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Alien Eyelid Bronze Star LP (Tall Texan)
Doesn’t get much taller or more Texan than this, the sophomore album from Houston’s Alien Eyelid. A band name like that has me picturing a bongwater-powered stoner-rock spaceship, but Alien Eyelid leave their distortion pedals and Orange amps out in the desert somewhere, preferring to get all sorts of countrified down-home rockin’ instead. Their sound comes from what must be a love of John Prine, The Grateful Dead, Blaze Foley, CSNY and all that ’70s mustache / bald-with-long-hair Americana that has charmed multiple generations of easy-going pleasure-seekers. Long-haired and friendly, Alien Eyelid don’t play up on the hokey, gimmicky aspects of the style though, preferring to let their ensemble-chooglin’ and delicate vocal melodies lead the way. Theirs is a sound entirely undisturbed by any person, place or thing more recent than 1974, though it’s my understanding that members of Alien Eyelid have played in all sorts of bands that most certainly don’t sound like this (hardcore and noise, among other things). Well, they know how to channel the vibe! These songs are humble and warm, the band singing about real-people stuff in a way that doesn’t feel trite or phony, with a sense of gratitude for getting to play these songs together and share them with any willing listeners. I’m glad to have listened.
American Nightmare Dedicated To The Next World 10″ (Heartworm Press)
There have never been more ways to be a hardcore band than right now, and while it wasn’t always this way, American Nightmare’s existence is most certainly a minority path in 2023. They’re a cult-worshipped life-changing band from like twenty years ago, who tour sporadically with a sound – fast melodic Boston mosh with diaristic lyrics – far from the more popular trends of today, still releasing new records but feeling more like a side-project to their various adult lives than the all-consuming existence of their twenties. They’ve got a reliable following of mostly their same age group, but the hype fests of today’s hardcore youth are asking other bands to play, you know? It’s a curious place to be, kind of a real band who previously defined an era, and I appreciate that they soldier on if simply because they’re hardcore dudes who have devoted themselves to playing hardcore music and will do so for the rest of their lives. Which, in their case, includes releasing a ten-inch EP of four new songs! I felt compelled to check it out, and I appreciate that their overall style hasn’t dramatically shifted, neither to the dominating trend of chugga-NYHC beatdown or moody synth-infusions (no need when you’ve also got Cold Cave, bandleader Wes Eisold’s more active engagement). It still sounds like post-Y2K Bridge Nine hardcore, and though Eisold’s voice isn’t quite as violent as it used to be, I’d imagine he’s not as violent as he used to be either, so it fits. My favorite track is the unexpected “Self Check-Out”, with what appears to be electronic drums and direct-input guitar for a fist-pumping sideways-stage-dive anthem, though “Real Love” could be a lost Nation Of Ulysses track for crying out loud. If today’s younger hardcore bands want to start sounding like Nation Of Ulysses, I wouldn’t be mad!
Anadol Hatıralar LP (Pingipung)
Anadol is easily one of the coolest artists to arrive on my radar in the last five years or so, 2018’s Uzun Havalar and 2022’s Felicita receiving endless plays in both home and car. And yet, I hadn’t tracked down her 2017 digital-only debut Hatıralar, that is until Pingipung recently reissued it! I didn’t expect it to be as good as the other two, and while it’s certainly not, it’s still a fun and rewarding listen, a pleasant glimpse of a semi-formed Anadol. The main distinction is that the music here is entirely synthetic, with the familiar sounds of old-school drum machine beats and cosmic synths driving the songs completely. Her melodic talent is clear from the get-go, but whereas later releases utilized a wide range of instrumentation, these songs are more like switched-on lounge music from the ’70s, something between Bruce Haack and Wendy Carlos with a touch of that Brain Records-styled krautrock fusion. The same general sound palate exists throughout, though Anadol is always a deft composer, squeezing a sultry melodrama out of “Orman Yangını” with casual ease. If this came from someone else, I’d be very impressed, and while I wouldn’t say I’m not impressed, it’s also kind of like watching video footage of Michael Jordan’s college career: spectacular, but a far cry from their future greatness.
