Artificial Go Hopscotch Fever 12″ (Feel It)
There’s no shortage of stripped-down DIY post-punk bands to choose from, old and/or new, but the ones that exude a natural, self-assured cool as if they were the only band in the universe? Those are harder to find. Nice job to Feel It then for sharing Artificial Go with us, a home-grown Cincinnati trio who make minimalist, dance-y post-punk seem like the coolest thing in the world all over again. Their music has that sort of early Au Pairs, garage-y Gang Of Four style: no reverb, no effects and the bone-driest of drums, but it’s the vocals of Angie Willcutt that push Hopscotch Fever into a must-hear affair. Willcutt’s voice bounces from sleepy to distracted to over-it to electrified, depending on the track and the mood that strikes her, and it’s a constantly compelling element. Her vocals call to mind “Guys Are Not Proud” by Anemic Boyfriends, the purr of Girl Ray and the scratch of Vivienne Styg, and on the album-opening single, “Pay Phone”, I’m getting visions of a youthful Chan Marshall fronting a garage-punk band. You either have this vocal charisma or you don’t – we can all tell when you don’t – and Willcutt immediately pulls you in for the ride, even if you tried to come up with a good excuse. Sure, post-punk as a genre is solidified and scripted at this point, and I’d imagine Artificial Go understand which influences to crib from and which to avoid, but I love this sound when it comes together perfectly, as is the case with Hopscotch Fever, one of the finest Feel It debuts in a while.
Black & White Cat Black & White Cake Black & White Cat Black & White Cake LP (Swimming Faith)
When it comes to long black-cat-centric band names that are exasperating to say out loud, it’s hard to top Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, but the newest project from the tirelessly-prolific John Toohill comes valiantly close. While clearly willing to play or program all the instruments himself if the idea strikes, Toohill is relegated to guitar in this human-drummer-deficient quintet, what could easily be classified as his “goth band” among garage-punk, surf, post-punk and proggy post-hardcore projects. If you’re onto your sixth band in as many years, and one of them isn’t goth, what are you even waiting for? True to the Swimming Faith style, this group’s self-titled full-length debut is self-recorded and sounds like it, as if the band is pumping away inside of a large cardboard box with thick towels draped on top. That’s not a disqualifying trait for underground music though, and it leads B&WCB&WC into the thorny territory of Blank Dogs, were they playing Echo & The Bunnymen songs with an aggressive, hardcore-informed stance. It’s tricky for any given song to stand out in this gloomy din, but the atmosphere is firmly established, a rainy night at a haunted hotel on a hill where all the staff stare at you motionless in their black band t-shirts. They’ve reserved you the “Unknown Pleasures” suite in the attic… good luck surviving the night!
The Brides Suburban Vermin LP (HoZac)
It’s starting to feel a little uncomfortable that eras of underground music I personally experienced first-hand are reissue fodder, if mostly because twenty years ago doesn’t feel like twenty years ago at all. What a thrilling epiphany that I am surely the first person to have! HoZac has done pretty well with their ongoing archival / reissue campaign, and this collection from Chicago’s The Brides fits the bill: raucous, youthful garage-punk that simply don’t care if you like ’em (or at least really want to make you believe they don’t care). They did a couple Rip Off Records singles in the ’90s – about as close to a hallmark of quality as you can get within the confines of Mordam distribution back then – and while nothing on Suburban Vermin sounds particularly remarkable or thrilling to my ears, it’s a satisfying trip back to the confused and anxious ’90s garage-punk underground. It’s raw, but clearly not indebted to chasing Killed By Death dreams, so much as maybe opening shows for Boris The Sprinkler and Gas Huffer and drinking all their free beer before getting chased out of the green room. Timeless and rude teenage antics, the stuff that feels like a revolution in the moment but is merely one of the countless iterations of brash and offensive white-boys causing trouble simply because they can. If you’re immune to the charms that come with it, you’re a better person than I.
Bumbo’s Tinto Brass Band V2 7″ (Bumbo)
Much like Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Bumbo’s Tinto Brass Band has an awkwardly possessive name, but I’m here for zonked-out Detroit art-punk, not overpriced tenderloin! This is their second self-released seven-inch – the two EPs comprise their entire discography thus far – and bearing six brief tracks, it’s my favorite of the two. I didn’t hear it the first time around, but there seems to be an accidental Minutemen thing happening here: post-punk-funky bass-lines (played by Bumbo himself) off of which the drums react, with jazzy little melodic guitar phrases and a confident, center-of-attention spoken-word vocal delivery. The uninhibited, party-ready vibes reflect Bumbo’s Tinto Brass Band’s Detroit home, but the music feels like the missing row of seats in a Meat Puppets / Saccharine Trust tour van circa 1985, everyone filing up their notebooks with spur-of-the-moment poetry and tie-dying the stains out of their shirts. And look, there’s Joe Carducci and Byron Coley locked arms in some sort of hoedown dance as the strange final track, “Honey Don’t”, unspools itself with guest mutterings by Asha Vida! It’s the sorta thing that Third Man Records is surely aware of but probably a little too nervous to get involved with, what with the true outsider style and lack of social-media savvy. Hopefully that last comment provides the nudge you needed to check it out for yourself.
Chat Pile Cool World LP (The Flenser)
Noise-rockers du jour Chat Pile follow their (unexpectedly) well-received debut with Cool World, delivering more gnarly Midwestern chug with confidence and panache. I wasn’t totally sold on the first one – too much second-hand embarrassment in that “Why” song, and not in a fun way – but as a fan of heavy, lumbering grooves and gluey layers of distortion, Cool World is a big greasy bowlful of the stuff. On paper, their riffs are probably as schematic as that of Metz and Idles, but the way in which they play them – either in the unwieldy, stumbling manner of Korn, the seasick swing of Lubricated Goat’s “In The Raw” or the Sabbathian groove-rock pacing of Rage Against The Machine – is immediately recognizable as Chat Pile, only a few years in. They really nail the production too, outlandishly heavy and punchy (does anyone have a Jeep with subs in the trunk that I can listen to Cool World in?), but not overly polished – the grimy residue on the guitars is rendered in high-def, far more disgusting to witness than if presented in a lo-fi blur. Vocalist Raygun Busch has the chance to make it or break it, and he does a fantastic job of giving the songs what they need, be it a full-throated holler, frothy-mouthed screaming or the quiet mutterings of a madman in his cabin, surrounded by the Feds who don’t yet realize the whole place is rigged with explosives. The songs themselves are varied in demeanor and aggression as well, sequencing slower, more melodic sections between lightless dirges and stompy nu-metal ready to warm up a metal-fest crowd for System Of A Down (see if your head ain’t banging to “Funny Man”). They should bring some of those rigged explosives to the Liquid Death-sponsored OzzFest redux they’ll inevitably be invited to play and really show those fools how it’s done!
Cicada Wicked Dream 7″ (Unlawful Assembly)
There’s a certain strain of modern hardcore that does it like this: a pogo drum beat with heavy reliance on the floor-toms opens alongside a Bone Awl-derived down-picked riff, and it skips a beat, at which point the singer appears with an anguished aough. There’s a lot of this stuff going on, and while Richmond’s Cicada open their Wicked Dream EP in precisely this manner, they strike me as more interesting, or at least more impactful, than many of their like-minded peers. I think it’s because, while much of their foundational riffage is in league with Gel and Gag, Cicada are coming from the spiky punk side of the equation, focusing on speed and sudden shifts rather than pit-worthy breakdowns. They’re playing on the same team as Electric Chair and Invertebrates, not Sunami and Scowl. And rather than do the usual overly-effected vocal thing, where a single shout echoes through waves of distortion, the vocalist performs a faithful remake of Sakevi’s Detestation style, an evil guttural growl that works well over this spastic hardcore punk. (The EP ends with the band clapping and cheering, which would’ve been the perfect time for him to mimic Sakevi’s “bye bye!” at the end of “Endless Blockades”. Maybe next time!) I’d say this sort of ugly, Japanese-inspired hardcore belongs on a one-sided flexi, but it turns out they beat me to it – Cicada’s three-song demo was reissued earlier this year in flexi form on Total Peace. Real punks know what to do!
Citric Dummies Trapped In A Parking Garage 7″ (Feel It)
You can’t leave these Citric Dummies alone for five seconds without them getting into trouble! This time we find our heroes unable to escape a parking garage mere moments after stuffing themselves on Arby’s, the basis of the two a-side tracks on this new seven-inch for Feel It. This is the silly side of real-people punk, reflecting the same mundane crap whose motions we all find ourselves unconsciously going through here in the US of A, giving us a moment to laugh at ourselves in order to cover up the tears that should be flowing instead. I really enjoyed their last LP, Zen And The Arcade Of Beating Your Ass, which crammed Misfits-y hooks into twice-the-speed songs, but this new four-song ripper is “whoa-oh” free, too agitated to do anything but shout their common complaints over fast-paced garage-punk blasts. These tunes take a similar updated-Ramones riff mentality as Dark Thoughts and rip the muffler off, Dwarves-style, for frantic yet poppy punk that would whip even the boredest crowd into a frenzy. It’s a Dwarves you can feel good about, though – songs like “Driving A Piece of Shit” and “Sit At Home And Die” aren’t geared to show you how woke they are, thank goodness, but rather express these sincere slices of life with relatability and an appealing sense of humor, calling out the nonsense everyone else seems resigned to ignore. Even in this time of unimaginable tumult and horror, Citric Dummies need to speak their truth on “Sit At Home And Die”, and speak it they shall: other bands suck!
