Sound of Berlin shares hypnotic video for Dani Ramos' "Dime Algo" Columbian Berlin-based producer and DJ Dani Ramos reveals Dime Algo EP via Sound of Berlin, digitally available everywhere now.
Originally from Columbia, Dani Ramos lives in Berlin and embraced the electronic scene with performances alongside the likes of Luciano, Martin Buttrich, Nick Warren, Hiroko Yamamura, Clive Henry, Seth Troxler, Ryan Crosson, Shaun Reeves, and Guti at premiere events ranging from Circolocoin Cartagena, BPM in Costa Rica and venues such as Ministry of Sound, SONAR, Pacha in Ibiza, Watergate, CDV, Hoppetosse, and counting.
Infused with lean basslines, crunchy drums, and rapid-fire high-end jabs, Dime Algo EP aims for peak times and is an excellent addition to the current tech-house revival. With a higher BPM, the EP features jerky drums cutting through layers of static kick drums, while floaty vocals rise and fall in the background.
On Friday Deer Scout will release her debut LP Woodpecker on Carpark Records. Songwriter Dena Miller began writing songs under the Deer Scout name in her Philadelphia dorm room as a college freshman, before the project grew as she began popping up on DIY shows around New York and Philly, sharing stages with people like Waxahatchee, Joanna Sternberg, Gobbin Jr, Told Slant and Yowler while periodically putting out singles on Bandcamp and cassette.
Six years on from those first singles her debut LP has proved worth the wait, with the pre-release tracks earning praise from places like NPR's All Songs Considered, Stereogum, NYLON, BrooklynVegan, FADER, and a host of others. Now Miller is sharing a final single from Woodpecker, a track called "Synesthesia."
"'Synesthesia' is about associative memory and inexplicable connections between sounds, places, and experiences," Miller explains. "It was written on the train ride home from a show that absolutely captivated me and jogged a bunch of memories. It’s about different points in my life that share the same undercurrent for no clear reason."
Woodpecker is a record about memory and the subconscious. And like an unforgettable dream that keeps you puzzling over its riddles for days, it’s as packed with direct symbols as it is with ruminative haze. “I approach songwriting as a process of boxing things up, or putting away a time capsule,” Miller, who wrote the album over a period of six years. It’s a culminating collection of the project’s many sounds and influences to date, from Philly’s punk cooperatives to Oberlin’s conservatory experimentalism to New York’s DIY history. At the center is Miller’s assured guitar fingerpicking and boldly clear voice, firmly grounded even as it gently probes uncertain emotional and musical terrain.
Today we share our third taster from Laurie Biagini's forth coming album and once again it's a catchy addictive track full of good vibes. To recap Laurie is a songwriter-singer from Vancouver, British Columbia Canada, whose music would appeal to fans of 1960’s California sunshine pop. Her sound and compositions have been compared to The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, Carol King, The Carpenters, and Jackie DeShannon. Her main influences include these artists along with The Beatles, The Byrds, The Monkees, The Turtles, and Jan & Dean.
Laurie has played piano by ear since age five, alongside ten years of classical piano training. She only started writing music in August 2006, after writing her first song which came to her with music and lyrics simultaneously one afternoon as she was commuting home from work. Since then, she has completed and released four albums.
Almost all of Laurie’s songs have been written, composed, performed and recorded by herself, with the exception of a few songs from her third and fourth albums which featured guest vocals, guitar tracks and lyrics.
East London based five-piece Roscoe Roscoe have released a dreamy new single “Secret Underwater Love,” out now on Slow Dance Records / Missing Piece Records. The track comes off the back of the success from the band’s first two singles, the “ferociously alive” (NME) “Brain Retrieve,” and the “brilliantly psychedelic summer romp,” (Under The Radar) “Jacob’s Ladder.”
“‘Secret Underwater Love’ is one of our oldest songs,” states frontman Charlie Read Clarke. “I wrote and recorded the first demo when I was about 15, long before I'd even met half of the band and since then I think there have been at least 3 different recorded studio versions until this one. It has a special, weird place in my heart that both floods me with equal parts nostalgia and cringe. Despite being the least mature of all our songs, it felt worth releasing after all these years, as our sound feels like it is forever changing. The track was recorded at Famous Times Studios in Hackney with my Dad.”
