I’m not sure how I first came across Julia Jacklin’s music, but her 2016 single, “Pool Party” and subsequent album that dropped the same year, Don’t Let The Kids Win, quickly became a go-to for cozy nights in, solo drives, and heartbreak playlists. The Melbourne-based singer-songwriter who brings a mellow mood and hyper-reflective lyrics has already had tours that have reached the states, but with the release of her new album PRE PLEASURE (released on August 26 via Polyvinyl), she’ll surely be adding more fans to bigger and more venues in the same way her new album feels like a step up in terms of the addition of new instruments, styles and an overall level up in the scope of production. Lucky for us, the heart of her songwriting and thoughtfulness remains the same.

The album dances around topics like the troughs and worries around relationships, with tracks like “Be Careful With Yourself,” “End of A Friendship,” and “Less of A Stranger“. After all, conveying that feeling of weaving in and out of nuanced interpersonal relationships is what she’s best at. With the album’s opener, Lydia Wears a Cross, she immediately drops us into the heartbeat of a drum machine and her knack for bringing in her past religious upbringing and childhood memory of listening to Jesus Christ Superstar to set the foundation of her current thought processes, delivering dryly, “I’d be a believer, it’s all just song and dance. Be a believer if I thought we had a chance”. The power of devotion and religiosity comes back later for a love-letter-like interlude in “Too In Love To Die” set to an organ-sounding synth.

The piano isn’t usually part of her repertoire, but as she has with other arrangements on this album, she expands her sound to include it. The second track “Love Try Not To Let Go” is the first, she’s noted, that she’s written completely on the piano. Moving into the album, we get more of her classic minimal, mellow style. In “Ignore Tenderness,” she meditates on the intimacy of being in her body, tying back to a strong theme of her earlier release “Body‘. As a woman, it’s entirely validating to hear songs written about the very real experience of navigating “put words in my mouth or those drinks on the house” in relation to the feeling safe finding pleasure, contemplating one’s reflection and overall a raw, healthy connection to being in your own skin. Though it starts with bare bones, she invites in chimes and strings, which we soon get more of on the album. In a way, it’s a nice level-up and expansion of her past work.

In “I Was Neon” we get a bit more pop punk as her style allows for grungier guitars and a looser feel to match the wonder and chaos of letting go. It ends with the whirlwind that ensues while questioning “am I gonna lose myself again?” repeatedly. Immediately following, she switches gears to a more Angel Olsen sound in “Less Of A Stranger,” which continues to show that all this woman needs is an acoustic guitar to transport us into the most intimate crevices of her mind. It’s a breathy, folky, and unadorned take on the complications of a mother-daughter relationship and a need to hear. Staying on the theme of complicated close relationships, in the next track, “Moviegoer” traces how those random, heavier thoughts appear, like when “moving through the city. Somebody runs into me….I apologize.” With a layered whisper she delivers, just like those thoughts that sit only to emerge from the back of your mind, “if you can say it to a stranger, you can call your sister later”.

Jacklin invites her version of a more uplifting, almost summer vibe to brush off the many yearning asks of a more responsible significant other to another who may get caught up in escape, like “when you go driving will you stick to the limit?/ I’m making plans for the future and I plan on you being in it.” Lyrically, it seems to tie back to the themes of her earlier single “Pool Party” (“My heart is heavy when you’re high/ So for me, why don’t you try?”). Is the same culprit at the root of her woes? We’ll have to ask her next time. The vibe however brings in something a bit more beachy and vaguely reminiscent of Sheryl Crow. To close, we get the gift of the orchestral and cinematic “End Of A Friendship”, speaking to just that. It has a bittersweet feel to a parting of ways, as the strings lift you up and match the glowing flight of having “All my love […] spinning ‘round the room”.

Overall, this album builds on the core of her classic style and material that we know Jacklin for and the addition of new arrangements and production definitely heightens the feelings she effortlessly evokes in her writing.

photos credit: Nick Mckk

The post “PRE PLEASURE” – A scoop of classic Julia Jacklin with some cinematic sprinkles on top appeared first on Quip Magazine.

Last summer brought the release of  Wet Leg’s single, “Chaise Longue” and with it, we were gifted the sarcastic dryness and infusion of post-punk fun we had all been looking for to cope with 2021— something upbeat, to the point and that voiced our shared quotidian experiences with a refreshing kick. Part cheeky pop, part grungy nostalgia, and a hefty sprinkling of all-too-relatable lyrics that shoot to the center of the millennial experience, (like, “Mommy, Daddy, look at me. I went to school and I got a degree.…I went to school and I got the Big D”). Wet Leg is what you want to blast in your head while strutting to the first bar of a night out on the town or with windows down in moody sunglasses on a hot summer car ride. Their sound delivers the laid-back attitude to give less of a damn and re-meet a healthy dose of your teenage self’s energy in its evolved, attempting-to-adult form. 