CS + Kreme The Butterfly Drinks The Tears Of The Tortoise LP (The Trilogy Tapes)
Even including the good stuff, it often can feel like we’ve heard it all before, so I always relish a new CS + Kreme release, confident that at the very least it will be something I certainly haven’t heard before. The Aussie post-experimental duo never repeat themselves, but a line can be traced through all their records, if not an entirely straight one. The Butterfly Drinks The Tears Of The Tortoise is their third full-length, and will probably end up being referred to as their “guitar record”, unless of course they bring in Scott Ian for their next one and blow this out of the water. Acoustic guitars are prominent throughout, often laid exquisitely bare but never untouched – part of the CS + Kreme process seems to be wiping down every last sound with something unexpected or otherworldly. While the guitar is a prominent figure, there’s still plenty left-of-left-field sound-design happening, be it the metallic tinkle of a ratchet, chopped-up auto-tune vocals, Graham Lambkin-esque frequencies or mind-tricking effects. The music of CS + Kreme calls to mind the secret sonic pulses mushrooms send back and forth to each other, dog whistles, whale song… sounds that elude the typical human umwelt yet vibrate all around us. This is what they’d sound like if played by humans on the instruments available to humans. “Fly Care” is precisely what I’m talking about: slippery melodic drones and sputtering pulsations coincide with an unintuitive melodic solo of unknown digital origin, the mating call of whatever avian-cyborg species replaces homo sapiens a thousand years from now.
Feeling Figures Everything Around You LP (K / Perennial)
Montreal’s Feeling Figures continue to explore any and all facets of underground guitar-band music on their second full-length, Everything Around You. It feels like they’d be a group Kurt Cobain would’ve repped on a t-shirt in 1989: aggressive but not masculine, defiant yet melodic, a band that is clearly not beholden to commercialism but might surprise you with a pop nugget that should excite the faceless masses were they sharp enough to receive it. Maybe it’s because that Love Child reissue is still kicking around my turntable, but I can imagine a kinship with Love Child and how they did it, covering all sorts of styles within the gravitational pull of classic indie-rock (even nearly hardcore-punk?) with as many band members singing as they want… they’ll throw a weird little proggy moment in that has me thinking of Home Blitz or even Henry Cow just as soon as they’ll plod out a Velvets-y choogle that requires less than ten fingers per band member to pull off. Violent Change are as similarly scatterbrained when it comes to songwriting, but Feeling Figures opt for a more traditional sonic route, easy-listening for anyone who likes their easy-listening a little scuffed up. At only four members, Feeling Figures are downright minimalist by Canadian indie metrics, but who knows, maybe they’ll get a tambourinist and an auxiliary synth player soon enough? Could we handle such an endless combination of possible Feeling Figures songs?
Gyeongsu & June All To None 12″ (Deardogs)
Stir up those autumnal feelings with some lazy-hazy ’90s-inspired alt-rock-lite from France. Gyeongsu & June remind me of a time when coffee shops had big disgusting brown couches and a pegboard with local flyers, not antsy Doordash deliverers hogging the bathroom key, so if you want to slide back into those semi-fabricated memories, “Scarlet”, the first cut off this twelve-inch EP, is a great place to start. It’s like if Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries wrote the theme for a sitcom based on Amélie. “Faces” chills even harder, a couple of 4AD-soaked guitars wandering a lonesome path that has me imagining Carla dal Forno materializing in the vocal booth right as Oasis laid down “Cast No Shadow”. The vibe continues on the title track with cool European guitar-work and vocals that pull you in close, still feeling like a Cranberries high on early Modern English and scampering through cobblestone streets after dark. Closing track “Lead To Curse” opens with a few minutes of a pleasantly fuzzy pulse, like shoegaze with only gaze, no shoes, but it eventually configures itself into its final form, slow-core trip-hop that will have the kids making TikToks at a previously unheard-of caliber. The throwback signifiers are clear, but the final concoction is fresh and almost unbearably hip. Go on, play it for your friends and pretend you heard it in some after-hours lounge in the fifth arrondissement, not on some old man’s web blog.
Некројаготки Вештице 12″ (Опачина)
Turn off your brain, you won’t need it where we’re headed! Outsider Macedonian label Опачина continues to share its crude and noisy visions with the rest of the world care of its most perplexing release yet, a one-sided twelve-inch vinyl reissue of a 1992 cassette release from Macedonia’s Некројаготки (which translates to “Necrostrawberries”, I’m told). Somehow, the gleefully unlistenable vibes brought about by Meat Shits, A.C., Napalm Death, Testicle Bomb and Final Exit in the early ’90s found likeminded souls in Macedonia, the Necrostrawberries themselves. Rather than full-on gore-grind noise-core blasts, Некројаготки play around with form and style, often mocking other forms of music (funk and glam metal, for instance) by playing their own sloppy, terrible versions of it, sampling long stretches of cartoons direct from the TV, or doling out some charmingly rudimentary crusty d-beat hardcore. It’s a perfectly understandable reaction to a self-serious, pro-‘tude underground from a land mostly ignored by the rest of the world, but the part that I struggle to grasp is why Опачина decided this needed to be resurrected from its decades-old cassette grave and pressed on vinyl here and now. I’d say the audience is limited, but that feels like an understatement – there might actually be a negative number of people out there who want to buy this record, sit down and listen to it. It simply does not get more anti-commercial than this particular venture right here, so by that criteria alone, two thumbs up for Опачина.
Jabu A Soft And Gatherable Star LP (Do You Have Peace?)
There’s an unmistakably British form of weary, grey-skied anomie that hits so well when it comes to depressive dream-pop that I don’t know why groups from other nations even try. You simply can’t match the low-level misery that’s baked deep into the crust of the best classic United Kingdom 4AD groups, and Bristol’s Jabu are the newest example of how artistically rich this dour form of underground music can be. Opener “Oceanside Spider House” is almost over-the-top in its Cocteau Twins similarities, the crystalline vocals of Jasmine Butt (huhuh) cascading over drums programmed at the slowest possible speed and chorus/flange guitar the colors of an oil spill. The rest of the record isn’t quite as directly referential, as the song-form drifts into hazier, drearier territory, rain-dappled loops taking precedence over verses and choruses in a way that is distinctly Bristolian. (I can’t help but think of the sprawlingly creative Young Echo crew and their various ventures like O$VMV$M, of whom Jabu’s Amos Childs is, get this, also a member. It’s all making sense now!) “Sea Mills” is a standout, as it blends the experimental approach you’d find on a Blackest Ever Black or Stroom release with late ’80s goth-pop, like Anna Domino putting her phone on silent and listening to the first couple Black Tape For A Blue Girl albums on repeat. Yet even so, A Soft And Gatherable Star doesn’t sound like a cross-breeding of influences so much as a strange new goth music that our times demand; somber, elusive, smart and sensual.
Jay Glass Dubs Resurgence LP (Sundial)
Been a minute since I sat down with a new Jay Glass Dubs record – the Greek producer’s exquisitely danked-out records were a mainstay of my immediately-pre-pandemic listening regimen – and boy am I glad I did! Seems he stepped back from the flurry of activity he was kicking up in the late ’10s, but maybe he was just saving all the best stuff for Resurgence, an absolute stunner of mystical narcoleptronics. The moods he conjures are mysterious, heavy-lidded and serene, soothing isolation-tank vibes if the tank was floating through the dwindling hours of either a goth club night or a dub soundclash depending on the particular record. It’s probably not the trickiest sound to conjure up, but I swear to you, Jay Glass Dubs operates on the highest level, finding the perfect balance of reverberated rhythms, haunting ambient flutter and unconventional percussive elements. “Arbitrary” sounds like you’re deep into a trance listening to Gas’s Königsforst when Valentina Magaletti steps out of the shadows and lays into some trippy percussive phrasing. That comparison should be enough to sell you on Resurgence (or at least have you pull it up for free on Spotify like some sort of gauche freeloader), but the whole album is this satisfying. “Don Lenti” and “Laguna” are the closest thing to the Rhythm & Sound school of dub here (check those time-elapse horns on “Laguna”, mmmm), only shredded and stretched like a cosmic mozzarella stick. “Swint” comes last and might actually be my favorite cut of the bunch – if you managed to make it through the rest of the album upright, a fully horizontal position becomes unavoidable from the closing minutes of this calming dub smear.
Junior Loves Redriff / Piper 32 12″ (5 Gate Temple)
I will always check out something new on John T. Gast’s fascinating 5 Gate Temple label, unless it’s like, a USB keychain release or deleted dubplate or something impossible like that (though honestly, if you have any 5 Gate Temple deleted dubplates, let’s work out a trade). Junior Loves is a perfect artist for the label, in that his identity is only ever partially revealed – in this case, the artist’s Instagram features more pictures of hand-built cabinetry and shelving than club selfies or promotional flyers. I’ll have to locate some of his earlier records (which, based on the impenetrable nature of this scene, are selling for either £2 or £200), as these three tracks of aggressively digital dub have me pulling my thickest hoodie up over my head. “Redriff” is an ice-cold stepper that calls to mind the fiercer side of Y2K-era IDM, not drill n’ bass but punctuated with a similar aggression. “Piper 32” you can slink into, dystopian digi-dub with a persistent low-end and Final Fantasy synth leads, but “End Cut” might be my favorite of the bunch, quite similar to “Piper 32” in mood and presentation but with wilder percussion and a cryptic Jahtari sound, tailored for the puzzle room of any pyramid crypt. One person shouldn’t be this talented at crafting both bespoke hardwood joinery and underground digi-tech steppers, yet Junior Loves walks among us.
