Producer and musician Kelly Lee Owens is “reclaiming space for women in dance music in really powerful and important ways” (NPR Music). Last year, she released Inner Song, one of 2020’s best albums, via Smalltown Supersound. Today, she announces a UStour in support of the album — tickets are on sale. Kicking off at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, Owens will play across the states, including appearances at Chicago’s Pitchfork Music Festival and Miami’s III Points Festival. Additionally, she will release the Inner Song Remix Series EP this Friday. It features remixes by Loraine James, Coby Sey, Roza Terenzi, Elkka, Breaka,Yazzus, and Haider.
Kelly Lee Owens Tour Dates Wed. Sept. 8 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg Fri. Sept. 10 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival Sat. Sept. 11 – Philadelphia, PA @ Making Time Mon. Sept. 13 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair Tue. Sept. 14 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage Thu. Sept. 16 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line Fri. Sept. 17 – Denver, CO @ Globe Hall Sat. Sept. 18 – Seattle, WA @ Nuemos Sun. Sept. 19 – Portland, OR @ Holocene Wed. Sept. 22 – Oakland, CA @ Starline Sat. Sept. 25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room Fri. Oct. 22 – Sat. Oct. 23 – Miami, FL @ III Points Festival
With his new album ‘Dragons‘ set for release June 25th via Houndstooth, Throwing Snow is sharing his new single & video “Traveller“, which follows on from previous singles “Brujita“ and “Halos“.
Speaking about the track, Ross Tones, aka Throwing Snow said “The etymology of the word ‘travel’ originates in ‘to toil’ or ‘labour’.In a modern context, movement is easy for some and near impossible for others, so the word still encapsulates this duality. ‘Traveller’ is journey music and was made from recordings loaded on to the SAMPLR app then manipulated and sequenced.”
Throwing Snow’s fourth album is the audiovisually-augmented Dragons, a work that occupies the space between science and ancestral wisdom. It links music back to its prehistoric capacity for transmitting knowledge to new technology that can untangle the complexity of the contemporary world. Dragons’ ten tracks of heavy primal rhythmic productions incorporate the physicality of acoustic sources, from ancient ritual instruments to modern drum kit, and each track is accompanied by visuals generated by machine learning.
Throwing Snow, aka Ross Tones developed Dragons’ neural network with artist, designer and technologist Matt Woodham. The structures and changes in Tones’ music trigger corresponding changes in accompanying moving images, which combine life in three scales, from microscopic views of rocks to large scale maps. “Everything that happens musically triggers the algorithm to do something,” Tones explains. “This isn’t controlled or predictable, and the music becomes an instruction for the algorithm to make its own decisions about datasets, images, speed, movement and other manipulations.”
The tracks on Dragons match Tones’s ambitions for the album in weight but not complexity. They are intentionally dazzlingly simple in their means, for maximum effect, with repeating motifs, locked basslines, cosmic patterns and full-frequency mids. Often built from four or fewer elements, Tones allows sound to accumulate into his unique take on ritual music for the 21st century. Throbbing ritual dances contain half-remembered earworms revealing glittering night skies of synthesizer patterns – ‘Halos’ stabs and stutters like a dance atop a longbarrow; ‘Purr’ reverberates in silky vibrational motifs; the heavyweight ‘Brujita’ is nu-metal for a past-future ceremony of uncertain purpose.
Tones says he often uses his music as allegory and container for the concepts and theories he’s immersed in – he studied astrophysics, and is fascinated by crafts, archeoacoutics, history, evolution and psychology. In Dragons, he wanted to explore the purpose of music from the beginning of human history. “We have Palaeolithic minds but find ourselves in an increasingly complex and interconnected world,” Tones explains. “Music and art have always been ritualised as a tool for memory, knowledge and emotion, and humans make sense of existence by using tools. Songs were tools of understanding, passed down from our ancestors. Now, things are complex and interrelated, so we can’t use that ancestral knowledge, and need to invent new tools – that’s where machine learning comes into it.”
As is typical for Tones’ Throwing Snow project, the album contains a bold and eclectic mix of instruments, from a bodhrán and daf to cello, with their uses rooted in their inherent acoustic properties. Tones also essentially built his own sample pack for the percussion patterns, working with drummer Jack Baker (Bonobo, Kelis, Alice Russell, Planet Battagon) on an intensive two-day session.
