129,600 – Techi
Seattle’s 129,600, the recording project of Jade Tcimpidis, is preparing to release their debut album Granular Convection with Ghost Mountain Records. Described as exploring the “limits of tradition in the consumer era,” the album sees Kalen Walther (bass), Kirsten Ourada (drums) and Neil Welch (baritone saxophone) join Tcimpidis to conjure a sound which straddles dustbowl folk and art pop invention, all while reaching towards psych and jazz. Lead single ‘Techi’ highlights this singular style, where all manner of details spin from a taut rhythm, making for a twitchy, volatile mood. Tcimpidis’s vocals are equally frantic, and coupled with the sax evokes the paranoid vibe of Coppola’s The Conversation, with all its schemes and surveillance.
‘Techi’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.
Casters – Memory
Casters is the recording project of Andrew Strader and a rotating cast of supporting musicians, based in Brooklyn via Nashville and Knoxville. With EP Walk on Home coming soon via Like You Mean It Records, Strader has shared single ‘Memory’ to give an indication of what to expect from the release. This time featuring Neil MacLean (Home Visions, Griffin Moyer) on keys/synths and Connor James (Pat & The Pissers) on drums, the track draws on Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again to explore the impossibility of returning to a place you’ve left behind. All cast in a dreamy drift that marbles fondness and regret into sound so rich you could suspend yourself within it.
Chris Chism – On The Run
Focusing on the working class experience and following a lineage through Dylan and van Zandt, Richmond, Indiana’s Chris Chism delves into the personal to emerge with a more universal picture of life’s joys and struggles. New EP Things Has Changed develops this style, and single ‘On The Run’ is the perfect place to jump in. A semi-autobiographical portrait of a young person beaten down by life—loosing those close to them, experiencing brushes with the law, and generally searching for reasons to continue on amid a slew of misfortune—though one captured with the patience and empathy only hindsight can bring.
Hit Bargain – Degree Decree
Featuring members who are/have been parts of acts like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Beach Fossils and Cold Beat, Hit Bargain is a LA-based project led by Nora Singh which aims to stare the worst excesses of our society square in the eye. It is of no surprise then that new album A DOG A DEER A SEAL is charged by equal parts manic fervour and anxious frenzy, playing like the fevered delirium of a country’s dying mind. Single ‘Degree Decree’ might clock in at barely two minutes but portrays this mood in all of its maniacal panic, where the technological hubris of consumerism encroaches on our world as a synthetic blight.
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Check out the video directed by Katharine Antoun below (though those with photosensitive epilepsy should note there are flashing images):
A DOG A DEER A SEAL is out on the 10th November via Get Better Records and you can pre-order it now.
June Rosewell – a solid state
Nashville songwriter June Rosewell recently released a new EP, the dog bit at such an angle. It’s a collection of songs in which frustration and tenderness coexist and hope refuses to ever quite evaporate. Take single ‘a solid state’, a track about moving home which sees Rosewell’s intimate croon relays scenes with an everyday poetry. “In the morning we were packing up our boxes,” the opening lines play, “and our friends / Brushed our backbones with their warm thumbs while they sent us off again.” Later the song reveals the significance of the EP’s title (“The dog bit at such an angle where I thought I’d need a stitch”), and endeavours to show the invisible bonds that persist even as all that is familiar is upended.
Sitting quietly in a pair in the back seat of mother’s car
While she hummed along to songs she chose to deaden worry’s roar
We’re moving states, we’re moving states
A solid state, a solid state
the dog bit at such an angle is out now and available from the usual places.
Kendl Winter – Humming Mantra
Beginning as a way to both explore the clawhammer banjo and share this process with fans and peers, Kendl Winter’s forthcoming album Banjo Mantras originated in a daily practice of improvisation. “The banjo mantras started off as morning writings, like morning pages but in musical form,” she explains. “Daily pen to paper, fingers to strings, listening, feeling, sliding and thumbing my way around my open back banjo.” But the more Winter committed to the concept, the more she became attached to the ideas which emerged, and eventually decided to expand the resulting mantras into fleshed out soundscapes. First single ‘Humming Mantra’ channels the Pacific Northwest’s verdant summertime, full of small details and a sense of invigorating clarity.
‘Humming Mantra’ is out now and available from the usual places.
leoblu – dirty windows
“It’s unclear if the events [portrayed] are autobiographical or fiction,” we wrote of leoblu‘s ‘cake‘ back in January, “but the emotions are so keenly felt that whether these things actually happened seems almost besides the point.” The project of Åland-based songwriter Julia Carlsson, leoblu complicates the divide between truth and fiction in order to locate a deeper emotional honesty, weaving a layered and controlled sound that has been described as ‘dark pop’. Latest single ‘dirty windows’ pushes further into this style, taking the titular image to explore the cycles of stasis and rejuvenation that come with depression. Again the sound is beguilingly understated, growing subtly across its length as though slowly thawing from a deep freeze.
Watch the video shot and edited by Jonathan Carlsson below:
‘dirty windows’ is out now and available via streaming services.
Mali Velasquez – Shove
Next month Mali Velasquez is releasing full-length I’m Green on Acrophase Records. An album, as we described in a preview of single ‘Bobby‘, which explores “how our relationships with ourselves can be so conflicted and uneasy, and the way in which this is governed by our experiences with those around us.” Homing in on a specific relationship with a sound somewhere between vulnerable and visceral, latest single ‘Shove’ delves into the way our actions can be detrimental within such experiences no matter how pure the motivation. “I wrote this song in an attempt to explain the feeling of seeing myself doing the wrong things in the perfect moment,” as Velasquez puts it.
I’m Green is out on the 13th October via Acrophase Records.
The Rural Alberta Advantage – Conductors
Next month sees the return of Canadian indie stalwarts The Rural Alberta Advantage with their brand new full-length The Rise & The Fall on Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek. Though, despite their experience, latest single ‘Conductors’ explores how the process of writing songs gets no easier no matter how many records you have under your belt. “There is so much I love about being in a band. But one of its most fundamental aspects causes me more mental anguish than anything else, and that’s actually writing songs,” as Nils Edenloff explains. “When I’m able to tune out the doubting voice in my head and get it done, there’s no greater feeling. But often the devil wins and it’s easier to just run away.” This time it took drummer Paul Banwatt’s threat to use AI generated lyrics for Edenloff to shake off the doubt, and the video by Good Job Hi Five channels Adam Curtis to foreground the sense of human creativity struggled against the encroachment of systems and machines.
Why, why do I run?
From the work and the words before it’s done
Sometimes I’m always waiting on what will never come
Before it’s done, now every thought weighs a ton
Taking it on the chin for a while
Taking it like a champ for a while
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The Rise & The Fall is out on the 6th October via Paper Bag Records and Saddle Creek and you can pre-order it now.