News – 7th Level Music

Gelli Haha brings the fun on her debut single – “Bounce House.”

A shapeshifter, a sonic acrobat, a performer with one foot in the cosmos and the other in arthouse theatrics, Gelli Haha (pronounced Jelly Haha) is a space for pure creative chaos.

For the opening trick, Gelli Haha presents her debut album, Switcheroo. Gelli’s music thrives on duality: playful but profound, tongue-in-cheek but sincere. Switcheroo is the soundtrack to the Gelliverse, a sensory adventure sphere created by Gelli.

Her debut art pop single “Bounce House” flashes back to youth-like innocence with high upbeat energy, turning the dance floor into a playground. The track’s accompanying music video rockets viewers straight into Gelliverse. This live revue is an invitation into a world of choreography, dolphin balloons, flutes, mini trampolines, and a stage bathed in the project’s primary color, red – bold and full of mischief. The 360 experience was shot all in one take by director David Gutel.

Listen / Playlist / Share “Bounce House”
Watch Official Music Video

With a shared taste for off-kilter pop and vintage gear, producer Sean Guerin (of De Lux) joined Gelli in turning freshly-formed demos into a high-voltage experiment, abandoning meticulous structure for something freer and more electrifying. Every song on Switcheroo makes use of a myriad of recording toys; wacky analog effects, such as the Eventide Harmonizer, MXR Pitch Transposer, and various Electrix units, fashion an intentionally flawed and strictly silly texture throughout the album.

Switcheroo is an exercise in letting go, an inside joke turned theatrical spectacle. Participation is encouraged. Surrender is required. Switcheroo sees its release June 27 via Innovative Leisure. Gelli Haha performs March 22 in her hometown of Los Angeles at Permanent Records just ahead of her appearance at this year’s Treefort Music Fest. For more info, follow Gelli Haha on Instagram.

Pre-Order / Pre-Save Switcheroo

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SOAPBOX nearly slap you into oblivion with new single – “Do As Ur Told.”

Already gaining attention for their live shows and even louder political views, Glasgow’s SOAPBOX announce new EP LOCK IN out 25th April as well as sharing new single ‘Do As Ur Told’. The band will also be appearing at various festivals this Summer across UK & EU.

SOAPBOX have graced the cover of Spotify’s The Punk List amongst being included in other playlists such as New Music Friday, All New Punk, and Hot New Bands. Pulling from influences like The Damned to Soft Play, Amyl and the Sniffers and Viagra Boys, the band say about their music, “we all have a severe praise kink so as long as people keep listening, we’re happy.”

Their new EP LOCK IN follows last year’s HAWD THAT, and comes out the same day they play their biggest headline to date at 500 capacity Glasgow School of Art.

‘Do As Ur Told’ is a song about abuse of power, explains vocalist Tom Rowan.

“Its lyrics are specific to a bad experience we had in the music industry where we felt we were being taken for a ride, but we feel it’s more broadly about being strong-armed into situations which are non-beneficial. The frustration we feel as musicians struggling to scratch out a living, and being squeezed on every penny we do make by other parties, translates to situations people find themselves in every day whether that’s off of a colleague, boss, landlord or someone else in a position of power over them.”

Listen to ‘Do As Ur Told’ HERE

Refusing to stray from their political stance, the band promoted their last EP with posters featuring their lyrics about Nazis and BDSM around Glasgow. Not even a week later, the posters were hastily removed due to a volume of complaints from Glasgow City Council. The band responded, “Glasgow City Council don’t believe in punching Nazis apparently” and urged fans to seek out any remaining posters.

In true SOAPBOX fashion, the band have faced more controversy surrounding a run of posters they plastered over Glasgow which featured their contentious lyrics and political support from politician Jeremy Corbyn. Previously, the band received an unsolicited endorsement from Alt-right ring-leader Gavin McInnes which was covered in The Times.

SOAPBOX are: Tom Rowan (Vocals) He/Him, Angus Husbands (Guitar) He/Him, Aidan Bowskill (Bass) He/Him, Jenna Nimmo (Drums) They/Them

LOCK IN EP out 25th April.

