Inuk pop-rap artist Aocelyn ascends to her rightful throne with the unveiling of her new single and video, “I Wish I Was a King” — available now.
The song lands ahead of the 22-year-old Nunavut-based songwriter, vocalist and freestyler’s forthcoming debut album, Lovely, set to arrive this November 5th via Iqaluit-based record label, Hitmakerz.
An extremely unique artist who has overcome many challenges, including housing insecurity and extensive bullying throughout her life, Jocelyn Arreak — and nom de plume, Aocelyn (pronounced “aw-slin) — hope to help others avoid the bullying that she experienced.
Having written her first song “Live To Love Life” in an attempt to deal with the harassment she faced, she says her music focuses on themes of believing in yourself, rooting for those who’ve been outcasted, spreading hope, and breaking the stigma around mental illness.
Discovered by the late Kelly Fraser, Aocelyn released her first music video “Adventure Awaits” in 2019, and was also featured in the music collective Ajungi album that same year. In September of 2021, Aocelyn attended the Hitmakerz Compound in Ottawa, where she recorded the video for “I Wish I Was a King” with filmmaker, Rachel J. Vrecic.
“I Wish I Was a King” — as well as the rest of the Lovely album — was produced by Thor Simonsen (Kelly Fraser, Aasiva, Joey Nowyuk, Shauna Seeteenak, etc.) and Bardur Haberg (Girls’ Generation, Namie Amuro, Kumi Koda, The Disney Channel, etc.). The single artwork was created by Bjorn Ulvedal Simonsen.
Financial support for the album and music video was provided by the Government of Nunavut and the Nunavut Film Development Corporation, respectively.
Love affairs, personal epiphanies, floods of memories, messy situations… Every life story can become inspiration for a song, and Canadian folk-rock artist Erika Lamon is distilling such moments into her forthcoming album, and new single “Catch the Light” — available now.
Confronting the world at a pandemic standstill gave Lamon and her co-writer, producer, and husband, Max Nolet, the desire to set creativity in motion and record an album. The result is the Kingston-based singer-songwriter’s first full length, and FACTOR funded effort, Hues — set to arrive May 27, 2022.
Fittingly, the album recording process began in 2020 with Lamon sitting in the middle of her home studio with “lyrics from the last few years strewn about me on the floor,” she recalls.
“I asked myself: ‘what songs am I really excited about? Cutting it down to fifteen songs was tough.”
Then, as inspiration would strike, Lamon and Nolet would write new songs, cutting that initial list even more.
“But throughout the process, we let excitement be our compass for the album,” explains Lamon. “By the end of the winter, we had narrowed it down to a single pile, and ‘Catch the Light’ was at the top of it.”
Even though “Catch the Light” was written in 2015 prior to the release of Lamon’s debut, self-titled EP, Lamon knew the song’s time had now come to be recorded and released.
“I remember sitting with a guitar at my in-law’s kitchen counter and playing it for the first time for Max, my now-husband and producer, and everything was there.”
Following where excitement led also influenced the recording of “Catch the Light,” she continues. “A lot of things appeared at the last minute in the song as people got creative: the bass swells, the backup vocals…. Even the guitar solo wasn’t part of the original plan.
“That’s the beauty of art: Those unscripted moments make a recording what it is.”
Writing and recording Hues and releasing “Catch the Light” mark Lamon’s reemergence from two years of performing and touring from Toronto to Charlottetown following the 2017 release of her debut EP. In 2020, the much anticipated, one-off single and video “Omen” garnered attention from FACTOR, and earned Lamon financial support for recording her first album and releasing “Catch the Light” this year.
“Music, for me, is about connecting to ourselves and the world around us through story,” explains Lamon. “And when we made the demo for ‘Catch the Light,’ all I could think was: this is the start of that story.”
“Catch the Light” is available now. Hues is available May 27, 2022.
Sonic Reducers. 1 topic. 2 music nerds. 5 minutes.
We try to comprehend claims that Satan was behind the Astroworld tragedy, dig deeper into the connection between the devil + music, and wonder why rappers + hip-hoppers aren’t as preoccupied with Lucifer.
