Don't adjust your speakers - the lyrics are in Turkish - but that doesn't stop vocalist Kutay Soyocak from conveying the deep emotion of the track in tones not dissimilar to those of Nick Cave or Future Islands' Sam Herring.
It's no less dark in English - 'Toz' translates as 'Dust' and the lyrics throughout have themes of death and loss that contrast with the fast-paced yet gothic backing track.
Combine all of the elements and it's an intriguing listen, although you'll need to brush up on your Turkish if you want to sing along.
Jakuzi's vocalist, Kutay Soyocak, says singing in his native tongue is important to allow him to express himself - although it limits the opportunities for the band's music, as it's much less likely to appear on English-speaking playlists and the genre 'Turkish DIY dream pop dark wave' is a little niche.
For Soyocak his homeland is more than just the language in which he sings, it is also the inspiration for the dark themes his lyrics touch upon.
"I think my melancholy comes partly from where I live. This can be seen in the lyrics. I sometimes feel dark, lost and lonely as everyone. Here, the economy and politics make me feel hopeless sometimes.
The future seems blurry but we try to keep our hopes high and continuing what we do. The audience is getting bigger every day and they support us and it is just pure love in our gigs."
Toz is the last single from Jakuzi before their album is released on April 5th. 'Hata Payı' translates as 'tolerance' but a more literal translation is 'part of the mistake'. It spans themes of acceptance of other races and sexualities, along with acceptance of yourself and of your own demons.
Mort Garson's Mother Earth's Plantasia is one of those quirks of history resurrected by the internet - and we're glad it has been rediscovered by a new generation.
Plantasia was originally conceived as an album of music for house plants to listen to (yup) and was given away for free to shoppers when they bought pot plants and other foliage friends from Mother Earth on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.
Now more than 40 years on from its original 1976 release, Plantasia is being officially reissued for the first time in its history, and that means we can all enjoy Garson's plant-potty compositions on the iconic Moog synthesiser.
In all seriousness, it's a delightful and soothing retro listen that's already available digitally, with a physical release due to follow on June 21st 2019 that we suspect is likely to become a collector's item within a matter of a few years.
Garson's daughter, Day Darmet, says: "My dad would be totally pleased to know that people are really interested in this music that had no popularity at the time. He would be fascinated by the fact that people are finally understanding and appreciating this part of his musical career that he got no admiration for back then."
So why now? Interestingly enough, it's thanks to the discography database and marketplace Discogs, whose community have expressed growing interest in Mother Earth's Plantasia over the years.
Due to this exceptionally high demand, Discogs and Sacred Bones Records have opted for a formal reissue of the album, making it available both for digital download and in the upcoming physical print run to fill the gap in record collections around the world.
Sacred Bones have made the album available to listen on YouTube, along with all the usual streaming sites, so just hit play above to give it a listen and drift off back to the 1970s.
Seahorse is the lead single from Jackie Mendoza's upcoming EP LuvHz (pronounced 'Love Hurts', y'see...) and much like the heatwave that's hit the UK in late February, it feels as though summer has come early in 2019.
Drifting vocals and underwater audio FX combine to create a soundscape that's more of a seascape, and perfectly in line with the subject matter of the song. Think Morcheeba in the 'Big Calm' era and you're halfway there.
The politics of Seahorse are firmly 2019 though - inspired by the way the creature shares parental responsibility between the genders, with male seahorses carrying the fertilised eggs while the female is in charge of finding food and shelter.
If that sounds a bit heavy for your morning commute or drive to the beach, don't worry, Seahorse is hugely listenable without thinking too much about the message it's making.
"The song's instrumentation mirrors the sense of being underwater; I imagined myself swimming between colourful coral reefs and seagrass. The sonic textures and theme behind this song are echoed throughout the EP."
- Jackie Mendoza
Listen on headphones to get the full chills-on-your-neck effect of the little cricks and chirrups of bubbling water overlaid throughout the track and reflected in the video by the floating geometric shapes that drift across the frame. Sublime.
About Jackie Mendoza
Jackie Mendoza was born in Chula Vista, California, and combines the cultural influences of her hometown with those of her motherland, Tijuana in Mexico. The result is oceanic, eccentric and rooted in Latin beats. Her tracks include ukulele, experimental electronics, and lyrics in both English and Spanish. The six-track LuvHz is due out on April 26th 2019.
Country singer Orville Peck has just released the first official video from his upcoming debut LP, ahead of a tour of Europe and North America in early 2019.
Big Sky is a moody debut for the masked country crooner, packed with uplifting lyrics like "Heartbreak is a warm sensation / When the only feeling that you know is fear".
