With the album coming soon on Worried Songs, Cameron Knowler has returned with new single, ‘Secret Water’. A cast of musicians join the track, adding fiddle, upright bass and mandolin and highlighting how Knowler expands the traditional guitar instrumental style into something richer. Imagine the guitar work of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn combined with the older string band tradition from Appalachia and you’d be getting somewhere close. But true to the CRK spirit, the result is also specific to Arizona, working to conjure the landscape in both fine detail and broad strokes.

The post Cameron Knowler – Secret Water appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Last week saw the release of Melody Trail, the new record from the ever-prolific Sam Sodomsky’s The Bird Calls. Again put out by Ruination Records, the album in part deals with Sodomsky losing his position at Pitchfork after Condé Nast’s decision to absorb the site into GQ last year, pulling the rug from under his feet and throwing into doubt one of the last bastions of independent music criticism. But anyone expecting a minor key downer will be sorely disappointed, instead drawing on a range of left of centre pop and folk to create something quite unlike any previous The Bird Calls work. The title track is probably the best place to start, a catchy and breezy acoustic strum that somehow sounds both weary and hopeful, vowing to make a fresh start if not quite committing to actually doing it.

And I’m trying to get my life back
Riding on the right track
Time to move on

Born Ruffians – Mean Time

Having made their name in the indie rock boom of the 00s, Toronto’s Born Ruffians have constantly evolved over their near-two-decade lifespan, resisting the temptation to settle into a groove or rely on nostalgia to instead push their sound to new dimensions. Forthcoming this summer via Wavy Haze and Yep Rock Records, their new album Beauty’s Pride represents another reinvention, embracing change alongside the real-life experience of becoming a parent, as highlighted by lead single ‘Mean Time’. A “sort of autobiographical/speculative non-fiction inspired by Nabokov’s beautiful autobiography Speak, Memory,” as vocalist/guitarist Luke Lalonde puts it. “It’s about those two black voids, the before and the after, and all of the extraordinary moments in between.”

Beauty’s Pride is out on the 6th June via Wavy Haze Records and Yep Roc Records.

Cameron Knowler – Felicity

CRK, the (quasi-)self-titled by Arizona musician Cameron Knowler forthcoming on Worried Songs, is fundamentally a record of time and space. A meditation of Knowler’s hometown of Yuma, Arizona both in its physical presence and historical weight, all achieved via a style of instrumental folk both traditional and visionary. Together with a video featuring local landmarks ranging from the purple Gila Mountains to lettuce fields and a long abandoned adobe prison, single ‘Felicity’ offers the listener an introduction to this style. A soundscape littered with features of the past, indeed shaped by their weight, yet one which is neither overburdened by the load nor bewitched by the seductive will to return to that former place.

Watch the video shot, edited and directed by Steven Perlin below:

CRK will be out on the 4th April via Worried Songs and you can pre-order it from Bandcamp.

Elskavon – How Cold

Elskavon’s new album Panoramas, coming this summer via Western Vinyl, sees Chris Bartels continue to evolve the project, drawing on everything which came before but finding a novel form. As lead single ‘How Cold’ shows, this involves challenging preconceptions of genre and style, crossing boundaries and questioning conventions, be it around what exactly a song or album can be, or indeed the role vocals can play within this. This exploratory mindset allows for a real authenticity to develop, creating an emotional resonance unhindered by any constraints. “This album is a deep dive into everything that’s shaped me as a creator,” as Bartels explains. “My favorite songs and albums are tied to memories and seasons—beautiful, painful, grand, and small—and those experiences inform everything I do.”

Panoramas is out on the 20th June via Western Vinyl and you can pre-order it now.

Fake Dad – Machinery

Consisting of Andrea de Varona and Josh Ford, LA’s Fake Dad make crunchy pop rock that’s concerned with both having fun and making a point. With new EP Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine on the horizon, the duo have unveiled single ‘Machinery’ to introduce this style. It’s a track which originated after a bad experience at a musical showcase, where female artists were forced to play into their own objectification in order to earn attention. “This song was written as a response to the way this kind of woman on woman (or more generally, artist on artist) hate perpetuates these spaces while the real culprits—our sick, sad society governed by narcissistic, billionaire white men—totally fly under the radar,” de Varona explains. “In the end, the man is the real one we’re calling out. The one that we’re sick and tired of watching get what they want, while we sit back eating from their palm.”

‘Machinery’ is out now and available at the usual places. Holly Wholesome and the Slut Machine is coming soon.

