New Orleans’ modern torchbearers of funk, Dumpstaphunk returns to the fray with their new single “Let’s Do It” out now on all digital platforms. An infectious gumbo of collective empowerment, the song marks one of the band’s final recordings with late bassist Nick Daniels III and is Dumpstaphunk’s first studio release since his April 2024 passing.
Ivan Neville shares of the new single: “This song expresses the concept of 'We' is more powerful than 'Me.' If we combine our strengths, talents and ideas we can accomplish more. It’s also one of the last songs written and recorded with our brother and co-founder Nick Daniels III, who passed away last spring. As we celebrate his life with this song, we move into a new era of Dumpstaphunk so… Let’s do it!!”
“Let’s Do It” takes off with bright, percussive horns and sticky basslines that reel in the listener from the jump. Keyboardist Ivan Neville and bassist Tony Hall trade off lead vocals throughout the opening verses, followed by multi-harmony choruses that coalesce into a powerful groove. A third of the way in, the gospel-like voice of the late founding member and bassist Daniels proclaims “I’m good, together we’re great,” in a poignant moment for fans.
Other special guest vocalists include long-time friend and Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Ani DiFranco, and Dumpstaphunk’s newest addition Viveca Hawkins. Infectious horn arrangements by band members Alex Wasily on trombone and Ashlin Parker on trumpet, with additional appearances by Brad Walker on tenor saxophone and Stephen Lands on trumpet, weave throughout the song to create one of Dumpstaphunk’s most poignant singles to date. ============================================================================
Kacimi & Mécréance - Ne comprennent rien.
Kacimi teams up with La Mécréance and unveils a new garage rock single with 60's vibes, "Ne comprennent rien."
With everything going on in the world lately, it’s safe to say no one understands anything anymore. And if you were hoping for Kacimi to guide you through the chaos—think again. The Franco-Swiss artist puts his dreamy pop aside and teams up with La Mécréance to hit us with a jolt of raw energy through their punchy garage rock single, "Ne comprennent rien".
With biting lyrics and raw energy, Kacimi and La Mécréance channel their frustration into an electrifying anthem, expressing their indignation at the complacency in the face of a world on the brin.
Ellen & Simona - All I Need is to Cry on Your Shoulder.
Great Canyon Records, the label behind Joana Serrat and the band Riders of the Canyon, is pleased to announce the signing of Ellen & Simona, the indie-folk project of Catalan-born Helena Capdevila. To mark this occasion, Ellen & Simona are releasing the music video for the song "All I Need is to Cry on Your Shoulder".
Under the name Ellen & Simona, Helena Capdevila invites us on an intimate and melodic journey, where her accordion, Simona, acts as a second voice.
After two years in UK, where she developed her career as Helen, she returns to her homeland in western Catalonia with a suitcase full of songs and a unique universe. This return takes shape in her first EP, Salvation Mountain (2023, self-released), a work of North American folk-rock sound and existentialist lyricism that captivates from the first beat.
Now, Ellen & Simona present the lyric video for "All I Need is to Cry on Your Shoulder", a song included in their EP Open Water (2024) —a work that anticipates their debut album, scheduled for 2025, to be released through Great Canyon Records.
Steven Troch Band releases new single "The Mountain" from upcoming New Album.
A mountain can be beautiful and haunting at the same time. Driven by a pulsating rhythm, the climber is pursuing the unattainable. A noble goal, but it can also make him a victim of unachievable expectations.
This single announces Steven Troch Band's fourth studio album. ‘The Dawning’ will be released on April 25, 2025 on CD, vinyl and digital services worldwide.
Theatrical indie-pop band, Bandits on the Run, release their first single of 2025, “Let's Go Below,” on February 5, 2025. The next night, they kick off a string of tour dates supporting The Wood Brothers.
Known for their distinct combination of cello, guitar, accordion and found-percussion with sophisticated three-part harmonies and rotating lead vocals, the trio of Adrian Blake Enscoe (he/they), Sydney Shepherd (she/her) and Regina Strayhorn (she/her) sprang from a chance encounter while busking in NYC's bustling subways. “Anyone who knows us knows we're no strangers to the subways-- our band was forged busking on the train platforms of New York City," says Enscoe.
