Alonzo Interview

Hey Alonzo! Thank you for your time. Tell us what has been your favorite cheat food in quarantine?  

Hey! Thank you for this interview. I think I’ve been enjoying food a little too much during this quarantine haha. I’d say my recent cheat food has been cookies. There are these Sea Salt Carmel Chocolate Chip cookies I’ve been baking a few nights a week. I’m going to try not to buy anymore because they are addicting LOL.

Any exiting news you want to share with us? 

Exciting News…Hmmm…Well my Album is DONE! We’ve been planning our next moves but it has definitely been difficult during this time. I think our biggest focus is now the fall and 2021. New Music is definitely on the way!

Any loves other than music? 

I loveeeee going to concerts. Does that count? Haha. Honestly my life revolves around music. Im really loving Tik Tok right now as well. 

Do you ever get nervous before you play music live?

YES! I always have the most random thoughts before going on stage. What if I forget all of the words? What if I fall off the stage? Haha I definitely have to keep my nerves under control before I play. The cool thing is that almost instantly when I walk on stage and the microphone is in front of my face my nerves are gone.

What is your next goal as a musician?

I’d say I have many goals but my biggest one right now is to secure I opening slot on a major artist tour. If there are any major artists out there looking for opening acts please keep me in mind.

What is your favorite song to belt out in the car/for karaoke? 

Omg this is so embarrassing but right now I am obsessed with Jessie J’s version of “Part of your world” from The Little Mermaid. Don’t judge me hahaha

Name one your strengths? 

I think a great strength of mine is leading

What is your own definition of happiness?

Ahhh I love this question. My definition of happiness is the feeling of Love, Gratitude and Peace occupying the space of Anxiety and Fear.

How do you see yourself in 5 years? 

In 5 years, I will be headlining a world tour and I will be one of the most known entertainers in the world. I will have opened a arts school in my hometown Rockford, IL and I will be inspiring people around the world.

How would you describe your fashion style? 

I’m still discovering my style. It changes often. Sometimes I’m very Chic, clean cut and classy. Other times I like a little edge more on the Sexy Rock & Roll side. Just depends on my mood. 

Where we can follow you on social media? 

Please follow on my Instagram @StoryOfAlonzo https://www.instagram.com/storyofalonzo/

Press Inquiries:  bsquaredmgmt@gmail.com

End of Interview 

Leo’s Guitar (EP) by Izzie's Caravan

As its title implies, Leo’s Guitar is all about artistic expression via an electrified six-string courtesy of Izzie’s Caravan, and in four fantastically engaging songs, this EP does everything its creators designed it to. Izzie’s Caravan come in blistering hot at the start of the tracklist with “Two in the Bush” before ripping through the slow-rolling “Lightnins-A-Howlin’,” crushing “Dorian’s Lament” and the instrumental juggernaut title track. Inside of just twelve minutes’ time, these blues-rockers manage to dispense one fiery eruption of tonality after another whilst making use of every melodic tool at their disposal. A great example of what can come from dedicated songcraft meeting passionate players in their prime, Leo’s Guitar is as top shelf as electric blues records get in the contemporary age.

The strings are mightily textured throughout the whole of this EP, and I’m not talking about the guitar parts alone. The basslines in “Lightnins-A-Howlin’” and the title track are bursting with detail upon closer inspection, and though they never come even close to stealing any of the spotlight away from the leads at the top of the mix, their sonic contribution makes this material as chill-inducing as it is. Most everything in the mix is arranged as to create additional tension through the physicality of tone and harmony, and while there are moments that sound almost nauseatingly crisp, nothing here feels overproduced to me. Izzie’s Caravan are putting some serious effort into making this a meticulous sampling of their talents, and for my money, they couldn’t have done much better.

The almost conflicted, hesitant rhythm in “Two in the Bush” and “Dorian’s Lament” allows for maximum melodic exploitation in both of these songs, which won me over in right out of the gate when I sat down with Leo’s Guitar for the first time. Nothing in this extended play seems even slightly rushed or thrown-together, and even in the case of up-tempo tunes that require ridiculous dexterity, you can tell that no one in Izzie’s Caravan was sweating the task at hand. They’ve got a great energy in this disc, and if it’s something I can expect to experience in their live performances, I’ll make a point of checking out their stage show the next time they’re in my neck of the woods.

I’ve been a guitar buff for the better part of my life, but I don’t think you need to be to fall in love with what Izzie’s Caravan are doing in Leo’s Guitar. Fiercely streamlined but not lacking in any of the compositional bells and whistles that diehard blues fans expect in a modern release, Leo’s Guitar is a credible offering from a band clearly capable of getting a lot done in the studio. A full-length album of this crew’s blues style would be quite enticing indeed, and if given the right space to record it, I think such a record could make a serious impact both in and outside of their native scene. I’ll be looking out for more, and I’d recommend you do the same.

