Sarah Harmer visits the bay, Elysium envision the end, Edoheart just says no, Chip Wickham sees red and more in today’s Roundup. In case you haven’t already heard, Bandcamp is waiving its revenue-share fees on Friday, so every dollar you spend goes to musicians. If any artists want to email me Bandcamp links and press releases, I’ll be happy to share. Feel free to spread the word.
1 | Sarah Harmer | St. Peter’s Bay
THE PRESS RELEASE: “The video for St. Peter’s Bay, off Sarah Harmer’s acclaimed new album, Are You Gone, is out now. A swirling, expansive piano-and-guitar song about the grief at the end of a relationship (written while Sarah was on her way to a Hockey Day gig), the self-directed video takes viewers on a trip to the frozen, real-life St. Peter’s Bay, for a cathartic last skate. “I made this with filmmaker Josh Lyon,” says Harmer. “We hopped a late afternoon ferry to an island in the St Lawrence River and caught a brief window of mild weather and a bit of sun. For me this story takes place in a simpler time, when word was sent ‘on the wires of woodsmoke’ and ice was sure to freeze from one shore to another. The pain of ending a relationship is familiar in any era, and the vastness of the landscape in the middle of the river speaks to that timelessness.”
2 | Elysium | Before The End
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Elysium is a Folk Gothic Rock band with female vocal and violin drawing inspiration from early Whitin Temptation and Nightwish, as well as from the most popular European prog & folk rock acts like Anathema, Eluveite & Pineapple Thief. The band makes frequent incursions in classic rock, folk and prog. The use of keyboards and orchestration sequences enriches the songs and adds a symphonic edge to them, going to duet with violin and guitar. Elysium was originally formed in Orvieto, Italy, in early 2013 by bassist Marco Monetini, the violinist Christian Arlechino giving to the band a prog and folk and powerful rock sound with the infusion of pop-soul voices by the singer Daphne Nisi. In 2019 they released the album Labyrinth of Fallen Angels. The album contains 10 songs, one of them Before The End.”
3 | Edoheart | Rogie (Oh No)
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Nigerian-born poet, African princess, and underground priestess Edoheart has shared an abstract visualizer for Rogie (Oh No). The song will appear on her upcoming EP For The Love, which is set to be released April 10. For The Love EP opens with Rogie (Oh No), which Edo wrote in response to her experiences with miscarriage and an unrequited love. “This feeling / enchanted / and it’s madness how much I adore you,” she sings. “Rogie (Oh No) is about a place of unrequited love and resulting madness,” Edoheart said. “The visualizer I have created is a distillation of evocative signs, symbols and sound — an intersensorial prestidigitation. I cracked a vial and colored potion began to swirl around, and in the long shadows of the candlelight I could see the forms of past loves and future lives.”
4 | Chip Wickham | Blue to Red
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Flautist and saxophonist Chip Wickham returns with Blue to Red, his most absorbing and cosmically charged offering to date. Soaring flute melodies, lush harp arpeggios and glistening Rhodes keys interact across six journeying, spiritual jazz compositions, leaning on a rich palette of sounds beyond borders, space and time. Channeling the spirit of Alice Coltrane and Yusef Lateef via the lens of a hip-hop, electronic and club music educated ear, Blue to Red encompasses Wickham’s disparate set of production influences with his Manchester and spiritual jazz education. The album not only seeks to forewarn Earth’s possible Mars-like future, but seeks to tap into the interplanetary, cosmic nature of music. “It’s a culture crisis rather than a climate crisis, one that can only be solved if we go right to the core of how we live as human beings”.
5 | American Terror | Judgement
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Heavy punk/metal band American Terror, featuring members of Skid Row, Sugar Ray, Phunk Junkeez and Grayson Manor, has just released Judgement, the first single from their debut album. Their full-length record, titled Influencer, will be released on May 22. Brad Cox says, “We formed American Teror to do something new. It’s classic punk attitude with metal grooves and a modern attack. It’s the punch in the throat that music is missing. I think we really found the right guys to do something new and interesting.”
6 | Lettuce | ’Ndugu
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Grammy-nominated funk-jazz-soul-hip-hop-psychedelic-jam-experimental titans Lettuce have released their new single ’Ndugu, the latest offering from the band’s forthcoming seventh studio album Resonate, out May 8. “I was watching a video on YouTube of Herbie Hancock performing live in the early 80s with the legendary Leon ‘Ndugu’ Chancler on drums,” shares drummer Adam Deitch. “Not only was it ridiculously funky, Ndugu was so IN it that he was doing this side to side shoulder dance while playing. I was struck by the visual as much as the audio of the groove and so inspired that I immediately started writing the tune as a tribute to that sort of energy I had just witnessed. The song ‘Ndugu was born that night. It starts with a hard groove and powerful horns, then gets a snake charmer vibe in the bridge! It’s become one of our favorites to play. Hope y’all dig it!”