Hour – Hallmark (Live at Philamoca, Philadelphia)

Following on from beautiful 2024 album Ease the Work, a release we described in our review of last year’s best releases, as “perform[ing] the same small miracle of the previous records, presenting the everyday in all its joy and melancholy, comfort and strangeness,” Philadelphia ensemble Hour are returning this month with new live album Subminiature on Dear Life Records. Collected across two years of live performances, the album serves as what the label calls “a capstone for the band’s oeuvre to date,” offering versions of pieces from Tiny Houses and Anemone Red alongside brand new arrangements to best represent a project that’s always adapting and evolving. Different songs recorded at different shows, performed by a changing cast of musicians across various months and years, yet all linked by the same spirit. That vital piece of the Hour DNA which commits to such fluidity as a fundamental part of what the project represents.

Watch the video directed/edited by Matt Ober below:

Subminiature is out on the 14th February via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Larum – O Virga Mediatrix (feat Bill Orcutt)

The recording project of Chet Doxas and Micah Frank, Larum combines woodwind and electronics to create a sound full of detail and intangible depth, something evident on 2022 EP The Music of Hildegard von Bingen Part One, which occupied a unique intersection between the early medieval and avant garde cutting edge. As the title suggested, the release was only the first instalment of the project, and this April Larum will return with appropriately named follow-up The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Part Two. Again the result is almost paradoxical in form, managing to imbue the work of an eleventh-century theologian, mystic and composer not just with contemporary resonance but a sense of pioneering potential. Featuring guitarist and composer Bill Orcutt, single ‘O Virga Mediatrix’ embodies this aesthetic, the track representing a thread which stretches away from the present in both directions, inviting the audience to following towards the mysterious spaces beyond.

MacGregor Burns – Put It All On Me

Described as “a new wave sad boy anthem that is a longing cry to pass the blame,” ‘Put It All On Me’ is the latest single from LA-based singer-songwriter MacGregor Burns. Previous tracks ‘Silent Answers‘ and ‘Can’t Go Back‘ highlighted the artist’s idiosyncratic style, “combining nostalgic nods […] while forging a new path forwards, [looking] for further clues in the fertile space between the familiar and the new.” ‘Put It All On Me’ continues this vibe but with some stylistic differences. Namely the lack of guitar, leading to a decidedly wistful sound that nods to the likes of the Psychedelic Furs but nevertheless carries its own bright forward motion.

‘Put It All On Me’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Royal Oakie Records – Canyon Country: LA Fires Benefit Compilation

“[Displays] a sense of cohesion and togetherness which hints at the radical potential within the collective, something we need to remember now more than ever as the suite of challenges which marks the contemporary moment only widens and deepens,” so we wrote of if only i could fly, a compilation in support of those affected by the LA fires organised by  Little Mazarn, hemlock and Jolie Holland. But we could easily have been writing about Canyon County, the new benefit compilation from Royal Oakie Records too. Featuring a mix of unreleased and album tracks from the likes of Holy Matter, Half Stack, Michael James Tapscott and Lauren Helene Green, the comp is what the label describe as a “love letter to Los Angeles and its surrounding canyons and coastlines,” as embodied by the languid warmth of Sandy’s ‘Band Without A Song’.

The Taxpayers – At War With The Dogcatchers

Portland, Oregon emo outfit The Taxpayers might have been on hiatus from releasing new music for going on a decade, but this March puts an end to that. Released via Ernest Jenning Record Co., their latest full-length Circle Breakers reckons with the changes in the world in the time since their previous record, with understandably dark results. Alongside the global pandemic, continued climate breakdown and turn towards reactionary politics were a series of personal tragedies too, and the record sees The Taxpayers pushing through a seemingly unending experience of loss with both fury and hope for something better. Latest single ‘At War With The Dogcatchers’ draws on a run-in with the titular enemies after a deceased friend’s dog was seized and taken to a pound. A song about “loving the broken things in spite of the dogcatchers of the world,” as the band explain, “and trying to find meaning in those things amidst the tragedies.”

Watch the video by Preston Spurlock below

Circle Breaker will be released on the 21st March via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and you can pre-order it now.

Yael S. Copeland – 2AM

“Unable to lose the romantic notion that things can be different, can improve. Mellow Submarine looks for good thoughts amid the chaos, and might just have you believing they are just around the corner after all.” So we wrote of Yael S. Copeland‘s most recent full-length back in 2023, applauding the manner in which the Queens-based songwriter looks to preserve the small, fleeting moments within an often calamitous world. Detailing an after hours encounter between two receptive strangers, new single ‘2AM’ is no different, offering a distinctively nocturnal tone to conjure a sense of ethereal romance. A sort of lightning-in-a-bottle sensation both characters can only cling to while it lasts. “You know we / Will probably be / only friends / for this night,” as Copeland sings in the chorus, “Maybe till the morning?”

