I sat down for a Zoom meeting with artist Kendra Sells to discuss her (at-the-time-forthcoming) solo album All In Your Head. This was our conversation.

TR: This album is a departure from your group BluMoon. What made you decide to do All In Your Head as a solo album?

KS: Really, it was just the pandemic. It was really scary at first, you know. I was just like, “Oh my gosh, if I am 10 feet away from anyone, who knows? It's gonna happen.” I'm diabetic, so at the very beginning of the pandemic, I was taking everything so seriously, really not meeting up with anyone. And, you know, it's just a hard time, especially being a musician. I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I don't know, anything” you know, “I don't know what's going to happen.” And so I was just writing the music, and I guess putting the songs together for myself, just to do it, because I like to make music and it makes me feel better. “I'm just gonna make some music”. And so I normally just write on my guitar, but I got Ableton and a little mini-keyboard. I was just able to kind of build a song head to toe, which I've never been able to do before. I guess that's mostly why, because I was just like, “Oh, this is my first time ever trying this, I just want to see what I can do”.

TR: Is it nerve-wracking going from being in a band to releasing your own solo material? Pursuing that kind of art, but without people around to kind of give you feedback?

KS: Not necessarily, because I guess that's where I started, for myself, as a kid. I would use like, what is it? Audacity? Yeah, recording my keyboard through the mic. So that lets you know where I kind of started, and I guess I left that for a moment. But I’m still with the band… But I've just done tons of solo shows and all of that stuff, so I guess I have been used to being by myself. If anything, sometimes being in the band makes me feel more like “ah, is this okay? Is that okay? Do you like this? Are you okay with that?” And I don't have to worry about that. It's just me.

TR: Was it jarring to stop doing shows during the pandemic?

KS: Yeah, for sure. We had a whole tour lined up and some really sick shows here in Austin. I felt the lack of shows in me physically. I feel really good when I'm on stage, when I'm singing, when I'm with the band. And when I'm performing, that makes me feel so great. And I haven't had that feeling in a while.

TR: Does it take the wind out of you creatively to not have the excitement of performing?

KS: That's not something that I have known that inspires me creatively. I haven't suffered in that way.

TR: What does your songwriting process look like?

KS: It really varies. I feel like my favorite thing is, some days, I’ll just walk into work in the morning, you know, I have my little caffeine mellow, and I'm just walking down the street and it's sunny and I'm just mellow. Just thinking whatever it is I'm feeling and sometimes I like it, and I'll record. I have so many freakin’ voice memos. I feel like I've written some of my favorite things that way. And other times, I'll just sit with a guitar hung around. Or I'll hear something in another song and kind of dissect it and rearrange it. It'll inspire me in that way. And I'm like, “I really like this, but I hear other things with it”.  And that will inspire me. Yeah, just kind of varies.

TR: What is some of the music that inspired the album, like if you had to pick like three recordings that were just like, yeah, without these, there would be no all in your head.

KS: Hmm. Well, that's an important question. Maybe like anything by Kimya Dawson. I feel like her, just the DIY approach, like, you can do that in your bedroom, you can do that, with whatever you have. You don't have to have this or that. That really, like for sure just gave me that type of courage to even approach this in the way that I'm approaching it. Because, at first, I was just gonna put this on SoundCloud, and be like, “Look”. But then I met with Quiet Year, and they were like, “hey, let's release this together”. But anyway, yeah, Kimya Dawson. I feel like anything she's done has really inspired me in that way, like sonically. It's kind of hard to say because I really do pull a lot of influences. 

Tirzah, her project Devotion, that kind of inspired me. of Montreal inspired me, Kevin Barnes. He's kind of the same way...

TR: What is the worst music you've ever heard?

KS: Okay, that's so funny you're asking me that. Because, literally, if I'm drunk, I will love anything, I will dance. But something that I don't like… and I know there's something...

Okay, no offense. But this guy- I'm not gonna name where I work or anything- but he'll come to my place of work, and just post up outside of it and perform because “yeah, you're at my show”. You know, that's what he's decided. And I call his genre “2008”. I don't even hate the songs, but I hate the songs in this way. And a lot of people do. But, um, you know, like that song “You’re Beautiful?”