7 | Foes | Turnaround King
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Turnaround King, from Oregon-based metallic hardcore outfit Foes, serves as the first single from the band’s impending American Violence 10″ EP. Offers Garrett Judkins in part on the new EP, “American Violence is an exercise in futility. A proverbial bashing of one’s own head against a brick wall. A wall that represents every obstacle to happiness and fulfillment. This wall is you, it’s America, it’s meaningless traditional values, and it’s the churches of man.This album was created with the intent to make the listener feel constricted, frustrated, and suffocated under the weight of it. A reflection of the actual feeling of being crushed by the constant pressure to adhere to a path that you didn’t choose and one’s own self-doubt about their place in a society that no longer cares.”
8 | Scott Hardware | Engel
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Scott Hardware shares the title track from his upcoming album, Engel, due out April 3. The subject of Engel is in a relationship with a mischievous angel who is probing his mind against his will. ‘Here he comes to comfort me, but like a fly around my head I’d sooner swat him dead,’ is sung over an off-the-grid deconstructed house piano. A symphony of creaking trains and industry envelops the banging piano and delicate strings on the chorus while our hero complains, ‘He’s here with that look again, he knows what’s happening, inside,’ not, it would seem, ready for this level of vulnerability.”
9 | Raquel Lily | Fuccboi
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Born in the Philippines, raised in New York and currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia, Raquel Lily is an independent singer, songwriter, producer, guitarist and online personality. Her upcoming debut, full-length concept album, I’m Leaving, features eight songs, narrating a coming of age story about someone going through their 20’s. Raquel confides, “Everyone’s been broken from something. You smoke some weed, you fall in love, they turn out to be a fuckboy, you’re with someone shitty, you break up, you ghost them, you still love them, you resign, you meet someone new and there’s hope again.”
10 | Diners | Learning Curve
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Leisure World (out April 24) is the latest album from singer-songwriter Tyler Blue Broderick, who performs with the project Diners. Not only is it the most eclectic and ambitious album in the songwriter’s (already muscular) catalog to date — it’s one of the catchiest, most realized indie pop records released in years. “Learning Curve is a song about trying your best and not beating yourself up when you make mistakes.” Says Broderick, adding “It’s also about patience and gratitude! After a confusing period of writer’s block and feeling like I was asking too much of my creative capabilities, Learning Curve came to me in a way that helped me rebuild and maintain my friendship with music. Leisure World found its direction and personality with Learning Curve too.”
11 | Emilie Zoe & Christian Garcia-Gaucher | We Age (Wars)
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Emilie Zoe & Christian Garcia-Gaucher’s collaborative album Pigeons: Soundtrack for the Birds on the Treetops Watching the Movie of our Lives comes out April 3. It is an alternative soundtrack for Roy Andersson’s movie A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. Emilie about the song: “It’s crazy how what seemed unthinkable yesterday can quickly become our everyday reality. I’m amazed to see how we always adapt to what happens to us. If pigeons are looking at us from the rooftops, they certainly should wonder what the hell we’re doing. Our day-to-day rituals must seem totally weird and incomprehensible to them. I wonder if they also think about the origin of all this.”
12 | In The Company of Serpents | The Fool’s Journey
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Denver doom bringers In The Company of Serpents will unleash their new full-length, Lux, on May 15. In advance of the release of Lux, the is pleased to unveil opening track, The Fool’s Journey. Relays Grant Netzorg of the track’s timely concept, “The title of this song is a nod to the tarot. In many decks the Fool is depicted as a young individual who is carelessly about to step off a cliff. This metaphor is often used to describe the first steps of a person’s magical initiation, but it is also represented in the lyrics which begin, ‘We’re standing on the precipice of our own demise, laughing in its face. It will ignore our cries.’ I like the idea that our understanding of time is fundamentally flawed, and the implication that, if we can use tools like Tarot to glean the shape of things to come, it also empowers us with the agency to shift fates. Yes, the world is a bit of a dumpster fire on the broader level, but on an individual level we can affect positive change. The song closes with a quote from Jodorowski’s The Holy Mountain, a film rife with tarot symbolism relevant to this song and album.”