The post Weekly Listening: February 2025 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

What she calls “[a song] about the experience of being both loved and misunderstood by someone,” ‘Poser’ is the title track of the forthcoming EP from Edmonton‘s Antonia Estelle. Built on a skeleton of stark acoustic guitar, the song is fleshed out with syrup-heavy drums and gusts of distorted guitar, the vocals swaying with quiet intensity like a flickering flame. The emotions underpinning it are gloomy and turbulent, focusing on the strange balance of a dysfunctional relationship and the ultimate unknowability of selfhood. “I had a dream that bears had butterfly wings,” Antonia Estelle sings, “it’s a picture I can’t paint—a feeling that stays inside.”

I don’t know why I even try to explain
Things that I know you won’t understand

Big Cry Country – Pest Control

Based in Washington D.C., Big Cry Country pour a whole host of moods and emotions into their sound, as latest single ‘Pest Control’ attests. Taken from their EP Living Conditions, the song finds inspiration in the likes of Cayetana and Remember Sports to offer something at once deliciously angsty and infectiously energetic. “I’m older but not better,” as the cathartic refrain states. “I’ve seen the afterlife and you are wearing my old sweater.” Big Cry Country might be a fitting name, but releasing emotion has never been so much fun.

Closebye – Hell’s Kitchen

Formed by Dallas-born, NYC based duo Jonah Paul Smith and Julian Paint Smith (unrelated), Closebye make folk-inflected indie pop inspired by the likes of Elliott Smith, Aimee Mann and Hovvdy. Following their debut album Lucid News, released in 2022, the band have returned with a perfectly autumnal single, ‘Hell’s Kitchen’, what they call “an ode to their libra birth season and to their home base of New York City.” The Smiths are joined by Ian Salazar, Margaux Bouchegnies and Simon Clinton, who together use a plethora of instruments to craft a “breezy pop banger” that’s tinged with just a hint of something more wistful, creeping in at the edges like the cool touch of the oncoming winter on an autumn afternoon.

Who are you gonna be?
When every day is Halloween

Check out the video, directed and edited by Elizabeth Kroner, below:

‘Hell’s Kitchen’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Dumb Things – Self Help

‘Self Help’ is the lead single and title track from the new record by Meanjin/Brisbane indie poppers Dumb Things, coming soon via Coolin’ By Sound. Influenced by the droll poetic style of David Berman, it’s a slice of breezy, dusty pop with a streak of yearning melancholy, the narrator looking to self-improvement as a remedy to past mistakes. “The original idea for the song is that it’s a letter from a guy who’s a bit down on his luck but still in the fight, to his ex, some time after they split up,” says vocalist Adam Vincent.

Lately I’ve been working hard on my personality
Cos you got to keep it up, to keep it together ah ha
Been trying to find the time to put the work in
Yeah, I’ve been working out how to work it out

Elephant in Red – Honey

The creative outlet of Glasgow‘s Loup Havenith, Elephant in Red make what they call “sappy sounds for earthly beings.” Latest single ‘Honey’ sees the band combine gently grooving, stripped back folk with a shimmer of shoegaze, full of rich textures and gently wavering vocals. Havenith is joined by Chris McRory (drums), Fin Logie (bass) and Alex Gyllos (piano), who together built the song from the ground up. “[The song is] a sort of longing for calmness and simplicity,” the band describe. “Wanting to move past the weird overwhelming coming-of-age feelings that come hand in hand with being young in a city full of people.”

Lando Manning – Driftwood

Written during what he calls “the final dregs of lockdown,” ‘Driftwood’, the new single from London‘s Lando Manning, is an exploration of the many shades of isolation and loneliness. A quiet folky song, it’s built on percussive acoustic guitar and soft peals of piano, full of loaded negative space and a film-grained cinematic quality. “I had moved to Brighton and felt that I had been isolating myself from my friends back home,” Manning describes of his time writing the song, “and the track was written as a letter to my friends to try to explain why I had been absent.”

‘Driftwood’ is out now and available on streaming services. Manning will release his sophomore EP on his label Mango Wax Records next February.

Laurel Bluffs – Richmond

“Losing myself in the mirror / drenched in alcohol and smoke / I called, you came and picked me up / laid me down, turned out the lights.” So opens ‘Richmond’, the latest single from Phoenix, Arizona-based project Laurel Bluffs. A drive to Richmond follows, a hungover nausea, the bumpy road, and with it the kind of wistful reflection which blooms in the sorry aftermath of things. The folk rock sound and unadorned delivery lend an intimacy to the track, where fondness and longing are present without spilling into sugary sentiment. Instead, there’s just the highway, a building pressure, and the accumulated weight of actions as gathered over the course of regretful years.

