Wayne Kramer and Brad Brooks kick out a timely old jam, Nothing have the last laugh, Joelistics school you, Exarsis are beyond tongue-tied and more in your Tuesday Roundup. It’s a slow day for new music — you’d almost think there was something more important going on somewhere.
1 | Wayne Kramer & Brad Brooks | The American Ruse
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Wayne Kramer and Brad Brooks deliver an Election (or, more hopefully, Ejection) Day message with their new recording of The MC5’s The American Ruse. The lyrics say it all: “Unemployed America in terminal stasis / The air’s so thick it’s like drowning in molasses / I’m sick and tired of paying these dues / And I’m sick to my guts of the American ruse.”
2 | Nothing | April Ha Ha
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Nothing have shared a video for April Ha Ha, taken from their latest album The Great Dismal. The visual, which speaks to the unending feeling of calamity that is life in 2020, is directed by Domenic Palermo, who said: “Life is a joke and everyone in it is too … The Great Dismal refers to a swamp, a brilliant natural trap where survival is custom fit to its inhabitants. The nature of its beautiful, but taxing environment and harsh conditions can’t ever really be shaken or forgotten too easily.”
3 | Joelistics | Yokai
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Australian hip-hop royalty Joel Ma aka Joelistics returns with a mesmerising new project in his forthcoming conceptual long-play Film School. A departure from Joelistics’ typically evocative, smooth and considered wordsmithery, Film School is a project of music and film; an album of beats and synths, ‘70s Asian pop samples, psych-rock journey music and studio improvisations and a short film incorporating dance and animation. The first taste of his ambitious new cinematic production is the psychedelic Yokai. “With the track, I wanted to weave an eerie feeling built from loops, reminiscent of empty streets, a distant sense of dread and the hypnotic patterns of lockdown life. With the clip I wanted the dancers to personify our collective fear of sickness and loneliness and how those fears dance at the edge of every moment we hold dear.”
4 | Exarsis | Mouthtied
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With their album Sentenced to Life due on Nov. 27, Greek thrash metal institution Exarsis have published a video for the track Mouthtied. Despite the melodic side of it, the gas pedal is still at full force and the vocals will make their way through your heart and soul! These new thrash metal grenades were produced by Mike Karpathiou, just like their two previous releases.”
5 | Barberos | I Sometimes Feel Like Paragliding
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Barberos are a three-piece electro / noise / visual band from Liverpool. Combining an eclective mix of genres, including the obvious drum-fuelled polyrhymic electro thrashings, Barberos infuse elements of jazz, noise, dub, breakcore and prog, framed in heart-racing theatrics using costume and projections to communicate their joyful danceable musings to their ever-widening audience. I Sometimes Feel Like Paragliding is Barberos’ answer to a ’90s rave anthem. Slow-burn builds with dark undertones dip in and out of short chaotic break-downs and eventually emerge in a euphoric gritty confetti drop of playful noise/dance music.”
6 | Motion Device | Blindfold It Away
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Motion Device have a video out for their single Blindfold It Away. It comes from their recent album Motion Device IV, released in September. The band explains: “The beginning riff was the very first piece of music that began the writing process for the album. Josh first recorded the guitar arrangement, then sent it to David and Andrea and before you knew it they were jamming it out together. It was also the song that set our vocalist Sara on a brand new path of lyrical writing that was the start of the most writing Sara had done on any album up to this point.”
7 | Sameer Cash | Easily
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Earlier this year, Sameer Cash filmed eight videos for his new album This City, out now. Today, the Toronto artist is sharing the video for Easily. “We filmed this video in the sauna, as it was warming up,” says Cash. “The song was penned after going on a very impromptu and slightly debaucherous road trip to P.E.I. with my high school friends last summer. It was written about the weight of friendship and all the battle scars we develop along the course of our ten plus years of knowing each other — how we strayed from the plans we made in our youth and found our way back to each other.”
8 | Blue Statue | So To Speak
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “London noise-rock band Blue Statue have just dropped the video for So To Speak. The video is intriguing and abstract with a surreal stop motion drama involving an out of control yeti, while the track is dripping with intoxicating fuzzy melodic guitar lines and infectious hungover vocal refrains that get under the skin.”