The U.S. Postal Service has announced a new Pete Seeger stamp to be issued in 2022.
“The new 2022 stamps are miniature works of art, designed to be educational and appeal to collectors and pen pals around the world,” said USPS Stamp Services Director William Gicker. “As always, the program offers a variety of subjects celebrating American culture and history. The vivid colors and unique designs of this year’s selections will add a special touch of beauty on your envelopes.”
The 10th stamp in the Music Icons series honors Pete Seeger (1919-2014), a champion of traditional music and its power to inspire activism. Seeger’s clear tenor voice, iconic banjo and enormous charisma transformed concerts into singalongs. The stamp art features a color-tinted black-and-white photograph of Seeger singing and playing his banjo in the early 1960s, by Dan Seeger, the performer’s son. One side of the pane includes 16 stamps and the image of a sliver of a record seeming to peek out the top of the sleeve. A larger version of the stamp art photograph appears on the reverse side. Art director Antonio Alcalá designed the stamp and pane.
Customers may purchase stamps and other philatelic products through the Postal Store at usps.com/shopstamps, by calling 844-737-7826, by mail through USA Philatelic, or at Post Office locations nationwide.
November has officially been recognized by the United States Senate as Hip Hop History Month, and to commemorate the very first iteration of this annual celebration of hip hop music, Pandora will launch a brand new station to take fans on a journey through the decades of the genre. The new station, entitled Hip Hop Forever, will feature four artist-curated modes highlighting hip hop music from the 80s through today.
From coast to coast, subgenre to subgenre, Pandora will honor the iconic musical artists who made hip hop one of the most popular art forms in the entire world. Each decade of hip hop history will have its own featured Mode on the “Hip Hop Forever” station, hosted by trailblazing artists who will walk listeners through their favorite songs and stories from that time. The Modes feature commentary from Kid n Play, Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, Naughty By Nature, Ghostface Killah, Lil Jon, Soulja Boy, Drumma Boy, BIA, Wale, Latto, Don Toliver, Lakeyah, Rich the Kid, and Hitmaka.
“Hip Hop has become bigger than just a genre of music, it’s pop culture and a lifestyle,” states J1, Pandora’s Senior Director of Hip Hop. “Working directly with artists to present their music and hear them tell their stories was fun, enlightening and an honor. We’ve been able to create something that hip hop fans will not find anywhere else.”
Earlier this year, the Senate unanimously voted to officially recognize November as Hip Hop History Month. The legislation notes that hip-hop is a genre that “transcends many different ages, ethnicities, religions, locations, political affiliations, and socioeconomic statuses, which demonstrates the melting-pot quality of Hip Hop art and culture.”
“God used Hip Hop to save my life,” says Play of the trailblazing hip hop duo Kid n Play about Pandora’s recognition of Hip Hop History Month. “Hip Hop culture inspired me to start paying attention to gifts I didn’t know I had. I appreciate, support and salute Pandora’s Hip Hop Forever Radio to hopefully inspire & point others in a positive direction!”
Pandora Artist Takeover Modes live on the platform’s top stations and feature the biggest names in music across Pandora’s most popular genres. Artist Takeovers feature music handpicked by the artist including a mix of their own songs and personal favorites from other artists, with special audio commentary describing their selections and what they mean to them.
England’s fate-crossed rock duo Libre Stone lay it all on the line when it comes to the release of their new full-length album and title single, Mark of Cain — available now.
The 11-song strong release follows their debut EP, Wrecking Ball, and lands as a passion project they were forced to create remotely due to a global-wide pandemic.
The pair met at a Tears for Fears fan group gathering, and found commonality and mutual ground within each other from their first encounter. “Dion Smith and I got chatting and he told me he played a bit of guitar — which was an outright lie,” Julian Orzabal (brother of Roland of Tears For Fears) recalls of their first interactions. “He plays a lot of guitar, and plays it very well.
“I said I needed a couple of guitar solos for a project I was working on,” Julian continues. “A week or so later he sent me the solos, and they were great. He then asked me to write some lyrics on a tune he had, and I obliged.
