Astronomique - Sharp Divide (2018)

OFFICIAL: http://www.astronomiquemusic.com

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Written by Daniel Boyer, posted by blog admin

The ten track, nearly forty minute full length release Sharp Divide from Minneapolis’ Astronomique is as rich and varied of a studio album as you can hope for in 2018. This isn’t slight; the depth on display from this four piece band is completely modern while still recalling iconic acts and halcyon eras in music history. Logan Andra Fongemie’s vocals and synthesizer playing are keys to the success of this collection, but her main musical partner guitarist and backing vocalist Sean Hogan contributes much to the band’s vivid tapestry of sound. Their music has been labeled as space-age electro psych-pop and it’s as good of a description as you’ll find for what is, essentially, a potpourri of musical creativity. Sharp Divide gains a lot, as well, from the contributions of bassist/backing singer Preston Saari and drummer Mitch Billings. Their fluid, slightly funky spice added to the band’s mix gives these songs an added idiosyncratic quality that makes them stand out from the pack.

Much of Sharp Divide is distinguished by the rhythm section performance without Billings and Saari obscuring the other musical elements. Their contributions to album opener “Forefathers” helps give this track the sort of necessary ballast that a first song deserves. It’s impressive how artfully Fongemie and Hogan integrate vocals, synths, and guitar over the firm rhythm section work – their touch is light, but unmistakably stamped with energy and great timing. Sharp Divide’s third track, “We Disappear”, is one of the best expressions of a dominant theme on the album and has a steady mid-tempo push that rarely relents. The upper register synthesizer contributions to the track bring a little extra flair to the performance and the lyrical material is among the finest heard on Sharp Divide.

“Losing Our Control” is another album highlighted by a tight, lively melody line and enormously sympathetic performances from each of the band’s four musicians. One of the most impressive factors making Sharp Divide such a success is the consistent unity of the band’s performances and rarely do they sound so completely on the same page as they do with this track. Hogan’s guitar work, in lesser hands, would serve an ornamental purpose, but his additions to “Losing Our Control” are colorful and nuanced, never overwrought. The title song has similar merits to recommend it. “Sharp Divide” is the strong musical statement we’d expect from an album title track and elicits one of Fongemie’s best vocals. The lyric, as well, expands the band’s established range with some particularly evocative imagery that always remains accessible to listeners.

“Smoke” is cut from a slightly different cloth than other songs on Sharp Divide. The band clearly focuses more on invoking a mood with this number without ever sacrificing their approach to crafting durable, coherent songs. The same penchant for evocative imagery explored in the title song recurs here with similarly strong results. “Bleed Me” definitely has a dark tone, but the musical mood never bogs listeners down in despair and, instead, tempers the mood. The melancholy atmosphere of this song embodies the album as a whole and stands among its strongest tracks. Sharp Divide is a work of vital musical creativity that Astronomique will work hard to surpass.

Cyborg Asylum - Never Finished, Only Abandoned (2017)

OFFICIAL: https://www.cyborgasylum.com/

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Written by Larry Robertson, posted by blog admin

Musical projects conceived over computers and not face-to-face can go a lot of different ways.  Frequently the way these types of collaborations go is that the ideas and even the music might be good but there can be quite a large disconnect to the point of distraction.  Such is not the case with Cyborg Asylum.  New York’s David Varga is responsible for the music composition, instrumentation and electronic backdrops while London-based John Tumminia is in charge of the lyrics, vocals and melodies.  Their resulting album Never Finished, Only Abandoned feels like a very complete piece of work composed by two individuals that did the work in the very same room. 

A teetering balance between atmospheric, soundtrack-esque instrumentals, industrial rockers, ballads and utter weirdness; the twelve tracks on the album seamlessly jump from strength to strength.  The police state madness of instrumental intro “Blitz” samples a panicked crowd’s screaming, bomb blasts, machine guns and sirens before diving into a lockstep bass beat with shrill synths, noisy wails and thundering low-end filling out the mix.  It acts as a polar opposite foil to “Synergy” and its poppy verse/chorus structure.  There’s still enough pure white-washed noise to maintain the opening vibe as scraggly guitar riffs, thick beats and a headstrong industrial synth melody wraparound the alternately clean/distorted vocals that carve out unusual rapping verses and sweet natured pop choruses.  “My Metallic Dream” compresses these components with a mid-paced, staccato beat ushering a heavily syncopated guitar riff and a breathless vocal from Tumminia into pure perpetual motion.  A little underrated industrial band from the 90’s called Course of Empire (former TVT alumni with Trent and NIN) strived and achieved a parallel greatness to Cyborg Asylum by building a place where tougher industrial sounds got swept up by huge pop rushes.

