Nilüfer Yanya
It does not take long listening to West London-based singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya’s music to realise that playing by the rules has never been her forte. First discovered at 20 years old after uploading her sparse, acoustic demos to Soundcloud, Yanya quickly made a name for herself following the release of her first three EPs. Starting with Small Crimes in 2016, her early releases set the stage for Yanya’s artistry as a lo-fi bedroom pop artist who could spin deftly weaved guitars and honeyed vocals into earworm melodies. Her brand of heartfelt indie pop led to support slots playing alongside likeminded artists such as Mitski, The xx, and Sharon Van Etten, along with receiving a litany of accolades including being longlisted for BBC Sound of 2018.As the daughter of two visual artists (her Irish-Barbadian mother is a textile designer and her Turkish-born father’s work is exhibited at the British Museum) creativity was always destined for Yanya’s future. First picking up the guitar at 12, she credits her love for music to her parents’ music collection and her school, which offered subsidised music classes. “It was life changing for me,” Yanya says of her school days as we sit outside a Ladbroke Grove café, “having that community in school was really good for everyone else as well, even if they’re not doing music.”By the time her debut album Miss Universe landed in 2019, Yanya fully established herself as a singular artist with a distinctive voice that needed to be heard. The critically acclaimed debut is an 18-track concept record that takes a tongue in cheek swipe at the most self-involved corners of the health and wellness industry. The album allowed Yanya to further open up her eclectic world, bringing in jazz-inflected guitar licks, and grunge indebted songs that were backed up by limber drum beats and noughties leaning synth lines.Follow up release, the three song EP Feeling Lucky?, further explored Yanya’s fascination with ‘90s alt-rock melodies, drawing on themes of resentment, her fear of flying, and the concept of luck. She also re-released her early EPs on vinyl for the first time this year on the record Inside Out. The release is a fundraiser for Artists in Transit, an arts collaborative group Yanya founded with her sister Molly that delivers art workshops to communities in times of hardship.Now as she enters the next stage of her creative journey, Yanya is running head first into the depths of emotional vulnerability on her sophomore record PAINLESS. The album was recorded between a basement studio in Stoke Newington and Riverfish Music in Penzance (owned by her uncle Joe Dworniak a former bassist in funk band I Level), with Miss Universe collaborator and producer Wilma Archer, DEEK Recordings founder Bullion, Big Thief producer Andrew Sarlo, and musician Jazzi Bobbi.Yanya began considering her second album back in 2020 after coming home from a year-long headline tour for her debut album. Initially she worried about the mistakes she didn’t want to repeat from making her first record. “Obviously I was really proud of it,” she says of her debut album, “but I also could have done it differently, there wasn’t a rush.” The anxieties that clouded the making of her debut were gone when she got back in the studio with Archer. “It just happened a lot more organically. [Archer] had all these amazing ideas and they were so easy to turn into songs. It just felt fun.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Rachel Despard EP Release Show
A singer-songwriter who often contemplates the fall of society and the Gen-Z condition. Classic folk inspired lyrics with soulful vocals and alt-R&B-inspired instrumentation. Proud queer Southerner based in Carrboro, NC.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Dealing Stan – Performing the Music of Steely Dan
Triangle-based band dedicated to performing the music of Steely DaLinks: Facebook
G. Love & The Juice Pre-Show Pop Off
Doors for GA Ticket Holders open at 7:00 pm. G. Love’s Pre-Show Pop Off includes a general admission ticket with early entry, access to a pre-show performance and Q&A with G. Love at sound check, group photo on stage with G. Love and a limited edition poster autographed by G. Love. You will receive instructions via email 4-7 days before each show with event information. Please note that this event will take place before doors are open so it will be just you and a few others for a very intimate and interactive performance with G!! VIPs can remain in the venue to shop merchandise before GA doors at 7:00pm.After 27 years of coast to coast touring, the global pandemic grounded the touring juggernaut we have come to know as G. Love & Special Sauce. With band members sheltered in place and scattered across the country and G. Love’s ever-pressing need to release creative juices bore a collaborative and experimental musical group.G. Love & The Juice is that new mosaic, drawing from his signature hip hop blues he invited seasoned touring musicians who shared in this vision to deliver a musical experience which includes classic G. Love songs, improvisation jams and the low-down dirty blues which has been a hallmark of Garrett Dutton shows since the 1990’s.G. Love & The Juice is a collective of all-star musicians which will be hitting a city or town near you. The current configuration has G. Love fronting the band with his legendary Harmonic, Guitar and Vocals. Jimi Jazz Prescott on upright bass performing his patented electrified upright bass. Chuck Treece, Iconic Philadelphia musician, professional skateboard and longtime collaborator on vocals and drums and Van Gordon Martin of the Organically Good Trio, Big Daddy Kane and Dub Apocalypses on Lead Guitar.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
G. Love & The Juice