‘Richmond’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Neighbours Burning Neighbours – Neil Young

Specialising in a brand of meaningful chaos, Rotterdam noise pop act Neighbours Burning Neighbours have been crafting songs from disorderly melodies and left-field harmonies since 2018. Following a couple of single releases, the band set to work on their debut full-length, which they plan to release in 2024. To whet appetites, they have released the record’s first single ‘Neil Young’, a typically discordant but infectious track which challenges gender norms and the harmful status quo. Watch the video, directed by Charlotte Brand and produced by A Small Production Company, below:

‘Neil Young’ is out now via streaming services.

Twin Bridges – A Dream of You

Led by cellist Zach Gerzon, Twin Bridges are a band from Portland, Oregon who combine folk and indie rock songwriting with neoclassical arrangements and elements of chamber music. They recently released Fertile Ashes, a new record which Gerzon wrote in the aftermath of some very difficult personal circumstances. “These songs explore what can feel like an impossible task, overcoming grief from loss, trauma, and failed relationships,” he says of the album. “Making this album helped me let go of things I held onto for so long.” Perhaps the record’s most personal cut, ‘A Dream of You’ is an ode to Gerzon’s late mother, suffused with an elegant simplicity and sorrow.

The post Weekly Listening: November 2023 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Last month Indonesia-born, Toronto-based songwriter Dwi Riana released their new EP, Jambu Tree, a bilingual release which draws on everything from folk to hip hop to realise its distinctive exploration of the immigrant experience. Single ‘WTFAI’ is a perfect introduction, a love-hate ode to their new home which does for Toronto what The Weakerthans’ ‘One Great City!’ did for Winnipeg. “My first winter in Toronto, it got down to minus forty degrees,” Dwi Riana explains. “People told me that it was the worst winter they’ve had in twenty five years. The next winter, it was the worst in twenty six years, and so on… I thought to myself ‘Where the fuck am I?'”

Jambu Tree is out now and available from the usual places.

ghost orchard – Sweet Song

Last month we wrote about ghost orchard, the project of Sam Hall from Grand Rapids, Michigan, describing single ‘rest’ as “a picture of calm and patience amid loss, where the quiet stillness holds the latent warmth of things now gone.” The song was the opener from the debut ghost orchard LP, rainbow music, which came out last week via Winspear. The album is a meditation on themes of home and change and the tangible echoes that remain when people move on, preaching patience and acceptance in a world that seems determined to rush by. This atmosphere is captured nicely on penultimate track ‘Sweet Song’, a bittersweet bedroom pop song that holds much tenderness and feeling in its sub two minute runtime.

g. spinn – We Might

Based in Tucson, AZ, g. spinn is a recording project unafraid to push the boundaries of genre. Since its formation in 2018, he has released music across the spectrum, from meditative ambient album summer’s long gone to singles more at home in hip hop, pop and indie rock brackets. New EP Nostalgia Melancholy draws from various points of this oeuvre, with single ‘We Might’ showing off the hybrid ambient-folk style. Wistful field recordings and warm acoustic guitar paint a mood fitting for the EP’s title, and the track’s pivot to lush ambient tones in its middle section only further cements the sound’s reflective quality.

Joan Kelsey – Survivor

“In a time of tremendous difficulty I tried to make something life-affirming: grieving songs which look toward joy.” So explains Seattle songwriter Joan Kelsey of new album Standing Out On The Grass, out later this week on Dear Life Records. A collection of songs written in the aftermath of loss, the days and months when grief arrives fresh with each moment, a thing at once personal and universal and impossible to ever quite overcome. But as single ‘Survivor’ shows, Kelsey does not try to conquer this sadness but instead place it within a wider context. Layer death into a larger, interconnected picture where the cruel linearity of time and space is upended, and nothing is ever really gone. Watch the video by John Desousa below:

Standing Out On The Grass is out on the 11th November via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Mui Zyu – Ghost with a Peach Skin

Next February sees the release of Rotten Bun for an Eggless Century, a brand new album from London‘s Mui Zyu (AKA Eva Liu of Dama Scout) on Father/Daughter Records, and lead single ‘Ghost with a Peach Skin’ gives a hint as to what to expect. “This song is about leaving your former self and entering your new peach skin,” as Mui Zyu explains. “Peaches are considered a symbol of longevity and even immortality in Chinese culture. The protagonist has overcome enemies and has bruises to prove the damage.” The track achieves the effect sonically, the sound itself bruised by distortion even as Zyu’s vocals progress with a calm confidence, the voice of a protagonist who is stepping out from the past and into something new. Check out the video directed and edited by CLUMP Collective below:

Rotten Bun for an Eggless Century is out via Father/Daughter Records on the 24th February and you can pre-order it now.

