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Hidden Gems: A Music Blog in the Spirit of The Old Internet 🔮

Welcome to ‘Hidden Gems: A Music Blog in the Spirit of The Old Internet’ - a series where I aim to re-create the feeling of reading a music blog on the family computer. 

Featuring Rachaellica, LEATHERS, Carpark, DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ, Hefner, Bimini, Cassie Candles, Ivor Game, Alexei Shishkin & Chantay Savage.

By Eimear O SullivanMusicngear Editor

This is a music series done in the spirit of the old internet and early 00s music blogs. This series is not focused on new music - it is me, a life-long music lover, writing about the music I come across on the vast, rich treasure trove of music on the internet, from any genre, time, or place - I want to re-create the feeling of reading a music blog on the family computer.

I am doing this because I know from personal experience that it can start to feel like you are releasing music into a void. That once a song is released, you feel like you have to move on to the next one, making you feel like art is disposable, which it is not.

Part of the aim of this series is to let you know that at the end of the void, we here at MusicnGear are listening and would love for you to keep sharing your art with the world. 

If you like the series or what we have written, please consider sharing it so that this series can reach more people and grow!

Rachaellica - Eyeliner

I heard this for the first time in 2022 - a year when I had to get an office job outside of self-employment, as the financial stress of it all was pushing me to the verge of a complete nervous breakdown (thankfully, that side of things has improved substantially). These circumstances ignited my already insatiable hunger for art, a longing for something fun that had teeth, as I found myself to be allergic to the rather contrived ‘I am so cute but I am actually like so crazy and such a mess’ adjacent tone of music that large labels were pumping out (something I find very hard to take seriously with the glossiness of the music and accompanying press photos (like if you are really such a mess then how is it that you were able handle the sheer amount of scheduled appointments that accompany such a large label release such as photoshoots, studio time and so forth) as the whole thing gives the appearance of artist risk, whilst taking none).

Anyway, I found solace within the pink, cloudy halls of an EP called ‘Cherry Vision Systems’ from mysterious Scotland-based artist Rachaellica. The opening to Eyeliner has a ‘1980s VHS tape welcoming you to a hotel in paradise’ vibe to it, before ending up in a haunted pool somewhere in  Los Angeles.

“And boy, you know I hate your girl/She hates me as well” and the penultimate, the iconic “don't tell me you've been awake all night/For a girl who can't even do her Eyeliner right” !!!!!!!!

It is hilarious, it is vicious, it is unique, and in being all of these things, it is art. 

Connect with Rachaellica
Bandcamp | Instagram | X

DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ - Under Your Spell

One of the first things I thought of when I came up with the idea for this series was that it was going to be a fantastic excuse to dig through DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ’s entire back catalog - something that feels like digging through a treasure chest of purple, witchy costumes, glittering plastic jewelry, all sprinkled with real-life magic dust. 

I have always loved witchy things. I was unfortunately not able to watch Sabrina the Teenage Witch as a child, but I was fixated on it (YouTuber José does a fantastic series retrospective of the show). This aside, I was still fully absorbed within the worlds of ‘The Worst Witch’, ‘Winnie the Witch’, ‘Halloweentown’, and others of that ilk. There is something in the fabric of the DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ’s music that reminds me of this, but also of home, of the movies of Anne Hathaway, the books of Meg Cabot, the wardrobe in Uptown Girls (which I did not see until I was an adult, but my God is it a masterpiece). 

Embarking on one of her albums feels like opening up a spell book.  There are so many songs in her back catalog that it was a full-blown battle trying to pick just one for this article (it came down to this or ‘All These Years’, but as this series is about older music and ‘All These Years’ was relatively recent, I went with ‘Under Your Spell’).

To me, this song represents the wonder and magic at the core of this artist's music. The plush amethyst soundscapes, the mashup of vocals and dialogue from old shows, how the songs are reminiscent of DJ Earworm mashups, but witchy. The intermittent saxophone that makes an appearance every so often, making you think of a series finale of a 1980s soap opera set in a tropical location - to put it in simpler terms, you can feel the human soul behind this music and the art that brought it into being.

Connect with DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ
Website / Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook | X

LEATHERS - Highrise

I cannot even begin to tell you the impact this song had on me. The opening lyrics immediately induce rich, dystopian visuals, like the opening scene to an arthouse science fiction movie ( à la Terry Gilliam or David Cronenberg).

You live in a highrise

No birds or butterflies

Live beyond your means

Like you always dreamed

The ominous industrial bass rumbles underneath it all, communicating a concrete, hostile city, one trying to strip its inhabitants of everything that makes them human in the grand name of Capital. 

“In a room painted gallery white/Isn't it nice?”  takes a dig at people who have amassed vast amounts of wealth yet still seem to have no taste (possibly a side effect of trying to optimize every second of your existence to make the most money possible). There is also something vampirish about ‘Highrise’, something sultry, something sleek and effortlessly cool, like looking into the glittering abyss, and finding yourself wanting to become submerged within the oblivion it promises. 

Connect with LEATHERS
Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook | X

Carpark - Don't Know Why We Met

This nearly knocked me over the first time I heard it.

Songs that pay homage to Avril Lavigne and that era of pop-rock as a whole were not as common 5 years ago as they are now; this song being a glimmer of what was to come. 

