Tamar Aphek comes in from the cold, Julian Shah-Tayler soldiers on, Lizzard take it down a notch, Gear gives up the ghost, Odette makes amends — and we’re just getting warmed up in your Thursday Roundup. Is it just me, or does it already seem like New Year’s Eve was about three months ago?
1 | Tamar Aphek | Russian Winter
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Tamar Aphek’s latest single Russian Winter is out now, accompanied by a video featuring UFOs and a guitar neck as a runway. Russian Winter is off her forthcoming album All Bets Are Off, out Jan. 29. “Russian Winter is my first concept music video. It was developed in few stages: first a visual translation of my personal feelings in light of the collapse of all the frameworks and creative endeavors in which I was involved before the Corona virus, then hours of brainstorming with the director Amir Buxbaum on how to put all the ideas into the patterns of a music video, then discussing the proper shot angles with the photographer and finally diving with the animator in a symbolic ocean of images.”
2 | Julian Shah-Tayler | All Good Soldiers
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Julian Shah-Tayler (aka The Singularity) presents All Good Soldiers, the first track on his new EP The Torment Suite, a collection of five new invigorating tracks with contributors including notable members of alternative rock royalty, including David J (Bauhaus, Love and Rockets) and MGT (Peter Murphy, Tricky, The Wonder Stuff). “It feels right currently to reach out with the song All Good Soldiers to the ones we love. It’s about fighting for what we believe in against what seems often like insurmountable odds. I performed everything on this one.”
3 | Lizzard | The Decline
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “French power trio Lizzard unveil their video for The Decline, from the full-length Eroded, set for release next month. Eroded comes as a strong, hopeful voice expressing the suppressed yearning for an end of this madness which we all carry inside. Notes the band: “The Decline always had an instantaneous emotional impact to us. The contrast between the cynical verses and the beautiful evidence of its chorus perfectly defines the behavior of human beings in relation to their surroundings.”
4 | Gear | Ghost Tears
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A spectre-cle, Gear’s video for Ghost Tears has just gone bump in the night. Packed with bars and bass, the producer/rapper reps the paranormal. The track was first heard back in July. Now, Ghost Tears is complete with its own eerie visuals thanks to Alejandro Selman and My Creative Gurus. The tune’s striking synths build across clattering hi-hats, with some of Gear’s best bars lurking in these verses.”
5 | Odette | Amends
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Sydney, Australia pop artist Odette has premiered the video for her new single Amends. The song is the third single from her upcoming sophomore album Herald, due out Feb. 5. “True to its title, Amends is a submission to pain,” says Odette. The track is about self-reflection and general relationships between people. Amends is a song I wrote during a period of unwellness. I was hurting myself and the people I loved with cruel disregard. This song is about trying and persevering even when you feel like you’ve already failed.”
6 | Bicep | Saku
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bicep have released the official video for recent single Saku, directed by David Bertram of Diplomats. Bicep’s new album Isles is out on Jan. 22. “Saku began as a 150 BPM footwork inspired track which actually had a hang drum melody. We were looking at lots of polyrhythms and more interesting drum programming. We ended up slowing the tempo down to around 130 BPM which totally flipped the vibe for us and then experimented with many different vocals samples.”
7 | Bell Orchestre | V: Movement
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Bell Orchestre’s House Music is an immersive ecosystem of an album to be released on March 19, and the first full-length work released by the Montreal outfit in over a decade. House Music unfolds as one long piece, a recorded-then-sculpted improvisation that vastly expands their work, coalescing classical and electronic instrumentation in the creation of genre-defying musical worlds. Bell Orchestre presents a video for the one-track album’s most anthemic and explosive segment, V: Movement, directed by band-member Kaveh Nabatian.”
8 | Good Bison | Lunatic
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Fresh off the announcement of their new EP Scattered Storms, Los Angeles-based indie band Good Bison are premiering their new single Lunatic. “Lunatic is the second song I wrote on guitar and it was inspired by multiple trips out to Joshua Tree in the middle of the night,” says Good Bison mastermind Pablo Alvarez. “One time, I was walking around the desert at two in the morning and genuinely started to feel like I was lost. Nothing looked familiar, and I had wandered pretty far off the main trail which is super dangerous and not something anyone should do. I was lucky enough to eventually find my way back to the campsite, but that feeling is something I carried with me while working on this track.”
9 | Appalooza | Distress
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Wild and heavy Brittany rockers Appalooza unleash their demons and present their cathartic grunge-infused video for Distress. The band will release their new album The Holy Of Holies on Feb. 5. “This song denounces the lack of assistance to a person in psychological and physical distress. People prefer to close their eyes and be silent rather than help. It deals with the taboos of our society about physical and psychological violences of all sorts,” comment Appalooza. “There is a lot of rage, tiredness, uncertainty during the album recording, and that’s what makes it so violent and intense. At some point, when we had just finished recording the song, we got drunk, positioned ourselves around the microphone and unloaded all our madness… And it worked!”
10 | Rhye | Come In Closer
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Rhye, the Juno-winning project of Toronto-born Michael Milosh, has released a new single/video, Come In Closer, from his forthcoming album Home, out Jan. 22. Thematically, Come In Closer presents how “as relationships deepen and you invite someone into your world, your life, your home, layers of appreciation, vulnerability, and patience reveal themselves,” whether it be a romantic relationship as in the song or a relationship between siblings as in the video. Directed by Milosh and Genevieve Medow-Jenkins and filmed in Big Sur, the video presents siblings “living without fear or inhibition, wild with the joy of simply being.”