Jonah McPherson

Chords of Eve release EP

Bursting at the seams with grooves as lush as they are intoxicatingly cerebral in “Brightside,” evenly distributed in a stony deluge of moderate distortion and crisp string harmonies in “The Future’s Not What It Used To Be,” the musicality that Chords of Eve are throwing down in their new extended play Dear Engineer is nothing to scoff at, and for critics like myself who have been lucky enough to score a sneak preview of the record’s five fabulously surreal tracks, it’s enough to get quite a buzz storm going.

From the electropop title track in Dear Engineer to the rambling rhythm of a beefy “Rebuild Ourselves Tonight” and haunting rhymes of “Evelyn,” Chords of Eve deliver a relentlessly dreamy debut in this EP that draws reference to some of the more ambient offerings in modern electronica/rock fusion, but make no mistake about it – theirs is a sound that stands on its own without question. There have been a lot of exciting new hybrids making headlines in the American underground in the last few years, but I can’t say that I’ve come across very many that have held my attention quite as well as this disc recently has.

ABOUT SKY TITAN MEDIA: https://skytitanmedia.com/

The vocals in “Evelyn,” “Brightside” and “The Future’s Not What It Used To Be” are ironically utilized as a frame for the lustrous instrumentation that each of these tracks contain rather than the other way around, and although this might seem like a complicated way to induce textured chills, I think it’s partly what makes Dear Engineer so hard to peg using conventional artistic terminology.

There’s a great use of contrast in “Rebuild Ourselves Tonight” that dispels any tethering of the song’s conceptualism to trends in progressive electronica, and while “Brightside” and the title track share a certain duality that would seemingly make them prime fodder for rock radio over a commercial pop format, the tension in their individual grooves make them plenty danceable just the same. On paper, a lot of what Chords of Eve are doing here could qualify as black and white experimentalism, but upon closer inspection, the indulgent cosmetics they liberally employ in this record make it a much more elaborate offering to decipher.

DITTO: https://ditto.fm/the-futures-not-what-it-used-to-be

It’s a highly eclectic effort that requires a discriminating ear to fully appreciate, but if you ask me, Chords of Eve’s Dear Engineer is more than promising enough to bring those who give it a spin this April back to their music when they decide to cut a full-length album (which, judging from the caliber of this content, won’t be too far down the line). They’re coming up against a lot of competition both in their home scene of Austin, Texas as well as throughout the underground in the United States at the moment, but as long as they continue to pursue compositional techniques and stylizations that their peers would just as soon shy away from, I think they’re going to see more and more success as this new decade begins to take shape for all of us.

Mark Druery

Ooberfuse “Call My Name”

Shades of post-punk surrealism are met with hypnotic, somewhat ambient textures as the bassline in “The Noise” remix of “Call My Name” thrusts back and forth, pulverizing the distant percussion with its unimaginable weight. Regardless of where the volume knob sits on your stereo, you aren’t going to stop the physicality of the bass that draws up a foundation for this mix of ooberfuse’s latest composition. Singer Cherrie Anderson’s voice is the only light in this dark, gloomy environment where tonality plays a villainous role in creating as much tension as would be possible within a three minute club song. As intimidating a listen as it can be, it’s got a magnetizing quality that seems to be a bit of a theme among all of the Call My Name remixes that I’ve heard, from the chiming “Hal St John Radio Edit” to the rather muted “Paul Kennedy Radio Edit” and its fiercely indie music video. Ooberfuse have made one heck of a summer melody here, and in these different versions of it we get to see just how talented the British twosome of Anderson and St John really are.

There’s more of an alternative/punk influence in the construction of the “Hal St John Radio Edit,” “Patrik Kambo Radio Edit” and “Push The Frequency Festival Mix” than there is in “The Noise” and “Paul Kennedy Radio Edit,” which lean more exclusively on the electronic tones in ooberfuse’s sound. The mashup of styles doesn’t create any sort of disfluency in the harmonies as we go from one track to the next, but instead makes the entire record feel like a picture window into the band’s history, and more explicitly, the roots of their music.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/06s7QZxwWcKnJZtFLbTTZi

There’s a little bit of The Cure in the St John remix, perhaps a touch of Kraftwerk in “The Noise,” a dash of strange, Massive Attack-like eccentrics in the “Push The Frequency Festival Mix,” and even a brutish, Ministry-esque industrialism to Kambo’s radio edit (spare the vocal track, that is). I listen to Call My Name and I can’t help but hear bits and pieces of the European underground spanning well over the last four decades, and that’s not something that I see very often as a critic, if ever at all.

