If you didn’t know these guys were from Chicago, you’d assume they’re a bunch of Brits, with their insanely Britpop-influenced sound and their unusual spelling of Colours, but the Windy City exports manage to capture the soul of the UK in the late ’90s/early ’00s and mix in a good amount of 70’s Psychedelia for a sound all their own. Ample amounts of fuzz and pop combine to sound something like if The Stone Roses and The Black Angels decided to mate, and their offspring is something to be cherished.
SOURCE: Official Bio
Secret Colours are:
Vocals, Guitar / Tommy Evans
Guitar / Mike Novak
Bass / Max Brink
Drums / Matt Yeates
LINKS:
https://www.secretcolours.com
https://twitter.com/SecretColours
https://www.facebook.com/secretcolours
-
Crooked Ghost – Sleepwalker
Dreamy post-punk rockers Crooked Ghost have announced that their new album ‘Skeleton House’ will be released on CD on November 23, followed by a limited edition 12″ vinyl release in February 2019. Ahead of this, the Asheville, NC outfit presents their ‘Sleepwalker’ single, accompanied by a video, directed by Rome Widenhouse.
“Skeleton House’ is the band’s sophomore long-play – a dark and hazy dreamscape of lush and angular melody, with a stark lyrical rawness touching upon such subjects as addiction, trauma, loss, superstition, and everything that gets left behind after a catastrophic event. The album consists of eight tracks, ranging from dreamy and playful to anguished and harrowing. Billowing vocal patterns weave intricate stories between shimmering guitar crescendos, cascading synths, and mathematical percussion.
This album follows up their debut LP ‘Strange Burial Rituals’, released in March 2017. This new offering has two distinct halves: the first is lighter, the second darker. The whole thing plays out like a story, or rather, two opposite stories that are intertwined.
“The song ‘Sleepwalker’ was one of the first written for the new album, and everything about it just worked. The song itself is in reference to addiction and a dissolution of one’s sense of self; self-medicating and numbness. I wanted to bring light to something dark, yet still tell an honest story. Something about this song has always stood out for us, says frontman Ray Clark.
“The music video was shot by Rome Widenhouse over a period of several weeks and includes shots of that eclipse everyone was so excited about. The video is a bit surreal and has a sort of Twin Peaks meets the X-Files vibe. It was a lot of fun to shoot, even the traipsing barefoot through the woods in nothing but a bedsheet and getting poison ivy part. At one point our director took a tumble down a cliffside and we thought he was done for!”
Formed in Seattle in 2013 as an acoustic side project by Ray Clark, Crooked Ghost was initially a channel for leftover songs that didn’t seem to fit in any of the other bands Clark was involved in, but quickly became the focal point of Ray’s creative energy. Ray soon fled the musically-saturated Seattle scene to find himself in the intensely creative heart of Asheville, North Carolina.
With a guitar case full of lyrics of songs never intended to be heard by anyone, somehow, something had begun to spark again. Intimidated by the idea of a solo project, Ray joined with Chris Saldin, who would play bass, and bought an electric guitar, set on bringing Crooked Ghost to life. Together with drummer Jon Wyatt, the songs came to life. A few months later, they entered the studio to record their debut album.
They were eventually joined by Charles Reed on guitar and Alex Cannon on keyboards before recording the heavily emotive and dreamily lush ‘Skeleton House’. With the power-pop punch of Catch Fire, the dark-disco punk breakdown of Roadkill, to the angular yet dreamy swoon of Sleepwalker, Skeleton House will impress and even haunt you.
“These songs were inspired by the loss of someone I loved to a fire. The idea that something like a fire could destroy so much, but still leave something behind was so enticing to me. I wanted these songs to represent resilience and strength, and to be able to process loss in a healthy way. I wanted to find a way to bring light to the darker things I was experiencing, and to arrange the pieces into something beautiful,” says Ray Clark.
“We recorded this album up in Black Mountain, NC in the dead of winter. The snowy and icy landscape definitely added to the album’s atmosphere. This is also our first release on vinyl, making it very special for all of us. As kaleidoscopic as it sounds, I feel we very much achieved the piece of art we were wanting to make.”