11 | Django Django | Glowing In The Dark (Iridescent Remix)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Glowing in the Dark, the second single from Django Django”s new album of the same name, enjoys an incredible remix. The Iridescent remix comes accompanied by a stunning original video from Mortis Studio. Made during the first lockdown in a guerrilla-style shoot in Portland, the video highlights an array of distinct characters each experiencing their own dizzying journey through the remix. In the band’s own words: “This remix was done by Dave and Tommy during the first lock down and we decided to ask Mortis to do some visuals because we’re big fans of their work. What they came up with was perfect for the track.”
12 | Voodoo Circle | Locked And Loaded
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Voodoo Circle have released their new video for the single Locked And Loaded, the title track to their new album, which will be released Jan. 15. Just recently, the classic hard rock masters announced that vocalist David Readman and drummer Markus Kullmann are now part of the group again, so the original lineup is reunited.”
13 | Stuart Lisbie | Can’t Keep My Distance
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Stuart Lisbie’s first release was way back in 1987. Since then Stuart’s soulful voice has brought him to perform all around the world, including 10 Downing Street and more recently in Rio de Janeiro as the lead singer of Personal Life. Says Lisbie: “Can’t Keep My Distance was inspired in early lockdown in London. Working remotely, we (Toby Salmon, Nixon Rosembert, musical director of The Drifters) developed on the concept and went on to write the song over Zoom sessions using Google Docs. We then moved into production with a steep learning curve on remote recording! Finalising with online mastering from Abbey Road Studios.”
14 | Aaron Holt | Set Free Your Sorrow
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Washington D.C.’s Aaron Holt is sharing the lyric video for Set Free Your Sorrow, the first single from the upcoming album In The Palace. “I think anyone who has heard my work before will be pleasantly surprised at the results we’ve managed to create in the more non-ideal recording locations. We really just tried to flip the production phase more from sounds and tones to the actual material that’s being performed on the instruments and as a whole in the group. I was constantly chasing that catchy riff, melody, or rhythm.”
15 | Triptides | It Won’t Hurt You
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “With a sound oscillating between psychedelic pop and space rock, Triptides’ album Alter Echoes channels both The Byrds at their most hallucinogenic and Pink Floyd at their most cosmically composed while creating something immediate and new. The band has established itself as a preeminent part of the new wave of L.A. psych music. With Alter Echoes they pull away from the pack, thanks to the quality of their songwriting, performance and production. Alter Echoes will be released on March 19.”
16 | Barra Brown | RIDE (feat. ePP)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Tell me, where you was, when the world went mad?” That’s a line from the new single RIDE (feat. ePP) by Portland producer and percussionist Barra Brown. The lead single off his forthcoming LP LFT:RT features lyrics and vocals from rapper ePP, who really captures the moment in U.S. politics through this track. Barra says: “ePP and I have never met in person. I posted a video on Instagram of me playing drums over what is now RIDE. I knew of ePP and was excited when he commented ‘I’d sound great on this.’ I followed up, sent him the instrumental, and he most certainly sounds great on this.”
17 | The Neighbourhood Watch | Focus Up
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Whether it was learning to play their instruments while writing their first album Community Protected, or stumbling through the production of their second record Goodbye Childhood, Toronto’s The Neighbourhood Watch loves to grow alongside their music. Focus Up, the first single to be shared from their forthcoming new record, Lost in Bloom, is about how it can be hard to keep friendships intact as you grow up and need to make selfish decisions more often.”
18 | Suffering Hour | Obscuration
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Obscuration is the devastating new single from Minnesota blackened death metal trio Suffering Hour. The track precedes the February release of the band’s second album The Cyclic Reckoning. The music on this album is more representative of the band’s core sound than on their previous material, with every member making their presence more known than ever. The new record also features the band sacrificing some of their technicality and chaos in favor of more atmospheric passages, as the band envisioned this record to be an unhindered display of negative emotion, seething or sombre. Based around themes of awakening, obsessions, and mental anguish, this is a natural continuation of everything that encompasses the band’s ideas on life, death and beyond. This is Suffering Hour at their most honest and fierce.”
19 | Final Void | Save Me
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Finnish band Final Void released Save Me, taken from their upcoming second album Visions of Fear, set to be released on Feb, 19. The band comments: “Save Me startles with straightforward, but a technical grip pulling you closer to the upcoming album. This earworm drills into your soul and leaves a permanent mark.”
20 | Benedict Sinister | Spitting Rhymes From Debbie Harry
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “French /Australian music artist, producer, poet and video creator Benedict Sinister has released a new single, Spitting Rhymes From Debbie Harry, his homage to the Blondie icon. “Debbie Harry is an iconic songwriter. She combines sexiness and a jaded take on romance with wit and wordplay in lines like ‘I will give you my finest hour / the one I spent watching you shower’ and ‘He’s on the level when he’s inclined.’ Yet below that fun, cheeky pop persona, there has always been a real woman with mental health and substance issues, about which she has been very forthright.”
