Black is the New AP Style

Before Mia Schuster had the entirety of her latest album, Happy (Again), planned out, she knew she wanted it to be yellow.

It was the only adjective she could think of to describe the album - yellow. It’s what she saw in her mind and she was determined to bring that idea to life. Her logic behind it was simple; yellow represents happiness, joy and life, and that’s what she wanted the album to represent.

“I wanted it to be a ray of sunshine, so yellow just seemed right,” she said.

The creation process was a mix of songs written over the years and new tracks seeming to fit right into her idea of yellow. It took roughly a year to get everything together, starting with the pride of finishing the first few songs to hitting a few bumps in the road and making it out on the other side.

Cohesion is a major part of any album, and Schuster found herself in a jumble of emotions trying to figure out how the songs were going to piece together. First she was proud of getting the project started, then stressed about the songs making sense as a unit. Then she was back to feeling excited about it coming together before second guessing the entire project.

“It wasn’t until the end of the process that I really started to have serious doubts,” she said. “Due to all the craziness that’s been happening in the world this year, I actually almost pushed the project back several times. Yet despite the rollercoaster of emotions this project was, everything managed to come together in the end! I am so proud of the finished project and I’m so happy with how everything turned out!”

It’s no surprise that working on this album taught her a lot about herself as an artist. She learned that her love for music is all she needs to make something that she is wholeheartedly proud of, and trying to please others or live up to their expectations only hinders the creation process. Most importantly, she learned that being true to herself and loving her music is the most freeing feeling.

In the month that Happy (Again) has been released, Mia Schuster has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from listeners and is happy to report that the concept of yellow has made its way through the songs to the visual portions of the album and beyond. Yellow represents joy, which she felt while creating it, and hopes listeners can feel and hear that throughout each track.

“I wanted this album to be a light in the darkness - a reminder that no matter how hard things get, it is going to be okay,” she said. “I hope that no matter where someone is at in life that they can listen to this album and walk away feeling a little lighter and a little stronger. Music has the power to heal, and my prayer is that people could find a bit of that solace here.”

The music world met Whitney Caroline in bands such as The Cheap Royals and The Tide Rose, but as she embarks on her journey as a solo artist, she brings pieces of her past with her.

Her passion for music started at home; learning piano from her mother on a keyboard with washable markers, writing poetry in middle school and finding songwriting in high school. When she first started writing songs, however, she didn’t necessarily think that she would ever release them.

“So many songs I’ve written have felt like batting practice, or journaling with a kind of melody,” she said. “With my first single/EP release, I think I just believed in the songs in a different way. As I found myself writing more, I noticed some songs came with a vision for how they might live beyond the moment I wrote them and I wanted to set those songs free.”

Her first show solidified her passion and it wasn’t long before she moved to Nashville for an internship and never left. While her career as a musician began before the move, Nashville is where she found the freedom to be herself “without any preconceived notions, history or memories of any kind.” She loved the thrill of not knowing a single person when she arrived and thrived on exploring this new version of her.

She currently plays under the moniker burwell, a tribute to a family name that she originally tried to leave in the past.

"I thought changing my name would help me let go of history... but it stayed with me like a memory,” she said.

So far this year, she has noticed a theme in her music of escaping from the present moment. Music has been a large source of escape for her lately, from the loss of her mother to the ongoing distresses of the current state of the world. She first released “Can’t Stop” and wrote about the ways she’s escaped the present moment through daydreaming. She also released a cover of Relient K’s “Be My Escape” which she felt fitting during the various stay-at-home orders. Her latest release, “Forever Young”, is a collaboration with Liam Keegan and far outside her comfort zone.

She wrote the song back in 2018 the day after leaving her full-time job to fully pursue music. It was what she called a “play day” in the studio and was her way of celebrating what was to come next.

“When [Keegan] turned the song into a dance track, it took on a whole new life,” she said. “If you feel like you’ve been stuck in a rut or are overwhelmed by responsibility of any kind, this song is a reminder that growing up is optional.”

