Nine “fresh n’ Green”, ultra tasty tunes to feed your music appetite. We are pretty confident, you don’t wanna miss those ones right?
JACQ – ‘Oblivion’
About JACQ
Quiet introspective songs, minimalism with a cinematic feel.
If, as the old adage says, that you can tell a person by the company they keep, then Rich Jacques’ CV speak volumes about him. By adopting shifting roles, from producer to songwriter to guitarist to artist, Rich has built up an envious set of skills which in turn have led to work with a host of notable musicians and create music for all manner of media projects. He is also know for being a member of 80’s infused alt-pop band Right The Stars which has so far resulted in three critically and commercially well-received albums and more recently can be found as one half of the song writing/production team that is Aalta.
The road to this current place has been as intriguing as it was unexpected. After moving out to LA almost twenty years ago, dreams of becoming a session guitarist were soon dashed and the reality became selling guitars and giving lessons soon replaced it. But the latter soon became a full time job and from there he made the right contacts and soon found his own music being licensed to a wide-range of TV shows and films. From there he hasn’t looked back, doors opened, networks were built and he has worked with everyone from Lisa Loeb to Men at Work’s Colin Hay and has had his music feature in shows as iconic as Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill and The Vampire Diaries.
His latest project is Jacq, a solo singer-songwriter outing and one driven from a very personal place. Unexpectedly, for someone who understands the art of big, instantaneous and infectious music, Jacq is the sound of an artist using only a few core components – guitar, voice and only a few additional musical details – to create wonderfully emotive, spacious and drifting music.That said it is nothing if not instantly accessible but feels more like an intimate conversation with an old friend than anything more but there is something wonderfully beguiling, warm and honest in its understated charm.
Whichever aspect of Rich Jacques work you are familiar with, this latest creation is like little you have heard him do before. If you are unaware of his long and varied career then this is the perfect place to start exploring his work.
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Influenz – ‘Another Level’
About Influenz
Influenz is a Rap/Hip-Hop artist from Sin city (Las Vegas). Style consists of smooth flow and articulate wordplay! Speaker Bangers and lyrical bars for days. First official and new EP/Album titled “Amoral Pragmatic” Available on Spotify, Itunes/Apple Music, Soundcloud etc. Just released in March of 2019 with more great songs and material on the way. Main single currently out is a song titled “Good Lookin”. A west coast styled banger!
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Shouldies – ‘running’
About Shouldies
2019 finds veteran indie label Graveface Records (home to Casket Girls, Xiu Xiu, Appleseed Cast and more) charting some new/old territory. They’re starting a subsidiary of Graveface called NEVERNOTGOTH. NNG will be home to many reissues of obscure darkwave/goth LPs but also will showcase some new talent making waves in the genre today. The first release on this new sub-imprint (GOTH001) is by Atlanta’s Shouldies.
Attention all goth kids, pop princesses, darkwave divas: the new sound still isn’t rock and roll. At least not to Shouldies, a synth punk trio consisting of Yancey Ballard, John Pierce, and Daniel Eberlein, on a mission to fuse dance with a relatable dose of realness — but make it goth. The group rose from the ashes of the Atlanta music scene in 2017 to serve darkwave to the buttcracks and crevices of the city’s sprawling highways and bigots, dance on the ghost of your face as you sit in the 5 o’clock traffic, whisper in your ear when you frequent, yet again, that bar with the shitty men. With lyrics that sound like the most profound page of your emo phase (but make it political), Shouldies layer earnest pacing over a soft fury of synth.
You’ll have a chance to let that sink in, as the alluring synthscape works in tandem with direct message — Eberlein and Pierce can be seen onstage focused intently on creating the backdrop for Ballard’s delivery. Introspective ideas manifest into broader themes. Ballard recently commented on Atlanta’s deceptively close proximity to homophobia and transphobia in Kerrang!: “A lot of the time, it’s a fight to be heard because it’s not ‘as dangerous’ as it is outside [Atlanta’s perimeters]. People don’t care about microaggressions. People don’t care about discomfort. People care less than they should about full-on aggression because at least it’s ‘safer’ here. ‘At least it happens less’. ‘It could be worse’.”