“That was the start of Libre Stone.”
From there, the two would buckle down as musicians and songwriters, music makers and storytellers, bouncing ideas off one another, and trusting the intuition of the other to create the soundscape that would eventually shape Libre Stone into what we hear today. “We soon realised we were a great combination for writing together because he brought the ideas to the areas I was not so good at, and I brought the missing parts of the puzzle to the areas he was not so good at,” Dion says. “So, it just worked!
“We continued to write and realised, the more we worked together, the easier the process became and the better the songs were.”
Now, with their commitment to creating together had become concrete, it was time for Libre Stone to turn to penning an arsenal of songs that would later become a debut EP, followed by their full-length effort, Mark of Cain. “We decided to write a full album of material and we continued to write enough material for a second album,” they say.
Though the pandemic of 2020 would prove a challenge in terms of conventional brainstorming and collaborations, the pair would get creative and turn to writing and recording the album completely solo from one another. “We recorded everything remotely,” they recall, with Dion adding: “Julian and I had ideas separately, which we would email back and forth to further develop the ideas. We were never in the same room working on the songs for the album.
“When creating music remotely and not being in the same room because of lockdown, you would think it would be really difficult to make music — but it was quite the opposite,” Dion continues. “It was actually very rare for us to come up with ideas that the other person didn’t like, and everything always seemed to click in place.”
Dion and Julian found themselves in the fortunate luck of an A-list team of guest musicians who then rounded out the sound of Libre Stone, converting the duo into a lush, full-band. Featuring Jamie Wollam (drums), Andy Carr (bass), Michael Wainwright, and Guy Townley (backing vox), the duo says: “We had the opportunity to work with other first class musicians which helped bring the Mark Of Cain songs to something we are both really proud of. It was a fantastic opportunity to work with outstanding musicians on the album, both Jamie and Andy brought their own styles and sounds to the music.”
“I think they both really understood what we were trying to do, and the sound we were trying to achieve,” Dion adds. “And, of course, with the additional backing vocals from Michael and Guy, it brought everything to how Julian and I imagined everything would sound.”
Title track “Mark of Cain” is a rushing rock bop; melodic, splashy electric riffs and licks from Dion, drawing the rumbling of Julian’s deeply seeded vox. It’s oozing with classic rock nostalgia, featuring memorable hooks and danceable bass/percussion. Dion and Julian take turns in the spotlight, from the electric lo-fi, to the sing-along chorus, “Mark of Cain” are each of them, and both of them; beautifully intertwined while singularly celebrated, tantamount to their success as a duo.
The album teaser is available online; a 90-second sneak peek into the album as a whole. Akin to flipping the book open to read the highlights, the teaser will draw you into Mark of Cain. Libre Stone’s full length effort is as much a triumph as it is a love-letter to the music that moves and inspires both of them. And now they’re offering that to each of us.
Most of us know what living on the “wrong side of the tracks” means, but how many of us realize the role social injustice often plays in who lives there? Prolific Guelph, ON-based folk singer-songwriter James Gordon examines this, taking a deeper look into humanity’s widening chasms, pulling no punches in the process, in this, his new single, “The Great Divide” available now.
“There’s a railroad track near my house that divides the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’,” he notes. “It’s the same in many towns.
“It got me thinking about all the different ‘divisions’ we’ve created in our society,” he continues. “Economic, racial, class, etc… The song ‘The Great Divide’ came from this observation.”
Like a freight train blowing its attention grabbing horn, “The Great Divide” chugs along, calling out social injustices that keep surfacing in our boiling melting pot. The wail of the mouth harp in the song’s intro and extro echoes the growing chorus of discord we’re hearing more often for various reasons around the globe.
In the key folk music tradition of turning a mirror on ourselves and our human condition, Gordon reflects an image that is uncomfortably true and impossible to turn away from.