Mexican Coke Mexican Coke 12″ (Convulse)
One-upmanship has always played a role in hardcore, with earlier generations focusing on sonic extremes: shorter, faster, louder, scarier, realer or heavier, just for starters. Nowadays, it seems that the focus has shifted from song to vibe, a circumstance that this twelve-inch EP from Houston’s Mexican Coke perfectly exemplifies. From fan-shot Instagram clips to formal music videos with some sort of production budget, Mexican Coke made their name on live visuals, seeing as they arrive at any scene with black ski-masks and authentic intimidation in the form of brazen firearm flashing, on stage and off. Maybe it’s a Texas tradition (Gibby Haynes firing shotgun blanks into the Lollapalooza crowd is a YouTube must-watch), but Mexican Coke take things further than the large number of hardcore bands who make fearsome menace an integral part of their aesthetic. The music seems to enhance the vibe rather than command it: besides the intro and outro, these songs are kind of interchangeable Gag/Bib/Hoax-core, burly down-picked stomps that offer little variation from each other, with vocals slathered in death-metal effects to the point of obliteration. Sonically, it’s a whole lot like fellow Houston unit Sexpill, though Sexpill’s sound is weirder, heavier and more uniquely memorable. Mexican Coke seem a lot more likely to blast me in half with a sawed-off shotgun, though, so if the quality of “which band would literally end my life” is a determining factor, get your last will and testament notarized and then head over to the Mexican Coke show.
Pablo’s Eye The Light Was Sharp, Our Eyes Were Open LP (Stroom)
Stroom introduced me to Brussels-based collective Pablo’s Eye with Spring Break, a collection of their ’90s material released in 2018. I found myself throwing on this subdued, left-field sort of trip-hop / spoken-word / downtempo-electronics assemblage all the time, so the discovery that they’re somehow still a fully-operational contemporary act tickled me like bros at the gym when DraftKings sends them a bonus twenty-dollar parlay for the weekend. The Light Was Sharp, Our Eyes Were Open is similar in mood yet different in execution to Spring Break: across fourteen fairly short tracks (shorter than your average Fugazi track, let’s say), synths hum and warble as Marie Mandi reads the poetry of bandmate Richard Skinner in a direct deadpan, as if she’s either hypnotizing you or herself. The ninth track, “The Deep Dark Days Of September”, is the first time we settle into any form of the rhythmic, late-nite Balearic sexual healing I heard on Spring Break – think The Beloved’s “The Sun Rising” without the pop fragrance – as most tracks tend to hover in low-light, more cinematic than danceable. It really works for current-day Pablo’s Eye, and while I hate to call anything “Lynchian” if I don’t really mean it, this music seems to focus on whatever is happening off-screen rather than on, though in Pablo’s Eye’s case, it’s a horny skin-flick on HBO circa 1996 turned Icelandic cerebral thriller, not Twin Peaks. Whatever it is, you won’t hear anything else like it, which is more or less the seal of authenticity you can expect from Stroom.
Pearson Sound Which Way Is Up 12″ (Hessle Audio)
Hessle Audio’s post-dubstep king returns to the label he co-founded, maintaining his extremely reasonable “once every two years” approach to EPs. Works for me! Leave the mediocre stuff on the cutting room floor and drop a fresh, high-quality twelve-inch every even-numbered year since 2018 and I’ll be here for you. Which Way Is Up flexes Pearson Sound’s rhythmic muscle – one of his finest qualities, I’d say – but this time around, there’s more playfulness to the proceedings than I’d have come to expect. Maybe he’s been palling around with Joe? “Hornet” probably gets its title from the ever present stereo-panned whine, more Charlotte Hornets mascot than invasive killer, bumping up against b-boy effects and clean-eating beats. “Twister” goes harder and faster, with a tense snare pattern, gluey bass and high-pitched percussive samples to soundtrack any getaway chase. “Slingshot” is all silky bass and a reclined rhythm – the soundtrack for counting your stacks following the proceeding getaway chase – whereas the title track initially recedes from Pearson Sound’s imposing percussive storms, a moment of clarity before the deepest bass wobble of the EP stumbles into a cab. Don’t take me home yet, what other clubs are still open?
Pharmakon Maggot Mass LP (Sacred Bones)
On her fifth Sacred Bones full-length, New York’s Pharmakon continues to writhe in the organic muck like a child in a ball-pit. There’s a formality to Pharmakon albums that I find very appealing – rather than release every other rehearsal on a limited tape, Pharmakon albums are comparatively infrequent and feel more like an “event” than more new crap on a merch table. Each album offers its own unique thesis, expertly crafted to bludgeon and frighten, always enhanced by starkly personal visuals and concepts to accompany the industrial noise. Maggot Mass is a harrowing and intense admonition of humanity’s failure, and I can’t say she’s wrong! Of course, a theme falls limp if the music is mediocre, but Maggot Mass might be my favorite Pharmakon material yet. The album is anchored around these massive, disgusting bass riffs, either on bass-guitar or synth, heavier and meaner than even the ugliest doom-metal bands. Pharmakon even kinda “sings” on some of these tracks, her vocals never more present and grueling than here, and the harsh metal-on-metal scrape is pungent and punishing. I’m reminded of Wolf Eyes circa Dead Hills and Chicago’s HOGG, though neither ever got this heavy – Pharmakon is only ever competing with herself, really. “Oiled Animals” is the closest I’ve heard anyone get to Swans circa Filth as far as desolate, gut-punching industrial rock is concerned, and “Splendid Isolation” sounds like Emptyset kicking the crap out of Throbbing Gristle’s “Hamburger Lady”. Humans are a terrible species, it’s true, but I’d love to see an iguana or an otter make a noise record this good!
Raynerfromfinance An Intro To Truffle101 12″ (Truffle101)
Truffle101 is a new label coming from Berlin run by DJ posse LazySusan (aka 2StepBec, Zeus and their British chum Oliver.r), though the amusing moniker of “Raynerfromfinance” is Oliver.r’s doing. When crews run thick like this, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if they all got to throw in their two cents (pence?) each, particularly as An Intro To Truffle101 is a smorgasbord of cheeky Balearic fun, sensuous elevator muzak, spa-resort dub and new-age jazz. It seems like lots of cratedigging vinyl nuts have run out of obscure private-press dazzlers to unearth, so they’ve taken to crafting the music of their dreams themselves – this might be how we ended up with “Dystopian Mr. Miles”, which melds Mille Plateaux-style IDM-ambient with “Careless Whisper”-informed sax. “Crazy” is like an AliExpress form of instrumental Sade; “Imaginova” goes fuzzy bossa-nova for a couple of Gen X lovebirds from a Hal Hartley movie, whereas “Tokyo Dreaming” slips those characters under the covers for the first time. The vibes are palpable and exquisitely tailored, Raynerfromfinance having clearly crafted a record that he would’ve lost his mind over had he found it in a musty cardboard box under the priced used records in some sleepy record shop. Truffle101 is doing a decent job of keeping the tracks offline, so that you too might stumble upon its pleasures in its physical form too. How excited can you get discovering an MP3?
Reymour NoLand LP (Knekelhuis)
Belgian-Swiss duo Reymour stick with the great Knekelhuis label for their third twelve-inch record, clearly a case of cool recognizing cool. Reymour are all icy-hot dub-disco post-punk, big oval sunglasses and leopard-print fur coat two sizes too big. They prefer space-aged synth squiggles to guitars, coat their deliberately-sparse drum machines in wet reverb, and work with bass-lines that are certain to enhance any dance-floor with their mysterious intrigue. NoLand confirms their shared sensibilities with Anika and Antena, and probably Young Marble Giants to some degree as well, though Reymour’s penchant for sensual chanson places them in the curved leather booth in the back of a late-night café rather than the wooden desk and chair of a public library. This sort of sound is inherently appealing to my ears, but also prone to exhaustion if done the exact same certain way that most people do it, which is why I appreciate the variety of songwriting and instrumentation that Reymour throw into it. “Documentary” still sounds like them, for example, but if you told me it was a Happy Mondays cover, I wouldn’t doubt you for a second. And they follow that up with the mischievous waltz of “Sans Éveil”, a totally different vibe… NoLand benefits from its sequencing and playful contrasts. At fourteen tracks, it’s a hefty chunk of music, but this is a rare case of excellent value, not gratuitous overkill.
Shackleton & Six Organs Of Admittance Jinxed By Being 2xLP (Drag City)
I feel like that Vince McMahon meme with each successive Shackleton collaboration as of late. Holy Tongue? Six Organs Of Admittance?? What’s next: Bad Brains? Benny Benassi, Stevie Nicks??? That Holy Tongue collab / reworking is a tough Shackleton release to beat in 2024, though his pairing with cryptozoological guitar-conjurer Ben Chasny doesn’t compete with anything besides the secrets deep within its own metaphysical navel. When Chasny’s vocals are in the mix, it’s particularly creepy – this must be what Comus dreamt of at night, some sort of Babadook peeking out of inter-dimensional portals, ready to nibble upon your soul. They balance those moments of Sun City Girls-esque supernatural horror with dreamy passages of languid guitars and soft-ambient synths, tranquil sand dunes separating beast-filled waters. “Stages Of Capitulation”, for example, has me considering that Dylan Carlson and Richie Hawtin might actually share more similar artistic viewpoints than not, so righteously does it meld solemn guitar and soothing electronic production. The back to back fright of “The Sign Of The Dove” and “Electric Storm” has me checking under my bed before I turn off the lights though, not wanting to end up the victim of some arcane fairytale too morbid for Grimm to write. Shackleton and Six Organs Of Admittance need to release the magical antidote to Jinxed By Being before it’s too late!
Shirese Hardly Cricket LP (C/Site Recordings / Grapefruit)
Much like Feeling Figures, Connecticut’s Shirese are a versatile rock ensemble, unbounded by stuffy genre guidelines or prevailing trends. They’ve got nearly a million tapes and records out now, the personnel shifting and loosely assembled around vocalist and band-leader Matt Paolilo, and while I’ve only heard a handful of their vinyl full-lengths thus far, they don’t show any signs of songwriter fatigue or quantity for quantity’s sake. Hardly Cricket is their newest, and leans on the classic-rock dial, guitars finding time to bear resemblance to Loaded-era VU, the dual firecracking of Thin Lizzy and the adorable stumble of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, all on the same record (though usually not on the same song). I get that Pavement and The Velvet Underground are two giant tentpoles of underground rock, so towering as to practically be rendered meaningless as signifiers, but I sweat that Shirese doesn’t just follow the motions, they seem to possess that same inherent spark of magic that transcends simple jangly melodies from regular old songs like the aforementioned legends. It’s all over the place as usual, and not all of it hits for me – the ’50s sock-hop vibes of “Red Cent” is my least favorite Shirese moment to date – but opener “New Music” thrills with wildly unselfconscious Jonathan Richman joy, “Sacred Heart” makes you think you’re living in the same sweet reality as The Adventures Of Pete & Pete, and “Arguing” is intrepid garage in the manner of The Original Sins. An abundance of rock value well worth the price of admission.