Made up of the tongue-in-cheek humor of talented duo Hester Chambers + Rhian Teasdale, Wet Leg has been riding the high of their nearly sold-out US/ European tour. I was lucky enough to catch their last US show before they took off to share the magic back home in the UK. It may as well have been everyone in attendance’s first time back to a show since 2020 – that’s how palpable the energy of collective joy and eagerness was entering LA’s historic Fonda theater this past Wednesday night. Lines drifted from down the block before doors even opened. Once inside, while folks grabbed their first drinks and mingled, the flowing chatter was all about what seemed like everyone’s favorite new band. For a duo that still has yet to release their first full-length album, they already have some diehard funs — like the couple dressed in lobster claws and bonnets (an ode to the “Wet Dream” music video).

The curtain lifted and out they came in cheerleader-esque uni’s. Little did we know then we’d get some synchronized guitar moves later on. Single (and banger) “Wet Dream” came early on in the night and with the chorus, head bops turned into two-feet-off-the-floor jumps all around. It was a good time, to say the least. “Too Late Now” had dreamier guitars in the intro which gave some space for Chambers and Teasdale to indulge in a few twirls, reminiscent of childhood pals during playtime — which is what their project is all about. Wet Leg, the two have shared in interviews, was birthed simply as a way for the duo to have fun together and attend music festivals, void of serious expectations or aspirations. That good old-fashioned fun transmitted straight into the audience. 

Despite the spontaneity of their rapid rise, their set seemed curated for the best ride possible. Sprinkled in between their familiar fan favorites, were the much anticipated new songs and they did not disappoint. They captured more of Wet Leg’s lively energy, witty wordplay, and splash of angsty feelings. What more could one ask for? 

Guitars blared in the best way during “Oh No,” which was a real highlight. On stage, Ellis Durand grooved on bass, while twirls evolved into rolling, guitars in hand. The wiggly, bright synths, played by Joshua Mobaraki matched the let-loose, get-goofy vibe and made it that much better to experience this song live. Vocals throughout the show notably sounded fantastic; even up against walls of guitars, Rhian’s deeper, smooth and playful sound came through as buttery while Hester’s backup delivery was the cherry on top. Shout out to drummer Henry Holmes, who held it all together, exerting at full force most of the show and definitely looking like he got a workout in. It sounded like they had all been doing this for a decade together.

The band covered Ronan Keating’s “Rollercoaster,” which they successfully transformed into something all their own and made the stage feel as carefree and intimate as singing and dancing alone in your bedroom to your favorite song. Later on, the surf-rock guitar of “Angelica” inspired more synchronized Rhian and Hester moves while everyone in earshot sang along to the pinnacle point of the evening. They closed with the best for last with “Chaise Longue“. A sun hat appeared for some dress-up fun that was tossed into the crowd. There were laughs, more dancing, and jams. It truly felt like the best kind of party and I can’t wait for more. Good thing their self-titled album comes out this month on April 8th! I know what I’ll be listening to.

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She has been going strong in Montreal’s music scene, being named as one of “30 Canadian Artists You Need to Know in 2020” by Paste Magazine and playing shows from NYC to Copenhagen. Her previous releases include solo albums Betting on an Island (February 2018) and All That I Can’t See (March 2019), which emanate her novel encapsulation of folky plucking, delicate vocals, and spacious drones – all of which she equally gives in to and has complete control over as she loops these components into a swell of something that feels uniquely other-worldly. This year, she relocated to rural Western Massachusetts to live and continue working on music with her partner, so we can expect more to come from artist Alexia Avina.

I was lucky enough to connect with the musician (and her cat, Merlin) to delve into the creation of her latest album, Unearth, a longtime project-in-the-making of Avina’s and joint release by Lost Map and Topshelf Records. We talk about the nostalgia of past periods of personal growth, of falling in and out of passions and practices, as well as the importance of a collaborative relationship with a label and those she works with as an artist. She’s effortlessly well-spoken and having met her on a silent meditation retreat in the past, she arrived, inspiringly, with the same quality of serenity and thoughtfulness as she radiated then.

The first words on her upcoming collection of songs due out October 9th seem to spill into the world that Avina invites us to join. Though her work has been called ethereal and as having a delicate or airy essence, the first track and recent release, “Cups” lures us into something that feels more like slow-moving water; a bit closer to earth and grounded by the drums and bass. Moving from the deeper pools of verses to the more playful streams of bridges and shimmering waters found at the end of a build-up of “You can say what you want to, but that won’t make you listen,” as if a view and realization have been “unearthed,” this is the starting point for the rest of the 11-track album, which mimics the experience of evolution rather than finding resolution – or as Avina describes, “more of charting the process of feeling.”

AM: I listened to your new album, [Unearth] that’s being released soon. It was like coming home. How did you dive in this time around? And has it been different than what you’ve done in the past in terms of your process?

AA: Well, this batch of songs was actually us actually from 2016 and around that time. So a lot of what I’ve been performing since has felt very different and come from a different place. Also, I was performing with the band then, and since those songs [on Unearth], I started playing solo. But the album was really fueled by the post-breakup relationship dissolution process of reacquainting myself with myself. Alongside that, [was] the process of re-examining the relationship and what I felt was true, watching how truth changes over time and over experience. But there’s also an oscillation with that of again, becoming too close, and then needing more space to consider everything.