The band met at The Brit School (following in the footsteps of Black Midi, who also formed there) and came together through a shared love of 60s counterculture and psychedelia. Rather than sheerly revivalist, however, their music comes from being part of a generation who have been able to take non-specific and widely drawn sources via the infinite bank of the internet. Other influences the band have cited include avant-pop groups Stereolab and Broadcast, along with evident echoes of Wand, Tame Impala, and Crumb in their music as well.
In 2019, they played a BBC televised performance at Glastonbury despite having no released music. Their charged, inventive live performance was also invited to The Southbank Centre for Nile Rogers’ Meltdown Festival within just a few months of their formation and in 2021, they closed the Rising stage at Green Man Festival.
Sondew Lerche - Alone In The Night (feat. AURORA).
Sondre Lerche released Avatars of Love, his most ambitious work to date, via PLZ / InGrooves. The 14 song double album features contributions from AURORA, CHAI, Felicia Douglass (Dirty Projectors), Mary Lattimore, Rodrigo Alarcon, and Ana Müller. Also released today is the official video for the album’s closing single “Alone In The Night” (feat. AURORA).” On April 30, Lerche will embark on his first US tour in more than 5 years. The tour will make stops in Seattle Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and more.
Lerche explains: “‘Alone In The Night’ was the first recording I did for the Avatars of Love album. It put everything in motion, and surprised me greatly. I heard AURORA's voice singing it in my mind one day when I was out running in the sun. So I asked her if she'd sing it with me. It felt extra special, because I had just returned home to Bergen after 15 years of living in the US. And she was one of the first to greet me there. It's a song about what happens to our bodies and souls when we fall in love, and then again through the passage of time, when we age and die. It's ultimately about our memories and dementia. How frail we really are, and how heartless the process of aging can be to lovers."
This morning, the album was highlighted as one of the best albums of the week on NPR’s New Music Friday podcast, with NPR Music’s Cyrena Touros calling it, “A journey start to finish… I feel like I could spend six months just listening to this one album and I could find so much to mine and explore." In their four star review, American Songwriter said, “An impressive accomplishment, Avatars of Love probes the depths of desire to extraordinary effect." Recently, Lerche released the official video for the album’s 10+ minute long centerpiece “Avatars of Love,” which was praised by FLOOD Magazine and Stereogum, and was named one of the best songs of the week by BrooklynVegan and Under The Radar.
“This is without a doubt the biggest, boldest, most complex thing I’ve ever done,” explains Lerche about the new album. “At the same time, it was also the easiest, most natural, and most liberating. As an artist, it’s the kind of project you always dream about.”
Australian alt-indie duo Geowulf returns with a new song “Drown.” The song is the perfect track to kick back and reflect on good love, even if it’s not the right kind of love. The track also comes with an official video with stunning images of a late-night drive into the unknown.
Speaking about the song, Star explained “Drown was another song Toma and I finished in lockdown over Skype and as difficult as that was I think this song is pretty special because in a way this song is about love (or a form of it) and how when you can fall in love it can be magical but not always right. This song is about finding a new space to exist in love or friendship after the breakdown of a relationship.”
Of the video, Star added “This video was filmed at the first time Toma and I had seen each other in two years due to covid and lockdowns. We wanted to channel a pop noir “Natural Born Killers” vibe and had such a great director in Tim Heinrich and his sidekick Jordan Kaye. It’s moodier vibe for us and we’re all about it.”
London based singer, songwriter Carmody releases new single "Hurricane", lifted from her upcoming debut album Imperfect Constellations. Out 6th July via Young Poet, the album features collaborations with Alfa Mist, Tom Misch, Conor Albert, and Laura Misch.
In matters of healing, we often don’t know how much we are carrying until we truly pause to take stock. Carmody has long been using music as a way to uncover her subconscious, examining the complex web of relationships that surround her. In the face of memory and generational grief, Imperfect Constellations is split into four main parts (or 'Constellations') and draws on her own experiences of alternative therapy, entering a world of discovery and recognition.
Co-written and co-produced with Avi Barath (Berwyn, Priya Ragu, Pa Salieu) and Calum Duncan (Alaskalaska, Rachel Chinouriri, Jones), new single "Hurricane" opens Imperfect Constellations in magisterial and captivating fashion, paying homage to a specific family member, painting her character into full tumultuous vision.
“My Grandma once told me that she doesn't dream, and that if she does, it’s not in colour. I was just like wow, that line has to go in a song,” Carmody laughs. “We have a strange relationship, because she's quite a difficult, but very loveable woman. She’s quite rude, she's really crass, she's got a lot of love but she can't often feel it. It's about me trying to get through to her, but also recognising that I feel like I am quite like her. I wouldn’t call it depression, but I struggle with sadness, and there’s a lot of sadness that she's had in her family that she's just carried. That hurricane feeling; I feel like I carry some of that too.”
