To celebrate the year anniversary of the release, Dickson is sharing ‘Skin of Words’ as a single, and anyone who missed The Beholder first time around would be advised to take notice. Crafted from characteristically dreamlike sounds, the song submerges the listener within an ambiguous, unanchored atmosphere. One where the mood is never static, the sound always moving but never within the neat arc of narrative. Instead, differing sensations are juxtaposed so that tension might be achieved, not least the pairing of granular textures with sweeping movement. “I was interested in the contrast and coexistence of high drama, drops, big sounds, and lush textures, with delicate, close, subtle, sensorial sounds,” Dickson continues. “It felt important for moments to have the tactility that comes from a sample of the rain or a bell or some rocks being jostled together. To me, reality has this quality; moments of sensory blending and cohesion punctuated by the hyperreal. The archetype of the beholder is fascinated by this way of being—unmoored from the trappings of actuality.”

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Originating as a narrative poem, The Chairman Dances‘ new album Evening Song traces the early days of a nascent relationship. A seminarian and a drummer mutually enamoured with one another, caught in the heady space of attraction and mystery, hungry to learn everything there is to know about the other. Lead single ‘We Rifled Through’ drops us into the middle of this burgeoning intimacy, a scene which might appear mundane elevated by its details. A snapshot of two people meeting which not only evokes the connection growing between them, but the paths their lives have taken to lead them to that moment.

“Your parents give you this?” “Which? No that’s mine.
I’m the lone church goer.” “How does that happen?”
“One day, I went to church. I stayed. That’s it.”
“That’s it? How did you know to go?” “I stole
a book with an address.” Chris laughs. “You what?”
“You know those bins that sit outside of schools—
you put your textbooks in them when you’re done,
maybe a blanket; someone comes and drives
them off to needy kids? One day, my friends
and I—we’re young, we’re bored—we rifled through.
There, at the bottom, four or five of…”, she points.

Charlotte Jacobs – mala

Speaking of narrative poems, Belgium-born, New York-based vocalist, composer, and producer Charlotte Jacobs is releasing debut full-length a t l u s next month via New Amsterdam Records, and the album’s vocal-centric style could be said to represent its own contribution to the form. Jacobs’s spoken word delivery is held within soundscapes which blur the line between avant pop and contemporary classical, the style marrying the intentional craft of minimalism with intricate detail to create something almost otherworldly. Single ‘Mala’ highlights how the vocals serve as the anchor and guide for the listener. The thread which leads them through this strange and beautiful world.

Honeypuppy – Understatement

The led by songwriter Josie Callahan and featuring Adam Wayton (bass), Will Wise (lead guitar) and Jack Colclough (percussion), Honeypuppy is an Athens, Georgia-based project based on fun and mischief. The first in a new series of monthly singles ahead of forthcoming release DIRTY TV, ‘Understatement’ serves as the perfect introduction for anyone unacquainted with Callahan and co. A song typical of the band’s bittersweet sound where sincere emotion and sardonic wit sit side by side and neither comes out on top.

DIRTY TV is out later this year on Indecent Artistry.

jason calhoun + cla-ras – cruel work carols

Recorded for a tour earlier this year, cruel work carols is a new split release from jason calhoun and Jeremy Ferris’s cla-ras. The pair have long held our attention with their use of sound and textures. The former most recently with small circle on Dear Life Records, a release which blended “organic and synthetic noises into a kind of constellation,” we wrote in our review, “small points to grasp as we move downward, to contemplate in all of their fleeting insignificance. And the latter on releases like Five clusters, “with subtle intricacies growing from every crevice,” we wrote of Ferris’s work, “its ambient folk style sees the organic slowly overwhelm the electronic, evoking ecology’s reclamation of abandoned industrial land. cruel work carols is no less evocative, calhoun offering a world of static and scrambled light and cla-ras something altogether weightier and stark. But although quite different, both suggest some approaching transcendence, however ambiguous that force might be.

cruel work carols is out now and available from Bandcamp.

kennedy mann – On Video

“I watch my life on video / How the time just seems to fly / I put my whole life on video / With all the things that slip my mind.” So sings kennedy mann on deliciously nostalgic new single ‘On Video’, the latest solo track from an artist you might know as having fronted Philly dream pop outfit Highnoon. Mann’s previous singles were hushed lo-fi affairs, though while this maintains the emotional resonance, the sound possesses a layer of cinematic gloss fitting for the title. Ava Mirzadegan adds backing vocals to lift the track further, leading to something both trapped by and longing for the ever-alluring past.