Life-long friends Ballard and Pierce collaborated on a number of projects before forming Shouldies with Eberlein, who they barely knew prior to, in summer of 2017. All three agreed that if they were going to make music, they wanted it to be accessible, relatable, and fluid. As Eberlein told Creative Loafing “We just wanna make songs that you can dance to, and with lyrics that are really meaningful… something that gets stuck in your head,” he says. “It feels way more powerful than making some art statement that’s supposed to be vague… People want to relate to music and dance and be happy.” Shouldies first took the stage at Irrelevant Music Fest 2017 with Eberlein on drum machine and synths, Pierce on guitar and synths, and Ballard at the front. The rest is a history of sordid love affairs with pop and punk.
Eberlein’s background is mostly in techno and noise, and he tells Wussy Mag his dream concert would be “Arca perform[ing] in a giant old building, like a church or something.” Pierce would rather meet you in the pit: his dream show is “Fugazi and Dead Kennedys at 529.” Shouldies is both a surreal and austere union, not to be taken lightly, though the music feels as natural as jokes thrown around a group of friends. Then comes the Darth Vader synth: monotone lyrics materialize on the dance floor as exorcism, and the audience feels the echoes. Wherever Shouldies draw their edge, live shows draw cross-genre crowds and promise an experience with very little internet tracing.
They must be cooking up something. If you ask them, they’ll shrug their shoulders and tell you that you missed tea time. Now serving: shiny, hard, synth pop.
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New Palace Talkies – ‘Caravan For Sale’
About New Palace Talkies
New Palace Talkies is Tom Stevens. The ethos is for the music to be uniquely personal, the lyrics to be written in a state of pure subconscious creative flow for total emotional truth, and to always be positive, inclusive, and broadly empathetic. Ross Smithwick (Lonely The Brave, SecondSmile) joins for the live show, a blend of electronic drums, looped vocals and live instrumentation. The show is supplemented with lights triggered live by the electronic drums and cast onto purposefully made clothes, for a visual reflection of the vibrancy of the music. The project began in Cumbria, with the “New Palace Talkies” being the name many original cinemas used, as these were the places where culture was finally brought to the common man and not limited to the upper class. These themes still underpin the music. After performing at Kendal Calling, 2000 Trees, and supporting Dan Deacon and George Ezra, there was an enforced break. Hundreds of songs were written, to be released this year.
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Cyberattack – ‘I Know the Feeling’
About Cyberattack
Cyberattack is an NYC glitch-rock band led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Ivan Anderson. Its full-length debut album, produced by Geoff Stanfield, will be released in mid-2019.
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Simon Lunche – ‘Cherry Wine’
About Simon Lunche
Singer/songwriter Simon Lunche has packed a near-lifetime of musical experience into just 20 years. As the creative force behind Berkeley-based indie-rock act The Blondies, he’s written and produced the band’s entire catalog and made his name as a captivating live performer. Along with taking up guitar at age five—and soon becoming the youngest endorsed artist in the history of Gibson Guitars—he’s built up a vast musical knowledge that includes composing all the instrumental parts to his songs, from violin and cello to trumpet and sax. Having spent the last decade as a frontman, Lunche is now set to deliver a solo debut that brings a powerful new depth and even more dynamic vision to his artistry.
Formed when Lunche was nine-years-old, The Blondies released their acclaimed album Just Another Evening in June 2016, right around the time of his high school graduation. While several of the band’s older members decided to focus on finishing up college, Lunche opted to forgo school and pursue music full-time. Despite having written the majority of The Blondies’ three EPs and full-length effort all on his own, Lunche quickly found that working as a solo artist allowed a greater degree of creative freedom and sparked an unexpected evolution in his sound.