The album seems to have a theme or concept; a flow that’s established and maintained by interspersing dramatic instrumentals amongst the more straightforward songs.  Take for example “War Machine” which is almost a blast of crazed 70s progressive rock gone industrial.  Multiple loops stack clattering percussion, forward/backward synths, robotic voices run through distortion and raging heavy guitar riffs one on atop of another turning the “song” into a frantic collage that’s heavy along the lines of Skinny Puppy and Frontline Assembly.  In a complete audio 180, “Weightless” is a killer pop tune with fantastic melodic singing coasts dreamily over a bottom heavy bass/drum grind that’s a nightmarish opposite from the skyward vocal croons.  A climactic run of heavy, dirty 6-string power chords make for a passionate final where, musically speaking, everything and anything goes. 

Another instrumental “Angel of Incidence” experiments with classical strings and 80s metal for a real quirky meeting of minds, “Steampunk Highway” adheres to traditional industrial gear-grind values and “Fragments as Illusion” winds its way through Eastern themed guitar leads, flamenco drum programming and rumbling guitar surgery…  Cyborg Asylum is unafraid of wild-eyed experimentation in their music and the result is magical.

Josh Birdsong - Where the Light Bends (2017)

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Written by Laura Dodero, posted by blog admin

Where the Light Bends, EP number two from Detroit-to-Nashville singer/multi-instrumentalist Josh Birdsong is a colorful display of interlocking and interwoven guitar melodies ala David Gilmour, pulsing electronica undercurrents and gripping, higher register vocals that avoid falsetto cheese for something earthier and more relatable…  All things considered it’s a very complete piece of work.  If it has any flaw it’s that only a few songs truly standout but strangely enough this is also one the recording’s strengths as well. 

This EP exercises its charm more and more with every subsequent listen.  If you’re looking for a release where you can simply skip around to your favorite tracks, you’ll find that Where the Light Bends doesn’t cater to finicky listeners.  Instead, Josh Birdsong treats the EP like one lengthy 6-part magnum opus with many soft change-ups in terms of dynamics and a thematic mood that is completely coherent if you play the songs in order.  Slight yet pleasingly melodic phrasing and structure adjustments become apparent once you get to know the songs.  For example, opener “Complex Contrast” unfolds new guitar licks (both backmasked and straightforward) each time you hear it.  The slow, deliberate first half is alive with guitars that constantly morph and shapeshift beneath a camouflage of synths and hymnal electronic drones.  Once the groovy percussion kicks in midway through, again the music becomes something else entirely.  At the center of this psychedelic tempest’s eye stands Birdsong’s unwavering voice; an expressive, emotional skyward timbre that crafts gargantuan hooks while never stepping on the music’s toes… and it’s without a doubt that the music itself is a larger focal point than the superb melody-intensive vocals.    

As “Complex Contrast” ends it spills over into the shoegazing, angularly bent guitar melodies of “The Sound Beneath the Static” which is like a crosspollination of My Bloody Valentine’s white-washed audio collages if filtered through the poppy indie rock of Sub Pop’s sadly forgotten maestros Pond and their tripped-out ballads.  “Cloud 8” is a tight mesh of push/pull guitars and keyboards that go from a pretty, sanguine mid-tempo to some late game bombast in the post-midsection where the riffs swell like tidal waves while still retaining their clean tones.  “Too Much to Hold,” while a nice song in its own right with a bluesy bent and more tangible rock n’ roll structuring, feels somewhat against the grain as it sticks out like a sore thumb when measured up against the rest of the album. 

Returning to the EP’s main progression, “Arctic Desert” is a sprawling, epic composition where western-tinged guitars collide into galactic, psychedelic melodies as Birdsong’s vocals reach for a bit gruffer registers.  It’s a powerful piece that should have been placed as the album’s finale instead of the stripped-down, cosmic pop of the title track which relies heavily on vocals and tangible guitar melodies.  Where the Light Bends is an stellar second outing from Josh Birdsong.  There aren’t any bad tracks and the EP could only be improved by tweaking the track listing.  “Arctic Desert” should certainly be at the end and you could move the title track to the position right after “Too Much to Hold.”  Still, minor nitpicks aside, this is easily one of the finest EP releases this year.    

EZLA - Outcasts (2017)

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Written by Frank McClure, posted by blog admin

Firmly lost in the weird, oft-forgotten electronica underbelly that populated movie soundtracks during the 90s or even the stranger side of the late 80s enters EZLA and her brand new disc, Outcasts.  The singer/songwriter’s alchemical mixture of pop, indie, trance, dub, noise, drone, Top 40 and house music doesn’t sound like anything that’s come barreling onto the scene lately.  You might be able to make some correlation to EZLA’s music and the solo work of Irish wild woman Leslie Rankine, as both Ruby and under her own name.  You may even find that touchstones as varied as Blondie, Tricky and even Bjork apply to the music heard on Outcasts, but the fact remains that this EP is very much its own thing and plays by its own rules. 