You can take a look below...
There's plenty to like about this track - it has that classic darkly disturbing country atmosphere, lyrics to haunt your dreams, and a delicate balance between vocals and strings.
Peck sings of lost loves and the conundrum of being tied down by relationships, versus the desire to explore and to roam beneath the titular 'big sky'.
It's a sentiment many people might sympathise with, beautifully expressed over the course of three verses and a couple of choruses.
You can catch Orville Peck live across Europe and North America in the new year:
Jan 4th - Hamilton, ON - Casbah
Jan 5th - Toronto, ON - The Monarch
Feb 28th - London, UK - Islington
Mar 1st - London, UK - Servant Jazz Quarters
Mar 2nd - London, UK - The Shacklewell Arms
Mar 5th - Amsterdam, NL - Sugarfactory
Mar 6th - Berlin, DE - Auster-Club
May 6th - Columbia, MO - The Blue Note
May 7th - Oklahoma City, OK - The Criterion
May 9th - El Paso, TX - Lowbrow Palace
May 10th - Albuquerque, NM - Sunshine Theatre
May 11th - Tucson, AZ - Rialto Theatre
May 12th - Phoenix, AZ - The Van Buren
(*May appearances are supporting Lord Huron)
Big Sky is released through Sub Pop worldwide, with the exception of Canada, where it is available through Royal Mountain Records.
Orville Peck's debut LP is due to follow in early 2019.
The back story to Laura Gibson's Empire Builder, released on April 1st on City Slang, is quite astonishing. Back in 2012, she released La Grande, and in the summer of 2014 she decided to relocate from Portland to New York - taking a break from music to study creative writing instead.
Her journey began with a trip on the Empire Builder, a rail route between the Pacific North West and Chicago that has legendary status in the US. This part of her story - a journey in the literal as well as the figurative sense - might be enough in its own right to inspire a collection of new songs, but it was eclipsed by the events that followed.
At the end of March 2015, a gas explosion blew up Gibson's apartment building, destroying almost everything she owned, including most of her recent work and all of her musical instruments. Two people were killed in the blast.
Empire Builder becomes a metaphor for this entire chapter in her life, from the initial rail ride, to the time spent completing her studies while sleeping on friends' couches and spare beds, and all while literally rebuilding her own empire, replacing not only the instruments she had lost, but the lyrics and music too.
The result is a quite incredible album, ten tracks that almost alternate between punchy defiance and melancholy reflection, lyrics that speak of loss, and of recovery, and of simply refusing to quit. These are the big feelings of every human life, and I think most listeners will find at least one track that resonates almost uncannily with their own life and experiences.
Not Harmless
The first of our preview tracks is Not Harmless, one of the more defiant tracks on Empire Builder, with a similarly feisty video you can watch below.
From the first second, Not Harmless is punchy in an instrumental style reminiscent of some of the best Tom Waits songs - heavy on percussion, on rhythm rather than melody, a slap beat that sustains through the whole track, creating a sense of time passing, a second by second tick-tock effect.
Gibson's own description of the song is similarly no-nonsense:
"In very simple terms, Not Harmless is about standing up for myself: defining womanhood on my own terms. It may be a critique of social expectations, but more so it's a critique of my own behaviour and insecurities. I must add that I have always, always wanted to write a song in which I was the villain, to hold that sort of agency, to reimagine myself in my most self-serving no-fucks-given form. So lines like, 'I'll be the thief you forgot to chase, the bramble sprung back in the hero's face' gave me great pleasure to write."
As for the video, director Derrick Belcham puts some context on the physical assaults suffered by Gibson throughout, as a metaphor for the assaults that come from within:
"It's an attempt to capture a multi-angle viewpoint of the various aspects of the singer's insecurities in the music video environment. Each of the dancers embodies a specific discomfort or complex that raises its head during the process of being on camera, exposing oneself through songwriting and 'being' in the world in general. Their actions reflect the shifting battle that an ego faces when the spotlight is turned on it."
Not Harmless is not the most 'listenable' song on Empire Builder, by any means - other tracks are more melodic, less confrontational on the ear, but of course that's not what everybody will be looking for from this album anyway. What the song does offer is a kind of inclusive defiance, almost a justification of relying on the darker side of your character when you need to find your inner strength, and I think that's something a lot of people will relate to as well.
Empire Builder
The title track is one of the most astonishing songs I've heard in recent years, a fist of emotion to punch into the chest of anyone who's ever lost somebody, and hoped to someday reconnect. I'm delighted to be able to preview this one below.