TR: I'm kind of imagining James Blunt or John Mayer.

KS: Yeah! And nothing against those artists, but something against white men doing those artists in this specific way. That and in the year 2021. It's just the audacity for you to come to where I have to be, like they asked you to be here and make this your show? Yeah, that's the only thing I can think of right now.

TR: I feel like the song Wondering//Bad Doctorzz would resonate with anyone who's ever been to a medical professional. Was the track inspired by personal experience?

KS: I really should look, because I remember when I wrote it, I feel like I wrote it in the middle of the night. But I need to see when I wrote it because I know it did come from a specific moment. Butas of now, it's just been every experience where I've gone to the doctor. I can barely see, I need glasses, and I've gone to the doctor, like, three or four times to get glasses, and they just won't give me glasses. It's weird. It's a combination of so many things like that, being gaslit, being told there's nothing wrong, being all of this, especially being diabetic. I just realized everyone's like, “Oh, yeah, our healthcare system sucks” in the same way that they'll say, “Oh, the justice system is corrupt”, but there's not the same amount of scrutiny. Why isn’t pressure put on the healthcare system in the way that it is on the justice system? 

It's frustrating thinking how you're supposed to go to the doctor to feel good and so many people... it brings them so much anxiety to go to the doctor. I shouldn't feel so many negative things about going to someone that's supposed to be helping me, in the same way that police are supposed to be there to serve and protect.., So, I guess just the fact that it fucking sucks is what inspired that.

TR: Something that really struck me about the release is not only that you were releasing on cassette, but you were also doing a physical booklet. What made you choose the cassette format, rather than anything else, or why even release a physical copy in the first place?

KS: I just love having physical copies, and whenever my friends release them, I'm like, I want one. I also have this weird paranoia that one day, the internet is gonna stop working or music streaming is going to just... cease, and there's gonna be so much music that I won't be able to hear anymore. That's why I went to do something physical. And then with the cassette, Quiet Year just said “we could do a cassette” and I was like, “Okay, well.”

TR: Do you have any nostalgia for cassettes? Did you have them around as a kid?

KS: Yeah,I had some nursery rhyme ones. And me and my siblings would record the radio. We'd be  like “Oh, my favorite song is on!” and you'd record it. 

TR: What is the significance for you of having the zine as an accompaniment to the cassette?

KS: I feel like music is always up for whatever interpretation, but I just wanted to dig deeper into what I was going for with the EP...my willingness to embark on this thing that I've never done before. The zine itself is a really important process that I feel that I could have easily tricked myself out of, or let someone convince me to not do. I feel like that's something that so many people do for themselves. I really wanted to be more open and transparent about the process and how I feel in the process. [the zine] has lyrics and little journaling type things, like open ended questions or whatever, you know, just to really kind of get people just thinking more about themselves in those ways. I just feel like so many people sleep on their own potential, and I feel like that's just the saddest thing. And I just feel like for so long, I was kind of doing that with myself. And so I just wanted to be transparent about that journey. It's not just an overnight type of deal.

TR: How do you feel about physical releases and physical accompaniment for music dwindling as streaming becomes more and more omnipresent?

KS: I'm honestly not worried about it. Because it's like, if it sells, it sells, and if someone wants it, they're gonna buy it. And people do buy it, I buy it. Other people buy it, and if they're going to stream, then they're going to stream it. If you’re into the physical, the physical is there for you. It's not, in my eyes, a waste to have that option.  It does more for the artists to sell the physical copies then to have it streamed. I think it hurts to stream, but I think that it does you a favor to have physical copies because that's going to make more money from people that care.

TR:  Do you feel like your listeners are missing out on anything by not engaging with the physical version and only engaging with the streamed version?

KS: Yeah, I think so. I think of any album that I've ever bought, I know all the songs, I love that album, I listen to it from top to finish, you know, multiple times. Not that you can't do that with streaming, I do the same thing on streaming, but it's just the fact that you open it up, put it in, press play, it’s literally drawing you into the whole experience of listening to it.