The Brooklyn-based outfit burst onto the national stage in 2019 when their song, “Love in the Underground,” was featured on the NPR Tiny Desk Contest's Top Shelf. After recording their 2021 EP, Now Is The Time, with producer Ryan Hadlock (Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers), the Bandits took to the screen, devising a short musical film, Band At The End Of The World, commissioned by Prospect Musicals. Since then, they have continued to explore the nexus of indie-folk and theatrical storytelling, composing music for the Netflix animated series, Storybots, scoring the movie, The Same Storm, adapting several songs from texts by William Shakespeare for a production of As You Like It, receiving an NEA grant for a new musical with Prospect Musicals, all the while touring the globe with appearances at the Cambridge Folk Festival, Floydfest, Summerfest Milwaukee, Americanafest, F1 Singapore Grand Prix, Mile of Music, and the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival.
Bristol-based alt-rock two-piece Pollyanna Blue are pleased to announce the release of their upcoming debut studio EP ‘Trials and Tribulations’ on June 23rd 2023.
Formed in the summer of 2019, Pollyanna Blue is led by Zoe Collins (guitar and vocals) and Rich Earle (Bass and vocals). Although based in different cities, the pandemic forced the band to really utilise the digital age, writing tracks back and forth online before travelling to Bristol to complete them in person.
Their name was inspired by a self help book ‘Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway’, which talks about a nickname ‘Pollyanna’, typically given to a person who is deemed overly optimistic. That ethos, blended with the waves of difficult emotions life throws at you, creates a concept of musical juxtaposition within a 90s/00s alt rock atmosphere which sees the duo wield their self discovery, vulnerability and love of music to create something authentic and raw to connect with anyone experiencing some type of hardship.
Following up on the April release of their latest celebrated single Stray, comes their debut studio EP Trials & Tribulations, recorded with Ash Scott (Memorist, Harper, Aniimalia). The title of the EP was inspired by personal and abstract experiences, from the trials of being in a band that started right before a pandemic, to the personal tribulations of battling with your own mental health.
Ariana Delawari is an Afghan-American musician, activist and filmmaker. Her film We Came Home (2013) documents her family, her travels to and from Afghanistan over a ten year period, in which Delawari recorded her first album. That album, Lion of Panjshir, was released on David Lynch’s record label to great acclaim.
The events that transpired during the recording of her new album, I Will Remember, were even more personally significant and traumatic, as Delawari’s mother and brother-in-law both passed away and she saw her home country fall to the Taliban. Delawari explains:
“I started to write about my mother, about living and dying, Earth and Heaven, Afghanistan and my life growing up in America, refugees, love of different forms, and about the social justice and environmental justice themes that my mom taught me about which shaped my own activism as well. I never could have imagined that COVID-19 would hit a few months before she died, and that I would lose her during quarantine. I’ll never forget the day I wheeled her up to a nurse in a hazmat suit at a sidewalk and couldn’t even kiss her goodbye.”
“I never could have imagined that just as I was finishing the album, a little over a year later, we Afghans would lose Afghanistan to the Taliban. Afghanistan is my whole heart, it is the cause of my entire lifetime and all of my activism. I am a very loud anti-Taliban Peace Activist, so the fall of the country was my biggest nightmare coming true.”
Ora Cogan has announced the August 25 release of her new album Formless via Prism Tongue Records. Along with the announcement the cinematic singer-songwriter shares the VHS/Super 8 video for the first single “Cowgirl”, a haunted acid trip of intense sorrow, deep solitude, and dark nights of the soul.
“Cowgirl” is a psychedelic, country slow jam reckoning with social isolation in grief. The ghostly guitar lines blanket ethereal vocals to create a twilight landscape of deep solitude, setting the stage for show work or a saloon brawl.
