Mad Symphony has released its debut self-titled album worldwide on MR Records. The band also recently world premiered the video for The Next Door. Talking about what was the inspiration for the video The Next Door, David Groves said, "The Next Door is a song about trying to make the right choices in life for ourselves and how those choices don't always work out the way that we had hoped for or planned. Game shows such as The Price is Right and Let's Make A Deal were the perfect backdrops to dramatize this lyrical theme in a compelling and often comical way."
As to why did the band pick this song for a video, David adds, "The Next Door is a song that perfectly encapsulates all the elements that make up Mad Symphony. Soaring harmonies and melodies are woven through interesting and ever-changing rhythms. Chunky guitar riffs blend with the bass and keyboards in a cacophony of instrumentation. Mostly though, we just wanted to see our lead guitarist get decapitated by an angry rabbit....and this song is perfect for that!"
“It ain’t over, never over, ‘til we do it all over again!” is the hook-line and rallying cry from Vancouver-based melodic prog-rockers Mad Symphony on their forthcoming single ‘Do It All Over Again.’ While channeling the sounds of classic rock bands such as AC/DC, The Who and Led Zeppelin, Mad Symphony infuses their songs with modern elements of heavy guitars, elaborate keyboards and massive vocal harmonies to create a sound that is both contemporary and instantly recognizable by music fans of all ages. Examining the themes of love, loss, and betrayal with songs such as ‘Sell Me Out,’ ‘Reality Check’ and ‘Wasted in Oblivion,’ Mad Symphony seeks to illuminate the pressures and struggles faced by all who live through these confusing and rapidly changing times.
Born in California, Heather Walton is an American singer-songwriter living in Utah, USA. She composes her music with the acoustic guitar and piano, her favorite being the electric guitar. Some of her influences are: Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston and Christina Aguilera (all the divas). Along with Elton John, one of her favorite artists.
As a contemporary vocalist that adores romantic music, Heather is aspiring to achieve this vibe in her upcoming work. She enjoys tapping into her feminine and sensual side, her most authentic nature. She hopes to spread light with her music and lyrics, as her mission is to help all feel love, the highest of all values. Heather started releasing covers on YouTube in 2018 and was discovered by a Canadian mastering engineer, François Rocheleau.
He began mastering her covers and encouraged her to release original compositions. In 2020 she was contacted by Mtec Academy Music Production from London, UK. They released 7 singles together. Early 2021, Heather signed with the renowned Italian Sonos Music Records Intl. Label (Maffucci Music). Out in May her new single “I Wanna Know” which will be the first of a long collaboration with them and the arranger Ermanno Corrado, who runs his recording studios and video production facility.
I want to know more about the possibilities of the purest human emotion… love. This is the basis of my new single “I Wanna Know.” It’s an anthem for the world, but especially dreamers. About a big ideal based on one’s innermost desires and feelings that have a deep meaning in the most passional way. It’s about overcoming boundaries and quest for light. My hope for “I Wanna Know” is that it will spark the listener to analyze their deepest desires on the subject of love, and then strive to reach new heights in their relationships, emotions, fantasies, and dreams. Love is the highest of all values after all.
This Is The Deep - The Best Is Yet To Come (Part 1 - EP).
East London 7-piece psych-pop collective This Is The Deep today release their debut EP 'The Best Is Yet To Come (Part 1)' - out now via B3SCI Records, with new track "Let Her Go" also out now.
Over the last two years This Is The Deep have quietly established a cult live following through support slots with HMLTD, PVA, and Family Time, as well as their own sold out cross-over events at venues such as Windmill Brixton, Moth Club and The Shacklewell Arms, combining immersive art and video installations with live performances from acts including Sinead O'Brien, Opus Kink and Baby Vanga.
Written, recorded and produced by the band at 'The Sauna' – their HQ in Hackney Wick – the EP is a wildly inventive introduction to the band. Across its 8 tracks, the band switch seamlessly between explorative psych-rock, glitchy art-pop and stomping indie rock.
What started out as late night recording sessions between flatmates Ranald Macdonald, David Bardon and Oscar Robertson - quickly spiralled into This Is The Deep’s carnivalesque troupe of seven musicians.
Drawing as much from artists such as Suicide, Death Grips, and the scores of Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet) and Ennio Morricone, as from the glittery pop-disco of the Scissor Sisters, This Is The Deep weave together personal stories with wider ideas and anxieties about the times we’re living through - from the loss of ‘real’ experiences to the feeling of being constantly watched by technology.