Aside from a few minor speedbumps on the soundboard side of the glass, Call My Name is an excellent collection of masterfully made remixes from ooberfuse and their collaborators, Paul Kennedy and Patrik Kambo. These tracks are more than experimental enough to keep the eclectic electropop and ambient fans happy over the summer season while still boasting a streamlined production quality that, I believe, will get a few of them some time on the radio in both the UK and the United States this year. Call My Name is full of richly evocative, heterogeneous harmonies that are anything but easy to come by in 2019, and even if it doesn’t tell us anything that we didn’t already know about ooberfuse, it essentially confirms everything that their biggest fans in the media were already well aware of.

Heather Savage

Ronnue’s Introduction 2 Retro-Funk is wrecking ball

The American underground has been producing hit after hit this summer, and one of its most profound stars comes to us out of the Northwest R&B circuit in the form of Ronnue’s Introduction 2 Retro-Funk, a wrecking ball of an LP that can get anyone grooving inside of its twelve deeply melodic funk tracks. Ronnue is no stranger to the spotlight up in Seattle, where he’s been building a cult reputation for his one of a kind flow and adherence to classic funk rhythms, but in Introduction 2 Retro-Funk, he brings a caliber of content to the studio that tops anything he’s issued in the past by a mile.

Both “17 Days (The Hood Mix)” and “Do It (The Remix) [feat. Roc Phizzle, Soultry]” show this skillful songwriter giving up a huge share of the spotlight to the instrumental swagger that drives the music behind him in what I would call a rare act of selflessness in modern R&B. Ronnue is really good about balancing out every batch of lyrics that he lays out here with a powerful harmony in the backing track, and while he’s always the most commanding presence in any given composition, he never sounds like just another talented artist with an ego the size of Alaska.

“Be Your Freak,” “If We Stayed 2gether,” “Something About U (The Retro-Funk Mix)” and “I’m a Lesbian” use a lot of callous bass tones to get our attention, but it’s the vibrant dispatch of verses that keeps our focus trained on the vocalist in these tracks. As a lyricist, Ronnue has only grown more capable with every release he’s stamped his name on, and if this game really is all about creative development, then I would name him as one of the only Seattle players near the forefront of the “New West Coast” sound at the moment.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/5pQtFqzcH7qj6e43XGfWcZ?autoplay=true&v=L

Some songs here, like “Why,” “Be Your Freak” and “You Tried Me (The Man’s Anthem)” sound more structured than others, like “In Love,” “I’m a Lesbian” and “Do It (The Remix),” which all feature a more freeform, improvisational feel. Everything on Introduction 2 Retro-Funk is rooted in professional-quality precision, but it’s important to draw a distinction between the loose, easygoing vocal style of Ronnue and some of the duller mainstream poets that he’s challenging for dominance in 2019. This guy doesn’t want to fit in – he’s a rebel, and honestly, this genre needs his kind of attitude now more than ever.

Ronnue’s talent isn’t any news to those of us who have heard his music before, but to the listeners who are finding out about his abstruse but always accessible brand of funk for the first time, Introduction 2 Retro-Funk is the best means of getting into his head. The harmonies are off the chain, the beats never tiresome nor timid, and the lyrical content is consistently more positive than the garbage that major labels have been tasking us with sorting through across FM stations around the country this year. He’s got the Emerald City in the palm of his hands right now, and if this record catches fire on the opposite coast, soon he’ll have the rest of the country as well.

Scottie Carlito

The music of RONNUE has been heard all over the world due to the radio plugging services offered by Musik and Film Records. Learn more - https://musikandfilm.com

Robert Miller’s Project Grand Slam release new album PGS7

Marching to the charged beat of an unmatched percussive section, Robert Miller’s Project Grand Slam dive into “Get Out!,” one of the staple songs of their new album PGS7, intent on getting everyone listening stomping to the rhythm of this electrified protest anthem by the time we hit the ten-second mark in the track. Much like the jazzier “Take Me,” “Get Out!” is structured as to place its captivating grooves at the center of our attentions from beginning to end. There’s no holding Project Grand Slam back on this record – from the absolutely erotic fashion in which they adapt “The ‘In’ Crowd” into their own stylish brand of fusion to the dazzling display of jazz-influenced virtuosities that they unleash in songs like the soulful “Yeah Yeah,” they operate with an efficient (though constantly relentless) intensity that is unparalleled in the American underground today. PGS7 feels like a supersized Band of Gypsys; there’s an improvisational feel to all of its material, and yet the organic passion that the players contribute to every song ensures that they’re never out of sync with each other.