This transported me back to the blue-skied music videos of that era, reminding me of octopus pants (cargo pants with strips of fabric hanging off them; they were huge in Ireland at the time), the 2004 movie ‘A Cinderella Story’, of hope, of all the things that lifted my spirits as a pre-teen. This absolutely sounds like it could be on the B-side of an early Avril Lavigne album - listening to this will do you the world of good. 

Connect with Carpark
Instagram | Facebook | X

Hefner - Junk

I was only recently introduced to the world of Darren Hayman, and the sheer unbridled creativity of the artist's back catalog filled my heart with joy, something that had been considerably dampened as of late by the grim state of the music industry today. Some highlights of mine from his discography are: an album called ‘Table for One’ with the below artwork:

A recreation of his album ‘The Ship's Piano’ on an old Casio in one day, and calling it ‘The Shit Piano’ and an album called ‘Field Recordings for Lido ’, which is a blend of “actual recordings of the Lidos themselves, and in some cases recordings of the locations where the Lidos used to be.” 

‘Junk’ (taken from the ‘Dead Media’ album) is sultry, indifferent, and strange. It feels like a song written from the perspective of a piece of junk at the side of a motorway, wondering what the point of it all is. 

Don't need people, what good are people?

People just get in the way

Just take everything I said for the past three years

Put it in a box, throw the key away

Connect with Darren Hayman
Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook | X

Bimini - Tommy’s Dream

There is a lot of music paying homage to the music of the 00s, but nothing comes close to the quality of work that was coming from Bimini circa 2022 (‘Rodeo’ and the accompanying music video are both masterpieces, I do not say this lightly). ‘Tommy’s Dream’ captures the grit and struggle required when trying to make your dreams come true, blending elements of UK breatbeat with strings that have been plucked directly from the longing of memory, all sprinkled with sampled vocals that remind me of the kind of songs we would have on our flip-phones in the 00s as we looked to the skies, dreaming of what was to come.

Connect with Bimini
Instagram | Facebook | X

Cassie Candles - Thanks for Everything

I only recently discovered Queer Portland-based artist Cassie Candles; ‘Thanks for Everything’ being taken from the artist's first ever EP ‘Sleep Paralysis’. This song is sooooo like the mid-00s style of electronic pop I used to be obsessed with on YouTube (RAC’s ‘Let Go’ era, if you know you know).

I love the pink, glitchy, sampled quality of it all; how it sounds like something made on a computer keyboard to be uploaded to MySpace. The chorus is a serious pop earworm.

Connect with Cassie Candles
Website | Instagram

Ivor Game - In The Woods

I believe the first Ivor Game song I heard was ‘Autumn’; a song that made you think of going for a crisp walk in the autumn air, “dressed like a babysitter from the 70s, with a Stephen King book in your shoulder bag, holding a warm cinnamon drink, and knowing that everything will be just fine”.

I believe I watched the music video for Taylor Swift’s ‘Antihero’ around the same time; both of these songs lighting something up within me, albeit in different ways. Ivor Game has gone from strength to strength since ‘Autumn’; the song ‘Highbury’ could honestly be a song from The Beatles’ or Paul Simon's back catalog; it is that wonderful. 

‘In the Woods’ is reflective, it is soft, it is whispered, like the wind in the leaves of the trees around you on an October morning. I think we have all collectively started to realise that we need to spend more time in nature (understandably, as this is from which we came). This will make you want to take a walk through the wandering trails, taking in the quiet beauty of the world around you. 

Connect with Ivor Game
Facebook / Website / X

Alexei Shishkin - All Your Life Went By

This sounds like it is playing in the lounge/lobby as you enter the liminal space between dying and death. As you await your demise in what appears to be an oddly glamorous hotel, you think back to all the good times, the sheer absurdity and joy of human existence. That being said, it is a pretty fun listen.

Connect with Alexei Shishkin
Instagram | Facebook | X

Chantay Savage - If You Believe (Believe In Steve's Club Mix)

This song is huge in my circles (people who love the 1995 movie ‘Party Girl’). ‘If You Believe’ is, in my opinion, one of the best house songs ever. I first came across this when it plays over the historic scene in the aforementioned ‘Party Girl’, which features Parker Posey dancing on a table while sorting books in the New York Public Library. There is a euphoria to this song, the kind found in the electronic music of the early 1990s, a quality that evades description; you just feel it from the moment you hear it. 

Connect with Chantay Savage
Instagram | Facebook | X

About Eimear O Sullivan

Eimear Ann O Sullivan is a multi-genre music producer, audio engineer and vocalist. After receiving a Masters in Music Technology from the CIT Cork School of Music, she went on to operate as a producer under the name Blakkheart. Her releases have received critical acclaim from Ireland's biggest music publications, such as District Magazine and Nialler9, alongside receiving heavy commercial radio airplay. She currently works in Cork recording studio Flashpoint CC. Previous clients of hers include the likes of Comedy Central’s Dragony Aunt star Candy Warhol, rapper Darce and Outsider YP. (Photo credit @Fabian Boros)

Contact Eimear O Sullivan at eimear.o.sullivan@musicngear.com

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