Philippa Zawe – Would You Lean

Ahead of upcoming EP Shudder Pt. I, Philippa Zawe has shared brand new single, ‘Would You Lean.’  Writing of previous release Road of Hope, we described Zawe’s work as a combination of “folk and soul… built around her versatile voice,” the delivery “switching from casual conversational comments to strikingly effecting croons to produce something that ebbs and flows with human warmth.” The new track is no less impressive in this regard, though builds on previous releases with an increasingly rich arrangement of instruments. A sound capable of exploring themes of loss, friendship and faith with a decidedly compassionate tone.

Sassyhiya – I had a thought

Rising from the ashes of cult LGBTQ punks Barry, Sassyhiya is the project of London-based partners Kathy Wright and Helen Skinner. Recorded during lockdown, their debut EP gum demos introduced the irreverent charm of their punky, poppy sound. But now with the addition of Pablo Paganotto of Punching Swans (drums) and Neiloy Mookherjee (guitar), Sissyhiya are now a full fledged live band. New EP Live at Paper Dress Vintage captures this newly charged form in all its idiosyncratic fun. Opener ‘I had a thought’ is as good an introduction as any, adding scrappy attitude to the original, taking the angles of post-punk and bending them into off-kilter shapes, leading to something somehow both laidback and volatile.

Thavoron – Twin Sized Bed

Back in April, Seattle-based songwriter Thavoron shared single ’18’ on Trailing Twelve Records, a tender and intimate track which explored the queer experience with dreamlike warmth. The song was relatively stripped back with its careful arrangement of flute, saxophone and guitar, but latest single ‘Twin Sized Bed’ leans more fully into the minimalist folk style. Built on stark guitar and gently emotive vocals, it’s a song concerning the often difficult process of coming to understand and accept yourself brought to life with all the stark solitude of such an experience.

‘Twin Sized Bed’ is out now via Trailing Twelve Records.

The post Weekly Listening: November 2022 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Earlier this Spring, Karima Walker released demos, a new album with Orindal Records and Keeled Scales which paired older versions of some of the songs from 2021’s beautiful Waking The Dreaming Body with new compositions. The release provided a glimpse into the beginnings of the eventual album. With rougher, perhaps more intimate acoustic arrangements and slight lyrical differences. The deviations from what we know as the ‘final’ versions are conspicuous in hindsight, but so to is the sense of latent possibility. The soul of something forming, even if it hasn’t yet realised its true physical body.

The result proves an inadvertent rebuttal of the fears around preserving early drafts. A lesson in the value of looking back, if only to remember the dual nature of creation. A combination of abstract magic and mundane perseverance. The easy inspiration, the mechanical work. For the final thing does not fall into complete existence but rather takes shape in the manner of a natural landscape. An uneven process of slow movement and violent change, where any divine beauty or imagination is underpinned by a long physical act, occurring day after day. The songs of demos are no less representative of the ones of Waking the Dreaming Body than a landscape a hundred years ago is of a landscape today.

demos challenges the binary between ‘demo’ and ‘final’, just as Waking the Dreaming Body challenges other such binaries. “The release is a product of both isolation and connection,” we wrote in our review. “The former fostering the latter in strange ways. In confronting the surrounding environment and considering her place within it, Walker traces lines between the self and the outside so that such boundaries might be challenged and blurred.” Songs crafted by both sound designer and singer-songwriter, deep rooted in conscious and unconscious thought, and both interior and exterior spaces. Environments which might feel complete or permanent within any given moment, but always subject to change.

As Walker prepares to head off on a UK tour with Advance Base, we took the opportunity to ask her a few questions about the new release and her work more generally. Check out the tour dates below then scroll on down for the interview, which Walker answered, fittingly, from an airport with gear and merch in tow.

Aug 28, 2022- Manchester, UK @ Gulliver’s
Aug 29, 2022- Glasgow, UK @ The Hug & Pint (w/ Raveloe)
Aug 30, 2002- Wakefield, UK @ Chantry Chapel
Aug 31, 2022- London, UK @ The Lexington (w/ Herbal Tea)
Sept 01, 2022- Brighton, UK @ The Prince Albert
Sept 03, 2022- London, UK @ St John on Bethnal Green / Daylight Music (w/ Robert Stillman)
Sept 04, 2022- Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival (just Karima Walker, no Advance Base)
Sept 05, 2022- Bristol, UK @ Cube Cinema (w/ SH Davidson)
Sept 06, 2022- Oxford, UK @ Port Mahon (moved from The Library) (w/ Katie Malco)

Thanks so much for speaking with us Karima, and congratulations on demos. Does it feel different releasing a record that’s not quite new?

