Week in Pop
Noah Kwid offered up a listen to the electro-enamored single “Untitled” featured off the forthcoming Transit Music EP from Future Gods May 26. The track works in wondrous neon-audio-obsessed ways like many of your favorite 80s pop stars that latched onto the breakthroughs in mass synthesizer productions at a time when the keytar was truly one of the most mythic, plugged-in/switched-on instruments out there.
Lord RAJA presents us with a privy listen to the just released EP Amadeus available today from Ghostly International. Your video game fantasias spill forth from the consoles & vintage controller chords and into your ear lobes & dome piece with the opening “Streets of Rage” ft. AceMo, that rolls into the mystic minefield of “Barrel”, strolling into the punchy beat-boutique of “O.K”, to the moody meditations of “Mantra”. Lord RAJA continues the dark-dancing party with the caffeinated cool of “Black Coffee”, the abstract audio art of “Picasso”, as “Colors” collect a variety of synths in a creative & brilliant luster as you are treated to the bonus track “Fox Den” that burrows a deep, digital, subterranean abode.
Small Leaks Sinks Ships delivered a listen to the electro-music box of their new single “Dancing Devil”, side-a off their forthcoming 7″ available June 2 from Lefse Records. The group takes a rhythmic, minimalist groove & does the most with vocal loops & sparse instrumentals that are employed to cause the maximum desired effect from their listening audience.
Boston duo Sleeping Lion dropped the new smoky synth pop of hesitation & reluctance with “Stop It” courtesy of Majestic Casual. Privy dialogues spill out from those late night phone calls and into an electro-treated mic captures all stated demands & preferred styles of expressions.
Blondage dropped the styling video for “Stoned” that takes you deep into the greenhouses & posts up with a denim-only crew. The track moves in big bright maximalist tropes that is sure to give you more than just a second hand high.
DYVR (fka DYVE) dropped the emotive & electronic track “Viridian” that proceeds with the concentration & reluctance of a war chant. The track sends out digital smoke signals & scratches lines in the sand & deals in a host of dramatic deliveries.
Those looking for some kind of catchy electronic pop fever might fall instantly in love with the emotive excesses of feels presented on Simian Ghost’s new single “When You’re Ready”.
Bask in the restrained & unwavering presence of the title single “Hot Gun Western City” from Human Potential, Andrew Becker of Medications & Screens solo. Featured off the forthcoming July 21 slated album of the same name from Andrew’s own What Delicate Recordings imprints; the track is a slow building & burning treat that ultimate erupts in a beautiful blast of blessed & wondrous dissonance.
T2 Ghetto Hippie delivered us the ALuceVision video for his tile track “Double Cups & Taco Trucks” available soon that delivers something rowdy & weird from the Houston outskirts. The life of southwest eats & cough syrup concerns combined together in a cautious yet chill cocktail of cool TX vibes.
Briana Marela announced the new album Call It Love available August 4 from Jagjaguwar & delivered the expressive & electronic single “Quit”. This is a track that tackles the dialogues & all the breakdowns in communication that can occur in-between.
INVSN beats against the incessant clamor & noise with their new single “This Constant War” featured off their upcoming album The Beautiful Stories available June 6 from Dine Alone Records. The elements & sentiments of battle collect like soldiers & mercenaries gathering among their loyalty lines as INVSN rides forth with the refrain of “I’m alive, I’m gonna fight another day…”
Brooklyn’s Fruit & Flowers dropped the jubilant beach party video for “Out Of Touch” featured off of their EP debut Drug Tax available later in June. The group operates on hedonistic whims that involve impromptu swims in the sea & all the fun one can have in the sun & sand while pondering the connections & lack their of that we all have with that shared thing some people call reality.
NO WIN dropped the single “You’ll Be Fine” released for the Dangerbird single series MICRODOSE ahead of the band’s Los Angeles performance May 17 with People Flavor & Rufrano at Dangerbird’s MICRODOSE happening at the Hi Hat. The track exhibits the sum of all aspects of anxiety that exhibits every tiny single solitary thing that we fuss & fret over with a shrugged shoulder style of acceptance/resignation doused with a good dose of r & r.
Los Angeles’ own Josh Onstott (from Other Lives) makes music under the title of New Mystics presenting the video for “Sparrows” from the debut album Smile With Your Teeth available this summer from
TH3RD BRAIN Records. Illustrating images of seeing the sky by way of the ocean deep; Onstott introduced the single with the following reflections:
This song was written about my great grandfather Daniel. Daniel was a bird watcher/protector. He loved Martins. Martins would eat mosquitoes in the area of Oklahoma where I was raised. Daniel would build nice bird houses for the neighborhood Martins. The Sparrows were the gangster birds that would come in flocks to run the Martins out of the bird houses…they would eventually take over the homes because the Martins were always out numbered. My great grandfather would sit in his shed with the doors cracked open with a cigarette that he wasn’t supposed to be smoking in one hand and a pellet gun in the other. He would shoot every Sparrow that flew over his yard…and in between kills, he would play his C harmonica. As a child, every time I walked outside, I remember dead Sparrows laying all over his yard and throughout his flower garden…
Riding off the buzz of the new album Jardin, Gabriel Garzón-Montano presented us with a view of the artist performing “Fruitflies” over at at Stones Throw Studios located in LA. Surrounded by super sick gear, Gabriel gets into a groove that will attract more than citrus thirsty insects but will bring more curious bees over to a hive lorded by Garzón-Montano.