Formless, finds beauty, absurdity, humor, and unlikely joy in the bleakest of times. Cogan’s smoky, psychedelic approach to gothic country and hazy folk merges with post-punk, groove, psych rock, and traditional balladry. With a singular voice as much sensation as sound, Ora Cogan seeks out new realities within the smoke-and-mirrors labyrinth of our cruel society.
“Writing this album was a very much a lifeline… transformative and healing,” Cogan recalled. “Re-calibrating an internal compass constantly thrown off by the magnetism of a deranged world.”
Raised by a photographer and a singer-songwriter on the islands of Canada’s Pacific coast, where she once again resides, Cogan shaped her approach to music far from big-city scenes. Her childhood home played host to a constant stream of artists as it served as a professional recording studio. Cogan absorbed a myriad of influences from Édith Piaf, Ladino and Rumbetico to Karen Dalton, and American country blues, all feeding into her glacial and cinematic yet tinglingly intimate sound.
Known for their vivacious performance style, genre-defying sound, soaring harmonies, and ability to make music-magic happen everywhere from subway platforms to concert halls, Bandits on the Run kick off a tour with the release of “Radio” and an appearance at Milwaukee Summerfest, opening for Deer Tick and The Avett Brothers.
Formed upon a chance encounter while busking in the subways of New York City, Bandits on the Run have become modern troubadours, the flower children of the digital age. The Brooklyn-based indie-pop-Americana trio is anchored by three-part harmonies and eclectic instrumentation, including accordion, cello, melodica, and a suitcase-kick-drum. Since their first release, 2017’s, The Criminal Record, they’ve received accolades from NPR Music’s All Songs Considered, American Songwriter, NPR Weekend Edition, and the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project. Their most recent EP, 2021’s Now Is The Time, was produced by Ryan Hadlock (Brandi Carlile, The Lumineers). This year has seen a new phase in Banditry, with band members Adrian Enscoe, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn jointly producing their own recordings for the first time.
“‘Radio’ was written at a time when I felt like I was living in a funhouse mirror... I was dealing with intense feelings of anxiety, dissociation, and dread about the state of the world and the state of my place in it. Many songwriters talk about songwriting as therapy, and I suppose that's true in this case, though it felt a bit more like expelling demons -- and does simultaneously reveling and revolting in your own inner world of absurdity count as a coping mechanism? Who's to say? I do know the bones of this song poured out of me all at once, and afterward, I felt lighter, freer,” Shepherd says. “I shared it with Adrian and Regina the very day it was born, and their brilliant care and thoughts and arrangements crafted it into the beautiful wild entity it is today. We've performed this song out many times (after I got over the weirdness of singing a Bandits song without a cello in my hand), and many folks have come up to us after shows and expressed a kinship with this song, and gratitude for giving a safe space to work out some darkness and dance with their own skeletons.”
Jillette Johnson shares “Forgive Her,” the latest single off her forthcoming album It’s a Beautiful Day and I Love You (out February 12). Striking an intimately reflective tone, "Forgive Her" is a meditation on breaking cycles that asks us to show compassion and acceptance towards ourselves and others. Audiofemme featured the track this morning, saying “The song opens with gentle chanting and piano chords that pull at your heartstrings, then escalates into angelic singing reminiscent of a parent teaching a child.”
"This song was inspired by the complicated dynamics of mother-daughter relationships, and the importance of generational healing,” explains Johnson. “It’s about nurturing and embracing the hurt parts of ourselves, and recognizing that we are all just little kids trying to connect with each other and feel ok.”
Produced by Joe Pisapia and written entirely by Jillette, It’s a Beautiful Day and I Love You injects her intimate, piano-written songs with irreverent lyrics, buoyant pop melodies and a shot of guitar-driven, alt-rock muscle. The album has already garnered early acclaim from American Songwriter, Refinery29 and Rolling Stone, who describes the debut single “I Shouldn’t Go Anywhere” as “a spaced-out trip that recalls Harry Nilsson or Elton John at his most decadent.” Johnson has released three other singles – a rollicking ode to exes named “Annie,” an irreverent meditation on acceptance aptly titled “What Would Jesus Do” and a kiss-off to past relationships called “Graveyard Boyfriend.”