Nala Sinephro Endlessness LP & 12″ (Warp)
Every year, there’s one popular experimental album where the vinyl sells out before you find out about it – it seems like Nala Sinephro’s debut Space 1.8 held that title in 2021. The Caribbean-Belgian composer’s follow-up was due to have lots of eyes on it, and I can’t imagine any pre-existing fans have been disappointed by Endlessness. In fact, it almost feels like it was grown in a lab to satisfy each and every Pitchfork-jazz type, so perfect is its on-trend synthesis of long-form string composition, spiritual jazz and space-aged electronics. The hipsters are screen-printing a million different Alice Coltrane shirts right now for a reason, and the music of Nala Sinephro has quickly found a similar spot in the bins of dabblers, dilettantes and poseurs across the globe. If this feels like a diss (and I guess it kind of is), please be assured that you can count me in those ranks as well, as if there’s any sonic or aesthetic fault within Endlessness, I haven’t been able to find it. Sinephro is exquisite in the way she’ll pull a soothing drone out like saltwater taffy, dub-techno pads slowly rising and receding, giving way to heavenly brass and keys as percussion locks into form ala Natural Information Society or explodes outward like Irreversible Entanglements. If anything, I would savor the chance to hear Nala Sinephro do something less blatantly crowd-pleasing – after all, the original spiritual/free/experimental jazz masters weren’t following blueprints so much as carving uncharted sonic paths with no guarantee of financial support or even critical acclaim, and there’s no denying Sinephro’s abundant talent to pull off whatever she wants. But for now, there’s Endlessness, sophisticated, delectable, and almost eerily algorithm-pleasing.
Alan Sparhawk White Roses, My God LP (Sub Pop)
Having lost his wife and decades-long musical partner Mimi Parker in 2022, fans, friends and onlookers of beloved slow-core pioneers Low expressed their overwhelming sympathy towards Alan Sparhawk, and understandably so. It’s a loss that can only be grasped if it’s happened to you as well, and as one of the few shining beacons of underground integrity, both logistically and creatively, it feels like the whole world is on Low and Sparhawk’s side. It’s with that framing that I’d imagine most people have greeted White Roses, My God, an extreme electronic outlier in Sparhawk’s catalog, and presumably a one-off dalliance rather than the establishing of some intentional new direction. Low’s final album Hey What pushed in bold new maximalist directions for guitar production, but White Roses was created and performed entirely on Sparhawk’s son’s (and son’s friends’) synths and drum machines, and it certainly bears the hallmarks of that younger generation. The beats are the familiar form of trap-lite one might associate with Playboi Carti and Future, the synths a simplified take on PC Music’s squeaky-glossy sound, and perhaps most jarringly, Sparhawk’s vocals are pitch-shifted to vocoder-chipmunk form, a style 100 Gecs brought to prominence (or at least stubborn popular acceptance). The grief roiling within Sparhawk is undeniable, so the disconnect between the fully synthesized sounds and his emotional state is jarring and unexpected: on “Project 4 Ever” you can feel his heart leaping out of his chest, even if it’s transmitting through the thick glowing Gorilla Glass of an iPad.
Split System Vol. 1 LP (Goner)
Melbourne’s Split System are already up to Vol. 2, and probably working on Vol. 3, but Goner recognizes a garage-punk sensation when they see it, so why not press it up for American audiences hungry for the stuff? Take me, for example: Split System weren’t previously on my radar and I often feel like I’m drowning in a sea of modern Aussie punk. They have a very particular set of skills – namely, merging Eddy Current-indebted guitar riffs with Hank Wood’s vocal delivery – and it’s pretty darn stellar! While I cannot speak to the creative circumstances that led them to this particular sonic combination, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t directly set out to rip off two of the 21st century’s garage-punk greats, but came across these catchy, easygoing riffs and the choppy vocal dispatch on their own, as snug together as a domestic beer in a Goner koozie. They do a great job of sounding more like a squad or a gang than a band, locked in and operating hand-in-hand with each other, knowing full well they’ve cooked up a great batch of songs and enjoying the earned cockiness that comes along with it. Can’t help but be reminded of OBN III’s as well, as they’re both that rare form of band who generally sounds like the rest of the bill they’re on, yet even though they’re playing second out of five, they’re the one the crowd remembers best the next morning. My favorite Goner release in a minute!
Tabor Mountain Twilight Apologies LP (Related)
Isn’t it kind of strange how so many awkward outsider weirdos got into playing soft-rock in the last decade or so? I wonder what that’s about… perhaps it’s, in our social-media drenched mindset, everyone knows they can’t really shock anyone anymore – what’s the point in jumping off the roof into a dumpster when some other guy is jumping off a higher roof into a filthier dumpster five minutes later? Those thrills aren’t thrilling anymore, but there’s definitely a comfort in retreating to the harmless soft-rock new-wave pop we remembered hearing as children, if even indirectly, and after all, any music can be fun to play if it’s good. Patrick Tabor has been operating as Tabor Mountain for a while – he’s one of the folks I’m talking about – and you can put me in his corner. Twilight Apologies is feel-good pop with a strange aftertaste, like an unopened bag of Runts from the ’90s consumed today. I’m reminded of Ariel Pink, had he set his sights on Survivor, Journey and REO Speedwagon and pretended his bedroom was the finest digital studio you could buy in 1984. We know who those three groups are because they wrote some absolutely gargantuan hooks, and while Tabor Mountain hasn’t necessarily delivered its own chunk of twenty-four karat AM gold, Twilight Apologies is a strong and entertaining effort, the kind of album that sounds good on first go-around and only gets better from there. Not sure if any of my readers like to wear spandex unitards and denim vests while doing bicep curls as they scheme to seek revenge against the local bullies / two-timing ex / greedy factory owner / corrupt police chief in their lives, but if so, boy have I got a record for you.
Toribio Bring Dat Jazz 12″ (BDA)
Trying to make it a thing where every time I’m in Detroit, I swing by People’s Records and pick up some new dance single off the new-arrivals wall. I decided to go with this one when I was in town last month, based on the song title “Jazz Misconduct”, the James Vinciguerra-esque lettering and the fact that Sam Wilkes is featured on a track, and People’s did not lead me astray. Cesár Toribio is actually from Brooklyn, but Bring Dat Jazz is bursting with the soulful and passionate house sound I associate with Moodymann. “Bumples” is full of Detroit flavor led by wild, proggy horns, with tight live-band arrangements repurposed for parking-lot sound-systems. “My Humps” is as lush as Theo Parrish taking the brunch shift, jazzy house that would be ripe for some g-funk rapping if the beat ever furrowed its brow. And that’s the b-side! Opener “Jazz Misconduct” snaps and clicks with elegantly funky bass runs, more of that dizzying horn-play and an off-kilter strut that Kyle Hall would appreciate. “Mr. T (Toribio Edit)” is the track featuring bassist Sam Wilkes and it’s the least jazzy of the bunch, colorful 8-bit sounding synths popping off in the direction of vapor-wave. It’s cool, and part of the reason I picked up Bring Dat Jazz in the first place, but my soul is so fully nourished by the other three cuts that I’m almost too content and peaceful, if only for a moment.
Wake In Fright Around Every Corner EP 7″ (Police)
“Wake In Fright” has to be the name of a horror movie – it’s a Uniform album title, of that I’m certain – but I’m not into scaring myself on purpose, so I’m refusing to investigate further. I was prepared to find something grisly and harrowing on this record, but the band Wake In Fright is a stately indie-punk trio out of Portland, ME, far more suited to the role of heroes than monsters. The tight, snappy rock they’re ripping through here exudes the same underdog chutzpah of Ted Leo and Chisel at their finest, taking starting cues from Elvis Costello and The Jam and giving it that American DIY kick in the pants. Vocalist/guitarist Micah Blue Smaldone was in Boston hardcore stalwarts Out Cold back in the day, before cutting out on his own in the American-primitive acoustic scene, and Wake In Fright feels like another successful back-to-basics reset, a classic guitar/bass/drums trio that can fit all their crap in a station wagon and conquer the continental forty-eight one corner-bar venue at a time. On this EP, you get four solid, buttoned-up and buoyant rockers. There’s never a bad time for a new anti-cop song, and “Good Cop Bad Cop” is going to have the blue-lives morons slinking off to the bathroom in defeat. If it doesn’t have you spilling your pint glass in righteous agreement, what are you even doing at a Wake In Fright show in the first place?
Way Dynamic Duck LP (Spoilsport)
There’s a subset of the Australian indie underground that’s full of rainbows, stuffed animals and picnics, one that seems remarkably, almost suspiciously happy in 2024. I’d file Melbourne’s Way Dynamic accordingly (and on some bright piece of primary-colored construction paper), so pleasantly unworried are the songs of Duck. The album title and cover drawing could’ve been rendered by children, which is a fitting setting for these songs, ripe for broadcast on a left-of-center children’s TV show. That’s certainly the vibe, and while I suppose there are probably some kids out there perfectly content with the simplicity of Raffi, Way Dynamic’s tunes are quite sophisticated, full of varied instrumentation and cool little tricks: a ridiculous bass-line here, lush keys there, Lehmann Smith guesting on clarinet and bass-clarinet as needed. Think Brian Wilson’s lust for pop perfection brought back to earth by Randy Newman’s silliness and Christopher Cross’s knack for an original melody that already feels familiar. The attention to detail is undeniable, each song given plenty of space (and a wide range of instrumentation) to bring every darkened corner into full technicolor sunshine. Your enjoyment may hinge on exactly how uncynical and cheerful you’re feeling; give me Duck on a bad day and I’m throwing it out the window, but the next time I get a less-than-cost-of-living salary increase or clean colonoscopy report, remind me to pull out Duck to help celebrate.