“As I started working on my new music, I rediscovered the reason why I picked up guitar in the first place,” says Lunche, who recalls hearing an Eric Clapton solo at five-years-old and instantly becoming infatuated with guitar. Expanding on the technique he’d begun sharpening as a little kid, Lunche soon advanced from his former role as rhythm guitarist and started crafting more intricate and richly textured guitar lines. “I don’t go for that shred-happy stuff that’s going to blow the roof off,” he says. “For me it’s more about slower, smoother playing and more melodic lines that really stay with you in a special way.”
As he settled into finding his voice as a lead guitarist, Lunche conjured up a guitar lick that would make its way into his solo debut single. Mixed by Grammy Award-winning engineer Dave Reitzas (who’s previously worked with artists ranging from Barbra Streisand to The Weeknd), “An Angel’s Love” bears a warm authenticity shaped by Lunche’s longtime love of Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen. The piano-driven track also finds Lunche bringing deeper nuance and a more reflective mood to his lyrics. “I think as you get older, you start to appreciate these little moments in time in a way you maybe never had before,” he says. “A lot of what I’m writing right now is about dealing with change and trying to move forward, but still holding onto some reminiscence of the past.”
Throughout his forthcoming album, Lunche matches his classic sensibilities with a soulful vitality that adds a fresh new edge to his music. At the same time, his solo work shows the strength of his natural musicality (a factor possibly inherited from his grandfather Raymond V. Pepe, who—as president of the Institute of High Fidelity—was hailed by Frank Sinatra for his sonic ingenuity). In each track, Lunche builds off his instincts with the songwriting skills he’s honed since age six. He also sculpts every song with intense precision, tapping into his constant studying of the complexities of production. “When I listen to music, I’m thinking about how certain sounds were made, what gear was used and how things were recorded,” he says. “Experimenting in the studio all the time has really helped me to fine-tune my own sound and create music that feels good to me.”
When he’s not working on his solo material, Lunche is often immersed in his long-term project of composing his own symphony: further proof of his restless creativity and singular devotion to making music. “If you don’t see me, I’m probably writing some piece of music or working on finding some sound—to the point where if I try to wind down a little at the end of the night, after about two minutes I’m picking up my guitar and trying to figure out some tone,” he says. “Music is 100 percent my life, and there’s really nothing that can ever distract me from it.”
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Glenn Echo – ‘Overwhelm’
About Glenn Echo
Glenn Echo is a musical project from Matt Gaydar, started in 2015, now three years of age. Based out of Brooklyn, NY, Glenn Echo has soaked up influences from past residencies, such as Nashville, TN and Northampton, MA, to weave together textures of folk, singer-songwriter, alternative and experimental music, and blues to cultivate a unique sound and performance. Glenn Echo inspires a soundscape, surfacing a mix of genres and noise collages, creating an intimate space, or atmosphere, for connection.
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Wallahi G – ‘Girls Kissin’
About Wallahi G
Uncloaked, transcendent and raw. Local legend Wallahi G’s unique approach to Rhythm & Poetry is filled with mind evoking lyrics and psychedelic melodies.
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Go Fight – ‘Chemical’
About Go Fight
Jim Marcus, the lead singer of the seminal 80s industrial band Die Warzau, started Go Fight in 2013 with fellow Die Warzau Alumni Dan Evans to build a kind of music that they weren’t hearing, am anthemic, song focused but grungy approach to industrial that they called Electro-Scuzz. Marcus’ son Mission and world class drummer Vince McAley whose recent performances with Cubanate and Chemlab have filled houses have also been integral parts of the sound that is bristly, and energetic live on stage and danceable and uplifting on record. Their voice has emerged as being sex positive, anti-war, pro-LGBT, pro-women, and compassionately aware of the trials that push people toward suicide. Go Fight has always been an advocate for new bands, new music, and young people’s ambition to do what they want, to build something great.
Christos Doukakis