Year: 2024

For Each Song I Create a New Character

by Ben Richel


During my childhood in Savoie, France, most of my free time was devoted to one activity: imagination. I imagine grandiose destinies but also standard and common stories: From fishermen in the Philippines to Western rockstars, from 19th-century wars to post-collapse scenarios, from my Star Wars spin-offs to projecting myself on stage later… I could imagine revolutionary flying machines, and the same day imagine the realistic routine of the today’s French middle class (I am myself in the middle, like Malcolm!)

For me, everything is interesting.

My life has been built by imagining and connecting lives. It was obvious that one day I would invent characters, partly because expressing my whole personality cannot be done by simply embodying a predefined, cliché role given by society.

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Love Is Punk

by John Kennedy of The Dark City Kings

The Dark City Kings - Love Is Punk


Out of the blue? That doesn’t even describe the moment. Dark City Kings was the runt of the litter in the Asheville music scene. We’d lost two guitar players in the Spring and had just brought in a new guitar player and fiddle player. The core of Dark City Kings has been around the Asheville music scene for a decade – but this band was the runt of the litter and then tossed into a raging river to drown.

Dark City Kings? We were a drunken brewery band that was slowly writing original material. We wrote simple songs. We meant them. We wrote melodies you can sing in the shower and big sing-along choruses. We’d just decided to try again, write an entirely new songbook with this new band formation, practice twice a week, and play a show once a week.

We played our first show together on August 5th.

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Classical Crossover Music on the Theme of Belonging

by Sam Joseph Delves

Sam Joseph Delves


As an established composer of music for picture, my writing has been featured in documentary series throughout Europe. But for my debut EP, “Content”, I wanted to take a new approach.

In the last few years, I’ve had to travel a lot. Capturing sounds from the various places I’ve visited and putting them together into this EP has been therapeutic, like keeping a journal.

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34 years of DIY … and just getting started

by Tuffy Brazil of STROMBLE FIX

STROMBLE FIX


It all started in 1990 when five teenagers formed a new punk band. In fact, STROMBLE FIX was a merger of two bands that rehearsed door-to-door in the local youth center in the Ruhr area of Germany.

We played many shows in the early 90s and recorded our songs on 8-track or 16-track tape machines in a friend’s studio whenever we could afford to spend a weekend. The music was published on compact cassettes, and there was a culture of sharing tapes with other bands or even taping tapes to get the music heard. Mail orders these days worked so that you requested a printed catalog first and then ordered your vinyl or cassettes by writing a letter.

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‘10 Years of Travel’ – The Long Journey Home

by Andy Coombs of Soft Cotton County

Soft Cotton County


Music was once ‘the most important, unimportant thing we had,’ said music critic and presenter Robert Elms. This sums up my relationship with writing in general and music in particular. I want to keep it unique and avoid the fillers and the B-sides. One great song would make me happy. In an ocean of mediocrity, sea levels are rising, but starfish are still found in the depths.

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A Sort of Musical Debris in the Form of Eight Tracks

by Hugo Espírito Santo

Hugo Espírito Santo


It all started for me in the mid-2000s as a pre-adolescent who had fallen in love with hip-hop culture in all its forms. After a few attempts at beatmaking throughout my teens, life eventually led me to cinema, visual arts, and abstract painting.

But the enthusiasm for (making) music never left—hence the debris EP. This project is the result of six months of experimenting with synths and plugins. It is a sort of musical debris in the form of eight tracks inspired by minimalism, time perception, and the soundscapes of daily life.

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Swimming Against The Current

by Old Magic Pallas

Old Magic Pallas


We are a Brazilian band that emerged in the 90s, more precisely in 1994: Old Magic Pallas. Oh gosh, 30 years! Time flies… We met in a CD store that belonged to our drummer, where we always met to listen to the releases of the bands we liked, mainly British alternative rock. In fact, our band’s name comes from the liner notes of Blur’s Parklife album (it was the name of one of those racing dogs).

At that time, few bands played this style of music in the country, and even fewer sang in English.

This was even the motto for a documentary called “Guitar Days – An Unlikely Story of Brazilian Music,” which details the independent scene of that time and where we are mentioned.

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How I Started as a Solo Artist

by Raging Flowers

Raging Flowers


Hi, I’m Raging Flowers, a singer-songwriter-producer from Auckland, New Zealand. My primary instrument is the electric guitar. I make jazzy self-help indie pop that celebrates the diversity of feelings. My music is about truthfulness, exploration, and hope.

My music career has had an unusual start. I’ve been a long-time music learner, but I decided to pursue a career in tech. I studied Computer Science and had a career as a Software Engineer. I worked for some of the top software companies in New Zealand. I was a star Software Engineer in various fields, including music, blockchain, and AI. Back in my programming days, my ambition was to run a small business of my own.

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The Ten Counter Arguments

by The Uncivil Society

The Uncivil Society


When interpreting philosophers’ works and transforming their ideas into lyrical poetry, I understand all too well how their ideas can become didactic. Compounded by my tone-deaf vocal delivery, I have found that in every project, when I get to track 8, I am sure the listener needs a break. Ludwig Wittgenstein said it himself that “when one cannot speak, one should be silent.” Having an instrumental track is the best way to respond!

Because music is the management of vibrations that we can audibly perceive, this spectrum itself has a range of limitations. In creating instrumentals, I research a connected idea and use it as a sonic template. I found that even using the same chord structures of these songs, my limitations and aesthetics yield a truly different result!

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