Milan W. Leave Another Day LP (Stroom)
Milan Warmoeskerken is a favored name around these pages, having released a couple of fantastic low-key IDM / inner-searching ambient records, ones that seemed too restless to abide by clean aesthetic boundaries. You can’t go wrong with Stroom on their worst day, so I was eager to peep Milan W.’s newest, Leave Another Day. Much to my sincere surprise, it sounds almost exactly like Kurt Vile circa his first couple Matador albums! Leave Another Day is dragged cosmic cowboy blues, the same sort of hound-dog-in-outer-space vibe you get from Kurt Vile all by his lonesome. Check “All The Way” and “Face To Face” and tell me you don’t immediately hear it, from the lilting, gauzy vocal to the string arrangement and drearily spacious atmosphere. Now, I’m not saying Milan W. is ripping off Mr. Vile – in fact, I’d guess it’s more likely that neither artist is aware of the other – and that’s part of what makes this album so fun, the unintended coincidence of it all, which often happens when these techno/electronic-centric producer folks venture out into the world of rock music (or, occasionally, vice versa). Milan W. does a fine job with it, regardless of Vile’s existence, his songs densely-layered but never overstuffed, inflected with shimmering stardust or goth-ish pomp as needed. If this takes us one step closer to Kurt Vile’s IDM record, I’m gonna order a second copy.
Cute band alert: hailing from the sleepy burg of Brussels, Another Dancer make their debut on the anything-goes Bruit Direct label. Their take on indie-rock is artsy and inquisitive, shifting in sonic palette but unwavering in congeniality. It calls to my mind the Night People label, back when they’d release these homespun lo-fi bands (or “bands”) that pieced together cheap synths/drum machines, fragile guitars and their own high-pitched voices in personalized, underground takes on Brian Wilson’s oeuvre. I’ve got a few of those Night People records, and while the thick polyvinyl picture-disc sleeves those records came in hazed up the records considerably, Another Dancer’s music is mostly haze- and distortion-free. They’ll throw in a rhythm-box groove for dancing, some soft little guitars for campfire strumming, and anyone in the band who feels courageous enough to sing is given the chance. I’d also compare it to some of the Vermont pop pleasures that revolved around Ruth Garbus and Chris Weisman a decade ago, Animal Collective two decades ago, or more contemporarily speaking, Feeble Little Horse right this very moment. There’s an unmistakable European-ness to Another Dancer that won’t be found in the American artists I mentioned, though – they’re out there in cobblestone courtyard cafés drinking their adorable six-ounce beers and not really having jobs, not living in fear of getting shot and hit by cars and being billed directly by the ambulance company like we are over here. 
The underground tunnel that connects New York City and Brisbane hasn’t been cleaned in decades, so it makes sense that groups like The Art Gray Noizz Quintet and Gravel Samwidge would eventually encounter each other there. Each band has developed their own takes on fine-aged scuzz-punk, as documented on this split single. The Art Gray Noizz Quintet, led by the illustrious Stuart Gray, refuse to slink into the comfort of (elder-)middle age, conjuring more NYC-as-swamp noise-rock with “Relief”. Served with extra sleaze care of Nikki D’Agostino’s sax, this is what I’d imagine plays in the background as Lydia Lunch makes a random man cry outside the club. Gravel Samwidge are far less metropolitan; this is music not for the lounge-lizards leaving the bar at 6:00 AM but the laborers starting their shifts pouring concrete across the street. There’s some stoner-y bounce to the chorus, and the undeniable sense of its Australian origins, all hairy forearms and sunburnt faces. Get these two groups together on an uninhabited island with some building supplies and a few cases of liquor and it’s gonna become the next million-dollar hipster enclave in a year, I can all but guarantee it.
Grab a hammer – First LP! is yet another nail in the egg-punk coffin. A solo recording-project turned hired-gun live band (as seems to always be the case these days), Autobahns is the work of Leipzig’s Giuliano Iannarella, and he followed the egg-punk rules as if they were an IKEA instruction manual. Super-fast drumming with airtight rolls; weak-on-purpose guitar-tone that warbles out Chuck Berry riffs at three times the speed; thrift-store synth effects; vocals with just enough modulation as to sound like they were recorded in a flying saucer. “Telephone Freakos” is a prime example of this overly prevalent punk style, because I’d say that on its face, it’s a cool punk song were it to exist in a vacuum, but every aspect of its structure and presentation, from the intermittent guitar strums to the Space Invaders synth effects to the hyperactive drumbeat and goose-y vocals… when you package that with a cartoon cover that looks like it was done with the same marker as The Coneheads’ first album (which they also named “LP1”), it’s like Autobahns and the dozens of other copycats out there should have to pay an aesthetic licensing fee to Mark Winter in order to legally make records like this. There’s really nothing wrong with the music here – if you simply want to hear more caffeinated, DEVO-inspired punk from a nerd in his room, First LP! will set you up nicely – but another permutation of this calculated, trendy sound leaves me as weary, sore and headachey as the newest Moderna shot. 
Hopes were not high when I pulled this record out of its cardboard mailer. Just glance at that Hey Arnold!-ass punk on the cover, looking like he just got back from his terrible Euro edge-core band practice working on a failed cover of “Can’t Close My Eyes” in 2005! Upon further inspection, Bad Anxiety are from Hattiesburg, MS, one of the most vibrant small-town punk scenes in the US, and there are ten songs on this seven-inch, which of course is another very good sign. Maybe I need to apologize to that cartoon punk on the cover (okay, no I don’t, I still really hate him) as it turns out Bad Anxiety rips! It’s the solo project of Hampton Martin, prominent member of both Big Bleach and Judy & The Jerks, and he whips up a youthful frenzy all by his lonesome here. The music is fast and frantic, and the delivery is snotty and immature, so it starts to feel like Angry Samoans playing Neos songs. It flails, falls over, gets back up, topples into the audience, accidentally unplugs itself and cartwheels out the window, usually in under half a minute. “Hardcore” might be the best song about loving hardcore since 25 Ta Life’s “Hardcore Rules”, and I thank Bad Anxiety for it. A good friend of mine did a solo project called Slogan Boy years before the current Slogan Boy existed (a Discogs Cheapo if there ever was one!), and Bad Anxiety reminds me of that OG Slogan Boy EP, just as likable and yet I don’t have the pleasure of knowing Hampton Martin personally at all. Now all he needs to do is draw the punk from this cover getting brutally vivisected on the cover of his next EP and I’ll be at peace. 
There’s an odd constant that runs through many of my cheery memories related to Philly’s guitar-centric underground: Chris Forsyth. How many times over the past few years have I been at a great show or a friendly post-show hang and there he is, wearing a funny hat that looks good on him, or laying in the grass with a beer, or telling an animated story to mutual friends, or on stage, casually ripping on guitar. I could fill this little write-up with more admiration and appreciation for the man, but then I’d be wasting my chance to tell you about his very excellent new group, BASIC. It’s probably his most “experimental” project since Peeesseye, in that it fuses a variety of rock’s left-field loose-ends into something both weird, cohesive and new. Joining Forsyth on guitar is Mikel Patrick Avery on percussion and electronics and Nick Millevoi on baritone guitar and drum machine, and from this formation the musical ideas blast outward like a busted fire hydrant. These instrumental songs are playful and funky, frolicking in that mid ’80s dead-zone where well-established rockers of the ’70s played with slippery concepts like downtown NYC funk, ECM jazz and new-age reggae. It’s like they took the ’80s Can records, the stuff that no one listens to, and figured out how it might work for them. These songs never take themselves too seriously, but they absolutely rip while exploring the fringes of good taste, not unlike Rastakraut Pasta if it actually rocked. Don’t get me wrong though, this is by no means a “throwback” record of any kind – “New Auspicious” is as heavenly as 75 Dollar Bill, and the disjointed shuffle of rhythmic effects, riffage and electronics in “Versatile Switch” reminds me of Morgan Buckley, a style that’s more likely to be lauded by Boomkat than CREEM. BASIC mixed the future with the past for a stellar album that I can listen to today. 
Having a hard time pinning down what makes the duo of Broken Telepathy tick, which is a good thing, or at least not a bad thing. In this era riddled with conspicuous musical intentions, it’s nice to hear something and wonder how its decisions were reached, to have your brain actually burn a few calories while processing what is happening. Hailing from the Bronx, Broken Telepathy features two members of Soft Gang (if that means anything to you), and while there are elements of synth-wave, post-punk and indie-rock happening here, Broken Telepathy don’t meld them together in the ways I’m used to hearing. There’s a distant sort of coldness to the recording, but Kaori Nakamura’s vocals are high-pitched and direct; that sort of conflict seems inherent to Broken Telepathy’s mission, where drum loops play a pivotal role. “Reasons For Excuses” is like the angriest trip-hop song ever made, and while there are plenty of moments recalling the early post-punk wake following Joy Division’s demise, a synth will arrive direct from Gary Numan’s powder room, or it’ll feel like the Ramones for a second, no wait, I meant Stereolab. What if Thomas Dolby joined 39 Clocks but they never left their basement practice space, and it was all just made out of loops anyway? It makes ya think. I don’t feel any closer to unraveling Broken Telepathy’s intentions, but they’re not called Successful Telepathy, now are they?
