Begonia gives voice to her fear, Run the Jewels run afoul of the law, Redd Jasper talk the talk, Seamus Fogarty goes Hollywood, Jaime Wyatt shakes things up and more in your Thursday Roundup. The only thing moving slower than my fingers today is my brain.
ON REPEAT
1 | Begonia | Fear
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Begonia (Alexa Dirks) is sharing the eerie new video for the title track from her 2019 album Fear. Says Dirks: “I didn’t want to make a video that was just like things popping out and me and me being afraid of the things exactly as I had listed them in the song. I wanted something that was more mysterious, open ended, and a bit uncomfortable so as to match the energy of how I was feeling when I wrote it.” As Begonia, Dirks is bold, brazen with her florid, surprising pop that is tempered with sensitivity and wisdom. On the LP, Begonia leans hard into a sense of arrival. She wrote and co-produced the record with a familiar team of Matt Schellenberg and Matt Peters (Royal Canoe) along with Marcus Paquin (The National, Arcade Fire, Local Natives).”
2 | Run The Jewels | Yankee & The Brave (EP 4)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Run The Jewels, the duo of El-P and Killer Mike, have shared a new video for Yankee & The Brave (EP 4) from their poignant and powerful album RTJ4. Directed by Sean Solomon with animation by Titmouse, the video brings the song’s action film-ready narrative to life as Mike and El are pulled into a stand off with a malicious robotic police force. Chris Prynoski, Titmouse founder and president, states, “Killer Mike and El-P would f*** up some robot cops in real life, so I consider this animated music video for Yankee and the Brave a documentary — that documents the future.”
3 | Redd Jasper | The President’s Speech
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Surprise! Dada is back! The President is speaking! And it don’t make any sense! The band says: “The President’s Speech is a groove-filled rock ’n’ roll statement, about the destruction Trump has created in the U.S. and all of the havoc he has wreaked upon the world. Following the Dada movement, the song lyrics feature no definitive words, to evoke Trump’s nonsensical garble and all his lies. It is also peppered with some key Trump statements. Trump is just one huge television show lie.” The single also features top impersonator and comedian Ben Price.”
4 | Seamus Fogarty | Jimmy Stewart
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “London-based Irish singer-songwriter Seamus Fogarty has unveiled Jimmy Stewart, the second track from his forthcoming third album A Bag Of Eyes, out Nov. 6. Fogarty says: “It’s me feeling like James Stewart in Rear Window, trapped in Walthamstow forever … months before lockdown existed. It’s also me trying to write a three-minute pop song.”
5 | Jaime Wyatt | Rattlesnake Girl
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Jaime Wyatt has premiered a new video for her song Rattlesnake Girl. The video features a live version of the standout track from her 2020 album Neon Cross with accompaniment from Lillie Mae, Misael Arriaga and Frank Rische. Wyatt says, “The song is a celebration of finally finding my community for the first time. Finding people who thought like me and felt like me and loved like me. I used the term Rattlesnake Girl in the song, as a type of code word for anyone who feels different. For me, I was scared to death of coming out and being different, but as a rattlesnake girl, I felt powerful. I’m hoping that others can embody the term and use it to identify each other, and flag their own uniqueness. Today, I’m proud to be a Rattlesnake Girl.”
ALSO ON THE PLAYLIST
6 | Hayden Thorpe | Aerial Songs
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Following on from the release of his recent Aerial Songs EP, Hayden Thorpe has shared a special live performance film. Directed by Fiona Burgess, the 12-minute film follows Hayden moving through a stripped back space to perform songs from the EP, with each song performed in a new setting. Says Hayden: “Fiona and I looked to create a brief portal into our shared place of origin, The Lake District. For me, music and nature are indistinguishable from one another, they are different expressions of the same thing. By harnessing Fiona’s vision, we were able to distil the songs and the realm to which they belong. So much of the making of this film was unspoken. We don’t hold our home within ourselves as some remembered knowledge, but rather as a present and felt sensation.”