Like how everything looks different
But I still feel the same
Holding onto glimpses
It’s better off that way

Kitty Fitz – Life of the Party

Last year the London-based songwriter Kitty Fitz put out All My Own Stunts via Sad Club Records, an EP which mixed equal parts vulnerability and charm to offer a sound at once laid back and emotionally charged. New EP The Man in Me, coming later this autumn via Sad Club once again, promises to build upon these foundations and push the Kitty Fitz sound further. Single ‘Life of the Party’ holds all of the tenderness and self-deprecative wit that made the previous EP so special, but held within a vivid pop sound that nods to the likes of Caroline Polachek. “At its heart it’s a song about social anxiety, which is something I’ve always wanted to write a song about” Fitz explains. “My mental health has been a really turbulent journey, and as someone who naturally comes off as very extroverted, I wanted to expose that I have always really struggled to fit in.”

Watch the visualiser by Amy Ryder below:

The Man in Me is out on the 31st October via Sad Club Records.

Klô Pelgag – Sans visage

This autumn sees the release of Abracadabra, the new album from Quebec‘s Klô Pelgag on Secret City Records which channels the magic, playfulness and wishful thinking of its titular exclamation in search of some miraculous answer to life’s questions. Latest single ‘Sans visage’ is an alluring introduction to Pelgag’s vivid brand of dream pop. An enveloping experience earnest in its emotion yet full of experimentation and curiosity. If, at its heart, Abracadabra is a spell designed in hope of or belief in the transformative potential of fun, then ‘Sans visage’ signals how such an incantation might be delivered with a straight face.

You have the clover and I, the luck
It seems to me
That we share the same silence
Without understanding
That time is not what changes us
That no trap has managed to catch us

Watch the video by Laurence Baz Morais below:

Abracadabra is out on the 11th October via Secret City Records and you can pre-order it now.

Masayoshi Fujita – Desonata

Migratory, the forthcoming album from Japanese composer, vibraphonist and marimba player Masayoshi Fujita “draw[s] upon the phenomenon of avian migration as a central image,” we wrote in a preview, and explores “the possibilities that exist in the spaces between electronic and classical music.” With the record out at the end of the week via Erased Tapes, Fujita has shared final single ‘Desonata’, and the origins of the track underline the process of experimentation and invention which underpin the release. “I remember when I tried to record the melody for this song. While improvising with the backing track, I was hearing a melody in my head and tried to play it, but somehow I kept hitting different notes than what I wanted,” Fujita explains. “When I listened back, it gave me a strange feeling, but I liked its unique mood and the new image it evoked, so I decided to use it for the song.”

 Robert Ascroft – Empty Pages

Following on from a successful single ‘Faded Photographs’ with Ruth Radelet, Rochester-based musician, producer and artist Robert Ascroft has returned with a new collaborative single, ‘Empty Pages’, on Hand Drawn Dracula. This time Zumi Rosow of The Black Lips fame lends vocals to a song straight out of the seventies. Derek James channels Mo Tucker in his drumming, leading to a beguilingly ambiguous interplay between rhythm and fuzz. To top things off, Ascroft puts his expertise in direction and photography to good use with a suitably cinematic video to accompany the track. Check it out below:

‘Empty Pages’ is out now Hand Drawn Dracula and available from Bandcamp.

roman around – Moves

We’ve written about Roman Rivera’s roman around a few times in recent times, appreciating the way they use a wide palette of post-punk, pop and R&B sensibilities to challenge the norm, be that of genre or gender. Again out via Trailing Twelve Records, new single ‘Moves’ continues the mission with an energetic examination of loss and adversity, or more specifically how to survive and thrive in the face of them. “‘Moves’ encapsulates the pivotal moments of my youth,” Rivera explains. “These experiences pushed me to surround myself with positive influences. My boundaries with love have been continually tested, such as being unable to contact my brother, watching old friends struggle with addiction, and being abruptly cut off by friends without explanation.”

‘Moves’ is out now via Trailing Twelve Records.