After 27 years of coast to coast touring, the global pandemic grounded the touring juggernaut we have come to know as G. Love & Special Sauce. With band members sheltered in place and scattered across the country and G. Love’s ever-pressing need to release creative juices bore a collaborative and experimental musical group.G. Love & The Juice is that new mosaic, drawing from his signature hip hop blues he invited seasoned touring musicians who shared in this vision to deliver a musical experience which includes classic G. Love songs, improvisation jams and the low-down dirty blues which has been a hallmark of Garrett Dutton shows since the 1990’s.G. Love & The Juice is a collective of all-star musicians which will be hitting a city or town near you. The current configuration has G. Love fronting the band with his legendary Harmonic, Guitar and Vocals. Jimi Jazz Prescott on upright bass performing his patented electrified upright bass. Chuck Treece, Iconic Philadelphia musician, professional skateboard and longtime collaborator on vocals and drums and Van Gordon Martin of the Organically Good Trio, Big Daddy Kane and Dub Apocalypses on Lead Guitar.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
Hot Flash Heat Wave
The San Francisco trio of Adam Abildgaard, Nick Duffy, and Ted Davis have built a loyal following and constant buzz over the last several years, with the 2019 EP ‘Mood Ring’ standing as their most kaleidoscopic work to date. Merging the quintessential melodies of pop’s past with contemporary touches to forge something truly unique, Hot Flash Heat Wave is just starting to create their own sonic world.Last year’s EP launched the group into a realm entirely different from their previous catalogue. It is their truest-to-heart release yet, synthesizing a wide range of influences encompassing My Bloody Valentine, Frank Ocean, New Order, and Toro y Moi into something that sounds new and refreshing. Mood Ring’s lead single “Glo Ride” bounces with a slight R&B tilt against a dark, trippy atmosphere, while “Sky So Blue” finds the band spiralling into full-on psychedelia, complete with layers of spell-casting keyboards and a wonderfully zonked-out breakdown.And the future only seems brighter from here: with September’s single ‘Grudge’ teasing a 2021 LP, Hot Flash Heat Wave is preparing for the next step up the staircase in their colorful sonic journey, with determination to elevate their craft in the process.Links: Website |Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Magic City Hippies
Shades on and shirts unbuttoned, Magic City Hippies generate the kind of heat that could’ve powered a high seas yacht party in the seventies or shake a Coachella stage next summer. If the trio—Robby Hunter, Pat Howard, and John Coughlin—stepped off the screen from some long-lost Quentin Tarantino flick in slow-motion (instruments in hand), nobody would question it. Embracing everything from AM radio rock and poolside pop to nimble raps and salsa, they lock into an era-less vibe with no shortage of psychedelic funk or hooks. The three-piece deliver the kind of bangers you can play on the way to the party, during the party, and to smooth over the comedown as the sun comes up. As the guys so eloquently describe it, they “give people a choice to enjoy this on the surface level, feel funky in their bodies, and dance…or go deeper into the music.”As legend has it, the origin of Magic City Hippies can be traced back to Robby’s days of permit-less busking in Miami. Eventually, Pat and John proved to be better accompaniment than his loop pedal, so the trio played regular bar gigs and built an audience locally. They formed as Robby Hunter Band, released the Magic City Hippies album, and adopted the title as their name. That LP gained traction in 2013 with syncs on The CW’s iZombie and Showtime’s Ray Donovan. On its heels, 2015’s Hippie Castle EP catalyzed their breakout as “Limestone” piled up over 21 million Spotify streams followed by “Fanfare” with another 20 million Spotify streams. They toured endlessly and moved crowds at Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Hulaween, Okeechobee Fest, Electric Forest, and Austin City Limits, to name a few. Along the way, the band also picked up acclaim from Relix and OnesToWatch as they dropped the fan favorite Modern Animal in 2019. When the world shutdown, the boys settled in different parts of the country (Rob “doing his Johny Mayer thing” in Bozeman, MT, Pat in Los Angeles, CA, and John still in Miami). Remotely, they wrote what would become their third full-length album, Water Your Garden, out January 2022. As things opened back up, the musicians put it all together in person.Armed with singles such as “Queen,” the falsetto-spiked “High Beams” [feat. Nafets], “Diamond,” and “Ghost On The Mend” Magic City Hippies are ready to heat up their next chapter now.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud
The Pack A.D.
Destruction and melody, acid wit and bruising vocals-this is the Pack A.D. Singer/guitarist Becky Black and drummer Maya Miller have made a sound so gigantic, so fierce and raw and empowering, that it’s easy to forget there are just two people behind this brilliant, carefully constructed havoc. Shredding and pounding their way through every song, the Pack A.D. swallows you whole inside their fearless Franken-blend of heavy psychpop/garage-rock. Their lyrics are wild nests, human and complex: darkly funny disclosures about depression; indictments of digital excess; grief-stricken fire bombs; sly crusades against stupidity.Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube
Senses Fail, We Came As Romans
Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify
Remember Jones
NJ-based soul/pop sensation named one of Paste’s Top 10 R&B/Soul Artists. In addition to two albums worth of original material, Remember Jones has performed recreations of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen, R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, Jeff Buckley’s Grace, Alanis Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill, and Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreaks at clubs, theaters, and performing arts centers nationwide.Has shared the stage with Darlene Love, Hip Abduction, Rebirth Brass Band, Buster Poindexter, Nigel Hall, Southside Johnny & The Asbury Jukes, and many others.“Fiercely passionate front man…one for the ages…holds the audience in the palm of his hand” – Live for Live Music“Remember Jones is a one-of-a-kind, soulful, pop singer, storyteller and bandleader with a throwback vibe and authentic energy” – IMPOSELinks: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