"Ultimately, we want to transport the listener somewhere completely different with the music. A landscape that can offer a different perspective on the real world or a just place to enjoy and escape from it," the band explain. "To us, The Best Is Yet To Come (Part 1) isn’t saying that everything is getting better. It’s about feeling that things today aren’t ‘The Best’ and although you can’t say exactly what it will look like, hoping that one day something better will come."
This Is The Deep consists of post-punk royalty Susie Honeyman (Mekons) on fiddle, Sammy Silue on guitar and vocals, Ranald Macdonald on synth and vocals, Hannah Tilson on trombone and vocals, David Bardon and Oscar Robertson on bass and drums, with electronic drums and percussion from Liam Toon.
Laurence Murray Project recorded their sophomore release ‘NPD’ at the UK’s most remote recording studio: Black Bay Studio on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. This setting helped create the sense of intrigue and mystery to this stunning psychedelic and rock infused single.
Featuring swirling twelve-string guitar parts, vibraphone and audacious drums reminiscent of late 60s and 70s Psychedelia, ‘NPD’ is both pleasing on the ear and edgy with Laurence Murray’s gritty vocal summoning smoky emotions. Lyrically, the track involves a dark take on themes of deceit, infidelity and delusion, whilst adventurous instrumentation and percussion parts create an apt musical backdrop for an exploration of the complications and intricacies involved in a modern-day romantic relationship.
On the single, Murray explains, ‘“NPD” is ultimately a track about duplicity and how we are all susceptible to manipulation at any given time. It’s about having a light bulb moment where many seemingly small & insignificant red flag moments come together at once to create a much larger picture.’
“The lights are on and the room is empty” is the sudden realisation of being duped all along. The screaming guitar solo and outro section of the track acts as a symbolic release from being controlled and abused. It is a ‘shackles are off and now it’s time to heal’ symbolic moment of Laurence Murray Project’s debut 11-track album ‘Still’, set to be released in mid-late 2021.
Rising singer-songwriter Roxanne de Bastion announces the release of her cathartic second album ‘You & Me, We Are The Same’. The ten songs were written by Roxanne, then recorded and produced with Bernard Butler, during the two-year period Roxanne was losing her father. However, ‘You & Me, We Are The Same’ is not a sad album. It has moments of euphoria, of fun, of falling in love, as well as falling apart, because as Roxanne explains “all those things still happen, even in our darkest chapters.”
As producer Bernard Butler explains “Roxanne sings great modern pop songs about being Roxanne in 2019. I really enjoyed making this album, I think we created something emotional and special.”
New single ‘Molecules’ is a slice of hypnotic, invigorating and intelligent dark-pop fusing elements of psych, folk, and a love of late 60s production, with Roxanne’s sound taking inspiration from artists like The Beatles through to Regina Spektor. Roxanne’s pure vocal is both contrasted and complemented by the screaming violins and vigorous guitar riffs, the latter, alongside the video’s stylised black and red silhouetted imagery, a nod to The White Stripes’ influence. The track’s drum sound is actually clapping and Roxanne hitting things like tambourines and floor toms in Bernard’s living room.
Lyrically, ‘Molecules’ raises some divine questions in its refrain “You can shout at molecules and see them react…that might be God, they might have mislabelled that.” As Roxanne explains “What if we got it wrong? If there is such a thing as divinity, maybe it’s more on a modular level.”
To celebrate the album’s release, Roxanne de Bastion has announced she’ll return to the Moth Club, London on 12th October, with full band and live audience. The show marks a year since Roxanne’s virtual gig at the venue during the start of the pandemic, which was broadcast worldwide and recorded for her 10” vinyl ‘Live at Moth Club’ EP.
Stockholm four-piece Melby have constantly been growing since their debut with catchy single 'Human' in 2016. In 2019, the band released their acclaimed debut record 'None of this makes me worry' which was followed by tour dates all over Europe. During the pandemic in 2020, the band have worked on new material in a new way. From these sessions, we've previously heard the prog/psych inspired 'Common Sense', the dreamy but melancholic 'Old Life', 'Somewhere New', a dynamic track inspired by classical counterpoint composition and the indie pop gem 'Magic'.
New single 'Concorde' is another taste of the band's dynamic indie pop, psych and folk blend that continues to win them fans with every release and step they take. 'Concorde' might just be their smoothest track to date, as they in their own way resemble contemporaries like TOPS, Tennis and more.
Melby tells us about the new single: "Concorde is a song about the luxury that is always dependent on other people."
On 'Concorde', Melby continues to cement their role as one of the most interesting Scandinavian acts around, a band so home and accomplished within their sound that they're now ready to continue to experiment with it without losing their characteristic. The new material was mainly written and straight-away recorded in the studio in close collaboration with producer Alexander Eldefors, this is a completely new way for a band that previously in many cases have toured material for years before recording them.
