NEW TRACK: Chelsea Wolfe – ‘Everything Turns Blue’

A shadowy rumination on the convoluted process of healing from an unhealthy relationship, Chelsea Wolfe has shared her latest single ‘Everything Turns Blue’. Taken from her upcoming seventh album, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, which is set for release via Loma Vista on 9th February 2024, the track is a hypnotic blend of compelling vocals, brooding keys and brittle beats which reflect the aching sincerity of true self-liberation.

Following on from her previous singles ‘Dusk’, ‘Whispers In The Echo Chamber‘ and ‘Tunnel Lights’, Wolfe’s new track continues her narrative of recovery, rediscovering self autonomy, and redefining what resilience both looks and sounds like. ‘Everything Turns Blue’ is about “finding yourself again after a long era of being part of something toxic,” she explains. “Making a split with someone after 10 years, 20 years, 30 years — there’s going to be some high highs and low lows as you begin to process it all.” Wolfe captures these emotional fluctuations succinctly in her lyrics. “What do I have to do to heal you out of me?” she questions throughout the track, before ultimately emerging from the shadows feeling stronger and more self assured.

Wolfe describes her upcoming album She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She as “a rebirth”, breaking the physical and emotional chains that once prohibited this cathartic process. “It’s a story of freeing yourself from situations and patterns that are holding you back in order to become self-empowered,” she explains in more detail. It’s “an invitation to step into your authenticity,” and as she poetically concludes: “like the dark moon, that void space can feel unpredictable and looming, but it also holds so much potential, mystery, and excitement.”

Watch the video for ‘Everything Turns Blue’ below.

Pre-order Chelsea Wolfe’s new album She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She here

Follow Chelsea Wolfe on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook & Tik Tok

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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NEW TRACK: Kim Gordon – ‘BYE BYE’

An eclectic combination of dense beats, brooding basslines, grinding reverb and spoken word, renowned musician and visual artist Kim Gordon has shared her new single, ‘BYE BYE’. The track serves as an introduction to her newly announced second solo record, The Collective, which is set for release on 8th March via Matador Records.

Following on from her 2019 debut solo album No Home Record, on The Collective, Gordon has retained her idiosyncratic style, remaining as curious, eclectic and ambiguous across each of the eleven tracks. Recorded in Los Angeles, Gordon continued to collaborate with producer Justin Raisen (Lil Yachty, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Charli XCX, Yves Tumor) on the new record, with additional production from Anthony Paul Lopez. Together, they have captured a rumbling, intoxicating sense of unease which is translated both sonically and visually – something which permeates new cut ‘BYE BYE’.

Accompanied by a video directed by photographer and filmmaker Clara Balzary, and starring Gordon’s daughter Coco Gordon Moore, ‘BYE BYE’ is an exciting preview of what’s to come from a musician who immerses herself wholly into all of her creations. The track and album also accompanied by words from English artist Josephine Pryde, who offers poetic context to Gordon’s debut and upcoming solo record:

“There was a space in Kim Gordon’s No Home Record. It might not have been a home and it might not have been a record, but I seem to recall there was a space. Boulevards, bedrooms, instruments were played, recorded, the voice and its utterances, straining a way through the rhythms and the chords, threaded in some shared place, we met there, the guitar came too, there fell a peal of cymbals, driving on the music. We listened, we turned our back to the walls, slithered through the city at night. Kim Gordon’s words in our ears, her eyes, she saw, she knew, she remembered, she liked. We were moving somewhere. No home record. Moving.

Now I’m listening to The Collective. And I’m thinking, what has been done to this space, how has she treated it, it’s not here the same way, not quite. I mean, not at all. On this evidence, it splintered, glittered, crashed and burned. It’s dark here… Haunted by synthesised voices bodiless. Planes of projections. Mirrors get your gun and the echo of a well-known tune, comes in liminal, yet never not hanging around, part of the atmosphere, fading in and out, like she says – Grinding at the edges. Grinding at us all, grinding us away. Hurting, scraping. Sediments, layers, of recorded emissions, mined, twisted, refracted. That makes the music. This shimmering, airless geology, agitated, quarried, cries made in data, bounced down underground tunnels, reaching our ears. We recalled it – but not as a memory, more like how you recall a product, when it’s flawed…

…I would say that Kim Gordon is thinking about how thinking is, now. Conceptual artists do that, did that. “I Don’t Miss My Mind.” The record opens with a list, but the list is under the title “BYE BYE.” The list says milk thistle, dog sitter…. And much more. She’s leaving. Why is the list anxious? How divisive is mascara? It’s on the list. I am packing, listening to the list. Is it mine, or hers. She began seeking images from behind her closed eyes. Putting them to music. But I need to keep my eyes open as I walk the streets, with noise cancelled by the airbuds rammed in my ears. quiet, aware, quiet, aware, they chant at me. What could be going through Kim’s head as she goes through mine?”

Follow Kim Gordon on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter (X) & Facebook

Photo Credit: Danielle Neu

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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NEW TRACK: Vanity Fairy – ‘Jungle Jim’

An eccentric psych-tinged soundscape that shimmers with a palpable sense of longing, self-professed “high priestess” of underground disco-pop Vanity Fairy has shared her latest single, ‘Jungle Jim’. A potent blend of soft vocals, dreamy synths and sultry beats, the track seduces listeners with its faux-calme quality, luring them into Vanity Fairy’s delightfully ambiguous aural mirage.