It does feel different, casual!

As a listener, I’m always fascinated to hear early versions of songs. How the vision for the track might have altered, what seeds would eventually blossom into the finished thing. But if I put on my writer cap, the prospect of going through my own old drafts caused a specific sense of dread. The interest might still be present, but there’s a competing trepidation too. Like you might be dispelling the mirage somehow. Does this ring true? And if so, how did you tackle the unease?

It does feel vulnerable… with “Reconstellated,” I sat with different iterations of it for well over a year. It’s almost like I owed something to the versions that brought so much to the final song, even if they weren’t present in it, in the end. In this state, the demos are still rough but feel like they have potential, so this release feels lighter.

To invert the question, what about the reverse situation? Do you feel your relationship with Waking the Dreaming Body has been altered by returning to the demos? Did you learn anything new about the songs in revisiting their early forms?

I do. On one hand there’s magic in how a song arrives but part of assembling these demos was reminding myself that they don’t always fall out of the sky. A lot of it is a much more mundane process. I’m a ways out from writing WTDB, so as I start writing again it’s helpful to hear the kind of questions I was asking for that record, how I assembled it.

The two versions of ‘Window I’ offer one of the most interesting comparisons because they foreground one of the most striking features of Waking the Dreaming Body. The porous line between a more traditional folk style and an experimental found sound/drone. Do you feel you identify more strongly with any one position along the songwriter-composer spectrum? Does your future seem to lean toward either end, or is resisting any clear binary the only certainty?

I am honestly not sure. I’m very impressionable when I’m listening to something I love, so it changes all the time… I don’t know if I could hang out on one side of those paths forever. I love that porous line, how one thing somehow becomes something else, and all the moments in between that can feel just as complete, or sometimes better than where you begin or end. I do like structure though, framing those moments around questions of perception, gender, the self-other dichotomy… On WTDB, I was wanting songs that felt complete and solid, compositions that felt whole and I wanted them to all happily co-exist together. Right now I’m writing you from an airport, surround by over a hundred pounds of my gear and merch, so sometimes I think it’s time to write folk songs.

To talk about craft more generally, what is the typical process when writing a song? Is it a case of generating a bunch of rough material and returning to hone it once halfway complete, or are you more meticulous within each track? Like, would you perfect an opening or chorus before tackling the rest of the piece? Or follow something through and polish it later?

I try to be open to whatever is coming my way… some days I’m showing up for a song even if I’m not feeling it, and that feels more like the former, documenting what happens through play, then looking back over it and doing the honing/editing work of reading what this body of parts is. But sometimes things do surface with more completeness built in, or more urgency, and I want to be available for that too. If my intuition is saying to dive deep into something then I try to leave room for that.

You wrote about the link between breathing and landscapes when announcing single ‘how it falls apart’, how words come when you’re running and form “a way of mapping or notating a place/landscape.” Could you talk a little on how this phenomenon informed the song, or indeed your work more widely?

When I’m out, moving my body, it’s like I’m shaking loose all the associations and ideas that were up there in my brain, stagnating. But then also, being outside and aware of what’s around me is an endless source of joy and inspiration, it’s hard not to connect to my creative brain when I’m feeling good and alive and awake. All that life around me starts to imprint on my internal world.

In a very physical sense, running over a trail feels like mapping or reading a score. I’m active in the former- moving through the landscape, and receptive in the latter- being shaped by the choices of trail builders, game trails, elevations. I’d noticed how my breathing rhythm would change over the course of a run, so I recorded my breath and footsteps on a trail near my house… I wanted to see if I could listen back to the recording later and remember where the uphills and downhills were. I suppose the audio isn’t technically a map, since a map presents itself visually, all at once, where as an audio recording opens up over time. But we consent to the components of a map or a score when we follow a path. It feels like collaborative performance.

Speaking of landscapes, we can’t talk about your work without touching upon the importance of the environment. There’s something about the balance between reality and unreality on WTDB which feels unique to the desert. Perhaps I’m projecting, writing from a place about as far from a desert as somewhere could be, but it seems a desert is the most real and unreal of places. Are you aware of the landscape’s influence on your work? Do you think it would sound different if you lived elsewhere?

I was just in Florida, and had really only been there once before. I’d walk around, filled with awe, with my mouth hanging open because I just could not fathom the trees and flora… they’re just so different. Huge, weblike, loud, lush worlds. I think I know what you mean by unreal… being in a landscape that is just so incredibly different from what I know, I was left to observe without a lot of language to help me. It’s a very joyful childlike frame of mind. I guess I’d suggest that those emotional, inner and dream realities, though very squishy, are still very real but that language fails in articulating that reality, maybe that’s where the unreal-ness comes from. There’s a knowledge in the body that can navigate those realities in ways my rational thinking brain just can’t. I think I’m aware of the landscapes influence on my work, and I’m pretty certain it would sound different if I was somewhere else, or with people when I wrote.