At the end of 2020, Johnson shared the first two songs from her upcoming OurVinyl session, including a haunting rendition of the Oasis classic “Champagne Supernova” as well as a stirring performance of “I Shouldn’t Go Anywhere.” She also recently launched her “Artist Brain” interview series, featuring intimate acoustic performances and conversations with other artists including Jaime Wyatt, Molly Parden, Aaron Lee Tasjan and Elle Varner. Airing live on her Instagram every other Thursday, Johnson welcomes Maggie Rose for the next episode (1/21), with more guests to be announced.
The first single, "Fast One," from Lafayette, Louisiana musician Renée Reed's self-titled debut album due March 26, 2021 via Keeled Scales, has just been shared.
Self-labeled "dream-fi folk from the Cajun prairies," Renée released her first two songs in 2020-- "Out Loud" in May and "Until Tomorrow" in July, which Gorilla vs. Bear described as "an effortless, inspired union of the haunting folk music that Reed was raised on and a lilting, lost '60s French-pop gem."
Renée's statement on "Fast One" and her album:
"Full of anger over the shallow, shitty behavior of certain acquaintances I’ve had over the last few years, people who assume they know more about me than I do. But I leave things open to change and growth."
"This album is a collection of songs about toxic relationships, seeing ghosts, ancestral baggage and blessings, and daydreaming about love. It is about certain feelings and experiences I’ve had over my life coming to fruition in the past three years. It was all made on a four track recorder at home, in a place and in a way I feel most natural, and I believe that quality comes through in the sound."
Still Corners will release their 5th album on 22nd January. Following on from the huge acclaim they have received for their previously shared singles ‘Crying’ and the record’s title-track, Still Corners have now released ‘White Sands’ from their highly-anticipated fifth album THE LAST EXIT, out on 22nd January 2021 via Wrecking Light Records.
A desert-noir soundtrack in miniature, ‘White Sands’ tells a classic ghost story of a phantom who roams the dunes and highways scaring travellers as they cross the land. Tessa Murray croons over a quick beat, clean-tone guitar and shimmering atmospherics.
The Last Exit will be the 5th album from Still Corners after a 13-year career that started back on Sub Pop Records in 2007.
Indie-rock singer-songwriter and pianist Rob Kovacs debuts the new single, “Bitter Memory.” The song is the latest offering from Kovacs’ forthcoming solo debut album, Let Go, to be released on February 12th. With its ambitious compositional palette and hauntingly potent songcraft, the album affirms Kovacs as a fully focused and steadfast artist, evincing a commitment and creative persistence rarely seen in our ever more short attention span society.
Let Go tells the story of one relationship, in chronological order. “The songs are about love, longing, loss, desire, confusion, acceptance, pain, the struggle to let go – all that fun stuff,” Kovacs states. “Bitter Memory” concludes the album, and reflects the struggle to move on. It was written after Kovacs received an email from the ex-love that inspired the album. “Every so often she’d reach out and it’d bring me right me back. I felt weak and powerless and, in turn, angry. The reality though, which I didn’t want to admit, was I still longed for her. Seeing and reading her messages felt good. I still hadn’t let go.” Musically, the song has a different feel from the rest of the album, complete with being in a different key, indicating that things have changed over time. “There is no chorus,” Kovacs elaborates. “Just a repeating pattern of chords that last longer and get more intense with each repetition until reaching a boiling point and release and ending in the soft, resigned ending.”
Named “Best Pianist/Keyboardist” by the Cleveland Free Times, Kovacs has been widely hailed for his shape-shifting musical experimentalism, spanning history-making classical feats and audacious recreations of videogame soundtracks to crafting mesmerizing indie rock both as bandleader and now, at long last, solo artist. Kovacs has invested more than a decade in the creation of this solo debut, a brave and bittersweet song cycle written in the years following an intensely impactful romantic relationship and then recorded over an even longer span.
Bandits on the Run, the NYC-based indie-pop trio anchored by three-part harmonies and unique instrumentation, announce their forthcoming EP, Now Is The Time, dropping 5/7/2021, with the release of the new single, “We Battle Giants".
