“The band’s first new release since 2022, new album The Big E promises to be every bit as ambitious and intense as previous releases, finding the trio further apart geographically, but tight knit in their vision and execution.” That’s how we described the new full-length from Editrix back in June, with the lead single and title track introducing a sound “charged with energy yet slightly unnerved in tone, playing like the chaotic, frantic internal landscape of someone gripped by neurotic concerns.” With release fast approaching via  Joyful Noise Recordings, Wendy Eisenberg and co. are back with new single ‘Flesh Debt’. A track sensual in more ways than one, blending a physical, muscular sound with coy, murmured vocals. “The internal band nickname for this song is ‘Horny Jail’,” the band described when asked about the track, “that should tell you all you need to know.”

Foot Ox – Horseshoe

Teague Cullen’s Foot Ox project arose from the Phoenix-Tempe scene that has given the world the likes of AJJ and Stephen Steinbrink, and since 2007 has been an outlet for narrative-driven experimental folk. The project has always been a collaborative one, but new record A Lighthouse with Silver Dog Eyes, which comes out next month on Ernest Jenning Record Co. takes things a step further. A rotating cast of musicians provide their talents, including a full string section, allowing things to move from hushed intimacy to full-band bombast, often within the same song. Latest single ‘Horseshoe’ is a good introduction, a track Cullen says is “about those big, uncontrollable forces in life […] losing people because of circumstances, and trying to follow your heart even when things get chaotic.”

herbal tea – Seventeen

The recording project of Bristol songwriter Helena Walker, herbal tea has won attention with a beguiling blend of dream pop, ambient and indie folk sensibilities, Walker’s home recordings spreading via word of mouth and eventually earning her invitations to play with the likes of Gia Margaret and Ex:Re. Of course, such high profile fans only cause a reputation to snowball, and it’s little surprise the debut herbal tea full-length Hear as the Mirror Echoes not only attracted the attention of Gold Day in the UK but also VSF favs Orindal Records in the US. With the album set for release at the end of August, herbal tea has unveiled single ‘Seventeen’ by way of introduction. One of the earliest songs of the project which has morphed continually over the years, settling here as a characteristically cinematic, textured slice of ambient folk which evokes both the slow aftermath of trauma and the slower process of transcending its overbearing weight.

Watch the video below, directed and shot by Chris Pugh and edited by Walker along with Henry C Sharpe:

Hear as the Mirror Echoes will be released via Orindal Records and Gold Day on 29th August. Pre-order it now from the herbal tea Bandcamp page.

Mae Powell – Contact High

With prior singles ‘Rope You In‘ and ‘Tangerine‘,  Bay Area songwriter Mae Powell has introduced the sincerity and heart of forthcoming album Making Room For The Light. The former saw Powell put comfort front and centre and the latter championing heart-on-sleeve earnestness, the songs set up a record unashamed to show compassion, not least to the self. Latest track ‘Contact High’ is no different, taking inspiration from an unlikely source to offer another affirming sound. “The idea for ‘Contact High’ came when my stoner elderly neighbor Phil suggested I write a song called contact high, but about good vibes instead of about weed,” Powell explains. “We laughed at this concept together but it stuck in my mind, and when one of my best friends was going through a tough time I used the idea to write her a song that might help her see what it feels like to be around her radiant energy.”

Making Room For The Light comes out on 15th August via Karma Chief and Colemine Records. Order it now from the Mae Powell Bandcamp page.

Mr Butterfield – The Train Left the Station//Big Oak Tree

Throughout this Spring, Portland, Oregon outfit Mr Butterfield have released a couple of great singles, first ‘Lamp is On’ and later ‘Bonnie Jean’. Our first introduction to a band—that’s Lee Butterfield (vocals and guitar), Penny Olives (drums), Kyle Raquipiso (bass) and Tim Kam (guitar)—who make an easygoing, countryfied rock ‘n roll. Their new release, double single The Train Left the Station/Big Oak Tree, doubles down on the country side of things, kicking off with the titular poem by “The Lonesome Cowboy Iz” set to galloping drums and subtly squealing guitar. “The train left the station like a bullet from a gun,” goes the opening line, “we were left there waiting, like a puddle in the sun.” ‘Big Oak Tree’ on the other hand is a joyously ramshackle lo-fi country rock song about taking a nap in the shade of an oak, complete with a catchy chorus (“there’s a big oak tree somewhere above me!”) and extended guitar outro. Check it out, it’s a lot of fun.

Okkyung Lee – good morning, harrison, it’s time to go

South Korean cellist and composer Okkyung Lee has been working at the sharp edge of experimental music for over two decades. Her new album for French label and publisher Shelter Press is no different. Informatively titled Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities, it’s what the label describe as “a deeply intimate body of recordings at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque, that stands as radical intervention with what experimental music can be, and the place that organisations of sound occupy in our lives. It reinterprets experimental music as a practice or pursuit, something made for the process of creation itself rather than the end product. It also sees Lee move away from the cello for the first time, something immediately obvious on single ‘good morning, harrison, it’s time to go’, which sees soft plinky keys fall like summer raindrops over a second bubbling keyboard line.