Diving into “Walk A Line,” the sixth track in, Avina explores this re-examining, stepping in and out of a situation unfolding to see truth from different angles. Self-described as a “space to witness the beauty that can emerge from loss,” a lone guitar leads in followed by Avina’s looped vocals and the swirls of hushed symbols and strings. Her guitar and vocal riffs call back to the Southeast Asian influence on Avina (having been born and raised there) and her sound. These tracks move forward and develop rather than revisit in both structure and sound, at times blossoming with a gentle stroke of a symbol, that then gives way to a new part of the journey. At times it almost steps into Beck’s more mellow orchestral works off of “Morning Phase,” but remains distinct and a bit more floaty.

“I Wouldn’t Go” follows, emphasizing the Eastern musical influence even further. She brings in darker sounding strings and more percussive elements only to fade away and leave us at the end – not with something happy nor melancholy – but simply along for the ride of her experiences from a post-break-up phase years back.

AM: Was it strange revisiting all of this then since it was recorded in 2016?

AA: My first LP, too, is a bunch of older songs that I didn’t even like or feel attached to anymore. With this batch of songs, I feel that I do still like them, and returning to them was kind of a re-appreciation of what the songs are and what they meant at the time of writing them and really re-appreciating who I was when I wrote them. So, it didn’t feel necessarily strange, but more like it was outside of me and so I was more objective in being able to hold it. This time around, that was actually kind of useful, and I feel a little less attached to the outcome of this album. At the same time, I have been holding on to it all these years, because I did want things to feel right and in alignment for its release.

AM:  I can understand the advantage of taking a step back. Even when going through pictures or listening to songs from a certain time in life, it’s like looking back and remembering what kind of things I was thinking or preoccupied with at that point, almost like looking back at different little evolutional characters along the way.

AA: Yeah, which is a large part of why the album art is what it is, because it’s a photo from that time period. It was taken while I was still playing with this band, in the middle of crafting these songs and thinking about forming them into an album. So it is really indicative of the state and the place that I was in. And I definitely really believe in honoring that and honoring all those shades. I wanted to keep that tangible feeling of the moment within the album to the artwork, rather than trying to come up with a whole new idea, which I did toy with a little bit, but in the end, [this] artwork felt like the right way to go.

AM: Yeah, back to the roots. In terms of choosing a title for the album – Unearth. Where did that come from?

AA: That was actually an interesting experience that I hadn’t had before, where the album title came to me before my first LP was even released. I was at a show watching my friend play this droney, ambient set and I had my journal out and somehow that word came to me and I knew I had to hold on to it. And I did for many years and I really appreciate that it happened like that – of holding something secret to you through time. I feel like it really works in terms of what the songs are about in many different facets of unearthing different parts of yourself.

A facet of Avina’s playful self appears on “Horse’s Mane.” Coos accompany her looped vocals which carry the song towards the sonic equivalent of falling stars. Formed by the guitar effects and astral synths, it feels less serious or raw than other tracks off the album, like “Fit Into,” a single released earlier this year. This track speaks to slipping into the shape of someone else’s desires in order to make a relationship work.

AM: The second half of the album becomes a little bit more cinematic and open – and it’s almost like a soundtrack. There’s not necessarily a resolution there, it’s more experiential, so I really like that. Did you have that in mind when you were crafting? 

AA: It’s funny that you say that because the person from the UK label that I’m in touch with a lot when I was kind of having some second doubts about the order of the tracklisting He was also commenting that it did have that suddenly very spacious, dreamy –  kind of like you’re drifting through the album without having a sense of time anymore.

I didn’t take that into consideration intentionally, but I appreciate that it happened that way. In terms of [having a] chronological order or emotional order with the songs, it was more, what feels like it flows?

As we flow into “Feeding That Beast” from the last chunk of the album, we enter what it must feel like to be inside a lullaby. With the mantra-like repetition of the guitar line, ultimately met by soft and warm drums reminiscent of a heartbeat, it’s a dreamy escape. Avina’s voice weaves itself through space as background synths fill in the rest. Leaning toward a cinematic quality, it brings to mind Anthony Gonzalez’s soundtrack projects as M83. Even dreamier, “Synth Jam,” is the most peaceful sleep you’ve had or like you’ve actually arrived in heaven. Every yoga teacher should play this in Savasana.

AM: So now you are signed with a label. What was that process like for you? And do you like working independently? Was it a big decision for you to hop on board with the labels that you’re currently on?

AA: Yeah, definitely. I’ve always kind of struggled with the idea of working with labels, even though I’ve also really wanted it to happen, you know? So it’s just been this tenuous line of questioning what I really want from music, and I don’t think I’ll ever really have that answered concisely. I think it’s always going to be changing and being refined. But I had a lot of doubts about working with labels and a lot of fears. And I had some experiences of either not hearing anything back or things were seeming to be going well, and then just kind of cut off. I felt really burnt out from reaching out to labels.

After taking a little break, I was like, okay, I’ll try Europe again, and I reached out to Lost Map after looking at their roster and artists that I liked. And yeah, Johnny from Lost Map, got back to me. It’s been a really nice part of this experience connecting with him because he’s such a joyful person and I really feel confident working with a team. I feel a lot of trust towards them because Johnny is an artist too. It’s pretty much still a DIY label, which is the ethos of that is important for me.

