With the advent of the internet, music has become a commodity. Anyone anywhere can make music and self-publish their work on a number of popular independent platforms. One of the most popular, yet somehow at the same time not well known, is Bandcamp – a place on the internet where any type of music from across the globe has a home. The list of genres exceeds my own awareness of how vast music has branched and twisted into, with many genres sprouting as many sub-genres as there are species of grass.

Since the beginning of this year, there have been three releases that struck a chord with my ear drums and convinced me to buy their work.

 

 

Mary Bell LP – self titled

Genre: Garage-punk

Similar to: Sex Bo-Bomb, The Orwells (their debut album)

This self-titled LP from the small Paris-based band Mary Bell has become a staple of my car rides to and from College of DuPage. Their garage-grunge sound, mixed with the constant drowning distortion from the guitar, has me reminiscent of Sex Bo-Bomb from the film “Scott Pilgrim vs the World.”

The band from this film has a very specific style of garage-punk that you can only see in up-and-coming bands. The sound is almost primal, with its low-fi lyrics that you can barely understand, and the instrumentals fighting those vocals like two gorillas in a brawl. The constant battle made their music so enthralling to both listen and watch perform throughout the movie.

Mary Bell has succeeded in adopting the more low-quality sound in order to make their music beyond lively and ridden with personality in comparison to any other punk band on Bandcamp. The french female vocalist sounds almost American with her enunciation. The fire in her voice blends well to create a slab of noise that many mainstream punk and metal bands have yet to produce.

Top 3 Tracks: Please, no; I hate you; Not for you

 

 

Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often – Quelle Chris

Genre: Rap

Similar to: Danny Brown, Milo

 

Mainstream rap and hip-hop has devolved into a platform for artists to brag about how much money they’ve accumulated and all the drugs they consume on the regular. Excluding more recent artists like Kendrick Lamar, the scene has become a formulated mix-and-match of artists who talk about the same stuff, sound similar, and tend to create fake drama in order to fluff album sales like Kanye West and Rick Ross. Quelle Chris is the antithesis to this mainstream contingency.

Although it’s great to make money from producing music, this practice of producing to sell rather than to make art has brought down the quality of the scene. Chris used Bandcamp to release one of the most experimental rap albums of the past couple of years. His beats lay bass heavy. His voice is mysteriously sharp. His lyrics are poetry instead of inflation.

In the song Popeye, he talks about his failings as to how time moves accordingly and he never feels like he succeeds within those parameters. “Those are my great regrets, always define my image; Seems I never reach the goal but always reach the finish; Popeye kickin’ the can but never eats the spinach”

His music is far from being anywhere near radio-bangers like G-Easy or Drake, but his lyrical prowess plays with concepts these rappers haven’t come close to touching in years.

Top 3 Tracks: Buddies; Popeye; I’m that N!#%A

 

healing – In Love With A Ghost

Genre: Electronic

Similar to: Spazzkid, Slime Girls

 

I use music as a way to both express my own emotions and to escape reality. The past two selections helped me deal with stress and anxiety with the amount of fire and complex tones throughout both Chris’s and Mary Bell’s track listings. In Love With A Ghost is an electro artist who specializes in teleporting you to another dimension with their layered production and other-worldly tones.

I could swear this collection sounds like something out of a videogame similar to Undertale. The album has so many emotions interlaced in each track, as well has its own personality to add to this cover-to-cover journey. The songs range from being the lengths of interludes to almost four minutes. However, each is treated like a new scene rather than a continuation of the one before.

The true kicker of this album for me has been how much happier I become when I finish listening to the collection. Music in general has a lot of control over my emotional attitude, and can even prolong feelings of sadness and being alone if I accidentally find myself falling into the sad side of Spotify or Bandcamp. “healing” provides a medicine-like euphoria, and helps me climb out of slumps which seem insurmountable.

Top 3 Tracks: i was feeling down then i found a nice witch and now we’re best friends; welcome at azerty and qwerty’s home; qwerty enchanted the house and now it’s attacking us