The band often gets compared to fellow Swedes Dungen and Amason but Melby’s dynamic sound, with influences from folk, psych, indie and pop, stand out. The quartet's light, semi-psychedelic folk pop is led by Matilda Wiezell’s enchanting voice which fits perfectly with Melby’s unique musical landscape - a sound that's been called "otherworldly, and wholly brilliant" by The Line of Best Fit.
The band consists of Wiezell, Are Engen Steinsholm (back-up vocals, guitar), David Jehrlander (bass) and Teo Jernkvist (drums) and formed while living together in a Stockholm shared housing.
Honest, agile, and refreshingly self-assured, Georgia State Line’s unique brand of country-infused melancholy yields music that’s equal parts heartsick and hopeful.
The stage moniker of Australian singer/songwriter Georgia Delves, Georgia State Line blends both vintage and contemporary sounds to craft songs steeped in Tennessee sunsets. Delves’ voice is effortlessly colourful, lyrical and textural with a depth and grace to rival even the most revered of talents.
“Every Time” is the first single lifted from Georgia State Line’s highly anticipated new album due later this year. Georgia says “it’s a song about making friends with the consistency of change; acknowledging what isn’t meant for you and celebrating the courage it takes to let it go. It highlights the quiet strength found in choosing to feel joy for what once was, and the power that comes with putting yourself first”.
The visuals were shot in Victoria’s beautiful Wimmera region on Wotjobaluk Country, the atmospheric single capturing the triumph of heartbreak.
“Every Time” was recorded at James Cecil’s studio, Super Melody World in Macedon, Victoria over 2019. It features some of Australia’s most celebrated Americana musicians: Tom Brooks on electric guitar and pedal steel, Laura Baxter on bass and backing vocals, Patrick Wilson on drums, percussion and piano, and of course Georgia Delves on lead vocals and acoustic guitar.
American singer-songwriter, Melissa Sullivan announced the animated music video for the song “Marcella” from her debut album Late Last Night (Daring Sparrow). Directed by Gabriele Fabbro and Illustrated/Animated by Serena Viganò in Milan Italy, the “Marcella” lyric video that follows an adventurous bird who travels through city and space to find his love. The song and video for “Marcella” takes its inspiration and theme from love being the key to create change. With everything happening in our world today; the pandemic, climate change, the division in countries, the goal was to create a video with hope.
What started as an original song Sullivan used to sing to her husky dog Anastasia was then brought to Jimmy Edwards for lyrics. Her melody envisioned a bird flying over the ocean for love, which Edwards lyrics fit perfectly. It was then transformed into a Brazilian influenced Bossa Nova beat when fleshed out in the studio and made its way onto her debut album.
“I have always been inspired by Gilberto Gil, Antonio Calos Jobim and the Bossa Nova sound,” said Melissa Sullivan. “My album Late Last Night is an ode to some of my favorite music and is a blend of jazz, pop, and blues of original songs and covers. Gabrielle & Serena’s video beautifully embodies the song’s theme of love being the key to create change via their imagery of lost connections between imaginary lovers.”
Sullivan’s Late Last Night album combines both original songs and newly realized standouts from The Great American Songbook and was recorded at Sir Tiger Studio and produced by Peter Adams, Will Gordon, Ed Maxwell and Melissa Sullivan.
Tautologic is in its third decade (plus or minus a hiatus or two) of making “perfectly normal music for slightly odd people.”
Wheels Fall Off is the first Tautologic album to feature a line-up of the band still intact at the time of its release - Ethan Sellers (keys/vocals/production), Patrick Buzby (drums), Nathan Britsch (bass), Chris Greene (saxes), Emily Albright (violin, vocals), and Jay Montana (guitar). “New guy” Montana has - at the time of the album’s completion - been with the band for 10 years, making this the longest-lived line-up in Tautologic history.
Tautologic had some help from special guests - Tom Culver (cello), Johnny Showtime Janowiak (trombone), John Moore, Jr. (trumpet), and Sellers’ own children. Sellers kept the guest list limited, otherwise - preferring to celebrate the band’s talents and stage-honed interplay.
Tautologic completed most of Wheels Fall Off even before releasing its 2018 album Re:Psychle. Determined to capture their live chemistry, Tautologic recorded roughly half of the album at a single live full-band session with Rick Barnes at Chicago's Rax Trax Recording in late 2013. Sellers recorded overdubs at his home studio, culminating in a COVID-19-inspired recording binge in the spring and early summer of 2020. An Illinois Arts Council grant generously defrayed the cost of Barnes mixing the album and provided a more urgent timeline to complete the album.
