Immaterial Possession - Violent Vickie - AMJ Collective - Casual Fan - banfi - Nichole Wagner
The first track from Immaterial Possession forthcoming album is 'Midnight Wander' and it's accompanied by a suitably matched video as the bands dramatic doom-dance quickly demands more than a little attention. === Los Angeles based Violent Vickie releases 'Circle Square' today, where sweeping synths glide over techno/electro beats as the shimmering vocals drift in and out. === AMJ Collective have shared their extended single 'Earth Is Calling' where instrumental reggae and some fabulous dub music shine beautifully. === Casual Fan just released 'Runners' a melodic indie song which exudes natural personal feeling through the vocals. === The brand new album from banfi entitled 'Colour Waits In The Dark' is an absolute feast of wonderful music and is streaming in full below. Creative and superbly delivered musical ideas cover considerable ground on what is a really fine album, one to take time out for. === Nichole Wagner releases her new E.P 'Dance Songs For the Apocalypse' with five distinctly different songs Nichole covers a lot of musical ground her consistently fine vocals keeping the overall feel together, this is a high quality collection.
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Immaterial Possession - Midnight Wander.
Midnight Wander is an energetic, doom-dance song, navigating the throws of impending earthly catastrophe, not without an uplifting shimmering view through the dark clouds.
Immaterial Possession was conceived by Atlanta natives, Cooper Holmes and Madeline Polites, whom share a history of the underground DIY Atlanta music, theater, and arts scene. The duo moved to Athens and was soon granted the seasoned drummer, John Spiegel, and eventually fulfilled with Kiran Jeremy Fernandes (keyboards, clarinets, flutes)- descendant of Elephant 6's beloved John Fernandes (Circulatory System, Olivia Tremor Control, Cloud Recordings).
All members bring forth a spectral hue unique to the ear- with Holmes' dark and driving punk-rooted base interwoven with Spiegel's vast repertoire of drumming artistry and sacral ardor. Polites, inspired by the musical scales of the Greeks and Spanish, weaves from her haunting bedroom classical guitar and transposes to a grittier electric. Fernandes' hands dance fearlessly along the keyboard as well as clarinet, offering windows into far away eastern lands as a light in the looming darkness.
The group's vocal charm is shared by both Holmes and Polites, tying the dynamic of the band into an intricate bow- sometimes in relatable rawness, other times by billowing operatic impulses. All together they create a sort of entrancement exclaimed as distinctly rare. "Immaterial Possession", the debut LP to be released on Cloud Recordings, is as much a visual journey as auditory. With Holmes, Polites, and Fernandes all sharing ties to surreal and abstract theater, each song on the album creates a distinct 'world' of impression and mystery.
The album commences with the apocalyptic fury of "Midnight Wander" to "See Through Stares"- the catching pop tale of altering the past through the present. It takes you through the psychedelic landscapes of "In the Loom", the hallucinatory darkness of "Accidental Summoning", towards the final 'Night Cap'- a soft, but inescapable ushering into the depths of the ancestral dream state. Cover tin-type by Salvage Sparrow.
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Violent Vickie - Circle Square.
Los Angeles-based Dark Synth-Riot artist Violent Vickie, is launching her latest track “Circle Square" today.
After being featured in EDM Joy, Brutal Resonance, and Fresh on the Net for her music video/single "Serotonin", Violent Vickie returns with "Circle Square", a gloomy, noisy electronic track with forlorn and haughty vocals that explores the illusion of not belonging. The second single from her upcoming Division LP, Circle Square is a mix of techno/electro beats and noisy synth texture, reminiscent of the dark techno tunes Vickie partied to at Oakland warehouse parties.
Violent Vickie is a Los Angeles based Dark Synth-Riot artist consisting of Vickie and co-producer/recording guitarist E. Vickie has toured with Hanin Elias of Atari Teenage Riot and supported Jessie Evans (The Vanishing), Trans X, Them Are Us Too, Aimon & The Missing Persons.
Her track "The Wolf“ was featured in a National Organization for Women film and she was interviewed for the documentary “GRRRL”, part of the museum exhibit “Alien She”. Her LP "Monster Alley” was voted best album by KALX and her tracks have been remixed by 25+ artists. Violent Vickie’s “Division” LP will be out in the fall of 2020 on Crunch Pod.
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AMJ Collective - Earth Is Calling.