Featuring three members of Cruelster (and, by transitive property, Perverts Again), I didn’t actually realize The Carp were a real band until Knock Your Block Off showed up. It’s hard to always tell where the gags end and reality begins with this lovable bunch of Cleveland jokesters, but I’m stoked that The Carp is an actual band, one whose sound rests comfortably within the realm these guys have created. They’re somewhere between the jittery post-punk of Knowso (whose Nate Ward is also in The Carp) and Cruelster’s couch-thrashing hardcore-punk, and it’s a great spot to land. Knock Your Block Off offers an enjoyable splitting of the difference, one where wrong-note melodies and righteously paranoid attitudes collide with hardcore energy. I love Knowso’s relentless monotony – it’s unique in a sea of sound-alikes – but The Carp offer just as much personality in a rambunctious form more likely to allow for stage diving, were The Carp ever to perform on a stage. I never doubted that all these guys are life-long friends, but you’ve gotta really like each other to be in like three or four bands together; one can be miserable enough depending on who gets on who’s nerves. When they cover A Global Threat’s “Cut Ups” with full intensity on here, it’s clear that their love of the street-punk group is as genuine as it is that they’re making fun of it, and themselves, and probably me, and you too. No one does simultaneously serious/unserious punk like these guys and Knock Your Block Off is another shining example. 
New Haven’s Stefan Christensen is a man of many masks, each subsequent record revealing further insight along side tantalizing mystery into his process. More than anything, it seems like he’s never short on inspiration, chasing fresh ideas through whatever strange paths they might take, from the warmth of melodic guitar chords to the abrasion of static-y feedback deconstructions. It’s rare and exciting, the way that a record under the name Stefan Christensen can behave in a multitude of ways, and his newest, In Time, opens yet another door, this one particularly gracious and inviting. The focus on In Time is set on uplifting and moody electric guitar riffs that repeat like mantras, and I’m glad he shared it with us. The album’s opening riff in “84 Days” could easily belong to Collective Soul at first glance, but in Christensen’s hands it’s wielded in a manner you’d expect from a New Zealand-raised Dylan Carlson. One could connect the sonic dots to Lungfish and the sun-bleached guitars of Steven R. Smith, so patient and meditative are these songs. “Foreign Outlaw” breaks from the guitar-centricity, much of which Christensen sings without musical accompaniment (and a memorable moment from his live set I caught earlier this year), but the heart behind it remains the same. I’ll admit, I love Christensen at his least accessible, crackling sparks of noise from his lonesome guitar for seemingly nobody, but the different direction of In Time is a joy, as comforting and nourishing as a room full of friends. 
Throw it back to the Y2K era with Side Splits, an album of remixes made by artists mostly not known as remixers, all taking on tracks from Coffin Prick’s 2023 album, Laughing. I enjoy Laughing quite a bit, completely content with its original form, but the list of remixers here is certainly intriguing: Beau Wanzer, Tim Kinsella, Battles… even Melt Banana and Shit & Shine appear. Coffin Prick’s original tracks were difficult to categorize, kind of woozy late-night post-punk pop with a swish of glam aspirations, and the majority of contributors here dismantle that vibe to their own ends. There are plenty of melodic stems to work with: Battles finagles theirs into a glitchy stomp, whereas Melt Banana flip the whole thing into a cybernetic Epi-Fat pop-punk track, as is their unpredictable wont. Unsurprisingly, Shit & Shine take it in the direction of Earth 2‘s majestic guitar drones, and Beau Wanzer does a good job of putting his trademark stamp on it, a fat wriggly drum-machine groove sure to leave a wet trail behind it. A fun exercise for all, though it can make for an incongruous listen – Gel Set’s take on “Surfs Up” feels like a typical GSL indie-dance remix throwaway versus some new eureka moment. It’s nice when others play with Coffin Prick, but more original Coffin Prick material is much higher on the list of demands I’ve asked my office coordinator to send to Sophomore Lounge. 
The bottomless spring of previously-unreleased Virginia hardcore has another new offering, the 1985 demo from Virginia Beach’s Disarm. If there’s a bad record where one of the band members is pictured doing a handplant on a vert ramp, I’ve yet to encounter it, and Existence Demo 1985 keeps the streak alive. Pair that with Bryan Stahel’s sticker-covered bass-guitar and it’s logically impossible that this record could suck! Recorded in the transitional year of 1985, Disarm veer closer to the early ’80s than the late; their sound is moshy, rugged and anxious in a way that recalls the A7 / Rat Cage years of NYHC, with an understandable tinge of metallic crossover. (As discussed in the extensive liner notes, they pursued a crossover sound following this demo, of which no recordings exist – at least until Beach Impediment goes full-on National Treasure and finds them.) In the excellent flyer montage insert, I can picture them warming up the Virginia Beach hardcore miscreants for headliners like Corrosion Of Conformity, The Faction and Christ On Parade, and spray-painting their band name on denim vests and skate decks… it’s chicken soup for the hardcore soul. No matter how much I’d like to kid myself otherwise, hardcore-punk is best performed by the youth, of which Disarm most certainly were. The band actually broke up because drummer Mike Crescini pursued his skateboarding career instead, taking him to far-away regions with deeper bowls and gnarlier ledges. A more perfect ending for a short-lived obscure hardcore band in the ’80s could not be written. 
I tip my hat to any ensemble who (d)evolves their sound from premeditated rock music to improvised noise. Audiences love structure, and asking yours to follow you on your journey from music that makes space for dancing, singing (screaming) along and hooks to merciless spur-of-the-moment chaos is a bold if not self-destructive move. Tokyo’s Endon have always been mutating, both from the size and shape of their collective to the sounds they produce; whereas prior records featured guitars, drums and songs (albeit in crushingly noisy forms), Fall Of Spring is a desolate, frightening soundscape of ruthless, discordant electronics. After the tragic passing of band member Etsuo Nagura, brother of vocalist Taichi Nagura, in 2020, Endon is now a trio, with Nagura on vocals alongside Taro Aiko and Koki Miyabe on electronics. Remnants of classic Japanese noise styles are evident, from the room-clearing shocks of piercing feedback to the continuous churn of heavy distortion, but Endon insist on pushing the form, in pursuit of harsh, provocative sounds that haven’t already existed. There’s an astringent, digital edge to the sounds that contrasts nicely with the uncomfortably human howls of Nagura, the production ensuring that the sound explodes outward no matter how dusty your stylus has become. There’s a shared sensibility to the PAN label, Persher and the more avant-garde side of harsh electronic noise at play here, perhaps more so than the lo-fi psycho-killer transgressions found on a Hospital Productions cassette. Album closer “Escalation” might be my favorite, as there is some semblance of violent melody lashing out, like a cyborg soldier’s frenzied commands on the battlefield, but the whole thing is a thrilling and sustained catharsis. You could break a sweat listening to Fall Of Spring and you’re not even the one twiddling the knobs!
Patio User Manual opens with the sounds of bird-song, analog clacking and the mooing of one lonesome cow, and if you insist on excusing yourself from the rest of this review due to the sheer over-saturation of this particular style, I understand. However, those of us who still have open hearts and minds for blissful amalgamations of featherweight electronics and site-recordings of the plant and animal kingdoms, Etelin’s got a fresh platter here for you. It’s the work of one Alex Cobb, a Cincinnati resident who runs the great Soda Gong label and intermingles with the small scene of likeminded artists primarily released on the Last Resort label, to give some context as to the artistic community of which Cobb is involved. His take on that same general lower-case electronica / domestic-ambient approach falls on the softer, more overtly digital side, plush blankets of glitch to tuck up to your chin as you drift between worlds, free of jarring cuts or harsh tones. For my tastes, I appreciate Etelin’s approach, reminiscent of Mille Plateaux’s chamomile-flavored releases, and one of my personal faves of the genre, Kid606’s Soccergirl EP, which was released on one of those three-inch CDs where the outer two inches are clear plastic. Does it get much more low-key, turn-of-the-century IDM than that? If I dip my head into the two minutes of “Electrical Sailing” I can almost peer back into that magical shred of time after Woodstock ’99 and before 9/11. 
There’s no denying the earth-shaking power of Swedish producers infatuated by huge pop music hooks. It’s like a drug to them, obsessively tinkering with the formula until their next dance-pop track has reached some golden ratio poised to liberate our ears once and for all. This mindset even filters down to the Swedes you haven’t really heard of, like Alexander Berg (aka Dorisburg) and Nils Krogh, working together off and on as Genius Of Time. “Closer” might not be a perfect dance track but it’s sure on the cusp, utilizing only the finest ingredients: a Blawan-esque shuffle, tender bass chords, a scene-stealing vocal hook and a snippet of uplifting house strings right when you least expect it. Vaguely emotional and smooth as silk, it’s almost a cheap-shot in its tech-house effectiveness, and I can’t get it out of my head. Once I stopped looping “Closer”, I found myself enjoying “Fumana Chord”, which takes a similar BPM and populist EDM approach, dusting up the edges enough to keep it interesting while also, you know, completely ready to soundtrack the next commercial for Hyundai’s IONIQ line of luxury EVs. I started pining for “Closer” though, I’ll be honest, and Genius Of Time clearly saw that coming, as “Closer (Reprise)” closes the EP, an ambient washing of the original, like the ghost of a loved one passing through the room while the loved one is right there too, feverishly dancing. 
Nice to see the pendulum in noisy dude-rock swinging away from the misanthropic, mysterious and vaguely threatening to something more vulnerable and sincere and in search of less toxic psychic terrain. Help seems like one of these bands in the latter category, a Portland trio that will support you on your path to seeking a therapist and trying to dig into the actual source of your misery rather than just like, posting grainy black-and-white pictures of decommissioned prison walls without any accompanying text. They’re even doing some progressive yoga on the cover, a tower of thinking-pose with perfect form, relying on each other in more ways than one. Their music seems to fit the vibe to a tee, pairing the aggro, post-hardcore, drum-centric pounding of METZ with melodic punk not unlike Paint It Black and Touché Amoré. The guitars are pretty polished, as is the whole presentation – this is a group with no less than fifteen different shirt designs shown on their Bandcamp page – but it never feels too slick, more like they’re simply making every effort they can to get maybe one or two inches above the endless herd of other bands hoping to catch your eye. I’m not going to check their Instagram to see if they posted a sincere unboxing video of Courage, but to be honest I wouldn’t hold it against them if they did. Someone’s gotta teach the problematic twenty-something hardcore guys to stop worshiping Swans and start working on their own faults – at least Help are way less corny than Idles about it. 
