Jokatech – Standing Still Symphony URL: https://jokatech.webs.com/ The latest two songs from indie hip hop songwriter and New York City native Jokatech are further entries in a successful artistic career. While Jokatech may not enjoy the same marquee notoriety experienced by more commercial performers, there’s little question after listening to his music that this is a songwriter and performer of rare distinction. His lyrical constructions are full of fire, intelligence, sarcastic humor, and the preening self-confidence while he shows the phrasing of a three decade or more veteran when delivering his songs. He is, essentially, an one man band responsible for the lyrics, melodies, and backing track and the responsibilities do not seem to have negatively affected his creativity. Instead, he sounds positively inspired. This is an artist unafraid of entertaining his listeners, but moreover, he’s unafraid to plumb into the depths of his life and return to the surface with something that might resonate or otherwise enlighten you.
Thomas Charlie Pedersen - Second Hand War FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thomas.c.pedersen Thomas Charlie Pedersen, on his first solo album Second Hand War, cannot be accused of attempting to remake the wheel. Instead, he relies on traditional folk music forms and a solid approach in the singer/songwriter vein to convey his deeply reflective, witheringly honest, and unflinching lyrical narratives. Much of his lyrical point of view is first person, but don’t let that suggest this is solely some exercise in self-pity or self-punishment. Pedersen writes just as convincingly about other characters in his song as he does about himself or his fictional narrators. The music is lean, cut down to the bone, and the stripped back setting allows a chance for Pedersen’s voice and words to shine as never before. The result is a fourteen song collection where no two songs sound exactly alike and everything beats with a massive, all-encompassing heart. Second Hand War is real music made by real people for real people.
Porcelain People – Streetlights FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/PorcelainPeopleMusic/ First releases, in any genre, are seldom this good. Porcelain People are a duo compromised of Josh Thornhill and Fred Kalil. They hail from southern Louisiana and are serving up a particular brand of electro pop quite a bit unlike anything offered by their peers. Thornhill’s profoundly melodic and flexible voice matches up well with Kalil’s expansive and varied electronic textures. Piano, synthesizer, and keyboards are recorded with equal clarity and blended in quite an impressive way. No one component takes precedence in the mix and, instead, the duo have mixed the individual parts into a seamless and forceful whole. There are many highpoints scattered among the album’s thirteen songs, but there’s also no filler dragging things down. These are fully realized songs with imagination and technique working together in concert to produce the desired results.
Kim Vogels - Native
URL: https://www.kimvogels.com/
Being brought up surrounded by so many different cultures, Kim Vogels was drawn to the power and energy of the original sound of those worlds i.e. Flamenco, Klezmer, Celtic, early Persian, Gypsy, Native American, Folk & Blues etc. Even though these musical styles are all quite different from each other, they hold a similarity in their powerful connection to their culture. “Native” is the EP which also includes a promo video for the track “Call Of The Wild.”
Jupiter in Velvet - The One in the Many URL: https://jupiterinvelvet.com/ Iconoclasts stand out. In our world of cookie cutter pop stars with the shelf life of vegetable, the performer/songwriter who writes vibrant material referencing influences while still blazing its own path is increasingly a rarity. American born and UK based Jupiter in Velvet culls from a handful of influences to fashion a distinctive and varied musical attack with an unwavering melodic base. His guitar pyrotechnics seem inexhaustible – they spark, crackle, soar, and growl, but they never fail to find room to sing. His vocals are, likewise, always on the money. Jupiter in Velvet isn’t any sort of Pavarotti, but his voice has remarkable elasticity and inhabits each of the album’s ten songs with tremendous verve and personality. The production highlights each song’s individual strengths in thrilling ways and has undeniable warmth.
Bob Lien - Color of Sky URL: https://www.boblien.com/ Color of Sky is very much in the Americana tradition, but it reaches ambitiously beyond that for a synthesis of dreamy folk music coupled with vibrant string arrangements. The collision of styles creates truly imaginative musical fireworks but there isn’t a single component in any track keyed to overwhelm listeners. This tastefulness extending over the course of Color of Sky’s ten songs never wavers and is part and parcel of high level artistry reaching far beyond the purview of typical recordings in the folk song idiom. The production job courtesy of Cyrus Rhodes does a remarkable job of bringing all of these parts into seamless interplay with each other – nothing sounds disjointed or out of place and, instead, there is a consistency of sound and approach that complements the material and Lien’s bell-clear vocals.
Angie and the Deserters - Blood Like Wine URL: https://www.angieandthedeserters.com/ This is rough and ready music for passionate people. Angie and the Deserters won’t let you set on the fence – they win listeners over with a rare combination of intelligence, torrid emotion, and outright musical virtuosity. The songwriting on their latest release, Blood Like Wine, is smart without ever flying over the head of its intended audience, but it also does an excellent job of capturing the intensity of the lives lived out in vocalist Angie Bruyere’s lyrical content. The band is obviously top shelf in every way, but much like the lyrical content, their obviously extensive skill set never gets in the way of their central mandate – communicating and moving their audiences in some small, but significant, way. Bruyere’s vocals are key to this and the production does an excellent job without ever losing the important musical adventure going on around her. It’s an EP and, naturally, a relatively brief collection, but it accomplishes much in a condensed amount of space.