Earth is Calling is a powerful instrumental lamenting the state of our planet with an uplifting call for a wiser, positive future. It was recorded live in the studio with the band.
The mixes feature once more the skills of Rob Smith at the controls. This tune will grow, there are more versions to come (including vocals), but we thought we’d share what we have with you right now and send some good energy out to the world. - Bless. AMJ
Led by producer John Hollis, the AMJ Collective is a group of musicians, thinkers and creators originating from the UK, Jamaica, Cuba, Colombia and Africa.
AMJ have been releasing fresh, modern dub tracks since 2011, steadily building a solid reputation for an original sound. Their first album, Sky Blue Love, a collaboration with dub maestro Rob Smith (RSD, Smith & Mighty), came out in 2016 to wide acclaim across the world. This was followed in 2017 with the Believe album. Now they embark on the 2020 Series, a collection of their latest recordings.
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Casual Fan - Runners.
It’s early March and you’re sitting in your car at a lookout on top of the ocean, looking down on the beaches you grew up on, thinking about a city you’re moving to and already missing the people you won’t get to see all the time.
You stay there a while and it gets to 6:30pm and cos of daylight savings it’s still light outside. The surfers are still all out there, and the sun setting over the hill shoots beams into the blue and orange haze and it’s like everything stands still, just for a moment.
Recorded in Cairns in late 2019 by Mark Myers (The Middle East) and mixed by Tim Fitz (Middle Kids), “Runners” is a song about the slow jog of life, and the rare moments you get to sit and watch it all run by.
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banfi - Colour Waits In The Dark (album).
Having relocated from North West England to South Wales via Edinburgh, Cornwall, Sheffield and 6 years in London, Joe Banfi has settled amongst the stark beauty of the Gower Peninsula. He entirely self-produced and recorded the album here, before heading to Eastcote Studios in London to mix the record with Eliot James (Two Door Cinema Club, Noah & The Whale).
Thus far 2 singles have been released from the album - the summertime-reckoning pop-hooks of ‘So Bright’ and the hypnotically addictive ‘Always Goodbye’.
Talking about these tracks and the album, Joe explains "Time and natural landscapes in relation to how I feel... I'm just trying to weave these things together for the listener... love and the passing of love among ancient things. Time and love entwined with the blood in the sky blessing my heart and the shells down on the beach that will go on sighing without me.
I've tried to voice a kind of void-fear amongst hope... John Keats’ gravestone (“Here lies one whose name was writ in water”) evokes a dread of time leaving each moment behind in a centreless dark, like goodbyes written on pages that'll one day float away.
But then there are no real grounds for believing that an afterlife, or lack of one, is any more eternal or real than the fact that you have once existed and always will have, forever in the past. We tend to project our linear view of time onto death, and maybe that's a mistaken view of the world. For me these answerless trails of thought create a flowing, bird-in-the-wind feeling of surrender to the force of time that I’ve tried to capture”.
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Nichole Wagner - Dance Songs For the Apocalypse (E.P).
Born and raised in the small town of Louviers, Colorado, Nichole Wagner grew up with a love of music and an extraordinary voice, but she had no way to really share her passion with the world. “I grew up writing song lyrics and wanting to be a musician, but I didn’t really play an instrument,” she says, “so that was a problem.”
At eighteen Nichole moved to Arizona to study journalism at Arizona State University, a career path that would offer a steady paycheck while also allowing her to indulge her love of photography. But she found that it’s not so easy to let go of a dream.
“I wanted to be Stevie Nicks,” she laughs, “but I had no idea how to start playing music out in public, and I still didn’t play an instrument with any degree of skill.” So I put that dream up on a shelf and said ‘well that’s probably a thing I’m not going to get to do.’”
After college, she moved to Austin, where she photographed the music scene and wrote articles from the sidelines. But the dream refused to die, and one day she found herself onstage at an open mic. She started writing new songs, learned to play guitar, and like wildfire the long-buried dream flared back to life.
In 2018 Nichole’s first album, And the Sky Caught Fire, was released, a terrific collection of country-rock that balances commerciality and integrity. It earned high praise from none other than Americana sage and No Depression magazine founder Peter Blackstock, who wrote in the Austin-American Statesman, “Wagner’s first full-length record establishes her as one of Austin’s most promising young singer-songwriters.”