As of November 23, ‘Skeleton House’ will be available on CD. It can already be ordered via Bandcamp and is also available across music stores and streaming platforms such as iTunes and Spotify.
LINKS:
https://www.facebook.com/CrookedGhost
https://crookedghost.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/crookedghost
https://twitter.com/thecrookedghost
https://soundcloud.com/crookedghost
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIgVwlr638HsQbVuTZGH6EQ
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/skeleton-house/1394361906
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1dQla5TZY6h1hmDyAIDtrF?si=5Qufr3YuSmGi_5FdwECCPA -
Murdocco – Rainy Day
Mariana Murdocco, who goes by her surname, ‘Murdocco’ is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to her style and musical output. With her velvety and sultry tones, Murdocco’s songs allude to personal experiences where she transmits deep emotions, immersing you into her world. Using the piano and often heavy bass lines, she delivers a melodic, quirky and unique sound. Speaking of her upcoming release Murdocco says “I hope that my single ‘Rainy Day’ will inspire you to speak up and say all that you’ve been holding back, without fears or taboos. Let it out, you ought to say it!”
Originally from Uruguay, Murdocco is a London-based singer-songwriter, her original productions are a fusion of live instruments and Electronica, citing Bjork and The Knife as influences.
Murdocco started in Barcelona with her ever-evolving band ( Jose Martinez on guitar), she released a number of EPs produced by David Okuniev, which was much more Rock orientated. This solo project has taken her down a different path where she finds herself being much more experimental and free to explore other genres. This is the first of a number of releases that will be coming out over the forthcoming months.
Welcome to Murdocco’s world.
LINKS:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2G0cbBExtt6UIrbC1uqaLC?si=ZWdCeb5PQp2m_m2sWsahhg
https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/murdocco/1540358146
https://soundcloud.com/murdocco/rainy-day-1/s-RZ44Sjzz8yh
https://www.facebook.com/MurdoccoMusic -
Captain Squeegee – Our Children
Psychedelic indie rock band Captain Squeegee has made a name for themselves in Arizona over the years for their over-the-top music videos and their latest release, the delightfully strange “Our Children,” does not disappoint. The song is the first single from their upcoming EP Harmony Cure, a collection of punk rock show tunes due to release on January 26th via 80/20 Records. The uneasy anthem is about passing on a broken world to the next generation as vocalist Danny Torgersen charismatically belts optimistic lines as “And when our children hang out, I hope they save the world. I hope they know about our weapon. And drop it again, that harmony cure.” In order to balance out the serious subject matter, the band opted for Sci-Fi references, 90’s hip-hop aesthetics, and even wheeled out a freakin’ DeLorean in the video.
“Our previous videos always told a narrative story and had a plot, kind of a guided journey, and I wanted this one to be a sensory overload, ‘what the f*ck kind of video.’ I wanted this video to make a lot less sense than other videos.” said vocalist Danny Torgersen.
Harmony Cure was produced, engineered and mixed by Bob Hoag (The Format, The Ataris), the same person behind the band’s 2013 full-length To The Bardos!. The five wickedly clever tracks hover over funk, ska, prog, rock, jazz and everything in between. “It’s about finding hope through song, confronting the demons of the 3D world with HARMONY,” says Torgersen. “A sonic swim through the unsettling swamps of time, age, death, dying art, & the future of Earth. You know, whatever. That’s kind of why we also named our new beer (by SunUp Brewing) after the album…it’s like, ‘dude I know, being human is crazy… here just drink this it might help’”
“…an energy that is irrepressible and unpredictable.”
– Music Connection“Captain Squeegee has dramatically expanded their sound, resulting in a heady brand of neo-psychedelic prog… [like] a van full of jazz performance majors raised on ska would play it”
– AZ Central“Their horn-driven instrumentation, metaphysical lyrics, and intense multi-media performances have hailed them “one of the toughest acts in town to follow” and “prepared to headline Coachella, tomorrow.”
– Modern Times MagLINKS:
http://captainsqueegee.com
https://www.facebook.com/captainsqueegee
https://twitter.com/captainsqueegee
https://www.instagram.com/captainsqueegee