Animal Piss It’s Everywhere Animal Piss It’s Everywhere LP (Half A Million)
Not the band name we wanted, but surely the band name we deserve: here’s the debut from Animal Piss It’s Everywhere! This Western Mass sextet are a whole lot of amusing fun, a hearty indie-country jam with head-turning lyrics. Imagine Silver Jews on an obsessive Workingman’s Dead kick with laugh-out-loud lyrics, and you can understand why it’s near-impossible to dislike the stylings of Animal Piss It’s Everywhere without being a bonafide hater. There are no less than two songs here that reference Jesus in the title (“I Like Jesus” and “Jesus Got Under My Skin”), plenty of direct commentary on wine and drugs and the situations that arise from their partaking, and a straight-faced delivery that makes it all work. They go from a falsetto harmonizing of the phrase “hot sewage” (in the song “Hot Sewage”) right into the next tune’s repeated sing-along chorus of the phrase “naked ass man blues” (“Naked”). I always loved that live video of Dr. Hook on German television where they’re all completely off their rockers wasted/high, barfing barely off-camera and falling off their stools with big warts poking out of their beards, and wondered when that specific mix of disgusting and joyous sensations might enter the roots-rock equation again. The answer is no clearer than Animal Piss It’s Everywhere.
Big Burly Tumors 7″ (Strange Mono)
You never really hear about anything being small burly, do you? Big Burly is a new Philly group and they’re hooked up by local label Strange Mono for their debut seven-song seven-inch, Tumors. Their sound takes me back to the realm of gleefully slop-tastic wannabe power-violence circa 1998, back when the coolest skate-rats in a few select suburbs across the US wanted to sound like Spazz. Big Burly avoid grinding (or really any sort of speed at all), instead delivering the slow and mid-paced parts that No Comply and Godstomper would’ve written between fast-core blast beats. I suppose you’d file it under “noise-rock” in that case, but there’s something happening here that feels equally as likely to be on a compilation LP alongside Charles Bronson and Suppression as a volume of Dope-Guns-‘N-Fucking In The Streets. Weirdly, Big Burly have two bassists and no guitarist, but the sound is just as trebly and itchy as the aforementioned Godstomper and No Comply. Maybe they only used amps that can be carried with one hand (or simply recorded it to sound that way), but it’s a DIY-sounding affair, right down to the distorted squeal of vocalist Dan T. If you want polished hardcore, you can go to the mall!
Burger Service Demo 12″ (Bergpolder)
Misleading Band Name Alert: if the idea of a project called “Burger Service” releasing their demo on vinyl is conjuring images of dirtbag garage-punkers in leather jackets and tighty-whities, I’m right there with you, but we couldn’t be more wrong! Burger Service is not remotely American for starters, but rather the project of Dutch-raised Belgium resident Jan Tromp, and it’s actually a subdued and tasteful indie-wave thing. A track like “Vervandaan Wordt Ingekort” sounds like The Xx with a touch of Flying Nun, and the track that follows it, “Sneeuws”, sounds like the elevator pop of Francisco Franco, or Young Marble Giants’ instrumental Testcard EP. Soft, homespun and appealing stuff, which also calls to mind the free-form synth-wave dalliances of Hessel Veldman. It’s released on Bergpolder, the always-adventurous Dutch label with ties to Lewsberg, and it also feels like the sort of surprise Euro-indie act I’d expect to find from Stroom, if that makes sense to any fellow Stroomheads reading this. It doesn’t sound like a demo so much as a balanced set of well-considered tunes, the dainty instrumental drum-machine tracks pairing well with the comparatively upbeat “Niemand Heeft De Schuld” and “Afslag Zuidas” (a Strokes-y one-two punch). I always knew that I’d one day find myself singing along with a song in Dutch, I just never expected it’d be something called Burger Service.
