Choices of the Grasshopper June

Songs of June 2021

Release Radar

No need to stress out. Stay relaxed with these easy, upbeat songs.

Totally Stress Free

I wrote and recorded each song from this EP and my last album in isolation at my home studio in real time, and as each song kinda follows the trajectory of everything that's happened in the past year. For Safety started a chapter that gave a glimpse of a hopeful, yet ironic and strange future where things are starting to wake up, but have morphed into all these odd new normals. In a way it's been nice to have all this time to reflect or cocoon in creatively, and part of me feels strange about waking up from that slumber. But as many silver linings as I slap on it, you'd have to be a world champion optimist to ignore that it's been a pretty dark world out there. A lifetime's worth of issues slingshot to earth in a single year. Pandemics, insurrection, the reality of social injustice, and on and on. Tons of alarms ringing nonstop and really loud.
Also as things start to feel a bit brighter around the corner, as things open back up and tensions have settled a bit, I can't help but notice that the world (or at least my world) feels pretty damn different than the last time I inhabited it. A lot has changed for me, much like everyone else probably. Things won't be that same, the once distant future is still pretty fuzzy and out of focus... but comparatively, I'm ok with this bottled optimism for now.

Monograms - For Safety

British Asian songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Dewan-Dean Soomary returns with a new project that blends the snappy pop sensibility of indie disco with the bleak humour and biting social commentary of post-punk.

Teenage Sequence tells acid-tongued and relatable stories about the humiliations and alienations of modern life: the casual racism of the music industry or your crush, the endless series of hangovers that keep you stuck as an eternal kid, the despair of living in a world on the verge of destruction, the yearning when you fall in love despite all of this. Lush synthesisers, fuzzy guitars, and relentless 909 beats build a soundscape that is as sleek, pulsing, merciless, and ultimately as irresistible as London itself— demanding that the listener dance, even as it reminds them that the dance-floor is burning. 

Teenage Sequence’s debut single “All This Art” turns a scathing eye on the small indignities and hypocrisies of a music industry that doesn’t want face its own racial shortcomings— all the while poking fun at its self and sarcastically  sending up the warped relationship we all have to ourselves and our art. 
Clocking in at 6.29 of spoken word over a dance beat as bright, tart, and cutting as the song’s lyrics, “All This Art” disregards the rules of modern pop and alternative songwriting in favour of brutal honesty and bittersweet fun.
	- K.M Ferebee

All This Art

How Low

Scout

Show Up

Waiting Around for a New Me

“‘This Is All I Need’ is about the positives of nurturing an adaptable persona”, explains band leader Padley. “Here our protagonist recognises that others will only open up to new ideas if initially they are rewarded sympathy for their current standpoint.

#altrock #indie

Social Haul - This Is All I Need

Secret Plan

Moral Hygiene

Good Trouble

Sad But True

Sad But True (Take 36 - February 5th, 1991)

Family

Hip To Be Scared

Hip To Be Scared (feat. Jacoby Shaddix)

Happier Than Ever

Sunlit Youth

Dark Days

Texas Sun

Colors

Trick To Happy

Shore

Sunblind

Never Alone Again, released on May 26th 2021

Written and performed by CIEL
Produced by Steven Ansell
Mastered by Robin Schmidt


Lyrics:

Tell me that I will
Never be alone again
Promise me that I will
Never feel so sad again

Baby I know it’s beyond you
These things come and go with time
There may be a darkness growing in me
When sunlight’s running out of time

I don’t know why it’s so hard to be
hard to be, hard to be
I don’t know why it’s so hard to be
hard to be, here

I hope that someday I will
Find stillness within these times
That somehow I could shine a light
When it’s moonless in the dead of night

I’m so crippled by memories
Often stuck in this tendency
trying not to feel much anymore

I don’t know why it’s so hard to be
hard to be, hard to be
I don’t know why it’s so hard to be
hard to be, here

Never Alone Again

‘I Might Have’ is the second single from A Place to Bury Strangers forthcoming EP, Hologram which will be released on their newly formed label, Dedstrange on July 16.  “I Might Have” is a fuzz-soaked sonic disaster in the best possible way. Past reflections collide with the brutality of a disintegrating world, stories of personal trauma, acceptance, and human failings emerge from the rubble of noise and destitute motorik rhythms. This is A Place To Bury Strangers at its most honest and unfiltered.   Hologram serves as an abstract mirror to the moment we live in and “I Might Have” smashes that mirror into a thousand pieces.

Hologram

I Might Have

A Place To Bury Strangers - I Might Have

New EP from Ipswich trio Coalfalls.

More info - https://www.4000records.com/artists/coalfalls

Coalfalls - Stone

How Low

Heartless Bastards