Over the years, Carmody has crafted a sound that fits her well, complimenting her lyrical dexterity with melodies that evoke the timelessness of Joni Mitchell and Joan Armatrading while nodding to the modern alt-folk of Laura Marling and Big Thief. When Carmody began work on Imperfect Constellations, it was this sound that she was aiming for, rich in detail and emotional substance.
Commenting further on the release of "Hurricane", Carmody said: "I am very close to my grandmother, she is the matriarch of our family and the thread that holds us all together. She looked after me a lot when I was younger and taught me how to sing. She is quite an unusual character. I think she struggles to live in the present and acknowledge the love that orbits around her, we are quite similar in this respect. This track explores my frustration with her, and with myself, to appreciate the things we do have, rather than what we’ve lost."
Further teasing their forthcoming self-titled debut album, Manchester’s most raucous, riff-fuelled jam band Chew Magna are getting philosophical with newest release ‘4232’ – an anthemic eruption pounding to the traditional teaching of ancient thinkers, in pursuit of freedom.
“Lyrically, ‘4232’ is a joyous song about existential freedom, perhaps even alluding to the concept of authenticity,” tells the band’s singer and nominated spokesperson, Laurie, of the track’s inspiration. “The song stems from the wisdom of German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. He said, to be human is to navigate the correct way to live in the world when most things occur without reason or are the result of an accident. Ultimately figuring this out, he says, leads to a more authentic life because you can question expectation.”
Serving up their own alt-rock antidote to lifelessness in the modern age and delving deeper into the band’s poetic and philosophical fascinations, ‘4232’ is powered by Chew Magna’s tried and tested approach to ‘spontaneous’ song writing. Melding ideas together in the former furniture warehouse where they rehearse, melodies emerge from endless instrumentals and boundless imagination to capture the raw emotion of live performance.
Selected from the Chew Magna album sessions recorded with SWAYS producer Martin Hurley in The White Hotel, Salford, ‘4232’ hurtles along with a chorus akin to alternative Sonic Youth tuning. Playfully screwing with structure, added instrumental ‘choruses’ embrace elements of Krautrock, Post Hardcore, Punk, Noise Rock and Shoegaze as Laurie calls out; “You’re running cos you can’t slow down / You’re running cos there’s time to save / Running cos you figured it out yeah / Running cos you can’t be late.”
“Sonically, 4232 is our most intentionally shoegaze track to date,” Laurie tells. “Its title comes from the weird timing parts in the verse, although we changed it so the numbers are wrong and don’t suit the structure… it should really be called 4323!”
Amitida Is a 18 years old Singer Songwriter from Iran. An inspiring artist with her catchy lyrics and top line vocals. I love working in different genres such as (rock,electro pop ,house ,dance indie/pop) but currently I’m focusing on Electro Pop House and Dance Music. Music is my passion it’s what’s inside me and Since the age of 13 I have been songwriting and singing . In the last few years I have also been learning production.
I had been using a vocal coach to help me with my performances and to help me find my true voice but everything else was completely self taught. My musical inspirations and the people who make me want to do music are Adele and Taylor Swift they are amazing artists. My biggest fan and supporter is my Dad helping me and encouraging me to follow my dream. Recently being signed to Happy Sounds Productions in London with the first Single “Tricky Boy” produced by BOI SYCO. With more release to come from these two in the coming months.
Also working with other artists from the label on other projects the 2nd single to be release is “CLOSURE” with Alberto Merelo. The duo are also working on another project together, to be released in 2022 I plan on working with different producers and artists and regularly release music on streaming platforms also performing live at gigs and showing the world what i have to share.
Alberto Merelo is a Uk based Music Producer/Composer born in Cádiz (Andalusia, Spain) in 1990, Starting his music career at the age of 17 When he learnt how to produce and compose music by himself. Starting in the hip hop genre and making tracks for different artists, He then begun to produce in different genres such as Rap, R&B, EDM, Pop, Reggae, Dance Hall, Reggaeton and other Latin music genres. Since coming to the Uk Alberto is working as a social worker and has a Masters in Studies and Intervention in Inmigration, Development and Vulnerable Groups from the University of Huelva (Andalusia, Spain).