Tour Dates

Fri 21 Mar – North Shields, The Engine Room
Sat 22 Mar – Blackpool, Bootleg Social
Sun 23 Mar – York, The Crescent *with KID KAPICHI
Sat 05 Apr – Middlesbrough, This Is Middlesbrough Fri 18th Apr – Carlisle, The Brickyard
Fri 25 Apr Glasgow, The Garage
Fri 23 May – Den Haag Netherlands, Sniester Festival
Sat 24 May – Amsterdam Netherlands, Pretty Pissed Festival Thu 29 May – Paris France, Supersonic’s Block Party Festival
Fri 30 May – Paris France, Supersonic’s Block Party Festival
Sat 31 May – Mannheim Germany, Maifeld Derby
Sun 03 Aug – Cumbria, Kendal Calling

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Salem 66 to release new compilation of tracks out of print for decades.

Salem 66 were founded by Judy Grunwald, Beth Kaplan and Susan Merriam in Boston in 1982. A major part of a thriving Boston scene that produced bands like Mission of Burma and Dinosaur Jr (Dinosaur Jr’s first New York show was notably an opening slot for Salem 66 at Folk City), the band were ahead of their time.

They were one of the few women-led bands in their scene, and made their mark with an adventurous blend of arty post-punk (they notably covered Wire’s “Fragile”) and melodic pop. Between 1984 and 1990 they released one self-titled EP, 2 singles and 4 albums, 1985’s A Ripping Spin, 1987’s Frequency & Urgency, 1988’s Natural Disasters, National Treasures, and 1990’s Down The Primrose Path (produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q. Kolderie who went on to produce Radiohead’s Pablo Honey and Hole’s Live Through This), all on the venerable New York imprint Homestead Records, label home to bands like Sonic Youth, Big Black and The Chills. The band earned comparisons to R.E.M., The Talking Heads and The Velvet Underground from The New York Times, and further praise from outlets like Rolling Stone, CREEM, and the Village Voice. They shared stages with The Replacements, Mission of Burma, the Go-Betweens, the Wipers, the Saints and the Raincoats, and toured across the country on multiple occasions, but despite their prominence in the ’80s, the Salem 66 catalog has been out of print for decades and their music has never been available on streaming.

Today, Don Giovanni Records are announcing a new compilation entitled SALT, and have made the band’s music available on all streaming services for the first time. To mark the announce the band are sharing a recently unearthed video for their song “Lucky Penny.”

Beth Kaplan says of the reissue:

“We were a long time putting together this re-release, and it has been a journey – from finding the pictures to not finding the master tapes, from writing up some thoughts to deciding which songs to include here. Judy and I picked the songs and it wasn’t easy. After exploring and rejecting more scientific methods, ultimately we decided to just highlight some of our favorites, or, the songs that felt the most like us. So what you see (or hear) here is not necessarily a representative sampling from all of the recordings but it does feel, to me, like a pretty good Salem 66 sampler. Like a cross-stitch. Or a Whitman’s Sampler.

“I hope you enjoy this record. If you were there with us, on the scene, whether in Boston or another town, I hope this brings you back to those youthful, passionate, perfectly imperfect days. If the band or the songs are new to you, or if you were born a generation or two after the fact, I hope you enjoy a glimpse at this sliver of a sliver of history.”

The band’s catalog is available on all streaming services now, and the SALT compilation will be available on June 6th via Don Giovanni.

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Sally Shapiro share “The Other Days” from upcoming new album due May 30, 2025.

Swedish italo disco / synthpop duo Sally Shapiro announce their fifth studio album, Ready To Live A Lie out May 30th and today are sharing the first single “The Other Days”. Taking inspiration from synthwave, italo disco, nudisco, indie pop and bossanova, the album becomes their second for Italians Do It Better – again mixed together with label founder Johnny Jewel (Chromatics, Glass Candy, Desire).

“The Other Days” on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eIwjvEdUMvI?si=PzVUYfjT6509Smif
“The Other Days” on other streaming services: https://idib.ffm.to/theotherdays
“The Other Days” on Bandcamp: https://sallyshapiro.bandcamp.com/album/the-other-days

Made up of producer Johan Agebjörn and an anonymous female vocalist who uses the pseudonym Sally Shapiro; the duo are known for their dreamy, melancholic sound and nostalgic homage to 1980s Italo disco and gained international recognition with their debut album Disco Romance (2007), which was then followed by My Guilty Pleasure (2009), Somewhere Else (2013) and their debut for Italians Do It Better Sad Cities (2022).

The name “Sally Shapiro” has always referred to both the duo, as well as the enigmatic anonymous singer whose real name is something else. But “Sally” is also a third entity: the fictional character singing about her love stories. It’s now been 18 years since Sally Shapiro’s debut album Disco Romance, that took influences from italo disco and indie pop with a naive and youthful flavor, as if everything “Sally” did was to “walk in the moonshine thinking about my love affairs”, as she once put it.

