JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the legendary Chuck Berry.
New Video: Allegories Return with Ethereal “Glorious Vanity”
Canadian experimental pop duo and JOVM mainstays Allegories — childhood friends Adam Bentley and Jordan Mitchell — just released their newest album, By accident, On purpose on this past Friday.
The album includes ““Honestly, that’s enough honesty” “They’ll Never Suspect Us” “Pure Comedy” and the album’s latest single “Glorious Vanity.” Arguably, one of By accident, On Purpose‘s most minimalist and ethereal songs, “Glorious Vanity” serves as one of the more extreme examples of the JOVM mainstay’s experimental creative process with only the title remaining from the initial composition. The result is song that’s a hauntingly eerie, slow-burning, half-remembered dream rooted in palpable yearning.
The song captures the duo’s willingness to abandon a predetermined designation that largely came to define the album. Rather than ruthlessly potting their original idea, the duo allowed instinct and experimentation to dictate what the song needed to become, crafting a weightless entry point into the album.
New Audio: Belgium’s Solarski Shares a Punchy, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper
Mysterious and emerging Belgian trio Solarski is inspired by post-punk and indie but steadfastly refused to be easily categorized. Their latest single “Do You Need a Riot?” is a punchy, mosh pit friendly ripper with […]
New Audio: Zacchae’us Paul Returns with Swaggering “TEN outta Ten”
Atlanta-born and based producer, singe/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Zacchae’us Paul released his highly-anticipated sophomore album JAZZ MONEY VOL. 2: SWINGIN’ R&B this past Friday. Sonically, the album sees the rising Atlanta-based artist effortlessly crafting a seamless blend of jazz, R&B, neo-soul and hip-hop that features razor sharp beats complementing nimble, acoustic jazz drumming, emcees effortlessly spitting bars alternating with jazz solos.There’s R&B-styled crooning and sangin.’ There are producer tags, interludes and spoken word sections. And it’s all anchored in jazz improvisation and cinematic storytelling influenced by hip-hop’s golden age.
JAZZ MONEY VOL. 2: SWINGIN’ R&B includes the previously released “LOOK TO THE SKY” “SHE F*CK WITH THE RACKS,” the Zacchae’us Paul and DJ OOOCHILD co-produced “BETTER MUST COME” feat. happy qavah, donSMITH, Keenyn Omari and Derzon Douglas, the Down To Mars-produced “STAY” feat. donSMITH and the album’s release day single “TEN outta TEN.” “TEN outta TEN” is a sleek and effortless blend of trap, R&B and jazz that pairs thumping, eardrum shattering low end and trap beats with soulful crooning, thoughtful lyricism, hip-hop swagger and lounge-ready sophistication.
As a Georgia native, Paul created the song to pay tribute to legendary local hip-hop producer Zaytoven. “I’ve always felt a connection to Zaytoven,” Paul explains. “We’re both preacher’s kids and organists whose musical foundation was built in the church. Even after all of his success, he still plays in church today. That has always inspired me because it reminds me that your gift belongs to God before it belongs to the industry.”
He continues, “Ironically, trap was the first style of music I ever learned to produce. I started making beats in middle school before I ever considered myself a jazz musician. From there, I became obsessed with exploring every branch of Black American music—jazz, gospel, blues, R&B, soul, funk, hip-hop, and beyond. To me, they’re all connected. This record is where those worlds meet: a tribute to one of Atlanta’s greatest producers through my own musical language.”
Throwback: Happy 54th Birthday, Eminem!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Eminem’s 54th birthday.
