Daniella Binyamin ‘Abba’ - Review
“Abba” opens with tenderness and immediacy. The exhilarating track drags listeners into the storms of emotions as Daniella Binyamin’s intimate and soulful vocal shimmers between worlds. Somewhere dark pop, somewhere exotic. Somewhere urban and somewhere rural. The quietness and atmosphere of the night with eclectic energy of the day. “Abba” showcases the unpredictability and versatility of Binyamin as a songwriter. And in her debut EP, Abba, she dives deep into the personal, innermost thoughts as well as exploring the world around her—a flamboyant and vibrant view doesn’t come around often.
“Abba” is a gateway to Binyamin’s sensitive and emotive inner world. It’s a way for her to face up against negative emotions and straighten out the entangled threads. Poignant, poetic and read like pages from a diary, the songs in Abba is brutally honest and most hard-hitting. “When I wrote ‘Abba,’ it was only my voice and a piano. I was angry and sad, and felt left behind by people I loved,” Binyamin confessed. “When we later started to arrange and produce the songs, I realised how much I needed to write it, in order to move on.” But the process is also how she finds closure and courage to move on. “For every tangle that was straightened out, I became more and more fearless and convinced I was doing what was right for me.”
Abba is therapeutic to Binyamin, but to its listeners, it brings a tear-filled and honest experience. The songs take listeners on a long scenic trip filled with introspective moments. In Binyamin’s lyrics, they find a piece of themselves that is missing. And in her sonics, they begin to understand feelings that have escaped from the busy life.
“All That Good” is a theatrical and revealing. It’s scenic road trip while thought provoking. It awakens the distant and most intricate emotions inside your body, while the lofi soundscape meets her haunting humming is then blended with a soulful trumpet. It’s something that can’t be put down into words, but you know that’s the moment that’d get stuck in your head.
“Grand Hotel” feels like The Cranberries meets Paramore. With emo punches, driven rhythm and cathartic but sensuous vocals, the track creates such a vibe. While “Out of Fuel” makes a darker impression with all its allure and mystic.
DCxPC Live Presents Vol. 15 No Coffin Live at Lou's
Captured live at Lou’s, Vol. 15 gives listeners a taste of death and doom, seeing art in its rawest form. No Coffin, the heavy hitters and touring machine brings the best of the best while on the road. Vol. 15 sees them toying with noise in a way that reminds you Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. Hysteric and stadium-filling, swamp mixed with hardcore filtered through metal and punk. It’s a taste of sweat and blood with immerse energy and disobedience.
“Reverse Prayer” crawls in with high contrast and flickering drone. The track pains the room black and mad, roaming with massive, commotion-staring rhythm. Race and rest, death and punch. They alter pace and soundscapes, awakening a range of drastically diverse visualizations through separate scenes. “.45” is fierce and maddening, fused with gunfire and aggression. The track catches No Coffin at their most unapologetic and vengeful, one foot into forbidden sonic lands with palpable angst and brain-melting hits.
“Fire Is The Cleanser Into All Life Must Ends” is hell-like and dominating. It puts you in full submission as if witnessing something majesty and unstoppable in full action. Destruction meets rebirth in metallic sonic world-building, while the process itself feels even ritual-like. Fire, as a symbol of cleansing, is a powerful, vivid force. There’s so much storytelling in this track that’s simply amazing to witness.
No Coffin is able to offer something different with each of their tracks. Though always heavy as hell and rock your head off, their dooming sound and noise manipulation is done with much mastery and impulsiveness. “Over By Portishead” is something else. Setting its scene in a lonesome, haunting riff, one man’s screaming cuts through all the silence and space and becoming something truly haunting and spine-tingling. When the percussion kicks in, the man’s voice is somehow covered up but still, he’s unsilenced.
The longer the show goes on, the deeper No Coffin seems to be in contact with the roots of rock—blues, with its purity and sickness, being amplified and derived in noise-coiled, electrified sounds.
In the last year, No Coffin has played 160 shows. They are looking to top that number this year. If you happen to be in the area, don’t miss the opportunity to get your ears dirty.
Das Wortspiel ‘Chapter I’
Art takes its form freely as it sees fits. There’s no set rules or genres in term of Das Wortspiel, the project by sound producer and composer Max Smogol and singer Maryana Golovko. In their debut LP Chapter 1, they travel across genres. Fusion and exploration journeys through poems written by Ukrainian artists from different eras, tackling themes such as war, struggle, resistance and dislocation. Das Wortspiel takes a free form approach with form and experimentation, effectively and dramatically crafting inner and outer experiences through music.
Every track in Chapter I is a unique work of art. They evoke different emotional responses that are at times thought provoking and deeply stirring. With spoken words that poetically articulate the complex experience of emigration, being in a foreign country, unable to go back home with precision and artistry, their music feels like a sonic documentary that uncovers the multitude of truth through unconventional presentation.
Ethnic singing traces the roots of ritualistic practices, self expression, meditation and folkloric storytelling. Layered with theatrical performance, field recordings and minimalistic instruments. Like an immersive, eye-opening sound installation, Chapter I invites you to a highly sensuous odyssey, where you’ll be reunited with a piece of your lost soul. Wes Wortspiel’s music is both hypnotic and evocative. At times, it feels like a gaze into the fire, feeling yourself recharging and reawakening, and at times, they gets under your skin with grounding soundscapes and singing from ancient cultures. “Rummy Rum” is atmospheric and meditative. Filled with haunting vocals and soaring expressions, they tap into a raw, emotive experience, stripping away all the contemporary noises.
Whether it is through the mending of field recording and instrumental, vocal music, they manage to change your perception of reality and puts you in a different world while engaging you with a glimpse into one’s most sacred heart space and inner world. “The Different Country” leaves its heart open to all experiences and adventures. Highly sensitive and vulnerable. The track gives you goosebumps.
The last songs from the album venture into more abstract spaces. A nostalgic recall of an earlier time. There’s so much life in the throbbing, dance rhythm, swirling soundscapes that fill your eyes with wonder, before going back to that deeply emotive heart space again. Chapter I is a translucent and transcending experience.
Drools “Fools In Hell”
“Fools In Hell” undoubtedly makes a strong impression as the debut single from Swedish punk rock four-piece Drools. Fueled by their restless, eclectic energy and unapologetically straightforward attitude, Drools is the type of band you fall in love with at first sight.
“Fools In Hell” is a stadium filler. You can imagine the crowds going crazy, screaming “you, yeah you” with the band while pointing their rock n roll signs up in the air. The song is not complicated. It’s simply good music. Punchline guitar riffs and machine-gun drumbeats join the fire of group vocals while the guitar glitches and sparks electricity. What’s not to love? That would be a hard question.
The band reveals that they got the first lines from Turbonegro’s song “The Age of Pamparius.” They probably inhaled some magic dust from the song as well. “Fools In Hell” is just as lit as “The Age of Pamparius,” but on the side of rock n roll and punk, Drool’s single is clearly more fun. It’s rebellious and youthful rather than aggressive.
The more you listen to Drools, the more texture you’re able to catch within their music. For example, the first time, you notice the catchy melodies and loud soundscape, but the second time, you begin to see how the band is engaging with the audience.
By the third time, you’ll see that “Fools In Hell” is not just a simple punk song, Drools put in thoughts in their structures and thematic riffs. They are serious rockers and they clearly know how to seize the day.