I had goosebumps within seconds of the start of the song, before Gibson began singing. There were tears in my eyes after the first few lines. Maybe the lyrics just hit home with me on this particular day, and there are certainly personal reasons for that, but I think I would have loved this song just as much if I had heard it for the first time on any other day. It's elegant, gentle, with a more muted percussion track that still echoes that sense of passing time; the inevitability of change.
"Oh, forget I said love.
And also don't forget I said love.
We are not alone
and we are more alone than we've ever been.
So hurry up and lose me
hurry up and find me again."
There's no long, slow fade at the end of the track, as you might expect, but an equally elegant end to the beat and a soft cymbal crash. It's a small symbol of the authenticity of this album - songs where the acoustics are held almost in a kind of reverence, given their own voice, not simply faded to silence when they are no longer needed. There's love here, and hope.
I'm in love with Empire Builder - the song and the album. It tackles the biggest emotions in all our lives without becoming pretentious. Musically it's beautiful, the very best qualities of its own time, with hints of half a century before it, the occasional lingering note that wouldn't be out of place in Unchained Melody or something similar. This is timeless subject matter, with enduring acoustics, and I look forward to revisiting Empire Builder time and again in the years ahead.
Once in a while, in amongst the latest chart releases and indie EPs, you get sent something to review that is a little special or unusual. Vaadat Charigim are both.
The Israeli trio formed in 2012 and released their first LP with the title The World is Well Lost; on September 25th 2015, they will follow it with the UK release of their second album, Sinking as a Stone, from which Hadavar Haamiti is taken.
Already some readers will be thinking "boo, Israel" and while we're not going to launch a political debate here, it's worth taking a moment to recognise that Vaadat Charigim - consisting of vocalist Yuval Haring, drummer Yuval Guttman and bassist Dan Fabian Bloch - are just three people who happen to be from Israel.
They are not the Israeli government, although the turbulence of their surroundings has a clear place in the tone of their recordings.
Haring says: "Instead of singing about missiles falling on a shopping mall and naming the missile and the shopping mall, I am taking the essence of that, and breaking it down to its basic mechanism. I am dealing with it piece by piece, as fragments."
The politics of a nation should never prevent artistic expression of any kind - although, as is the case here, it can certainly sculpt the tone of a musical work.
Vaadat Charigim have a frankly amazing sound, like an Israeli Stone Roses singing in a cathedral, choral and anthemic, moving and contradictorily uplifting.
I can only imagine the sense of affirmation their music might carry in more optimistic times. I hope we might find out, one day.
Until then, their music carries a quite different message, and one that would be all but impossible to convey in words alone.
Vaadat Charigim's second album, Sinking as a Stone, is due for UK release on September 25th via Burger/Anova records.
One worth looking out for later this year is Cristobal and the Sea's debut album Sugar Now, confirmed for an expected release date of October 2nd on City Slang.
It's good news for anyone who caught the group's EP Peach Bells back in December 2014, and it's great to see the album follow less than a year later.
What should we expect? Plenty of variety, not least thanks to the band's multinational membership: Spain's Ale Romero on vocals and bass, Portugal's Joao Seixas on vocals and guitar, Corsica's Leila Seguin on flute and vocals, and the UK's own Joshua Oldershaw on drums.
In terms of genre, there's an equally eclectic mix, and Joao explains: "We don't ever consciously make our music sound like a genre." Josh adds: "The Latin element is always there, but it naturally adapts to whatever theme is most prevalent, whether it's psychedelic, or more poppy, or sometimes a bit disco." Sunset of our Troubles is a summery, almost Caribbean track, so it's good to see this one is available already - no need to wait until October to get your hands on it, just hit play on the SoundCloud player below.
If this is an indication of the album as a whole, Sugar Now will be worth waiting for - and with any luck, there'll be some autumn sunshine to enjoy at the same time. Even if not, it's likely to make the perfect soundtrack for Christmas shopping too - even if the big day is still six months away right now!
Bones is the latest album from Son Lux, AKA Denver-born musician Ryan Lott. It's his first album on Glassnote, after leaving Joyful Noise Recordings in 2014, but it bears all the hallmarks of an artist whose work is probably more widely known than his name is.
If you're not familiar with Son Lux, take a look back at our review of Lanterns in 2013; you can also hear Lott's work on the soundtrack to the Bruce Willis time-travel movie Looper, and on Ned Benson's 2013 trilogy The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.
Bones is typically dramatic and fast-paced, an energetic and acoustically rich tapestry of music that yet again proves Lott's talent for composition in a genre he has all but made his own.