In 2020, the Bandits were poised for some of their biggest performances yet - as official SXSW artists, as well as at The Kennedy Center in DC and New York’s Webster Hall - and vocalist/guitarist Adrian Blake Enscoe was slated to appear in Swept Away, the musical based on the music of The Avett Brothers. Like most of the world, they saw their plans quickly deconstructed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
However, in true Bandit style, they immediately started looking for ways to find the silver living. “As Bandits, we’ve always tried to be bearers of light, positivity, and community,” explains Regina Strayhorn (vocals, accordion, melodica, assorted toy instruments). So, after sequestering themselves in North Carolina finalizing new material, they took a socially-distanced road trip west to record at the famed Bear Creek Studio in Washington State, with producer Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Brandi Carlile, Vance Joy).
“Having Bandits on the Run out to Bear Creek Studio was a really wonderful experience,” Hadlock says. “Their songwriting and interwoven vocal harmonies are beautiful and inspiring. Working with the Bandits on these songs during the pandemic this summer was definitely a bright spot in an otherwise difficult and dark year.” Of this latest single, he continues, “When I heard the demo for ‘We Battle Giants,’ I was like, ‘PLEASE let me produce that song.’ I just love the way their three voices lock in during the chorus. The Bandits are a powerful and inspiring colorful trio of magic.”
Locks return to Beehive Candy for a seventh time with their latest release 'In The City'. The bands creativity is notable in pretty much anything they record, this time they have shared a simmering alt folk song with bags of atmosphere and a very addictive vibe.
From The Cordial Sinswe have their new single 'Cruel'. I was hoping to share the video for it, but it's still unlisted as I write, nonetheless this is a gorgeous and melodic alt pop song that is released today.
Ex Norwegian have shared'Life' along with a video that brings out the psychedelic feel of this fabulous and somewhat sixties orientated rocker. The band may have been around for a while, but they are still putting out some really fine new songs.
Our second feature for The Be Positives this time we have 'She's The Girl' and boy does it contrast with the last song. This time the melodic vocals lead with a toned down rock backdrop, last time they were belting it out in full garage rock mode, either way they are good.
Just four weeks after sharing the video for 'Hear Me' Dominic Sen returns with 'What It Is'. Her vocals are distinct and melodic on this beautifully arranged and somewhat gentler piece, and the hooks slowly dig in deep.
With a 360 degree video to immerse yourself in Bandits On The Run present The Ballad of Bonnie Jean (Live at the Safehouse). The trio serve up some feisty live roots music, putting us right in the centre.
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Locks - In The City.
LOCKS are a London based alt-folk band, made up of L.Geary-Griffin (lead vocal / guitar), Mike Byrne (double bass), Marian McClenaghan (fiddle) and Andrew Marvell (drums).
In The City is the third track taken from the folk-noir quartettes debut album Skeletal Blues. It contains their signature traits which the band have honed over time, shuffle-esq tribal drums, rumbling bass lines, fiddle hooks throughout and story-telling fables.
“This song, simply put, is all about revenge. You’ll get what you deserve no matter what.” L. Geary-Griffin. “The fiddle part was made to sound like a siren echoing a warning ‘don’t come into the city tonight’” Marian McClenaghan.
The B-side to In The City is a remix of Teeth from their debut EP Rattle Them Bones! By Stos Goneos of Zambian swamp-blues brother duo Bite The Buffalo In The City & Teeth remix available as digital download September 6th 2019.
Live Dates:
13th September – The American Bar, Belfast, Ireland
22nd September, Prince of Wales, Brixton
27th/28th September – BrightFest & Strummerville, London
18th October – The Finsbury, London
24th October – Lynch’s Irish Pub, Juich Germany
25th October – Haemmers Pub, Vettweiss, Germany
26th October – Old School, Roedingen, Germany
19th December – The Bank Tavern, Bristol w/ Lonely Tourist.