Following on from her recent release ‘Love of My Life’, Vanity Fairy’s latest cut is as enigmatic and elusive as the thoughts that formed it. “‘Jungle Jim’ was one of those songs that just came out more or less in one whole piece, or at least the vocal did,” she explains. “I like that it happened that way, because the instrumental (most of which my brother and co-writer/producer Sam E. Yamaha came to me with) feels very instinctual to me – very dream-like and languorous… and also very jungle-y, at least to my ears. It sounds so calm and dreamy, but there’s something really uneasy and unsettling happening in the music underneath everything. Not that the song’s about that, it’s just really the mood of the song to me…

The noises and few fragments of intelligible words I sang in the first take I wanted to keep, so my brother and I set about trying to remain as faithful as possible to those original sounds with the words we used. So the lyrics have an unconscious quality, and a kind of retroactively imposed automatism – if that’s not a contradiction (which I think it is). I like how fractured and fragile the language ends up being. And I like how un-authored it feels. Like I went into the song and disappeared.”

Ahead of a string of UK tour dates supporting Pip Blom in February, Vanity Fairy will be be performing at the DIY Magazine ‘Hello 24’ showcase at The Old Blue Last in East London tomorrow (16th Jan). Full dates are listed below

Listen to ‘Jungle Jim’ here:

Vanity Fairy UK Tour Dates 2024
16 JAN // London – DIY Hello 2024, The Old Blue Last
27 JAN // London, The Windmill
3 FEB // Folkestone, Quarterhouse, supporting PVA
4 FEB // Reading – Sub 89, supporting Pip Blom
5 FEB // Birmingham – Castle and Falcon, supporting Pip Blom
6 FEB // Liverpool – Academy 2, supporting Pip Blom
7 FEB // Brighton – Folklore Rooms, supporting Mickey Callisto
21 FEB // London, Heaven, supporting Pip Blom
30 MAR // London, The Cavendish Arms, Indie Pop Weekender
13 APRIL, Bristol, Outer Town Festival
11 MAY // Wrexham, FOCUS Wales

Follow Vanity Fairy on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter (X) & Facebook

Photo credit: Meadow Florence

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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NEW TRACK: Whitelands ft. Dottie – ‘Tell Me About It’

A bittersweet rumination on the complexities of love, London-based Black British shoegaze band Whitelands have shared their latest single, ‘Tell Me About It’. Taken from their newly announced debut album, Night-bound Eyes Are Blind To The Day, which is set for release on 23rd February via Sonic Cathedral, the track is an evocative, hazy musing on the way in which neurodivergent minds perceive love and heartbreak.

Proving to be one of our live highlights at last year’s Great Escape Festival, Whitelands have been busy crafting their intoxicating shoegaze sounds since they met at Decolonise Fest many years ago. Fusing together their eclectic personal music tastes, and bonding over a desire to shake up the predominantly white male shoegaze scene, the band routinely disarm listeners with their blend of noisy-yet-melodic riffs and effervescent vocals, finding the sweet spot between heavy and heavenly sound. Their latest single ‘Tell Me About It’, featuring label mate Dottie from deary, perfectly showcases these talents.

“It’s about being lost with the aspect of love,” explains Whitelands’ frontman and guitarist Etienne about the track. “It’s about dealing with break-ups, not in the sense of missing a relationship or a person, but the question of ‘am I doing this right?’ To me, it seems loving while being neurodivergent (ADHD) doesn’t follow a lot of the same rules, because I tend to fall in love with other neurodivergent people.” Through their use of drifting, dual vocals and ethereal guitar tones, the band beautifully capture these fogged thoughts and feelings of indecisiveness. This is also reflected in the track’s accompanying video, created by the psychedelic videographer Innerstrings.

Etienne offers more context about the band’s upcoming album too. The record takes its title from The Prophet, a philosophical book by Kahlil Gibran (1923). “The full quote is ‘the owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light’,” he explains. “I think it encapsulates the feeling of the album. A common theme running through the songs is lots of ‘I’, ‘you’, sense and emotion. Very physical and intimate settings. Lots of descriptors of light, celestial bodies, water, Biblical stuff, abstract stuff. I don’t really know why I write things the way I do, but I do tend to write emotions as anything other than what they actually are. I consume a lot of media. Video-games, music, news, paintings, manga, animations and film are my go-to, especially anime. There is this drive to want to understand and feel the whole weight of an expression. So, the songs are based on other songs, pictures, aesthetics, ‘vibes’, an emotion someone else felt. Fundamentally, you are what you eat.”

In the lead up to their album release, Whitelands will be playing a series of shows with shoegaze icons Slowdive throughout February, as well as a headline show at London’s Rough Trade East in March. Full dates and ticket info are listed below.

Watch the video for ‘Tell Me About It’ here:

Whitelands UK Tour Dates 2024
3rd February – Bedford – Esquires (with English Teacher)
16th February – Brighton – Dome (with Slowdive)
17th February – London – Eventim Apollo (with Slowdive)
18th February – Birmingham – O2 Institute (with Slowdive)
19th February – Norwich – UEA (with Slowdive)
21st February – Liverpool – O2 Academy (with Slowdive)
22nd February – Newcastle – NX (with Slowdive)
23rd February – Glasgow – Barrowland (with Slowdive)
24th February – Edinburgh – Liquid Room (with Slowdive)
26th February – Cardiff – University (with Slowdive)
27th February – Manchester – Academy (with Slowdive)
28th February – Nottingham – Rough Trade
4th March – Bristol – Rough Trade
5th March – London – Rough Trade East

Buy tickets to see Whitelands live here

Pre-order your copy of Whitelands’ debut album here

Follow Whitelands on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter (X) & Facebook

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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