Ready To Live A Lie may, however, be the duo’s darkest album yet. The lyrics have shifted from the euphoria of first love to exploring “Sally’s” struggles in long-term relationships—love triangles, boredom, resentment, and the lingering sense of loneliness.

On the record, Johan said, “We live in the era of lies. We deceive ourselves, our partners, and those around us. On social media, we paint pictures of perfect lives, only to be fed falsehoods in return—by algorithms, newsfeeds, and politicians.”

Sally added, “But perhaps, at times, we need these deceptions to get by. Maybe loneliness is somehow inescapable and we simply do our best to navigate life.”

Ready To Live A Lie is out on Italians Do It Better on May 30th and includes the duo’s acclaimed Pet Shop Boys cover “Rent.”

Pre-save album: https://idib.ffm.to/readytolivealie

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Water Machine announce their debut album, “God Park,” with its first single – “Tiffany.”

Flooding out of Glasgow in 2022, Water Machine have quickly gained a reputation for their weird and wonky art-punk, winning hearts with sing-along songs about dogs, struggling artists and the housing crisis. Now, they announce their debut album God Park out 20th June via FatCat Records, as well as sharing first taster with new single ‘Tiffany’. Explaining the track, vocalist Hando says, “This song was originally called Orange as we think it sounds like an Orange Juice song. We decided not to call it that due to a certain king and the city we live in being Glasgow. Eventually it was changed to Tiffany as it felt safer for our careers (we are not sectarians). We wrote this in one sitting after I had a panic attack in the studio and we decided to write something happy. As usual it ended up being a hypothetical love song about a car crash.”

Listen to ‘Tiffany’ HERE

Debut album God Park takes a collection of disparate influences and distils the disjointed into something new. Taking influence from everywhere, the tunes are always on the verge of falling apart or breaking down. Their world is a swirling eddy of melodic bass lines and volatile guitar sliding between jazz chords and punk riffs, all the while narrated by sardonic social commentary, silly stories, and pop sensibilities. This group of young Glaswegians recognise that they owe something to the city’s rich musical history, in particular the 1980’s scene captured so brilliantly in Grant McPhee’s documentary, Teenage Superstars.

Tired of listening to songs about gloom and heartbreak, Water Machine, instead, want their lyrics to provide a “realistic escapism.” Their words, while rooted in the day-to-day-maybe-mundane, are spun into what the band call “hyper conceptualised allegories.” So while they might sometimes sing about love, this is hidden amongst copulating clouds, car crashes, housing crises, rabies outbreaks, toxic jobs and unrequited office romances.

Everything on the album packs positive, punk energy. As Henry Rollins put it: “Water Machine is a very cool band”.

Water Machine are: Hando Morice [they/them] – vocals, violin, synth, Flore De Hoog [she/her] – bass, vocals, Nicky Duncan [he/him] – drums, percussion, Baby Cousland [they/them] – rhythm guitar, Ellie McWhinnie [she/they] – lead guitar

God Park is out 20th June via FatCat Records. Pre-order HERE

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Photay releases “Jet Stream” from an upcoming extended version of his “Windswept” album.

Nearly six months after the release of his album Windswept, Photay (Evan Shornstein), returns with Windswept: Expansions, out March 28, 2025 via Mexican Summer. The expanded album features two new tracks from the album’s surplus of exceptional sound alongside the producer’s own remix of standout single “Air Lock.” The first of these new tracks, “Jet Stream,” is out today.

“Pushing past the dynamic ceiling of Windswept, ‘Jet Stream’ peaks in our upper atmosphere, and as a result, it didn’t fit on vinyl,” explains Shornstein. “At the start of 2025, on the other side of Windswept tours, I lost my home and studio to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. Although this piece (and Windswept) were made well before this disaster, for me they grow in relevance. I use sound to understand the greater elemental forces and our vulnerability to them. I believe music will continue being a source of uplift and clarity amidst intensifying weather and atmospheric conditions.”

Following headline tours in the US and Asia in 2024, Photay will perform at London’s Polygon Live LDN Festival this May.