Whitney Caroline has embraced every part of her musical journey as it has grown and evolved. By releasing music under the name burwell, it shows that she, too, has grown and evolved.

“My love for music has grown in beauty and depth over the years; music has played a unique role in every area of life that matters to me,” she said. “With every release, my goal has been to open up a little more, just to be a little more honest and share my words in a way that feels true… I’m still finding my way.”

Nathan Oaks has been using music as his creative outlet since before he was a teenager. His solo project, Dandelion, was meant to be a pop rock project with a live band attached, but quickly transpired into an entirely different sound as he began writing.

He refers to the sound as “dream trap”, citing influences such as Lil Uzi Vert, The 1975, No Rome and Iann Dior. His music shares themes of sex, drugs and modern pop, all through the lens of longing. He recently released his two-song EP, Fine Now, after working on it for a few years.

“The Fine Now EP holds a lot of sentimental value to me because I've been working on this project for the better part of 2-3 years when you include the band ideas and moving past that vision,” he said. “It took at least a year of writing to find an authentic sound to give back to the music community. These songs are the first two that upon completion I sat there confident and excited to share the vision and direction so I thought it was appropriate to announce and release these two tracks before I delved even further into the ‘dream trap’ vision.”

The meaning behind the moniker is a reflection of Oaks’ personality and how he carries himself naturally. It also shows in the songs off of the EP, “Ghost Rider” and “Stars”. In “Ghost Rider”, the song plays into his mantra - “Forever Up To No Good”. The debauchery-fueled lyrics reference partying, sex, excess, OnlyFans accounts and "stealing every bitch’s sweater this year." Despite the entertaining aspect of the sound and lyrics, Oaks wants listeners to still take away a more serious message.

“I hope that listeners understand that they are not alone in any of their mental or emotional struggles first and foremost,” he said. “Secondly, I hope that the fresh sound gives listeners incentive to dance and vibe while thinking about things from a different perspective.”

With Dandelion as his main focus, Nathan Oaks plans to release more music in 2020 and build up an organic fanbase that loves his love for music as much as he does. His love for music grows each day, and it resonates throughout this project.

“Since pursuing music as a career, my love for it has only gotten deeper and my mindset towards music is that it’s an entire industry centered around seven major notes, everything in between, and your ability to not be an asshole, so the possibilities are endless with that outlook.”

I’m no historian. I’m not a very highly educated or political guy in general. Just a regular white musician living in a pigpen-like filth cloud of privilege.The times being what they are, I’ve had plenty of spare hours to spend scouring the internet filling in gaps in my knowledge of United States history, and no shortage of reasons to do so. I was recently made aware of a Reconstruction-era event known as the Kirk-Holden War, in which the U.S. government battles the KKK and nothing goes well. I’d like to relay this story to you now.

There once was a lawman named Outlaw. Hell yeah. Wyatt Outlaw had been appointed as the Town Commissioner and Constable of the town of Graham, North Carolina in the wake of the Civil War. The first Black man to do so. His rise in prominence included serving as a cavalryman for two years in the Union Army and helping to establish the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in his home county of Alamance, North Carolina. Seems like an all-around good dude and his freakin' name is Wyatt Outlaw, how cool is that?

The mere fact that this man existed was enough to royally piss off those faceless coward sacks of shit - the Ku Klux Klan. Soon Wyatt was joined by two other Black constables, making the entire police force of Graham Black men. I’m gonna go ahead and say that sent the Klan members into a tizzy. Then the year 1870 rolls around and the 15th amendment is passed, granting Black American men the right to vote! Those evil bastards were about to shit their sheets over all the fairness happening right before their eye-holes. A campaign of terror was unleashed upon the Black population of the south as the Klan, the White Brotherhood, and other such hate groups wielded their wealth, power, and influence to LITERALLY GET AWAY WITH MURDER via their ties with community leaders and intimidate the newly emancipated voting population into silence. Outlaw, being a popular bad ass, was naturally targeted. One night, as a mob of racists in the worst Halloween costumes ever rode through the town of Graham, hootin’ and hollerin’, waving torches and screaming for blood, Outlaw stood his ground and opened fire, dispersing the crowd and quieting the streets. I like to imagine "Voodoo Chile" by Jimi Hendrix blasting as this is happening.