7 | 3409 | Pistol
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Toronto urban pop band 3409 effortlessly move between dance, hip-hop, and world music to create a blend of rhythm and blues wrapped in youthful enthusiasm. Using laid-back atmospheric production, their songs are centered on the contrast between Dante’s swagger-laden storytelling and Ro’s vulnerable delivery. Together the four-piece create anthemic memoirs for those pursuing self-discovery and happiness, despite the trials life may throw their way. 3409’s single Pistol was inspired by Houstatlanta trap with the addition of Spanish guitars for a western feel that shows off the group’s playful approach to creating music.”
8 | Mike Block | Tenfold
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Composer, singer, educator, and celebrated cello player Mike Block will release his new adult-pop record The Edge of the Atmosphere tomorrow. Today he premieres a video for the single Tenfold. The Edge of the Atmosphere is Block’s fourth full-length, in four different genres, in the past year. A Grammy winner with The Silk Road Ensemble, Block studied and trained in the classical world at The Juilliard School and Cleveland Institute of Music, but his curiosity and imagination as a musician knows no bounds or borders.”
9 | Born Ruffians | Waylaid
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Born Ruffians shared the official video for Waylaid from their recently released second album Squeeze! The track, which features indie-pop luminary Hannah Georgas, is their first time sharing vocals with another artist. “We’ve had other people come and sing on tracks before but I haven’t ever sung a proper duet with anybody,” says lead singer Luke Lalonde. “Once we finished a demo version of Waylaid we knew it should be a duet because of the lyrics. Hannah was at the top of our list because she’s so great and I’ve got to sing with her a few times — it’s always so effortless and easy and I think our voices blend really well. It’s about distance in a relationship and the fear of becoming entangled with somebody else — or of that happening to you. It’s a tired-of-being-alone song.”
10 | Spirit Adrift | Battle High
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Last Friday, U.S. heavy metal outfit Spirit Adrift released their new record Enlightened In Eternity. For the music video for Battle High, they teamed up with director Dillon Vaughn. Spirit Adrift say: “Battle High is a song about the human cost of war. This is an anti-war song, and we made a video to reflect that. It’s pretty cliche for metal bands to glorify war, but we wanted to do something more honest and realistic. The stance of this song is more in keeping with the guys who invented metal and wrote songs like Hand of Doom and War Pigs. As always, we’re trying to honor that tradition and carry the torch into the future in our own way. They were living in a world with napalm and agent orange, we’re living in a world with drone bombing, but the sentiment remains the same. Rest assured, the song and video are still metal as fuck.”
11 | Sam Rosenthal & Alex Cox | Timothy Leary’s Trip 1
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “It’s the centennial of Timothy Leary’s birth; to commemorate, Sam Rosenthal recorded Tim, Where Are You Now?, an electronic space music/art rock collaboration. The album celebrates a pioneer of consciousness expansion using his own words accompanied by international artists exploring those same realms via their music. Rosenthal collaborated with Steve Roach, Erik Wollo, Mark Seelig, Forrest Fang and others, and recorded Timothy Leary trip narrations from Alex Cox (director of Repo Man and Sid & Nancy), Reggie Watts (bandleader on The Late Late Show with James Corden), Lee Ranaldo (of Sonic Youth) and others.”
12 | Arcana | Tailwind
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Calgary’s Arcana are releasing their debut EP this year, the fantastic space rock opera Letters From A Lost Soul | Act I: The World One Forms. They are releasing a music video for Tailwind, which takes progressive metal and rich storytelling to a new level. As explained by Rogan McAndrews: “Tailwind is a very stripped-down track. I wanted it to feel like your standard four- or five-piece rock band (singer, guitarist, bassist, drums, keys) in contrast to the other tracks on this album, which can get up into the 20 individual instrument range. I have been trying to write one more contemporary/pop-like track per album and I believe this encompasses that wish extremely well. It’s upbeat, quick, and it feels like you can dance to it.”
