Crashing cymbals and forgotten dreams start off local heavy rock band Souls Extolled's latest release MMXXII.

Concocted by Zach Black, JP Ortiz, Joe Valadez, and Andy Leonard, along with their production dream-team at 512 Studios, the band's third record seeks to create art that reflects the creative energies of its four members honestly and without self-imposed limitation. For them, this is the standard of true art.

Unveiling it through live performance in February at Flamingo Cantina, the band gave their audience a taste of their earthy genre-bending thrills before releasing the 12-song LP.  Like the releases before it, MMXXII covers a lot of ground. It's a delightful mix of indie rock, grunge, proto-metal, punk and ska. The best way to describe the album is to think of it in a theatrical sense. It is a Shakespearean album filled with high drama, gore, politics, love, and it seems to be organized in two acts: the first set of 6 songs filled with heavy intensity and the second set of 6 songs that is more mid-tempo but full of surprises.

Act one includes anthems of self-forgiveness and unrequited love with high intensity drums by Joe Valadez and the unforgettable guitar skills of Zach Black. The theater, drama, vocal performance by Zach, and the instrumentation of the band is tight. It follows a dark narrative about treacherous love. The songs are highly beat-driven, supported by the very talented JP Ortiz on bass, but at many points, it suddenly plunges the listener into a sweet release of relief. "Dancing in the Light" ends the first half of the album with a softer touch, surprising, but effective.

"1K Red Balloons" opens up the next set of songs. The set is more ska punk influenced, and has obvious traces of Zack's background as a son of Hawaii. It's filled with slow jams like "Never Like Before," making it slightly more consumable to the average listener than the heavier first half, but equally filled with drama and wonder. The songs in this set are slightly more ballad-y, intense, full of depth and darkness and features a groovy bounce throughout.

Omar Vallejo, Clint Manning co-produced the album with the help of Rich Baur. The band will be releasing a single on the first Friday of each month for streaming, but the album is available for purchase/download at their website and on iTunes. 

Souls Extolled will be touring 10 cities in the Northeast in April followed by a full West Coast tour in September. 

For the past 10 years in Austin music, Curbside Jones has been quietly working in solitude. That's why when COVID-19 devastated many music makers, it didn't bother him; he's always been his own mix engineer, producer, and graphic designer. But that doesn't mean that his latest EP was without international collaboration. 

Heavily inspired by Japan, Curbside and a group of his friends planned for a 2020 fall tour of Japan but their plans were rudely interrupted by the pandemic. After having already worked with Japanese artists before including Dyelo Think (fka Free Design), his intention was to collaborate with members of LafLife, a Japanese rap group, and push the music through both countries. They had been exchanging emails and sharing beats back and forth over a few months along with Maryland-based artist Dexter Fizz.

In February of this year, Curbside Jones went to work on Gyakusou, Vol. 1, a three-song EP, the first release in a set of three, named after the Japanese term for "running in reverse."

Curbside notes that the Japanese track team of the same name will run in the opposite direction as a representation of their rebel identity and going against the status quo. "I took that idea, of going against the grain, going against the norm. People think it's moving backwards, not forward, but the EP is forward-thinking," Curbside says. "It's taking American rap and putting it over Japanese instrumentation."

The EP was made in collaboration with Japanese producer Ballhead who he discovered while watching Jazzysport Kyoto sessions. Eventually through his previous work with LafLife, he also connected with Japanese rap artist MUMA. MUMA is featured on the second track on the EP, "Coffee Stains."

The inspiration for "Coffee Stains" came after Curbside had spilled coffee on his pink Converse x GOLF le FLEURs (cue the verse: "Damn I can't believe coffee spilt on these pink GOLF le FLEURs / had to seek 'cause I know there's more."). Initially upset, he embedded the theme of not crying over spilled milk (or spilled coffee) and finding inspiration even in times of hardship: "had to fall before I could find division." 

Similarly, each song has its own theme as Curbside, who describes himself as being "heavy into concept work," decidedly wished each track to have its own life. "I wanted the Gyakusou series to be less of a conceptual project as a whole and I wanted each track to be different."

For example, "Terrace House Flow," the final song on the EP inspired by the Japanese reality TV franchise of the same name, features a verse about self-love, a theme that was especially important to Curbside because two days after recording the track, Hana Kimura, a member of the latest season of Terrace House, committed suicide.

Overall, the project is bouncy and fun, but very different. In many ways, between the production and the bars, it speaks to the depth of the person that is Curbside Jones, the mastermind behind the EP. Both in solitude and collaboration, he excels in creating islands of hope in a sea of madness. When you step foot in his world, in the less than 10 minutes of modern-day boom-bap that is the length of the first installation of Gyakusou, you feel the chaos of "running in reverse" but instead of adding to the stress of our dystopian universe, it's relieving and hopeful.

Gyakusou, Vol. 1 is available July 3, 2020 on Bandcamp.

The many shades of lead man Zach Black can be found behind the curtains of his newest project, Souls Extolled. Through this roller coaster of a journey, Black rips through a number of songs with high energy, smooth vocals, and instrumental harmony. Resulting from the chaotic cacophony is their debut album Follow the Ghosts. 

In one of my favorite tracks titled "Mutations Sake," the song starts with ambience and masterful lyricism: "From way up high, looking down at the ground / You can feel the gravity pulling me down / Tripping through the mission just a vision away / Hopin' for the wisdom of another day." Like some of the other tracks on the album, the song eventually breaks down into an epic release of energy before returning to its original slow prowl.

In another track titled "Garden of Eden," Black sets up for the perfect retelling of Adam and Eve's creation story. Dark but with a slight levity from the guitar picking up in the chorus, the bass creeps throughout, adding a quick slapping funkiness to the song. 

Lastly, the most provocative song in the whole bunch might be "Touch Me (F**k Me)." Black burns through his guitar like a hot knife through butter but soothes it momentarily through pieces of the song before returning it to an angry blaze down the neck of his guitar. The drums beat down just as heavily and rapidly, competing for moments to breath with the lead guitar parts.

Overall, the project, from top to bottom, is a made of fantastic and angry but sensational compositions. Weaved in are interesting and well thought out lyrics.

Stream Souls Extolled's Follow the Ghosts everywhere.

By Rey Castillo

The feel-good, empowering love song by Math Judson, “Love Someone," does what he himself intended the song to do: Tell people to show compassion to others.

By David Tran

Culture Wars, the Austin based rock trio featuring Alex Dugan, Mic Vredenburgh, and David Grayson recently released their single “Let Me Down” this Friday and we are in love! The track is filled with energetic melodies and guitar riffs to compete with Dugan’s silvery voice and the lively percussion from Vredenburgh and Grayson.

By Ashley Morris

Today, on April 18th, local Austin pop artist SOBBRS released his music video for “Monsoon,” which features a buoyant, electronically lush beat amplified by singer/songwriter Jesus Acosta’s vulnerable vocals. Modernly poetic, the fresh, minimalist track is pop recontextualized.
Color, movement, and light define videographer Mitchell Allison’s conceptualization of SOBBR’s new single. Following the ambiance of the song, Allison creates a minimalistic yet mind-bending video that has the vibe of a small art gallery mixed media presentation. The beginning of the video presents a neutral, muted setting of a few vases filled with water and fragmented images of a woman. Lyrics are thrown up on the screen in haphazard patterns, and shots of flesh, glass and water create a sensual surreal mood. About halfway through the song as the music builds, the color shifts from off-white to red, highlighting the visceral tones in “Monsoon” by elevating the intensity.