Thanks to the inexplicable popularity of my Submit Music page, I always have albums, EPs, singles and videos stacked up like virtual cordwood, awaiting my perusal. Here are the latest submissions that caught my ear — a surprisingly catchy Klezmer hybrid, some soothing Canadian dream-pop, the utterly unique soundscapes of a London audio rebel, genre-jumping antics from a one-man Parisian band, solidly stomping San Francisco stoner-rock and more. At least one of them oughta float your boat. To that end, I’ve included Bandcamp links wherever possible so you can buy the music straight from the source. Tell ’em I sent ya. And if you’ve got something I need to hear, send it my way. If I think you’re half as good as you think you are, I just might include you next time.
Bob Gaulke with Emilia Cataldo
Insomnia
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Based in Bronx, NYC. I write, produce, and play with some very skilled friends. I collaborate most often with Brazilians and Kiwis, while maintaining a love for French chanson. In NYC, I currently curate a world music series called 3×25, a monthly showcase. New work is always appearing. This one’s a bit Klezmer meets Forró as it was made with a lot of Jewish Brazilians. I wrote these songs after my mom passed; hope it’s not too morbid. Friends seem to like it.”
Alex Nicol
All For Nada
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Alex Nicol is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Montreal. Nicol’s played in different projects, most notably in the band Hoan, which achieved critical success with their EP Modern Phase. Nicol now sets out on his own with his debut album All For Nada. In the making of this record, Alex entrusted his long-time partner Nada with many creative choices. With the music acting like an audio journal of the people and themes important to them, the resulting eight songs hum with emotional integrity.”
Klein
Frozen
THE PRESS RELEASE: “South London-based musician Klein is an artist whose neoteric vision has seen her quickly become one of the UK’s most intriguing and unpinnable producers and performers. Using notoriously erratic audio editing software Audacity as a canvas for cut-up, pitch-shifted, and contorted cell phone recordings of her own voice, piano, and guitar playing, quotidian sounds, and samples from childhood Nigerian B movies, Klein’s playfully brooding assemblages seem to creak under their maximalist weight, their own construction made brazenly audible. Her techniques echo the idioms of musique concrète and industrial music — with crude, static loops and busted glitches that resist pop convention — but, Klein insists, her influences and ambitions lie with gospel, Pavarotti, the musical theater of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the R&B of Brandy and Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins rather than the staid institution of orthodox experimental music.”
Wolf City
Distant Early Warning Signs of The Apocalypse
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Wolf City is a one-man band based in the western suburbs of Paris. Exploring the different sides of indie rock through noise, hard, ambient, post rock and even world music. Underground and lo-fi music. Our last album, Early Warning Signs of the Apocalypse, is a mix of hip-hop / trap rhythms, rock / noise guitars and traditional music samples. Very lo-fi and underground.”
Jon Telegraph
Our Man Of Texture
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Our Man Of Texture is the first EP by the San Francisco-based band Jon Telegraph. Dave Parker (Company Car), Dave Walker (Music For The Apocalypse), Neal J. Schlosser (Knightboat, Glorious), and Dave Phillips (Cables & Arms, Company Car) make up this high energy Grunge/Jazz/Desert Rock group. The members of Jon Telegraph have had a strong presence in the SF music scene dating back to 2006 when the band Company Car played The Noise Pop Festival. Since then, members of Jon Telegraph have toured the west coast and played some of the best stages in the Bay Area including; Slim’s, Bottom of the Hill, The Chapel, The Golden Bull and many more. Our Man of Texture was painstakingly recorded at Jon Telegraph’s rehearsal studio over the course 2 years. This EP represents a small percent of the music recorded during that time, and many more releases will be coming out in quick succession. This music is to be played at a loud volume.”
Lefthnd
Mira
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Lefthnd, the alias for Richmond, VA-based producer and songwriter Scott Lane, is releasing a four-part piece of music titled Mira. Mira offers a completely different take the Lefthnd vision: A four-movement piece of music arranged more like a classical work. “I wanted to bring out a feeling of incredibly tense intimacy,” says Lane, who began writing the piece after the passing of the long-time agent and sometimes manager of The Congress, the band Lane had toured with for nearly a decade; “He was a 5th band member, and was family to us.” The music reflects on the past and speaks from the present, from happy and naive early days traveling together, to imagining the feeling of the subject’s death, and ultimately the funeral and birth of a new life. The songs feel eerily prescient and relatable to our current situation in the world (Mira was written in early 2019), speaking of an inevitable “reckoning” and sympathetically experiencing sickness: “Fever / I breath out / and feel / counting down my final hours / imagine all the time.”
Pure Flow
The Purest
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Pure Flow is a 17-year-old musical songwriter, singer, producer, and mixer from the Midwest (Minnesota). He has spent the last year creating this 20-song debut album, which came out on his birthday. Trying to make a change in his community, he started a music label (That he owns, but is not signed to), Pure Music, in 2017. He currently has multiple artists on his label. His main goal is to help as many families as possible pull themselves up from the bottom.”