It’s not just the tracks that split this town
It’s a system built to keep you down
If you don’t have the money and your skin is brown
Then slavery’s alive
All along the great divide
“The Great Divide” is the second single and lead track from Gordon’s 40th (yes, 40th) album, When I Stayed Home — a self-produced, pandemic-born project released in July 2021. Although Gordon admits he’s “lost track” and there could actually be more than 40 albums under his belt now; over his enduring forty-year career, Gordon has released music both as a longtime, successful solo artist, and as a founding member of the groundbreaking Canadian folk group, Tamarack.
“I can’t seem to stop writing songs,” Gordon shares. “Mostly, they write themselves — I just hold up a net, and catch them as they flutter past.”
Written and recorded at home during the extended periods of pandemic imposed isolation that we’ve all experienced since early 2020, the album is just one of a number of projects Gordon dove into during lockdown. A legendary ‘gig pig’ who has toured relentlessly around the world since he was 20 years old, Gordon, like many musicians, found it difficult at first to adjust to staying home but then, he got busy, really busy.
From his tiny home studio, Gordon finished a novel that is accompanied by a 36-song recording; he did a virtual tour of his one-man show “James Gordon’s Emergency Climate Musical”; he kicked cancer’s butt, dealt with the overwhelm of his side hustle as a Guelph city councillor during Covid, and perhaps most significantly, wrote and recorded his 40th album. He may have been staying home but he was anything but standing still.
During a time when all of humanity has been threatened by a microscopic foe, Gordon had a lot of personal time to focus on songwriting and sharpen his recording skills to bring those new songs to life. The new songs are as current and they are socially conscious, with the album’s first single “We’ll Bring You Home” written in response to the shocking news that unfolded around Canada’s Indigenous residential schools this year.
In addition to “The Great Divide,” and its commentary on the income gap and racism, the songs on When I Stayed Home examine climate change, empathy, social justice, our natural environment and ‘love in a challenging time.’
“These are songs that demanded to be written,” says Gordon. “And I’m excited about sharing them with the opening-up world.”
“The Great Divide” and When I Stayed Home are available now.
With tangy wah-guitar peppered on top of throbbing bass and drum handoffs, Canadian rockers BUSM — Big Up Sour Mash — have unleashed their newest high-voltage single, “Smile” — available now.
Sure to give you something to “Smile” about while you jam along, BUSM is a three-piece hard rock outfit from Oshawa, Ontario, and features Shawn Cormier on guitar, Dustin Cormier on bass, and Mike Loyal on drums. Their journey started as a comedic acoustic-rock group, but eventually morphed into “a three-headed dragon of electric commercial punk mixed with dark, erotic undertones of rock ‘n’ roll.”
While there isn’t so much fire being spewed in BUSM’s newest single, “Smile” features plenty of the punk and rock ‘n’ roll Big Up Sour Mash is recognized for. “The intention with ‘Smile’ was a riff-rock blues vibe reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix and/or Stevie Ray Vaughn,” the band recollects. “Shawn’s high-pitched vocal added more of a pop sound to the jazzy instrumentals of the rhythm section, played by Dustin (bass player) and Mike (Drummer).”
As is tradition for any good punk band, BUSM has managed to sneak some clever underlying messages into their newest release. While “Smile” is disguised as a funkadelic pop single, the overall message isn’t lost on anyone who is critically listening.
“In some ways, the song lyrics reflect a commentary on social media and the pressure everyone feels to look good in society: to project a positive image,” the band says. “It is a commentary on the organic nature of smiling — an act which cannot be forced.”
It is worth mentioning BUSM’s producer, Austin Nolan, and, specifically, his dedication to the acquisition of gear and his grasp on audio engineering. Big Up Sour Mash gives Nolan credit for his dedication to the group, reflecting on Austin Nolan’s input during the creative process. “Austin is very very meticulous as an engineer/producer, taking painstaking time to sculpt the body of the sound that you hear throughout this whole EP.”
BUSM started a release campaign at the beginning of 2021, each housed under the Smile EP, and with “Smile” as their newest addition. “We took a new approach to releasing the songs by debuting them all as singles, each with their own unique album art,” they say of the inventive rollout. “We took a lot of time figuring out the aesthetics of each title cover, which we are particularly fond of and proud of.”