Tones is a Houndstooth stalwart, and Dragons is his fourth full-length album on the label, along with a string of 12”s and EPs. His first album was Mosaic in 2014, followed by Embers in 2017, and Loma in 2018. Originally from the North Of England, for the last few years he has worked from The Castle, his studio an hour outside Bristol/Bath, where he can both forage his own food and find the headspace to make music and experiment with modern technology. He is currently recording a new album with his trio Snow Ghosts, and a soundtrack for a Netflix documentary.
Dragons is a new form of inter-disciplinary album, which is neither wholly electronic nor acoustic, sonic or visual, and pulls from an equally diverse range of inspirations, from texts such as Steven Mithin’s The Singing Neanderthals and Margo Neale and Lynn Kell’s Songlines to the 1982 animated film Flight of Dragons. “I’m into putting music back into history,” Tones explains. “I want to make you think about what music is, what its purpose has been. I’m asking about the scientific aspect to folklore and ancient knowledge, and looking at why it’s still useful. This album is a doorway – if you choose to listen like that.”
Alberto Melloni‘s Red SirenEP was already a hot double-shot of house and trance music, and now two remixes of the EP’s title track have been released from Paradise Palm Records.
The first remix, by Berlin’s Local Suicide, bubbles with industrial bass and dark dance club synths. It’s the kind of track that will instantly awaken you from an early morning groggy state (as it did to me) and keeps you bumping and grooving.
The second remix is by Jacuzzi General, and is a great example of his poolside, luxurious, hedonistic style of house and disco. The synth-bass thuds are pretty much made for slow motion videography of glamorous women walking around, lounging in, and making out by a rooftop pool.
It’s good stuff, and Paradise Palms seems to be hitting everything up the middle for at least a double right now.
Museum Of Love – the New York-based duo of Pat Mahoney and Dennis McNany – shares the new single/video, “Marching Orders,” from their forthcoming album, Life Of Mammals, out July 9th on Skint Records. It follows lead single/video “Cluttered World” and their “Cluttered World / Marching Orders (Remixed)” EP featuring remixes by Parrot and Cocker Too and Justin Van Der Volgen. “Marching Orders” starts with an irresistible cowbell driven rhythm track. It builds with a propulsive bass riff, a casually whistled melody, and a whole studio load of chaos. Combined together, it’s a hypnotic musical invitation to join Museum of Love’s carnival procession that’s part Blackstar, part NYC block party and part after hours smash up at Mardi Gras.
The video, featuring footage deconstructed and edited by Shaun MacDonald, “is a hallucinogenic dreamscape describing the collective feelings everyone went through over the last year of the pandemic,” says Museum Of Love. “All of us feeling crammed in our tiny apartments like an elephant in a tiny tea house. Time and reality, not computing for many of us.”
Life Of Mammals is a dizzying swirl of chaotic art rock and metronomic dance music. The creative process for Life Of Mammals was approached like an art project while the lyrics throughout are delightfully elliptical, with a thousand valid interpretations. The album was recorded in bursts between Mahoney’s LCD Soundsystem touring commitments. It has been mixed in its entirety by James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem/DFA) and features guest appearances from legendary saxophonist and Arthur Russell collaborator Peter Gordon (The Love of Life Orchestra) and Matt Shaw.
If you’ve ever imagined what a band influenced by Scott Walker, John Cale, Jonathan Richman, dub, Robert Wyatt, post-punk and Krautrock might sound like, then you might finally have your answer – Museum Of Love. Weird, perhaps, but also enormous knockabout fun, at times approaching their song craft with the bombast of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the outlook of the Marx brothers and matched with the production knowledge of a Basic Channel record. A bewitching combination that rewards repeat listens, it’s doubtful anyone will release a more compelling and beguiling album this year.
Situation Chicago 2 is a fine compilation of Chicago bands and artists, and proceeds go to helping artists and venues affected by the pandemic (which, by the way, is pretty much all of them). The project is part of the CIVL SAVE fund, which needs all the help it can get to support independent music venues throughout the Windy City (full disclosure, some of these venues are my favorite venues in the country).
“Sinistry” by MIIRRORS is a fiery live rock cut with some light goth touches. Robust‘s “Dont Know Why” is a smooth example of Chicago’s vibrant rap scene. The bass line alone on it make impregnate you. Speaking of great example of Chicago’s music culture, Fess Grandiose‘s “Keep the Rhythm Goin'” is a prime one of Chicago house music (a genre that, while popular, still deserves to be better known around the globe). Umphrey’s McGee and Bela Fleck team up on the bouncy and bright “Great American.” Reduxion‘s “The Imperial Boxmen” is sweet funk jazz that will make you want to spin your lover around the room. Speaking of fun, Jeff Park delivers a great instrumental cover of WAR‘s “Slippin’ into Darkness.”