Burnt Envelope I’m Immature: The Singles Vol. II LP (HoZac)
I was confident that Heavy Metal’s IV: Counter Electrode / Iron Mono was going to be the greatest reissue of a couple years’ old cassette from a punk-as-disturbing-sketch-comedy project in 2023, but now I’m listening to Burnt Envelope’s I’m Immature: The Singles Vol. II and not so sure! I still love that Heavy Metal album dearly, but Burnt Envelope are equally demented in all the right ways. For starters, it appears that this is a collection of imaginary “singles”, the second such collection to Burnt Envelope’s name, fantasizing rare seven-inch EPs that never actually came. The group is more or less the work of Anthony Pasquarosa, whose name I remember from the grisly hardcore of SQRM and Aerosols (and apparently moonlighting in Animal Piss It’s Everywhere, too!). I loved those groups, but Burnt Envelope might be his finest moment yet: rudimentary, bad-kid punk rock ala the earliest Killed By Death era, sounding truly backwater and miserable in the best of ways. Over basic shit-can guitar and drums, Pasquarosa rants, argues with himself, accuses and jeers like the unknown punk outsiders of yore, on par with The Generics’ “The Bitt”, Peer Pressure’s “Underachiever”, Nubs’s “Job” and even the theatrical trash of Jimmy Smack and crude menace of Bobby Soxx. He picks apart his own band at one point, fake-cries like a baby the next, and then rolls out an echoed sample of an extended WWF promo over a brooding instrumental. In other words, just really great stuff, the sort of thing that would happen if The Spits devolved into a basement project or if Amyl & The Sniffers was just one single brain-damaged Sniffer, left to wander the streets alone while recording his ugly thoughts on tape. No offense to anyone else, but I’m Immature is far and away the punkest record of the month.
Feeble Little Horse Girl With Fish LP (Saddle Creek)
Not ashamed to admit my love of poppy emo, although it can be harder to find something fresh within the genre as I enter graying beard territory (speaking for myself, at least). Seems like there’s a million more bands than ever before (this goes for every genre, really), and while I’m not checking out every last one of them, it feels pretty safe to say that Pittsburgh’s Feeble Little Horse are one of the best things going for emo in its multitudinous forms. I loved their debut album and am settling into Girl With Fish nicely, as the best parts of their debut are still in place, just with new songs and a confident hold on what they’re trying to do. If you’re not already familiar, they’ve got these weirdly distorted, lo-fi shoegaze guitars, drums that sound like they were recorded in the other room, at least one or two tracks of amp feedback that turn on and off at appropriate times, and the captivating vocals of Lydia Slocum. Her voice is expressive yet detached, rich with individuality and that sweetly nihilistic Zoomer attitude. Like Stephin Merritt and Kathleen Hanna, I can already picture a new generation of indie-rockers trying to copy her singing style, so infectiously weird as it is and with great lyrics to boot. It’s a striking sound for sure, but any form of pop music requires catchy hits, and Girl With Fish comes prepared, from the Duster-ish “Tin Man” to the hazy grunge of “Steam Roller”, sounding like Helium on helium, or a hit off the first Rentals album chased down the street by Hijokaidan. Fantastic stuff, and lightyears beyond the emo made by millennials, which we can all agree was the worst era of emo thus far.
Freak Heat Waves Mondo Tempo LP (Mood Hut)
We can always count on Vancouver’s Mood Hut for relaxed-fit dance music; nostalgic sonic templates updated for today’s modern needs. This new one from Victoria, BC’s Freak Heat Waves fits the bill perfectly, melding laid-back ’80s cheese with after-hours hipster flavor. Mondo Tempo calls to mind contemporary artists like Juju & Jordash and labelmates Pender Street Steppers, Daughn Gibson’s sensual Carnation album and original Balearic inspirations like Tullio De Piscopo, Kano and New Order, all of it washed in a soothingly narcoleptic rinse. Pure Moods for today’s obsessive cratediggers. It’s music where you start off listening in a chair and find yourself flat on the floor by the end, which has been one of my favorite genres lately. The vocalist plays no small role in achieving this state, as his languid, recently-awoken voice is a dead-ringer for Tin Man, whose similarly icy drawl elevated records like Wasteland and Cool Wave to ’00s synth-wave classics. Music as vibe-y as this often gets lost in its own accoutrement, worried more about set-dressing than plot, but Freak Heat Waves have been at it for a while, and the songs they’ve programmed here are fresh and original, a sophisticated balance of pleasant and weird. Sweet stuff, even if the name of the group will grow less and less cute with every subsequent record-breaking summer on this doomed planet.