The music for Wheels Fall Off is an organic mash-up and a study in contrasts. Sellers’ composed pieces leave openings for in-studio improvisation. Male and female vocalists trade leads and harmonize. Short vocal-centered songs co-exist with long instrumental epics. Prog-rock and fusion workouts share space with Afro-Caribbean, zydeco, funk, blues, and samba grooves. There are organic whole-band recordings, and layers of one-man-choir vocals, one-woman string sections, guitar armies, horn sections, synthesizer mini-odysseys, and post-production audio mangling.
We have the new single from Australian eclectic chamber indie folk sister duo Charm of Finches. Entitled “Gravity” the track follows the tremendous success of their recent single “Treading Water” and is part of their upcoming full-length album to be released later this year.
“Gravity” reflects on the many dangers of “toxic positivity” and how this can cause people to avoid the inner-work of dealing with painful and uncomfortable feelings, such as sadness and grief. The song features the sisters’ gorgeous emotion-laden and harmonious vocals, with sublimely beautiful instrumentation composed of cello, ukulele, banjo, violin, harp and guitar, and a tender smooth, stripped-down melody laced with bittersweet nostalgia and deep melancholia.
The duo are signed to AntiFragile and have been acclaimed by the likes of NPR, and have been added to popular Spotify playlists including Fresh Folk, Lush + Etheral and Infinite Acoustic.
London-based synth-pop artist Alice Hubble has shared her comment on the #metoo movement in the form of new single ‘Power Play’ alongside news that her new album will be released later this year. Described as the work of ‘one lady at home with her enormous collection of synthesisers’, Alice Hubble mixes melancholic pop, layered vintage synths and elegant vocals, reminiscent of Ladytron, Ashra and Goldfrapp.
Her debut album 'Polarlichter', inspired by the 70’s recordings of Tangerine Dream and Sally Oldfield was released in September 2019 to much critical acclaim. Earning the project support from the likes of BBC Radio 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq and Gideon Coe as well as acts like Damo Suzuki, Advance Base, Pram and Beak> with whom she played live.
Where ‘Polarlichter’ offered a soundscape of pastoral solace, new single ‘Power Play’ is a much more direct offering. Written in March 2020, Alice found herself channeling a lot of anger into the single. “The track is my comment on what happens in a post #metoo world, once the worst offenders have been ‘cancelled’ and caught and the news stories have been had. Has something changed? Does society move on and go to the next issue?” explains Alice.
The song references the mass hex of Brock Turner, when witches around the world joined together to hex the Stanford swimmer convicted of sexual assault. “I am fascinated by this form of collective digital activism,” she says. “In honoring this, Power Play is the closest thing I’ve written to a protest song”. ‘Power Play’ wassout on 19th May on Happy Robots and is available to download and stream via all digital platforms, with a new album to follow this Autumn.
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 monthy single releases are their way of getting through this pandemic while all the usual album cyle 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.
Canadian rocker Jesse Roper continues to tease music from an upcoming album due later in 2021, dropping a serendipitous, Motown-infused new single, “Does Anybody Know” this week. Roper hit the studio earlier this year with JUNO nominated producer Gus Van Go (Arkells/Sam Roberts Band/The Stills) in Brooklyn, NY.
Discussing how the track came about Roper, notes, "It was kind of funny how the song came about. I’d been listening to a lot of Leon Bridges at the time and it was just a matter of time before I wrote something in that fashion. The song is about a guy who’s been dumped and is confused and looking for his ex all around town. I was in a relationship when I wrote it, so it had no particular meaning to me. But months later, after I got home from a long tour, my girlfriend met me at her door and informed me that she no longer wanted to be in a relationship with me. I was shocked and hurt and suffering from all those feelings. The song now felt like foreshadowing to my own future, and I was almost embarrassed to sing it.
But Gus loved it, and went straight to it. The song came together quickly and it was my introduction to his way of doing things, which I immediately loved. The tones were rich and the song ended up being really groovy. It was also the first song that Josh Dion played drums on. That guy is next level pro and my mind kind of blew watching him lay it down in one take.
It’s one of my favourites off the upcoming album. I’ve since played it to the girl who broke up with me. She loves it too. And now we’re actually back together. Maybe because she liked the song. I don’t know."
“Does Anybody Know” follows the March single “Horizons,” showcasing a new side to Roper's musicality with a focus on his powerhouse of a voice. Roper is quick to give credit to working with Van Go, who pushed him to explore new musical directions. “Recording with Gus helped take things to a whole new level. Everything was broken down to the finest details and nothing was allowed to sit at just ‘ok’. He really cared where the songs were headed and that they ended up just right. It was all about getting the vibe right.” And right it is.