13 | Suuns | Fiction
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Suuns will release their new EP Fiction next Friday, Oct. 30. Today, they share the title track and video. Fiction warps with distorting vocals and thick, foreboding instrumentation. The track was inspired by BJ Burton’s work with Low and is about time moving simultaneously fast and slow. The accompanying video, directed by Dr. Cool (Jordan Minkoff), is entirely animated. “Considering the limited time and ability to film anything in the Montreal red zone I got the band to send me some videos of them playing,” says Minkoff. “I tried very hard to make webcam footage look watchable by rotoscoping it and turning it into some glowie sci-fi thing. My animation style is usually more colourful and wacky so it was fun to try and change it up for the Suuns’ darkness.”
14 | The Besnard Lakes | Raindrops
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Magisterial Montreal psych-rock band The Besnard Lakes announce their new album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, set for release on Jan. 29. Today they reveal the LP’s first single, Raindrops, by way of a video that was shot by Joseph Yarmush. For The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings, The Besnard Lakes dispensed with a timeline and instead took all the time they needed to conceive, compose, record and mix the album. Some of its songs are old, resurrected from demos cast aside years ago. Others were literally wood-shedded in the cabin behind band members Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas’ Rigaud Ranch — invented and reinvented, relishing this rougher sound. Some of that distortion makes its way into the final mix: an incandescent crackle that had receded from their more recent output.”
15 | Low Island | Don’t Let The Light In
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Low Island release an exhilarating live video of Don’t Let The Light In. They say: “This video was shot in the same house the we recorded in the song in — a makeshift studio in rural France where we were recording just before the beginning of lockdown in March. This particular room features in a lot of the new music — we used it to record everything from percussion, backing vocals, piano, synths and guitars — and it’s played a big part in binding the new material together, placing disparate sounds in one space. It’s also a space that is very emotionally resonant for us; it’s the place we’ve been to bookend this crazy year, where we’ve finished so much new music and now filmed live performances in. Don’t Let The Light In is a song all about trying to capture memories — this room has captured our 2020, the highs, lows and everything in between.”
16 | The Elwins | Hung Up
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With The Elwins ready to release their new LP IV on Friday, the band are celebrating by releasing the new video for album cut Hung Up. “When we started talking about video vibes we liked the idea of interpreting the song in a different way,” says Francesco Figliomeni. “We were chatting with our friend/collaborator Wyatt Clough and he mentioned he had been researching certain cult practices and we thought that would work really well for this song, being ‘hung up’ in something that may not be good for you — no disrespect to any of our fans who may be in cults, please still buy our album. We shot the video in about a day and a half at this cute little cabin near Kingston. If you haven’t spent a day running around digging up crystals from the ground I would highly recommend it.”
17 | Hua Li 化力 | Water
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Montreal’s Hua Li 化力 shares her new single and video Water, taken from her forthcoming Yellow Crane EP out Nov. 20. Water takes on the city of Wuhan, describing her powerful history, the equally fiery climate and temperament of her citizens and its three boroughs, Wuchang, Hankao and Hanyang, at the Yangtze River. Hua Li’s passionate and unrelenting verses give way to lush choruses weaving together ancient Chinese symbolism with the modern-day political plight of Asian Americans. The video is filmed by Steve Deku.”
18 | Eliza & The Delusionals | Sentimental
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Pairing gorgeously structured indie-rock with flecks of ’90s and early ’00s filtered throughout, Eliza & The Delusionals’ new single pulls on feelings of nostalgia and stands out as an exciting start of a new chapter for the band. “We’re super proud of this song, it’s one of our favourites to date. Kurt started playing some chords in a tuning he made on the tour bus. We knew we were going in for a writing session, so after coming up with a few ideas around the chords, we brought it into the studio with Sarah and John, and they really helped bring it to life. After having a few months of listening to the demo over and over, myself and Kurt added a bridge and the other parts before taking it into the studio.”
19 | Nonviolenze | Electron
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Texas-based Nonviolenze is the artistic polymath looking to enchant audiences with not just his bewitching jazz-inflected acoustic prog songs but his stunning accompanying paintings and poetry. Combining all these artistic elements, he questions the fabric of life itself with Electron, his new single examining what, amongst the transience of everything around us, is eternal. It doesn’t get more fundamental than questioning life itself, but Nonviolenze is an artist quite unlike any other — singer, songwriter, musician and painter, Nonviolenze is a boundary-breaking creative using art to challenge concepts and beliefs.”
