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Duncan Barlow’s music career has always been driven by raw emotional expression and intense passion. His work with Louisville hardcore pioneers Endpoint exists as a cultural touchstone for Midwestern hardcore, and helped place progressive politics and allyship in the Kentuckian punk conversation. On his new LP, Colony Collapse, Barlow turns that emotional intensity inward, exploring depression, and the absurd comedy of heartbreak through shimmering, psychedelic guitar-pop. Barlow self-produced and engineered Colony Collapse at his home studio as a means of processing a particularly tumultuous time in his life. 

“When I started writing Colony Collapse, it was as a reaction to some personal turmoil,” says Barlow. “I found myself very depressed and frustrated with my life at the time, but in a way that I couldn’t really do anything about. So rather than mope I just put all of my energy into doing these home recordings and things developed from there.”

Once the groundwork had been laid, Barlow rounded out the album by bringing in some of the friends he’s made over his years in the music world, including Jason Loewenstein (Sebadoh) on bass guitar, and Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse, Cold War Kids, The Shins) on drums, as well as mixing engineer Colin Bricker. Those who are only familiar with Barlow from his time in Endpoint and the Victory Records-signed hardcore bands Guilt and By the Grace of God, may be surprised by Colony Collapse’s sparkly jangle-pop, but the change comes as a natural progression for Barlow. “I’ve always been interested in the outliers and progressives of the music world, and the artists that were able to walk in two worlds,” he said. “Even when I was heavily into punk, the bands that struck me the most were always the ones that weren’t playing it down the middle. Over the years I’ve played folk, rock, electronic music, ambient stuff. I’ve just always wanted to find new means of expression.”

Colony Collapse is its most affecting as a vehicle for the confusion, frustration and hopelessness that accompanies both clinical depression and heartbreak. These sensations are most poignant on the album’s closer “Winter, Winter, Always Winter.” Written in the wake of Barlow’s father’s passing, the sparse, atmospheric track viscerally captures the isolation of grief and the bleak uncertainty of wondering when happiness will return. Elsewhere, on “Again, Light & Spectre,” Barlow captures the paralysis of heartbreak atop layers of dreamy synths and waves of effect-laden guitars and reverb-washed backing vocals. Though the subject matter remains emotionally raw, Barlow takes moments throughout Colony Collapse to step back and marvel at life’s absurdity, such as on the tongue-in-cheek, “What’s The Point,” in which he comedically reflects on the pain of heartbreak and how ridiculous our romantic pursuits can be. “This record looks at that feeling when you’re heartbroken and it hurts and you kind of want to be sucked into that sadness, but also just how ridiculous it is,” says Barlow. “It’s so over the top, but the over-the-top aspect is part of the comedy of it.”

Barlow’s musical career took off in the Louisville, KY straight-edge hardcore scene that served as a precursor to the emo boom of the mid-late 90s. His band Endpoint garnered substantial regional success that allowed them to repeatedly tour the United States and Europe, and eventually establish themselves as genre trail blazers that would later be cited as influences by bands like Taking Back Sunday and Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz. As his time in the hardcore scene wore on, however, Barlow, battling with a worsening diagnosis of depression, became tired of scene politics and desperately needed change. He began to feel trapped in Louisville and eventually shifted his focus to academia, eventually becoming an English professor at The University of South Dakota and writing multiple novels. Though he has continued to write and record music throughout the years, Colony Collapse—the first record to be released under his own name—marks Barlow’s re-emergence as a songwriting powerhouse.

“[Colony Collapse] may best be described spiritually song by song, as the alternative, americana, and indie elements range from savvy, happy, and cool in the opener, ‘Le Seul Amour’ to brooding chill in final track, ‘Winter, Always Winter.'” – QRO Magazine

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Launched three decades ago, Harald Löwy’s enduring German indie-tronic dreamcore project Chandeen is now gearing up for the release of its 10th album, Mercury Retrograde. The title was inspired by Löwy’s passion for astronomy and singer Julia Beyer’s fascination with astrology, the two disciplines providing a properly cosmic foundation for Chandeen’s ambient, interstellar sound.