Geld Currency // Castration LP (Relapse)
A fresh combo here: raging hardcore-punk from Melbourne (of all places) on Relapse (of all labels)! A few cynical contrarians reading this are probably quipping something about how Relapse releases lots of hardcore-grind, and while I appreciate them for keeping me on my toes, Currency // Castration is purely grind-free, thank you very much. While I wouldn’t say it’s completely devoid of metal’s influence, those aspects play out more in the poisonous guitar tones and blown-out drum sound than the songwriting or drumming. Geld borrow sparingly from black-metal and thrash (and Septic Death), sparsely applying it to the overall sonic experience, which is fast raging hardcore with a smattering of moshy breakdowns. I’m strongly reminded of the sound and style Youth Attack fostered in the ’10s, sounding more like Aerosols, Raw Nerve and even The Repos than anything else, really. The riffing is very much in line there – a more complicated take on first-wave hardcore like Rattus and Die Kreuzen – and the gravel-voiced shouting of un-Googleable vocalist Al Smith seems to take more influence from Ildjarn than Uniform Choice, which of course is the way of the Youth Attack breed. Geld break up the onslaught with the instrumental industrial soundscape “Across A Broad Plain”, which feels more like a G.I.S.M. move than anything else, and which I’m hopefully allowed to say out loud now without one of their members crawling out of some old fiber-optic cables in my basement and strangling me. Come to think of it, G.I.S.M. are on Relapse now, too! Everything is crazy!
Incipientium Undergång LP (Happiest Place)
Richly developed noise record here from the tongue-twisting Incipientium, alias of lone Swede Gustav Danielsbacka. Not that I’d expect anything less than thoughtfully-crafted from the Gothenburg scene, but even so, Undergång stands out. Using voice, magnetic tape, sampler and “acoustic instruments”, Incipientium slowly moves from the deeply-rumbling crackle of Ramleh to the temperamental fog-zones of Demdike Stare, all with the “hand-made in a creepy old barn out back” feel of Aaron Dilloway. Can’t help but hear some similarities to Neutral as well, in the way that the music sounds like decaying organic material as opposed to crisp digital noise rendered from mouse-clicks. I say noise, but plenty of Undergång is subdued and almost melodic, the opposite of in-your-face (out of your face?); there are moments early on the second side that have me imagining Fennesz in a Tom Hanks Cast Away situation, resorting to composing his dazzling electronic soundscapes on downed palm leaves, a dying radio transponder and hollowed out coconut shells. Sorry, crime scene and bondage photo enthusiasts: this noise record offers neither, only a shiny silver stripe upon which to reflect your own blurry self-image.
Karenn Everything Is Curly 12″ (Voam)
Juggernaut duo of Jamie Roberts (better known as Blawan) and Arthur Cayzer (aka Pariah) blew me away with the debut of their adamantine cyber-death project Persher last year (still waiting on a vinyl release, guys!), but they’ve also been operating as Karenn for a number of years now. It’s crazy how Roberts never seems to miss… I’d forgive an airball or two at this point, but no, Everything Is Curly is an inspired four-track EP of rigid and uniquely-abrasive techno. These tracks engage like sharkskin, visibly smooth but prickly to the touch. Bass-lines creep up to the midrange and the rhythms twist (or should I say curl) like a snake up your arm, a hectic sense of motion always present. Great stuff! Samples are scuffed-up and tossed in, the heavy-artillery synths are only lightly invoked and it seems like these two are simply having a swell time together, making club tracks, or at least their interpretation of club tracks. Opener “Feeling Horizontal” is my favorite, reminiscent of Audion’s sleaziest hits and bustling with chaotic activity… it’s what I’d imagine John Wick would try to make if he traded in his guns for a copy of Ableton Live.
Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante LP (Ever/Never)
Weird recognize weird, it would seem, as Basque noise-prank provocateur Al Karpenter has joined forces with French experimental-trash duo CIA Debutante for a full-length player (released in tandem with a solo (but guest-filled) Al Karpenter album). I haven’t heard anything from CIA Debutante I haven’t enjoyed, and Karpenter is a guaranteed wild-card, so it comes as no surprise that this self-titled collaboration leaves a satisfied smirk on my face. CIA Debutante are always up for downsizing, removing necessary elements of song-form (even avant-garde or post-punk song-form) to leave behind the picked-apart carcass of a tune, and Karpenter takes the opportunity to roll around in it, spouting off-the-cuff lyrics about medieval cocaine (“Medieval Cocaine”) and public scaffolding (“Public Scaffolding”) with the vigor and froth of Mark E. Smith’s Von Südenfed contributions. As is frequently the case, Al Karpenter comes with Mattin and friends in tow here, who add percussion and electrical interference (and “computer”) to Nathan Roche’s incidental guitar and Paul Bonnet’s shortwave electronics. These tracks have the feeling of being executed live in person, but also being post-operatively disassembled in true Shadow Ring fashion, levels raised and altered with abandon. I once questioned if Al Karpenter was a real person on here, and then he showed up in my Instagram comments asserting his existence! I almost thought I heard him speak to me personally during the uneasily-musical closer “This Is An Invisible Song”, but when I go back to play it again, it’s gone.