20 | Dust Bowl Faeries | Candy Store
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Plague Garden would never have come to life in this incarnation were it not for the 2020 plague, which is not to say that I am thanking the plague for the album,” smirks Ryder Cooley of New York-based dark carnival band The Dust Bowl Faeries. Their new album will be released independently on Nov. 20. Structured around a traditional Yiddish folk song that Cooley’s grandmother taught her, first single Candy Store is a fascinating and alluring Eastern European immigrant’s tale with added lyrics to flesh out the story. “My grandmother taught me the first verse of Candy Store when I was a kid,” she reminisces. “I have a good memory for anything morbid or morose, like twisted old faerie tales and nursery rhymes, so when I got my first accordion, the song just sort of just played itself.”
21 | DeTeresa | Catastrophe
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Turning up the heat since her last release, England-based artist DeTeresa dives into a more vulnerable side of dark pop in her new release Catastrophes, a synth-driven chill-pop song that explores the relatable struggle of letting your mind create dark ideas from worst-case scenarios. This anxiety-ridden mindset is one difficult to break free from because there’s almost a hope and comfort in it, as the song poses the question, “If I stage the worst case / It won’t happen, right?” — But even if it does, this way at least you’ll be prepared when the worst does happen … right? The rest of the emotive, raw lyrics delve into DeTeresa’s sensitive personality, expressing the very real mental battle of scripting catastrophes and letting the bad play out in your mind.”
22 | Violent Life Violent Death | Dead With Me
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Color Of Bone is the brutal fourth EP from Charlotte, N.C. metallic hardcore outfit Violent Life Violent Death. It included the new single Dead With Me. Guitarist Joseph Benham offers: “Dead With Me is about two lovers parted by death, as the ghost of the deceased watches and admires his partner from beyond the grave, wishing and longing for them to join them in death.”
23 | Illuminated Minerva | Wilder (Mother Goddess)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Calgary’s Illuminated Minerva released their emotional, turbulent full-length Enigma Adamantine on Sept. 25. The album is a showcase of the band’s amalgamation of heavy riffs, groovy bass, and psychedelic melodies, and in lieu of vocals, archived audio clips resulting in oratory artistic storytelling. Today, as the album blazes through speakers of fans, the band is sharing their new music video for Wilder (Mother Goddess). The song is an onslaught of technical brutality set to a narrative of biology, reptilian beings, and ritual. Slithering guitar, ancient rhythms, and ripping bass cut deep in the track.”
24 | Lydia Luce | Occasionally
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nashville singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Lydia Luce shares her latest song Occasionally. The track will feature on her upcoming album Dark River. The song took on new meaning to Luce after the devastating March tornado that hit Nashville ripped through her home. Luce stated, “My roommate and I were home at the time of the storm and were running down the stairs as it passed over the house. My room had wooden pilings fly through the walls and right across from where I would have been in my bed.”
25 | Tuzeint | No Mo’
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Born in Mexico, Enrique Toussaint — aka Tuzeint — is a 28-year-old singer, musician, and producer whose world flourishes around soul, jazz and R&B. Tuzeint’s smooth new single No Mo’ is “a track where I had the vision to make the best song I could in terms of production/musicality. I wanted to create something similar to D’Angelo combined with Tyler, the Creator and Solange. This track expresses the desire to be better; It’s about the story of a man and a woman. He wants to stop playing games and become something more serious! This is actually a story opposite to my experience where ending my last relationship was a phase of constant change that took me to where I am right now.”
26 | Sheila Eden | Snake Oil
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sheila Eden continues to be focused on her passion: music for film and television. She is constantly seeking to help create the ‘perfect’ cinematic moment, where the audience can tap into potential emotion that has been suppressed for years, even decades through music and visuals/video. Her music and voice have been showcased in award winning independent films, and her song is pinned to be an upcoming theme song for a TV show pilot. Sheila studied and is a graduate of a sync license training program out of Los Angeles.”