Starting his own music production company in 2017 called 'Greedy Game Muzik'. Working with lots of different artists and genres. Also working on his own album hopefully to be released late 2022. In 2021 Alberto was signed to a London based record label Happy Sounds Productions Ltd where he has started working with different artists from the label. The first release will be a track called “Closure” in collaboration with the amazing Amitida.
“Like It’s The First Time” is a chipper cut from the band’s latest album ‘A Matter of Life & Love’, a raucous record that pays homage to all the greatest things in life.
The exultant song celebrates the thrill of being on the road with a gang of your best mates, set to a foot-stomping beat, dizzying melodies and elating vocal harmonies. As frontman Dan Heptinstall says of the track: “‘Like It’s The First Time’ is a well-trodden ode to life on the road as a touring musician. The travelling, the shows, the hangovers and, most importantly, the connection with the friends and supporters of the band that we get to hang out with along the way. That feeling of often being so far from home yet so utterly at home.”
Creating the mood and atmosphere reminiscent of the final moments of a rowdy night out — when the bar is closing, eyes are blurry and you have a fuzzy feeling in your stomach whilst you jump around to a forgotten throwback track blaring on the radio — “Like It’s The First Time” took on a more bittersweet undertone when touring and “good times with good friends” were put on hold. Something that they were also keen to capture in the official video accompanying the track. As Heptinstall adds:
“It’s a track made all the more poignant for us in the wake of the pandemic, which saw us take a lengthy break from touring. It's been great to be finally back on the road ‘doing it all over again’. The video perfectly mirrors the images I had in my head when writing the song. It’s great to have such memories captured this way, and serves as a reminder to look forward to those we’ve yet to make. Bring it on!”
We have the brand new single "Easy to Love" from alt/pop meets folk duo Loud Forest. The track is the second single off of the band's forthcoming full length album Family Tree set for release in May 2022. "Easy to Love" is a folksy, meditative tune with stunning harmonies. Rachel confides on the inspiration behind the release, "I’ve spent a lot of years with a hard heart, trying to be strong and power through. Through my own journey of motherhood and growing, therapy and working through love, I’ve had to really do the hard work of mending this hard heart, learning to listen and let my heart guide how I think and feel. This is not an easy road, but it’s been the best and most beautiful path to working toward a tender heart."
The band Loud Forest is based in Los Angeles, CA where Bernard and Rachel Chadwick, a married couple, collaborate out of their experimental project space in Pasadena. Merging elements of alternative rock, Americana, and pop as well as post-punk into their moody, crafted indie rock, their earliest albums won a dedicated fan base and radio attention.
An album-oriented band, Loud Forest is doused in indie credibility from years of self-releases, homemade microphones and hosting rock shows in their studio. With influences ranging from Wilco to the Staples Singers, from Bob Dylan to Trey Sivan, from Spoon to Anderson .paak - the band distinguishes themselves with an acute attention to hooky melodies and intentional lyricism that plays with themes of love, fidelity and family. Drawing inspiration from their two daughters, Bernard and Rachel started the band to end all other bands they were in; a merging of creative forces and a project surrounded by their LA community.
Their 4th and forthcoming album, “Family Tree,” returns to their DIY approach; a beautiful lockdown creation of sparkly jams and alternative rock anthems that tell stories of their childhood through raw and angular expressions. Coming May, 2022.
This Rock is the debut album from Glasgow trio Jill Lorean, following on exquisitely from their 2020 EP Not Your First, musing on nature, relationships, love, grief, motherhood and memory over frenetic, hypnotic drum beats and playful, subversive bass and guitar lines.
Jill Lorean as a living breathing thing, featuring Jill O’Sullivan (Sparrow And The Workshop, Three Queens in Mourning) in collaboration with Andy Monaghan (Frightened Rabbit) and drummer Peter Kelly, the band is a unique beast inhabiting its own world, incorporating elements of many genres from folk and lo-fi to post-punk and underground rock.
At its heart This Rock is a timeless rock record rooted expert musicianship, perfectly capturing that live band spirit while commenting on where we come from, where we live and how we interact with our surroundings, while maintaining a raw energy that cruises from the danceable freak folk of ‘Black Dog’ to hook laden ode to love songs ‘Walls’, all the while O’Sullivan’s unmistakable soothingly yet intoxicating vocal performance thrusts your attention front and centre.
