Gotts Street Park feat Pip Millett - Sabina Chantouria - Mirrorball - Annie Bartholomew

Gotts Street Park - 'Got To Be Good' feat. Pip Millett.

For new listeners and latecomers there has been no handier introduction to Leeds collective Gotts Street Park than their recent run of releases. Singles "Lost & Found" ft. Charlotte Dos Santos, "Summer Breeze" ft. Rosie Lowe and their 2021 four-track EP Diego are a musical suite of songs that drill into the nucleus of GSP.

Now focused on 2023, Gotts Street Park announce their highly anticipated debut album On The Inside released October 13 via Blue Flowers, alongside sharing new single "Got To Be Good". With their effortless blend of vintage soul meets alt-R&B, "Got To Be Good" is enlivened by Pip Millett’s raw and impassioned vocal. A union from its early notes that submerges listeners into another cinematic Gotts Street Park experience as Millett’s voice voyages over seamless grooves of reel-to-reel keys, guitars and snares.

Talking about their union and new single, Gotts Street Park describe “Got To Be Good, came together pretty fast. Whenever we’ve been in the room with Pip, it’s pretty free and fruitful. When a song comes together like this, we don’t overthink it or alter the final take too much and just hope to have the same energy come through to the listener as we felt in the room creating it.”

Commenting further on the single’s lyrics, Millett says “Got To Be Good is about pulling yourself out of the darkness. You have to really want for a change in order to pull away from that sadness, and that’s what I was writing about.” "Got To Be Good" arrives alongside a video which acts as the song's aesthetic anchor depicting the universal feelings of isolation and unwanted solitude, directed by Harvey Pearson.

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Sabina Chantouria - Echoes.

Sabina Chantouria's sound is as eclectic as her Georgian-Swedish roots. With her velvet voice and rhythmic guitar, she’ll take you on a journey that evokes emotion and leaves you breathless. A 2017 Georgian National finalist for Eurovision, she has performed at numerous festivals and live on television and radio, working with music producers worldwide.

The single pulls us into a rich soundscape with Rock, Pop and Americana influences along with powerful heartfelt melodies and lyrics. Sabina says ''We all carry memories of someone close to us that has left a huge impact in our lives. 'Echoes' is a song about time, and memories that awake bittersweet feelings.''

The single was recorded by California based music producer Dave Jenkins (who also provides harmonies and keyboard), with world-renowned musicians like Kenny Aronoff on drums (John Fogerty, Mick Jagger, Willie Nelson m f.l), Doug Pettibone on slide guitar (Lucinda Williams, Marianne Faithful m f.l) and Jorgen Carlsson on bass (Gov't Mule).

Music Elevator PR · Sabina Chantouria - Echoes

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Mirrorball - Red Hot Dust.

Mirrorball, the dreamy LA pop duo consisting of singer/songwriter Alexandra Johnstone and multi-instrumentalist and composer Scott Watson, announces the drop of their second single "Red Hot Dust" from the upcoming debut EP, produced by Chris Coady (Beach House, Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

Mirrorball is the brainchild of Johnstone and Watson, both veterans of the LA indie scene. Following a successful debut in 2019 with two dream pop songs on Dangerbird Records, the duo caught the attention of acclaimed producer Chris Coady, meeting him at Sunset Sound to discuss their next recording. Over the next few months, they formed a special bond with Coady resulting in the upcoming EP, showcasing a unique blend of dreamy, nostalgic pop.

Johnstone states that “Red Hot Dust ” was written "during difficult times as a way of forcing some light to the surface, and because I wanted to feel like I could go home again at a time when I could not physically go home.”

“Red Hot Dust” evokes a hazy, distant past. It’s driving down the LA freeway with the top-down, molten lava flowing where the asphalt used to be. It’s being trapped in a crystal ball in the middle of a desert. The sun is beating down and time is standing still.

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Annie Bartholomew - Mountain Dove Song.

After nearly a decade of performing in Alaska’s rowdy bar scene, Juneau folksinger Annie Bartholomew became haunted by the stories of sex workers during the 19th century after touring the brothel museum at Skagway’s Red Onion Saloon. This week, Bartholomew shared the new single "Mountain Dove Song” from her debut album Sisters of White Chapel.

After conversations with her friend, Arkansas songwriter Willi Carlisle, the scope of the project came to include a play and stage show. The result is her debut album Sisters of White Chapel, out June 16. The music accompanies a play that she wrote Sisters of White Chapel: A Short But True Story, which premiered to acclaim in Bartholomew’s hometown of Juneau.

The close-sung “Mountain Dove Song” addresses the secrecy that these women needed to have to move on with their lives after sex work. Of the song, Bartholomew recounts, "I was inspired by many stories of women, but especially Maude Parrish who brought her banjo to the Yukon at 19, escaping a bad marriage in San Francisco. Maude’s roommate was a Dawson City sexworker, and I tried to imagine the life of her cabin mate in this piece. It was composed during my 2019 artist residency in the Yukon where I did most of my woodshedding in a timber frame cabin in Ship Yard’s Park on the Yukon River."

In contrast to the art created for tourists, Annie envisioned a musical work that would share these omissions of Alaska’s mining past, and embody the stories of women in Victorian-era Alaska. Through archival materials, personal history, and Alaska’s stringband traditions, Bartholomew brings these women to life, extracting the emotional truth of who they were, why they risked everything to follow a gold rush, and their subsequent journeys and misadventures along the way.

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Margo Cilker - Dubmatix - Annie Bartholomew - Madeline Kenney

Margo Cilker - Lowland Trail.

"Lowland Trail" is the first song to be taken from the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed debut Pohorylle which Uncut described as "one of the most auspicious debuts of recent times" back in 2021.

The new album "Valley Of Heart’s Delight” is released on September 15th and sees Cilker working with the same team of Sera Cahoone on production duties with John Morgan Askew recording the album at his Bocce Studio just outside Portland, Oregon.

Cilker says of "Lowland Trail": I wrote this song living in a place where a rise in elevation paid off spectacularly.  And I would climb. Yet, I began to crave just placing one foot in front of the other; a more meditative wandering. Less risk, less reward.

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Dubmatix - The Ska Sessions (Volume 1). 

For the past few years I’ve had an idea bubbling around my head - could I create a song a day, and for how long? In December 2022, I decided to test this concept out and see what would happen starting January 2, 2023. As it turns out, a lot of things can happen and this is just one of them - a full-length Ska album. Over the past 20 years, I had never thought about creating a ska album, but sometimes when you dive into fresh waters, your perspective can be altered and new opportunities appear. That is how this all began.

Starting on January 2, I set out to produce an 8-bar song idea each day, which gradually evolved into sharing 30-second videos and eventually creating full-length songs and videos over the first four months. To date, over 125 song ideas have been created so far, choice ones that resonated with me became full-length songs in the ska style. This adventure has garnered a positive response from an enthusiastic audience, particularly in the ska genre, which I love but have not previously produced much music in.

Delving into it headfirst, I built tracks that pay tribute to the originators of the genre and the 2nd wave movement of Two Tone. What began as a bucket list idea has turned into something wonderful that Dubmatix has thoroughly enjoyed sharing with people and connecting with in a new way.

The vocals used in the album are from loop packs since I work fast daily on new music to achieve this goal. Although there needed to be more time to work with singers, I felt it was important to share their names and give them credit as they are unique and well-known and help to bring these songs to life: The Ragga Twins and Dennis Alcapone plus Double Tiger - Jesse.

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Annie Bartholomew - All For The Klondike's Gold.

After nearly a decade of performing in Alaska’s rowdy bar scene, Juneau folksinger Annie Bartholomew became haunted by the stories of sex workers during the 19th century after touring the brothel museum at Skagway’s Red Onion Saloon. This week, Bartholomew shared the new single and music video for “All For the Klondike’s Gold” from her debut album Sisters of White Chapel.

After conversations with her friend, Arkansas songwriter Willi Carlisle, the scope of the project came to include a play and stage show. The result is her debut album Sisters of White Chapel, out June 16. The music accompanies a play that she wrote Sisters of White Chapel: A Short But True Story, which premiered to acclaim in Bartholomew’s hometown of Juneau. The first single will be “Sisters of White Chapel,” referring to the red light district in Dawson City.

“All For the Klondike’s Gold” is accompanied by driving guitar and fiddle, and is sung by women, abandoned by their male companions but now joining together to survive the gold rush. Annie says, “’All For the Klondike’s Gold’ is adapted from a 1901 miner’s poem anonymously published in the Klondike Nugget, that empathizes with women left behind in the Northland due to the deaths of their male companions. These were the tragedies and very real economic realities that made women turn to sex work.”

In contrast to the art created for tourists, Annie envisioned a musical work that would share these omissions of Alaska’s mining past, and embody the stories of women in Victorian-era Alaska. Through archival materials, personal history, and Alaska’s stringband traditions, Bartholomew brings these women to life, extracting the emotional truth of who they were, why they risked everything to follow a gold rush, and their subsequent journeys and misadventures along the way.

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Madeline Kenney - Superficial Conversation.

In the quiet surrounding the pandemic, Madeline Kenney made sonic sketches in the basement studio she shared with her then-partner. She arranged phrases that called her—the sharp knife of a synth cutting a path along a blooming arpeggio, drums stuttering firm and tight. Working this way, she amassed a collection of songs she had no particular aims for. Some formed her 2021 EP Summer Quarter, others languished.

But in 2022, Kenney’s partner left suddenly and without warning, plunging her into the solitary act of untangling what happened. In the wake of her ensuing depression, she revisited these songs and found in them something prescient. She’d already laid the foundation for A New Reality Mind, her fourth LP (due out July 28th via Carpark Records) which she is announcing today with the album's first single "Superficial Conversation," alongside the track's self-directed video.

That her relationship’s end came without warning is only half true, though. The warnings were in the feelings and fears that inspired Kenney’s critically-acclaimed third album, Sucker’s Lunch (2020), which was co-produced by Jenn Wasner (Flock of Dimes) and centered around the idea of flinging oneself freely into the seemingly-assured destruction of new love, come what may. If sonically Sucker’s Lunch was letting yourself be pulled into the warm bath of a good story, A New Reality Mind reflects the harsh light of truth coming to break the spell. But as sobering as morning light can be, there’s brilliance to it, too. To see in the clarity of day is a gift. A revolution.

This is Kenney’s most expansive work, while also her most solitary. Produced and recorded alone in her basement, these songs are manifestations of what it feels like to be transformed by pain. Textures collide and collude; sonic ornaments emerge and dissipate capriciously; saxophones soar untamed. There's a propulsive power in the album, and there’s also acceptance, self-forgiveness, and a willingness to move forward into life, with all its ways of making a sucker of you. “That way of living, I’m over it,” Kenney declares of the habits that hold her back on "Superficial Conversation." “I do not need to be reminded of what I did,” she assures, the song opening wide and beaming, like a smile expanding to taste a new breath of air.

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