Welcome to the second instalment of Honey on the Knife Radio. Every second Wednesday, we take a look at eleven songs, some of them new, some of them not as new, but all of them are good.
Listen to Episode 2 here:
If you’d prefer to read about the songs instead, keep reading below.
Zoe Polanski – “Apple Hill”
Zoe Polanski is an Israeli singer/songwriter and film composer. She was born in the tense city of Haifa and from a young age found escape from her everyday environment within music, learning to play piano, cello, and guitar. She now lives in Tel Aviv and just recently released her dreamlike debut album.
Across Violent Flowers, Polanski crafts gentle and airy soundscapes, with chiming guitar lines and delicate synths sailing underneath you to carry you off into a place more tranquil than the harsh realities of this Earth. It’s one I see myself returning to whenever I’m in search of an inner peace.
Wares – “Hands, Skin”
I might be biased because I live here, but I believe that Edmonton’s independent music scene is often overlooked. The city is full of talented musicians and Wares is one group that particularly stands out. Earlier this year, they released Survival, an album that they dedicated to “decolonial activists, anti fascist agitators, prairie queers fighting for community and a better life.” The electrifying opener, “Hand’s Skin” is a anthemic tone-setter for the rest of the album.
vera, etc. – “hi”
Vera, etc. is a self -described noise pop chiptune gremlin based in the netherlands with two upcoming albums, online and offline. Release dates aren’t confirmed yet, but online might be arriving in August. Until then, you can listen to two new singles, “hey” and “hi” and vera’s sunday EP on Bandcamp. “Hi” is dense, digital and infectiously energetic with bustling breakbeats and buzzy synths.
Samantha Crain – “Pastime”
Samantha Crain is a Choctaw singer/songwriter based in Oklahoma. Pastime is the second track from her latest album, A Small Death, which just dropped on July 17th. Here’s what she told The Line of Best Fit about when she wrote the song three years ago:
“I was living a quiet life… and spent my time talk-writing poetry into a voice recorder, reading, walking, watching birds. My life now, with travel restrictions and social distancing, has taken on a similar shape of pause. I felt, then, like I was getting to know myself from scratch, peeling off a costume that I was put in as a child and allowing myself, for the first time, to dress myself and fully lean into my curiosities and sensitivities. This song phrases that journey as the excitement of the giddy and audacious stages of a new romance because I truly felt (and still do) in that way about finding these new facets of myself.”
https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/latest-news/samantha-crain-shares-new-single-pastime
Dorvin Borman – “Everyone Lied”
Dorvin Borman is an Los Angeles based dream pop/psych pop artist whose work is influenced by Brutalist architecture, French New Wave films, left-wing politics, and anxiety. Although it may not be immediately apparent in the song’s warm and wistful sound, Dorvin says “Everyone Lied” is about “the paranoia of a not-so-dreamy socio-political climate–one that is engulfed by a rise in fascist sympathizing.” He goes onto describe how the narrator feels estranged from those who he grew up with and thought he knew, leaving him with a compulsive desire to constantly abandon his surroundings in search of like-minded people.
For more Dorvin Borman, follow him on Spotify and check out his band Mama Kokomo.
Willie Thrasher – “Beautiful”
“Beautiful” is the seventh track on Spirit Child, by Inuk singer-songwriter Willie Thrasher. Thrasher was born in 1948 in Aklavik, a tiny community in the Northwest Territories. At age five, he was taken from his family and sent to a residential school, forbidden to practice his culture as the Canadian government attempted to violently assimilate thousands of Indigenous children into the mainstream Eurocentric Canadian society.
At the school, there was a drum set in the gymnasium where Willie learned how to play. After leaving the school, he began playing in rock groups and formed a band called The Cordells with his brother and a few friends. Through the 1960s and 1970s, The Cordells toured across Northern Canada playing rock music and covers. After one show in the mid-70s, an older man asked Willie why he didn’t play music that reflected his heritage. Willie then picked up the guitar and began writing songs about his life, his people, and the environment. In 1981, his debut album, Spirit Child, would be released. It was a success in the north but limited promotion and a lack of support in other regions would prevent Willie from reaching a higher level of exposure and success.
Today, Willie lives on Vancouver Island and continues to perform regularly. Several of his songs were featured on the Native North America, Vol. 1 compilation released by Light in the Attic in 2014, which helped spark greater awareness and interest in Thrasher’s music, and he would go on to play several major festivals across North America.
SAULT – “Wildfires”
The third album from mysterious UK group SAULT, Untitled (Black Is), opens with a call and response chant of “The revolution has come, (out the lies) still won’t put down the gun (out the lies)”, a refrain that harkens back to Black Panther chants from the 1960s. The album is a continuation of the line of amazing art created by Black musicians that celebrates Blackness and embodies the resistance that comes with being Black in a world built in opposition to Blackness.
leuhan – “Wild Horses”
According to Leuhan, frequencies can heal you. On the Argentina-based producer’s Hear to heal 01 release, the frequencies are deep, with subterranean grooves bubbling under the surface of squelchy synthesizers. I can only hope that the 01 in the title suggests that this dose of healing is part of a series, because my body is responding well to the techno treatment so far.
MJ Guider – “FM Secure”
“FM Secure” is the lead single from MJ Guider’s upcoming album Sour Cherry Bell, set to be released September 18, 2020. About the creation of the album, Guider said “”I was curious to see how far I could go with [my tools], even if that meant reaching the ends of their capacity to do what I wanted…but I never exhausted them and they never exhausted me.” Guider and her tools head into the shadows on this latest track, with her voice sailing out from beyond churning clouds drenched in reverb.
Zhlehtet – Tic Tac Universe
Zhlehtet is a project led by Slovenian pianist and composer Rok Zalokar. Earlier this month the collective released Toyomi, an album taking its name from the Japanese word meaning sound/echo and is often used to describe “big sound and people laughing together”.
The album came together through a process of recording instrumental improvisations and subsequently feeding them through analog equipment, distorting them, pulling them apart and putting them back together to create a mutated monstrosity of glitchy electronics and unhinged jazz flourishes. It’s often impossible to predict where each song is headed next, creating a very captivating listen experience with a plentiful abundance of textures and masterful use of space, opening up into sparse atmospherics before closing in on you with moments of chaos.
PLAYYTIME – “Next Life”
We’ll finish off things off with “Next Life” off of PLAYYTIME’s The Fun Never Ends. On the album, the Atlanta based-band sinks into the murk of gloomy blues and launches into sludgy and pummeling hardcore punk, often doing both on the same song. Obi Ugonna’s vocal performances are powerful throughout, taking on a downtrodden moan on the slower cuts, and erupting into explosive shouting that cuts through the chugging riffs as their tempo increases.
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If you are a musician and you would like to submit your music to be featured in a future edition of Honey On The Knife Radio, send an email to contact@honeyontheknife.com