding them to strict timelines; not only those of the music industry, but society in general. “Terzo was born out of a discussion about songs we mutually liked and a wish to try a different work process to our then current projects,” they state. “We wanted to do whatever we wanted without restrictions, using our obsession and gut feeling as guidance.”
Their preference for music and art that embodies a degree of doom and gloom is evident on their upcoming self-titled debut album, with its central theme of ‘love and death’ linking all six tracks. Their very first studio session yielded the 10+ minute post-rock epic ‘Cymbeline’ (available now as a debut single), while in the midst of recording it they both had the sensation that a third presence was keeping them company. Intrigued by the thought, “we started talking about the appearance of a third element, in sleep and in dreams,” they explain. “Terzo is about acknowledging this, the swirl that light in the darkness generates, opening ourselves out toward our own weaknesses.”
‘Cymbeline’ is actually a unique cover of a 1991 song by the Celtic/world music singer-songwriter and composer Loreena McKennit, which has a lyric lifted from the William Shakespeare play of the same name. “We had a feeling that we could make something interesting with it,” says Lindahl. “Karl did most of the instrumental work, guitars and programming, while I recorded my vocal in one take. This song means so much to us because it was the first thing we did as a duo and I think we just sort of understood that we could do great things together.”
Terzo travelled to New York in the summer of 2022 to play their first live shows, with the video maker and photographer Johan Lundsten accompanying them to document the trip. Footage from this can be seen in the video for ‘Cymbeline’, with Lindahl adding that “we always pictured something in documentary style for this song. Johan filmed everything that we did, even just hanging around. It is very raw, but it feels right.”
Watch the captivating video to this immense song here:
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TERZO | photography by Johan Lundsten
Cardiff post-punk outfit Red Telephone are set to release their highly anticipated debut album Hollowing Out on the 31st March 2023. The only single taken from it ‘Waiting For Your Good Days’ is out now.
Hailing from Cardiff, Red Telephone’s richly layered alt-rock could have emanated from a club in Blade Runner’s dystopian LA – combining angular guitars, Krautrock-inspired rhythms and New Wave-tinged synths with infectious pop sensibilities. Drawing on post punk and synth pop influences, the band has been catching the attention of DJs across BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, Absolute Radio and Radio X; with comparisons to the likes of MGMT, Super Furry Animals, Mitski and Berlin-era Bowie being drawn. The band have recently appeared at BBC 6 Music Fringe Festival, Focus Wales, Swn Festival, Other Voices and Llangollen Fringe, supporting Warmduscher. With previous single releases on Welsh-based labels Libertino Records and the Popty-Ping Recording Company, the band’s highly anticipated debut album is set to be released in March 2023.
Watch the video here:
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Like much of the album, this song was initially composed by Bethan on the piano. It features Ynyr and Bethan on trumpets but also features Ioan Hefin, the man responsible for performing Welsh music’s greatest and most iconic trumpet solo in Eryr Wen’s Gloria Tyrd Adre. It’s a song about love and the feeling of trying to comprehend the magnitude of the love that you can feel for someone. It can relate to any form of love but in this instance it was written when their daughter turned 3 years old, with Bethan trying to articulate and comprehend the outpouring of love felt for a child and the hugeness of childbirth; the challenge, escalation, triumph, glory and the raw vulnerability of it all.
Watch the video here:
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Aural Aggravation 