The second vinyl full-length from Oakland’s Hits, World Of Dirt further reveals the group’s appealing duality: twee indie-pop on the surface with a restless experimentalism bubbling underneath. The group is a vehicle for singer/guitarist Jen Weisberg’s songs, which land somewhere between the DIY pop of The Petticoats and the charismatic fuzz of The Breeders. Max Nordile plays bass in Hits and is on his best behavior here, though each side of the album ends with different versions of something called “Future Tense”, loose improvisations that stumble and squeak without any adherence to the tenets of song-form. That sense of combustibility is never too far away, even on a passive pop strum like “Thorn By My Side”, the Vivian Girls-ish jangle overloaded by an unexpected gaggle of droning horns, because why not. These strange choices are never to the songs’ detriment; Hits like to deliver their predictable chords in a manner as nearly unpredictable as Violent Change. Rules are respectfully broken throughout World Of Dirt, though the timeless guitar pop leads you through to safety, assured and sweet. 
Feared to have been lost on the way back to his home planet, Shackleton’s collaboration with percussive-dub trio Holy Tongue zaps us back to a fresh rinse of the signature sound he developed over the first decade of his impressive career. Fans of sticky-humid dub effects and third-eye-induced polyrhythms have a hearty feast awaiting them in The Tumbling Psychic Joy Of Now, wherein Shackleton takes the helm as producer of Holy Tongue’s raw material. I was always hopeful that a collaboration between Shackleton and Valentina Magaletti was inevitable, they being two crucial conduits of high-end contemporary rhythm, and this album does the opposite of disappoint. These tracks are built for maximum torque, with unyielding percussive patter and richly developed atmospheres, the sort of music you’d expect to cause those alien eggs they found buried under a pyramid to finally hatch. It’s all top-notch, but I would first direct you to “The Other Side Of The Bridge”, which calms things down just enough for the horns to whip up a jazzy romp as heady as it is hedonistic. I know they already made a Where The Wild Things Are movie – maybe they even made more than one – but it kills me that they didn’t wait for Shackleton and Holy Tongue to link up and conjure the perfect soundtrack in the process. 
Osaka’s Hyper Gal find a fitting home on Chicago’s Skin Graft Records, the storied imprint that has always welcomed musical saboteurs in from the cold. They also arguably introduced Melt Banana to an American audience, and while similarities to Hyper Gal are no deeper than surface-level, I’d like to think that the imprint remains a trusty conduit for genre-defying music across the globe. Hyper Gal are a duo, Koharu Ishida on vocals and “noise” and Kurumi Kadoya on drums, and they’ve got a peppy take on crusty-yet-experimental pop, an artsy-fartsiness somewhere between Japanther and No Age. The live drums and vocals are natural and familiar, whereas the melodies appear to be distorted, half-busted synths, like something you’d find in James Ferraro’s garage under an inflatable dolphin. Ishida will chant along with the beat while her synths or noises or whatever seem to interact mostly with themselves, not contributing to the flow so much as dissonantly avoiding it. I’m all for that – why play some regular-ass song that will immediately make sense to everyone? – though, in recorded form, After Image isn’t really sticking inside of my skull. It feels like music meant to be experienced live, if that’s not too trite – surely the guitar(?) solo in “GHOST” would be best received by blasting the listener backward off their feet in a crowded little club. 
Brooklyn DJ / producer / co-owner of the Razor-N-Tape label JKriv lays down two slices of heavy-lidded dub for new sub-label Leisure Group, and it’s been the perfect sonic aperitif for these final summer evenings. “False Start Dub” glides on a tweaky loop of digital brass, like migratory geese stopping for a spliff. The arpeggiated synths offer a more cosmic sensation, the plane’s wheels tucking into its undercarriage for a smooth sunset departure. Don’t let the title fool you – “High Speed Dubbin'” remains fully reclined, like a cloud-soft version of the earliest dubstep that came from Coki and Mala. No bass wobbles, only trippy, swinging melody. While still chill as a penguin, “High Speed Dubbin'” creeps with a sense of intrigue, its warbling chords conjuring the tension of a romantic scandal that has yet to be revealed, only hinted at. This isn’t typical dub, nor does it try to be, and while it probably wouldn’t feel out of place as the soundtrack to one of those Tiktok videos where a rich kid shows off his fancy apartment or morning matcha routine, Kings Of High Speed’s elevated caliber is obvious no matter how gaudy your taste level. 
I know at least a couple noise dudes who’ve either ironically or sincerely pursued Christianity in the past few years, and if a typical mass sounded like Die Reise Zur Monsalwäsche, I’d be right there with them! Christian Schoppik’s Läuten Der Seele project is one of those current-day obscurities where I don’t think I personally know anyone who is a fan but the records all quickly sell out and immediately go for seventy-five bucks or more on the secondary market, an increasingly common fiscal circumstance in our increasingly annoying world. It’s a lot of coin, but I’ve yet to encounter a Läuten Der Seele record that wasn’t worth its weight in frankincense, all of them conjuring various ancient European cultural histories in thrilling, dizzying ways. Die Reise Zur Monsalwäsche leans heavier on classical church choir sounds, presumably ganked from formal orchestral recordings before they’re manipulated/collaged/dubbed/sampled into these two side-long pieces. The technique might be similar to People Like Us or even Nurse With Wound, but the results here are majestic and refined… if God ever got into the remix game, it’d probably sound closer to these blissfully massaged collages than the original source material in all its inherent stuffiness. What if Läuten Der Seele was one of us? Just a slob like one of us?
Brian Leeds AKA Huerco S. AKA Pendant AKA Loidis is a man of exquisite timing. He seems to know precisely what the underground electronic/dance music audience wants before the audience itself knows; Huerco S.’s For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have) became a bonafide ambient classic within moments of its release back in 2016, and Pendant’s 2021 release To All Sides They Will Stretch Out Their Hands brought forward a reinvention of brain-scrambling electronica-fog. And now in the risen temps of the summer of 2024, Loidis delivers a sumptuous suite of understated tech-house grooves, twinkling like moonlight on a backyard pool after dark. His tones are waterlogged and dubby, but energized with pulsing rhythms and low-key melodies, always on the move. If it’s liquid house, it’s most certainly carbonated. No one would accuse this sound of being “new” – any number of Basic Channel, Luomo, Jeff Mills, Galcher Lustwerk or Pole cuts could be sonically linked to what Loidis is offering, alongside countless others – but Leeds didn’t invent tranquil ambient music either, he simply sculpts his sonic muses into their most delectable form. The effect is like tasting a homemade five-ingredient chocolate cake after years of pre-packaged Little Debbies, the simplicity and lack of unnecessary additives leading to an immediately heightened experience. I don’t know what I’ll need to hear from Leeds next, but I trust that he will deliver it. 
Lolina winds up on my year-end best-of lists religiously, yet none of her records ever sound much like each other, a testament to the success of her boundless creativity. The final installment of a mixed-media trilogy (part one: online graphic novel, part two: live improvised performance), Unrecognisable is really great, and it too sounds nothing like Fast Fashion, or Who Is Experimental Music?, or The Smoke. Compared to those others, Unrecognisable is actually pretty easy to parse, a suite of low-key electro-pop vignettes that often features verses and choruses, two aspects of song-form I know better than to demand or expect from Lolina. Actually, if there’s someone that I’m reminded of here the most, it’s… Kool Keith?! Many of the beats here could charitably fall under the “horror-core” hip-hop sub-genre, and there’s a morose chill to the production that feels very Kool Keith-esque. Lolina speaks/sings her choruses and kinda raps her verses, often quite dead-pan, and frequently interacts with pitch-shifted versions of herself, usually in the lower-register claimed by boogeymen and the demonically possessed. Much like Kool Keith, if you pull all the threads of Unrecognisable apart and study them, it’s evident that Lolina is responding to very real circumstances and societal issues with a lush and fully-functional narrative, but is doing so in a fantastical, funny, creepy, wholly original way. 
The first time I ventured to Pittsburgh like two decades ago, it was for punk reasons of course, and on said trip I witnessed the majesty of Jerry’s (RIP) and encountered the enthusiastic Eli Kasan. I think he was in Mary Celeste at the time, but you might know him from Iron Lung recording artists Kim Phuc, or Sub Pop recording artists The Gotobeds. The styles may change, but there’s always been a sense that he really cares, that bands aren’t hobbies to kill the time but meaningful soul-bearing ventures thought-out to the smallest detail, even if it’s only going to be a bar full of mostly friends that ever witness it. The Sewerheads is his newest group, kicking things off with the untimely yet applaudable move of a self-released seven-inch single. It’s interesting stuff, a “mature” post-punk sound whose kindness shouldn’t be mistaken for weakness. “Diary Of A Priest” is a ghostly serenade guided by the electric violin of Shani Banerjee. You can’t deny the Dirty Three feel conjured by Banerjee, but the music hits closer to something else, like Rowland S. Howard stumbling into Lungfish. “Man Of Infinite Sorrow” pushes and pulls with a drunken-carnival feel akin to Marching Church, or I guess current-day Iceage as well as they’ve gotten more and more Bad Seeds-inspired. Banerjee shreds on the violin like we all wish we could, and the band locks in, not only on this cool b-side song, but a curious sound full of potential. 
