Summoning the spirit of 2000’s hardcore, Dallas, Texas band Nygma has established a reputation for surrealistic lyrics, unorthodox guitar melodies, unpredictable shifts in tempo and rhythm, and wild stage presence. Burnie, Colten, and Caleb have been playing music together for close to 16 years, they’ve been in other bands together as well as touring the US multiple times. The three of them met through local church functions in Mansfield, Ohio. Burnie met Daniel and Chris through the local scene in Denton, Texas. The five have been playing together for close to years now. NYGMA started as an outlet that wasn’t faith-based even…
Author: Cleopatra Patel
From the corners of city streets to some other stretch of pavement in the world around us, there isn’t a moment in the lyric video for Iva Toric’s “Trust Fall” in which the young performer does not own every inch of space around her. Her execution is smooth, her abilities more than obvious from every angle we break down the music from, but most of all, she’s backed by the right combination of attitudes and actual people to bring out even the subtlest of features from this piece here. Iva Toric might have a minimal background to the average listener,…
AV Super Sunshine has been rocking the American underground for a minute now, but in his new single ”Scarecrow,” I think he makes it pretty obvious that he’s starting to outgrow the insularities of his indie scene. There’s a restlessness to his vocal in “Scarecrow” that is the opposite of off-putting; it actually feels like a battle cry calling for us to wage war with whatever mundane circumstance has kept us unhappy and frightened in life. This is one of the more cathartic slow jams I’ve come across in a long time, and worth taking a second look at this…
Adunni Rose Talent Agency is always looking out for talented and fresh-faced newcomers who aren’t simply “gimmicks” and likely to be out of the business by adulthood. Intelligent observers will soon get the feeling that Adunni Rose are taking the long view with their clients rather than squeezing every job and available nickel out of them while they are still draw money. Talent development, yes, but they are interested in helping to develop quality human beings as well helping to shepherd blossoming careers. Few clients on their roster make that more apparent than brothers and native New Yorkers Lance-Carter Obadiaru…
Rob Alexander is crooning with all of his heart and soul in the opening lines of his new single “Merry Christmas in Heaven,” and with his words, he is instantly painting a picture of an American holiday with modern, albeit unfanciful, poetry. The strings swing along to a swift beat in the backdrop, but nothing is rushed here; Alexander is taking his time to make this as original a Christmas song as he can, which as most already know, is no easy challenge for any artist to face down. There’s a lot of adrenaline in his voice, and when matched…
Punk, metal, and goth are a familiar combination to a lot of heavy music fans, but in The New Jacobin Club’s new album Empire of Dis, they make for a cocktail of chaotic melodies as pulverizing as they come. While I wouldn’t say that The New Jacobin Club is out to reinvent anything with this record, efforts like “Gloriana Engine” and “The Hunter” imply a desire to paint outside the lines that is very exciting to those who like a more creative strain of hard rock intensity. With Empire of Dis, a tornado of texture and harmonies doesn’t always land on top…
Minimalism doesn’t have to sound particularly barren in chamber pop and psychedelic music, and if I had to judge based on the looks of his new album, I would have to say that Sun King Rising is out to make this statement law with the release of the brilliantly simple Signs & Wonders this October. Though the instrumental intricacies of this LP are absolutely on the more conservative side, there are a few complications to the construction of the material and the delivery SKR provides. In telling us a story that starts and ends from within his very soul, this songwriter gives…
The Dallas String Quartet have peers and contemporaries mining the same general musical territory that they are but, for the most part, the pop/classical band has planted their flag in a corner of the music world that is all their own. Revamping songs from a wide cross section of pop music and tossing in some polished takes on time-honored classical pieces as they do on Love Always, their new album, produces a rich collection of material that never rests for long in one place. They’ve played for Presidents, global organizations, and filled important venues, but the Dallas String Quartet has…
Shelley Loving’s passion lies in helping others cook and eat a little healthier without dieting or having massive restrictions. After her husband’s heart attack, she decided to take ownership of their health by cleaning up what they were eating. After two nutrition schools and culinary school, she now teaches others what she applied to her own life. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be complicated, time-consuming, or boring. And Shelley is on a mission to teach you how to do it in a way that will leave you feeling great. Her certifications include Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, Certified Culinary Nutrition…
Recording artist turned producer, Joseph Maresca, looks a bit like a highly connected event organizer. He just happens to be a talented musician and composer as well. His latest offering, “Mighty Mighty South Beach,” while not necessarily high art, is nonetheless a lot of fun. Joseph pays tribute to his favorite place in the world, in the smoothest and most fluorescent way possible. Likening himself to DJ Khaled on this project, Maresca may have found his new calling. With a bright and persistent chorus, “Mighty Mighty South Beach,” doesn’t insist you find it memorable, yet you do. With the ladies…
I think it’s a fair observation that we’re all obsessed with buying things. There’s no shame in that, technology, fashion, and more are more accessible than ever before, however this leads to a slight issue being that if you can get anything, what’s stopping you from getting everything? It’s a decidedly American conundrum that Austrian singer ViennaCC tackles head on in his charming, disorienting and fantastic track “Shopping Queen.” At first glance, an Austrian might be the last person you’d expect to tackle a seemingly heady and long standing argument against those easily swayed by the allure of “shiny things”…
Minimalism can come in numerous forms, especially when we’re talking about pop music. From the simplest of acoustic folk songs to a stripped-down club sample, if we’re pulling the fat from the muscular melodies a track is built upon, we’re indulging in some sense of minimalism, and it’s to this end that I think Andrew Z is bound to get a lot of love for his new single “Growing Pains,” currently out and available everywhere quality indie music is sold and streamed. “Growing Pains” has a compositional backbone that puts it in line with a lot of minimalist pop coming…
Teasing us with simplicity in “Op. 27: I. Larghetto in C-Sharp Minor” or cutting through the crisp silence with a devastating form of decadence ala “Op. 55: II. Lento sostenuto in E-Flat Major,” Elizabeth Sombart’s interpretation of Frederic Chopin’s Nocturnes has had critics and classical fans around the world very happy in 2022, and for good reason. WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Sombart WEBSITE: https://www.elizabethsombart.com/en/home-english/ Where Chopin was a standard-setting influence over the world of music and continues to be revered as one of the most important composers of all time, Sombart looks to be as much as a pianist in her work, and…
2022 has been a busy year so far for Alt.Pop artist Little Hurt (Colin Dieden, Ex-The Mowglis) with touring ramping up again. He continues to explore the edges of Alt. Pop & Alternative Rock with new single “Cooler If U Did”, due to be released on Friday, 9/16. The song features a tight groove and a soaring atmospheric chorus that is instantly memorable. Dieden says “Cooler If U Did’ was a song that was written after I went through a really difficult breakup. I got together with Jordan Witzigreuter from The Ready Set and my friend Ryan Baharloo and we rented a house in Venice Beach. It was a…
I’ve always heard artists opening an album or EP with the title cut as an unstated admission of confidence, a bit of attitude, in the material they’re putting out. If so, it is justified here. “With Love” opens Tia McGraff’s EP of the same name with gentle acoustic guitar before the arrangement soon expands. She introduces light percussion, additional string instruments, and pumps up the pace for the song to take flight. It’s a controlled soar, however, as McGraff and her cohorts are careful to never go too far. There is a pop sensibility behind the writing that is impossible…