The EP seems best relatable for discussion when the tracks are dissected as pairs.  “Outcasts” is a brisk open with dysfunctional beats congealing into a mid-tempo, shuck n’ jive chorus while the themes zero in on the pulse of living forever and a certain degree of urgent profanity that punctuates much of EZLA’s work all across the 5 tracks on display.  Laid out beside track #2 “Skeletons” where its equally soft to loud dynamics and acerbic, dysfunctional verse beats simultaneously shake things down only to shake them up again, later opening up into an arid, sing-a-long pop chorus. The two compositions are very, VERY much alike.  The vivid, poignant beauty and crystalline hypnotics of “Satellites” and “Hangman” explore deeper themes of love and the damage it does to a person, while the percussive backgrounds and gliding chorus synths provide numerous parallel points that ensure these tracks are the perfect companions for one another.  Whereas the opening pair of songs feel like they could break apart at any moment until the listener reaches the chorus destinations, it seems as if the next pair feels as if they are much more ordered, arranged and designed to follow a more tuneful, song-oriented trip down a dark New York City alleyway.  

This leaves the somewhat crazed and psychologically unstable “Psycho Killers” to occupy a space all by itself.  Proudly belting out the EP’s most harrowing set of lyrics, EZLA’s voice goes from a wispy croon to nearly satanic vocal back-masking atop a pounding, urgent beat and caterwauling synths; a proof positive snapshot that the singer operates from a darker frame of mind than anybody peddling pop songs in modern times.  Quite frankly, the extremes covered on Outcasts will be too intense for the casual listener, delegating the EP to record collections that favor honest, frantic electronica that’s not afraid to bombard the audience with curveballs.  Outcasts is an excellent piece of work from front to back cover and it makes clear the point that EZLA is an artist to keep an eye on as she progresses from release to release.    

YYY - A Tribute to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (2017)

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Written by Daniel Boyer, posted by blog admin

YYY’s A Tribute to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds revisits a seminal album release that, by 2017, should be considered every bit as canonical to our culture as Christmas classics and other iconic works from the first and second generation of modern musical and rock performers. The powerful imaginative hold exerted by this classic crosses generations – young Minneapolis musician Austin Carson, aka YYY, has set the bar high for himself with this audacious musical endeavor and the bevy of local performers he drafts as guest stars makes the case, however inadvertently, that the Minneapolis area remains a key hub for original American music in 2017. These covers are far from slavish imitation; instead, YYY aims at nothing less than fully re-envisioning Brian Wilson’s classic compositions for a modern audience. It sounds like hubris. The thrilling part is that it turns out to be anything but hubris because YYY pulls it off so compellingly.

He begins the album with “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” featuring the guest talents of deM atla S and we are confronted with an approach that’s equally faithful to key elements of the original while offering a deconstructionist take on the remainder. There’s a couple of crucial drum sounds in the song – he adopts a highly-charged, live sound during portions of the track while relying on more electronic percussion during the song’s second half. There’s an appealingly raw, emotive sound to the vocals that will hit home with many. Electronic music is a big part of what makes this such an idiosyncratic release, but it’s always placed within a larger context that contains nods to the traditional as well. “You Still Believe In Me” has a guest star as well, City Counselor, and her ethereally tinted voice is highly appropriate for the track. It achieves a surprising and entertaining near-orchestral grandeur despite the electronic backing and has a beautifully pensive vibe. “That’s Not Me” finds YYY going at it alone for the first time on the album and his love for the Beach Boys vocal arrangements shines through once again. When Carson errs on the side of following Wilson’s examples, it’s invariably expressed through fidelity to the vocal arrangements and melodies. He finds inventive new vehicles for these elements without ever betraying the song’s original spirit and infusing it with something of his own.

Another turn from YYY on his own is the song “Let’s Go Away For a While” and he structures this piece as a sultry, moody instrumental with a dollop of voice over attesting to her love for The Beach Boys buried in the mix. It’s built around electronic instruments, for the most part, but keeps a warm and alluring sound up throughout the song’s duration. Al Church provides a particularly affecting vocal on the eternally vulnerable “Sloop John B” and sings with such open-hearted feel that it spins a dreamy, dramatic web for the song. Echoes of the original version underpin this, like they do so many songs on this album, but they provide the same basis for YYY to stamp the song with his own individual brand of magic. His take on the original album’s crowning achievement, “Good Vibrations”, utilizes the guest talents of Fort Wilson Riot and the dueling male and female voices in this song make for a nice contrast. The song remains remarkably faithful to the original version while providing its own finish to the number. One of the most distinguishing parts of this release is how YYY resolutely avoids self-indulgence throughout the entire album and that artistry reaches its zenith with the final track. As tributes go, there’s nothing quite like this, but one listen to it will convince you that it’s far more than mere tribute.