Listen: Badge Époque Ensemble – “Air, Light & Harmony” [2023]

Posted on September 6, 2023 by Very Warm

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This world is full of constants: death, taxes, and Warm Visions covering Badge Époque Ensemble. These things will never fade, even long after we’re all gone.

The Canadian jazz-funk group’s new album Air, Light & Harmony arrives November 3rd via Telephone Explosion Records, their fourth LP for the label since 2019, and sixth overall. The album is also the final piece of a trilogy, the others being 2019’s Nature, Man & Woman and 2021’s Future, Past & Present, which all sample and take stems from previous BÉE records, warping them into new creations behind the intensely skilled instrumental prowess of the band themselves, once again flexing their versatility as elite studio musicians, as well as sampler extraordinaires.

The title track, “Air, Light & Harmony” is out now and is a lightweight groove, immediately bringing to mind a hot day spent out on a veranda, with shadows in the form of stray patches of disharmony occasionally floating in like clouds. Across the chunky drums, saxophone lilts away and organ steams up the place. A vibraphone solo offers a glassy quality, beads of moisture gathering on the outside of your beverage. A satiny guitar solo stretches out time, rubberizing stiff joints. BÉE’s ever-present flute closes things out, signaling the curtain closing on this afternoon, but leaving the door open for the rest of the album.

Badge Époque Ensemble’s Air, Light & Harmony is out November 3rd via Telephone Explosion. Listen more + pre-order below.

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Listen: Edsel Axle – “Some Answer” [2023]

Posted on September 5, 2023 by Very Warm

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Looking for a little discordant shredding to start kick off your week? Yes it’s Tuesday, but I had Labor Day off. From all things. But back to the previous prompt, if you need some beautiful disharmony, look no further than the new record from Edsel Axle, aka blog fav Rosali Middleman’s solo guitar project. Her new album Variable Happiness is out now via Worried Songs, and most likely going to be featured in my Recommended Albums of September 2023.

The song I’ve chosen in particular here is “Some Answer”, the opener for the record. Putting it on a few weeks back gave me a kind of magical feeling, one that harkened back to times like when I listened to The Dirty Three for the first time. Layers of bending and wilting guitar pile onto one another, washing ashore and receding like the current. There’s a recurring, trembling passage that works its way into the mix throughout the song as well, adding depth and color to the churning guitar passages. To some the dissonance might feel overwhelmingly ugly, but I was struck by a sense of awe & beauty I haven’t felt in a while listening to new music. Love this track.

Listen to this + buy Variable Happiness via Bandcamp below.

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Listen: Gabby’s World – “Open The Door” [2023]

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Very Warm

Now here’s a name I haven’t posted on the blog in a good minute. Gabby’s World is prepping a new album Gabby Sword, coming out on December 1st via Carrot All Records. Gabby’s World is an artist that’s beloved between my partner and I, and their 2015 album O.K. was one of my favorite albums of the 2010s.

The newest track off the record, “Open The Door”, is a lightweight pop romp with nice added strings to beef up the instrumental, which is held together by a drum machine loop. Very motivational, with its steady beat and swelling strings, matching Gabby’s World singer Gabby Smith’s soaring vocals. It reminds me of the kind of summer day that’s beautiful and scenic, but you can see massive storm clouds looming in the distance.

Gabby Sword, the new album from Gabby’s World, is out December 1st via Carrot All. 

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Listen: Joseph Shabason – “Jamie Thomas” [2023]

Posted on August 31, 2023 by Very Warm

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Ok I have to admit: I don’t know anything about skateboarding. But thankfully I do know a bit about Joseph Shabason, and can appreciate the vision for his upcoming project, Welcome to Hell, a reimagining of the soundtrack to the iconic skate video of the same name from 1996, made by Toy Machine.

The original video contained songs by The Sundays, Sonic Youth, Iron Maiden, Jefferson Airplane and more, mostly featuring rock and punk tracks, but also some jazz funk from the Overton Berry Ensemble. This fast-paced skate footage, along with the spliced in clips of the skaters’ surroundings, along with the eclectic combination of tune selections, inspired Shabason at a young age. Now, he’s gone about reimagining the soundtrack in his own terms, utilizing a big band of players and a wide range of instrumentation to harness the energy that surrounded the original and point it in new, exciting directions.

The star of the first single here, “Jamie Thomas”, is undoubtedly the vibraphone, which plinks and plonks around in a psychedelic haze set by the uptempo, driving beat. A fuzzed out violin and smooth keyboard also take solos, but the ping-ponging energy the vibraphone commands is undoubtedly my focus point. It’s an itchy, nervous track that presses you to keep moving, to keep looking back. I’m definitely curious to see how Shabason continues to pay homage to not only the skate footage itself but the musical moods placed upon them at the beginning. Should be a good time!