WHY? presented us with the expressive visuals for “The Barely Blur” found off the recent album Moh Lhean available now from Joyful Noise. Frontman Yoni Wolf introduced the visuals with the following insights:
“The Barely Blur” was one of the last songs I wrote for Moh Lhean. It embodies a frustration, in a way, about how incomplete our understanding, even of our own experience, as conscious matter in this universe. That said, it’s not dark really, but more filled with inquisitive wonder. Idea for the video came to me in my sleep about 6 month ago. The initial idea was just to shoot close ups of runners in a marathon in super slow motion. The idea developed through conversations between myself and Scott, and then further, of course, throughout the process of making the video, as it began to take shape. Scott would be more equipped to speak on more technical aspects of the video.
Amy Allen is readying the Get Me Outta Here! for this summer & she dropped the infatuated & obsessed jam “Chasing Jenny”. Elements of fondness & affinities run wild & free on this ultra-bright jam that works in all the big vivid radio pop tropes that dazzles & dizzies all at the same time.
Lafa Taylor & Aabo delivered the Mikos Da Gawd (from the Soulection imprint) remix for “Falling” as they ready their collaborative album FEEL for release June 30. The minimalist approach from the SF DJ re-fashions the track to become a restrained & moody sequence of subtle, percolating rhythms.
Denmark’s Lød dropped the motorik title track “Folder” from their upcoming EP available June 30 from Tough Love. The track works like drive on those infinite autobahns & freeways of inexplicable freedom that lead toward any destined goal that you could dream or hope for.
Pill presented the visuals for “Speaking Up” from Alexander Lezzi & Anni Puolakka featured off the album Convenience available from Mexican Summer where an outcast-creature’s dismissal leads to an #ecofeminist adventure. The chant about getting “fired for speaking up” becomes a journey into the harsh elements of snowy conditions where escapism & protest are mixed together in order to discard comforts for some real hardcore self-actualization.
Emily Zeck collaborated with producer Gazzo to make an ultra-bright & ultra-catchy cut called “Two Cents (Ice Cream Song)” that plays off the melody heard from the ice cream man’s truck that rolls around during the dog days of spring/summer. All the FM pop feels fall on the listener like listening to the radio on a hot, hot day with all the windows rolled down & the volume turned way up.
Japan phenomenon tricot released their third album 3 this week from Topshelf Records stateside, Big Scary Monsters in the UK & the group’s own Bakuretsu out of Kyoto & we present some of the album’s new singles. “Melon Soda” is like the joy of imbibing your favorite beverages while surrounded by the greatest, raddest & dearest of friends.
Peep the music video for tricot’s “Melon Soda” from Mani Kato that is almost everything you imagined it would be (except in reverse!).
Also check out tricot’s “DeDeDe” that showcases the more mathematical & creative approaches the group utilizes in creating progression schemes that will keep you constantly smiling. Look for the group on tour late summer/fall.
Buffalo’s Ugly Sun offered up a listen from Painted Post with the destroyer of worlds, “Contagious”. The track spreads like an airborne organism that blares forth from speakers anywhere where Ugly Suns songs are played (at ridiculous levels, of course).
ShitKid blows up your spot and does donuts on the greenbelt in the radical “Two Motorbikes” single. Featured off their debut album Fish available June 2 from PNKSLM, ShitKid’s evocative surrealism makes for some tripped out cult mysticism.
Hear the ballad of weird times in the evil empires on the single “Strange Times In The City” from Great Woods, oka Brooklyn artist Eric Ryrie, featured off the upcoming album Strange Lives available June 23. Sentiments of strangeness spill out in a kind of confessional honesty that embraces the uncertainty & unsettled feelings that permeate much of our city-living existences.
The elusive & alluring world of Goldn returns with the single “I’m Still Here” ft. KAIE that reminds a certain someone of their presence. A duet of chopped & treated back & forth vocal edits stirs up a stew of digital electro pop drama that will keep you hanging onto every beat, pulse & harmonic key of untold ecstasy.
Brooklyn’s Psymon Spine dropped “Eric’s Basement & Secret Tunnels” that will give you something you can dance along to as if you were living it up in NYC way back in the oughts.
Brian Ellis’s new album Mirror/Mirror is available today from Chit Chat Records and we give you a listen to the old school electric AM vibes that run from “Nice Surprise” through “Emulated” that offer up redesigns of classic anachronistic styles.
In case you missed it, hear Radiator King’s classic rustic folks styles featured on the recent release of A Hollow Triumph After All. The futile ups & downs, ins & outs all collide together in tales of rustic gothic endeavors & encounters span from the ever after of the opener “After All” to the pub pop last-call-closer “Sammy Song” that is sure to keep you hanging around for more long after the honky-tonks have closed their parlor doors.
India by London by Brooklyn artist Vandana dropped the single “Jaan” featured off the upcoming Nox Anima EP that works in mysterious electronic essences & manners. “Jaan” manifests itself from the ether like a digital specter materializing from the air & into the physical environments that we all know in a breathy sound of humming & buzzing synths that makes for an elusive & moody pop momento.