Within a year, Wyatt Outlaw’s body would be hanging from a tree in the courthouse square. On his chest was written “beware, ye guilty, both black and white.” A local Black man who claimed to know who was responsible would be soon found dead floating in a pond. No one would ever be tried for these murders. Ever.

This is only the beginning.

A few months after Outlaw’s murder, the Klan assassinated John Stevens, a white Republican state senator sympathetic to the Black population. Now that white guys were getting murdered, the Governor of North Carolina, Republican William Holden, decided that it was time to put a stop to things. Go figure. Holden hired George Washington Kirk, a former commander in the Union Army who had flipped over to the good guys from the confederate forces. In the war he developed a reputation for some nasty guerrilla tactics and had fought alongside Malinda Blalock, one of the few female soldiers in the Civil War. Look her story up, it’s wild.

So Holden suspends Habeas Corpus, declares martial law in Alamance and Caswell counties, and nasty ol’ George Kirk rolls into town with a volunteer force of 300. Please stop what you’re doing, put on "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham, and imagine a montage of over 100 Klansmen being arrested in a matter of weeks. Beautiful.

Here’s the thing about the Klan though… they run the shit round these parts. We’re talking about congressman, sheriffs, lawyers, bankers, and some guy named Barzillai Graves - all sorts of prominent community members whose position in society was abetted by the idea that they were of the superior race, and who violently resented the blossoming freedom of their Black peers - being arrested in the name of the state. As rock and roll as this all is, white society was not having it, and the Klan retaliated. Several bloody skirmishes later, 12 militiamen were dead along with 16 of the Klan. The violence eventually came to an end, with Kirk’s army being the victor.

The aftermath of all this is where things get really fucked up and relevant. Even though the Shitty Hateful LARP-Ghost Clubhouse had been subdued into not openly killing innocent people for a while, they did ultimately succeed in terrorizing the Black population into not voting. August of 1870 saw Democrats regaining control of the state Legislature, and William Holden became the first Governor in United States history to be removed from office after being impeached and convicted on the grounds that the men arrested in connection with the murder of John Stevens and the lynching of Wyatt Outlaw were treated unfairly. Kirk was arrested and sent back to Tennessee from whence he came, and the Klansmen walked away scot-free. Don’t worry though, Holden was pardoned of his crimes in 2011, only 119 years after his death.

Think about this for a minute. The first governor ever removed from office in the U.S.lost his job because he sent volunteer forces to put a stop to the killing of Black people and their protectors by organized murderers with a fucking logo. He lost his job because tactical voter suppression made it possible. His crime was protecting the people who were led to believe they had just gained their right to be protected. I’m not telling you all this just to say “man, history is cRaZy!” or to say “dang the south sUcKs!” - I’m urging you to recognize and exercise your power as a voter, and to not feel hopeless or cynical about the use of that power. If we do not, then those who wish to step on the weak and the different for their own hateful gain shall capitalize on our complacency. Wield love against them. We are deeply, deeply embedded in a system that willfully turns a blind eye to those in need. We cannot escape it, or pierce it’s scales from the outside. We must change it from within.

Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” In this story we have a police officer firing his weapon into a crowd of protesters… suspension of Habeas Corpus… mass arrests… sound familiar? It is sad and ironic, and I haven’t yet wrapped my head around this cycle of violence. I can only hope that one day true equality can be achieved, and that America will have no reason, just or unjust, to attack its own citizens. The baton is in our hands now. What path will we lay for those who come next?

Thanks for reading.

- Fritz Hutchison

Elana Belle Carroll, known under the moniker Party Nails, is among many artists who are inspired by today’s advanced culture. Anything and everything is right at her fingertips, but she didn’t want her music to hold back her emotions just because the subject matter doesn’t always get talked about truthfully.