9 | Emi Wes | Crybaby
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Following the release of her debut single Issues earlier this year, emerging singer and songwriter Emi Wes has returned with her bold and bouncing new offering Crybaby. With a voice that balances the fragility of Joss Stone against the sheer tone of Nina Simone, Emi Wes has spent the last couple of years working with Danish songwriters and experimenting with different genres to perfect her musical craft.”
https://youtu.be/bLBiXkDLrKI
10 | James Vincent McMorrow | Gone
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Gone has the immediate feel of a breakthrough moment in James Vincent McMorrow’s life. Produced by James alongside Paul Epworth and Moon Willis, the track builds from little more than sparse beats and intimate vocals into a pop song clouded by chaos, but actually about clarity (“I give less fucks than I used to / still give a lot of fucks”). Gone, says James, “Is about the disintegration of relationships. In my case, the disintegration of my relationship with myself. No song or lyric I’ve ever written has come as close to this one at capturing how I feel about life, how I hear it, my fear of it, my obsession with it, my belligerent belief that I can control it, my quiet acknowledgment in the middle of the night that I will never control a single thing. And there’s nothing wrong with any of it. There’s absolute beauty in embracing the chaos and the decay.”
11 | Rusty Reid | American Villain
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Shortly into Donald Trump’s term as president I realized that he is truly a villain … in every sense. He’s a liar. He’s a conman. He’s a chauvinist. He’s a racist. He’s homophobic. He’s anti-science. He’s anti-democratic. He’s a thug. He’s a thief. There have been other dastardly characters in American history, but none have reached such a high level of chicanery. I started to think of him as the American villain. And, of course, I had to write a song about it. I had hoped to get the song released earlier, but things happen. Anyway, the song is as much about his followers as it is about him. We will be rid of this villain sooner or later, but will be stuck with the problem of his cultists. So I think the song will remain relevant for quite some time, and hopefully serve as a cautionary tale of how (apparently) easy it is for some such charismatic thug to cause half the nation to swoon.”
12+13 | Danced Til Midnight | People Get Up + Soon Enough
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Essex DJ, producer & musician Danced Til Midnight dropped new singles People Get Up and Soon Enough, taking things in a soulful and mellow direction and featuring the vocals of Carmelle Cox.”
14 | Leon Stanford | By Your Side
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Welsh singer-songwriter Leon Stanford has released By Your Side, from the forthcoming EP Fear Is Heavy. Leon recalls, “I have spent years writing songs in a band but the last year or two I focused on my solo work, travelling between London, Bristol and Cardiff, writing with a handful of songwriters. I wrote songs on my break whilst painting empty houses and using the hallway or bathroom acoustics to blast the melodies out to no one but the freshly painted walls. I find inspiration for lyrics from the stories of people around me and the people I meet on my painting jobs as well as personal experiences.”
15 | Bleach Lab | Never Be
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “As they so expertly showcase on Never Be, Bleach Love put two things together that on paper shouldn’t work yet absolutely do — the heart-on-sleeve vocals of Julia Jacklin with the opalescent soundscapes of Mazzy Star and Cocteau Twins. Never Be is about how lead singer Jenna Kyle was set to move to a new city with her then partner but in the end had to do so alone. And the sense of mourning that spread to every experience there, knowing she should have been sharing them with someone else.”
16 | Will Powers | Woven and Shattered
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Will Powers is the brainchild of songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer Oli Palkovits. Following his 2017 self-release, Flowers of Atacama, Powers moved to Montreal, where much of the material that would become the Will Powers debut EP was written. Having since moved back to Sudbury, he is working on several albums with members of Murder Murder and Tommy and the Commies. His single Woven and Shattered, is carried by a polyrhythmic riff, with lyrics that reflect the sense of seamlessness/continuity between our inner and outer worlds.”
17 | Sweet Roger | Pay Me
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sweet Roger finds relevance for folksy themes and imagery in an advanced age where we continue to struggle and search for solace. Pay Me is a surly blues and folk song reminiscent of early 20th century outliers who sang in rough and coarse overtones speaking of hardships, travels, and cursed relationships. Pay Me is the first instalment to Sweet Roger’s upcoming sophomore album. The track captures the unsettling mood of the times with a defiant performance of raw vocals and growly acoustics driven by a solid rhythm that exultantly powers us forward.”