A carefully paced and deeply satisfying journey, Mercury Retrograde begins in earnest with “Summer’s Fling,” a persistent, shimmering instrumental track that showcases perennial Chandeen collaborator Florian Walther’s intrepid, David Gilmour-channeling space-rock guitar flourishes. “Vanish” follows, weaving acoustic and electric guitars into a romantic, vibey patchwork that becomes a blanket for ominous lyrics and breathy vocals that wouldn’t sound out of place escaping the lips of Hope Sandoval on a classic Mazzy Star record. The bittersweet letting go of “I Don’t Care if I’m Wasted” continues to blend Mercury Retrograde’s disparate synthetic and organic elements, Walther anchoring the tune with some entrancingly melodic runs on his Höfner-style Beatle bass. And toward album’s end, semi-spoken manifesto “Cause It’s Slow” floats along, propelled by sputtering drums, eventually fading into the cosmos like an astronaut on an ill-fated spacewalk. Mercury Retrograde is an unapologetic downtempo-burner, heavy with the gravity of fate, but at once weightless and sparse enough to allow one’s imagination to fill in the blank spaces between notes, making for a highly personalized listen.

Each distinct vocalist featured on the album—Chandeen lead singer Julia Beyer, British composer/multi-instrumentalist Holly Henderson, sad-eyed French singer-songwriter KITTY, and 16-year-old German artist Odile—as well as guest songwriter Jennifer Pague, contributed their own lyrics, always keeping Mercury Retrograde’s titular winged-messenger traveling east to west in their minds, reckless and unrepentant. The perfectly calibrated soundscapes Löwy and Walther have created to score these star-slathered song-poems are a breathtaking fusion of ghostly psychedelic dreampop and barely tethered indie rock, all shot through with a delicate yet unwavering pop sensibility.

“It’s always nice to invite other people into your own galaxy,” Löwy says, offering up praise for his many Chandeen collaborators. “To get another view, to see things from a new perspective.”

Perpetually seeking these new perspectives is what has kept Löwy’s sound fresh since he began creating music under the Chandeen moniker back in 1990. Originally a collaboration between Löwy and his childhood friend and schoolmate Oliver Henkel (featuring a revolving cast of angel-voiced women on lead vocals), Chandeen initially found its niche in the darkwave scene of the early ’90s. After self-releasing a pair of DIY cassettes—The Twilight Crossing, Parts I & II—the young band was signed by German indie label Hyperium Records, with whom Chandeen released its first four albums, though Henkel would depart after 1995’s sophomore full-length Jutland. By 1998, with his sound in flux, Löwy dropped a new Chandeen album, Spacerider – Love at First Sight, on the SPV label. The album featured trip-hop-inflected single “Skywalking,” the song’s video ending up in heavy rotation on channels such as VIVA and MTV Europe. Chandeen followed the success with a lengthy national tour and appearances on Europe’s NBC Giga. In 2001, Löwy started his own label, Kalinkaland Records, putting out music from several other artists before deciding to focus on releasing his own projects. In addition to Chandeen, over the years, Löwy has also recorded and performed with Incept Date, Seasurfer, PHOSPHENES, Lowenritter, and his partner Antje Löwy’s project Stoa. As Löwy wryly puts it, “I can’t do anything but music.” 

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Shane Palko brushed thick, red dust off of a cloth guitar bag and unzipped a side pocket to see how many Ugandan Shillings were left. They exchanged so weakly into Tanzanian Shillings that he’d be surprised if there would be enough to get to his concert at the Slow Leopard in Dar Es Salaam. Having performed live on Voice of America (US), NTV (Uganda), and VTC10 (Vietnam) as well as at official concerts and festivals in 28 countries and counting, he knows what it’s like to be stuck at the end of a rugged road. “If I’m going to be five hours from home, I want to be five days from home,” he said after returning from his Seaside tour in 2015, which spanned four continents.

The morning after his concert at The Slow Leopard, he hitched a ride back downtown on a truck, piled full of pineapples. While waiting on some paperwork to come through before continuing his tour in South Africa, Palko accepted an invitation from a stranger in the street and found himself standing on top of a beautiful skyscraper, overlooking the bustling Dar seaport. There were a few men there, in finely-pressed suits. Palko wondered if his cutoff shorts and explicitly feminist t-shirt, still soaked with sweat from the previous night’s show, might disqualify him from such an establishment.

