SOFTSPOT, Ziemba, Listen To This DJs

Originally formed in 2009 by artists Sarah Kinlaw and Bryan Keller Jr, SOFTSPOT has evolved over the years into a four piece of friends with a long history of creativity. Blaze Bateh joined on drums for the writing and recording of 2014's MASS with Jonathan Campolo on synths for the tour to follow. Recorded by Keller, the completion of Clearing marks the band's first full length as a quartet with all members' artistries permeating its new yet mature incarnation. Putting illustrative lyricism at the forefront of lush and clean instrumentation, Clearing centers on themes of exposition and openness as a means for connection and progression. Like a dream, to process stimuli is to synthesize memory. Actions are symbolized through our behavioral and physical awareness, the polarity of the everyday and the masks we wear. SOFTSPOT's new music navigates a mistake driven culture clouded by insecurity, and hopes to reach a clearing through the belief that one exists.


René Kladzyk offers a gateway between worlds and times in her performance persona Ziemba. Compared by Deli Magazine to a modern incarnation of Nico, and likened to avant-pop luminaries such as John Cale, Brian Eno, & David Sylvian, Ziemba takes the role of the chanteuse at her piano and thrusts it through a kaleidoscope of sonic and poetic refraction, with emergent chants, screams and plaintive ballads. As an experimental vocalist, performance artist and dancer, Kladzyk has cultivated a brand of improvisation and embodiment that permits songs to build and destroy simultaneously, describing protected spaces of hope amid menace and constant change.
Ziemba has performed at art, music, and dance spaces throughout NYC and internationally including Issue Project Room, Glasslands Gallery, the Museum of Art & Design, Trans Pecos, the French Institute in Fez, Morocco; St. Marks Church, Momenta Art, Gina Gibney Dance, Green Space, Silent Barn, Secret Project Robot, SXSW, Panoply Performance Laboratory, and more. She recently premiered a music video for single "Phantom See" at Cake Shop NYC and has had multiple songs featured on the most recent season of Broad City. She has held performance/sound art residencies with the French Institute and Culture Vultures in the Rif Mountains in Morocco and with Mount Tremper Arts in Upstate NY. She has a new EP coming out in June 2015 & a her first full length is due out in late 2015.


We are Jen Monroe and Brian Sweeny, based in Brooklyn, New York.

Listen To This! came about so we could share music that we love with our friends. It focuses on albums, rather than singles or tracks, because albums are our favorite way to engage with music--"the original playlists." This is an anthology of records that are amazing all the way through, a personal canon of underground music.
- See more at: http://www.listentothis.info/p/about.html#sthash.hlopCRSn.dpuf