Gonna trust that the discerning folks at Beach Impediment did their due diligence on Atlanta’s SIKM, as modern Oi (much like classic Oi) has no shortage of awful right-wing idiots masquerading as free-thinkers. I’m assuming SIKM’s gotta be on the side of the, uh, “good guys”, so when they sing “light up the torches / turn up in force / bring out the hatred / we’re at your door” in “We Won’t Behave”, I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt that they mean that in an anti-white-power sorta way. Their music itself isn’t limp and cheesy in the ways that appeal to racist losers; rather, SIKM’s songs maintain a level of energy and grit befitting hardcore-punk, somewhere in the league of Slapshot’s Step On It, early Blitz and Rixe, whose Maxime Smadja actually recorded and produced Now I Must Comply in Paris, faraway from SIKM’s southern US home. I thought flying to different countries to record music was reserved for stars like The Bee-Gees and New Order, not a DIY band with a Beach Impediment record deal, but it’s nearly 2025 and anything is apparently possible. Against all odds, The Exploited still exist, so why shouldn’t SIKM cross the globe in search of the thickest UK82 sound they can find? 
No style of music thrives through indifferent anonymity like techno. I’m not sure I’d really want to check out a rock band with undisclosed identities, but techno folks who pick some random moniker that offers no real detail as to who they are? Gimme it all day long. SnPLO is the duo of PLO Man (previously reviewed in these pages) and someone else who goes by Snp 500. I think PLO Man is German, and Snp 500’s label Doo is based in Montreal, so who really knows where they live and how they got together, and I guess now that I’m sitting here ruminating on it, who really cares either. The music they deliver on this new twelve-inch is gloriously anonymous as well, bustling sheets of techno that end in locked grooves more times than not. Though not the full seven hundred and fifty loops promised by the title, I prefer it this way, SnPLO cutting into rich hardware-driven grooves that shift in nearly imperceptible ways. Across these unwavering patterns, various filters and mix levels are adjusted only slightly, with shimmery dub effects that wash past like the landscape as viewed from a moving vehicle. You can focus on something else and kind of ignore the changes, or stare directly into your speaker cones to uncover its secret, shifting sonic features, or find a nice in-between zone, like cranking it while washing the dishes. Lose yourself in these grooves, and before you realize it, you’re standing in front of a stack of sparkling pots and pans.
If you’ve ever felt ripped off by songs that have one, two, maybe three separate ideas happening within them, be sure to check out Spirit Of The Beehive’s You’ll Have To Lose Something, which seems to cram at least a couple hundred different things into each two- to three-minute track. Phew! This trio broke up and got back together, and somewhere in that interpersonal journey discovered the joy of sampling, no longer confined to the music that can come from their amps and now armed with the entire spectrum of recorded sound at their disposal. On one hand, I’d say that just because you can doesn’t mean you should, but I sloughed off that conservative attitude pretty quickly as I settled into You’ll Have To Lose Something. These tracks ricochet from cut-up samples to basically every musical genre officially recognized by Spotify, from crunchy grunge-gaze to trip-hop, slow-core emo-pop, lo-fi R&B, sample-tronica, ’80s new-age schmaltz and domestic noise. If you need your brain to be able to control the music it’s hearing, always one step ahead of what is about to happen, this record will stress you out, but if you can give in to this deep bowl of sonic spaghetti and enjoy its innumerable moments of blissful confusion, accepting that some of its most savory moments are often its most fleeting, there’s a good chance you’ll never want to let it go. 
No guesswork necessary as to the inspiration behind the new project from Jarrett Dougherty, best known for his career as Screaming Females’ drummer. The sticker on the sleeve plainly states “Early 1980s NYC-style Post-Punk Mutant Disco” as well as “for fans of: ESG, Tom Tom Club, Liquid Liquid, Dinosaur L” in case you weren’t putting the pieces together. I see this as a move to tempt an interested audience that would’ve otherwise thumbed past this twelve-inch in the record bins, and I appreciate anyone who still treats record shops as a primary node of musical connection between artist and prospective listener. The sticker ain’t lying, either – each of these tracks pairs simple-yet-effective bass-lines with steady disco-punk drums, neither of which stray off course at any point; if 34 Trolley is at all no-wave inspired, it’s certainly not taking cues from Mars and DNA. The bass and drums provide a sturdy if rudimentary foundation, upon which guitars, vibes, horns, and most notably, the lead vocals of ex-bandmate Marissa Paternoster and Brittany Luna (of ska-punk sensations Catbite) provide splashes of personality, though the additional elements are generally deployed one at a time, never all at once. If the sticker had more room, they could also mention that fans of Tussle’s first few records or that great Chandra twelve-inch might also want to take a peep, but that’s what this review is for now isn’t it?
Having previously collaborated long-distance, Jazz Plates finds two of my favorite electro-experimentalists collaborating in person. I’m enchanted by Ulla’s still-warm collaboration with Ultrafog from earlier this year, and I’m jonesing hard for a new one from Pmxper, Perila’s collaboration with Pavel Milyakov, so Jazz Plates entered my electronic shopping cart with an abundance of good graces. No doubt, it’s cool – they stretch their limbs wide across these two discs, unburdened by time-sensitivity or narrative. Vocals are persistent and as wordless as the piano, which stumbles through day-drunk motifs as one-off percussive hits, gauzy horns and a bevy of non-musical sounds appear. It doesn’t seem like a whole lot was really pre-planned here, but that probably would’ve spoiled the mood, one of aimless exploration. If there are elements that bear similarities to Charalambides, Félicia Atkinson and Ssabæ here, which I posit that there are, it’s not by design; I get the impression that both Ulla and Perila aren’t prone to outside interference in pursuit of their elusive, blurry muse, so much as the great and simple act of Just Seeing What Happens. For my money, I prefer Ulla and Perila’s more grounded material, stuff that feels a smidge more thought-out than of-the-moment, but I’m not going to regret it when I pull Jazz Plates out again in a year and find myself blissfully transported to whatever isolated barn / luxury loft / abandoned subway station they recorded it in, quietly petting a cat as they shuffle through their gear on the floor. 
Some ten years, eight full-lengths, countless tours and many well-received collaborations under their belt, Brooklyn’s Uniform have earned the right to coast if they want to. Churn out some more music that sounds like Uniform, print up some new black t-shirts with white ink designs, and their core audience will remain happily satiated for the foreseeable future. I wouldn’t blame them if they entered this cruise-control phase of their existence, but instead I offer them the most sincere of kudos for not doing that, instead pushing into deeper, dirtier and uncharted extreme-music territory on what most will surely agree is their finest moment (at least so far!), American Standard. Currently boasting two percussionists and a bassist along with the core unit of Ben Greenberg (guitar, production) and Michael Berdan (vocals, synths), this is an absolute beast of an album, four distinct-yet-complimentary cuts of forward-minded industrial/sludge/noise. The title track delivers the first bold move, encompassing the A-side in over twenty minutes of thrilling, pounding industrial metal, heavier than lead and come to think of it, kinda like Led Zeppelin when that chugging, chiming choral motif locks in too. “This Is Not A Prayer” goes heavier on the percussion, like a couple of helicopters emergency landing on Iron Monkey’s stoner-sludge as Berdan continues to squawk like one of those breeds of vultures who evolved featherless faces so they can more easily dig into bloody carcasses. “Clemency” rules too, not far from the meanest Boris material yet enhanced with the sort of eerie soundscaping that might appeal to a Ghostemane fan. I don’t know what else to say, honestly – American Standard actively seeks out ass to beat from start to finish, and I haven’t even touched on the personal poignancy of Berdan’s lyrics, as the music gives me so much to rave about. In a word: recommended!
Not enough room in the building for this gigantic new record from French electro-brutalist Franck Vigroux. He’s always had a penchant for unrelenting sonic architecture, wide swaths of heavy sound that seem to shake with excessive electricity, and he continues to push himself forward with Grand Bal. I wasn’t sure what to make of the cover art, in all its Hollywood neon Italians Do It Better slickness, but one sniff of opener “Loïc” knocked me on my can immediately. It’s a shrieking industrial-techno shocker, perfect for the trailer of one of those new horror movies based around modern-day plastic surgery, Gucci models sitting blankly in a sterilized room with their entrails in their laps. And this is before the black-metal pterodactyl vocals really kick in! Mercifully, not all of Grand Bal is this overtly aggressive, but even at its more pensive, creeping moments (like the epic build of “Lightnin'”) the album is fully juiced and menacing, the sound of the final boss that you thought you defeated bursting through the wall even bigger, stronger and more disgustingly deformed. If there was a daring enough rapper out there to drop some rhymes over the first half of “68”, it’d be the biggest track of the year, but that rapper would probably have to be 6’11”, 375 pounds and have one forearm cybernetically replaced with a crossbow in order for it to work. Humanity’s evolution hasn’t yet caught up to the thrilling power of Franck Vigroux’s electronic music. 
Laid-back NYC fuzz purveyors Weak Signal continue their fruitful relationship with 12XU care of Fine, their fourth full-length and second for the label. Weak Signal reek of that distinctly New York form of hip, something that’s harder to find these days as authentic New York City culture continues to shrink, raisin-like, in the face of big-money homogenization. Their songs are simple and disarmingly straightforward, yet the list of involved parties reads like a who’s who of the people too cool to be featured in Meet Me In The Bathroom: Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, Gang Gang Dance’s Doug Shaw and Cass McCombs all contribute (and there’s probably someone from Endless Boogie lurking in the rehearsal space, rolling something up for everyone to smoke later). Guitarist/vocalist Mike Bones slowly enunciates his drawl over four-on-the-floor drumming and thick syrupy two-chord riffs, sounding extra heavy when mute-picking and purified when he lets the guitar ring out. Bones has one of those great indie “singer without a singer’s voice” styles, sincere while cracking a smirk, and as he’s consistently backed up by bassist Sasha Vine and drummer Tran Huynh on secondary vocals, the whole thing hits like timeless guitar pop on just the right amount of downers. Sleepy but attentive, unadorned but sophisticated, Fine exudes the metropolitan cool that you won’t find in an officially-licensed Ramones baby onesie. 
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