Talking of places far from deserts, you’re about to head out on a UK tour with Advance Base. It’s a difficult time for obvious reasons, but speaking more generally, what role does touring and live performance play within your work? Does it feel part of the creative process?

Touring, especially with friends, and playing live are sources of real joy for me. Then there’s the connected and slightly different kind of joy, the… maybe more fraught joy of having a creative practice. The logistics of tour give my days structure and purpose, reconnects me to the network of friends and community, that I often only see when I’m on the road, and to places I love very much.

Live performance is immensely fulfilling and at the same time a huge output of energy. I build my sets around a narrative arc and it feels like a theater-healing ritual, to transition through different places and arrive at a resolution of some kind.

demos is out now via Orindal Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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These images allowed me to think about immense horror and beauty—something that overwhelms but simultaneously is so hard to look away from, something that holds violence but also reflects a better understanding of ourselves in the context of that immensity and scale. Looking out and looking within, and knowing that the divide is false, but feeling the pain of that division nonetheless.

This dual process of acknowledging and questioning borders is key to Karima Walker’s work. Occupying a variety of niches across the artistic spectrum, the Tucson-based interdisciplinary artist has long probed in directions both various and wide-ranging, extending across visual and performing arts to include collaborations in fields as distinct as sculpture, creative non-fiction and dance. Though even within the discrete category of music, Walker’s art maintains a multifaceted approach. In working as both a songwriter and a sound designer, there is a dichotomous quality to the Karima Walker style, a dualism between modes that might be complementary or contradicting.

Written, performed and engineered by Walker alone (with the sole exception of bass from C.J. Boyd on one song), the release is a product of both isolation and connection, the former fostering the latter in strange ways. In confronting the surrounding environment and considering her place within it, Walker traces lines between the self and the outside so that such boundaries might be challenged and blurred. “I wanted these songs to stand alone as complete worlds,” Walker explains, “and this required a shift in my usual way of writing. I found myself trying to escape from an excess of interiority by exploring outward, by thinking about the mirroring that happens when you seek connection to others and to the natural world—when you try to bring the outside in.”

The sublime of Waking The Dreaming Body is therefore not an attempt to realise the limitations of one’s mind à la Lyotard. Rather, it is an exercise in locating such limits in order to eventually surpass them. “I sought to make arrangements that swell at certain moments and barely hold together at others, moving with my breath and other rhythms connecting my body to the natural world,” Karima Walker continues. “Ultimately, I was seeking to draw myself out, to reconstruct my personal narrative.” 

Written and recorded in seclusion, and often possessing a sense of distance and yearning, it is clear that this objective is far from simple. But there are moments on the record where the possibility flickers in life, brief snatches of some potential future where even if the borders are not conquered, we might perhaps learn to be present within their confines, come to accommodate for their shape.

Today we have the honour of sharing the record’s title track, coincidentally one of the closest encounters Walkers manages with such an experience. “This was the last song I wrote for the record,” she explains. “It became the song that was able to bridge, with a certain kind of peace, a space that I had been in for a long time. It moved from a stuck-and-in-between place to the place I was physically in, which was beautiful and singular. I was outside and camping and I think you know the feeling I’m talking about. All the uncertainty and fear spilled out into something very present and joyful.”

The earth it is shaking she’s taking a breath
while the rest of us hold it
There’s no use in explaining, there’s nothing left
no use in it’s naming
And if I feel the edge, with my fingertips, is it softer than I imagined?
And if I crawled inside you, I mean it I could just die here
between the starry dome above and the rocks beneath my feet

Karima Walker was also kind enough to share a live performance of the track, which, recorded at home, strips back the already minimalist sound into something even more intimate.

Waking the Dreaming Body is out via Orindal Records and Keeled Scales on the 26th February and you can pre-order it now from the Karima Walker Bandcamp page.

Photo by Holly Hall

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Out via Memoir Music, an imprint of Rotterdam label Chillhop Music, Amparo is back with a brand new EP, Lost Ghosts, a three-song release that perfects their style. As the title suggests, the EP is as concerned with the past as it is the present, possessing a kind of duality in its sound. Field recordings anchor the spatial side of the songs in the present, dripping rain and ambient echoes of opener ‘Unlisted’ evoking a calm solitude, but the instrumentation places the temporal dimension somewhere back in time. Lost Ghosts is therefore both an exercise in fond, nostalgic reflection and the quiet place in which to practice it.