“Drowning” by Neptune’s Core starts side B of the vinyl with strong power-pop hooks. Goth country makes an appearance with The Goddamn Gallows‘ “The Maker.” V.V. Lightbody‘s “Really Do Care” is a slice of dream-pop complete with birdsong and cat’s purr-like guitar. Erin McDougald‘s lovely, sexy “The Parting Glass” is a wonderful exemplar of Chicago’s jazz club scene and makes you want to seek out her live performances.
It’s a good compilation, and proceeds go to a great cause. You can’t miss.
Moon Safari, the classic ambient / house / lounge album by Air (Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin) was pretty much an instant classic as soon as it was released. I remember reading reviews that more or less called it “cool elevator music.” It’s far beyond such a label. It’s a “mood change” record, as in it can change the mood you’re in or the mood of any room in which it’s played.
The opener, “La Femme D’Argent,” with its ultra-smooth hand percussion and keyboards, immediately shifts your brain into a meditative space and should be played in dentist offices around the world. The song is never in a hurry. It’s about a seven-minute groove beamed into your brain from aliens who might be high. The slightly menacing “Sexy Boy” tells a tale of hyper-masculinity and wanting to be “as beautiful as a god.”
“All I Need,” featuring Beth Hirsch on vocals, brings in lovely, almost Spanish, acoustic guitar as Hirsch sings to a perspective lover to let her be a light to him. “Kelly, Watch the Stars!” is mostly an instrumental (the title is repeated multiple times) that combines thick bass, Theremin, and robot vocals. “Talisman” belongs on a movie soundtrack, be it a spy thriller, a sexy comedy, or a sci-fi film.
“Remember” has electro-beats surrounded by ghostly synths as Dunckel and Godin sing about a day in the past. You can’t tell if the day was good or bad or somewhere in between, but I think that’s the point. Ms. Hirsch returns for vocals on “You Make It Easy,” a song with bossa nova touches that tells a lovely tale of love.
“Ce Matin La” reveals Air’s love of Ennio Morricone with its harmonica riffs, subtle trumpet, and, of course, guitar work. “New Star in the Sky (Chanson pour Solal)” is a mellow head-trip and perfect for relaxing on the international space station while you’re circling the Earth every ninety minutes. “Le Voyage de Penelope” closes the album with sultry synths that almost sound like a warped trumpet at first and then become a lush groove track to send you off into euphoric bliss.
Moon Safari is perfectly named because this whole album sounds like it was made in such a place – a hidden jungle deep inside the moon ruled by sexy women and weird creatures.
Scottish producer Sam Gellaitry announces his new EP, IV, out May 14th (digital) and June 11th(vinyl) via the new home to Sam’s own Viewfinder Recordings, FFRR Records/Parlophone, and shares the lead single/video, “Duo.” Between 2015 and 2017, Sam put out three EPs as a series – Escapism, Escapism II, and Escapism III. He’s always used instruments to convey voices – high pitched flute sounds to evoke falsetto sounds and female vocals, for example, or top lines made from melodics. But after taking a break for a few years since the release of his Escapism series, he decided the time was right to start singing on his own music. You can hear this for the first time on IV. Produced, written, vocalized, mixed and mastered by Sam, its name is a subtle nod to the Escapism trilogy and the work he’s released so far. More literally, it’s also called IV because it’s a collection of four songs and four emotions.
Born far away from key electronic music hubs like LA, Glasgow and London, Sam, now 24, grew up in Stirling – an old town in central Scotland that’s rich in medieval history and visually stunning views. Living here led Sam’s older brother to happy hardcore – a kind of hard dance music born from the UK and Europe’s breakbeat and rave scenes – which in turn lead to Sam learning to produce. YouTube granted unfettered access to the world’s electronic scenes, with the array of sounds pushing Sam to pick up production in his early teens. He dove into Daft Punk’s robotic space realm where looped up disco samples reigned supreme and LA producers Samiyam and Flying Lotus were early inspirations. But no matter the genre, one thing remained constant: the idea that music can take your imagination on a voyage through color, place and sound, via combinations of notes.
