Blog
-
Bring Me The Horizon announce 2026 North American tour
Featuring support from Motionless In White, The Plot In You, and Amira Elfeky -
Magic Fig – Valerian Tea
Effortlessly blending the heady mystique of Broadcast with the baroque playfulness of Friends-era Beach Boys, San Francisco psych-pop experimentalists Magic Fig return with the first taste of their forthcoming full length debut Valerian Tea.
The album’s title track builds on the theme’s of last year’s self-titled EP, with Inna Showalter’s sun dappled vocals once again wrapping themselves around inventive, ever evolving arrangements. “Valerian root extract was a popular remedy for anxiety and insomnia in Eastern Europe where I was born,” Inna explains. “The song is an exploration of how I was shaped and influenced by the experiences of my maternal lineage. This one was really fun and effortless for me and gave me the chance to experiment and take some risks.”
Containing members of The Umbrellas, Healing Potpourri, Almond Joy and Whitney’s Playland, Magic Fig is nothing short of a Bay Area supergroup. Valerian Tea is the purest distillation of their talents yet. Essential.
Magic Fig are: Inna Showalter (vocals, mellotron), Jon Chaney (keys), Muzzy Moskowitz (guitar), Matthew Ferrara (bass) and Taylor Giffin (drums).
Valerian Tea releases 21st November via Exploding In Sound. You can pre-order here.
-
Tommy Bolin – Teaser (Song Review)
“Yeah, she’ll tempt ya ‘til ya fall”
Backed by an array of talented guests and session musicians, Tommy Bolin works through a dazzling array of musical styles and moods on his 1975 debut solo album Teaser. But on the album’s title track he gets down to the business of some straight-up, groovy hard rock. The bluesy main riff that kicks things off is one of those “why didn’t anyone come up with this before?” classic riffs, the chorus’s crashing chords and stabbing bends have a Hendrix-y flash and excitement and Bolin colours the whole song with all manner of jazzy licks, tasty slide and spacey Echoplex effects. As well as being a guitar masterclass, Bolin’s singing also has a under-achieving cool charisma too. Teaser is a class track from one of my most cherished, most listened-to albums and I never get tired of hearing it. His role in the demise of 70s Deep Purple tarnished his reputation and his drug-related death cut his career tragically short but Teaser (both the song and album) is the work of a young guy with more maturity, talent and flair than many musicians manage to access in their entire lives.
-
Recognizing Tonal Momentum and Echoes of Past Styles in Riff Turnarounds
I got something really exciting in the mail recently: my complimentary copy of The Routledge Handbook to Metal Music Composition, which features my latest publication about metal, a chapter about metal’s tonal roots in the blues and the evolution of a common musical structure I call a “riff turnaround.” This new edited volume is really an important moment for the musicological study of metal, featuring a who’s-who of folks currently writing on the topic.
The editors put in a fanatical amount of work to put this collection together—especially Lori Burns, who has several such collections that have either just come out or are in process. This one is really a huge service to metal studies, giving tons of early-career scholars a chance to get their work published and helping those of us who are already published get a boost to our citation counts. And the collaboration between the editors and the individual chapter authors are drawing a huge web of scholarship into coherent field rather than a bunch of disconnected one-shot publications. I can’t wait to read the other chapters!
Here’s some more information about my chapter:
Title: “Recognizing Tonal Momentum and Echoes of Past Styles in Riff Turnarounds”
Abstract: Riffs are often described in terms of their propulsive rhythm, but they also create a sense of forward motion through tonal momentum. This is especially true in “riff turnarounds,” figures added after multiple repetitions of a riff to create additional momentum, which often demarcate sections within a song’s form. One factor that contributes to this impression of momentum is when a listener recognizes a riff turnaround as a recurrence of a melodic motion they have heard before. This recognition of similarity allows a “transference” (Scotto 2019) of scale degree functions and tonal momentum from one song to another. Through this recognition and transference, each listener can hear echoes of older styles of blues, rock, and metal in newer music-even in styles like progressive metal which substantially depart from those traditions.
Here are some of the songs I discuss in this chapter. You might recognize a few of them from previous posts on this blog (linked).
- “Wanton Song” by Led Zeppelin
- “Crazy Train” by Ozzy Osbourne
- “Amerika” by Rammstein
- “Pisces” by Jinjer
- “Demiurge” by Meshuggah
- “The Rumbling” by SiM
While the whole book is fairly expensive, I’m happy to share a pre-print version of my chapter, which you can access for free over at my Academia.edu profile or at the link below.
https://www.academia.edu/120233272/Recognizing_Tonal_Momentum_and_Echoes_of_Past_Styles_in_Riff_Turnarounds -
The Goods – April Fools
Returning with a gently uplifting yet melancholic sigh as we wave goodbye to summer, Oakland based Rob Good (Ryli) announces his band The Goods’ full length debut Don’t Spoil The Fun with shimmering lead track April Fools.
A bittersweet paean to the complexities of human connection, Good explains the song thus: “It’s about being tugged around by someone else’s ever-changing moods, someone who drives you up the wall but who you’re nevertheless drawn to, almost because of how crazy they make you.”
Joined by bassist Cherron Arens and guitarist Gabriel Monnot, The Goods have perfected a timeless pop formula loaded with arpeggios and heart warming harmonies. Be sure to keep those soaring summer memories alive by letting this most beautiful music into your life.
Don’t Spoil The Fun arrives 24th October on Dandy Boy Records. You can pre-order here.
-
Yoth Iria “Gone with the Devil”
ARTIST: Yoth Iria
ALBUM: Gone with the Devil
RELEASE DATE: 05/08/202601. Dare to Rebel
02. Woven Spells of a Demon
03. The Blind Eye of Antichrist
04. I, Totem
05. 3am
06. Give ‘Em My Beautiful Hell
07. Once in a Blue Moon
08. Blessed Be He Who Enters
09. The End of the Known Civilization
10. Harut, Government, Fallen