Graham Lambkin Aphorisms 2xLP (Black Forms Editions)
The field of quiet domestic experimental tinkering has grown crowded over the last few years, but Graham Lambkin reaffirms his status as master of the genre here with this new double album, Aphorisms. I find myself a little leery of the presumably-moneyed Blank Forms Editions label, who kind of arrived on the scene fully LLC’d with a business-y art-world vibe (their Discogs pages lists eight people on their “board of directors” and over a dozen on the “curatorial advisory board”, what is this, Succession?), but all Lambkin needs is some thick black vinyl and a sturdy sleeve and he can let his music (or complete lack thereof) speak for itself. Aphorisms is certainly a “piano record”, but in as much as the demolished pile of bricks and insulation down the street from my house is still a pizza restaurant. Recorded in both London and the Blank Forms studio in New York (see what I mean: they have their own studio!) and cross-edited, Lambkin summons high drama from incidental noise, the inner and outer workings of your standard-issue piano and surely a bevy of other unidentified causers of sound. I like it best when the piano is drifting away at sea, its wires gradually resonating, as Lambkin huffs, puffs and abruptly screams into it, an auditory jump-scare crafted out of common household items. It’s crazy how he can configure so much nothing into such a transfixing final product; lots of copycats out there with the same general materials but none of them could put together Aphorisms, not even if the Blank Forms Cultural Advisory Board taught a seminar on it.
Leda Neuter LP (Discreet Music)
The noisy Swedish underground continues to churn at a consistent pace, but I found myself growing disconnected with the amateur folk performance / domestic field-recording style which has really risen in prominence over the last couple years. Thank god for Leda then, half of powerhouse industrial/psych duo Neutral, whose debut solo album knocked my socks off. She’s back with Neuter, and it rules! Once again, it seems to be all (or at least extremely mostly) guitar, working a live looping technique where the crunch of a muted riff becomes the rhythmic backdrop for further heavy-psych exploration. Her playing is crude and powerful, and while the concept of layering guitar loops in real-time is as old as the loop pedal itself, Leda has found a compellingly ugly way to do it. Her guitar whooshes, squeaks, churns and vibrates without ever feeling cluttered, and though it’d probably be best to file Neuter under “experimental” instead of “rock”, she finds clever ways to integrate heavy stoner riffs in the mix. The first track on the second side sounds like Bill Nace covering an Emily Robb instrumental, for example, rejiggering a classic chord progression into something suitable for Throbbing Gristle and Randy Holden fans alike. Recommended!
Lifeguard Crowd Can Talk / Dressed In Trenches LP (Matador)
There are many steps towards feeling old in the underground: when your friend’s younger sibling starts going to shows; when your friend’s kid starts going to shows; a formative band breaks up; a formative band reunites; a formative band’s kids start a band. In this case, I’m hearing that the ranks of Chicago indie-rock band Lifeguard include at least one child of a member of the band The Ponys, who also released an album on Matador earlier this millennium. Sheesh! It’s bad enough hearing Wolfgang Van Halen on terrestrial rock radio and being reminded of my mortality, but I guess I hoped indie-rockers would be too hip to breed. Anyway, what’s even weirder to me is that Lifeguard don’t rebuff their parents’ style with a Mountain Dew Code Red-soaked 100 Gecs sound, but mostly adhere to an aggressive Y2K indie-emo aesthetic. These songs sound like Milemarker, Drive Like Jehu, a touch of Unwound, a whiff of Q And Not U and perhaps most of all, a subdued, less-incomprehensible At The Drive-In. Curious set of influences for a trio of youngsters, and kind of refreshing, as it’s nice to hear people under the age of forty who still have some cartilage left in their knees playing this sorta thing. And it’s on Matador, of all labels! Time is feeling less and less like a valid concept.