Sam views the world through palettes of vivid color. A C minor scale becomes purple, plum and grape. C-sharp minor is cool and blue. Night time is best evoked in dark F minor reds and D minor induces rich forest green. His music is a journey through experience, circumstance and surroundings, told through his impressive, synesthesia-informed knowledge of different musical tones. For him, songwriting and producing has always connected to a process of pairing and contrasting different tones – “using the notes to create different sensations – like tension or relief in your head.” In practice, this technique has seen him experiment with high definition club music, crisp hip hop production, dabs of orchestral instrumentation and more.
Lead single “Duo” hones in on the French house music Sam discovered in his early teens. It’s the first track ever that features his voice. Presented with high octane and eclectic visuals, the video directed by Ethan + Tom, transitions rapidly through a scene of animated and inverted clips of Sam before it takes a psychedelic-feeling thrill ride. “It feels like I’m dropping my first ever song. It’s a crazy feeling to go from hiding behind instrumentation to finally finding my voice. It’s super liberating being able to explore more refined soundscapes by using my vocals as the glue. I return to my roots with ‘Duo’ by venturing into a more funk oriented sonic and I’m going to continue to showcase all my past and present tastes that have brought me to this point musically.”
This new phase of Sam’s career is an embrace of his unparalleled and unadulterated passion for creativity. “I’m at an age now where I feel ready to talk and tell people what I’ve experienced in life. It’s perfect timing in that sense,” says Sam. “I’ve done three EPs. I’m at the point now where I’m like – I want all the smoke. Now I’m comfortable singing on my songs, I want to go back to each point in my musical journey and tap into it. I’m using the voice as my anchor, then tapping into other sonics that have influenced me.”
Earlier this year Oakland-based duo Brijean released Feelings, “an album that’s as soothing as it is grand” (Bandcamp). Today, Brijean announces the Feelings Remixes EP coming out August 13th on Ghostly International, and presents the “Moody (Buscabulla Remix).” In addition to the Buscabella remix, the EP extends the relaxed reverie of Feelings with contributions from Sam Gendel, DRAMA, and Rick Wade. Brijean Murphy and Doug Stuart’s deep roots in jazz, pop, electronic and Latin spheres inform the music they make as Brijean, and these influences are reflected in the diverse group of remixers they tapped for this project.
Puerto Rican synth-pop duo Buscabulla accentuate the percussive downtempo flair of “Moody.” Keeping Murphy’s stream-of-consciousness lyrics at the forefront, the polyrhythmic percussion is sparing and, well, moody. Sprinkles of subtle yelps, harp flutters, gauzy synths, and sinuous synth grooves give this rework a unique neo-tropicalia vibe. Murphy elaborates, “I first heard of Buscabulla from a club poster at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn. I was playing at that venue with a band I was touring with around the same time and fell in love with their music. They play with time signatures, levels and expression in an enveloping and inspiring way. They are insanely talented artists and I’m so so stoked to have their lush, experimental and moving touch on our song ‘Moody.’“
Buscabella adds, “We had plans to meet Brijean the next time we swung by San Francisco on tour before the pandemic hit. We love their vibe and doing this remix is as close as we can get to jamming together in the same place. We aimed to deconstruct the original and to explore the point where our separate influences converge. Fusing together the futuristic synthesized drums and bass with organic syncopated Caribbean percussion. Here’s to a jam in real life.”
Buscabilla photo by Quique Cabanillas
Rhythm is the driving force of Feelings; each featured remix plays with that force, adding, subtracting, and altering percussive elements to build a range of sonic environments — true to Brijean’s mission of encouraging uninhibited imagination and new possibilities. Stream “Moody (Buscabulla Remix)”
Just in time to snap you out of your COVID-19 blues, Alberto Melloni‘s two-track EP, Red Siren, brings you plenty of dance beats and synth-bumps to get you moving out of the house, down the street, and to a club or house party (finally!) in order to celebrate your survival and you and your friends being properly vaccinated.
Side A is the title track, and it brings together jungle drums with cyborg synths, chopped-up Middle Eastern chants, and a bass line so subtle it pretty much seduces you before you realize it’s happening.
Side B is “Santa Serenada” – a track that somehow sounds more futuristic than the other with its “underground disco of the future” vibe that brings to mind humans and replicants dancing alongside each other and sipping drinks that glow in the dark. Chants are again used to nice effect, and that bubbling synth-bass is boiling hot.