From there we reached out to Topshelf in the US, which somehow I forgot that my friend was on (laughs). It’s been nice to see [both labels] collaborating and just having the multiple strands of connections going cohesively.

So far, it’s been a good experience. It’s nothing too huge, which I think is better, for me anyways. If something huge had happened earlier without the experiences that I have had now, I wouldn’t have been able to manage it. Taking things incrementally and organically has been an important part of my process and dipping my toe into the label world through this avenue feels really good and like an important growing experience without being too scary at all.

AM: Absolutely. It sounds like just another venture and another way to explore and expand. Having met you initially at a meditation retreat, is that something that you still practice? 

AA: I kept up with the practice and then fell off it a bit. Pretty much since December, I’ve been meditating at least once a day. I was doing the hour-long sittings, but these days, I am a little bit more lenient and I’ve started moving more towards Shamatha mindfulness training, just so I have the firm foundation because it feels like you can’t really build anything without that. It’s been very transformative for me, which has been really cool. When you can actually see the progress being made it’s a huge source of inspiration for you to continue down that path. There’s definitely lots of peaks and lows and I’m in a little bit of a slope right now. During quarantine, especially, I feel like it was a good excuse or opportunity to delve into that.

AM: As such an interesting performer to watch live, how does it feel that everything is a bit up in the air right now? Do you prefer playing live to an audience versus jamming by yourself?

AA: I go through phases with it. Like, when this first started happening, I felt relieved in a way to have an excuse not to fly to shows. I was just in one of those phases. Then I would enter the phase of wishing I could play shows again, because I had a tour planned right around the time that [the pandemic] happened, so I had the tour-itch still in me, but it didn’t get satisfied.

But I also feel really nervous [when I play]. Even though I’m playing a small outdoor backyard show, I feel really nervous to be performing again. So it’s clear that that is not going to go away – the nerves – which I think is a nice thing. It keeps things interesting.

AM: Is there something that you’re looking forward to other than this upcoming little gathering?

AA: Hmm. I am in the process of recording the next album, so that I can start recording the next album after that (laughs). Most of these songs are recorded already, at least, the vocals, and they’re the songs that I’ve been playing solo live for the past two years or so. Right now my partner is coming up with drums for them and I’m kind of thinking of other parts as well. It’s just an interesting process because having not heard these songs with accompaniments, it’s now this second phase of viewing them come fully into form with new life and that’s making me more excited about diving into this album because previously, it felt really daunting to think about working on these songs alone. So we have some studio sessions coming up in October, slowly taking it one by one.

The post The constant journey of Alexia Avina & the release of her latest album “Unearth” appeared first on Quip Magazine.

The words “a whole new mess” describes and emboldens what so many of us have come to experience in 2020. It’s a simple, unraveled, and downright real explanation for the loaded question we sometimes find ourselves asking at the end of a trying day: how did I get here? But long before this strange reality hit, Angel Olsen had been meditating on these words. More recently, they have been birthed as the title for her latest album which came out August 28. After her release of All Mirrors last year— a layer cake of strings, synths, and the furthest she’s strayed into the grounds of cinematic, Angel dropped Whole New Mess, a reflective and intimate return as a one-woman artist.

“I really stand by ‘whole new mess’ as a phrase. I want to inspire people to think about what that means,” Olsen says. Upon listening to the first and title track, to me at least, it’s about becoming and the cycle of breakdown that accompanies it. “I stretch my bones out on the floor,” she croons, only to “make a whole new mess, make a whole new mess again.” The song itself feels like a bittersweet return as if having been on a long, potentially exhaustive journey— that feeling of when you get home, close the door and take a breath, and realize the quiet, the calm, and even the emptiness of where you’ve arrived.

The sound for this project she owns as “ragged” or “purposefully a mess,” but instead of being plain or scrappy, it’s her un-glossed, unhindered delivery that gives this album it’s humble edge. Initially meant as a partner album and bare-it-all antithesis to her 2019 release, she has released the Whole New Mess version of the tracks in the hopes of peeling back some of the layers that have been built up as her career has grown, and of marrying the woman she is at home, with the artist whose curated image we’ve come to know.

Though the elevated drama and the storied production of All Mirrors definitely served in creating something beautifully bold, I am partial to the rawness of simplicity Olsen brings to many of the same songs released in this newest collection. Recording in a once-Catholic Church, using the natural acoustics of the space, Olsen and engineer, Michael Harris, perfectly captured both the hollow starkness of feeling lonely and the ethereal power that comes from standing on one’s own. After all, this is the first material she’s recorded and released without bandmates since 2012’s Half Way Home, and it is yet another expression of the theme of returning that comes with life’s cycles of growth, disarray, and most importantly, re-discovery. The process of stripping things down was a conscious action to “feel strong in myself again outside of relying on so many band members or collaborators,” she shares.

It’s this demo-like quality that enhances this record in a different way. “I was still processing a lot of the songs” when this record was written, “feeling every feeling that they evoke,” in a more direct, untouched way, she explains. This particular rawness comes through in “Summer Song” both through lyrics like, “If I could show you the hell I’d been to [….] Was that the truth I was supposed to see?” and their utter delivery, from wavering and angelic to hopelessly unphased. There is a grittiness of her strums and lone guitar that brings some of her the dreamy and echo-soaked moments back down to earth.