The Cordial Sins' new single is entitiled "Cruel". A personal reflection and a journey toward the resolve of inner conflict, "Cruel" is a rollercoaster representing how isolation manifests when one dwells on unresolved grief and the emotional labor of the past.
However, this isolation acts as a catalyst for personal growth, change, and eventual peace. Musically the track features the band in their finest pop form with Liz Fisher's beautifully rising and arresting vocals alongside Corey Dickerson's lush guitar textures.
Drawing fervent attention for their delectable meld of alternative, pop and shoegaze, The Cordial Sins have recently completed their first U.S. tour in support of Elvis Depressedly. The group’s electrifying performance has also been showcased on stages shared with the likes of The Breeders, Foals, The Flaming Lips, Twin Peaks, Wolf Alice and more.
Somehow, through cosmic forces and mystical hiccups, it’s entirely possible you’ve been missing out on one of music’s great treasures. Following a musical lineage of power pop greats from the 60’s and 70’s, as well as the unhinged genius of the likes of They Might Be Giants and Squeeze, they have spent the last ten years cultivating a rabid fanbase and critical acclaim from publications worldwide. Over 25 tracks (15 on the vinyl edition), Something Unreal is a monolithic slab of glorious hooks and Michelle Grand’s Debbie Harry-esque vocals trading blows with Roger Houdaille’s rabble-rousing tones - if this is the first time you’ve encountered them, a technicolour world awaits you.
Based in Miami Beach, Florida, Ex Norwegian (named, obviously, after the Monty Python sketch), Ex Norwegian have had an evolving cast of band members, with the odd exploding drummer and bassists lost at sea but throughout it all, prolific songwriter, Roger Houdaille has remained. Something Unreal features fan favourites, Life and Making Deals, by turns swirling psych tempests and grandiose anthemic glam hurricanes.
The band’s output of chiming, melodic pop and rock gems began in 2008 with their album, Standby, at the CMJ Festival in New York, immediately causing a stir and understandably having countless genres thrown at them in the hope that one would stick.
Released in late 2016, Glazer/Hazerr is described as a “love letter to classic rock ‘n’ roll based pop” by UK’s Shindig Magazine. A low-key release, Tekstet (Subtitled) along with a 40-track covers album, Original Copies, quickly followed in 2017 leading up to 2018’s No Sleep. The ninth album, No Sleep, arguably took the band back to the beginning, crafting straightforward pop/rock songs with effective arrangements and quirky lyrics with strong melodies, with the main trio of Roger, Michelle and Giuseppe working collectively on it.
THE BE POSITIVES is a northern conundrum. Consisting of Mike Seal (Guitar, Piano & Vocals), Rob Hatton (Bass & Vocals), Simon Mayne (Lead Guitar & Vocals) and Callum Darley (Drums & Vocals), they were splayed across Merseyside to Sheffield, all sharing an affinity for McCartney, Dylan, Kinks and Nick Lowe, and later, converging on Manchester, they hankered for gigging at grotty pubs across the city. Now united, the four-piece invoke mad-pop affirmation through berserk instrumentation laced with smart lyricism.
Of the same vein as Cut Worms, filled with Lemon Twigs-esque zest, second slice ‘Like Everyone’ flaps about with math-rock melodies and striking signatures – you never know quite where you stand – aligning it both musically and conceptually, feeding into Mike’s howls of “we’re like everyone…”
The band elaborates; “Like Everyone was originally intended for Proto Idiot but the weird timing of it threw us and it got shelved. I'm glad we revived it for The Be Positives as it’s understated and simple, yet the concept behind it is far from…. It was also one of those rare occasions where a song falls out of the guitar fully-formed, which doesn't happen often. We’re like everyone…”
Director Callum Scott-Dustin, who also created the visual for the band’s debut single, says; "For the 'Like Everyone' video we wanted to try and do something a little vintage and tongue in cheek, in the style of some Paul McCartney and Harry Nilsson videos we like. We played around with split screen, costume changes, some green screen and the idea of a fake concert within the video. We shot it all in a day at a Manchester venue then I had loads of fun throwing all the elements together in post, going for something playful that matched the energy and colour of the track."
