Ben Brookes - The Motor Car & The Weather Balloon (2017)

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Written by Jason Hillenburg, posted by blog admin

This is an album packed with some real heavy hitters. Young singer/songwriter Ben Brookes has recruited some of the most respected musicians and sidemen in rock’s long history with former Bob Dylan keyboardist Greg Inhofer, one time Prince drummer Michael Bland, and Badfinger guitarist Joey Molland. They’ve contributed much to the realization of Ben Brookes’ The Motor Car & The Weather Balloon but, ultimately, Brookes’ exceptional vocals and songwriting are the primary culprits behind the excellence of this ten song collection. This Portsmouth, UK native began writing and performing his own songs at the age of eleven and each of the ten cuts included on The Motor Car & The Weather Balloon testify to the obvious commitment he’s made towards honing his chosen craft, as well as the influences fueling its creation. There are obvious nods to both The Beatles and Pink Floyd but, in the end, Brookes’ collection stands on its own and never risks imitation.

“I Wanna Go Home” opens the album on a distinctly creative note. There’s a jangling quality that Brookes and his collaborators bring to bear during an assortment of passages while other sections are much more reliant on firm drumming and flourishes of fiery guitar. The organ thrown into the mix adds further color without ever sounding out of place and Brookes’ vocals achieve a great balance between a storytelling stance and a more emphatic, straight ahead rock style. The second track “Integration (Not Segregation)” is a particularly memorable number for how it brings together Brookes’ melodic gifts with a near symphonic grandeur, but there’s more. Brookes frequently makes use of ambient sound effects and even intersperses spoken word passages from various sources, including former American President John F. Kennedy. Acoustic guitar and some light keyboard contributions power the opening of “Asleep in Galilee” and the drumming takes it off into a stately march with just the right amount of propulsive force. The addition of some slide guitar in the song continues a recurring trend towards a gritty, rootsy sound on the release.

The mid-tempo acoustic jangle of “Before Sunlight” is punctuated by some tasteful reverb-laden electric guitar fills laid over top. Brookes’ voice has a slightly nasal quality to it that gives the memorable vocal melody further flavor than it might otherwise possess and its gently loping quality is particularly effective with this musical arrangement. “Stories in the Rain” cops a similar musical feel, but it’s much more emphatic and certainly sports a clear Beatles influence running through it. The steady march pace he adopts for the song provides for a number of hard hitting mini-climaxes. There’s a near waltz quality to the song “Siren” and the emotive wail in Brookes’ voice plays exceptionally well over this tempo. It has an airy, strum-driven arrangement and the space in the performance allows the song to breathe without restriction. The penultimate track on The Motor Car & The Weather Balloon, “Somewhere Around Eight”, is one of the finest slow build tracks on the release and shows how sharp his instincts are for ramping up the musical intensity. The electric and acoustic guitar lines paired up with this track complement each other extraordinarily well and lend its dramatic a little extra muscle. Ben Brookes closes the album with “Shackles” and it’s a track where he forsakes any significant electric guitar bite in favor of a quasi-orchestral pop ending putting forward his influences a final time while retaining the same well defined identity defining much of the release. The Motor Car & The Weather Balloon recalls a time when artists aimed higher than the marketplace with their musical works and, instead, eyed posterity as the thing they truly wanted to impress. There’s little question that these ten songs are fine enough to exert real staying power to hold up under repeated listening. There’s no question that Ben Brookes has his career off to a magnificent start with this album.

Cyborg Asylum - Never Finished, Only Abandoned (2017)

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Written by Jason Hillenburg, posted by blog admin

A mix of American and English influences powers the debut release from Cyborg Asylum, an electro post-industrial alternative rock duo featuring the talents of David Varga and singer/songwriter John Tumminia with some additional collaborators contributing from the fringes. Varga’s classical music education, production acumen, and vast experience providing music for television, film, video games, and commercials proves to be an indispensible tool for the twelve songs on the duo’s first full length release Never Finished, Only Abandoned. Varga’s musical vision is enough to ensnare the audience’s attention, but Tumminia’s lyrical and vocal contributions are the deciding factor in presenting this collection as an all-around rewarding listening experience. It’s, in turns, lush, melodic, ominous, and brimming over with emotion. Never Finished, Only Abandoned is a debut of immense artistry and sets up Cyborg Asylum as one of the most promising acts working in this vein that have come along in many years.

The album opener and first song Varga composed for the release, “Blitz”, kicks off with a bellowing air raid siren between transitioning into a dissonant and brief classically themed introduction replete with the sound of falling bombs. The song properly begins and we’re drawn into its churning web. Anyone expecting Cyborg Asylum’s material to neatly follow a path from point A to B will be disappointed – there are musical asides and flourishes galore lain over a relentless percussion and bass pulse. This fine instrumental is an excellent way to begin the album and contrasts nicely with the comparatively restrained second number “Synergy”. There’s a more traditional drive to this song, but it pursues challenging ends as well with the fluid course of its arrangement and the assortment of variations it applies to Tumminia’s vocals. The lyrics are exceptional and well suited to the arrangement. The brief, clocking in at just a little over two minutes, “War Machine” might promise to be a bulldozer of a tune based on title alone, but Varga and Tumminia instead opt for a much subtler feel and effects laden vocals.