Though in the past she’s joked to audiences at live shows, poking fun at her subject matter and introducing yet another song about the darkness times or severance of relationship, Olsen makes it abundantly clear that this is an album, “inspired by what I’ve been doing, by traveling constantly, by writing constantly for the last seven years and the things that I’ve learned [and] the hardship that I’ve had to confront with people,” she shares. The struggle to learn, unlearn and relearn has a bit more nuance and a whole lot more depth to it and rebirth often comes from the ashes of things lost. “There’s a lot of hatred and anger and frustration happening in the world right now, and there’s a lot of destruction,” she says. “But all of that needs to happen before there can be progress.

If Whole New Mess started with a return to home, the album closes with “What It Is (What It Is)” as a metaphorical readiness to step back outside to face the world with the pep of an acoustic folkiness and the silver lining of lessons lived: It’s easy if you tell the truth/ but knowing what it is, it’s not enough and knowing that you love someone/ doesn’t mean you ever were in love.”

The post Let’s talk about Angel Olsen’s 2020 album “Whole New Mess” appeared first on Quip Magazine.

First, she starts with the drums – the rhythm, the beat. Then she adds vocals – her truth, her story. Drums and voice, “because that’s the humanity of it.” We could sum it up all right there with the powerful simplicity of beat and heart, fire and grace, that Madame Gandhi, or Kiran, emanates, but there is so much more to this creator than the music that flows from her, it’s her practice on the deepest level is about how – and more directly – why the music is birthed.

The ever-blossoming bouquet of an artist we hear and see today grew from roots nourished by the sounds of Lauryn Hill and TV on the Radio, and of rap artists, like NAS from her native NYC, whose music the school bus driver would switch on at young Gandhi’s enthusiastic plea. Naturally, there was also a childhood love for the multi-persona’d Spice Girls. Standing together as a united force, they’d come to represent, to Gandhi, a fuller, more accurate depiction of what it feels like to navigate as a woman in our world: “Some days I was Scary Spice. Sometimes I was Sporty Spice. I lived in the multi-dimensionality of my own femininity,” she shares with a UN FemTalks audience. Without hesitation and in a way that many Spice Girls fans may be familiar with, she recounts: “they changed my life.” Realizing at a young age that women in music needed to be shown in a more dynamic, nuanced way has guided her toward her current work of uplifting femininity in its vast forms, iterations, and facets.

Owning and proudly expressing the many facets of herself is one part of being the change she wishes to see in the world. Carving out proper space for others to do the same is another. She does this by working alongside casts and collaborators, most of whom identify as women, queer, trans, and proudly brown-bodied to put her vision of celebrating the voices and stories of women and non-binary folks, whose perspectives and stories are not told as often, into action.

Let’s be clear: this is not a girls club. It’s a grounds to bring forth more diverse ideas and accurate experiences that push culture forward, because “if we don’t stand up empowered to share our own stories via our own skillsets, someone else, will tell them for us.” It’s work that serves to benefit us all and it’s how we should be viewing business. As Gandhi, the Harvard MBA puts it: in business, the best ideas win out. In this way, business can be the most democratizing force, so “my job is to make sure I’m generating the best ideas possible,” but also “that the best ideas around me are heard.”

If you’ve been loosely following the leaps and bounds of the boss Madame, you may know that Kiran Gandhi’s experiences range from drumming with Thievery Corporation (first sitting in for their percussionist at Bonaroo, while pursuing a Mathematics and Gender Studies degree from Georgetown) and later M.I.A (while earning her MBA at Harvard) to landing as a viral conversation and prominent Fourth Wave Feminist activist for her decision to run the London Marathon, free from the hindrances of tampons and period products. In between, she kicked off a career at Interscope as their first Data Analyst and started DC’s first all-women’s drumming festival called Rad Ladies That Drum. You may ask how did all of this happen? Well, she has birthed a theory for an approach to life that answers this question, called Atomic Living (you can hear her Ted Talk on that here) and she names the “Wake Up Gently” playlist on Spotify as her “secret weapon” to starting any day. But the thread that runs through her long list of accomplishments is the purposeful intermingling of different interests and passions — the urge to dive straight into the “belly of the beast,” of business school, the heart of many patriarchal assumptions, matched with a steadfast certainty that “the bravery to look within and elevate” will build a more emotionally intelligent, liberated, and connected world. This is what makes Kiran and what she stands for beautifully radical.

Her most recent video for “Waiting For Me,” released this June, has been praised for its dreamy styling and aesthetic, its highlighting of India, her mothers, daughters, and all in between, its return-to-nature messaging and its adamant celebration of others’ work. “I wanted to make a video that highlights and celebrates the aspects of Indian culture that I do love – community, vibrancy, female leadership, music, nature, and celebration.” Her respect for her Indian- American heritage and active normalization of female leadership is also what inspired the aptly chosen name of Madame. “The concept of a Madame,” she explains, “is a female leader who really has her team’s best interest at heart.”