Welcome To Hell is out October 20th via Western Vinyl. Listen + pre-order below.

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Listen: Eartheater – “Pure Smile Snake Venom” [2023]

Posted on August 30, 2023 by Very Warm

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Right when I was revisiting Eartheater’s incredible 2020 album Phoenix: Flames Are Dew Upon My Skin, and considering it to potentially be the best album of the 2020s so far, she announces a new album, Powders, out September 22nd via Chemical X / Mad Decent.

The first track off the project, “Pure Smile Snake Venom”, sees Eartheater return to the more pop-focused productions found on pre-2020 albums like Trinity, with a throbbing, late-90s rave-influenced instrumental co-produced by Sega Bodega. The song sees Eartheater potentially forgiving a partner that “fucked up”, and withholds her venom despite having every right to use it, instead opting to see how the partner can improve and mend the relationship in the future. A flashed smile to soothe, but contains fangs to kill if provoked. It’s a compelling concept, and executed with grace amongst the pulsating, hypnotizing instrumental.

I’m incredibly excited for this upcoming LP – Eartheater is an artist like no other, and I can’t wait to see where she moves the needle elsewhere on the full project. Powders is out September 22nd via Chemical X / Mad Decent.

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Listen: L’Rain – “Pet Rock” [2023]

Posted on August 29, 2023 by Very Warm

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Adding to the pile of releases I’m incredibly psyched for is L’Rain’s I Killed Your Dog, out October 13 via Mexican Summer. L’Rain had my favor starting all the way back in 2019 when I saw them twice in a week’s time, opening for both Ava Luna and Grouper respectively, putting on truly remarkable shows. Then in 2021 they evolved into “band I will stan for the rest of time” with Fatigue, a record that still sees no equal in terms of its expansiveness and originality. And going back to their live performances, seeing them open for Animal Collective in 2022 just showed me that they’re continuing to evolve, elevating their catalog that I’d already seen played live three times before then into new creations and turning into bonafide rockstars.

And rockstars they are on newest single “Pet Rock”, with some of the most alt-rock guitar and drums I’ve heard on a L’Rain project, with dissonant chords taking chunks out of the melody and a high-pitched arpeggio driving along the verses (almost sounding like a Strokes song slowed down + put in reverse) and the drummer just completely annihilating the beat with incredibly punchy hits across the entire song. Let’s not discount the bass either, which is always a strength of L’Rain’s music. Acrobatic and nimble, it provides the low end and doesn’t feel content with sitting in the background. It’s a kaleidoscoping trip that again, establishes that L’Rain are, like their Bandcamp tags indicate, not jazz, and actually rock stars. This is a rock record. Well, this is one track. Who knows what else we’re going to get.

Don’t think I didn’t notice how the end doesn’t cut off completely clean either, clearly bleeding into the next track following with lead L’Rain brain Taja Cheek laughing in the distance. That was another thing I loved about Fatigue, was that the wide net of sounds and moods across the record never felt jarring – the band found ways to smear the whole thing into one cohesive piece whether it be with samples, field recordings or other strange bits of noise. This band is the future! It’s also the present! Cmon now!

L’Rain’s I Killed Your Dog is out October 13th via Mexican Summer. Listen more + pre-order below.

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Listen: Jane Remover – “Lips” [2023]

Posted on August 28, 2023 by Very Warm

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Undoubtedly one of the bigger incoming records among populations of the terminally online, Jane Remover has announced Census Designated, her sophomore LP out October 20 via deadAir. The first track off the record is the swirling and unsettlingly harmonious “Lips”, which led me to wanting to write a post about it immediately after listening.

I’ve seen Jane Remover’s music described as “digicore”, a label I’ve never found myself gravitating towards after the hyper-saturation of hyperpop as the early pandemic churned along. The fusion of 90s + 00s alt rock combined with cutesy internet forum-fodder digital sound effects and aggressively autotuned vocals, has never won me over. This new track though, despite a few rocky patches in the beginning, fully pulls me in by the second half, as Jane’s falsetto vocal melodies evoking Frank Ocean’s Blonde, with floating vocal harmonies stack together and fall apart in tandem to create a dramatic, dynamic song that feels like a sexy bop singer wandered into a Sweet Trip recording session. Eventually the track goes on the offensive, with a glitched out barrage of guitar and drums giving the hypnotic vocal refrains a trellis to climb upon, growing and reaching further to the sky, before everything eventually crumbles back down to earth.

This upcoming record likely wouldn’t have been on my radar at all if I hadn’t listened to “Lips”, so I suggest you do the same and get in the know. I know Jane’s first album Frailty ran the table of different sounds and influences across its length, so I’m very curious to see if she’ll continue to broaden horizons on this upcoming LP, or hone in on a mood or palette to really flesh out. Either way, Census Designated is out October 20 via deadAir.