Pegg – Baseball Season

The music of Pegg, that’s the Brooklyn-based project helmed by Xander Duell, has always pushed the envelope in terms of style, championing a fundamentally collaborative ethos to reimagine the boundaries of indie rock. Take 2024’s self-titled debut, cinematic, finely honed and constantly surprising record which moved with both swagger and mystery. But if you thought Duell and co. has settled into a groove with the album, think again, because latest release Presque Tout: Variations no. 435-514 “Baseball Season,” Pegg & Van Dyke Parks pushes out further into the avant garde. As the title suggests, the release sees Pegg joined by esteemed arranger, composer, performer and producer Van Dyne Parks, and mammoth single ‘Baseball Season’ hints at the ambition which underpins the exercise. A song of great detail and ambiguous meaning, channelling both the wistful familiarity (and thus melancholy) of its titular period, but also the near sublime sense of stakes. “Baseball is life,” as Duell puts it. “Decisions made in baseball can affect the rest of the season, a microcosm to the decisions you make in life. ‘Baseball Season’ is about choosing your proverbial horse wisely, delicately.” 

Presque Tout: Variations no. 435-514 “Baseball Season,” Pegg & Van Dyke Parks is out now via IS NOT MUSIC. in physical form, including a CD edition and jigsaw puzzle (yes, really), and will be released digitally on the 19th September. Find everything on the Pegg Bandcamp page.

Rival Consoles – Soft Gradient Beckons

Last week Rival Consoles released new full-length album Landscape from Memory via Erased Tapes, a record we’ve described as “focusing in on small details while retaining the grand sweeps of melancholy and euphoria” to ultimately “[retain] a sense of humanity within its digital sound.” To celebrate the record, Ryan Lee West enlisted the help of artist and filmmaker Anthony Dickenson to create a video for the single ‘Soft Gradient Beckons’. Dickenson spent twelve months creating the hand-painted frame animation at its centre, matching the care and craft of the track with its own painstaking process of creation. “Each image became a fragment of memory, layered and stitched together to explore rhythm, decay, and time,” Dickenson describes. “The result is a piece that moves with the emotional undercurrent of the track—quietly pulsing, always evolving.”

Landscape from Memory is out now via Erased Tapes. Purchase a copy from the Rival Consoles Bandcamp page.

U – Is It A Kind Of Dream?

Described by label Lex Records as “working an archivist, collagist and chronicler through careful sonic curation,” the mysterious and suitably un-Googleable project U has made a name by refusing to be pigeonholed, its forays out into the general zones of techno, experimental electronic, ambient and modern classical never lingering long enough to be claimed by any one space. Latest release, double a-side single Black Vaughan / Is It A Kind Of Dream?, shows just how wide the U sonic palette can be. The former, which feels indebted to the soundtracks of Kurosawa films, offers a meditation on violence and dread in all of its poignant unease, while the haunting latter feels altogether more Lynchian in its oneiric strangeness.

Black Vaughan / Is It A Kind Of Dream? is out now via Lex Records.

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

“There’s something of Kraftwerk in the sound, a smidge of Suicide and no small amount of Lou Reed, though the blend of digital and organic tones is clearly the product of a singular imagination.” That’s how we described the work of Turin-born, Toronto-based ‘poetic jazz rock’ songwriter Fortunato Durutti Marinetti back in 2023, writing about the album Eight Waves In Search Of An Ocean. Now FDM is returning with new album Bitter Sweet, Sweet Bitter, what label Quindi Records describe as “his most sweeping, absurd, and emotionally acute statement to date,” and lead single ‘Full of Fire’ hints at the maximalist style at its heart. A song which takes inspiration from iconoclasts like Annette Peacock, Rickie Lee Jones, Donald Byrd, Brigitte Fontaine and Fabrizio De André to paint love as something equal parts fond and fatal.

Green Gardens – Stroom

Leeds ‘feudal indie rock’ outfit Green Gardens have been sharing new material in recent weeks, with singles ‘Year of Love’ (which saw the band, as we wrote, “swapping out some of the grand scale in favour of increased intimacy”) and ‘Ghost of a Tree’ (a song “embodying the spirit of a band who make no distinction between the intimate and the sublime,” as we put it, “positioning an individual’s loves and losses within an almost geolgical span of time”) introducing a slightly new direction for the outfit. The releases have been building up to the announcement of Thistlesifting, a brand new full-length coming later this simmer via Tiny Library Records, and now Green Gardens have unveiled latest single ‘Stroom’ to further whet appetites.

Watch the video made by Joel Johnston and Chris Aitchison below:

Thistlesifting will be released via Tiny Library Records on the 25th August and you can pre-order it now.

Greg Freeman – Curtain

Later this summer, Burlington, Vermont songwriter Greg Freeman is returning with Burnover, a brand new full-length via Transgressive Records and Canvasback Music. It’s a record which pairs laidback country twang with indie rock momentum, furthering the singular style Freeman introduced back in 2022 with previous LP I Look Out. New single ‘Curtain’ captures the mix of playful lyricism and charged energy which makes up the release, Sam Atallah’s piano driving proceedings but Freeman’s vocals stealing the stage. Assured and surprising verbose, like a stream of consciousness unfurling with equal parts conversational immediacy and poetic grace.

