STREAMING // (Video) Vyes Tumor – “Secrecy Is Incredibly Important To The Both Of Them”
Listen/Watch Here – Youtube
Directed By: Jordan Hemingway
Executive Producer: Luigi Rossi
Line Producer: Francesco Raffo
Director Of Photography: Ben Carey
Written By: Roi Cydulkin
Styling + Wardrobe: Nicholas Royal + Peri Rosenzweig
Classic Day – Chicago’s Own
Vocalists have this tendency to often lose the audience within the realm of approachability and being able to hold a listener’s attention. While not a commercial success in its own right, Come To My Garden from Minnie Riperton becomes a metamorphosis for a debut record.
The introductory track “Les Fleurs” is immediately the best stand out for the record. Riperton is an angelic nymph here and one of the most beautiful driving forces of vocalization. She begins as this gentle and welcoming tour guide that through tension building and escapism, flows like a mighty river.
The backing layered vocals that appear from herself and both Elsa Harris and Kitty Hayward are a trifecta of narrative bliss. “Les Fleurs” might not only be one of the best works coming from Riperton but are one of the better depths recorded by a vocalist.
Due largely in part to the instrumentation of Maurice White on the percussion and the piano skills of Ramsey Lewis, which paint this well-articulated skyline for Riperton to float upon.
Other later tracks pull a reserve like on “Memory Band” where the instrumentation is more reserved but has a bigger spotlight on Riperton. While godly and profound in her delivery, Riperton is able to use these falsetto vocals and intense layering as a drawing piece in her music.
While depth is not always the conquering notion to sound, the performances on Come To My Garden are a joy to watch unfold like a complicated layout to a physical garden. Roses disguised as hidden gems through the tracklisting appear and disappear at a moment’s notice. “Memory Band” while being four minutes long still has enough of a weight to construct a solid foundation for Riperton to survive fully on.
Even near the end of the record with “Only When I’m Dreaming,” there is serious attention to creating a tonality of dreamlike states. The backing vocals that jut with “Only when I’m dreaming” in a faster tempo behind Riperton is there a desire to expand and completely eradicate the human conscious.
Instead, Riperton formats to this ethereal being of epic proportions where the love for performance and ability is the forefront of the eyes. A sampler’s heaven stash, Riperton is manufactured to be the underground soul for vocalists both past and present.
Come To My Garden is inspiring while never being unreachable. Riperton’s performances are more striking than the lasts and while initially, the best track seems to appear, Come To My Garden is the songbird’s paradise.
Listen To Come To My Garden Here!!! – Spotify/Amazon/iTunes
STREAMING // (Track) Ohbliv – “No Remorse”
Listen Here – BandCamp
STREAMING // (Track) Oblique Occasions – “Inviolate”
Listen Here – BandCamp
Misc. Day – Blues Funeral
Melting away into this ether while sound drapes over the audience like a looming presence becomes the main draw of Midwife. Focusing entirely on being this nearly unapproachable mistress to sound, Madeline Johnston is ethereal behind the six tracks that crush the audience with grief.
With a face emotionless staring into this void of daunting production, the simplicity of Midwife is what makes Forever seem impossible to breach. Particularly with the introduction of “2018,” there is enough of a lingering hell without ever touching a microphone. With barebones levels to the production, Midwife gives a desolate stage for Johnston to stand upon.
“2018” and most of the work present on Forever is immaculately gentle to the first appearances. Instrumentally, Midwife is approachable but there is immediately this intuition that something is inherently wrong. This notion becomes tucked in the lyrics which are delivered through soft and often whispered tones.
As Johnston illustrates, “This is really happening, this is really happening, this is really happening to me. Get the fuck away from me, get the fuck away from me, Get the fuck away from me.” Appearing almost as a one-member army of performance, Johnston recruits some additional instrumentation with Tucker Theodore, Randall Taylor, Jensen Keller, and Caden Marches to fill in these gaps with large markers of noise.
One-piece immediately shakes into the soul as “Vow” spends more time being the mourning after burial than any uplift of performance. With no instrumentation besides a piano that sluggishly collides within itself; “Vow” is the most simple but in the same instance, the most devastating.
Bleak tones coincide within the higher pitch keys, a rush of shadows fill the room and suddenly memories sculpt themselves within the darkness. As Midwife pushes further into this tormented but graceful display, it’s nearly impossible not to break into a miniature framework
While the majority of Forever is spent in complete and bitter isolation within oneself, “S.W.I.M.” adds melody to these crashing waves of impending doom. The sun appears briefly with more upbeat grasps on the strings and percussion.
Johnston is less based on being somber and more based in some areas of motion for a welcome change. Describing, “I don’t want to swim forever, treading water my whole life. You know I can’t swim forever, I don’t want to fight the tide.”
The strumming increases in frequency and Johnston uses this to force vocals into the frame. They continue on, “I don’t want to live forever, paranoid for my whole life. I don’t want to live forever, you had a gun, I only had a knife.”
While the moments of clarity appear at the end of the record, Midwife on Forever is a justification of self-recording immolation. The hands that were once adorned with gold and silver emerge from the mire cracked, beaten, and impossible to ignore.