In this era of reality TV and lightning fast virality, it’s extraordinary when an artist can achieve fame for more than 5 minutes. Cue: The Black Sorrows. Nearly 40 years after their hometown debut, the legendary Australian roots rock band has amped up their enviable catalogue with another in a long line of chart-busting albums and blistering new singles — Saint Georges Road and “Revolutionary Blues” are available now.
The second high-energy single from The Black Sorrows’ 22nd album, “Revolutionary Blues” rips out of the gate with a spirit of wild abandon crossed with polished confidence only years of honing musical craftsmanship can add.
“The band really owns this track,” says Joe Camilleri, Australian Recording Industry Hall of Famer and the main artist behind, and in front of, the internationally successful ensemble that has had a rotating and ever-evolving line- up of members and contributors since 1984. In the current TBS line-up, Camilleri is joined by Claude Carranza on guitar, James Black on keyboards, Mark Gray on bass and Tony Floyd on drums.
“It’s just a lot of fun,” he continues. “Initially, I had a different concept, but we took it into a country/blues/gospel sound. And lyrically, it could be about any time… There could be a revolution brewing somewhere.”
With its own heady brew of Saturday night roadhouse rhythm, dueling hot country guitar licks with honky tonk piano and soulful southern gospel vocals, “Revolutionary Blues” delivers handily on the promise of The Black Sorrows’ hit-filled past.
“History’s got its heroes
They all had to choose
And if I’m not mistaken
They sang the Revolutionary Blues”
Saint Georges Road may be album #22 for The Black Sorrows but, more notably, this new chart topper is Camilleri’s 50th career release, putting him in the esteemed company of other household names from Down Under like Olivia Newton-John, Jimmy Barnes, John Farnham and Slim Dusty.
The lifelong singer/songwriter, saxophonist, guitarist and producer with a five-decade career has well-earned the “Living Legend” designation bestowed on him by Australian Rolling Stone. Luminaries such as Elvis Costello, John Denver and Frankie Miller have recorded his songs and with The Black Sorrows alone, Camilleri has toured Australia relentlessly, played to sold out audiences across Europe, racked up 18 ARIA nominations, two ARIA awards and has sold well over two million albums.
The honours continue for Camilleri’s newest album with The Black Sorrows: Most recently, Saint Georges Road has parked at #1 on the ARIA Jazz and Blues Album chart and the 11-track collection has also hit #1 on the iTunes Australian Rock Albums Chart, the iTunes Australian Albums Chart and #2 on the Australian Blues and Roots Airplay Chart — all since its September 2021 release.
After releasing an impressive repertoire of hits that have become staples on Australian radio and beyond, Camilleri felt obliged to keep the creative bar high for the Sorrows’ latest effort. He brought the new batch of songs he co-wrote with his long-time collaborator Nick Smith to Peter Solley, the Grammy-nominated producer who helmed Camilleri’s breakthrough project with his band Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons in 1979 that gave him his first two top 40 hits.
Before they embarked on the project, Solley asked Camilleri one question: “What kind of record do you want to make?”
“A good one,” Camilleri replied.
Numbers and sales figures don’t mean as much to the seemingly ageless Camilleri as does making music that’s timeless.
“This album is a testament to Joe Camilleri’s long-lasting career and his burning desire to keep working at his craft. The album shows the power of love and inspiration that spans 40 years of our lives,” says Solley, who also adds his Hammond B3 and keyboards to the record. “I’m sure, Saint Georges Road will inspire Joe’s fans as well.”
Reflecting back to the final listening session as he completed the album with Solley, Camilleri recalls a profound moment. “We were two like-minded souls coming together for what could be the last time. We knew we had something special. A record that was a culmination of everything I’d done before and probably the best record I’ve made.”
The following day Peter Solley headed back to his home in the US. The day after that, Australia’s borders were shut as the global pandemic took hold. A fitting wrap on the latest project for an artist and his band that have always been right on time with their music.
The Black Sorrows’ “Revolutionary Blues” and Saint Georges Road are available now.