Brandon López Vilevilevilevilevilevilevile LP (TAO Forms)
Most annoying album title of the month without a doubt (and it’s not even the “complete” version, which apparently goes on a lot longer?), but all is forgiven when considering the meaty heft of Brandon López’s solo bass brutalizations. He’s known for playing in all sorts of improv trios, and while I’ve enjoyed him live alongside Steve Baczkowski and his car engine-sized saxophone, this new solo venture is a real highlight. López gets messy and violent from the get-go, moaning and wailing along with his standup bass in a way that reminds me of Bill Orcutt on “LikeTheEdgeOfAMachete”. The motion is constant and hectic, at times recalling the incessant synapse-firing violin of Agencement, or on “PonceNewYork”, sounding like he’s trying to replicate a full grindcore unit with only his two hands and a large, hollow, wooden box with strings. Even when he commits to simply tapping the body of the bass, it’s urgent and fierce. The energy is palpable throughout, and while the recording is precise and clean, it provides a close-up of the blood under his fingernails as opposed to filtering it away. Hell, you know what, this album can have as many viles as it wants! Even a Kurt would be nice.
The Malakas She’s My Walkin’ Rock N’ Roll 7″ (Almost Ready)
Almost Ready has been at it for quite a while now, and their promotional style has always been entertainingly lax. They’ll release a record without updating their website, reissue a reissue they already reissued, put out a brand new band and press up a demo from 1979 at the same time… it’s the opposite of industry professionalism, and I always appreciate it. You won’t be plagued by Instagram ads and unboxing TikToks if you keep up with Almost Ready, that’s for sure! This leads me to this seven-inch single by The Malakas, a band I had never heard of, with two copyrights on the back cover, one for 2000 and one for 2022. I’m always curious enough to Google bands like this, and it appears they existed right around Y2K, may or may have not released a CD or two, and then guitarist/vocalist Cranford Nix sadly passed away (there is now a tribute website for him, his various projects showcased and documented by a loving friend). It seems to be an all-too-familiar story, drugs wiping out a wild life ahead of its time, and these two songs certainly sound like the kind of Heartbreakers-y punk such a character would make. The lyrics are casually offensive by today’s standards, unsurprisingly; the a-side opts for a three-chord Ramones kick and the b-side is an acoustic-driven tirade driven by expletives and insults, in the spirit of the acoustic GG Allin records but closer in sound to Paul Westerberg. Which is all to say, this record is bad-apple punk that who else but Almost Ready would save from total obscurity.
Ron Morelli Heart Stopper 2xLP (L.I.E.S.)
Naturally, when the clubs were packed in a pre-Covid world, Ron Morelli insisted on making noxious ambient noise, and then when everything closed down, he put together the tracks for Heart Stopper, an unflinching and extensive set of hardware-driven house jams. Gotta love his style, essentially building his own cool-ass network of gritty techno individualists through nothing short of years of hard work, and Heart Stopper, his first solo full-length in four years, reminds us that Morelli is never, ever to be shorted. I saw a video of him demonstrating how he makes beats a little while ago, and for as chill as he maintains his demeanor, you could just tell he was psyched as hell to program a couple machines, run them alongside an old sequencer and build a caustic dance track from the ground up. That’s what Heart Stopper is, a love-letter indebted to after-hours dance music, far from the commercialized realms of corny EDM festivals and Tesla-driving Tiësto fans. These tracks are primitive, exposed, occasionally grouchy and often promiscuous, calling to mind Adam X, Joey Beltram, Clock DVA and Bam Bam. Uncompromising and heartfelt, where pop-industrial, tech-house and EBM meet. Not sure if that’s Lydia Lunch providing the uncredited sexy-scary vocal on “Tangled Trap Of Love”, but I can picture her dragging me down the basement steps behind a Manhattan club while Morelli watches, slowly finishing his cigarette with his hood up rather than offering me any help.
