Tank and The Bangas

Tank and The Bangas don’t go anywhere quietly. Sitting around a dimly lit room in London’s neighborhood of Camden Town, vocalist Tank Ball, bassist Norman Spence, drummer Joshua Johnson and saxophonist Albert Allenback can’t go mere minutes without bursting into play fights, or talking over one another, or laughing from their deepest guts. They are a beacon of life. And it’s that life that you hear in their music. That’s what makes this fivepiece one of the most thrilling, unpredictable and sonically diverse bands on the planet; a unit where jazz meets hip-hop, soul meets rock, and funk is the beating heart of everything they do. Their new album Green Balloon is on the horizon, and it’s their first release now they’re signed to major label Verve Forecast – a deal that came after they won NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest in 2017, beating out hundreds of other acts. They admit that it was a moment that has entirely changed their lives. This resulting record is set to prove their pizazz and their staying power. It’s everything they’ve worked so hard for so far.Green Balloon is a multi-faceted title for their first full-length release since Think Tank in 2013. Think Tank was a case of throwing all their creative juices and ideas to at the wall to see what stuck. It was a DIY project. This album process was a world apart from that. “Green Balloon is a sister to Think Tank,” says Tank. “Think Tank was 12, and Green Balloon is 16 and having sex. She’s out there.” Made in New Orleans, Los Angeles, London and Florida, the band’s newfound critical acclaim and global notoriety meant they were able to call upon producers such as Jack Splash, Mark Batson, Zaytoven, Louie Lastic and Robert Glasper. Some of these names were on their bucket wishlist, others were new discoveries. “It was truly a dream to us. We’re so lucky,” says Tank. Green Balloon and many of its lyrical themes may seem to revolve around money and material (“money, look at all my money” starts ‘Spaceships’), but it’s far more complex than that. The color is explored throughout the tracks.It’s not quite a full concept album, but there are interludes and a story arc. Tank explains that in New Orleans a common phrase is “she’s as green as a blade of grass”. “Green is about being naïve,” she explains. “You could be immature, new to life and experiences.” Green is also a reference to marijuana, which is vital to the band. “Feeling high, feeling out of yourself, feeling different,” she continues. Take the track “Too High,” which is almost two minutes of Tank just talking about weed consumption. In terms of wealth, Tank is as interested in what it means to not have money as she is with knowing what you do with money when you’ve never had it. It’s fitting too, that the idea of naivety pertains to the experience of Tank and The Bangas in the past few years while elevating from underground treasures to internationally renowned professionals. “It’s been a learning curve and a journey,” they admit. “We went to a whole different dimension.”Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Ripe