Carroll is always working on new music, and at one point in 2018 she was really getting the sense of what her second album was going to feel like. While a few songs were left over from her first album or written during that process, many of the songs on her latest release, You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here, were written in real time.

It wasn’t too long after that she was showing a friend an early iteration of the album, pre- mixed and mastered, to gauge his initial reaction.

“I wanted to see what his initial impressions were, especially because he is sober and I hoped that he might relate to some of the inebriation themes, and give me feedback on them,” she said. “He did pick up on all of that, and we brainstormed names together while listening to the songs in his car. We both liked ‘you don't have to go home but you can't stay here’, which we thought of while we were thinking of what sorts of things you might hear at a bar or at the end of a party.”

Her creation process was heavily influenced by the masking of the truth in so many ways of life. She noticed it mainly in today’s politics and culture, and noticed it started to hinder her songwriting.

“The addictive nature of technology and social media, the logic behind one policy over another, the reasons why people choose to stay silent or speak out; I saw an era that involved a level of secrecy and denial, and parallels to what that behavior looks like on a personal level, such as wanting more booze even when you know it's going to hurt you, refusing to acknowledge how your behavior affects other people, wanting to be heard but not wanting to take responsibility for your words. All of that. It wasn't hard to make music about it because I was watching closely myself, the people around me, and the world at large,” she said.

The day before the album was released, she listened to it alone one last time. Each song brought back specific memories that helped her realize how much she enjoyed creating the album alongside co-producers Benjamin Greenspan and Ryan Nasci.

“I'm so grateful to each [song] for ‘coming’ to me and to Ben and Ryan for taking such good care of them with me as they inched to a final form,” she said.

Carroll hopes listeners feel seen while playing You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here, because listening to music can bring out unwanted emotions - but they are emotions that are necessary to being human. Feel overcome with joy or sadness. Feel confused or like you finally belong. Dance. Cry. At the same time. Whatever emotions are felt while listening to Party Nails, these songs are here to talk about that.

One of Lindsey Lomis’ favorite things about music is finding a song that can have different meanings for different people. As she was writing her Altadena/Warner Records debut single, “Feel”, she soon found out that it would be one of those songs.

Last March, Lomis found herself about to enter her first writing session in Los Angeles when it was cancelled last minute. Thanks to the creator of Altadena, busbee, Lomis was able to find another co-writing session with Ryan Daly.

“I’m extremely thankful that he put us together because he’s a forever partner of mine now in music,” Lomis said. “[I’m] so very lucky that he brought us together.”

The pair had never met before, but immediately clicked as they shared their influences and current music rotation. Lomis compared her experiences with co-writing sessions as blind dates - not knowing the person but hoping to make an emotional connection. This end result turned out in her favor; before they knew it, the session was over and the majority of “Feel” was finished.

As she listened back to the song, she heard it in a different way than she had originally intended. From her perspective, the lyrics of the song reminded her of friendships she had during her formative years. It was a time where everyone was trying to figure out who they were, and she personally struggled with having a friend group that liked her one day and disliked her the next. For her, the song represented a love/hate relationship “where in the end you’d rather feel something than nothing at all.”

Listening back to it with Daly gave her an entirely different perspective. He interpreted it in a more romantic sense, which gave Lomis the opportunity to hear it as the artist and the listener.

“It can mean something completely different to somebody but can feel so connected through the lyrics,” she said. “I think it’s such a cool thing for people to connect through a song that they can see it in a completely different light than you but can still tie you together in some way.”

When it came to creating a music video for the song, the original plans had to be scrapped due to her state’s stay-at-home orders. She still wanted to release an official video, so she did the next best thing: she got her family involved. Her brother, home from college, filmed everything while her mother held the director up to watch via video chat. Her father stayed behind-the-scenes and filmed enough of his own footage to create a second video that she plans to release in the near future.

“It was super fun and gave us the freedom to experiment and create,” she said.

Lindsey Lomis has created a debut single that can speak to multitudes of people in a matter of a few minutes. With the right people in her corner and an EP on the way, she is certainly ready to share her talents with the world.

