Off The Charts: Future Pop Albums Summer 2023
A selection of releases that have been stuck in our heads this summer
I always feel a bit of melancholy at the end of summer, so to fight it off a bit I tried to find some solace in searching for music that I normally don’t listen to a lot: let’s say it’s what I wish future pop music sounded like. I mean “pop” in a very broad sense, of course: what we have here is strange-sounding normal songs, assorted splinters of melody, remixed nostalgia, out-of-place catchiness, and more. All kind of left-field, often fragmented, and very refreshing.
This will be a continuing format, and we will appreciate entries for ‘Off The Charts’ - reach out to info@guerrillabizarre.com with your upcoming releases.
PC Music - Astra King - First Love
I want to start with the poppiest one, a short EP, and man it’s been hard to get this one out of my head. She’s a nice girl based in LA who has released a few songs with London’s PC Music. The EP showcases her glittery style of 00’s influenced vocals that gradually morphs thanks to hyperpop broken countermelodies, bursts of electronics, and misplaced 8-bit synths.
What especially gets me though is her nose for simple and effective building of tension. I even caught a hint of post-grunge/alt.rock in her singing in the title track, which’d be an interesting ingredient to add to the mix, but I might be imagining things.
Oh, and gotta love that album cover!
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100% Electronica - George Clanton - Ooh Rap I Ya
Very 90’s neo-new romantic pop (filtered through a lot of later sounds), complete with 90’s videoclips and a very 90’s release on cassette. Very hypnagogic, very melodic, the most conceptually vaporwave an album of songs can be, while also creating its own sound.
A sound for long roadtrips on a deserted highway on songs like “I Been Young”; “Punching Down” and a few others tend a bit more towards the psychedelic side, but the gluttonous melodies remain and cut their way through the ambient fogs of the last few tracks. The album is delivered on 100% Electronica which is George’s own, LA-based label.
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Chapelle XIV/Yoyaku - Beyondre - Berlin Blue
André Baum has used the identity Beyondré only once until now, in his 2014 debut; here he gives a new spin to this project, published on a sublabel created by Yoyaku Records in collaboration with art gallery Chapelle XIV (they’re neighbors in Paris’ 18th arrondissement).
“Berlin Blue”’s songs have been written mostly between 2019 and 2021, while enduring lockdown in NY and breaking up with his girlfriend in Berlin: some are slow and melancholic but hopeful, some are rhythmic and danceable but droning, all blend deep sonorities with a warm, human touch, unafraid of mixing intimate songwriting with electro and minimal techno overtones. His voice is velvety and delicate and soothing even when it twirls in strange loops like in “Runaway”, or when it growls over echoing chirps like in “What We Are”.
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Ghost Diamond - death's dynamic shroud - After Angel
This is a trio of musicians from Dayton, Ohio who’ve been using this moniker (and a few others) to release music in pairs. In fact this is one of the very few albums that they produced as an actual trio. And it’s a curved ball: a collection of b-sides and unreleased tracks from their previous album “Darklife”.
“Darklife” was quite the trigger-happy soundtrack to a never-made movie from an alternate reality 80s; “After Angel” is by design more varied which I think gives them wider possibilities of expression while still being very cinematic. There’s operatic tracks and snippets of hooks and mechanized loops, and so much genre experimentation. It’s hard to find an album that can get you from would-be stadium filler “Phantom You, In Four Parts”, through heart-wrenching ballad “It’s Only Pain”, to the rnb scraps of “Dark Channels”, so seamlessly
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Ilian Tape - ROLROLROL - MUSIC
I love it when titles are this minimal! This album is a gleeful mixture of synthetic pop musics, eaten, chewed, digested and somehow reassembled by way of synths and drum machines. It’s very urban in rhythms, very jazz in musical mastery, very surprising in juxtaposition of sounds and melodies, and strangely pleasant in the way it spreads catchiness all around. They’re not scared to get pensive though, around halfway through the LP; but after an admittedly steep change in atmosphere, the last trio of tracks brings back the feel-good feelings in a more laid back version. Check out “Surprise”’s combo of rhythmic piano and ostinato vocals for a nice final dose of bliss.
ROLROLROL are Dutch musicians Niels Broos and Jameszoo, both especially talented pianists and keyboardists. They have already worked together, in respective solo releases. Here they’re on Ilian Tape for the first output of this new project together.
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Words and selection by Alessandro Cebrian Cobos
