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Jeremy Beck
Song of the Sky – album
Distinguished, Louisville-based composer Jeremy Beck is no stranger to success. He’s won numerous awards and honors for his compositions and has had his music presented to orchestras around the world. His latest collection of classical symphonic music, Song of the Sky, (all works of which were performed by the magnificent Sofia Session Orchestra), begins with his four-part, 22-minute “Cello Concerto”, (with award-winning Bulgarian cellist Atanas Krastev), features an array of woodwind instruments presenting an overall gentle, relaxing, romantic feel with some darker, thrilling moments. This is followed by “Rhapsody,” a piece written for violin and orchestra and featuring violinist Dora Dimitrova. This piece was given its American premiere by our own Louisville Orchestra and is a very bright, cheery, and wondrous adventure with the occasional sadder moments. The album continues with five excerpts from Beck’s opera noir, The Highway, which features UofL School of Music instructors Emily Albrink, (soprano) and Chad Sloan, (baritone). These five dramatic, sweeping operatic pieces tell the story of a young musician named James and his attempt to forge an artistic life in the face of an indifferent world. Its controversial themes involving murder, suicide, sex trafficking, and parallel time structures have so far kept it from being performed on stage. Beck concludes the album with “Song of the Sky”, featuring harpist Denitza Dimitrova and inspired by the photography of Alfred Stieglitz. This piece is highlighted by tranquil, calming, dream-like movements that shift and flow with the moment, much like the photography that inspired it.
Kink Head
Presents “Belligerents” – EP
Normally I wouldn’t directly quote much from a bio, but this one has some real gems in it! The introduction starts off with “Kink Head is a shadowy recording and songwriting project by Jackson Kinkead, a Louisville-based multidisciplinary artist mostly known for organizing the former Chapel of St. Philip Neri” (which is now known as The Woodbine Chamber), going on to say, “This recording marks the first step into a high-fidelity vision of Kink Head’s world of dark lounge parlors, leprosy-stricken dance floors, and intimately hand-made mail bombs.” Thoroughly intrigued yet? You should be! Kinkead, who lists himself in the credits as performing vocals, Korg, guitar feedback, and contact mic supplier, is joined by drummer Conner Goldsmith (Father’s Gun), bassist Nina Kersey (Plastics, co-organizer of the Snide Hotel), and multi-instrumentalist Charles Rivera (MINEcONTROL, Stook). The three tracks that make up Presents “Belligerents” are a 15-minute, head-first dive into the great unknown. A place where krautrock, free jazz, experimental pop, post-industrial, and post-punk have joined forces to create otherworldly soundscapes that take over your conscious and submerge you into a dark, strange, twisted world where noise seems to be the only light and where melodies and groove are fractured, although still intact. Obviously, being able to explain what I’m hearing here isn’t exactly possible; I just know it’s making me uncomfortable in a good way. Just don’t look for any tracks in the Listen Local Spotify playlist; as per the bio, this release “will never be published on Spotify, Apple Music, or any streaming service other than Bandcamp.”
My Infatuation
“A Kiss” – single
“Maybe what the world needs now is feel-good, back-to-the-basics pop: uptempo, toe-tappy, hummable music via guitar, bass, drums and vocals, plus some subtle textures from various instruments” reads the press release for My Infatuation’s debut single “A Kiss.” And you know what? They’re right! We could all use some bright, cheerful, fun music to help escape the daily drudge, even if it’s only for 3-and-a-half minutes. And that is exactly what you get here. Backed by a huge walking bassline that really steals the show, a catchy stomping beat, and led by reggae/ska-ish guitar riffs and smooth, flowing vocals, “A Kiss” is a song that gets stuck in your head and refuses to leave. Obviously heavily influenced by 80’s new wave and new romantic music scenes, this track grabs me as a cross between Talking Heads, Roxy Music, and ABC. My Infatuation is made up of two multi-instrumentalists with literally an ocean between them. One-half is Louisville native and resident Todd Groemling (who also has a mostly solo project called Tripendicular). The other half is Giles Gerry, who lives in Derby, England (they point out that it is pronounced DAH-be, but good luck getting anyone from Louisville to pronounce it that way). “A Kiss” is a huge, unexpected, but very welcomed statement to make as a new band, and there is certainly a lot to live up to in following this debut single, but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing if they are up for the task!
Pipestem
Over – album
If you’re looking for something different, and I mean different, uncategorizable, undefinable by genre, then Pipestem is the band you need to hear. Made up of three multi-instrumentalists, Louisvillians John Baird and Gregg Weaver, along with Pete Malinoski from Hyattsville, MD, Pipestem has been at it for the past 20 years. However, their musical partnership goes back over 40 years and spans a multitude of releases under a few different band names. And although they’ve since released three full length albums in the last two years, it was January 2023’s Over that Malinoski asked me to review, as he put it “This is a good starting point to ease into the somewhat hard to genre-ize music we make.” One can definitely hear the influences of Tom Waits and Portishead, but this is quite different from either. Improv jazz, electronica, shoegaze, darkwave and chillwave all dance amongst each other to sparse rhythms and smooth, almost spoken word vocals. Although a multitude of instruments are used here, they are more for setting the mood than for melodies, almost like a film noir background soundtrack. There is an underlying darkness to the music—not in an unapproachable way, but in a mysterious, intriguing, even somewhat sexy way. It’s calming and deep, yet a little unsettling at the same time. Malinoski sums it up best: “We believe the discerning listener is an underserved audience, and we present, with that in mind, what has always been a rather bent version of non-pop music. Pipestem makes stories for people with inner resources.”
Virgin Birth
“I Can’t Read” – single
Although Virgin Birth contains 2/4 of the Louisville horror punk/metal band Prayer Line, you’d never know it. They sound nothing alike, and that is not only extremely commendable but also extremely rare. Generally there is a sound, style, and/or song structure bleed over between different bands with the same songwriter, but not here. Virgin Birth is Phillip Olympia and Jake Miller incorporating vocals and guitar with drum machines and synths for a sound that is truly their own. Their latest single, “I Can’t Read” (the third single off their upcoming full-length album titled Total Annihilation, due out April 11th on Never Nervous Records), is an all-out hard-hitting industrial goth synth-punk assault! Driven by a pulsing beat and flowing synth, this track is heavy and powerful, but without going the metal route. “Lyrically, the song is about failing to understand obvious dialogue in everyday conversation, particularly email/text communication,” said Olympia. This is a band that has come a long way in a short period of time. While they’ve always had an early Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine-era, KDFDM, Pixel Grip, and maybe Skold (to a lesser extent) kind of vibe, the ten tracks that make up the upcoming album Total Annihilation (yes, I have already heard the full record) take on a thicker, darker, deeper sound than their previous releases, largely due to the mix and mastering by Jake Miller. I’m telling you now, this is a great record you’re going to need to hear!
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This article appears in Mar 14-27, 2025.
