Archives

Experimental Pop

Penelope & Owlsley: Burning In The Sound

by Owlsley Burroughs

Penelope & Owlsley


Penelope Arvanitakis and I go way back to 2005. I would spot her at open mics in mysterious and leafy Belgrave, the creative centre of the Melbourne hills, and simply marvel at her talent. The cadence of her voice was like no other, her piano playing was so highly advanced for one so young, and her songs were quirky, honest and deep. She was a cut above the rest.

In 2007 we recorded three songs together at her parents’ house, one of mine and two of hers, and then … we promptly fell out of touch for 16 years!

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Prince, Black History Month and The Spoken Word

by Lee Christian

Prince, Black History Month and The Spoken Word by Lee Christian


I have been a Prince fan since I was 8 and first heard Let’s Go Crazy, with its ear grabbing pyrotechnic guitar ending. Since then, I’ve learned from him, copied him and even just ended up doing the same things as him by osmosis or naturally. His work ethic, energy and diversity are three touchstones of my own ‘career’ and I have many strange ethereal intangible links to prince and ‘signs’ attached to many of my fondest moments in music so far that it’s almost as if he’s been a musical guardian angel since his passing in 2016 – an event that hit me so bad that I bought a streaming package, set up a little shrine on screen and DJ’d for 3 days straight, so fans had a place to hang, and I had some way of expressing my own sense of loss and gratitude for him voluminous output and inspiring presence in my own life. My phone went off non-stop that first day, I was associated with him so much by my circle of friends, they were checking that I was ok!

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I wasn’t thinking about what I was going to think about

by Ben VanBuskirk of Blackout Orchestra

Ben VanBuskirk aka Blackout Orchestra


I can’t talk about music.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I have the language. I can talk about what a particular song means to me, or I can talk about what that drummer is doing on the hi-hat that makes you know it’s them. Music history is an easy one – I’ve devoured all the rock bios, read all the critical analysis, seen all the interviews. I eat, sleep and breathe music. So why does it feel hard to talk about?

Not to sound all new-age about it, but music is elemental. Larger than life. When I was a kid, like most kids, I was into superheroes. The bright colors, the high stakes, the every moment of a story that meant something important to the larger narrative. As I grew up, music was the only “adult” thing that felt that exciting, that vital, that universal and yet intensely personal.

So of course I became a musician.

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Radical Presence

by Alexander Jones aka THATS NOKAY

Photo Credit: Jake Hanson 


A few years ago I found myself banging away on a $12 Casio from goodwill in a basement in Edmonds making some weird experimental pop songs.  Soon a pandemic was upon us and I decided to buckle down and learn how to make beats and use Logic to record.  Some friends gave some pointers and drum kits to download, and soon I was off and running, making beat tapes and collaborating with vocalists over the instrumentals.

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KC to LA: A Westward Pilgrimage

by Heads or Heads

KC to LA: A Westward Pilgrimage by Heads or Heads

When I stepped out of LAX and into the warm evening air I suppose I fell in love.

Kansas City, as much as I adore it and feel proud to represent, will never be as warm as Los Angeles was that night in mid-December, nor will it evoke the feelings of excitement and hope that still exist within. So when you grow up in a rural place it’s not uncommon to dream of bigger things – in the back of my mind LA was always the destination.

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How Music Heals

by Domenico Solazzo

How Music Heals by Domenico Solazzo
When I called it a day about seven years ago, I was exhausted. Somehow I was emptied. I felt like I had already said and experienced everything. Since day one, music had always nourished me. How foolish was I to believe for a single moment that I could go on without it?

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Hide and​/​or Seek

by Queen Cabbage

Hide and​/​or Seek by Queen Cabbage
My second album is somewhat of a time capsule. These are the songs I wrote between realizing I needed to get better and doing something about it.

My alcoholism and dependence on other addictive behaviors (weed, sex, etc.) had progressed to a point where they had begun destroying every semblance of a good life I’d managed to build despite them. To preserve any chance I had at living well, I needed to change the way I spent each and every moment of my time. In order to honestly document these in musical form, I stripped away every instrument other than my voice, guitar, laptop, and tape recorder.

If there is anything for you in these songs, you will most likely find it outside of what I have to say about them. All I really have to say is thank you so, so much for listening. So much.
That said, in case it might inform your listening, here’s what I have to say:

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Even if it doesn’t pay… Even if not many people take interest

by R L Armstrong

Even if it doesn't pay... Even if not many people take interest by R L Armstrong aka Loading...Mad Spells

“Hey, mom where is my bass and guitar?”

“I took them to grandma’s; you’ve been playing way too much.”

This is how I woke up one day in grade 11 because I wasn’t doing much of anything other than making up random melodies and recording them on a tape player. I loved the fact that I was in control of making these things up and that they were not being graded or picked apart by a teacher or whatever…

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Digital Queer Aesthetics

by Ava (Hegemonix)

Digital Queer Aesthetics by Ava (Hegemonix)
My name is Ava and Ben, I use they/them pronouns, and I make music as Hegemonix. I’ve recently been exploring online queer aesthetics via electronic music and music videos. I’ve been using digital instruments and my physical body to communicate my exploration of having a non-binary gender identity. I’m interested in using the “precise” robotic language of electronic music combined with the uncertainty of the voice and body to explore what it means to be human in today’s digital world.

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Truths that no one wants to see

by Pablo Drexler

Truths that no one wants to see by Pablo Drexler
For me making music has always been about finding hidden lumps of pain, lighting fire to them and watching them disperse into the ether…

WEIGHTLESS/SINKING is the sonic representation of one of the most confusing periods of my life: I was simultaneously getting to grips with how much I had suffered from / attempted to forget the fact that one of my parents is a double cancer survivor, helping my family move out of my childhood home and trying to find my place in the mind-boggling metropolis that is London. I thought that the paradox of feeling like I was weightless yet at the same time sinking perfectly described the emotional soup I was in.

(I’m) a sparrow’s feather
on a lake: weightless/sinking

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