On a primal level, we react to music through movement.A head-nod, a foot-tap, or a handclap certainly shows appreciation, but dancing seals the eternal bond between audience and musician. Siphoning the spirits of rock, funk, R&B, jazz, and pop through a kaleidoscope of unpredictable and virtuosic improvisation, Boston-based Ripe consistently bring people to their feet. Most importantly, they prove that “dance music” in its purest form doesn’t have to come from computers and synthesizers. It can be an unstoppable groove or an extended moment of ecstatic release. Like those bodies moving on the floor, it’s the result of the energy, friction, and communication between living and breathing people. An inimitable and indefinable chemistry has separated and singled out Ripe since day one. Subverting any and all standard genre boundaries once again, their latest offering confidently continues that tradition. These five musical soulmates —Robbie Wulfsohn [vocals], Jon Becker [guitar], Sampson Hellerman [drums], Calvin Barthel [trombone], and Nadav Shapira [bass]—once again incite listeners to move on their full-length debut, Joy In The Wild Unknown.“What we make is music you can dance to,” affirms Robbie. “We’re drawn to the peak of a song—the emotional catharsis when everything comes out. It’s all about reaching that moment. The revelation comes back to us when bodies shake with joy.”“Every time we play, something unique happens,” adds Jon. “You’ll never see the same show twice. We want to bring that unexpected element into the pop sphere.”Ripe brings the swagger of funk filtered through a rock anthem, a musical journey that somehow gets as stuck in your head as your favorite pop banger.Formed during their Berklee College of Music days, the boys have built a rabid fan base through tireless gigging and a steady stream of music. Following their debut collection of songs, Produce The Juice EP, the 2015 Hey Hello EP yielded fan favorites “Goon Squad,” which clocked over 4 million Spotify streams. The band then raised the stakes with their debut album, Joy In The Wild Unknown, which represented a creative journey as Ripe became a national presence. The band tapped the talents of producer Cory Wong of Vulfpeck behind the board. Additionally, five-time GRAMMY® Award winner Joe Visciano [Mark Ronson, Adele, Beck, Coldplay] mixed the music, while mastering came courtesy of Randy Merrill [Lady Gaga, Lorde, Imagine Dragons, Taylor Swift].Over the course of twelve songs, it finds the elusive sweet spot between jaw-dropping technicality and airtight songcraft as Ripe collectively kick off a fresh, focused, and fiery next phase. Averaging over 250K monthly listeners on Spotify, the group landed looks from the likes of WXPN, Huffington Post, Verge Campus, Boston Globe and Hype Machine love from sites like Ear to the Ground and Indie Obsessive. Along the way, they also hit the stage at festivals such as SweetWater, Levitate, The Rock Boat, High Sierra, LaureLive, Brooklyn Comes Alive, Audiotree, and Summer Camp.The common thread would always be the translation of their individual interplay to their audience, one that Ripe views as not just fans, but old and new friends; an extended family that is rapidly growing as their sound spreads and their world deepens. Ripe gives the same weight to happiness as is often given to sadness.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

Destroyer

Destroyer’s latest album, LABYRINTHITIS, brims with mystic and intoxicating terrain, the threads of Dan Bejar’s notes woven through by a trove of allusions at once eerily familiar and intimately perplexing. The record circuitously draws ever inward, each turn offering giddy surprise, anxious esoterica, and thumping emotionality at equal odds. “Do you remember the mythic beast?” Bejar asks at the outset of “Tintoretto, It’s for You,” the album’s first single, casting torchlight over the labyrinth’s corridors. “Tintoretto, it’s for you/ The ceiling’s on fire and the contract is binding.” Delivered in a Marlene Dietrich smolder, Bejar’s lyrical menace seeps like smoke through the brazen march’s woozy synths and dizzied guitar. “There’s some character here that feels new to me, a low drawl, an evening gown draped over a piano,” Bejar says of the song. Throughout, LABYRINTHITIS insists that everything’s not all right, but that even isolation and dissolution can be a source of joy— stepping into the sunlight at the other end of the maze in your ear, Bejar strolling alongside like a wild-maned, leisure- suited minotaur.More than an arcane puzzle for the listener, LABYRINTHITIS warps and winds through unfamiliar territory for Bejar as well. Written largely in 2020 and recorded the following spring, the album most often finds Bejar and frequent collaborator John Collins seeking the mythic artifacts buried somewhere under the dance floor, from the glitzy spiral of “It Takes a Thief” to the Books-ian collage bliss of the title track. Initial song ideas ventured forth from disco, Art of Noise, and New Order, Bejar and Collins championing the over-the-top madcappery. “John is in his 50s, and I’m almost there, but we used to go to clubs,” Bejar laughs. “Our version may have been punk clubs, but our touchstones for the album were more true to disco.”Bejar and Collins conducted their questing in the height of isolation, Collins on the remote Galiano Island and Bejar in nearby Vancouver, sending ideas back and forth when restrictions didn’t allow them to meet. “From the vocal manipulation to the layered electronics, making this record pushed us to a new place, and reaching that place felt stressful,” Bejar recalls. “But I trust that that stress is a good feeling.” That cuddly anxiety excels in tracks like “Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread,” Joshua Wells’ percussion and Collins’ drum programming pushing Bejar’s voice forward. “The whole world’s a stage/ That I don’t know/ I am going through,” he sighs, before reaching the frustrated religious imagery of the title.Lyrically, LABYRINTHITIS embraces a widescreen maximalism, blocks of text dotted with subversions and hedges. Building from the koans of Have We Met, Bejar continues to carve his words precisely, toying with expectations and staid symbols, while Collins’ production reconstructs the pieces into a unified whole. “Even though everyone recorded in their own isolated corners, this is the most band record that we’ve done in the last few years,” Bejar says. “Everything’s manipulated, but the band is really present, and our plans wound up betrayed by what the tracks wanted. I’ve written 300, 400 songs in my adult life—I don’t know how to do anything else—but this album feels like a breakthrough into new territory.”Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook

Jphono1 “Rectify Mercy” Album Release Show

“Rectify Mercy” Album Release ShowJohn Harrison has been in something of a sustained period of creative and eclectic output via his shape-shifting outfit, Jphono1. This time John Harrison has rejoined with his current rhythmic collaborators, John Crouch (Caltrop, Solar Halos, Kerbloki) and Jimmy Thompson (Randall Brice Bickford, North Elementary), for his fourth record in the span of two years and first of 2022 “Rectify Mercy”.“Rectify Mercy” is the spiritual successor to 2021’s “Parliament”. In moments, however, it incorporates some of the textures of the “You Are Here To Be Around” volume 1 & 2 albums. These sounds are more often created through unique effect manipulations, however, than synth explorations. Album opener “Let Us Let Go” features a riff and solo section with a guitar all but transmuted into a harmonica, and other moments of the album explore how far you can morph a six-string while still finding anchors in classic psych-rock stylingsWhile many of the song’s structures lean towards turn of the century jam and their tie-dyed forebears, there are other influences not so far below the surface. “That Ghost is Best” twists a Youngish intro and bridge around a dream pop verse, and then bends into an Elephant 6 outro bolstered strongly by Brett Harris’s guest harmony. “Good Run Roscoe” begins in media res propelled by a motorik pattern destined to send this liquid light show down a winding road into the setting sun. There are moments where you can almost hear motorcycles zooming past you on 54 west of Chapel Hill, NC.At under 33 minutes across seven tracks Rectify Mercy is a relatively compact collection, and many of the songs are “short” by Jphono1 standards. Despite almost half clocking in under 4 minutes, however, John and company have a hypnotic way of stretching time. This temporal sorcery combined with genre bending and mindful sonic exploration make “Rectify Mercy” a record ready to stand up to repeated listens this season.Check out the video for the single “You Are A Kingdom” off the new album.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

The Dip

Hailing from Seattle, The Dip is an electrifying seven-piece ensemble that melds vintage rhythm and blues with classic pop storytelling. Acclaimed by KEXP as “one of the most exciting and joyous acts to emerge in recent years,” the band features frontman Tom Eddy’s compelling vocals over an effortlessly deep pocket and energetic melodies from the three-piece Honeynut Horns. Hard-hitting but sensitive, The Dip draws inspiration from the musical roots of decades prior while sounding undeniably relevant today. Following the organic buzz of the 2015 debut, the band arrived on the international stage with their 2019 sophomore full-length, The Dip Delivers. Buoyed by the hit single “Sure Don’t Miss You,” the album was entirely recorded and mixed by the band in their own studio and dishes out a nourishing dose of stylistic and sonic variety. Following an ambitious 2019 that took the band throughout North America, Europe, and Japan, The Dip will captivate audiences with brand new music to complement their vibrant live shows and solidify their reputation as one of the most engaging acts on the road today.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

Moonchild

‘Starfruit’ is the fifth album from LA-trio Moonchild (Amber Navran, Andris Mattson, and Max Bryk). The result of ten years spent working and growing together, ‘Starfruit’ showcases the respect, musical understanding, and love the trio have, both for each other and for the noteworthy list of collaborators featured on the album. Bringing a host of beautiful melodies and personal lyrics, ‘Starfruit’ beholds offerings from Lalah Hathaway, Alex Isley, Tank and The Bangas, Rapsody, Ill Camille, Mumu Fresh, Chantae Cann and Josh Johnson. “This is our 5th album, which felt like a big milestone to us. They all added their magic touch to the songs and really brought the music to a new and special place,” Amber muses.Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