The video work is not only visually stunning, with a sunrise/sunset color palette of oranges, pinks and her token hue of yellow calling forth a new dawn, but its release further establishes her as an artist that is here to stay and marks the warrior-driven, future-is-female movement at a more powerful point than ever before. Sonically, the track is set to what other than a contagious beat colored in with swirling electronics, while she preaches the lessons of social justice and gender liberation movements, like “stigma is one of the most effective forms of oppression because it denies us the ability to talk comfortably and confidently about our own bodies,” and “we always assume our own powerlessness but never our own power.”

As an activist, an academic, and an artist Gandhi is familiar speaking to new possibilities of seeing the world and often relates power to another message that drives the song: Truth is love and love will free us. Her goal of “teaching people about love energy” could be written off as woo-woo to those who have not listened with intent to hear, but she challenges audiences to restructure our world’s view of power. “What if” for example “power is patience,” grace or the ability to understand others? What if power was seen as the ability to love or be peaceful “instead of aggression and brute force?” Power is the nuances of expressing ideas, which is fundamental to how Madame Gandhi’s message operates. So, when asked by women or non-conforming professionals about how they can get into a position of power, of change-making, it’s her clarity to see outside and beyond current structures that excites and empowers so many. “I don’t want to break into what men have already started. I want to do our own dope shit.”

There’s a lyric in “Waiting For Me” that sticks out to Kiran, “which says, ‘I won’t take in what they feed us, run away in my Adidas,’ and that line really is about saying I choose to not be brainwashed. I choose to question what I am taught. I choose to unpack and re-examine what I think is truth. I will run away from systems of oppression, and I will run towards the light.”

With music industry veteran Christine Mehr, Gandhi speaks to translating the frustration of oppression, of “so many external conditions and forcing factors that make women dim their light just to be able to survive” into a feminist anthem, “The Future Is Female” a track off of Visions. “It’s really the biggest tragedy and it makes me so mad… You hear that in the aggressive drumming and aggressive electronics of the song. It starts peaceful… like hey, we’re gentle, we’re loving, we’re here for you, we do great work, we’re brilliant, but then you oppress us and then you push us more and push us more and now we’re mad.”

Though growing up, her sights weren’t necessarily set on a career as a musician (she picked up drums at summer camp and pokes fun at the notion that her academically-minded parents encouraged it as a quirky extracurricular that would look good on college applications), drumming became the outlet for her punk rock nature. It epitomized the force that would pair perfectly with and rustle up the feathers of the status-quo-mentality often upheld by academic institutions she explored. It’s true that more and more women are upending the status quo of a male-dominated drum world, still, she knows “it’s radical to see women drummers, even though women were some of the first drummers in the history of humanity. We are internally rhythmic. As folks who bleed, we have a menstrual cycle that is connected to the rhythm of the moon and the rhythm of the earth… This internal rhythm is something that I find to be very feminine.”

On last month’s Tiny Desk, she reassured us with the same natural grounding, that no matter where we are in this world during this uncertain pandemic, “we share one sun, one moon.” It’s this connectivity that has driven Kiran’s fascination with music in the first place. The notion that music is a window into someone else’s perspective, and therefore empathy and connection. This is why music-making is fundamental to her as an artist and intertwined with her active efforts to evolve our society. On an experiential level, watching her drum and perform from her Downtown LA studio felt as warm and playful as the yellow and neon around her.

As we await her culminating album of the trilogy, Vibrations, she continues producing, writing, drumming, and speaking on social justice from LA, as well as remaining active in the Black Lives Matter protests. And though sometimes “It’s challenging to translate a radical spirit into music,” when she sings, so unassuming and directly, “If I drum the beat/ Will you sing with me?” it’s hard to hold out.

Images courtesy of the artist.

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This most recent Friday, January 17th, marked the final marathon night of NYC Winter Jazz Fest 2020. From Bushwick’s House of Yes and The Sultan Room to Williamsburg’s Music Hall of Williamsburg, National Sawdust, Rough Trade, and Brooklyn Bowl, the chilly night didn’t slow artists and fans alike from enjoying the many performances across the handful of participating venues.

After shows by Kendra Morris and Felix Pastorious & Social Experiment, Brooklyn Bowl hosted the popular Kung Fu for a two-hour set, marking the dance-inducing, high-energy point of their lineup. Both crowd and the Connecticut-based quintet contributed to the feel-good-only vibes of the room and were ready to groove the second members of the band stepped on stage. Tim Palmieri (guitar), Rob Somerville (tenor sax), Todd Stoops (keyboard), David Livolsi (bass guitar), and Adrian Tramontano (drums/percussion) were surrounded by an audience so close and happy to get down to Kung Fu’s sounds, that they seemed to one big extended family. On par with Brooklyn Bowl’s usual scene, the funk fusion jams were easy to fall into and accessible to even those who can’t keep a beat.

Following Kung Fu, DJ Logic + Friends set the tone for the late-night Festivalgoers. Collaborating with Billy Martin and Shanir Blumenkranz, the trio made for a chill atmosphere. Their performance was a definite display of eclectic artistry perfectly coming together. Bassist Blumenkranz seamlessly swapped between and played through what seemed like a museum collection of traditional instruments throughout the set, which lent a mysticism to DJ Logic’s praised beats. Some of these included string instruments like the African Gimbri and Oud, which made for more colorful bass lines. Celebrated drummer Billy Martin got deep into his equally notable percussion collection, moving from behind the kit to sound delicate singing bells and a variety of wooden pieces. Really, this was a perfect trio I’d be excited to see again soon.