TR: With your zine, and with your videos, too, it seems like a lot of your artwork is present. Do you feel like there's overlap in what you hope to achieve creatively with your music and your visual work?

KS: I have a lot of work as far as accepting myself as an artist. With music, I've been down this road. I am a musician, goddammit! It feels like it's only been two years... and with art, it's gonna take me a bit longer. But I have done album covers and t-shirts and  other stuff here and there. 

Art is more something that I enjoy doing for myself. And I don't love to do it for not myself. Music I don't only do for myself.

TR: How early into the pandemic did you decide that this was something that you wanted to do?

KS: I guess I started the songs in May, but I think maybe it was July when I was like, “Oh, I should, you know, release this”. I anticipated it coming out much quicker. But I just wouldn't finish the songs....I just kept going at it, like, “Oh, I need to do this, and I need to do that.” And I didn't come to a stopping point until about November.

TR: What has been the process since November?

KS: Well the songs on my end were all recorded and tweaked and all of that, and then I sent them over to my friend Jerry to mix and master. It took like four months for that.

I really didn't know what I was doing on Ableton. So I just kind of asked him I was just like, “hey, if I did something that was like really stupid or it just didn't make sense like, Can you help me now?” And he was like, “Well, you know, like a lot of your sounds are kind of just like stock and I have a lot of cool ones”, and so he just fluffed it up, you know, just made it sound better for sure. Not, that sounded bad, but he gave it the final finishing touches, he did like some live drums on Wondering//Bad Doctorzz and on Call Me When Ur Dead. He plays for a band called Glasshealer.

TR: What do you think is after this? Do you have any thoughts on what the next step is going to be for your solo work?

Unknown Speaker  24:33  

I want to do some b-sides if I finish them within a time that I feel comfortable putting them out, because I don't want it to be next year. I'm just looking to gig more with the band. We're all vaccinated and places have their procedures and stuff for outdoors. We have a song that we're working on. We're trying to record. I think we might be just looking at doing some singles for a minute. 

TR: Do you think it's going to be hard to get back in the rhythm of performing with people again? 

KS: During the pandemic we did a livestream thing, it was fine. The production of it was kind of funny. Our key player that we were gigging with before the pandemic moved to Florida, so we've had someone else sit in, but he's dope and does a great job. I just missed performing without the fear of COVID. I'm ready to be in a situation where it's energy and people are there and it's hot, you know, it's just, that's what I love.

-- Tín Rodriguez

Tulsa native and L.A.-based psych-jazz auteur Byron Crenshaw unveils their second official work as The Growth Eternal. Clocking in at a brisk 10 minutes, Kensho ! EP, is a collection of six lovingly-crafted miniatures that offer, according to the artist, “…introspective sentiments on Black identity, love for the environment, social media anxieties, and more.” Crenshaw continues: “This EP comes from my direct experience, me trying to see and connect with my true nature. I hope it helps you like it helped me. If it does, that’s Kensho.”

Kensho is a Japanese word from the Zen tradition, roughly translated as “seeing one’s true nature.” And these six tracks, although just a taste, feel as if we’re getting a small but vivid glimpse into the artist’s inner world. The songs pulse with anxious and wobbly, pitch-shifted vocals; haunting, spiraling vocal harmonies; guitar fragments filtered through a broken kaleidoscope; skittering minimalist grooves, and elastic and jazzy bass lines reminiscent of L.A. jazz/R&B virtuoso Thundercat. In other words, it’s a view into a complicated yet fascinating musical world.

Here’s hoping that The Growth Eternal shares a fuller look at their true nature with listeners soon. A fuller sense of Kensho. Gabe Hernandez

If the long awaited Cagney & Lacey movie ever comes to fruition (sorry, I don't consider the TV movies canon) I'm going to immediately start an online petition to make "Asphalt Homeland" the opening credit music--played as the camera slowly pans over the asphalt homeland of Lower Midtown Manhattan until landing on our two sometimes harried but always resolutely determined lady detectives. And sure, the new single by Ghost Funk Orchestra is a good deal less boob-tube bouncy and peppy than the original TV theme song, but that's good because it'll help Cagney & Lacey make the transition to the big screen with the help of some dramatic, cinematic music.