FACEBOOK: https://business.facebook.com/pg/projectgrandslam/posts/

URL: https://www.projectgrandslam.com/

In “Tree of Life,” Project Grand Slam - and specifically singer Ziarra Washington - produce one of the most emotional performances that they’ve ever included on an LP. The breathtakingly melodic vocal from Washington aside, the lyrical content is utterly haunting (especially in the wake of recent events in the news). On the flipside of this song’s brutally honest pleas, we find the band in much higher spirits in tracks like the groove-driven funk jam “Python,” punky “I Don’t Know Why” and retro rock n’ roller “No One’s Fool,” but no matter the tempo or topic covered by our singer’s artful poeticisms, there’s never an instance where the music lacks the sort of raw power synonymous with legends. “At Midnight” sees Project Grand Slam manipulating a relaxed beat into a straight-up jazz juggernaut, while the calculatedly progressive “Torpedo of Love” incorporates a higher caliber of conceptualism than I had previously realized this band capable of experimenting with. Even simpler songs like “With You” and the swaggering “Funk Latino” command a lot of attention, and though PGS7’s hit single “Redemption Road” has been garnering the most praise out of any track on this LP, it’s no more a spellbinder than any of the songs that it sits beside in this flawless tracklist are.

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/4ftaEAv76cOhIsKxA5tiCy

Project Grand Slam were already creating a lot of AOTY buzz with the release of Greetings from Serbia earlier on in 2019, but after dropping this most recent treat, it should be obvious to anyone who follows independent music that they are collectively the undisputed royal family of alternative fusion this year. Robert Miller’s work has never left me feeling dissatisfied, but what he and his players have done with PGS7 is beyond a slam dunk. Whether you’re a diehard jazz enthusiast, a fan of eclectic music or just interested in something that goes against the sonic grain, this is an album that deserves all of the attention it has received and more this August.

Gavin Shaughnessy

The music of PROJECT GRAND SLAM has been heard all over the world due to the promotional services offered by Danie Cortese Entertainment & Publicity. Learn more here - http://www.daniecorteseent.com/

Integriti Reeves - Eu Vim Da Bahia (single)

I confess I am a novice regarding Latin influenced jazz. This doesn’t mean I haven’t heard bands and musicians engaging this style – just that my knowledge of the form is undoubtedly shallow compared to others more engrossed by its sound. This isn’t a slight; there are only so many hours in a given day. Having said that, I am impressed by what Washington D.C. based Integriti Reeves has managed to do with this recording. The single “Eu Vim Da Bahia” from her first recording Stairway to the Stars is possibly the marquee attraction included on her debut EP and its genre and culture crossing appeal is evident from the beginning. Great care, among other factors, distinguishes this performance from weaker run of the mill or cookie cutter efforts – the production captures every nuance of the instrumental and vocal presentation.

The guitar and violin playing are musical high points in the recording. “Eu Vim Da Bahia” includes some of the best and cleanest guitar playing I’ve heard in recent memory – it sounds like it is cut live rather than overly rehearsed and there isn’t a single detectable misstep through the song’s three minutes. The violin work only takes up a small amount of space in the song, particularly when compared to the guitar presence, but its effect on the song cannot be denied. It is akin to including contributions from a second voice that, nevertheless, never obscures Reeves’ effect on the performance.

PRIMARY URL: https://www.integritireevesmusic.com/

Her effect is pronounced. She does not enter the song with an assertive or physical tone – instead, she almost slides into the arrangement and brings her voice in lockstep with the instruments. She weaves and wraps her singing around the soft percussion and guitar while knowing to cede ground to the violin during its spotlighted turn in the arrangement.

Concision is an important part of the song’s appeal as well. Like the Gilberto Gil original, Reeves never belabors listeners’ attention and studious avoidance of any self-indulgence reinforces the song’s core strengths. Integriti Reeves maintains an even vocal stance through the song, raising the emotion when needed, and creating a performance her audience will enjoy while it illuminates their mood and spirit. Keeping the focus narrow and on point helps this happen from the first.

It all adds up to one of the best performances in this musical vein I’ve heard in some time. Integriti Reeves’ “Eu Vim Da Bahia” is such a good performance it can headline a full length release as ably as shorter forms and doesn’t take any shortcuts or pander to any low common denominators. Shorn of gimmicks or production tricks, we are treated instead to music as pure as driven snow that lights us up and sticks in your consciousness. It is far from the last thing we will hear from this vocalist; Reeves is possessed with the spirit of song, obvious intelligence, and one gets the feeling she would never stop singing even if she never recorded another note. Her passion is seductive and real.

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Eu-Vim-Da-Bahia/dp/B00J49XLGS

Troy Johnson