My thoughts die out slowly on the blood swept plains where I see you every night
And to the lonely hours, it’s like burning the furniture to keep the house bright at night

The night is getting late and the horns have all been blown
And the drummer’s looking cock-eyed on his rusty metal throne
And I’m somewhere in the distance and you’re somewhere at home

Watch the video directed by Carl Elsaesser below:

Burnover will be released on the 22nd August via Transgressive Records and Canvasback Music and you can pre-order it now.

John Also Bennett – Easter Daydream

His first album for Shelter Press since 2019 solo debut Erg Herbe, John Also Bennett returns this July with new full-length Ston Elaióna. The record—titled ‘in the olive grove’ in Greek—sees the US-born, Athens, Greece-based composer, flautist and multi-instrumentalist blur the lines between the ancient and the contemporary, the physical and metaphysical, with electroacoustic compositions every bit as precise and spacious as fans of JAB will have come to expect. Lead single ‘Easter Daydream’ welcomes the audience into the world of the record, a soundscape built from subtle bass flute and synth which allows the real world to bleed in. Namely the bells from a procession captured during Orthodox Holy Week down the road from Bennett’s apartment in Athens, sounds which have a strangely dualistic effect on the mood, both haunting the track and charging it with immediacy.

Michael Beach – Poison Dart

We’ve long followed the work of Naarm/Melbourne-based songwriter Michael Beach, with 2021 record Dream Violence winning a place among our favourite albums of the year. “Beach reaches into the grab bag of rock history and fashions what he finds into something timely and unique,” we wrote. “Imagine Neil Young meeting The Velvet Underground on a dark and hopeless night in our late-capitalist hellscape to muse on the meaninglessness of existence.” Such a description might have captured the record’s searing heart, though does a disservice to the overall tone of Beach’s work. Because while there is an undeniable darkness, it is often sublime in nature, and certainly anything but nihilistic in its intentions. A fact made clear by new record Big Black Plume, coming soon via Poison City and Goner Records, which works with perhaps the only form of optimism left.  “I was wrestling with the beauty and intensity of the natural world and coming to grips with the human destruction of it,” as Beach explains. “I have an overwhelming sense that humans will come and go, and the world we depend on will outlast us.” Listen to new single ‘Poison Dart’ now:

Watch the video below, directed by Alexandra Millen with cinematography from Claire Giuffre:

Big Black Plume will be released on the 25th July via Poison City and Goner Records and you can pre-order it now.

Omo Cloud – Ultimate Love

Later this month sees the release of Mausoleum, the debut album from Cole De La Isla’s Omo Cloud on Dusty Mars Records. The album sees the San Diego songwriter reckon with their past with the intention, as per the title, of burying it and moving on. The result, as shown by lead single ‘Ultimate Love’, is every inch as bittersweet as that might sound. Enduring the painful process of returning to old traumas in order to redefine the present and future. “I feel like I spent a lot of my teenhood being very angsty and existential and cynical in a lot of ways, but I don’t want that to be the takeaway of the record at all,” De La Isla explains. “I feel the takeaway is actually a very optimistic one. We’re all capable of growth and change, and it is a lot of work, but it is worth it. I want people to trust their gut. I want to help people connect with hard emotions—and I want people to be inspired.”

Mausoleum is out on the 27th June via Dusty Mars Records and available to pre-order now.

Pacing – Nothing! (I wanna do)

Led by Katie McTigue, Pacing has been catching our eye for a number of years with a sound at once fun, idiosyncratic and deceptively heartfelt. “[Pacing] follows in the playful, tongue-in-cheek tradition of the likes of Kimya Dawson,” as we put it back in 2023, “yet always nudges the ideas further to be more than mere twee humour or sardonic fun.” After a number of successful collaborations and a high profile tour with Cheekface, this summer sees McTigue return with PL*NET F*TNESS, a new album on Asian Man Records, and latest single ‘Nothing! (I wanna do)’ suggests Pacing is firing on all cylinders. Inspired by a brain-numbing commute along Highway 85, the song is described as “a classic upbeat depression banger” (“we are all entitled to one per album, and I’m using mine now,” as McTigue says), and embodies the mission which has long lurked beneath the surface of the project. Because, when you peel back the wry humour and off-the-wall personality, it becomes clear Pacing is asking how we are supposed to live beneath the weight of all that is asked of us. How might we find meaning in a banal world?

Watch a live video for the single below, with gig footage by Hali Tauxe and b-roll by errbody:

PL*NET F*TNESS is out on the 25th July via Asian Man Records.