Back at Music Hall of Williamsburg, Kneebody played to avid followers who almost had as much fun as the group themselves did on stage. Made up of Shane Endsley (trumpet), Ben Wendel (tenor saxophone), Adam Benjamin (keyboard), Nate Wood (drums/bass), and this year’s Winter Jazz Fest artist-in-residence, drummer Mark Guiliana, the show was one of pure enjoyment, craft, and experimentation. The treat began with Wood’s bass mix set to deliver a deep and palpable stream of vibrations to the gut and through the bodies of all in the room. The powerhouse group played from the framework of some new songs, but the focus was clearly on letting loose with solos by all. Most notably, Wood and Guiliana teamed up, jamming from behind their individual kits for a display not to be missed. The excitement only heightened as Wood brought his bass back into the mix, playing it and attacking drums simultaneously.

Music Hall of Williamsburg ended with a set from Daedelus for attendees looking to keep the night going. The LA producer was animated as ever outfitted in his usual tailored suit, complete with a handkerchief to wipe his brow from the workout of the iconic show he puts on. The crowd dwindled with the onset of the morning hours, but those who left missed out on a chance to really take the marathon to a higher level. It was an ending that left me already anticipating next year’s Winter Jazz Fest.

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The crowd grew as this year’s Jazz Fest’s artist-in-residence, Mark Giuliana’s Space Heroes, took the stage. Guiliana himself maintained an air of flowing ease while playing in his utterly unique style. Chris Morrissey on upright bass added to the mix, bringing a sense of thorough enjoyment. You couldn’t help but be drawn to the musical dance he had with his bass and the vibe of the stage until Guiliana slapped back with a breakdown. Solos by Shane Endsley on trumpet and Jason Rigby on saxophone rounded out the performance. Though Guiliana has more shows to go during this year’s fest, he looked relaxed and natural as ever, taking in the scene from behind his throne with complete control. We look forward to seeing more from Space Heroes as well as Guiliana’s upcoming performances to close out the fest!

The night closed out with the duo Scott Amendola Vs. Wil Blades. With a confident attack from behind the drums by Amendola was in his element. Blades met him on Hammond organ and clavinet, playing with an octopus-like reach across layers of keys and pedals, yet with the effortless quickness of dancing fingers. As expected, the intrigue of this duo came from the variety and depth of musical play made available by the two skilled musicians. Amendola later invited special guest, Skerik to join the conversation on tenor sax. Skerik took his time to ease into the set, but once he did, it made for a pleasing ride. The set wrapped with a final, full jam.

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Last week Tycho performed a cool end-of-the-summer evening show at Central Park’s SummerStage. Upon entering, the venue was lined with promotors offering an odd combo of freebees: hangover cure tablets, granola bars, and ice cream sandwiches. The space let in a breezy evening air that paired perfectly with L.A. duo Poolside’s opening act, which saw the crowd through a laidback city sunset.

The audience filled in significantly as we awaited the headliner. Tycho’s Scott Hansen stepped on the stage all dressed in white and jumped into his accessible track “A Walk” from the 2011 release Dive. The night sky set a perfect backdrop to his visual accompaniments of crashing waves, southwest desert scenes, and kaleidoscope colors. Flashing lights flanked the stage, blinking and shifting between rainbow hues in rhythm with the beat, illuminating both the artist and the clouds of vape smoke floating over the crowd.

The highlight of the show proceeded once he introduced his special guest, Saint Sinner. Her white-blonde hair glowed against the light and she serenaded us with Weather hit “Pink and Blue” as well as the more mellow track “Japan.” Between songs, Hansen beamed, admitting that playing to us in Central Park was a “dream come true.” No doubt, Tycho’s California vibes add a dreamy quality to any scene. That night at Hansen’s show, the dream was the low-fi calm of Tycho’s live set reverberating out from the heart center of otherwise busy New York City.

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slowdanger, a Pittsburgh-based collaboration between dancers Anna Thompson and Taylor Knight, constructs at once an intellectual and supremely visceral ambient sound. Their songs are captivating and strange. Soft, throbbing beats and found material echo alongside Thompson’s ethereal vocals creating a resonating, soulful kind of downtempo electronica. When sound is coupled with visuals, in their music videos and live performances, the concept of slowdanger is more fully realized. This pair of abstract futurist dancers tell stories through vibration and movement. Their message touches on the topics of the natural world meeting modernization, building something new, yet inherent and familiar, and rebirth from the rubble of leftover constructions and ideas.

June has been a very busy month for the band, full of traveling, teaching, producing, arranging, sampling, editing, and preparing for their next big creative moves at the junction of music, dance, and tech innovation. Lucky for us Anna and Taylor found some time to chat with us and even hang out for a photo shoot.

Haley Stein: How did slowdanger begin? 

Anna Thompson: It kind of happened naturally. We started out making dances together when we were both in college, and we wanted to make our own scores. We played around with samples and field recordings from our phones. Then there was this natural process of meeting and engaging with people in our community, collaborating, while simultaneously working on our own sound and dance. And we are starting to feel how these worlds can’t be separate. 

