The Underground Forest - Volume 30
Welcome to The Underground Forest; a place where you can explore the lush undergrowth of ambient music; jazz, shoegaze, country, experimental music, and much more.
Featuring Austyn Wohlers, Martina and the Moons, Niomí, Nala Sinephro, Party Nails, Tessa Rose, Jackson, Huge Molasses Tank Explodes and Crys Matthews.
This month's edition features a song that sounds like it plays to you from a shimmering secret garden from a magical realism-infused dream; a song that feels like it plays over the night-time skies of Ratatouille's Paris; a song that has the magical and glimmering quality present in one of the interludes from Christina Aguilera’s Stripped; and more!
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Grasshopper Heaven - Austyn Wohlers
The rush of glimmering, ambient sounds that envelop your ears from Grasshopper Heaven make you feel like you are stepping into a shimmering secret garden; one that exists somewhere between reality and a dream.
This is warm, surreal ambient music, with a touch of magical realism...The garden Grasshopper Heaven transports you to is vibrant, lush, and glimmering with life.
Taken from the album BodyMelt in the Garden of Death; I would recommend exploring the whole album, it is an auditory wonderland.
Connect with Austyn Wohlers
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram
The Difference Between - Crys Matthews, Melody Walker, Chris Housman
The newest song from Nashville-based singer-songwriter Crys Matthews "The Difference Between”, features LGBTQ artists Melody Walker and Chris Housman, all of whom call Nashville home.
On the song Crys says "This is Country too, it looks like you and it looks like me. When I heard Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town", I was so offended — not just as a Black woman, but as a proud Southerner. The audacity to think that there would be a South at all without my people is the kind of willful ignorance that keeps folks like me from feeling safe in Country and Americana spaces. There are consequences to that kind of hateful rhetoric."
The opening lyrics are a perfect blend of thoroughly cutting insight and humor “You say you wanna build a wall/ Then Ok let's build a wall/ Around you and yours so you can figure out/ That it ain’t just your town that’s small.”
The chorus is a dreamy blend of harmonies and hope, my favorite line from the entire song is “See I’m from the South like you/ So tell me what’s your excuse?” A work of genius.
Connect with Crys Matthews
Spotify / Instagram / Website / YouTube / X
Continuum 1 - Nala Sinephro
I recently listened to Adam Conover speak to Jenny Odell about her book “Saving Time: Discovering A Life Beyond The Clock” in which they speak about different ways of viewing time, different forms of time (e.g geological time, how the sky changes through the day) and it honestly changed my life.
For some reason, I view Continuum 1 - 10 (all taken from the album Endlessness) as being part of this, as experiencing time differently, as taking place outside of what we view as conventional forms of time, and this makes it all the more wonderful to listen to.
Immerse yourself in the ocean of gentle jazz, ambient textures and a bed of heavenly electronic textures. Breathe, and let your mind soar.
Connect with Nala Sinephro
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Website / YouTube
Dixon Avenue - Martina and the Moons
The gentle clarinet this opens with transported me to Paris under the night sky in the 1960s, where mystery and the scent of delicious cuisine swirl in the air.
Martina and the Moons are a four-piece band from Dublin; this new song is gorgeous. It is cozy, it is gentle, it has a dyed-in-the-wool character that makes it feel like a classic. This is hard to describe, you really just have to experience its warmth and wonder.
You can read more about the inspiration behind the song here.
Connect with Martina and the Moons
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Website / YouTube / Χ
Sweetest Thing - Niomí
The glistening, magical realism-soaked textures of Loves Embrace (Interlude) from Christina Aguilera’s album Stripped, had a profound impact on me (the magic continuing in Loving Me 4 Me) - this new song from artist and songwriter Niomí has this shimmering and entrancing quality present throughout.
Sweetest Thing is a glistening blend of sugar-like textures, flavored with a divine R&B and 808s fuelled groove. This is mesmerizing, all-encompassing, and will whisk you away into the clouds.
Connect with Niomí
Spotify / Instagram / Website / YouTube / X / Facebook
Same Old Song - Party Nails
A new song from singer-songwriter, artist, musician and producer Party Nails, this feels like a diary entry from childhood, opening with the line ‘I drive through the woods I look for you/ Through the trees’.
This song manages to capture the fun, imagination and adventurousness of childhood, the music itself having a beautifully lofi and dreamy quality. It also has a melancholy feel running throughout.
This is absolutely gorgeous.
Connect with Party Nails
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Website / YouTube / X
Stick In The Mud - Tessa Rose Jackson, The Shells
This new song from Tessa Rose Jackson was co-written with Milo of The Shells.
The vocals in this whisper through the willows over grunge indie textures (this song feels like it plays on the radio of a station wagon while driving home at dusk). The chorus dissolves into a dreamy kaleidoscopic chorus, with beautifully layered vocals and surreal textures here and there, the results being nothing short of entrancing.
On the song Jackson says, "It's a sultry, no-bullshit love song for a friend in the throes of heartbreak. Forget me not, your stick-in-the-mud / Might be old news, but I know you."
Connect with Tessa Rose Jackson
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Website / YouTube / X
Rise - Huge Molasses Tank Explodes
I was immediately curious about what a band with a cool name like Huge Molasses Tank Explodes sounded like, and I was not disappointed.
Rise is the opening song of their album III, it has a gorgeous analog quality to it (it has the vibe of an undiscovered album from the 1970s). Mysterious pads soar, a hypnotizing synth runs throughout, the melody whispers overhead - this is expertly crafted.
Connect with Huge Molasses Tank Explodes
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Facebook
Spotify Playlist
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
In this blog section we host new music releases, artist features and handpicked playlists by the Musicngear staff.
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