R&D – Everything Becomes a Sign

We’ve long followed the work of Dan Knishkowy (Adeline Hotel) and Rebecca El-Saleh (Kitba) in their own respective projects, with the latest Adeline Hotel full-length Whodunnit making our list of favourites from 2024 and the Kitba’s exceptional self-titled record winning our praise in 2023 (“Proof that art can offer a picture of identity more nuanced than simple labels,” we wrote of the latter. “A deeper understanding reached via an embrace of confusion. Identity as an ongoing thing”). So it is most welcome news the pair have teamed up under the moniker R&D to create improvised, instrumental songs which further delve into the themes they have explored individually. Because while upcoming album I’ll Send You a Sign marks something of a departure from what we might expect from Knishkowy and El-Saleh in terms of style, its thematic concerns feel more like a continuation or deepening. Take the spare, probing single ‘Everything Becomes a Sign’, which mines patience and sensitivity for all of their exploratory potential.

Rival Consoles – Jupiter

We’ve featured a number of tracks from Rival Consoles‘ forthcoming album Landscape from Memory in recent weeks, with tracks like ‘Catherine‘ and ‘Known Shape‘ finding Ryan Lee West working at the intersection of the human and the digital, crafting soundscapes full of euphoria, melancholy and restless motion. With the release approaching via Erased Tapes, West has shared latest single ‘Jupiter’. A song which embodies the album’s spirit in its combination of repetition and variation, its intricate detail and overarching brightness. “At the heart of this piece is a call and response,” as he explains. “The main idea is changing but the response is always the same, this is connected to life and nature. I wanted the music to feel like materials, bending, distorting, shimmering, colourful shards of glass and metal. To me it feels like the sun touching objects with its warmth and power.”

The post Weekly Listening: June 2025 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Specialising in a style of atmospheric alt-rock that’s at once melancholy and anthemic, London outfit Dead Slow Hoot draw on a variety of genres to create something unique.” So we wrote when covering single ‘Take It Or Leave It’ last year, and DSH’s forthcoming new full-length Orbits Intervened takes things even further to become perhaps their most ambitious release to date. A collection of sprawling songs large and detailed enough to carry a range of narratives and thematic concerns, touching on everything from personal heartbreak and grief to the cultural trauma of things like the Magdalene laundries scandal. Lead single ‘Sleeping Before The Big Day’ hints at the release’s nuance and depth, a song full of tension despite its patient rhythm, caught between resistance to change and the desire to surrender to its constant flow.

Orbits Intervened will be released on the 5th June.

eggcorn – Hitler Was a Vegetarian

Last month we introduced Observer Effect, the new album from eggcorn coming soon on Spirit House. “Taking its name from the phenomenon where an observed system is disturbed by the very act of being observed,” we wrote, “[the record] sees songwriter Lara Hoffman explore the ways in which reflecting on one’s life and surroundings can shape our experiences.” After the title track used pop-inflected chamber folk to “bare vulnerabilities and reckon with their implications without sacrificing a certain playfulness,” latest single ‘Hitler Was a Vegetarian’ again finds Hoffman examining her own imperfections with unerring candour. As its title suggests, the song explores the ways in which individuals exist as systems of contradictions, with objectively cruel people still capable of tenderness and vice versa. “I am tender but that doesn’t make me nice,” as Hoffman sings at the climax of the song. “And I’m sorry and I’m sorry and it’s not fair to you.”

Ella Hanshaw – One More Hill

Born in 1934, Ella Hanshaw started playing guitar aged twelve, playing and singing for her family on their farm in Procious, West Virginia. From then until her death in 2020, Hanshaw wrote hundreds of songs, first heartsick ballads inspired by her favourite country singers and later Gospel songs she believed to be sent directly from God. Despite her obvious talents and huge repertoire, Hanshaw’s music was never recorded professionally, or released publicly, at least until now. Gathered from both home and church tape recordings by Hanshaw’s granddaughter, and released by the fine folks at SPINSTER, Ella Hanshaw’s Black Book brings together two distinct collections of her work. Side A features the Gospel songs, while Side B the country ones. Lead single ‘One More Hill’, recorded with Hanshaw’s band the Hallelujah Hill Quartet, opens the collection and is a good example of the its prevailing theme, what the label describe as “love and longing for what we cannot quite touch—not yet, anyway.”

Festiva – Ghosts and Lichens

Carver Arena-Bruce has long released music under the moniker Festiva, with albums like Songs I Don’t Sing for Anyone showing off the Portland, Maine singer and guitarist’s bold, cathartic garage rock style (“If there were a Venn diagram with Sonic Youth in one bubble and CCR in the other, Festiva’s [sound] would be in the middle,” as Arena-Bruce puts it). But the project also has a full-band iteration, with Noah Grenier-Farwell (drums) and Simi Kunin (bass) of Amiright? joining to help realise Festiva’s full noisy potential. Out via Repeating Cloud, new full-length Everything In Moderation shows how powerful this can be, with songs like ‘Ghosts and Lichens’ matching Arena-Bruce’s singular vocal style with a sense of heft and volatility.