No Reality Daddy Longnose 7″ (Industry Standards)
California’s No Reality features personnel from Acrylics, Smirk and Spiritual Cramp (although I get the impression only one of them wrote and performed this EP?), and he/they open it with “Buying Drugs”, a near pisstake of modern hardcore. The pogo-mosh riff is just so distinctly beholden to Gel, Gag, Spy and countless others that I can’t tell if it’s parodying the genre in the way that Crucial Unit did with straight-edge or if it’s simply just a hardcore song like many others. The rest of the EP, while not as blatantly mosh-pandering, is more or less on the same tip: “Daddy Longnose” sounds like Iron Cross covering SOA (though the metallic guitar solo and breakdown finale throw this comparison a little off), and Smirk guests on “Fashion Rocker”, which means choppier punk-rock guitar (and maybe that he’s not a full-time member of No Reality). The vocals are firmly in the 86 Mentality school of gorilla mouth – always a fine way to go – and the song titles and written insert have me wondering what combination of “serious” and “joking” No Reality are delivering. If the question is “can anyone take a hardcore song called ‘Daddy Longnose’ seriously?”, I appreciate that No Reality have left me with no easy answer.
Optic Sink A Face In The Crowd 7″ (Spacecase)
Future-primitive punk outfit Optic Sink evolves from the duo of Nots’s Natalie Hoffmann and Girls Of The Gravitron’s Ben Bauermeister to a lean trio on this two-song single. Sounds great! “A Face In The Crowd” is motorik-punk with sass and class, the drums locked in place, the guitars thin and queasy and Hoffmann’s dead-stare vocals penetrating any non-metal surface. Sounds like Blondie if they signed to Subterranean in 1980 and were never heard from again by 1982. “Landscape Shift” is the flip, leaning harder into the rhythm-boxes and synths, eschewing guitars entirely while Hoffmann’s vocal sneer maintains a post-punk rather than new-wave stance. It’s as if someone gassed the punk bar with Italo-disco and the survivors came out sounding like this. I could certainly go for more songs like either of these, but for now I’ll be content to flip A Face In The Crowd back and forth until my carpal tunnel starts to kick in.
People Skills Hum Of The Non-Engine LP (Digital Regress)
People Skills (one Jesse Sinclair Dewlow) was doing the whole dilapidated-ambient thing long before the underground shifted its attention in that direction, and while that sort of oversaturation can sometimes point out an artist’s inherent disposability, Hum Of The Non-Engine is a shining example of what a true talent can do in the genre. People Skills has always toed the line between organized song and random noise, and the beauty of this new one is the way in which he melds the two. A buzzing loop will become the basis for a quiet indie dirge; keyboards flash on and off like fireflies and you only realize he was quietly murmuring some lyrics after the song is over. Can lo-fi hum, sampled drums in the far-off distance and a single strummed guitar string comprise a song? Damn straight if its People Skills it can! This new album is like the perfect convergence of Félicia Atkinson’s incidental-domestics and Flying Saucer Attack’s sandpaper-melodicism, sounding like a tiny basement band slowly consumed by the piles of cassette tapes and thrift-store synths that surround them and in turn becoming its own distinct thing entirely. Like I said, it feels like everyone is trying to record the sound of their empty kitchen and mix it with lonesome-sounding synths/guitars these days, but I swear if you didn’t tell me who this record was by, I’d recognize it as People Skills from the quaalude vocals, blue guitars and expressively-vague mood that surrounds it all.
Road Soda World’s Greatest Disappointment LP (What’s For Breakfast?)
Lots of cool, thought-provoking records reviewed this month, but none of them startled me as violently as the new full-length from Davenport, IA’s Road Soda. Why, you ask? Because I truly believed this particular style of extremely ’90s numbskull pop-punk ceased to exist! Much to my surprise, here are Road Soda, behaving as if the last twenty-seven years didn’t happen. Their style is an exact amalgam of The Nobodys, The Vindictives, Guttermouth, The Queers and any local pop-punk demo that dared to parody the South Park characters on its cover in 1997. I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys are the last remaining Boris The Sprinkler fans left on the planet, and you know what, I think I love them for it. All their songs are about how much they suck, or being losers who can’t help but party… I can practically picture them crawling out from underneath the ramps of an indoor suburban skate-park, Encino Man-style, assuming it’s still funny to talk like Beavis and wear a chain wallet so long you trip over it. One song takes a shot at Luke Perry (as if he’s still on the tip of everyone’s tongue!), and there’s another song called “Who’s Bad? Party Time”, a slogan that I understand to have originated from beer bong funnels, because when I was in high school in the ’90s I had friends in a basement pop-punk band (just like this one!) who actually named their demo CD-r Who’s Bad Party Time. Road Soda’s drummer’s name is even “Scud”, like the infamous missile used in the first Iraq war! I might have to skip writing about anything besides Road Soda for the next few months, so deeply have they struck a chord with both my fifteen year-old self and however old I am today.