“You’re the music man, aren’t you?” said a kind and confident voice. Palko was surprised at the recognition. “I am Mendrad Kigola, Member of the Tanzanian Parliament. I dream of helping my people make their music.”

A year and a half later, Palko and Zuli Tums, a renowned Ugandan Producer, jumped on a jet to Tanzania. Zuli carved out two and a half weeks to sneak away from Volume Up Studio in Kempala, and Shane worked the time into the middle of a tour schedule. Zuli carried a backpack full of mobile recording equipment, and Palko a La Patrie hybrid classical guitar.

They hatched an ambitious plan with MP Kigola. In a sort of musical sharrett, they would cross much of Tanzania together, recording music for people that don’t have access to professional recording studios. While traversing the country and helping people record their own material, Palko found himself writing and recording an entire album of his own, the forthcoming, transcendent Swahili Surreal.

Swahili Surreal does not claim to be representative of traditional Tanzanian music, but rather chronicles Palko’s personal experience – a hauntingly intricate finger-dance across a classical guitar to accompany both the physical and spiritual journey Palko and his companions had embarked upon. Collaboration being a part of the process, some of the songs on Swahili Surreal feature other voices, like Wazzy, a staple in the Tanzanian scene. The album’s lead single, “Metamorphosis of a Dream,” cradles the vocals of the thirty-strong Saint Monica Singers, who previously had never set foot in a recording studio.

“‘Metamorphosis of a Dream’ is a concept that the dream turns into a plan and then turns into a memory, much like how a caterpillar turns into a chrysalis and then a butterfly,” says Palko. “And there’s a tremendous amount of work between each stage. For me, it’s easy to dream about playing a big show on the other side of the world, but if I don’t make a plan, I won’t ever get to do the thing, and if I don’t do the thing, I won’t have a memory. And life is just a string of memories, happening at the same time.”

When word got out that MP Kigola was bringing an American musician and a Ugandan producer to town, a man unlocked a recording studio that had been closed for many years. Over a few intensive days, Zuli and Palko were able to help over 30 people record their own music that they could keep, and invited them to sing on Swahili Surreal as well.

Kigola, Tums and Palko crossed much of Tanzania, creating memories as well as the tracks that make up Swahili Surreal. Zuli tirelessly recorded while Palko persistently wrote and helped engineer. They set up their mobile equipment in borrowed studios, small hotel rooms, a gym, an ornate catholic church, outside – anywhere that there was enough time and space to capture a song.

This recording foray was the beginning of a dream. In addition to providing people with quality recordings of their own music, Swahili Surreal will be internationally distributed, with all profits from the album going towards the construction of a recording studio in Mafinga, Tanzania. “I’m so thankful for the opportunities that the member of parliament has given me in East Africa,” says Palko. “There are a lot of great studios in the area, but in that particular region, it’s more rural. There are a lot of people that make wonderful music, but just don’t have a home for it. They pass their songs on, orally and they’re remembered, but none of them get recorded. So, we want to make a community space and music venue, but it will primarily be a recording studio.”

Palko, who currently resides in Spain, will be traveling to the United States in late 2019 to perform and celebrate the release of Swahili Surreal, before returning to East Africa to continue working on the studio project and the follow-up album that he’s already begun writing. Looking forward, there’s no telling where Palko will end up, but that’s just the way he wants it. “The way I see it, you’ve gotta be alive somewhere, so you may as well be alive all over, trying something new,” he says. “Sharing music, getting to hear other musicians and inviting people back to your place to come and play another time makes it all worth it for me.”  

“Palko’s high tenor exudes a wistful ineffable quality encompassing tender remembrance, eloquent simplicity and optimistic tranquility.” – HuffPost

“One of the most unique songwriting talents working today.” – No Depression

“Not only is Shane Palko a singer-songwriter, but a notable socio-environmentalist…an artist and philosopher, representative of over ten thousand miles traveled on the road thus far.” – For Folk’s Sake

“[Palko’s] listeners will be taken on a journey that will change them wholly.” – Neu Futur Magazine