Listen To Forever Here!!! – BandCamp/Spotify/iTunes
STREAMING // (Video) Curren$y X The Alchemist – “Half Moon Mornings”
Listen/Watch Here – Youtube
SUNDAY SAMPLER // (Playlist) “02/20/2022″
Listen Here – Spotify
“A playlist of tracks that were featured on MattsMusicMine.com from the week of February 14th – 20th. From Reviews to Streams, never miss a track with these playlists that are uploaded every single Sunday till I drop dead.”
Featuring: Clams Casino, Cloud Rat, Injury Reserve, Celeste, Pupil Slicer, Cara Drolshagen, Artie Shaw, Visages, Strategy, Shifting Gears, Squid, Martha Skye Murphy, ACUTEK, Golden Bug, Pajaro Sunrise, IDLES, EXEK, Locked Groove, Deliriant Nerve, Echo Brown, Horizon, HEALTH, Lamb Of God
Track List: Misty, Water Theme, Pupil, Outside, (A), Thermal Runaway, Nightmare, Traffic Jam, Lunar Eclipse, Drum Nation, Narrator, Like A Carrot, Bring The Light, Crawl!, (I’m After) Your Best Interest, Sen Yen For 30 Min Of Violin, C2FX, Death Prayer, Melancholy, Feel The Funk, COLD BLOOD
STREAMING // (Track) Horizon – “Feel The Funk”
Listen Here – BandCamp
New Music – Back On The Grid
Almost like the sound of butter melting in the pan, bedroom recordings always have this intimate nature behind them even when those same records are mixed and mastered in mansion-esque recording studios.
A band that works around this notion is Melbourne’s own EXEK on their 2022 release Advertise Here. A fairly quick ride around the block sitting at 35 minutes, Advertise Here is immediately blissful on the harmonic side of things.
EXEK opens with “The Mains” which is a gentle eye-opening rise with soft synths that resemble these momentary horns. Almost similar to a somber funeral, “The Mains” paints an image of fogginess and an unknown element to Advertise Here before the first true instrumental track plays into frame.
“(I’m After) Your Best Interest” is an upbeat start with mostly percussion by Chris Stephenson bringing the remaining instruments in. Like a red carpet, they appear to strut in one by one so the listener can get a short, but unsubdued look at each component.
When vocalist Valya YL Hool begins this narration around the track, his vocals are almost muddied by the entire mix of instruments that surround him. Instead of being a negative aspect though, EXEK marches through this grand build-up and break-down within transitions to craft a stage around Hool.
And this follows until the final 30 seconds of “(I’m After) Your Best Interest” where the tone becomes more vivid with loose instrumentation but fantastic direction of sound. Later pieces like “Sen Yen For 30 Min Of Violin” are an interesting derailment of momentum for a graceful glance into these piano chords that start more loving and intimate than somber.
When EXEK appears as a conglomerate figure, the band adapts so well together in creating this otherworldly, but still reachable medium. Like an abstract painting, “Sen Yen For 30 Min Of Violin” is instrumentally quite approachable but from a distance becomes more and more intriguing. Dissecting the track gets further and further into the ideology of being an architect for the absolute strange and vague at times.
“Sen Yen For 30 Min Of Violin” has Hool describing, “Well-worn rood that costs a lot in units of a currency that forgot. What the exchange rate was, what’s the contents of that bag?” With a highlighted ramp in emotional output musically, Hool is given the keys to the city as he continues on. “Watch as that psychic’s face strain becomes unbearable, unbearable to watch. Weathered rocks and loose terrain, geographic surveys always look the same.”
Final moments with EXEK create this fantastic segue where the instruments fall back into a subtle creep in the same way they began. Tracks from “Hiding A Smile” to “The Mains” are almost able to coexist within each other before the listener falls back into the pit of warm and dynamic silk sounds.
Listen To Advertise Here!!! – BandCamp/Spotify/iTunes
STREAMING // (Track) Echo Brown – “Melancholy”
Listen Here – BandCamp
STREAMING // (Album) Deliriant Nerve – “Uncontrollable Ascension”
Listen Here – BandCamp
Mix/Master By: Matthew Michael
Cover Art By: Caroline K
Logo By: Matt Scott
Layout By: Malokul
Track List: Uncontrollable Ascension, Shrapnel Spiral, Death Prayer, Vice, Mouth Full Of Eyes, Mania Gaze, Post Collapse Cannibal Fantasy, Flesh Creep, Deliriant Nerve
THIS IS A LIST OF THE MOST RECENT STREAMS...
The complete list of all past streams can be accessed here as well
(Click Here)
MATT'S MUSIC MINE - MERCH FOR SALE
VIDEO REEL 2
LIVE PHOTOGRAPHY – JESUS PIECE AT BABY’S ALL RIGHT, DECEMBER 6TH, 2022
SUNDAY SAMPLER // (Playlist) “12/04/2022″
(Track) Jake Mason Trio – “Rib Eye”
(Video) Lightning Bolt – “Dead Cowboy @ TAICOCLUB 2014”
(Video) The Velvet Underground – “After Hours”
(Video) Mac Miller – “10 Years Of You”
(Video) A$AP Rocky – “Same Problems”
The complete list of all past streams can be accessed here as well
(Click Here)