Florry – First it was a movie, then it was a book

Philadelphia‘s DIY country superstars Florry have a new record on the way via Dear Life Records. It’s their second effort since bandleader Francie Medosch transformed what was once a solo project into a bona fide folk rock band, and early signs suggest it could see Florry hit yet another level. “A portrait of a ripping band cresting towards the height of their powers,” as the label describe it, “uniquely equipped to capture a wildly loving, barn-burning camcorder clip of a turbulent trip with your best friends, without dipping into nostalgia bait.” Released a couple weeks ago, single ‘First it was a movie, then it was a book’ confirms this hype, a freewheeling country-fried rocker that kicks off the album with limitless energy and dedication to the vision of what Florry means both to Medosch and the community that has formed around her.

First it was a movie, then it was a book
They chopped my life up, put it on tv so I had to take a look
Well that Holly Hunter is so relatable, when she screamed I cried
if I wasn’t feeling so empty baby Id give that movie five out of five

Watch the video directed and edited by Jon Cox below:

Sounds Like… is out on the 23rd May via Dear Life Records and you can pre-order it now.

Laila Smith – Diorama

Something Dreadful’s Going To Happen, the upcoming release from musician and artist Laila Smith, is more than your average EP. Not only are the songs themselves experimental in their own right, adding avant garde noise sensibilities to what are ostensibly folk arrangements, they are also accompanied by an immersive video game available on Smith’s website. Lead single ‘Diorama’ introduces the project, matching an interactive experience to the song to further its explorations of trauma and the power dynamics which shape us on both personal and societal levels. “I’ve created a digital twin of the physical diorama featured in my album art,” Smith explains, “an explorable environment where fans manipulate a miniature version of me through rooms filled with objects from my personal history.” Taking inspiration from the art style of 90s era internet, the work takes on a strangely retrofuturist vibe, harkening back to a time where the online space felt like fertile ground for a better, more creative future. As Smith puts it: “it’s an attempt to reclaim digital space as somewhere strange and sacred rather than optimized and consumable.”

‘Diorama’ is out now via streaming services.

Rival Consoles – Known Shape

“Might be the project’s most impressive [record] to date, focusing in on small details while retaining the grand sweeps of melancholy and euphoria too.” So we wrote of Landscape from Memory, the upcoming from Rival Consoles on Erased Tapes. The release sees Ryan Lee West delve into what he calls “a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets,” building from the flashes of memory and inspiration found within. Embodying the spirit of the release, latest single ‘Known Shape’ shows how Rival Consoles retains a sense of humanity within its digital sound. “I’ve always been obsessed by controls on machines because they produce beautiful sounds and they have their own rhythms,” West explains. “The drums are made from rotating switches and the synths are set in motion by invisible mechanical rhythms. Machines have a special connection to the human spirit, which is both good and bad but above all restless. There is a constant searching in ‘Known Shape’ for some kind of answer or emotion.”

Sally Anne Morgan – I Saw a Heron

The music of North Carolina artist and naturalist Sally Anne Morgan is inextricable from the landscape in which she creates it. Her blend of traditional instrumentation and more modern composition is an exploration of the people, places and nature that surround her home at the edge of North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. Morgan’s forthcoming record, Second Circle The Horizon, is a direct example, an attempt to translate both the rhythm and randomness of the natural world into a language more musical. “I wanted to capture the feeling of walking outside and encountering organic nature sounds,” she describes, “some with patterns, some with a randomness that also verges on its own kind of pattern.” Our first taste is ‘I Saw a Heron’, a piece built of fiddle, violin and piano that feels as fresh and lush as a spring morning walk through a sunlit valley.

Slow Mass – Freeze Frame

Next month sees the release of Low On Foot, the new album from Slow Mass on Landland Corportage. Their first since 2018, the record finds the Chicago outfit bigger and bolder than ever, their line-up increasing to six members (and subsequently seven after recording) and their sound pushing in all directions. Single ‘Freeze Frame’ bears the fruits of this evolution, a sound at once weightier than anything they released previously yet also more tender and heartfelt. Because Slow Mass haven’t merely taken their work down one specific road but added depth to everything, meaning their current iteration can be heavier and more delicate all at once. The juxtaposition is fitting for ‘Freeze Frame’, a song all about the tension between who you are and who you might have been, holding space for those desires to change as a person while learning to embrace one’s own identity.

Watch

Low On Foot is out on the 16th May via Landland Colportage and you can pre-order it now.

Symbol Soup – Miniatures

Back in 2023 Symbol Soup released full-length Slow Puncture via Sad Club Records, an album “brought to life with a decidedly American aesthetic, following a lineage rising in the 90s from songwriters like Mark Linkous and persisting through a myriad of contemporaries,” as we described in our review, “but one which draws parallels between the US and Rea’s hometown of Milton Keynes. A city with a short history inside a country with a long one, designed purely for modern living and possessing the strange balance between potential and hollowness of any ahistorical space.” New single ‘Miniatures’ is again concerned with place and a person’s identity within it, specifically how overly familiar surroundings can come to make a life seem rote and insignificant. But with Symbol Soup’s signature blend of melancholy and warmth, the song manages to reposition such feelings into something like relief. Perhaps being small isn’t the worst thing in the world?

Watch the video by Hello Mary below:

‘Miniatures’ is out now via Sad Club Records and available from Bandcamp.