Photay’s Windswept is, in the producer’s own words, a nine-track sonic exploration of the wind as a “powerful, deep, unpredictable and at times overwhelming spirit.” Traversing IDM, ambient-techno, and jazz funk electronic modes in unpredictable, undeniable ways, Windswept blew away those familiar and new to Photay’s music, even being named the #1 album of 2024 by Juno Daily.

The album is primarily reliant on Shornstein’s fresh, home grown electronic textures and acoustic drumming. Numerous friends also add instrumental touches including Randall Fisher, Will Epstein, Carlos Niño, Laraaji, Nate Mercereau, and Mariana Bragada. Windswept’s compositions were largely written-out and specifically produced, though a couple were also turned into “songs” out of improvised sections. But all were under the spell of the wind, of climate change and weather phenomena — from their titles on down.

One reason that Windswept may especially feel like an organic solo statement is that the previous handful of projects Photay had been involved in were all explicitly collaborative. There was the new age improvisation albums with Niñoand friends; there was the album he produced for London-based Indian-American drummer Sarathy Korwar; and there was WEMA, a kind of studio supergroup involving members of the Afro-Latin dance band Penya and Tanzanian gogo master Msafiri Zawose. Each of those projects took Shornstein in very specific directions he did not dictate. Windswept was a response to those experiences, an opportunity to reconnect with his own vision, and apply newfound lessons.

There is admittedly a higher quotient of direct-towards-dance-floor energy to Windswept than recent Photay recordings have featured. Stretches of tracks are moderately home-rave-ready, but there is a thematic balance with moments of reservation as well, and of Evan’s voice embracing the moment. These songs — gorgeously sweet melodies and tart textures, layered synths and instruments, off-kilter rhythms and treated voices, all gliding from structure into another — contain much of the warmth and fresh-air that’s made Photay’s various sounds so distinctive and unified through the years.

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Smut releases new single that’s anything but “Dead Air.”

Smut — the Chicago band comprised of vocalist/lyricist Tay Roebuck, guitarist Andie Min, bassist John Steiner, guitarist/synthist Sam Ruschman, and drummer Aidan O’Connor — releases “Dead Air” via Bayonet Records. It’s the first new single from a forthcoming release out later this year and follows their revelatory 2022 Bayonet debut, How the Light Felt, hailed by Under the Radar as “pop perfection.” “Dead Air” starts out with crystalline guitars and fall air-crisp bass. Then Roebuck’s vocals come in. She sounds like Elizabeth Fraser, but more rock ‘n’ roll, shifting her vocals from honeyed and dreamy to a pop punk shriek. It’s patched together Frankenstein-style, with lyrics and riffs the band worked on solo and together. Lyrically, it’s a break up song, a band break up song— a song about relationships ending and changing. “I heard you say forever,” she sings, “Forever.”

Stream “Dead Air”

When setting off to write “Dead Air,” Smut wanted to make something that rocked. They wanted to make something that was as fun to make as it was fun to listen to. They went back to their favorite bands growing up, playing My Chemical Romance and Metric. Green Day and The Fall. Twisting metal riffs into a pop context.

“Dead Air” marks the first track drummer Aidan O’Connor and bassist John Steiner have recorded on as full-fledged members of Smut. Part of what makes the song so electric is the excitement the band felt working in this new iteration. “We have so much energy right now,” says Roebuck. To record, “as live as they could,” they went off to New York to work with Aron Kobayashi-Ritch (Momma) at a studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married. When they were recording, Roebuck had completely blown her voice by the end, chugging lemon and honey and hot water. The band slept on friend’s couches and floors. Smut has always been DIY. Because they love it, they love to work together. They love to collaborate. “Dead Air” is the product of that collaboration.

Formed a decade ago in Cincinnati, OH, Smut have conquered national tours with Bully, Swirlies, Nothing, and Wavves since their founding. Where their 2020 EP Power Fantasy dipped its toe into the experimental, their most recent album, How the Light Felt (mastered by Heba Kadry), dives head-first into 90s influences — brit-pop, shoegaze, and trip-hop, taking Smut’s sound to exciting heights, with more new music to be released in the coming months.

Stream/Purchase How the Light Felt

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Blackwater Holylight announce new EP, “If You Only Knew,” with its first single – “Wandering Lost.”