Her new EP, Dance Songs for the Apocalypse, is another great leap forward. The first single, a funky, soulful take on the Talking Heads’ Life During Wartime, is a stunner: a deep and danceable track that takes David Byrne’s dystopian vision one step further and highlights Wagner’s abilities as an interpreter as she takes the song into deeper and darker territory. Those interpretive skills show themselves again in an intimate and mournful eight-minute take on Neil Young’s Ambulance Blues, a gorgeous piano and violin trip through sadness and reflection. Yet somehow none of it comes off as doom and gloom. There is the triumph of Better Son and Daughter, which starts off with an acoustic guitar and Wagner’s front porch delivery, but then builds as the band comes in, gathering steam and force. Finally, Bird Set Free shows off an electric piano and strings and carries you off to an ethereal and poignant place.
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Midnight Wander is an energetic, doom-dance song, navigating the throws of impending earthly catastrophe, not without an uplifting shimmering view through the dark clouds.
Immaterial Possession was conceived by Atlanta natives, Cooper Holmes and Madeline Polites, whom share a history of the underground DIY Atlanta music, theater, and arts scene. The duo moved to Athens and was soon granted the seasoned drummer, John Spiegel, and eventually fulfilled with Kiran Jeremy Fernandes (keyboards, clarinets, flutes)- descendant of Elephant 6's beloved John Fernandes (Circulatory System, Olivia Tremor Control, Cloud Recordings).
All members bring forth a spectral hue unique to the ear- with Holmes' dark and driving punk-rooted base interwoven with Spiegel's vast repertoire of drumming artistry and sacral ardor. Polites, inspired by the musical scales of the Greeks and Spanish, weaves from her haunting bedroom classical guitar and transposes to a grittier electric. Fernandes' hands dance fearlessly along the keyboard as well as clarinet, offering windows into far away eastern lands as a light in the looming darkness.
The group's vocal charm is shared by both Holmes and Polites, tying the dynamic of the band into an intricate bow- sometimes in relatable rawness, other times by billowing operatic impulses. All together they create a sort of entrancement exclaimed as distinctly rare. "Immaterial Possession", the debut LP to be released on Cloud Recordings, is as much a visual journey as auditory. With Holmes, Polites, and Fernandes all sharing ties to surreal and abstract theater, each song on the album creates a distinct 'world' of impression and mystery.
The album commences with the apocalyptic fury of "Midnight Wander" to "See Through Stares"- the catching pop tale of altering the past through the present. It takes you through the psychedelic landscapes of "In the Loom", the hallucinatory darkness of "Accidental Summoning", towards the final 'Night Cap'- a soft, but inescapable ushering into the depths of the ancestral dream state. Cover tin-type by Salvage Sparrow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Los Angeles-based Dark Synth-Riot artist Violent Vickie, is launching her latest track “Circle Square" today.
After being featured in EDM Joy, Brutal Resonance, and Fresh on the Net for her music video/single "Serotonin", Violent Vickie returns with "Circle Square", a gloomy, noisy electronic track with forlorn and haughty vocals that explores the illusion of not belonging. The second single from her upcoming Division LP, Circle Square is a mix of techno/electro beats and noisy synth texture, reminiscent of the dark techno tunes Vickie partied to at Oakland warehouse parties.
Violent Vickie is a Los Angeles based Dark Synth-Riot artist consisting of Vickie and co-producer/recording guitarist E. Vickie has toured with Hanin Elias of Atari Teenage Riot and supported Jessie Evans (The Vanishing), Trans X, Them Are Us Too, Aimon & The Missing Persons.
Her track "The Wolf“ was featured in a National Organization for Women film and she was interviewed for the documentary “GRRRL”, part of the museum exhibit “Alien She”. Her LP "Monster Alley” was voted best album by KALX and her tracks have been remixed by 25+ artists. Violent Vickie’s “Division” LP will be out in the fall of 2020 on Crunch Pod.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earth is Calling is a powerful instrumental lamenting the state of our planet with an uplifting call for a wiser, positive future. It was recorded live in the studio with the band.
The mixes feature once more the skills of Rob Smith at the controls. This tune will grow, there are more versions to come (including vocals), but we thought we’d share what we have with you right now and send some good energy out to the world. - Bless. AMJ
Led by producer John Hollis, the AMJ Collective is a group of musicians, thinkers and creators originating from the UK, Jamaica, Cuba, Colombia and Africa.