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Outer Spaces – Gazing Globe

Working under the moniker Outer Spaces, Baltimore-based Cara Beth Satalino creates off-kilter pop songs that shift and shimmer, like arcane messages from some place out of sync with our own—a distinct dimension, an outer space. Released last month on Western Vinyl, new album Gazing Globe suggests that such a place might not be a deviation from reality but a more distilled form, somewhere free of projections and expectations that can shape us beyond our control.

The record is a product of great upheaval, Satalino turning to meditation in the aftermath of a relationship. “I think I was trying to get back to myself and my identity,” she explains, “separate from my relationship.” Perhaps the Outer Space does not concern some external world but something far closer, an interior nonetheless separate from the quote-unquote ‘real’ world, a space where we can find ourselves.

Kali Malone – The Sacrificial Code

Stockholm’s Kali Malone makes expansive, organ-based ambient music that pleasures in patience and precision. Released by iDEAL Recordings, The Sacrificial Code is a double album where no minute is wasted, working within a self-imposed austerity to achieve a near-hypnotic focus. “By voluntarily giving up the freedom to do whatever momentarily comes to mind,” Steve Reich once said, “we are, as a result, free of all that momentarily comes to mind.” Malone operates according to this ideal, stripping back any sense of surroundings, organ music suspended in blank space. The result is a meditative, ascetic lesson in transcendence, where open-ended does not mean nebulous.

Big Joanie – Sistahs

Consisting of Stephanie Phillips (vocals/guitar), Estella Adeyeri (bass) and Chardine Taylor-Stone (drums), London punk trio Big Joanie draw on influences from across the spectrum to form their distinctive style. Owing as much to The Ronettes as to the Riot Grrrls, and borrowing some of the weight of the post-punk movement, the band refuse to settle in any one box. “[We wanted to be] completely ourselves as black women,” they describe, “and discover what was possible to realise in those spaces.” The result is Sistahs, a full-length album released late last year via the The Daydream Library Series of records and tapes, the independent house label of Thurston Moore and Eva Prinz’s publishing imprint Ecstatic Peace Library.

Abe Hollow – Paradise

Abe Hollow is the the recording project of Oakland-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Adam Hirsch, and its songs display the full range of his talents. Born of an obsessive interest in family history and his Jewish heritage, debut album A Palace in Time is a collaborative, improvised journey through the many layers of Hirsch’s psyche—“a Yiddish gothic trip” according to one friend.

Single ‘Paradise’ gives some clue as to what such a thing might sound like, a single full of radiant shimmers and ethereal vocals where nothing is quite as it seems. With help from Ryan McGill (aka Ryan Von Gonten on guitar), Andrew Maguire (drums) Doug Stuart (bass) and June Hong (piano), Hirsch weaves a pleasantly surreal soundscape that’s at once forward-facing and reflective, proving that digging into one’s history can lead to discoveries as meaningful and rewarding as any other.

Slow Pulp – Big Day

Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Slow Pulp bring to life dreamy soundscapes with a minimalist touch, angular riffs punctuating the gauzy space. Released with our friends at Citrus City Records, Big Day goes a long way in perfecting the style, borrowing from shoegaze and post-punk but maintaining its own unique spirit. Which is fitting, seeing as the EP is concerned with ideas of development and learning, focused on the formative years where everything is strange and new and nothing is set in stone. Slow Pulp take this idea into their music, moving forward without hesitation or preconception, letting the experience speak for itself in the present moment.

Nathalie Joachim – Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)

Nathalie Joachim is a Haitian-American composer, flutist and vocalist who draws upon hip hop, indie rock, electronic and classical music to form a sound capable of forging new directions while maintaining an awareness and respect of cultural traditions. Joachim is set to release her debut solo record later this summer via New Amsterdam Records, an album which sees her joined by the Grammy-nominated string ensemble Spektral Quartet.

Fanm d’Ayiti, or “Women of Haiti”, is something of a celebration of Haiti’s female performers and storytellers, featuring recorded interviews with these artists, including Joachim’s grandmother and the the girls choir of her family’s home farming village of Dantan. Opening track gives a view ‘Papa Loko (Interlude: September 24, 1918)’ gives a glimpse into this vivid blend of music and oral history, and hints at what promises to be a special release.

Joyer – Here

Drawing inspiration from slowcore, 90s-era slacker rock and the contemporary bedroom pop movement, New Jersey’s Joyer make richly textured songs that often barely break a murmur. The songs exist in a crepuscular lethargy, favouring a kind of slow dawning rather than any immediacy or confrontation.