“Angle of Incidence” is even shorter, not even reaching the two minute mark, but proves to be a gripping musical interlude regardless. It packs more musical firepower into that confined space than many much longer songs are able to muster. There are hints of a human voice straining to be heard through the electronic attack, but they are warped by streaking electronic colors that transform them into something much darker, even vaguely threatening. “Steampunk Highway” opens with a splash of synth driven atmospherics joined by acoustic and electric guitar tracks. Tumminia’s singing has one of its more emotive moments with this performance and backing vocals further strengthen its effectiveness. One of the album’s longer numbers, “Asymmetry” has an attention grabbing backbeat given some extra bit thanks to its forceful electronic attack. The arrangement frames Tumminia’s vocal in a variety of shades and permutations certain to hold listener’s attention. The finale, “Paradigm Shift”, is a sleek and uptempo number making great use of the interplay between guitarist Phil Jones and the percolating, assertive synth lines. The drumming has an invigorating live snap and Tumminia’s lyrics are among the album’s finest. Never Finished, Only Abandoned is a resounding first effort from this duo surging with boundless promise.

Josh Birdsong - Where the Light Bends (2017)

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Written by Jason Hillenburg, posted by blog admin

Josh Birdsong’s debut EP Simple Geometry established this young singer/songwriter and musician as one of the most promising talents working today, but his new EP release Where the Light Bends primes him to be propelled to entirely new level. The six song collection from this Nashville by way of Detroit transplant relies on an assemblage of electronically treated guitar work meshing with emotive singing and first class lyrical content to excellent effect. Birdsong recorded this latest release in Nashville with producer Stephen Leiweke, renowned for his work with Ingrid Michaelson and band Jars of Clay, and amply demonstrates why Birdsong has garnered consistent airplay on over a hundred radio stations nationwide while also receiving numerous awards for the excellence of his presentation and material. Birdsong has found a definite method for transmuting the personal into the universal and few, if any, listeners will finish this EP without feeling affected by his talents.

The electronic effects applied to Birdsong’s stellar guitar work further accentuate its excellence. There seems to be an array of guitar lines weaving through the introduction to the EP’s opener “Complex Context” and the production imbues it with immediacy capable of immediately seizing your attention. Birdsong’s voice emerges from the mix as an equal to the other instruments while still maintaining its position as the center of the song. The slightly upbeat tempo never threatens it runaway with itself and, instead, gives the song welcome physicality assured to help the song linger in listener’s memories. The EP’s second track “The Sound Beneath the Static” has a much more spartan sound and the guitar work has a tightened focus when compared to the first track. The arrangement nicely climbs higher with the chorus, but there’s a careful restraint to this performance that exhibits a more considered point of view than we heard with the EP opener.

The cleverly titled “Cloud 8” has a much more ethereal, airy thrust than the first two tracks and a little more post-production effects applied to Birdsong’s vocals. Birdsong exhibits a wont for cloaking everything with a certain amount of echo and it underscores the atmospheric tenor he aspires to on this release. The patient approach continues with the song “Too Much To Hold” and gives listeners another taste of Birdsong’s masterful talent for orchestrating these songs in such a way that their dynamics draw listeners in without ever coming off as too heavy handed. His vocals on this song are attentive and ranks among his finest vocal turns yet. Birdsong revisits some of the urgency that defined the opener with the penultimate number “Arctic Desert”, but with a more diffuse quality than we heard with the first song. The nuanced percussion is key in differentiating between the two approaches and one can definitely hear this performance as a sort of mix of the grounded approach heard on various tunes with his more thoughtful inclinations. Birdsong’s title track is the fullest realization of his point of view on the EP and exhibits tremendous range despite artfully reining itself in. The airy electronic textures juxtaposed against Birdsong’s guitar is, as usual, critical to the song’s success and ties the EP’s various strands into an unified whole. Where the Light Bends is a more than worthy follow up to Simple Geometry and sets the stage for Birdsong’s future.   

EZLA - Outcasts (2017)

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Written by Jason Hillenburg

Nashville has long since ceased being exclusively the realm of cowboy hat wearing would be hayseeds peddling a particular vision of life, love, and all that to the music buying public. It has continued, as cultural winds shift, to be a major hub for popular music in America and many young performers continue to flock to its environs with the hopes that talent will out and they’ll get their day in the sun. EZLA’s EP Outcasts is a five song release revealing this young female singer/songwriter to be one of her generation’s more formidable talents in the making. Her musical imagination has stoked enough of a sympathetic response from her target audience that she’s garnered over thirty five thousands streams of her material on the Spotify platform. Even a single turn through the tracks gives strong indication way. EZLA merges dark lyrical impulses with equally atmospheric musical structures and all of it defined by a well developed sense of melodic possibility.