The post Weekly Listening: April 2025 #4 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Now Rival Consoles is back with Landscape from Memory, a brand new full-length due to be released this summer by Erased Tapes, and the sense of evolution continues. The record developed slowly, following an uncharacteristic dormant period for the usually prolific artist. But perhaps that period of stasis was just what was needed, because the end result might be the project’s most impressive to date, focusing in on small details while retaining the grand sweeps of melancholy and euphoria too. This is due in part to the process of its creation, which saw West dive into ” a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets,” breathing life into the flashes of potential he discovered in primordial shards of melody. “There is a kind of strange beauty to [the process],” he describes, “because it involves the past, present and future in a very strong way.”

Lead single ‘Catherine’ illustrates this perfectly. Ostensibly a dance track, but suffused with far more nuance and emotion, the song is dedicated to his partner, and sounds more like the lonely memory of a dancefloor than a sweaty, packed one. “It’s extremely open, just like a naked melody on drums, so exposed as an idea,” West explains. “I think because she was so excited by it, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m excited too, actually, I just didn’t realize.”

The post Rival Consoles – Catherine appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Combining the sensibilities of lo-fi rock and slow burn country rock, Vermont‘s A Box of Stars have made a name re-examining life’s small moments in search of their weight and meaning. Single ‘Jenny When the Blues’ is the perfect introduction for the uninitiated, a tender, near-whispered folk duet which blooms into life across its runtime, drawing the listener through a seemingly ordinary moment to reveal the depth beneath the surface.

‘Jenny When the Blues’ is out now. Find A Box of Stars in all the usual places.

Cooper Wolken – Hold Me Under

Back in March we premiered ‘So Down‘, the lead single from Cooper Wolken‘s new album Chapters on Earth Libraries. “The album sees Cooper Wolken apply such observations to his personal life,” as we explained, “mining the fine details to illuminate the fundamental truths at the core of his experiences, no matter how vulnerable this might make him.” The album has now been released, and latest single ‘Hold Me Under’ continues this introspective, unguarded mood. A song which combines shimmering textures with an urgent edge, Wolken again pacing out into the woods of his childhood and finding something sacred there.

I left those woods behind my home
The place where I first heard your song
Then I saw your face, unexpected place
If we meet again, if we meet again
If we meet you can

Hold me under holy water

Chapters is out now via Earth Libraries.

Graves – Cavin’ In

Last month we introduced Gary Owens: I Have Some Thoughts, the upcoming album by Graves on Perpetual Doom and Curly Cassettes, with single Little ‘Dumb Dogs’. The song highlighted how the album represents “a throwback to Nashville’s golden age, loaded with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia and a wry humour that brings new vigour to a timeless style.” Latest track ‘Cavin’ In’ continues the vibe, what the label describes as an “upbeat downer” which evokes the bygone simplicity of the previous age while offering a self-deprecating melancholy too, utilizing this style to explore age old themes of regret and mortality.

Olivia Reid – Central Park West

Following 2021 debut Earth Water, Olivia Reid is releasing a series of new songs this year, and latest ‘Central Park West’ highlights the careful arrangements and emotional depth which marks her work. Written after the passing of her aunt and uncle, the track is an effort to preserve specific memories of times shared, its mourning leavened by an overriding gratitude. Because though illness altered and ultimately ended the walks in Central Park Reid would share with her family, she makes a point of choosing to cherish what they shared rather than lament what is lost.

Paper Lady – Swan Song

The esoteric Allston, Massachusetts project Paper Lady has won our attention on several occasions in recent months, from the dense shoegaze spiritualism of ‘Five of Swords‘ to the excoriating romance-gone-bad ‘Starcross‘, the latter “burn[ing] with what could be spurned fury or frustrated embarrassment,” as we put it, “building nonetheless into with unerring intensity of an ancient curse.” Ahead of new EP Traveling Exploding Star, latest single ‘Swan Song’ sands down the sharpest edges of the previous tracks yet loses none of the intensity, building from smouldering beginnings into an all-out blaze, the sound’s sluggish melancholy transcended in a final moment of release.

Traveling Exploding Star is out now and available via streaming services.

Puppy Angst – TKO

Lead vocalist and guitarist Alyssa Milman (Past Life, Blushed), Puppy Angst is a Philly-based outfit which draws upon everything from dream and power pop to shoegaze to capture life’s contradictions. Hence the PA sound embraces raw energy and dreamy hazy, and Milman’s writing is happy to explore vulnerability and strength within the same song. Released via Fire Talk‘s digital singles imprint Open Tab, new single ‘TKO’ is an encapsulation of the sound, its momentum possessing a cathartic empowerment even as the vocals announce their fatalistic conclusions.

Maybe I’m a masochist
I’ll put you first if you insist
Baby I’m a pacifist
Don’t wanna fight so I let you win
I let you win

‘TKO’ is out now and available from the Puppy Angst Bandcamp page.