I think for everyone staying at home, time feels a little different. Quarantine began for me in early March, when everything in Los Angeles was beginning to shut down. I had just come home from Utah when I came down with a fever that persisted on and off for two weeks. I managed to knock out whatever it was with a round of antibiotics in the second week. I was still pretty drained for a week or so after and acted as if I had had the virus but at that point you couldn’t get a test without displaying more severe symptoms than a fever. At some point I will get an antibody test to see if that’s what I had because I haven’t been that sick in years.

Besides my corona-scare, I’ve been lucky that my work hasn’t been disrupted much and my friends and family are safe. I do miss live music desperately but I’ve been able to connect virtually. We have gotten creative with video conferencing and have game nights and dinners with friends and family. I’ve watched virtual concerts and even do a weekly Zoom trivia night with a group of friends. I’ve also been getting my fix of the outdoors through daily walks and bike rides around my neighborhood.

Like most people, my eating-out habits have been significantly curbed, so another thing I’ve been trying my hand at is creating new things in the kitchen. I’ve baked my mother’s famous hummingbird cake twice now which has been great for my waistline!

The biggest life change has been that my wife and I got a puppy while we are both working from home. We each grew up with dogs but have never had one of our own, so in mid-April we brought our little guy home. He’s half Australian Shepard and half King Charles cavalier, three months old and seven pounds of pure energy. Thankfully he has finally learned how to go to the bathroom outside. We’ve also taught him some fun tricks like roll over and high-five. So I’ve become a weird pet person who now has a dog with an Instagram account. You can follow him on Instagram here and me here.

Ultimately, the quarantine has made me look at the way I spend my time. I’m grateful for the reset, the extra time for the simple things and am focused on creating more music.

While practicing social distancing, watch my latest music video for "Let The Robots Drive":

“Hey GALEXI I don’t want to blow up your egos, but I’m a massive Pink Floyd fan, and I might actually like your version of this song better than the original.” - GALEXI follower

Electro-space duo GALEXI are exactly the rising stars that their name leads you to believe. Jo Alexis, ‘The Priestess’ and Alexander Johnson, ‘The Scientist’ are connecting electronica, smooth synths and lush vocals into a glittering map of sonic constellations. Based in Portland, Oregon (though their home planet is called Issia), the group has made a home at GALEXI Studios, where they’re able to discover and nurture morphing soundscapes. As ‘The Scientist’ explains, “we are experimenting with the never-ending Pandora's box that is electronic music.”

In their own words, GALEXI provide a “whole-body musical experience”. Engaging an intergalactic narrative and experimentation suggest GALEXI are artists in a league of their own. Alexis and Johnson contextualize their work as “trip hop in an evocative soundscape that transports listeners to an interplanetary headspace”. Magnetic Magazine describes their unique cosmic style as “Björk meets Sia meets Giorgio Moroder”. Having maintained Björk’s unconventional influences on their sound, GALEXI also credit David Bowie, Massive Attack and Dead Can Dance for significant inspiration.

The next release from GALEXI is a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them”, set to be released on June 19, 2020. The track is poised as a tribute to Pink Floyd, with both Alexis and Johnson admitting their lasting admiration for the revolutionary band. “We are big Pink Floyd fans so we spent a long time on this song,” Alexis reveals, “we struggled with the bridge and kept scrapping it and trying new takes - like 16 versions.”

Black is the New AP Style is excited to premiere the music video for “Us and Them” the day before the release, which you can view below! The video is an entertaining blend of their style and humor with a sci-fi edge that gives off classic space movie vibes.

"The video for ‘Us and Them’ by GALEXI is a nostalgic, galactic romp featuring vintage outer sci-fi movie clips,” they said. “Although the message of the song can feel intense, we wanted to counter that with lightness, using 50s space travel as a humorous flip side. Ultimately, the underlying vibe is a sexy, get-up-and-dance groove, which may be just the release we need in these challenging times."

“Us and Them” will be available on streaming services and their website on June 19.

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