Leading up to the June 11th release of their new EP, A Sleeping Place, Gawain and the Green Knight have released the single, “Fingers.” Filled with allegory and inspired by literature and mythology, the duo calls their sound, “folk for people who like to listen to music while pacing mournfully yet poignantly through the streets, pretending they’re the protagonist in a very beautiful film.”
“Fingers” is “a love song for my soon-to-be husband [bandmate Mike O’Malley], simple as that,” says singer/guitarist Alexia Antoniou, and one of her only auto-biographical songs. She found inspiration in an unusual place - on an airplane, when they were unable to get seats together. “I had been reading Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles and finished it mid-flight and was just completely emotionally devastated. I wasn’t just teary-eyed, I was outright weeping- so much so that the woman next to me took one look at me and started turning up the volume on her little headrest TV,” Antoniou recalls. “I managed to make meaningful eye contact with Mike across the aisle, and with a few gestures of the head, he agreed to meet me near the airplane toilets so I could cry some more on him. ‘Fingers’ was inspired by that whispered conversation.”
O’Malley produced the song with that same intimate, hushed atmosphere. “I wanted to ride the line of all-the-way-in-love and all-the-way-scared. And I wanted Alexia to sound like she was alone in the dark with a torch,” he says. “Sparseness and reverb seemed the order of things - a little Rhodes piano here, a little bowed bass there.”
Inspired by the etymology of the Greek word for cemetery, which simply means “a sleeping place,” the EP sits comfortably in the deep, sometimes dark, parts of the subconscious, arranged in such a way that you remember why life can be so joyful in the first place, its tempo anything but sad. “I think of this EP as a love letter, full of desperate affection, to anyone who has ever been alive and been scared to die,” Antoniou states.
Indie-rock band, RVRSIDE, release their debut EP, Bullet With Butterfly Clips, today May 21, 2021.
Consisting of front-woman Jessica Vaughn, a songwriter and vocalist whose music has been heard on a variety of top networks, including Netflix, MTV, NBC, ABC and more, songwriter and producer Curtis Peoples, who has a storied musical past as a songwriter for artists like Pierce The Veil and Third Eye Blind, and producer Colin creeV, who has produced big names like Jez Dior, hot up-and-comers like Traces, and even Third Eye Blind (of which he is a band member), Rvrside came together over a love of grunge, pop, and dirty synths.
Taking inspiration from the spirit of the 90s, Bullet With Butterfly Clips welcomes listeners into RVRSIDE’s world, “a little dark but not too self-serious,” with a mix of originals and a few choice covers. Three new songs from RVRSIDE appear alongside hypnotic reimaginings of quintessential 90s hits. The next single, “Beautiful Life” (out 4/23), turns the Ace of Base bop into a sinister alternative pop anthem, while “Love Me Like The End Of The World,” is “a love song for the apocalypse.”
Lipstick Jodi, the Grand Rapids trio led by powerhouse non-binary songwriter, vocalist, guitarist Karli Morehouse, want you to know who they really are with their latest single, “Don’t Wanna Know.” Out now, the track is featured on More Like Me, Lipstick Jodi’s sophomore album due June 4 via Quite Scientific.
Discussing the single, Morehouse stated, “The first demo I made of ‘Don’t Wanna Know’ was the first spark of Lipstick Jodi's renewal for me. It seemed like the light at the end of a really long tunnel. I was feeling stuck in time in the eyes of the people around me; like I was being judged constantly for my past. I felt like no one wanted to know me past surface level, or know me for who I really was and who I would become.”
With More Like Me Morehouse closes the books on everything that got them to this place. All the raw emotions and experiences of childhood, teenage complexity and early adulthood angst are explored and expressed in depth - soundtracked by adrenaline rush of synths, guitar-fuzz and propulsive drums. When Morehouse sings, they blast through the sounds in triump.
Listening to More Like Me is like thumbing through a journal of self-improvement, self-doubt, self-preservation, and self-celebration - words sometimes written in a steady hand and sometimes scrawled angrily on the page. Through their music Morehouse explores the deepest valleys of their mind, celebrating small victories, right after a big fight, or driving fast yelling out the car window on the treacherous road of trying to do better. While the songs contained are wildly infectious, Morehouse could not be more clear what this album means to them. A little more mature, a little wiser, a lot more confident about what they want from their music, what they want to say as a queer artist, and what they want from life. More Like Me is just that.