Rival Consoles – Coda

Back in October we wrote about Now Is, an album by London-based musician and producer Ryan Lee West’s Rival Consoles on Erased Tapes. A record which “sets out to explore the full spectrum of minimalism and the moods which can result,” as we explained, “from anxious isolation to playful curiosity and everything in between.” New single ‘Coda’ is equally ambitious in its reach, looking to portray the duality of the nocturnal environment through haunting quiet and pulsing energy. What results is a soundtrack for the spectrum of night, from the still darkness of an empty room to the house clubs glittering on across the city.

Wombo – Thread

We’ve covered Wombo a number of times in recent years, culminating in last year’s full-length Fairy Rust on Fire Talk Records. A released we described as “a collection of songs which explores the contemporary preoccupation with the unreal.” This month sees Wombo return with Slab, an EP which looks to harness the outfit’s instinctive creativity, favouring immediacy over perfection with stylistic freedom and scratch take guitar. Single ‘Thread’ hints at the result—a picture of a band in constant motion, always looking to challenge themselves with new directions while nevertheless growing increasingly assured upon the ground they’ve made their own. Watch the video directed by Wombo’s own Cameron Low below:

Slab is out now via Fire Talk Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.

Yvonne Hercules – Phoenix

Based in Cambridge, Yvonne Hercules is a singer-songwriter whose work draws on the rich lineages of folk, Blues and soul, tying them together with a contemporary twist. Last week she released Olive, a brand new EP on Trapped Animal Records, a collection of songs which “celebrate the strength of Black Women and the ability to rise up and overcome adversity” and fully captures her rich and varied style. Closing track ‘Phoenix’ is perhaps the standout, a soulful, quietly epic ode to Hercules’s mother and her resilience and compassion in the face of adversity.

The post Weekly Listening: June 2023 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Latest album Now Is, out now via Erased Tapes, represents the most concise, controlled Rival Consoles release to date. Back in September we introduced the record with single ‘World Turns‘, a track which offered a glimpse into the precision and structure with which West crafts his blended digital and acoustic soundscapes. “There’s a certain minimalism to the Rival Consoles sound, even if the tag doesn’t quite do justice to the detail of the songs,” we wrote in our preview. “A sense of clarity developed via a central repetition… Minimalism in the way of fine machinery. An elegant coherence to design.”

The summary encapsulates the intentions of the record. It sets out to explore the full spectrum of minimalism and the moods which can result, from anxious isolation to playful curiosity and everything in between. Moreover, it attempts to convey how such moods shift and evolve across time. Latest single ‘Vision of Self’ is perhaps the best representation. A song which not only lives up to its title in conjuring interior spaces, but also explores how such things change.

“The title of the music reflects this sense ‘what is the self?'” West explains. “It is both knowable and unknowable, it is always changing as we get older and as we pass through experiences, our relationship with ourselves, with others, with nature, dreams, love, hurt, desire, repair etc. I like the dream-like nature of thinking about this and how electronic music can echo that dream-like quality in an abstract yet identifiable way.” The song is supported by an animated video by María Medem, which helps to push further into these ideas and refine the Rival Consoles style.

“This piece is important to me because it is both repetitive but is also always changing in a deceptive way,” West continues. “There is something dreamlike about the waves of colour that come and go, overlap and weave around each other. I love it when drama emerges out of non-dramatic things, so I spent a long time writing this piece of music and slowly letting it reach a point where that made sense, and letting it create its own little world.”

Now Is is out via Erased Tapes and you can get it from Bandcamp.

The post Rival Consoles – Now Is appeared first on Various Small Flames.

After releasing their sixth album See Through You on DedStrange last February, post-punk icons A Place To Bury Strangers are sharing a series of remixed singles from the record. After offerings from the likes of The Pleasure Majenta and GIFT, the most recent sees Annie Hart take the reins for a reimagining of album opener ‘Nice of You to be There For Me’. A version which strips the harsh immediacy of the original in favour of something reflective and shining, the original’s needle replaced by an ethereal air. Where Oliver Ackermann previously railed against greed with a building volatility, here his words carry the melancholy of hindsight. Mourning mistakes rather than threatening to set them straight.

Illbe – It’s Time

Described as being inspired by the “‘beyond the grave feel’ of Nick Cave’s radical introspection,” Illbe’s latest single ‘It’s Time’ introduces the dark and alluring tone of forthcoming EP, Long Gone. The project is the alter ego of Liège’s Gauthier Gilissen, a musician who draws upon cinema as the source of his sound, aiming for something between the nocturnal paranoia of neo-noir and a Lynchian surrealism. ‘It’s Time’ finds its narrator navigating such a world. Searching for answers within an unforthcoming environment, the patient Cave-esque delivery furthering the existential mystery at the heart. Check out the video directed by Corentin Cuvelier below:

‘It’s Time’ is out now and you can get it from the Illbe Bandcamp page. Long Gone will be released next month.

Kelsey Magnuson – Faking It

Following on from previous single ‘Beep Beep‘, Olympia‘s Kelsey Magnuson has unveiled another track from forthcoming debut Don’t Budge on Earth Libraries. Closing out the album, the song again highlights Magnuson’s ability to sound at once earnest and playful, as though the thoughts communicated are entirely meant, yet delivered with a certain self-awareness. But ultimately the needle settles on the sincere side of things, ending on a sense of hope which feels all the more heartfelt for its plainness. “Cuz growing up feels like were faking it ’til we learn to fake it better,” Magnuson sings in the final lines. “Growing up up feels like were faking it so why don’t we fake it together?”