Of course this isn't to imply that bandleader/songwriter/arranger/producer Seth Applebaum only writes music appropriate for a Cagney & Lacey type show. To the contrary, Seth is a one-man "library music" machine whose music could just as easily be used to score urban dramas, medical dramas, gangster epics, or even wild comedies and super action films but with a distinct golden-era approach harkening back to a time when jazz and funk and rock and Latin music and psychedelic music (and many other genres besides) often shared equal space on a single soundtrack.

Take the song called "Fuzzy Logic" for example (see video above) which stays true to its title by rejecting Boolean either/or logic in favor of multiplicity and suggestive ambiguity. It starts off sounding like the dramatic opening moments to a classic spy soundtrack or a caper movie with its dissonant stabs of brass and syncopated hi-hat cymbal--not to mention how the music video's use of color gels and multiple exposure give it a strong Bond pre-credit sequence vibe--before sliding into a groove that's laid back enough to be Sade-approved but with some vaguely uneasy lyrics (and a brief Bill Withers "I know" interlude, may he rest in peace) sung to enchanting effect by regular vocal collaborator Romi Hanoch (PowerSnap). And then about one minute in the song takes another turn with a breakdown section featuring flamenco-style clapping and dub-like echo and surf guitar reverb before circling back to the second verse and then later ending with a concise but still pretty epic solo outro traded between baritone sax and flute.

Seriously, put this song on in the car next time you're cruising around and it's guaranteed to make you feel like a total badass even if you're just heading to 7-11. Or put on almost any GFO song because they rarely skimp on the funkiness, the ghostliness, or the intricate orchestrations. And did I say "one-man show"? In reality, Ghost Funk Orchestra is more like a ten-to-twelve-man-and-woman machine because you know it can't be easy making music this elaborate alone and especially not if you plan to play live. And by the way seeing GFO live is a wonderful thing that will presumably happen again someday soon. 


So, if you lack familiarity with the Ghost Funk prior to "Asphalt Homeland," their most recent full-length An Ode To Escapism (2020) is a good place. The album features a shift array of musical emotional hues that still manage to flow together as a continuous whole--more that fulfilling the promise of the album's title. And just case you happen to forget the stated purpose of the album while listening there's an intermittent GPS Lady voiceover reminding you that "as long as your headphones are on...you're safe, and hidden" and it never hurts to be reminded of that. (Jason Lee)

A couple years ago I got a chance to see Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century on the big screen—a film first released in 1977 to capitalize on the recent hit King Kong remake starring Jessica Lange—and boy I'm glad I did. An Italian film production shot in Canada and then poorly dubbed into English, Yeti: Got2C tells the familiar story of what happens when boy meets Yeti, grandfather of boy attempts to exploit Yeti as corporate mascot, sister of boy inadvertently seduces Yeti after brushing up against his gigantic nipple, gang of miscreants frame Yeti for murder and get the public to call for his head, Yeti gets fed up and ransacks Toronto, dog belonging to boy saves Yeti from gang of miscreants, boy and dog run across field towards each other in slow motion and meet in final ecstatic embrace. The End.

I'm sharing this absurd movie synopsis not only because the album discussed here also has “Yeti” in its name or because now I know you want to watch it immediately, but also because I bet that if El Michels Affair could go back in time that they would end up happy and well-compensated by writing soundtracks for movies just like this one--tho' not only Yeti-sploitation movies of course but also Spaghetti Westerns and Italo giallo shockers and conspiracy thrillers and Kung-Fu/martial arts movies of course, plus writing music to go with whatever other movie genres and trends are popular at the drive-in at the time. And conversely I could see the 70s Italian Yeti entering the El Michels Affair universe because if you took the super funky opening theme song to Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century (called "Yeti" and credited to The Yetians, naturally) and slipped it onto an El Michels Affair album then I think I'd probably be none the wiser and you could even do that with some of the other music from the soundtrack too.