Lost Ghosts is out now via Memoir Music and available from Bandcamp.

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Opener ‘Gave it All Away’ sets the scene for the album, slow and smoky dream pop that teams intimate guitar with Kepner’s earnest vocals. “I have it all away,” he sings, “I traded all of my pain, I have it all away for you.” The song has a midnight candlelit confessional vibe that plunges the listener into Kepner’s world and immediately bares the emotional bedrock that supports the record.

That said, some of the songs flow with a honeyed ease of a smash hit pop song. ‘I Gotta Go (Right Now)’ is a good example, stripped back to a near hush but still undualting with a beguiling rhythm. See also ‘The Hurt’, which sounds like a sleeper radio hit, peppy drum machine anchoring Kepner’s expressive vocal work. This proves to be a characteristic of the music of Bryce Kepner, drawing on a variety of styles genres and levels of accessibility to produce something that feels unique.

‘I’ll Just Wait’ unfurls in a rich serpentine sway, while ‘Sky Dreams’ dawns slowly from winding atmospherics and subtle sleigh bells, eventually blooming into a confident-sounding guitar pop song (think The Dirty Projectors without the pretentious flourishes). Finale ‘Chances’ has the melancholy composure of a Justin Vernon song, the way Kepner’s vocals spring from the minimal instrumentation, primarily an hypnotically repetitive guitar line. It’s the perfect end to an album that sounds as confident as it does dreamy, as stylishly minimal as it is rich with feeling.

Transitions is it now and you can get it on CD, cassette or digitally from the Bryce Kepner Bandcamp page.

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As if to set out their stall immediately, Nanami Ozone open with ‘Sidewalks’. The track initially sounds like murky post punk but soon blossoms into something altogether expansive, the voices of Miller and Opich like liquid light at the centre of a tangled grey cloud of static energy. A song about occupying an awkward no-man’s land, follow up ‘Alone Too’ combines catchy dream pop vocals with rumbling guitar and slapped drums, showing the band are capable of earworm melody as well as raw power. “I don’t want to be with you but I don’t want to be alone too,” sings Opich, the sentiment representing the first sign that Nanami Ozone are not interested in making sickly pink love songs.

‘On the Ground’ is a celebratory shot of shoegaze goodness, while ‘Affection’ builds from blown-out guitar into a leaden 90s alt-rock. Miller’s vocals are initially little more than a downbeat mumble, the song dragging itself along on its belly as guitars chug and drums stomp, but the second half sees things perk up, the vocals straining for something higher as the atmosphere brightens.

Miller handles lead vocals on ‘The Art of Sleeping In’, a dark and smoky track that pairs a towering storm front of intertwining guitars with propulsive percussion and Opich’s disarmingly soft backing. He then continues on ‘3 Mile Drive,” where wiry guitar gives way to bursts of punchy noise, the vocals stitched into the fuzzed-out instrumentation to create a shimmering MBV-style sonic blanket.

‘Erase Time’ is one NO‘s more sedate moments, existing in a sense of twilit negative space, while ‘Make It Alright (Damage)’ gets all grungey around a sighing centre, proof that elemental noise can have an emotional core. The album then closes on ‘Think of Me None’, an Opich-led song that dials back the volume in favour of Mazzy Star-esque aching sentiment.

Please stay
or I’ll miss the way that you taste
like toothpaste

A record that takes three decades of influences and turns them into something genuinely thrilling and new, NO is a delight. Come for the all-enveloping noise, stay for what’s just below the surface, the melody and feeling that elevate these songs beyond simple indie rock.

NO is out now and you can get it on LP or cassette from Tiny Engines or as a download from the Nanami Ozone Bandcamp page.

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As we wrote in a preview, opener ‘Ruby’ “combines sombre piano, sparse guitar and minimal spoken samples to form something that sounds moving and elegiac,” and this wistful shimmer is present across the EP. ‘Lidkoeb’ is perhaps a little more insistent, the indecipherable voices that flit in and out giving the track an introspective edge, as though too busy in its own head to distinguish the external world. This sensation is perhaps true of the release as a whole, a kind of sad wonder at being outside of so much, the environment moving around you and the people who inhabit it, all unaware of your trivial but life-determining problems.

The final track ‘Balderdash’ remains true to this aesthetic, though takes it a step further. The guitar loop cycles with its personal feeling once more, though is this time supported by a cinematic swell, as though Rains wishes to reinforce the inherent beauty in the situation, no matter how melancholic, and leave you with a mindful appreciation of your small part in the world around you.

Rains is out now via Taabiir and available from the Amparo Bandcamp page.

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