Notable longplayers

9 October 2024

Impressive album artwork

Artist: JOE GENI
Who: Passionate singer-songwriter
from New York, NY.

Album: CITIES BUILT UPON CITIES
His 3rd longplayer.

An 8-track offering that traces the transformation of Long Island City, the part of
Queens that Geni calls home. Situated across the East River from Manhattan with its stunning skyline views and now booming with skyscrapers, this place is haunted by its industrial past and friends who have moved on. These recordings explore themes of change, impermanence and loss amidst the city’s constant evolution.

Photo by Alice Teeple

Joe Geni: “I lived here in 2011, when it was a totally different city, flat and industrial and grey. One time I was walking along and I heard the rhythmic thump of a distant dance party, and then the sound was gone, and then it was back again. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and so I hunted all over the neighborhood trying to find it.

Finally I realized it was on the roof of practically the only tall building for half a mile in
any direction, and the reason it kept drifting in and out of earshot depended on where I was standing and whether or not I could hear it echoing off the brick walls and corrugated siding
of the smaller buildings all around it.

Nearly all of those buildings are gone now. So are most of my friends from that time. I’m back now. The city is changing. The people in it are changing. The environment around it is changing. The architecture is changing. Yesterday’s city has been buried under today’s which will soon be lost to tomorrow’s… cities built upon cities.”

TUTV: I really like the idea of Cities Built Upon Cities. An universal sign’ of the modern times. Just google old photos of your own town and see how it looks today. Geni seems to have it done in detail with his beloved Long Island City and wrote eight affecting songs about it.

Romantic reveries with real/surreal images of the past, present and future of LIC. Bittersweet, richly orchestrated, symphonies with his monumental voice – think of Perfume Genius, Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis and James Bay‘s bewitching vocality – taking them to sky-high heights, up there in the clouds, while floating over the city. This is the kind of record you listen best to with headphones on, dimmed lights and far away from our daily rat race. It’ll evoke mixed emotions about the place you love the most. Well, that’s what I experienced while listening.

KEY SINGLE

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STREAM/BUY ALBUM

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JOE GENI: Instagram – Spotify