Blackwater Holylight crafts music that offsets airiness and immediacy. Today [February 26, 2025], the Los Angeles, CA band announces their new EP, If You Only Knew, out April 18, 2025 via Suicide Squeeze Records. Though it clocks in at just four tracks, the EP traverses countless cosmic peaks and sludgy valleys. The band has also shared the single “Wandering Lost,” premiering on FLOOD Magazine, which gradually evolves from atmosphere to heaviness. Over the course of almost seven minutes, metal, shoegaze, and psychedelia coalesce. The song was slowly conceptualized while Blackwater Holylight was working with acclaimed producer Sonni DiPerri (Animal Collective, DIIV, Suzanne Ciani) in Los Angeles, and mimics the mysterious, sometimes painful chapters of life by shifting between multiple movements. Like all of Blackwater Holylight’s material, there is an ample dose of beauty to be found beneath “Wandering Lost”‘s snarling exterior.

On “Wandering Lost,” singer, guitarist, and bassist Sunny Faris shares: “‘Wandering Lost’ came to us in pieces throughout a handful of weeks in Los Angeles. The four of us intentionally wanted this song to have multiple parts to tell a story that takes you on a journey throughout. This song is very special to us because it represents us as musicians individually and is a perfect reflection of what we’ve created as a group. It’s a song about wandering through the chapters of life, curiosity, and the connection we all have to each other through the unknown of how it will all unfold.”

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Levitation France announces its 2025 lineup.

Levitation France has announced its full (?) lineup for 2025, and they’ve packed a lot of good bands into just two nights.

Vendredi (Friday) brings in Italy’s New Candys (whose new album, so far, sounds pretty cool), UK’s Ditz (a sharp new post-punk band), Spain’s Hinds (also promoting a new album), Danish metal giants Kadavar, and the U.S.’ own Blonde Redhead.

Samedi (Saturday) has Angers post-punkers Rest Up, UK’s mysterious HONESTY, goth-queen Heartworms, experimental psych-rockers Bryan’s Magic Tears, and psych-proggers bdrmm, plus the U.S.’ synthwave duo Boy Harsher, and finally French psych heavyweights The Limiñanas.

It’s a good lineup with some serious rock in it this year, and it’s in a new location – a pyramid on a lakefront, no less. Don’t miss it.

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Big Thief’s James Krivchenia’s new solo single, “Probably Wizards,” is out now.

James Krivchenia (drummer and producer of Big Thief) announces his new album Performing Belief, out May 2nd via Planet Mu, and shares its lead single, “Probably Wizards.” This spring, Krivchenia will play his first ever live show on Tue. June 17 at Elsewhere in Brooklyn, NY (tickets are on sale this Friday and will be available here).

Featuring contributions from electric bassist Sam Wilkes (Wilkes/Gendel) and double bassist/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society), Performing Belief builds rhythmic thickets from gathered sounds interwoven with synths, drum machines and other samples. At the core of Performing Belief is a lush, opulent matrix of percussion ranging from the familiar—hand claps and drum machines—to the mysteriously verdant, sampled largely from Krivchenia’s own field recording collection. Lead single “Probably Wizards” was created alongside Wilkes and carries a profoundly fresh sense of time, blurring the edges of the quantized grid and the boundaries of electronic music.

Listen to “Probably Wizards”

Krivchenia’s previous release, 2022’s hyperkinetic Blood Karaoke, was composed mostly from hundreds of tiny samples of unwatched YouTube videos. Performing Belief sees Krivchenia turning from online realms to the natural world. For years, Krivchenia would record his musical encounters with natural objects: performing on a particularly resonant log on a hike, throwing rocks into a pristine pond, tap dancing in the mud. This archive of sounds became the fertile soil out of which the tracks on Performing Belief grew. Having built these rhythmic nests, Wilkes and Abrams bring the presence of a grounding human witness to the undergrowth, providing a centering and even at times melodic voice to the gathering. This rhythmic language, set in Krivchenia’s long-fermenting electronic musical palate, feels like a revelation — it calls back not only to his wonderfully elastic timekeeping behind the kit, but also to his prior work in computer music as well as his deep study of the vast human archive of drumming.

Performing Belief is in good company in the rank and file of the legendary Planet Mu label. From the foundational early releases of the likes of Jega and Venetian Snares, to the contemporary envelope-warping work of Jlin and hundreds of brilliant releases in between, Planet Mu has been a beacon of forward-thinking rhythmic music for decades, informing Krivchenia’s own sense of the weird metaphysics of musical time since he was a kid. Krivchenia’s contribution to this history calls to mind the principle of organic danceability that subtends Mu’s whole catalogue, while bending our sense of rhythm in new and gracious dimensions.

Pre-order Performing Belief

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