The quartet’s self-titled album encapsulates their varied musical influences, from their garage fueled opening track ‘Like Everyone’ to the Nilsson tinged mad-pop of new single ‘Monkey. The Be Positives certainly don’t attach themselves to one genre. Expanding on ‘Like Everyone’, the band said “The song was written very quickly on acoustic guitar in Mike and Callum's kitchen. It was originally intended for Proto Idiot. You could sum the theme of the song up by simply saying, we all make mistakes; we're all the same.”
'What It Is' is Dominic Sen's second single from their terrestrial debut 'Visitor' out on October 18 on Roll Call Records. It follows previous single 'Hear Me', acting as yet another vignette from the love story, space opera, and thought experiment that is 'Visitor'. The album tells the tale of Tal Naata, a biologically human female coming from a distant and socially progressive civilisation to study Earth. Taking Tal Naata’s story as their prism, Sen casts our own primitive ideas of gender, duality and social cohesion back at us through shimmering, crystalline pop that pays homage to our recent past.
‘What It Is’ develops Tal Naata’s longing for connection on Earth. After spending her first months here struggling to adapt socially, she finds her interest piqued by a regular patron of the academic library in which she works. “I notice the books that you’re reading / you come ‘round the same time each day”. Tal Naata gives herself over to an insatiable curiosity to know more about this human that she feels inexplicably drawn to as her feelings morph into attraction. ‘What It Is’ is Sen’s own take on the female gaze in the throes of budding desire. Documenting one of the mainstays of the human experience, it is most simplistically a song about having a crush from afar and the follies and fluttering excitement that ensue.
Like Tal Naata, the album's creator Dominic Sen is themselves a visitor to Earth. The seventh and only surviving child of the supermassive black hole at the centre of “The Evil Eye Galaxy,” Sen drifted around space in limbo until intercepting the radio waves from Earth’s broadcasts during 1980’s and 1990’s. Our colourful pop culture precipitated Sen’s fixation on the meretricious myth of Earthbound stardom and eventually led them to create 'Visitor'.
‘Visitor’ will be released on Roll Call Records on October 18. It will be immediately available for pre-order, including as a limited edition LP in “Interstellar White” vinyl.
Bandits On The Run - The Ballad of Bonnie Jean (Live at the Safehouse).
Bandits on the Run have joined forces with The Power Station at BerkleeNYC to create “The Ballad of Bonnie Jean,” an immersive 360 experience where the audience finds themselves at the center of all elements, being surrounded by the music featuring spatial, ambisonic audio. When a viewer rotates the video by moving a mobile device, dragging the picture on a computer, or moving their head while wearing VR goggles, the sound field also rotates.
Stephen Webber, the Executive Director of BerkleeNYC, explains, "Power Station at BerkleeNYC is committed to pushing forward new modes of artistic technology and is becoming a leader in the development of 360 Cinematic VR music video content, featuring spatial audio. When it came time to present an educational session on ambisonic audio, I wanted to find a compelling acoustic group who knew how to engage an audience and was flexible enough to choreograph a performance to a 360 camera in the middle of the action. Bandits on the Run was the perfect choice! Their choreography blew away expectations, and the uber-talented trio provided a chilling, immersive performance that must be experienced to be believed. I truly believe the Bandits' 360 version of 'The Ballad of Bonnie Jean' is a pivotal moment in the development of 360 Cinematic music video!"
Comprised of cellist/badass Sydney Shepherd (who goes by the moniker “Bonanza Jellyfish,”) guitarist/fool Adrian Blake Enscoe (“Roy Dodger,”) and player-of-toys/clairvoyant Regina Strayhorn (“Clarissa,”), who are all actors in addition to troubadours, Bandits on the Run’s signature three-part harmonic voice stands at the center of their musical equation. Throw in some serious cello action, hooks played on various and sundry toy instruments, and a steely spine of rhythm guitar all accompanied by a suitcase drum packing a powerful punch and bang: you’ve got the basic magic of banditry, with a sound forged while busking in the acoustics of NYC subway stations.