Taylor Knight: We were especially driven to work together because the environment of our university felt somewhat fixed on what it meant to be a dancer. Anna and I had a shared vision of flipping the traditional idea of being a dancer by incorporating the use of our voices and drum machines.

HS: As dancers, how does movement influence the way you create music and soundscapes? 

AT: We wanted to create [a] sound that made us want to move. That’s kind of where our sound comes from, thinking about the vibrations that signal our bodies to move.

TK: I started out dancing at a very young age as a tap dancer. I always related movement and sound in a special way. Then this idea of vibration, that vibration is everywhere. Even in silence, there is still this vibration. Vibration connects us to the audience or the observer. We can harness vibrations and be a conduit to let that pulse or that drive off that vibration come out in movement. Anna and I focus on the environment a lot on stage. People relate to sound as a connection to place so easily. You hear a certain sound and it takes you into another world. As Anna was saying, we use a lot of field recordings and ambient sound to invite the audience into other worlds. Space is also a vibrational tool.

AT: We play something that we have thought up, and it gets to physically touch someone. The soundwave changes when it meets your body. And your body has a response. You can’t always control how you react. I think that is so beautiful, that with sound you are physically impacting another person.

HS: In the bio on your site, you mention “physiological centering” as a component of your work, what does having a physical body mean in a digital age?

AT: A lot of the work that we’re making right now is dealing with how we can balance and center being human. We continue to advance technologically; we use technology as a tool to enhance our experience of living. Technology takes on this embodiment. But centering is learning how to sense your internal responses.

TK: […] The song structures are meant to have this level of ambiguity. The structure is nontraditional, so maybe it keeps the listener engaged, more of a journey in sound rather than verse and chorus, verse and chorus. You can feel a response to the sound in the body, maybe in your chest, for example. At the same time, we use drum machines and music made through computers that are inherently disembodied.

HS: How do you see the direction of technology influencing the arts?

AT: With our residency at Carnegie Museum of Art right now, a lot of the focus is on creative technology, and programming. We’re seeing a lot of great interdisciplinary collaborations that are working with technology in a way that’s not a fetish.

HS: Fetish. How do you mean that?

AT: Technology in the arts can so often go in the direction of like, “Ooh look at this new technology!” without exploring the why or the how. We want to come from an angle that’s versatile in relating the body and technology.

TK: The human enmeshment with technology is going to continue to happen. None of us can stop that. Rather than use advances in technology to further diminish people’s interpersonal skills and connections, how can we infiltrate those technologies, and help people keep the human connection? Eye contact, skin-to-skin touch. A lot of the VR world is “shoot ‘em up” video games and action-packed explosions, but there’s also work going on relating to empathy and ethics. It’s a new frontier for us all.

AT: […] We can envision and actually create a totally new space, especially in virtual and augmented realities. So then, there is this capacity to potentially… While we exist in this reality, we can reflect in another. A lot of new technology is for media and military purposes, but what I see these artists doing… they’re building amazing new realities, to heighten specific perspectives.

TK: And desexualize the word “intimacy.”

AT: Finding ways where we are not objectifying ourselves as dancers but creating interactive space for the audience. We’re working on a VR piece between two dancers and one observer, where the observer uses their body to illuminate the space around them, and then eventually they create a portal into the “real world” where they notice they’re dancing, they’ve been dancing with the two dancers the whole time.

HS: That’s a fascinating application for this technology. I saw some of your older music videos and the visuals are very sensual, very warped depictions of the human body. Can you explain how those videos, for example, “body, my body,” tie into the narrative of Slowdager’s musical style?

TK: Yes. There’s these landscapes of trees and forests, and you zoom out, and that’s actually inside of us. We can talk about the body as a landscape, the simplicity of that concept, and how broad it can become. Anna and I really like the idea of distortion. Letting bodies be fragmented, or liquefied, to touch upon the many emotional landscapes we carry. How we share the experience of living in these bodies but oftentimes try to be on our best utilitarian behavior. “Everything’s fine! It’s all great!” Really, you might not be doing great.

AT: The lyrical content came out of a lot of writing from experiences in my past of body dysphoria, eating disorder stuff, and a way to find control in this world. I feel very strongly about acknowledging the shadow as a way of becoming a whole person. In that way, we play with a lot of destruction and fragmentation. The song came out of the feeling that your body isn’t going to just disappear in one instant. That you can build something with your body as you become aware of it.

TK: And how it can be a place to return to in the face of all this uncertainty, questions that cause anxiety, that we can never have answers to. We can at least say “I’m here in this body.”

HS: What does the future hold for slowdanger?

AT: Our residency at the Carnegie Museum of Art is putting on “Performers at Play” between June and September, culminating with an event on September 19^th at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s Alloy Studios.

TK: And we’ve developed a new evening-length, multimedia dance-performance work with this LED light sculpture that responds to our motions and our placement on stage. That one is called “empathy machine” and it premieres in Pittsburgh on August 30^th and 31^st, and it will tour to New York (date TBD) and Washington, D.C. in October.

AT: We’re making new music, too. We’ve released some last summer. We’re trying to take it slow.

photos by Alana Mayer

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