The duo are interested in movies and new album Peeled is no different, with Counterzine going into the influences of Harmony Korine and Andrei Tarkovsky on the lyrics. But there is a filmic quality to the sound itself too, with single ‘Here’ showing off the image-based, atmospheric style.

Mauno – Vampire

Montreal experimental pop duo Mauno have a new record on the way. Out later this summer, Really Well sees the band delve into high weirdness in order to explore the absurdity of life under late capitalism, where everything from art, love and even the self are assaulted by the drive for productivity and growth. With its playful tone and metaphorically ripe title, single ‘Vampire’ is the perfect example of Mauno’s style, fiercely critical yet grounded in humour, as though in wit lies a truly subversive power.

The song comes complete with a video directed by Max Taeuschel which further layers the critique, Mauno made to exercise non-stop for an hour during recording as a comment on the reality of creating and promoting music today. The duo can barely sing at times, exhausted and visibly sweating upon bikes stripped of their purpose, going nowhere.

Really Well is out on the 2nd August and you can pre-order it from the Mauno Bandcamp page.

Kate Tempest – Holy Elixir

If performance poetry and spoken word artists are experiencing something of a boom, then Kate Tempest can stake some claim for instigating a new urgency in the movement. While the form gets co-opted from all angles, popping up on every other advert as banks try to mimic a human face, Tempest stands resolute as an example of the true power of words. Recorded with Rick Rubin, her latest album The Book of Traps and Lessons builds on what has come before, its tracks alive with some electrical frisson, something related to both love and dread.

Lead single ‘Holy Elixir’ serves as a fine example, its force conjured from the unfurling sentences, as though within the correct sequence of syllables an energy can form. This energy lies at the heart of all things, both good and bad, though Tempest seeks to harness it, channel it in the right direction. “I hope that people feel connected,” Tempest explains. “I hope they connect with the work, and that this connection enables them to connect with themselves, and that this connection encourages a deeper connection to others. It might sound like high hopes. At this stage in the game, you have to know your motives. Otherwise, why even try?”

The Book of Traps and Lessons is out now via Fiction and you can get it from the usual places.

Daughter of Swords – Dawnbreaker

Daughter of Swords is the moniker of Alexandra Sauser-Monnig, who you might know as part of folk trio Mountain Man. Setting out solo, Sauser-Monnig uses Daughter of Swords to explore a break-up before it even happened, both pre-empting the sadness to come and dreaming of the things that couldn’t happen on her current course. As the title track highlights, the result is something elegiac and warmly hopeful, as though only through some great, earth-shaking catastrophe can the new shoots of life break through the topsoil.

Dawnbreaker is out now via Bella Union and Nonesuch, and you can get it from the Daughter of Swords website.

High Sunn – Our Perception

High Sunn is the recording project of San Francisco’s Justin Cheromiah, who makes an upbeat and glimmering brand of bedroom pop. New record Our Perception was released earlier this year, with Tristin Souvannarath joining to lend drums, as well as mixing and mastering duties, leading to the most vivid and immersive High Sunn tracks to date.

Indeed, the process of creating the record was the most involved too. “Never have I ever spent months on a release,” Cheromiah explains. “I’ve ached, cried, stressed, and felt joy writing these songs of love, real life experiences, struggles, and pure gratitude.” Lead single ‘Grateful’ shows off the care and attention that constitutes the release, a jangle pop so lush you can fall back into it and not hit the ground.

Our Perception is out now via Spirit Goth Records and you can buy it now.

Briston Maroney – Fool’s Gold

After a nomadic childhood strung between Florida and Tennessee, Briston Maroney eventually settled back in Nashville, laying down roots and cutting his teeth in the DIY music scene. Winning fans one living room at a time, Maroney built up a reputation and has now released an EP, Indiana, with Parlophone Records. Despite the big label, single ‘Fool’s Gold’ shows off Maroney’s grounded and intimate style. There’s a tenderness to the sound, a gilded nostalgia that drives a hope for the future, kicks of reverb hinting at the dissatisfaction with the present.  Check out the video directed by Joey Brodnax below:

Indiana is out now on Parlophone Records and available from all the usual places.

That’s all folks. Check the tag for previous editions of Bright Sparks.

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