Nature runs as a central vein through the record, taking a chance to disconnect from the sometimes disorienting digital world, taking step back and putting a lid on the noise and appreciating the natural world on ‘Beekeeper’, and then human nature on eerie pulsing of opener ‘Breaking Down’, which makes a statement on the meaning of freedom to different people.
Meanwhile, This Rock looks to generations of women, from childhood to granny-hood, from tracks inspired by O’Sullivan’s five-year-old daughter asking “what is war?” and how to broach such a dark subject matter with someone so young, to trying to capture that childlike spirit again on the urgent, powerful single ‘Mothers’, while ‘Kneading’ looks to Jill’s granny and her extraordinariness through some people’s unextraordinary lens.
“I like to feel surprised, I want people listening to it to feel alive and awake. And a lot of music feels a bit stale and gentle. And now you can say, Alexa, I would like some exercise music or I'm in a sad mood play me sad mood music. And I feel like, I just want to shake Alexa and be like, Alexa, fuck off. I just want people to listen to the music and feel a little bit stirred or slightly disturbed by it.
Ritual Cloak follow-up an ambitious year of releases (Divine Invasions, A Human Being is the Best Disguise & Orange Crush) with a collaboration between the duo and photographer Michal Iwanowski.
Witaj w Domu was recorded during the Divine Invasions sessions, but it felt like the track deserved to stand alone. Having been inspired by Iwanowski’s photographic project, Go Home Polish, Ritual Cloak composed a piece of music in response, inviting Iwanowski to contribute spoken word, drawn from writings of his 1900km journey between his two homes - Wales and Poland. Michal narrates three stories, all different, yet all similar and asks, just like the photographic project, where is home? The answer is elusive and complex, a riddle that transcends time and administration.
“The title of the song was inspired by images of Michal’s mother and family awaiting his return as he walked the final stretch towards the family home in Poland, holding the sign Witaj w Domu (Welcome Home). We wanted the title to completely contrast the hostility of the graffiti that Michal felt compelled to respond to. The composition even features audio sampled from a live streamed video of his arrival at his family home. The sounds and voices of his family played a key part in closing the track as these are the people that mean the most to Michal, especially the sound of Michal’s mum’s laugh weaving between the piano notes that brings an emotional texture.” - Ritual Cloak
Willi Carlisle is a poet and a folk singer for the people. Like his hero Utah Phillips, Carlisle's extraordinary gift for turning a phrase isn't about high falutin' pontificatin'; it's about looking out for one another and connecting through our shared human condition. On his anticipated second album, the magnum opus Peculiar, Missouri (coming July 15, 2022 on Free Dirt Records), Carlisle makes the case across twelve epic tracks that love truly can conquer all.
Born and raised on the Midwestern plains, Carlisle is a product of the punk to folk music pipeline that’s long fueled frustrated young men looking to resist. After falling for the rich ballads and tunes of the Ozarks, where he now lives, he began examining the full spectrum of American musical history. This insatiable stylistic diversity is obvious on Peculiar, Missouri which was produced by Grammy-winning engineer and Cajun musician Joel Savoy in rural Louisiana. The songs range from sardonic trucker songs like “Vanlife” to the heartbreaking queer waltz “Life on the Fence.”
The album also imbues class consciousness in songs like “Este Mundo,” a cowboy border ballad about water rights, and the title track’s existential talkin’ blues about a surreal panic attack in Walmart’s aisle five. Though Carlisle's poetic words evoke the mystical American storytelling of Whitman, Sandburg, and e e cummings, ultimately this is bonafide populist folk music in the tradition of cowboys, frontier fiddlers, and tall-tale tellers. Carlisle recognizes that the only thing holding us back from greatness is each other. With Peculiar, Missouri, he brings us one step closer to breaking down our divides.
After almost four years since Sad & Easy, Colyn Cameron is excited to be sharing a new album Freehand. While living in Vancouver, BC, the new material emerged within the paradoxical spaces of experimenting with dispersed and concentrated rhythms. He used the material to explore themes of technology, adventure, self-worth & love with mild nods to worldly trepidation. The album was again recorded mostly at home, with additional instrumentation from close collaborators Aiden Ayers and Josh Contant.
It has now been ten years since the release of Wake Owl’s first album. In the years since, Colyn has also composed original music for 2 feature films and numerous different independent projects, and formed new musical and broader artististic collaborations.
Early this year, Colyn and other local Vancouver collaborators founded the record label Market Garden Records. It will serve as a foundation for releasing his new music and supporting collaborations.
