Sonic Cinema 24- Joseph Efi, Bad Colours, and Rival Consoles

Joseph Efi is a UK-based artist who artfully fuses electronic, dubstep, and experimental influences to create an innovative and experimental sound. ‘Walker’ is the latest example of Efi’s soulful creations and is based on the idea of a character whose spirit is traveling between different bodies as a shapeshifter looking for a home. The accompanying video features a fossil-like conglomeration of objects and stones set in a square piece of concrete—an assemblage of items that mirrors the artists’ merging of soundscapes. Around the block floats an amorphous orb that shifts shapes and hunts for a place to land.

Always With U is Bad Colours’ second album, releasing this November. ‘Maybe I Should Move to LA’ is a single from the upcoming album, where the artist merges his songwriting, producing, and djing to produce an upbeat and aspirational sound. The song’s music video features a couple on their way to go surfing on a beach in New York City, juxtaposed against lyrics about a dream of living the beachy LA lifestyle. Bad Colours is a London-born and Brooklyn-based artist whose first album PINK was released in 2021.

Rival Consoles’ latest single ‘Vision of Self’ explores the question of ‘what is the self?’ Understanding transformation, pain, love, relationships, nature, dreams, and more, the music and video are formed around existential questions about who we are, howe we dream, and how music can reflect this ambiguity and questioning in an abstract and symbolic manner. The animated, colorful music video incorporates animals, nature, and objects to depict phases of transformation, imagination, and dreamed-up visions. Rival Consoles is electronic artist Ryan Lee West, and the track features on his latest album Now Is, out now via Erased Tapes.

Sonic Cinema 21- Music videos from Ebi Soda, Deru and LDN Monos

‘Pseudocreme’ is a track selected from Ebi Soda’s new album Honk if You’re Sad. The musical compilation is a result of ten-hour jam sessions influenced by an archive of internet music culture and the UK jazz scene. Collaborating with trumpet player, Yazz Ahmed, the artist’s second album is noteworthy for its exceptional sense of experimentation and technical acumen. The accompanying video gives a voyeuristic feel as viewers watch the artists and a prawn-headed figure through a blurred, color-adjusted lens.

This track is the first single to be released from the artist’s album We Will Live On. Created with a Disklavier acoustic piano that has software allowing it to play itself with digital controls, the song and video alike make a commentary about humanity, technology, and the climate crisis we are living through. The debris and trash shown in the poetic video ask questions about loneliness, hope, and the current state of the world. The track itself follows a geometry-based pattern in its composition, making it different from most western music and producing a unique sense of order and structure.

This is the latest single from producer and multi-instrumentalist LDN Monos, a pseudonym for Curtis Neil. The track features an atmospheric sound, vocals sung in a Chinese dialect, and a sampling on instruments from around the world. The track explores the relationship between light and dark and the infinite cycle of life and rebirth. Depicted through the movements of synchronized swimmers above and below the water, the music traces physicality, water, belonging, and form as the swimmers form a natural beauty in their teamwork and anonymity.

Sonic Cinema 19- Music videos from Chósta, Danny Mulhern, and Allegories

‘Vox’ marks the artist’s first single of the year, using electronica and manipulation of rhythms to set a nostalgic and melancholic tone. Inspired by Four Tet and Burial, the artist constructs a tribute to the city of Dublin with intimate electronic sounds that form an acoustic series of events for the listener. Connecting with his roots as an Irish musician from a seaside town near Dublin, his music is inspired by coastal sounds and a visceral approach to electronic composition. The track is accompanied by a video that takes viewers on a tour of the city’s small moments of everyday life and infrastructure, infusing it with connection, community, and relatability, telling a story of old and new.

This track features various musical elements, unveiling an intellectual approach to composition and melody. The artist produces a surprising and deep sound by incorporating classical and ambient electronica with a string quartet, piano, and jazz instruments. His notorious approach to mixing contemporary, classical, and ambient sounds successfully tells a story in this song. The track’s video features adorable animations of small animals playing with toys and unfolding into an abstracted tessellation of psychedelic forms.

Thirteen years after releasing their first album, Allegories has dropped their second. Coming together and being pulled apart by life’s obligations at different paces, the two artists, Bently and Mitchell, found ways to keep their music alive. Their dance-oriented, abstract track ‘Tell Me, Before I Forget,’ makes everything worth the wait. Calming vocals and compelling rhythmic percussion bring this song to life in its deep bass and transformational elements. The video features ocean waves abstracted in geometric fluid transitions, demonstrating an ebb and flow that matches the artists’ stories.

Experience the Small Waves of Henrik von Euler's 'Små Vågor 5'

The new 9 track album exudes sounds of healing and comfort

Henrik von Euler is a composer of ambient music who uses a variety of wind and electronic instruments, including piano, mellotron, clarinet, and accordion. He is a specialist in quiet, minimal and organic sounds.

This album, the fifth in the Små Vågor series which kicked off in 2015, finds a home on Swedish electronic and ambient label ‘Flora & Fauna’. The album features a number of personal compositions inspired by daily life at his local pub in Sweden: Restaurantang Hjälmaren. The album features a number of talented local musicians, including Aina Myrstener as cellist and Rut von Euler as the sound engineer on "Masa beş", Simon von Euler on the Juno-6 synthesizer on "Smygen" and Tove von Euler, as additional pianist on "Kinan".

The album, which is composed of nine songs, invites listeners on a spiritual trip and helps them feel at peace with nature. “Stor mellan" opens with a melancholy and beautiful piano, and the accordion gradually expands into a peaceful world in the middle part of the piece. As the title of this album means "small waves" in Swedish, you can feel the sound of waves in "Smygen". In addition, you can enjoy a light piano sound in the last track, "Voltstart". The peaceful sound played quietly from beginning to end brings with it a sense of calm. The music makes your heart at peace and is the perfect accompaniment for everything from a busy 9-5 to a chill Sunday afternoon.

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RYECROFT’s Latest Album is an Experiment with Layers of Found Noise

The guitarist-turned-electronic musician continues to display his versatile capabilities

RYECROFT is the solo project of Yuki Hongo, a multi-faceted musician from Fukuoka, Japan. With years of experience as a guitarist living in Tokyo, Hongo ventured into the electronic music scene and genre in 2016, a move that brought his practice to Toronto, Canada. Hongo continues to perform in Japan and produces abstract sound installations, and his latest album Beautiful Variant, released this year, shows the next step on his electronic music path.

Debuting his electronic career in 2018 with the album Abstract Gene, RYECROFT’s tracks showed a distinct versatility and multi-angled approach to electronics. The first song on the album ‘To die a little’ is a more tranquil sound, and is followed by ‘Cut,’ which features piercing intensities and a command over electronic production. In 2020, his album Melt, featured ‘Defend us from Nation,’ which opened the album with an orchestral sounding, classical music-electro twist full of dystopian themes. His 2020 EP ‘Psychological Portrait’ featured this epic narrative sound with an existential tilt, plus found clips of water running. More recently, in his EP ‘Give’ in 2021, he returned to his guitar practice.

Beautiful Variant came out this year and is composed of 10 tracks that give a found sound feel and feature static effects, trance like beats, and more. The variability of intensities and rhythms throughout bring a shift of mood, moments of calm, and the manipulation of strong, clashing, and abrasive sounds through a multi-level experience of beeps, clashes, and scraping.

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