If you're the kind of person who likes to say "They don't make music like that any more," then Ex Hex are the girls for you.
The Washington DC trio are rock'n'roll in its truest sense, all cymbal crashes and clanging guitars, and it's really, really good to hear some new-old 'proper music' still being made, well into the 21st century.
Drums come courtesy of Laura Harris; Betsy Wright is billed as an 'ace piano player' and all-round performer; and Mary Timony is the driving force behind the songwriting.
The result of the collaboration is a slick performance across a dozen tracks with killer hooks and enough rock'n'roll heritage to leave you wondering if this really is a debut album, or a group who have been around for years.
To Rococo Rot's distinctive blend of ambient and electronic sounds has been a hallmark of their sound over the past 18 years, and long-term fans will be pleased to hear of the upcoming full-length album release of Instrument.
It will be To Rococo Rot's eighth album in all, and their first since 2010, and is due for a July 21st launch date, accompanied by a launch show at Cafe Oto in London.
Until then, fans will have to be satisfied with preview tracks, and the first of those is Many Descriptions, featuring vocals by Arto Lindsay.
It's an elegant reintroduction to the musical world of To Rococo Rot - I could happily listen to four minutes of the intro before any vocals were introduced - but it also marks an evolution in their sound.
"We wanted to make clear that something is different," says Robert Lippok, and while that is true, the signatures of Robert and his brother Ronald, as well as collaborator Stefan Schneider, are written all over the track.
The launch of Instrument may be some way off, but you can already preorder it via iTunes - click the button below if you don't want to miss the launch date.
The new record from Son Lux, 'Lanterns', is an energetic and uplifting fabric, a kind of musical weave that envelops the listener and begs to be played again and again.
Complex and thought-provoking, it's a symphony of instruments and voices that helps to drown out any stresses left over from the day, and lull you off to sleep - or help you relax or, contradictorily, help you prepare for a night out by creating a musical buffer between the working day and the evening's festivities.
Whatever you use Lanterns for - even if just to provide a soundtrack to your morning commute or journey to school - you definitely won't be bored by its detailed soundscapes and often haunting refrains, particularly in the case of Easy, which although minimalistic is one of the most sit-up-and-listen tracks on the record.
Click through to our full review below to preview Easy and other tracks from Lanterns.
It may be more than two years since Love Inks last featured on Popsiculture, back around the release date of E.S.P., but now they're back with Generation Club, and there's a whole ten more tracks to fall in love with.
For those of you who bought or remember E.S.P., Generation Club continues in the same style - an almost sensual combination of electronic sounds and purring vocals that perfectly show off lead singer Sherry LeBlanc's range.
If you're new to Love Inks, prepare yourself for something a little different from the norm. Think end-of-the-night slow-dancing on the greatest dancefloor of your life, but in the middle of the day and stone-cold sober, and... actually that sounds like a nightmare, but what I'm trying to say is, Love Inks feel like the crescendo of a great night out, but can be enjoyed at any time of day.
Nature Noir is the new album from Crystal Stilts, due out on September 16th through Sacred Bones, and it's currently having aural sex with our earholes here at Popsiculture.
It's an effortlessly stylish, stereophonic masterpiece that begs for a decent pair of headphones or set of speakers - so do yourself a favour, and give this one a listen on something other than your laptop or phone's built-in speakers; you won't regret it.
Walking Lightly, due for release on September 16th via City Slang, is a lush balance of percussion and Jose Gonzalez vocals, rich and mellow, and provides a perfect follow-up to the self-titled sophomore album released by Junip earlier this year.
You can preview the track using the SoundCloud player below, but also look out for the EP - also entitled Walking Lightly and due out on September 16th - for more tracks, including remixes by Maps, To Rococo Rot and Tobacco.
Like many people in the UK, we've been fans of Jose Gonzalez since his version of Heartbeats featured on the Sony Bravia 'bouncy balls' advert - and it's great to hear his work with Junip offering a different side to his distinctive vocals.
What's more, there's currently the chance to see Junip perform live on their European tour, which includes UK dates at:
14th Sep - Manchester, Ramsbottom Festival
15th Sep - Glasgow, No Mean City
16th Sep - Leeds, Brudenells Social Club
17th Sep - Bristol, Fleece
18th Sep - London, Shepherd's Bush Empire
It's a hectic schedule, sandwiched between further dates in France, Germany and the Benelux countries - and with the single and EP due out to coincide with the Leeds date, Junip are likely to be making a fair few appearances in the trade press over the coming weeks.
To download Walking Lightly from iTunes, use the button below, or look out for the full release of the EP if you're interested in the remixes.