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Listen: SPELLLING – “Cherry” [2023]

Posted on August 25, 2023 by Very Warm

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Out today, it’s the new LP from SPELLLING, SPELLLING & The Mystery School. The Mystery School is another name for SPELLLING’s live band, and this album finds the group re-recording new versions of tracks off her last three albums, Pantheon Of Me, Mazy Fly, and 2021’s incredible The Turning Wheel, to help reflect the sound of the upcoming live shows, which you can find the dates of below, as well as the sonic evolution of SPELLLING’s divine compositions.

This track sees the band tackling a track off of SPELLLING’s first album Pantheon Of Me, originally named “Choke Cherry Horse”. The first version is a minimal track that featured spindly guitar, whispery vocals and bruising, blown out low end, like if Joanna Newsom’s folk had taken a wrong turn in some haunted district and turned into a ghostly spirit. This recreation keeps the spooky vibe of the original, with its slow build up, the spindly guitar returning, but the jump in fidelity and added instrumentation is like re-watching an old movie that’s been remastered to HD, or changing a film’s aspect ratio to see previously hidden figures. The field of view is bigger, making space for punchy percussion that offers a chunky backbone, and throbbing electronics bring back the same burly low end that previously hulked around in the track but this time without obscuring the other instrumentation. Another feature this new version does is throw in a Deftones kind of breakdown right at the end, with heavy, molasses-like guitars methodically dissolving the whole track into goop, ushering in its demise. It rocks.

Another great thing about this album as a whole is that not every track feels like it’s just “oh we added instrumentation”. These tracks have been reworked, recontextualized, and shows SPELLLING’s versatility as a songwriter and arranger. “Hard To Please (Reprise)” acts like a chamber pop SZA ballad. There’s a darkness that still exists around all of SPELLLING’s music, but there’s also a ton of wonder and imagination, offering a ton of room to explore new sounds. Always shifting and showing off something new.

Catch SPELLLING on tour and likely grip some sick merch. I’ve got a shirt I wear regularly from when I saw her play at LPR in 2021.

09/16 – Oakland, CA @ Childrenʼs Fairyland (Through The Looking Glass Festival)
10/07 – South Pasadena, CA @ South Pasadena Masonic Lodge
10/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts
10/17 – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Hall
10/18 – Baltimore, MD @ OttoBar

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Listen: Truth Club – “Exit Cycle” [2023]

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Very Warm

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Here’s a modern rarity for Warm Visions – posting rock music. Raleigh’s Truth Club recently signed to Double Double Whammy and are soon to release their upcoming album Running From The Chase on October 6. I have a bunch of triangle-based friends that are friends with folks in this band, but I hadn’t listened to their music until seeing them at SXSW this past March. Sorry! They were really damn good. Their strain of noise rock / post punk / 90s-referencing alt rock (or their Bandcamp-provided genre tag “rare earth metal”) stirs up a chaotic fervor that I place with bands like Ovlov, Pile or Weed – three bands that have made records that contain moments that propel me to new heights whenever I listen. There are other bands that sound similar, but just based on the tracks I’ve heard, I put them in my highest tier of raucous, emotional catharsis.

Their newest single, “Exit Cycle” is a builder; with instrumental and dynamic swells, sounding like smoldering coals that rise into a raging fire by the end of the track, with staggered group vocals twisting together with staircase-climbing guitar lines. It’s a track that feels constantly searching for the majority of it, and feels like it hits a level of peace and acceptance by the end, surging forth with newfound confidence.

I’m really dang excited for this record. I don’t find that happening with me and rock records that much anymore. Shout out to Truth Club. Running From The Chase is out Oct 6 via Double Double Whammy.

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Listen: Hakushi Hasegawa – “Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)” [2023]

Posted on August 23, 2023 by Very Warm

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Japanese musician Hakushi Hasegawa has recently signed to Brainfeeder Records and has dropped this mind-twister of a track, “Mouth Flash (Kuchinohanabi)” that comes with an accompanying insane visual, which you can watch below.

Enter this track into the canon of expertly done, maximalistic pop that Japanese musicians seem to excel at. Cluttered with booming percussion, Hasegawa navigates a rocket-fueled ride through alternate dimensions, even emulating a train whistle at one point. My immediate comparison point was the music used in Satoshi Kon creations, like the parade scene in Paprika or the opening theme of Paranoia Agent, two iconic music moments in anime, in my opinion. If you’re familiar with those scenes, by that alone I feel like you should check this out.

Definitely going to be looking out for more music from Hasegawa soon! They’ve made more tunes in the past that I still need to check out, but cool of Brainfeeder to give this person some shine on their label.

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