The whole EP is hot, really. You can’t miss with this one. Mr. Melloni sure didn’t. He hit a home run with it.
Margate-based producer Raven Bush has announced his debut album ‘Fall Into Noise‘ is set for release August 13th via PRAH Recordings. The first single from the record “Start of Something New” is streaming online now.
‘Fall Into The Noise‘ is a record that looks to document living in the moment, allowing listener to find their own meaning in the results and the music to speak for itself, which is testament to Raven’s experimentation with sound and freedom of expression as an artist.
Speaking about this first single, Raven said “‘Start of Something New’ was the first track that was made and completed on ‘Fall Into Noise’. It all emerged from some chords I recorded as a voice note whilst playing the piano at my dad’s house.”
To accept that chaos is constant isn’t easy, but reconciling that idea can result in a sense of freedom. For producer and composer Raven Bush, it’s embracing that things simply are and that you can control only yourself within it that’s allowed him to thrive. Fall Into Noise is his debut LP for PRAH after two previous EPS, and it revels harnessing chaos as a positive, that it creates moments where no one path feels pre-ordained, and that it’s better to engage with what you can’t avoid than attempt a fruitless retreat.
“As a title, Fall Into Noise is about the acceptance of all that you can’t control” Raven explains. “I find it interesting that noise can be disconcerting to one, yet sublime for another. For one person a sound which makes them anxious, makes another aware of something mystical. I’m talking about uncontrollable forces and how we perceive them. A friend was telling me about how the thought of the ocean, with its unstoppable power that everyday just went in and out with the tides, was terrifying. everything just ‘is’ and it’s up to us to decide and embody meaning to it.
Of course it’s easy to say these things, but it’s always good to be reminded, I think.”
Fall Into Noise might be his first LP, but Raven Bush has made a career out of working within chaos, following paths that might not have immediately been there, and subsequently pushing his practice out into diverse fields. As a producer and violinist – an instrument he started playing as a two-year-old – he’s appeared on releases by everyone from Christine & The Queens and Ghostpoet to Kae Tempest. On stage, meanwhile, he’s performed with the likes of Mica Levi and the CURL collective, among many others.
It wouldn’t be right to call Fall Into Noise a culmination of all this – Raven is an artist who thrives on balancing simultaneous projects – but there was a pivotal show that provided the impetus for its creation. Many of the album’s tracks began as music performed last year at Funkhaus in Berlin for a show by choreographer Kiani Del Valle. One of three music producers working on the show, alongside Lotic and Floating Points, the challenge of fitting his music to dance felt like a natural fit and triggered a desire to further document it.
Recorded at his home studio in Margate, before being given a final stem mix by Ghostculture and then mastered by Rupert Clervaux, Fall Into Noise captures Raven’s giddy excitement at crossing this boundary. Rooted in techno, it pulls the fabric of that foundation apart to intertwine it with a rich, colourful sonic palette.
Tracks like opener “Factory of Light” have a breathless rush to them, with the tempo of the entire record rarely dropping below 135-140 BPM. There are moments that surge, and feel like sharp intakes of breath, but there’s also a sense of serenity due to the widescreen atmosphere of the production.
It also comes from his long-held interest in film scoring. In 2020 he worked with director Phillip Karminiak for a Nowness short film titled Cass & Lex, and the tension between the tenderness of his string work and the hard-hitting rhythmic drive of that material is something taken further here. Tracks such as “Start of Something New”’s restless flutter of clean keys and manipulated vocal work, and “The Window” – where everything drops out to leave a yawning chasm flooded with yearning drones and intermittently flickering frequencies – it’s clear this is music written for moving image both real and imagined.
“Something like We Are Made of Stars, too, is an example of a track that in my head has a whole film to it” Raven furthers, citing the record’s third track, which slips in an out of different scenes at break neck speed, from 70’s sci-fi futurism, through crackling percussive clicks and whirrs and mechanical techno, to ascendant strings.
Raven’s strings frequently make an appearance throughout. It is, in many ways, his anchor and main voice given his history; yet despite his extensive string work across multiple projects, here it’s symbolic that on Fall Into Noise he allows it to nudge and compliment rather than hold centre stage. This is a debut album that above all else is about taking a creative leap into the unknown and embracing the horizons that he might find. Finding clarity amongst the chaos.
“I think everyone has something absolutely unique about them, you just need to keep carving away till you find the essence of what you want to say” Raven finishes. “For me I feel like this record is the first layer of that process.”