Ceremony, a spectacular, triumphant album from Sweden's Anna von Hausswolff, defies description and explanation - although naturally, I'll give it my best effort.
Let's be under no illusions though that this is not a sequence of compositions that's best heard, rather than discussed; so take full advantage of any previews you can get your hands on, or just take the plunge and buy it outright.
If you don't know what to expect of Anna von Hausswolff, then you're in for the greatest treat of all - and you may as well enjoy it, as you'll only get to 'discover' her for the first time once.
Picking up the pace slightly from our previous post, Wax-Work is another free download, this time from Virals, AKA Shaun Hencher.
As you can see from the SoundCloud waveform below, it's a noisy affair, with plenty of guitar and cymbals, so get ready to adjust your treble if you're not a fan of the hi-hat.
Hencher just got back from appearances in the US, and is scheduled for Field Day in Victoria Park, London this weekend, with a pre-party appearance at The Shacklewell Arms on Friday.
As far as we can tell, Wax-Work has been made available pretty much for the hell of it - there's no immediate album release coming up, although once Field Day is out of the way, Hencher's planning to start working on a full-length release, which we'll bring you more details about as we receive them.
As you may have noticed over the past couple of years, we're pretty big Katie Waissel fans at Popsiculture, and like many Waissel Warriors, we're hanging on every snatched glimpse of what to expect from Red Velvet Band, when they finally get around to releasing an album.
I'm Fine probably isn't typical of what to expect - a heartfelt ballad written and recorded by Katie herself, it's a moving demo recording* free from gimmicks, and free to download via the Red Velvet Band SoundCloud page.
There's a sense of real emotion - and of real pain - underpinning I'm Fine, which anyone who's followed Katie's life in recent months won't find surprising.
Her voice, though, is as distinctive as ever, and her natural delivery of her own heart-rending vocals comes almost as a whisper, a shared secret, a burden not unburdened, but perhaps at least eased through music.
I've always adored Katie's ballads, and allowing for the fact that this is, after all, a one-woman demo track, I think it stands up there with her best efforts from the past.
Truth be told, some fans are likely to be happy with any song that carries Katie's voice - and although I count myself among them, I feel truly blessed for that to be the case.
As always, more from Red Velvet as it becomes available.
*UPDATE: Katie uploaded an updated version of the track for download via the SoundCloud page after we published this review, which brings the track up to studio quality and offers a much richer sound in general.
New this week, Limits of Desire is the new album from Small Black, and it's not easy to find the words to describe it, but I'll try.
If, like me, you're a fan of expansive soundscapes of music, of soaring synth, haunting vocals and pulse-like beats, Limits of Desire will transport your mind to a place it's likely never been to before.
Even if you're not so hooked on electronic instruments and 'big sound', there's enough here to drown out the world around you, if only for a while.
Who are Small Black?
Small Black have a distinctly northern European sound, but actually come from Brooklyn. You may have heard them several times over the years, with a self-titled EP released in 2009, studio album New Chain released in 2010, and their free mixtape download Moon Killer made available in 2011.
Good god this is bad. I can't imagine why Missy Elliott would put her name to this, unless she's secretly Jesy's mum or something.
I'm not gonna lie - I don't like Little Mix. I don't like the way they were forced on to an impressionable young voting audience on The X Factor.
I don't like that Jesy is continually treated as if she's the only one that matters, like some kind of propaganda bundle who exists purely to disguise any flaws in the group's musical capabilities by making it all about 'girl power' (this is not 1995, and Little Mix are definitely not The Spice Girls).
And I really don't like the ADHD-style video for How Ya Doin'?, which seems to work on the assumption that as long as everything keeps moving, and fast, nobody will notice that the song is terrible.
Really, it is - take a look:
I'm appalled. Then again, I've been appalled by everything else I've ever heard Little Mix produce, so there's little surprise there.
Thanks go to Sarah Linney for pointing out that How Ya Doin'? is actually a cover version of Curiosity Killed the Cat's 1989 hit Name and Number, which reached number 14 in the UK.
If curiosity really did kill the cat, then it must be turning in its grave at this abomination of a cover version.
I stand by my initial reply to Sarah on Twitter, that How Ya Doin'? is an "abysmal clatterbash of unnecessary noise", while Little Mix are "about as 'street' as an aqueduct".
Mixers, if you really feel the need to defend your idols on this one, comments are open below - anything unnecessarily abusive will be removed, but I'm definitely open to debate.
Torture yourself, if you must, by buying How Ya Doin'? on iTunes:
Or click the button below to educate yourself and check out some more Curiosity Killed the Cat:
