Rob Kovaks - Dr Schwamp

Rob Kovaks first appeared here just a month ago and left a fine impression with his song 'Here in the Future' . He has followed that up with 'Fizzle' and it's another refined song that showcases both his excellent piano skills and vocals and reinforces Rob's high quality song writing ability. ===== Dr Schwamp has a new album entitled 'Tunes, Tall Tales & Tinctures' from which we have 'Dr Schwamp's Brand New Cure-All Tonic'. Despite the clear overtones of Dr John, this is a thoroughly good eleven track album, with plenty of originality throughout.  

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Rob Kovaks - Fizzle.

With the release of the new single, “Fizzle,” indie-rock singer-songwriter and pianist Rob Kovacs has announced his debut solo album, Let Go, to be released February 18, 2021.

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 his debut solo album, a brave and bittersweet song cycle written in the years following an intensely impactful romantic relationship and then recorded over an even longer span. The album 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,” he states.

“Fizzle” is not only the first song on the album but also the first one written. “It was a rare case where I wrote the melody a cappella first (rather than coming up with piano part first). The melody came to me on the drive home after the first time hanging out with the girl who would ultimately inspire the whole album. I often write a song because I come upon a musical idea that catches my attention. Writing music helps to express a feeling that I may otherwise struggle to express. Through this song, I try to convey the feeling of connecting and falling for someone combined with the anxiety about that feeling and the understanding that, for whatever reason, you can’t be with that person.” 

Rob Kovacs · Fizzle

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Dr Schwamp - Dr Schwamp's Brand New Cure-All Tonic.

Dr Schwamp and his ensemble extravaganza release musically invigorating album 'Tunes, Tall Tales & Tinctures', and single 'Cure All Tonic'

Dr Schwamp and his ensemble extravaganza have today released ‘Tunes, Tall Tales & Tinctures’, a mind contorting, sense disorientating and musically invigorating 11-track album, spinning the precarious line between restraint and excess, the ordinary and the extraordinary, betwixt Heaven and Hell… with the wondrous, magnificent and all-curing video for ‘Cure All Tonic’.

For the mysterious, peripatetic Dr Schwamp, every performance is a walk-in surgery, at which he and his highly trained acolytes serve up a thrilling "Cure-All Tonic" involving a secret recipe of blues, funk, gypsy, folk and swing all delivered with poetry, precision and power. 

Dr Schwamp will enthrall you with his combo of gritty vocals, witty lyrics and dizzying facility on violin, blues harp and BAGPIPES! (We kid you not). While his highly skilled team of sonic surgeons perform complicated operations involving finely tuned instruments and fleet-fingered frettings, the album takes you on a sonic journey, uplifting and energetic, and is one to be enjoyed in full.

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Eric Anders and Mark O'Bitz - JEWLS

Eric Anders and Mark O'Bitz have shared a beautiful Americana song entitled 'Careful Now My Son'. The impassioned vocals cry out for attention and the slow rhythmic musical arrangement just adds to the emotion and feeling this track conveys. ===== JEWLS debut song 'Take It' is a heartfelt and touching piece. Her natural and refined vocals are immersed in a gentle soundscape that seemingly dances around her singing, adding more depth to this gorgeous piece.

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Eric Anders and Mark O'Bitz - Careful Now My Son.

"Careful Now My Son" is the first song of the collection Eric Anders and Mark O'Bitz have named "music in the time of coronavirus."  Eric decided to have three separate releases for this collection so that each release would be more consistent style-wise.

Everything done for this collection--from songwriting to recording to mastering--was done remotely during shelter in place (Eric in NorCal; Mark and Mike in SoCal).  Most of the songs were inspired by the isolation, anxiety, and cultural upheaval of the pandemic year of 2020.

"Careful Now My Son" is the only song that was done in a truly Americana style, so they've decided to release it as a single. They also thought that its foreboding feel and lyrics worked well to represent how we were feeling during this pandemic--so it would make a good kick-off song.

From the Artist:The song is about both the pandemic and the authoritarian and cultish politics of Trumpism. We were deeply afraid of both infectious diseases during 2020 and as 2021 gets going.  With regard to Trumpism, "Careful Now My Son" can be understood as an Americana companion song to our song, "Wounded Son"on our 2019 album, Ghosts To Ancestors. 

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JEWLS - Take It.

JEWLS released her debut single 'Take It' an alternative pop gem that takes you higher.

JEWLS is a melancholic pop alternative to hold on to. With her debut single 'Take It' she shows her mixture of a husky, sensitive, sometimes even moody voice and heartbreaking honest lyrics. JEWLS her music is predestined to go under the skin. For her, writing and composing music is a way to express what’s underneath. The release comes with a self-directed music video:

JEWLS: Will is lost. The cold has returned. Hearing footsteps above and the rain outside. Blue pretends to be my colour now.  Moments of the past rushing back, cloaked in ice. Everything seems to be a reminder and silence has never been so loud.

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Myths - Big Little Lions

Myths just shared 'When You Go Where You Go When You Die' and it's a catchy, melodic and gorgeous psychedelic song with timeless pop sensibilities and yet still manages to retain a fresh and modern feel. ===== Big Little Lions have also just released a new single entitled 'Turn It Off'. Mixing folk and high class pop the song has refined dual vocals and harmonies and a whole load of musical hooks running throughout this refreshing track.

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Myths - When You Go Where You Go When You Die.

“When You Go Where You Go When You Die” is the latest offering from Australian psychedelic pop band Myths. The song comes as the first single from their
upcoming second LP “The Art of Pretending” – a project over two years in the making, and due for release in 2021. The track is a playful ode to the macabre and surreal experience of trying to reconcile everyday life with unexpected bouts of nihilism. Much like their previous releases “When You Go Where You Go When You Die” is entirely self produced by the band’s songwriters Mike Nutt & Jamie Turner and was recorded throughout the last year in various makeshift home studios.

The track was mixed by Sydney-based producer and musician Jack Mo ffitt (The Preatures, I Know Leopard) who the band is currently working with to put the finishing touches on their new album.

Myths formed in 2017 and are based in Perth, Western Australia. Their music is best described as neo-psychedelia, taking inspiration from the styles and sounds of the 60s and 70s, and merging them with a modern approach to sound design. This comes to the forefront in their new single, opening with an 8-bit collage of old video game death sounds before layers of vintage synthesizers, sitars and more take over. In 2018 the band released their self-produced debut album “Paradigm”, and work on a follow-up has been underway almost immediately.

MYTHS · When You Go Where You Go When You Die

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Big Little Lions - Turn It Off.

Big Little Lions have been described as ‘a blissful marriage of new folk and
sophisticated pop’. Prolific songwriting, infectious folk-pop style, and an
offbeat, memorable live show. This award winning duo consists of Helen Austin and Paul Otten who, despite living thousands of miles apart, have found a way to connect and create music together. Despite being in two different countries, they have found common ground to share their message.

Call it destiny, or call it fate, call it a necessary progression for these modern times. Helen lives in British Columbia, Canada and Paul lives in Cincinnati, OH. But the distance provides the necessity to create in a new way. Using technology as their ally and their differences as their strength.

Their monthly single releases are their way of getting through this pandemic
while all the usual album cycle release plans don’t make sense anymore. Their
music is jam-packed with emotion and tight harmonies, the sound of two
people working side-by-side.

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Villages - KodiakArcade - Paper Tapes

Villages recently shared a video for their beautiful song 'Poetry In Motion'. The bands indie folk music has a fresh and pristine feel to it along with some mature pop sensibilities, add in the melodic arrangement and fabulous vocals and this is one special song.  ===== KodiakArcade new single 'Silicon Hill' is a fabulous synth driven instrumental track, where the huge array of musical sounds intertwine and create a mesmerizing piece and at two and a half minutes duration leaves me wanting more. ===== Yesterday Paper Tapes released a video for the song 'You And I' which is taken from the E.P 'Homecoming' that was released in October. Fresh, catchy and with gently delivered vocals, the soundtrack is quite addictive and with the new visuals this is a fine recommendation to check out the E.P if like me you have not done so yet.

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Villages - Poetry In Motion.

Having had their praises internationally sung for their self-titled full-length debut album in 2019, the four members of Villages continue to keep the spirit of their home province, Nova Scotia, in their thoughts, whilst letting their minds escape to their fantasies.

Comprised of Matt Ellis, Travis Ellis, Jon Pearo and Archie Rankin; the quartet have managed to spark a genre-bending sound of indie-folk and experimental pop; standing tall with the likes of Father John Misty, Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses. Taken from their recently released EP ‘Upon the Horizon’, new single ‘Poetry in Motion’ delivers a flavour of the bands next full-length album due in 2021.

Directed by Mel Stone, the new live visuals see’s the band gather together; delivering a hopeful message that things will get better. With the ongoing pandemic restrictions, it’s an outlook that we all need to hear from time to time, especially the live industry.

Mixed by American Indie rock legend Phil Ek, their recently released EP ‘Upon the Horizon’ was written aimed to transcend the sense of isolation and dread that we have all faced this year. Frontman Matt Ellis says, “Being locked up naturally conjured visions of escapism. Escaping to the wilderness has always been a way to find peace, but when even that was not an option it was yet another thing that had been taken for granted.

The songs were written on an old guitar with four dead strings that had been neglected for years. There was something fitting about it, given the current condition of the world. This guitar was once a prized possession and over the years just sat collecting dust. Yet, the moment I picked it up the memories it had amassed over the years flooded my mind. It was the comfort and inspiration that was needed—the feeling of a new instrument yet to be discovered, and of new beginnings and endless possibilities.” 

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KodiakArcade - Silicon Hill.

As a project, Graeme Cornies’ Kodiak Arcade is a hi-fi homage to the lo-fi  sounds of the past. It’s a set of sonic landscapes, where the humanity of the organic performances are intertwined with sounds that can only be created by modern tech.

Graeme spent a lot of time thinking about his own relationship to technology while making Kodiak Arcade’s debut album, Arcade. From the time he spent consumed in the fictional worlds of Sierra games as a kid, and how those stories affected his real-world self.

Focus track, “Silicon Hill,” began with a dream. Two friends sat on a hill at sunset, looking into the distance at a newer sort of Art Deco city skyline. Everything around the city was a desert, though there was no sand in sight. The whole desert was made of a sort of semi-soft silicon with faint lines underneath – like patterns of a motherboard under the desert’s milky surface.

This song title is also a nod to the time Graeme spent in Silicon Valley, at events like the GDC, where he spent many nights year after year talking with passionate artists and programmers in the game industry, getting high on talk of the future, admired artists and the meeting places between art and technology.

KodiakArcade · Silicon Hill - Single

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Paper Tapes - You And I.

GPSs flicker, spirits emancipate themselves from any final destination… PAPER TAPES’ first EP 'Homecoming' was released in October on Geographie.

Native of Lyon (FR), living in Paris and a member of the band Brace ! Brace ! (Howlin’ Banana), Cyril Angleys delivers, under the pseudo PAPER TAPES, an adventurous and immediate pop.

Influenced by the 70s film score, the outsiders that became heroes like Stereolab and Air, the psyched pop from Todd Rundgren or the R’n’B from the first The Neptunes’ albums, he assumes boldly but with finesse his carelessness of time and genres.

It is while composing with Brace! Brace! That he feels the need, this desire to start a solo project. Drum machines, synthesizers… he starts writing and experimenting from home, in his flat during the 2018 summer.

With 'Homecoming', co-produced by Barth Bouveret (Brace ! Brace!, Good Morning TV, Marble Arch) PAPER TAPES offers us a first magnetic and luminous EP. Five little hits nestled between some modern soft rock and emancipated pop, to listen to while traveling or at home… even though we know travels always start home.

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