Glove

Rod Wendt, Brie Deux and Michelle Primiani began playing music together in Tampa, FL in 2017 and shortly thereafter found their missing piece, Justin Burns, to form the modern dystopian bliss that is Glove. The stylish and magnetic 4-piece group underscores the best of the 1980’s synthetic new wave sound with a contemporary rock n’ roll edge that is sure to propel the band to the forefront of the alternative rock genre. After self-booking DIY shows for two years, the band supported indie rock darlings The Nude Party and Broncho on a string of east coast shows, honing their infectious live performances fueled by 70’s inspired dance rhythms and buzzing cosmic guitar melodies. In April of 2021, Glove released the first single from their forthcoming album Boom Nights titled “Glass”, landing their first Spotify editorial playlist on “New Noise” as well as festival slots at Lollapalooza, Shaky Knees, and Levitation. The band will hit the road with alt rock band, White Reaper, following the release of their second single “Behaviour” on July 21, 2021. “Behaviour” is a radiating track that speaks to the static reaction to operate and perform as you’re told – a chain reaction of words and expressions, a sentiment that the song’s vocalist Rod Wendt charmingly teases throughout this ear-worm. Glove will release Boom Nights in the fall of 2021 to coincide with a handful of headlining dates, doubling down on their place in contemporary music.Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

We Are Scientists

Low Cut Connie

Low Cut Connie released Private Lives last year to rave reviews, ultimately earning its place at #34 on Rolling Stone’s “50 best Albums of 2020” list, #4 on Fresh Air’s Ken Tucker’s ten best albums of the year, and #1 on PopMatters’ “25 Best Americana Albums of 2020” list. Capping off the year, The New Yorker dubbed Adam Weiner “Pandemic Person of the Year.” The album’s last single, the title track “Private Lives,” was also one of “Public Radio’s Most Popular Songs Of 2020.” With 6 albums released to date, select highlights from the band’s impressive career include endorsements from Barack Obama and Elton John, a performance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, and a spot on Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Albums of the Decade list for their album Call Me Sylvia. “Like Bruce Springsteen after he discovered literature, Weiner started bending classic rock to meet his ever more complex emotionalism. The result is that this new 17 track collection Private Lives is Adam Weiner’s version of Born to Run, filled with songs about losers and lovers and beautiful dreamers.” – Ken Tucker, NPR’s Fresh Air “Pandemic Person of the Year” – The New Yorker Links: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube

Machine Girl

Equally apocalyptic and ecstatic, the music produced by Brooklyn’s Machine Girl (Matt Stephenson) is an explosive, cathartic blend of footwork, jungle, digital hardcore, and rave. The project debuted in 2013 with self-released EPs 13th Hour and Electronic Gimp Music, followed by several releases on London-based , including the 2014 full-length WLFGRL. The album’s remix EPs featured mixes by a variety of footwork, jungle, and breakcore producers, ranging from of Chicago’s collective to Detroit’s . Second full-length Gemini was released by in 2015, receiving much acclaim from several music websites. Machine Girl toured across the United States extensively, often with drummer Sean Kelly. A split cassette with Detroit-based rhythmic noise artist Five Star Hotel appeared on Visual Disturbances/Emergency Tapes in 2016, as the two acts toured together. Machine Girl returned to with 2017’s …Because I’m Young Arrogant and Hate Everything You Stand For, the project’s most vocal-heavy, punk-influenced release to date. Follow-up The Ugly Art appeared on Kitty on Fire Records in 2018. MG Demo Disc and U-Void Synthesizer both appeared in 2020. ~ Paul Simpson, RoviLinks: Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube | Soundcloud

Genre: Miscellaneous