There’s an initial cloud of shimmering synths coming with the opening song, “Outcasts”, but it shifts nearly immediately into much more looming, moodier fare. EZLA certainly has an excellent voice technically, but the sound is all her own. It has a cawing, slightly nasal quality possibly a little unsettling initially, but listeners will soon settle in with her style. The title cut takes a handful of relatively unexpected turns during its duration and the idiosyncratic tone of her voice commands a definite presence from the first. There’s more of a conventional use of melody with the song “Skeletons”, but EZLA’s musical imagination can’t help but skew our expectations some with this song as well. Her sharp, intelligent phrasing lighting up the lyrics of the opener is equally powerful here.

The heated longing at the center of “Satellites” exerts a definite amount of commercial appeal, but it likewise displays some of the same artier inclinations that distinguish the first two songs. It could have served as a strong first single for the EP as well, though the title song has a good case for that spot. The dark throb opening “Hangman” quickly dissipates into a mid-tempo pulse with enough nimbleness to switch gears as EZLA’s inventive vocal melody demands. The intense musical thrust of the song never relents despite any tempo shifts and the song concludes on a distinctly chaotic, yet controlled, note. There’s a theatrical air surrounding a lot of EZLA’s material and that reaches its apex with Outcasts’ finale “Psycho Killers”. This is another sleek electronic driven number with occasional spikes of electric guitar cutting its way out of the mix. Her hushed, understated vocal has some post production effects applied to it at various points, but those alterations never undercut the natural power of her voice. It makes for an effective ending to the EP providing it with another colorful moment nonetheless consistent with the release as a whole. Outcasts is an ear-catching debut from a vocalist, writer, and performer who truly stands apart.

Black Note Graffiti - Volume 2: Without Nothing I'm You

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Written by William Elgin, posted by blog admin

Black Note Graffiti’s second release Volume 2: Without Nothing I’m You illustrates the band’s natural evolution better than anyone could possibly explain it. The band, initially a four piece centering on the vocals of Ricardo Ortiz, has recently added female vocalist Gabrielle Bryant as a fifth member. Her talents, however, are not featured on Volume 2, although listening to the eleven songs on this release provides listeners with a unintentionally fun parlor game in imagining how her voice might further transform or elevate these tunes. Ortiz and the other three originals, however, turn in a barnstormer of a collection and the casual and hardcore music fan alike will be swept away by this Ann Arbor, Michigan based band’s unique confluence of meaty metal riffing and alt rock theatrics and emotion. They’ve discovered a viable vehicle for expressing themselves in a way that sounds fresh in 2017 and sparkles with deceptive originality.

The low-cut, guitar-centric attack of the album’s opener “No Love Lost” is a memorable way to begin the release, but this song sports a power-packed chorus as well that the band plays just right. Ortiz’s vocal balances itself exceptionally well between outright lung muscle and emotional, full-throated phrasing unusual for the genre. Bringing that added dose of technique to a singing style not particularly renowned for finesse makes this a much more invigorating listening experience. There’s a steady, bass-anchored plod bringing “Such is Art” to life and when the song launches in earnest, Black Note Graffiti unveils one of the album’s best numbers. Adam Nine’s bass playing is especially effective. “Castles” clocks in a little less than three minutes and has a grinding, stop start arrangement beginning the song that soon segues into some of the band’s customary staccato riffing. Kris Keller’s blistering lead work adds a fiery exclamation point to the performance. This is another outstanding vocal from Ortiz, as well, that relies much more on art than muscle.

The distorted melancholy beginning “Bars from the Cages” is much more in an alt rock band than the largely metal leanings of the album’s first quarter. Naturally, this means Black Note Graffiti makes more use of their melodic potential and the inclusion of backing vocals is another highlight of the song. “Shadows” is four and a half minutes of the band exploring textures in a particularly exciting way. The song’s first half is artful in a way nothing before it on the album is, but they soon unleash some of their best hard rock fireworks and the mix proves effective. The bass playing, once again, plays an important role with scene setting on the track “Relapse” and Ortiz’s vocals are uniquely tuned into the song’s unique requirements – moving from beguiling work in the first quarter of the track and into some of his best rock singing during the remainder. “Natural” is a much shorter tune than the previous two tracks and the mid-tempo guitar workout rocks with complete conviction and whips up a raucous sound that will likely be an infectiously enjoyable live number. The same guitar-laden moodiness we heard on the earlier “Bars from the Cages” returns on the song “Wicked Ways”. It’s a song with an unique lyrical perspective, a hard as nails yet inventive musical approach, and some surprisingly effective harmony vocals light up much of the song. Volume 2: Without Nothing I’m You charts Black Note Graffiti’s development with a forceful, urgent collection sparked with genuine inspiration.