New Audio: Monølo Shares Driving and Hypnotic “A1”
Monølo is a French classically trained pianist and electronic music artist, who has built a career exploring the intersection of acoustic piano and contemporary techno. Throughout his career, his work has seen him crafting a sound […]
New Audio: GOODTWIN Shares Breezy and Sultry “Roadside”
Led by Augusta “Gus” Alexander, indie pop project GOODTWIN derives its name as an ode to Alexander’s very good twin sister. And with the release of handful of singles over the past two years, the […]
Live Footage: JOVM Mainstays Gotts Street Park and Olive Jones Perform “Wake Me Up” at ATA Studios
Leeds-based trio and JOVM mainstays Gotts Street Park— Josh Crocker (bass, production), Tom Henry (keys) and Joe Harris (guitar) —released their full-length debut 2023’s On The Inside, which included “Got To Be Good” feat. Pip Millettt, “Fuego,” “Mountains” feat. ENNY and “Tell Me Why” feat. Olive Jones to international acclaim. And in the subsequent years since its release, the album has amassed over 300 million streams across all DPS with “Got To Be Good” landing in Season Three of BBC’s hit series Boarders and this year’s Finding Emily starring Spike Fearn and Minnie Driver.
The acclaimed British trio’s recently released sophomore album Somewhere Between is a natural progression from the soulful-groove led sound that has defined their previously with the material drawing from Bill Orcutt, Dylan Day, Dick Gaughan, Jessica Pratt, Big Thief and Blaze Foley, as well as the working methods of the house bands at Stax Records and Sun Records. The result is an album that combines the collective’s signature production prowess with an even greater warmth than before, as they also draw on the spirit of the 1970s troubadour singer/songwriter movement with a cast of long-time collaborators that include Celeste, Olive Jones, Pip Millett, Matt Maltese, Sofia and The Antoinettes, anaiis and Rosie Lowe. While the album finds the band exploring new textures, arrangements and approaches to songwriting that helps to create space for a wider cast of collaborators, the material stays rooted to the understand, live-take-in-the-studio feel that has become synonymous with the band.
Speaking on the evolution of their sound, the band said: “New influences have definitely found their way into this record, but it’s still grounded in our love of soul and jazz. The sounds originally introduced to us through all of us growing up on hip-hop. It’s about new strands weaving through what we already do”.
“The title only arrived once the album was finished, and it means something slightly different to each of us,” the band continues. ““For me, it reflects the space that collaboration creates, a place where our individual lives, moods and experiences overlap for a while to make something together. We’re all arriving from different places, but in the studio those separate worlds meet. There’s something about making music that feels like stepping into a space between the tangible and the intangible, where ideas seem to come from somewhere beyond ourselves. In many ways, that’s what this album represents: meeting somewhere between who we are individually and what we can create together.”
The album includes the previously released “Some Birds Don’t Fly” feat Matt Maltese, “Easy” feat. Celeste, and the album’s latest single “Wake Me Up” feat. Olive Jones. Featuring a sultry, old-school soul-meets-Soulquarians-like groove with dusty breakbeats, a strutting guitar lick and bursts of bubbling synths beneath Olive Jones‘ breezily soulful yet yearning delivery, “Wake Up” explores the blurred lines between true love and infatuation, capturing the messy uncertainty of someone trying to decipher whether the rush — and hope — of a new romance can develop into something deeper.
“It’s about coming out of the whirlwind stage of early romance and trying to find a steadier, more enduring form of love,” Olive Jones explains. “It’s a phase of confusion and questioning: ‘Am I making the right decision? Is this the right person for me?’ It’s about not wanting to let the fun of the whirlwind go but knowing it can’t last forever.”
The live footage of Jones and the band was shot by Andy Berriman in Leeds-based ATA Studios.
Throwback: Happy 79th Birthday, Bob Weir!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 79th anniversary of the birth of Grateful Dead co-founderBob Weir.
Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Flea!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea’s 64th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 57th Birthday, Roy Hargrove!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 57th anniversary of the birth of Roy Hargrove.
New Video: Montréal’s DONALDA Share a Glitchy, Politically-Charged Banger
Montréal-based electronic dance music duo DONALDA — Florence Lafontaine and Olivier Martin-Fréchette — derive their project’s name from the name given to the first women admitted to college in Québec in the late 19th century, and is a nod to the fictional character introduced in Claude-Henri Grignon’s 1933 novel Un homme et son péché, who, for several generations, embodied the consequences of patriarchy.
