The Underground Forest - Volume 40
Welcome to this month’s edition of The Underground Forest! 🌿
Featuring Avery Friedman, DOPE LEMON, Maddie Ashman, Rani Jambak, Matthew Nowhere, Zoe Graham, Laura Misch and Madame Reaper & the Gentlemen’s Club.
Follow The Underground Forest playlist on Spotify
This month’s edition features; a song that sounds like your favourite early 00s song from MTV or Kerrang!; a song that feels like it takes place in a dark folk-tale, where sirens and mermaids and something else lurk beneath the oceans surface; a deliciously smooth song that feels like a blend of Metronomy, Tame Impala and L'Impératrice; a song that sounds like an epic 1980s electronic pop classic; a deeply glamorous synth-pop song from a luxurious fantasy and more!
Maddie Ashman - Dark (Otherworld)
Every so often, you will come across an artist who personifies art and creativity, an artist where you feel the glittering imagination of their inner world the moment you hear their music. Maddie Ashman is one of these artists.
The guitar and vocals in this don’t sound like anything I have heard before; the technical skill required to deliver a performance like this is on another level entirely (the vocals are pitch perfect for every syllable).
The vocal delivery makes me think of a woodland nymph you discovered in a dense, enchanted forest communicating in an ancient magical language.
The style in which she plays and bends the guitar notes makes the song feel more and more surreal and reality-warping as time goes on, and all the more entrancing.
Connect with Maddie Ashman
Bandcamp / YouTube / Spotify / Instagram
New Thing - Avery Friedman
Dreamy and nostalgic shoegaze-drenched guitar chords float to your ears from a cassette tape from the past, accompanied with mournful humming (the effects give it a slight hyperpop vibe, which I love). In the verses, the guitars expand to something dreamlike, the chorus is like your favorite song from the early 00s - this is saturated in the sensation of memory, and it is wonderful.
On the song the artist says “I wrote ‘New Thing’ in one sitting after riding the subway home alone at night for the first time since being mugged at knifepoint months prior. I was shocked and disoriented by the anxiety I experienced doing something so routine—I felt foreign to myself. It’s one of the first of my songs that I truly loved, which is part of why I chose it as the title of my upcoming record. I’m grateful for how this song continues to bring me back into my body.”
Connect with Avery Friedman
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Bluesky
Kembang Mengembang - Rani Jambak
Taken from the album VIBRA GENETIKA, an exploration of “the interconnected dimensions of life. Since 2013, the artist has embarked on a path to explore the meaning of her cultural identity as a Minangkabau descendant born and raised in Medan. Through this process, she began piecing together fragments of family history, the complexities of her cultural heritage, and the diversity of her surroundings. This journey has not only allowed Rani to understand her connection to tradition and her ancestral land but also to explore the concept of Rantau (migration) as a vital part of the enduring Minangkabau narrative” to read more, please see the following link on Bandcamp).
Kembang Mengembang is a blend of field recordings with instruments and electronics, the results being a luscious, immersive soundscape that shimmers with life, the way a lavish green, swamp or forest does, this reminds you of the sheer amount of surreal beauty that exists on this earth. This flows seamlessly over your ears like a shimmering kaleidoscopic body of water.
Connect with Rani Jambak
Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Website / YouTube
Evilin - Zoe Graham
Taken from the album TENT, the songwriting in this draws you into the rich visual world of Evilin, who works at a bakery. The rhythmic delivery of the lyrics and how they develop throughout the song is masterful; the pads that descend to your ears in the chorus add a kaleidoscopic dimension to the song.
This kind of feels like it could take place in the world of Sweet Pea (with a dash of the magical realism of something like Tuca and Bertie).
Connect with Zoe Graham
YouTube / Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Website
Alchemy - Laura Misch
Laura Misch’s new song will immerse you in an underwater world. This soundscape is healing, with bursts of electronic textures washing over your ears throughout, like an ocean wave breaking on a rock. The world of the song Alchemy is quiet, it is mysterious - like an ocean where you know something unknown and ancient lurks beneath the surface; or an ancient folk-tale about sirens and mermaids. A work of pure sonic genius.
Connect with Laura Misch
YouTube / Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / X
Madame Reaper & the Gentlemen’s Club - Glueing myself back together (not)
Image credit Shawn Ruddy @ ruddy.buddy
A single taken from the album This is an album because the industry says it’s not (out April 11th). Glueing myself back together (not) features ornate glittering synths, luxurious vocals that float from the dark shadows and lull you into a state of hypnosis - this is the soundtrack to a surreal dream or fantasy; it plays throughout a boudoir with dark wallpaper, gold enamel, and velvet carpets.
Glamorous to its core.
Connect with Madame Reaper & the Gentlemen’s Club
YouTube / Bandcamp / Spotify / Instagram / Website
DOPE LEMON - SUGARCAT
The accompanying music video to SUGARCAT brought to mind Metronomy’s classic The Bay, and the sonic world that unfolded did not disappoint. The song itself is deathly smooth with an easy groove, the instrumental shimmering and luxurious.
The lush, layered vocals are easygoing, giving the effect of someone singing to themselves while looking over an azure blue paradise, making the song all the more dreamy.
Divine.
Connect with DOPE LEMON
YouTube / Spotify / Instagram / Website / X
Echoes Still Remain - Matthew Nowhere
Gorgeous analog-flavoured synth-pop, the chorus has a serious 1980s electronic classic vibe to it; this feels like a nighttime walk in 80s Los Angeles. A wind of mystery runs throughout this, absorbing you into the world of the music; a fantastic song from start to finish.
On the song the artist says "Echoes Still Remain’ comes out of exploring ideas about the artistic process itself - the way in which a lonely whisper of inspiration in an artist’s mind can take flight and become realized as a concrete work. And in those rare cases, something that started as just a personal vision might even become immortal, something that lives on, becoming all these different things to different people,"
Connect with Matthew Nowhere
Spotify / Instagram / Website / Bluesky / 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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