AMJ have been releasing fresh, modern dub tracks since 2011, steadily building a solid reputation for an original sound. Their first album, Sky Blue Love, a collaboration with dub maestro Rob Smith (RSD, Smith & Mighty), came out in 2016 to wide acclaim across the world. This was followed in 2017 with the Believe album. Now they embark on the 2020 Series, a collection of their latest recordings.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s early March and you’re sitting in your car at a lookout on top of the ocean, looking down on the beaches you grew up on, thinking about a city you’re moving to and already missing the people you won’t get to see all the time.
You stay there a while and it gets to 6:30pm and cos of daylight savings it’s still light outside. The surfers are still all out there, and the sun setting over the hill shoots beams into the blue and orange haze and it’s like everything stands still, just for a moment.
Recorded in Cairns in late 2019 by Mark Myers (The Middle East) and mixed by Tim Fitz (Middle Kids), “Runners” is a song about the slow jog of life, and the rare moments you get to sit and watch it all run by.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Having relocated from North West England to South Wales via Edinburgh, Cornwall, Sheffield and 6 years in London, Joe Banfi has settled amongst the stark beauty of the Gower Peninsula. He entirely self-produced and recorded the album here, before heading to Eastcote Studios in London to mix the record with Eliot James (Two Door Cinema Club, Noah & The Whale).
Thus far 2 singles have been released from the album - the summertime-reckoning pop-hooks of ‘So Bright’ and the hypnotically addictive ‘Always Goodbye’.
Talking about these tracks and the album, Joe explains "Time and natural landscapes in relation to how I feel... I'm just trying to weave these things together for the listener... love and the passing of love among ancient things. Time and love entwined with the blood in the sky blessing my heart and the shells down on the beach that will go on sighing without me.
I've tried to voice a kind of void-fear amongst hope... John Keats’ gravestone (“Here lies one whose name was writ in water”) evokes a dread of time leaving each moment behind in a centreless dark, like goodbyes written on pages that'll one day float away.
But then there are no real grounds for believing that an afterlife, or lack of one, is any more eternal or real than the fact that you have once existed and always will have, forever in the past. We tend to project our linear view of time onto death, and maybe that's a mistaken view of the world. For me these answerless trails of thought create a flowing, bird-in-the-wind feeling of surrender to the force of time that I’ve tried to capture”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Born and raised in the small town of Louviers, Colorado, Nichole Wagner grew up with a love of music and an extraordinary voice, but she had no way to really share her passion with the world. “I grew up writing song lyrics and wanting to be a musician, but I didn’t really play an instrument,” she says, “so that was a problem.”
At eighteen Nichole moved to Arizona to study journalism at Arizona State University, a career path that would offer a steady paycheck while also allowing her to indulge her love of photography. But she found that it’s not so easy to let go of a dream.
“I wanted to be Stevie Nicks,” she laughs, “but I had no idea how to start playing music out in public, and I still didn’t play an instrument with any degree of skill.” So I put that dream up on a shelf and said ‘well that’s probably a thing I’m not going to get to do.’”
After college, she moved to Austin, where she photographed the music scene and wrote articles from the sidelines. But the dream refused to die, and one day she found herself onstage at an open mic. She started writing new songs, learned to play guitar, and like wildfire the long-buried dream flared back to life.
In 2018 Nichole’s first album, And the Sky Caught Fire, was released, a terrific collection of country-rock that balances commerciality and integrity. It earned high praise from none other than Americana sage and No Depression magazine founder Peter Blackstock, who wrote in the Austin-American Statesman, “Wagner’s first full-length record establishes her as one of Austin’s most promising young singer-songwriters.”
Her new EP, Dance Songs for the Apocalypse, is another great leap forward. The first single, a funky, soulful take on the Talking Heads’ Life During Wartime, is a stunner: a deep and danceable track that takes David Byrne’s dystopian vision one step further and highlights Wagner’s abilities as an interpreter as she takes the song into deeper and darker territory. Those interpretive skills show themselves again in an intimate and mournful eight-minute take on Neil Young’s Ambulance Blues, a gorgeous piano and violin trip through sadness and reflection. Yet somehow none of it comes off as doom and gloom. There is the triumph of Better Son and Daughter, which starts off with an acoustic guitar and Wagner’s front porch delivery, but then builds as the band comes in, gathering steam and force. Finally, Bird Set Free shows off an electric piano and strings and carries you off to an ethereal and poignant place.
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