27 | Raphaela Gilla | Star Song
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Raphaela Gilla is an impressive musician and singer who is dedicated to helping others through her work as a vocal medium and spiritual guide. Her single Star Song is the first track off her upcoming album Ancient Angel. Compared to the likes of Lisa Gerrard, Diamanda Galas, Yael Naim, Raphaela’s voice is her superpower and the control she showcases in Star Song is remarkable.”
28 | Eleanora | Mere
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Belgian sludge/post-hardcore five-piece Eleanora have just shared the title track for their second full-length album Mere, which is set for release on Nov 6. The followup to their critically lauded debut Allure sees Eleanora delivering an emotionally wrenching and viscerally powerful concoction of post-hardcore, screamo, doom and sludge.”
29 | Bladebae | Worst Of Sins
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Worst of Sins is a newly released track from Bladebae, the project of Rubén Vázquez Amos. Worst of Sins evolves from haunting folk to a rousing rock spectrum. The track comes from the Hashtagblessed EP. Per the artist, the track “explores the quandaries of sabotaging your own happiness- and perversely enjoying it.”
30 | Snurfu | The Curse
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A few weeks after unveilling the official music video for the single No Fucks Given, Swiss rockers Snurfu just premiered another audio excerpt from their forthcoming effort with The Curse. Both songs will feature on Round Two, coming out on Nov. 16.”
31 | Alpine Decline | I Got Up (Just Like John Sinclair Told Us To)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Alpine Decline speak from the other side of the deep on their starkly gorgeous 10th album, For the Betterment of Well People, out Jan. 22. Carefully loaded with concise, penetrating alt-pop tunes, it’s an airy glide across choppy waters, a hard-earned lesson glimpsed dimly from the bottom of a very deep well. “I hope people catch the message that it is through adopting a process of ritually altering your life — through any door — that you can better yourself and break beyond a reality that, frankly, is crushing all of us right now.”
32 | Locean | Sprucce Bingsteen
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Formed in 2012, Locean found its collective feet through a shared passion for genre apocalypse; live improvisation, raucous live shows and sonic exorcism. The experimental Mancunians return this December with their most exploratory recordings yet, Top Ten Zen Meditations. “Top Ten Zen Mediations is a return to the early, unhinged phase of Locean,” explains vocalist Lauren Bolger. “It documents two phases of the band. Two line-ups of people, two different sets of tension and intimacy in the room. Therefore, the whole album has a dual contrasting energy running through it. It harnesses our live performance really well and we think it’s the closest you’ll get to actually seeing a Locean show.”
33 | Chant | President God
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “When Bradley Bills, creator of the tribal-industrial-art-rock project Chant, is not drumming alongside Martin Atkins and Danny Carry in the industrial supergroup Pigface, he’s producing albums with percussive-driven songwriting that digs deep into primal emotion and social observation. Chant took to social media this week to announce that his new album Hydra is complete and will be released on Oct. 30, preceded by his new single President God.”
34 | Teen Ravine | Everyone
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Teen Ravine’s Nick Rose and Dan Griffin want to get close but not too close; a sentiment that may well be the hallmark of a generation’s struggle with the desire for, and fear of, intimacy. In February, the Toronto duo will release an album recorded live alongside a chamber quintet and are starting with lead single Everyone. The song explores the desire to withdraw from an overstimulated world where consuming stuff, staying busy, and living vicariously through our performative digital avatars is the name of the game.”
35 | Zeb Samuels | Astral Commence
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “London musician and multi-instrumentalist Zeb Samuels has released the single Astral Commence. The single is the collaborative project of an array of talented musicians including Kiko Continentino (keys), Byron Wallen (trumpet and flugelhorn), Marc Cyril (bass) and Roy Reemy (drums). Samuels tells us: “Astral Commence is a track that has taken over two years to complete. It’s the first record that is totally production-based without me performing on. Some of my heroes have contributed to the record, so I feel very honoured and proud to have put this all together.”