Lafontaine and Martin-Fréchette both have an academic background in digital, contemporary mixed-media and instrumental composition, as well as in jazz interpretation. Inspired by UK garage, dubstep, left field bass and other British electronic music sub-genres as well as the queer nightlife scene, the duo take a pedagogical approach to music in order to deconstruct the boundaries of musical genres. While getting people onto the dance floor is their ultimate goal, they also seek to spark musical curiosity among their audience, something that is at the core of their inclusive, unifying philosophy.
Through composition, sound design and creative coding, the Montréal-based duo tap into their wide-ranging experiences to bring every stage of DONALDA’s creative process to life. And fittingly, their versatility imbued their sound with a coherent and deeply personal artistic identity rooted in a celebration of diversity and inclusion, freedom and the French language.
Earlier this year, the duo signed to Bonsound. And since then, French Canadian outfit have released “C FOU,” “C BEN D’VALEUR” and their latest single “C CHER.” Translated into English as “It’s expensive,” “C CHER” is one-part footwork, one-part Larry Levan/Chicago-styled house and one-part glitchcore with wobbling bass that references Daniel Lanois’ 1989 song “O Marie,” which focused on the grueling, back-breaking labor of French Canadians who used to work in Ontario’s tobacco fields while also being a critique of the frantic pace of capitalism and its physical and psychological effects. The result is a song that turns collective physical and mental exhaustion into a visceral, deeply universal anthem — and is both a cry of frustration and a call to question a broken system that hinders individual and collective fulfillment.
Directed by Cori & Zacksta, the accompanying visualizer features the French Canadian duo making beats, brushing their teeth, stopping a bloody nose, making beats and hanging out with VHS video glitch and in heat mapped-style footage. It’s as trippy and high energy as the song it accompanies.
New Video: Total Fucking Darkness Shares Yearning, Pop Gem “This Is The Last Time”
Electronic music outfit and JOVM mainstays Total Fucking Darkness features:
- Stars‘ Torquil Campbell
- Young Galaxy‘s Stephen Ramsey
- English studio genius and synth player Tom McFall, whose engineering credits include R.E.M., Bloc Party, Twin Shadow and Regina Spektor
Over the past 18 months or so, the trio have released a handful of standalone singles, including “Desolation Boys,” “Take It Easy,” “Give Me Everything You Own” “Horizontal Rain” and “Beaten to Write.” Their latest single “This Is The Last Time” is glistening sophistipop-meets-80s New Wave-meets New Order-like tune anchored around what may arguably be the most melodic and the most earnest and achingly oversized yearning song of the trio’s growing catalog.
Sonically, “This Is The Last Time” sees the JOVM mainstays looking backward to move forward. Campbell, Ramsey and McFall have had a long-held obsession with late 1980s and early 1990s electronic music, and the new single pushes that fixation towards its biggest pop-leaning instincts. There aren’t software shortcuts hiding beneath the surface either. “No plug-ins, anywhere. This track is all analog, baby.”
When asked what inspired it, Total Fucking Darkness’ Stephen Ramsey offers a characteristically economic answer, “New Order.”
“This Is The Last Time” arrived with similarly little ceremony. Ramsay had barely made it through the instrumental once before Torquil Campbell had the lyrics ready. “It may as well be called ‘Real Time’ because Torq wrote this in real time,” Ramsay explains. “By the time I played him the instrumental once, he had written the lyrics.”
“‘This Is The Last Time” is about the point where letting go becomes forward motion, following whatever dream remains, committing to it completely, and accepting that the only sensible response to uncertainty is to set your heart on fire — and see what survives.
“Every band says their latest music is the best thing they’ve ever done,”the band’s Stephen Ramsay says. “It’s obviously cliché at this point and therefore categorically untrue in almost all cases, but I’m telling you, this is the best song we’ve written.”
The accompanying video features edited footage from some movie that follows two dogs, who are in love. It’s adorable.