Laveda – Surprise

The music of Laveda always promises lush textures and heartfelt emotion, and new single ‘Surprise’ is no exception. Introducing an upcoming second album to be released later this year on Papercup Music, the single offers a bright, upbeat sound which belies the turmoil of the lyrics. A juxtaposition which both embraces the nostalgia of the dream pop/shoegaze style while also refusing to retreat fully from the realties of living and working through pandemics and other challenges. “Being alive is just getting old,” Ali Genevich sings, “I’m not surprised that I’m not sober.” Check out the video directed by Genevich herself and shot By Derick Noetzel and Valerie Barbosa below:

‘Surprise’ is out now and available from the Laveda Bandcamp page.

Mali Obomsawin – Odana

Mali Obomsawin is a Wabanaki bassist, composer, and songwriter whose work opposes the Western idea that indigenous cultures are somehow inflexible and backward looking, highlighting the continuous process of resistance and adaptation required to survive in the face of colonialism. Obomsawin recently announced a new album, Sweet Tooth, on Out of Your Head Records. A collection of songs which draws on many threads—jazz, folk, Wabanaki stories and Catholic hymns—to explore contemporary indigenous life and celebrate its endurance and creativity, even when faced with great violence and cruelty. “My people have had to innovate endlessly to get our stories heard,” Obomsawin explains. “Learning to express ourselves in French, English, Abenaki… but sometimes words fail us, and we must use sound.” Lead single ‘Odana’ introduces the record perfectly. A ballad first written in the 1700s, it pays homage to the Abenaki reservation in Quebec, Odanak, founded by Obomsawin’s Sokoki and Abenaki ancestors in 1660 as they fled to modern-day Canada to escape Royally-sanctioned persecution by English colonizers.

Pale Angels – Casper

Based between the Welsh city of Swansea and Rahway, New Jersey, Pale Angels make what label Specialist Subject Records describe as “transcontinental punk trash.” They have just announced a brand new record, their first in six years, titled Plastic Legacy pt II and lead single ‘Casper’ is a glimpse of what to expect. For all of its punk rock fuzz and grittily desperate vocals, it’s actually a lot more sincere than SSR’s label suggests. Founding members Jamie Morrison and Michael Santostefano are joined by Vacation songwriter Jerome Westerkamp on drums to create something with a real emotional punch.

Rival Consoles – World Turns

Rival Consoles, the recording project of London-based musician and producer Ryan Lee West, is set to release new album Now Is via Erased Tapes next month, and latest single ‘World Turns’ welcomes listeners into the blended, digital and acoustic soundscapes West creates. There’s a certain minimalism to the Rival Consoles sound, even if the tag doesn’t quite do justice to the detail of the songs. A sense of clarity developed via a central repetition. This single, for example, is “built around this pendulum-like bass, that constantly drives the piece forward,” as West explains. Minimalism in the way of fine machinery. An elegant coherence to design. “I like having parts in music which are repetitive but everything else is changing around it,” West continues, “almost like a kind of hidden structure, because the repetition becomes more subliminal.”

Secret Shame – Luxury Bitch

“A ferocious, no holds barred descent into the depths of a psyche, emerging if not triumphant then somehow born again.” That’s how we described ‘Hide’, the last single from Asheville post-punks Secret Shame. Next month sees the release of the band’s long-awaited new album Autonomy, and new single ‘Luxury Bitch’ is every bit as intense, barrelling headlong into anxieties surrounding mental health and the knock-on effects such struggles can bring. “Will you still be there / to hold me when I am trying,” asks lead Lena Machina, “when I am losing and when I lose?” If Autonomy represents Machina pivoting towards a new direct approach to songwriting, then ‘Luxury Bitch’ shows exactly what you can expect.

Sheenah Ko – Eyes of the Ego

Montreal electronic artist Sheenah Ko makes introspective and sophisticated pop music in the vein of Kate Bush or Björk. Earlier this summer, Sheenah Ko released her sophomore album The Future is Now, what she described as “a cautious reminder to take advantage of the little time you’ve been given in our wonderous world.” Since the record’s release, Ko has unveiled music videos for several of the tracks, the latest being for ‘Eyes of the Ego’. Directed by Anne Marie Munoz, the video was made with a 100% female, majority LGBTQ+ cast and crew, starring filmmaker/artist/actor Katharine King So and Le Couleur vocalist Laurence Giroux-Do alongside Ko. “Passion and anger are manifestations of the ego; that can drag us deeper and deeper into our minds, into a dream where we can’t escape,” Ko explains “This video is a representation of the exploration of the self, to identify and accept the ego as a part of us, but it does not have to be us or define us. To realize we are the eyes behind our ego and that we can be the observer of the ego.”

Future Is Now is out via Lazy At Work and you can get it from the Sheenah Ko Bandcamp page.

The post Weekly Listening: September 2022 #1 appeared first on Various Small Flames.