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Movie Club – Black Flamingo (Color Version)
03:36 | Single | 31/10/2022
Digital | Independent
Psychedelic Rock / Post Rock
Venice, CA, USA
Fans of Californian Psych and Post Rock duo Movie Club will know that there has already been an official music video for the song ‚Black Flamingo‘. The cinematic transformation of the title track to Movie Club’s 2020 album was directed by Ran Pink and it has been online since October 02, 2020. For Halloween 2020 – two years and four weeks after the original video’s release – Jessamyn Violet (drums) and Vince Cuneo (guitar) – provided a very special gift for their fansand for everyone who is yet to become one. The award-winning band presents a coloured version of the lack and white original, and thus they let the audience dive even deeper into the fantastic world of the ‚Black Flamingo‘.
Ran Pink’s music video makes us explore an exciting universe that is located at the borderland between dreams, nightmares and curiosity. While the black and white version from 2020 adds a (beautiful) Nosferatu-like vibration to the visual, the coloured version adds depths and impressions in the vein of 1970s horror films. With this new dimension added, the indulgence of the sounds gets emphasized even more.
The recordings of ‚Black Flamingo‘ feature three famous guests, namely Tim Lefebvre (bass – David Bowie), Jessy Greene (violin – P!NK) and Rami Jaffee (keyboards – Wallflowers/Foo Fighters). This five-piece line-up creates a sheer monumental sound that combines the sweet sedative effects of Psychedelic Rock with atmospheric Post Rock breezes and a heavy Stoner Rock rhythm. Thus, ‚Black Flamingo‘ feels like a luci dream in which the listeners wade through thick ooze in a colourful but uncanny dreamland while sweet odours of unknown fruit tickel their noses.
8/10 Mangoes
Kath and The Kicks – Stay way from me
03:56 | Single | 22/10/2022
Digital | Independent
Alternative Rock / Hard Rock
Leeds, England
In their latest single ‚Stay away from me‘, Leeds-based trio Kath and The Kicks addresses an issue that probably most of us can relate with. It is that very gut feeling you get when you realize you have swa with the tide for far too long. Group mentality, peer pressure and collective action have coined your decisions and attitudes, and you may even have benefitted from that. But there comes a time when you realize that the stream has taken a direction you do not want to move. It is this very moment in which you begin to realize you wat to break out of the cycle, and in which you raise your voice against those who try to keep you amidst the stream. This moment and this power to stand up for yourselves is the theme of ‚Stay away from me‘.
Concerning such a liberating act, it is no big surprise that Kath and The Kicks present their single ‚Stay away from me‘ with a powerful and chain-breaking Punk Rock attitude. Yet, ‚Stay away from me‘ is not a proper Punk Rock song although the verses are carried forward by an activating pogo rhythm. But thhe song is way more than just that. Atmospheric and melodic passages display the tough moment of realization until they flow into heavy elbow-laden Alternative Rock riffs symbolizing the struggle of fighting one’s way back against the stream. The song’s intensity steadily increases until it finds its climax in the anthemic coda with its purely liberating character – ‚Stay away from me‘! Kath Edmonds (vocals and guitar), Trev Nicholls (bass) and Matt Larkin (drums) present the hymn for those whowant to break free.
7/10 Mangoes
Hampi – Devil’s Moon
03:13 | Single | 31/10/2022
Single | Digital
Dream Rock / Psychedelic Post Rock
Edinburgh, Scotland
Hampi is a new artist whose name you should keep in mind. Born in the Scottish Highlands, the musician has traveled Europe, Asia and the Americas to explore the world inside and outside of his soul and his physical body. Between meditation, exploration, and a multifold perspective inwards, outwards and beyond, Hampi’s artistic vision has grown. In the year 2023, the artist who now lives in Edinburgh will present his music on stages. The first single has already been released on Halloween of 2022, and it gives a first insight of what to expect from Hampi in the future.
‚Devil’s Moon‘ is an ode to the misty barrier between conscious and unconscious. It is that overwhelming feeling of remembering a dream and longing to step back into it shortly after waking up. Hampi musicks the moment in which the light and fragile reality of a dreams seems to vanish while one is fighting against the consciousness to break in. Using words for such an intense experience is hardly possible within the codes of modern-day humankind’s languages.
Hampi’s approach is thus a perfect one since he uses drones and atmospheric soundscapes for the sonic transformation. In the song’s beginning, Dream Rock and Shoegaze elements beautifully symbolize how daylight or noises break into the dream, and thus endanger it of collapsing. Voice samples even intensify this impression while the thick mist of psychedelic noises stands for the one foot that still stands solidly in dreamland. A spiral staircase of Post Rock licks adds extra movement to the song until finds its open ending. Whether the final theme has led to the conscious world or back to the dream lies in the sleepy eye of the beholders.
7/10 Mangoes
