You get what you give, in every single situation.
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Blame It On My Ancestry
by El Valerie
I know I’m supposed to promote myself, but before I do that, let me break down why my latest project is bigger than me.
So. I am born, raised, and artistically based in Queens, New York City, USA. The borough of Queens as a standalone city would be the single most diverse place in the world; something like 200 languages are spoken here. In high school, I knew this girl who spoke English, Spanish, and a specific dialect of her family’s motherland (I forget which specific country it was – sorry mija). And it gets way more diverse than that around here.
Hide and/or Seek
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:
I Went To The Desert And Held Out My Thirst
The different settings for my latest album, Desert Cities – Part One, span from Denver to Seoul. Track three, Brooklyn, is a love song for the gritty and enigmatic Bushwick neighborhood and track four, Coming Home, rides the metro north to Midtown where home is not a place but a person (and a lovely oasis at that). Track two, Lost in Seoul, reflects on the foreign shores of South Korea, “the crowded streets, the angry East Sea, don’t mind if I belong here for a while.”
Only track one, Hold out Thirst, mentions a dry, barren, lifeless, sandy desert. Its brief and stark first refrain, “I went to the desert and held out my thirst,” captured something much bigger in me when I first listened back to the completed album. The desert, in this case, is where one goes to reflect deeply, to test themselves against the elements, physically and emotionally and to experience thirst as a fundamental sensation of life, to feel acutely alive. The remainder of the album (part two included, TBR Fall 2019) is born of this same desire.
Odd Woman Out
My name is Charley Young. I’m an indie synthpop artist based in NYC. I was born in San Diego, California, and grew up on the Gulf Coast of Florida. I’ve always loved music and always knew I wanted to be a singer, but it took me a while to become confident enough to pursue my dreams. About five years ago, I decided it was time to stop being scared and go for it – Whether or not the timing was good, whether or not I was “ready.”
Exploring the Ghosts of the Past
by SYBLING
Hello there!
We are sisters Alice Makwaia and Mariana Quinn-Makwaia. We make up the duo SYBLING.
We have lived in New York City just about our entire lives, and we like to think our music mirrors our NewYorker-ness (eclectic and a bit mysterious).
With Every Breath You Die
by Day & Dream
Day & Dream is a husband-wife team, Peter Frizzante, the morning person, and Abby Amaya, the night owl – our band name is a nod to our opposite sleep schedules. We are often writing music or lyrics at home in between work and daily chores, finding inspiration in personal relationships, nature, and risk-taking.
Ye Olde Grampfather’s Tale
In the beginning, a rock appeared in the firmament, and on that rock a fissure did form. An old man with youthful eyes looked upon this rock and said, “I shall call you ‘Shredrock.'” And upon receiving the reverberations of his utterance, the rock burst forth a great explosion, showering the old man with mystical properties, endowing him with the wisdom of old age and the vigor of youth. And when the phenomenon did cease, the rock told the man, “I shall call you ‘Grampfather.'”
I have to remember, The Universe is the Ultimate Algorithm
There was a piece of me so lost… I ran around the world creating chaos… crashing and burning and needing to be rescued again and again trying to find it.
Meeting Lydia Lunch
by Jack Blare
photograph taken by Sebastian Greppo
Lydia Lunch is the undisputed Queen of No Wave and is one of the most dynamic and influential artists of our time. She started Teenage Jesus & The Jerks in 1977. Since then she’s been part of numerous bands such as 8-Eyed Spy & Big Sexy Noise and worked with artists as diverse as Sonic Youth, Last Poets, Cypress Grove, Richard Kern, Christine IX, Brian Eno, James Chance, Robert Quine, Nick Cave and Rowland S. Howard of the Birthday Party. She’s published several books and memoirs like Will Work For Drugs, Incriminating Evidence & Paradoxia.
She was a pioneer in the genre of Transgressive Film and is known for her powerful spoken word performances and outspoken feminism. Lydia Lunch has been influencing musicians, poets and artists since she appeared on the scene in 1977 and bands like Sonic Youth and L7 were heavily influenced by her music and ideals. So was I, an unknown 20-something poet and noise musician from a small town in Canada. This is the story of how we first met.