Likewise, if you took the cover image from the 1977 "Yeti" 45-rpm promotional vinyl single (thank you, Internet) which features our hulking hero positioned in such a way that he appears either to be dancing or to be squatting and about to take a Yeti sized dump (the weird almost sheepish expression I dunno) with the words “funky disco sound” superimposed over his hairy crotch (talk about potentially funky in more way than one) all set against the backdrop of a blue-tinted, badly blown-up photograph of the Yeti's ancestral home on a rocky mountain somewhere, and then if you told me this was the cover image to the new EMA album I would totally believe you because the soundtrack song cover image fits so perfectly with the playful cut-and-paste aesthetic of EMA's music plus it's vaguely psychedelic feel (on this new album especially) and equally with EMA's sly sense of humor and the pure kick-assitude of the band's "funky disco sound," so that when you peep the real cover below it's more than a little uncanny how there's a blueish, cartoonish backdrop there too with yellow lettering and how the Yetis are both in a similarly off-center foregrounded position and how in both images it clearly looks like a man in a Yeti suit. The only major difference I see between the two record covers is that the Yeti in the EMA version has a kid in his arms and its the kid who is possibly dancing. 

Really and truly, I'm trying to avoid spreading conspiracy theories in this space about purported connections between this film and this album, but it's not easy when you find so much overwhelming evidence and plus you know how people today love their conspiracies so maybe I should write a book or something.

And sure ok, the band's namesake leader, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist Leon Michels has shared an origin story for the album’s title with another magazine that shall remain nameless and the story doesn't involve Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century. Still, I’m not convinced, because who tells the truth in the pages of the Rolling Stone anyway? But even if Leon Michels isn't a time-traveler in real life I can see why he would call his music "cinematic soul" because there's such a kinship to my ears between the sounds on the album and some of the sounds I've heard not only in Italian film music but also in soundtracks from Bollywood and Nollywood and other global film industries making productions designed to be polyglot, and aimed at multi-lingual and multi-ethnic audiences. So perhaps no mistake that from around the late '60s to maybe the early '80s a good number of these soundtracks pointed the way to a nascent "world music" sensibliity based on globe-spanning eclecticism, but at the same time equally based on a bedrock of melodic hooks and funk grooves and tight arrangements.

And so thank goodness that El Michels Affair is out here in 2021 making cinematic soul soundtracks for these modern times, because I'm not really quite comfortable going back to the movies yet, and EMA's music makes it easy to create movies in your head. Like on the 2020 release Adult Themes which--fair warning, be prepared to take its title literally--provides the listener with a series of sweeping, pulsing musical themes to an imaginary film of the sexy variety, probably quite similar to the movies that would run for months on end in Times Square until Deep Throat came along and got the mafia involved, that could provoke your mind to make some movies that will fully solve the mind-body paradox once and for all. But if that sounds too taxing then I'd recommendYeti Season instead, because to my ears it aspires to a more spiritually-inclined form of elevation that's ideal for creating critical-hit Oscar-bait movies in your head. But just to be clear, the funk is still in effect on Yeti Season. It's just a little more mellow overall and also the funk gets mixed to intriguing effect with everything from a stately overture played by Turkish-American qanun master Tamer Pinarbasi ("Fazed Out") to some exquisite and emotive singing by Piya Malik (Say She She) on four tracks to some strong doses of the Turkish psych pop and folk rock styles that served as one of the musical inspirations to the project according to Michels himself.

So in closing this all makes me think that fake soundtrack music should be more widespread today--not only for the benefit of movie-in-our-heads makers but also for composers because the fake soundtrack is a great concept to inspire stretching out and exploring new sounds and new creative pathways and who knows maybe new career opportunities too. For even if El Michels Affair has a lock on not-faking-the-funk on film right now, it can't last forever. And when it ends, who will write disco funk anthems for future generations and for future sad-eyed Yetis if not you? (Jason Lee)