The Underground Forest - Volume 23

Welcome to The Underground Forest! This months edition features; a song that sounds like candy floss, with some late 90s early/2000s RnB vibes; a song that sounds like an alien fantasy landscape; a song that plays to you from across an abandoned moore; a shoegaze demo that sounds like solitude at night-time; an eerie bedroom pop song that sounds like it is from an alternate dimension, and more!

Featuring; Bambina, Vitesse X, twst, Tsatsamis, Speedrun, Candi Carpenter, Liv Miraldi,mui zyu & Silent Mass

By Eimear O SullivanMusicngear Editor

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Sugar Boy - Bambina

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Have you ever wanted to hear a song that sounds like clouds of sugar? The newest release from the prolific artist Bambina is for you. 

Warm Rnb chords paired with glittering bursts of candy-like synths (reminiscent of the shimmering ice-like textures of late 1990s - early 2000s RnB) flow over a seriously smooth beat. The vocals are heavenly, melting over the instrumentation; the arrangement is simple but extremely effective.  This is another flawless entry into the Bambina discography. 


Connect with Bambina
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Cult - Candi Carpenter

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I came across this while looking through Bandcamp; and immediately needed to know more. Taken from the album Demonology (which the artist describes as an exorcism), Cult is about growing up as a midwestern pastor’s child, the opening lyrics “I sat in church while my father preached/ About sexual sin and pornography/Learning that I was inherently bad/ That God was my lover, my brother, my dad.”

The chorus is a burst of gorgeous Americana pop, it is utterly cathartic, it is releasing yourself from what you were exposed to when you were younger, deconstructing the beliefs that held you in a state of fear for so long, in Candi’s words:

“So who's that in the corner listenin' to REM

It's me, losin' my religion again

I didn't ask to join, it wasn't my fault

Growin' up is like leaving a cult”

I highly recommend listening to the whole album. 


Connect with Candi Carpenter
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Nouns (demo) - Vitesse X

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An achingly beautiful shoegaze demo of a song NY artist Vitesse X wrote in 2016. 

Nouns is a portal to solitude, to walking alone in winter or through the city at night; the dreamy, doubled vocals coming to you from the clouds of the past. The music video for this (see here) was shot on a Super 8 camera; it features cityscapes at night, surreal shop windows, concrete buildings, the beach underneath a grey winter sky, and more. 


Connect with Vitesse X
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Was I Ever Alone? (Tsatsamis’ Hymn) - twst, Tsatsamis

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This sounds like an ethereal fantasy landscape in audio form; it also sounds like an achingly beautiful classic; the opening soundscape entrancing everyone who listens to it with its otherworldly beauty.

Shimmering vocals descend to your ears from the nebula; dissolving into an electronic beat with some early 2000s influences. You need to listen to this.


Connect with twst
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Connect with Tsatsamis
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What He's Used To - Speedrun

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Taken from the EP Love’s Latest News, which deals with medieval ideals of courtly love and how they relate to the modern world. What He's Used To could honestly have been plucked directly from the early 2000s; once you start listening to it it transports you back to that time period. However, it adds something new, which is what makes this so addictive and fun to listen to.

Speedrun (a.k.a. Nina Lüders)’s vocals are flawless (the double-tracked vocals are hypnotic), these flow over the indie and grunge-like texures, resulting in something you will not be able to stop listening to.

On the EP the artist confides, "She confides, "I wrote this EP as a love letter to 2000s indie rock, with the cover art of me in a suit of armor to both highlight the medieval theme and introduce imagery of a young black woman empowered in her own hero's journey. The Strokes producer Gordon Raphael found me on TikTok and offered to join the project as the lead mixer and really drove home the nostalgic garage rock sound while keeping it contemporary for all kinds of listeners."  


Connect with Speedrun
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Friend of the Family - Liv Miraldi

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The vocal melody running throughout this hooks you immediately, and never lets you go. The subject matter of the lyrics are devastating, on this the artist says “Friend of the Family’ was something I was afraid to talk about, so I knew I had to write it. I gave myself the space to feel the full range of my emotions. The song details the complexity of infidelity through the daughter’s point of view. This sad indie bop is an instant tear-jerker that is sure to bring the feels.”

The vocals flow over the gentle, charged backdrop of music; the instrumentation getting gradually more and more lavish as time goes on; the melancholic feeling of memory saturated to its core. 


Connect with Liv Miraldi
Spotify / Instagram / Twitter


everything to die for - mui zyu

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This feels like it plays to you from an eerie alternate dimension, where everything is just slightly off. This has a really cool DIY vibe to it; with a slightly psychedelic feel. It is also slightly dissonant; which gives the song a vaguely uneasy atmosphere, a quality which makes everything to die for it so interesting to listen to. 


Connect with mui zyu
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Land of Heart's Desire - Silent Mass

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This has an alt 90s vibe which I love. The vocals float to your ears from an abandoned moor through the fog, the instrumentation is very dreamy, with shoegaze and post-punk elements, everything becoming more and more bewitching as time goes on.

Ammo Bankoff of Silent Mass confides "I wrote the song while reading W.B. Yeats who was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Yeats wrote a play entitled ‘The Land of Heart’s Desire’ about unfulfilled aspirations and how they can inadvertently affect those around you. This led me to consider the consequences of avoidant behaviors in my own life and uncover the source of my escapism."


Connect with  Silent Mass
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About Eimear O Sullivan

Eimear Ann O Sullivan is a multi-genre music producer, audio engineer and vocalist. After receiving a Masters in Music Technology from the CIT Cork School of Music, she went on to operate as a producer under the name Blakkheart. Her releases have received critical acclaim from Ireland's biggest music publications, such as District Magazine and Nialler9, alongside receiving heavy commercial radio airplay. She currently works in Cork recording studio Flashpoint CC. Previous clients of hers include the likes of Comedy Central’s Dragony Aunt star Candy Warhol, rapper Darce and Outsider YP. (Photo credit @Fabian Boros)

Contact Eimear O Sullivan at eimear.o.sullivan@musicngear.com

About Music Spotlight

In this blog section we host new music releases, artist features and handpicked playlists by the Musicngear staff.

Interested in a music feature, writing a story as a guest or joining the Musicngear team as a Contributing Author? Contact us at info+blog@musicngear.com