Rocket 808 House Of Jackpots LP (12XU)
I think we’ve all agreed that “guilty pleasures” is a faulty concept, but I definitely believe in the similar notion of liking something you shouldn’t like. On paper, and even in execution, Rocket 808 isn’t something that would normally jive with my tastes – honky-tonk guitar over programmed rhythms – yet I can’t deny the pleasures it brings. Opener “Under Surveillance” sounds like the soundtrack to a commercial advertising a Ford F-150-inspired men’s body-hair trimmer, just really boldly in your face with that Jack Daniels-scented Old Spice vibe, and yet here I am, calmly tapping along with it while I warm up my morning oatmeal. The riffs are staunchly in the ZZ Top / Link Wray school of desert-casino rock, and they chug along with nary a care in the world, dropping a pair of pink fuzzy dice on every rear-view mirror within earshot. It’s a very different form of being cool than the ones I usually ascribe to – no other record this month will sound like an Elvis impersonator peeling out across the set of Breaking Bad – but there’s something so timelessly attractive to these slow-simmering guitar lines that I find myself fully along for the ride, no matter how many cactuses are in our path and vultures on our tail.
Son Of Dribble Son Of Drib Against The Wind LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
It’s cool that the nascent Minimum Table Stacks label is investing in both obscure cult artifacts as well as modern-day obscure cult groups. You can file Son Of Dribble in the second column, as this is a currently-functioning group out of Columbus, OH who carry the Columbus sound with pride. While their recording quality is significantly clearer than your average Columbus Discount Records release, the band’s demeanor and approach to songwriting are in a similar boat, a kind of slacker-y, half-drunk style where anything can knock a song gleefully off course and at least half of the instruments are borrowed from strangers for the night. Imagine if Protomartyr decided to write a full album in a day and only remembered their plans at 6:00 PM, or if Mordecai and The Walkmen had to combine into one band against their will… it’s classic indie-rock strum that sounds like it’s all beat up and doesn’t care, lumps proudly on display. Son Of Dribble’s is a style that relies heavily on charm, but they’ve got more than their share; they seem like they could talk their way into any backstage area, convincing everyone that “Son Of Dribble” is a perfectly normal and appealing band name by the end of the night.
Patrick Stas If Paul K.’s Life Was A Movie, This Would Be The Soundtrack Of His Death LP (Stroom / Kontakt Group)
As is often the case with Stroom releases, I’ll just start by saying I have no idea what the hell this is. From what I think I understand, it’s a guy named Patrick Stas, who also goes by the name Paul K., who appeared on a couple tapes back in the early ’80s, sometimes with a group called Gheneral Thi Et Les Fourmis, but also on a couple random remixes in the late ‘2010s? You’d think we’d have run out of musical mysteries by now, especially cool post-punk ones, and yet Stroom keeps digging and hitting gold. If Paul K.’s Life Was A Movie is a fantastic collection of this guy’s work, all of which is extremely Euro-sounding instrumental cold-wave post-punk, rife with funky bass, clinking electronic drums, bleating keys, brittle guitars and an imposing sense of dread that’s impossible to ignore. Feels right in line with Trisomie 21, Fred A., Ceramic Hello, Grauzone; any music that was created with a Korg in a dust-filled warehouse without working heat in 1983 to an audience of no one. I kinda can’t believe Patrick Stas’s stuff stayed undiscovered for this long, considering the quality of the music, which really displays the best that depressive cold-wave music can offer, back when it was the result of singular creative expressions and not a standardized goth aesthetic. The title’s no joke, either – Stas sadly passed away in 2020, but the album (and title) was in the works as early as 2018, yet another striking aspect to this exquisite collection.
The Stools R U Saved? LP (Feel It)
Detroit has never been short on head-punching punk rock, the type that makes no distinction between garage-rock and hardcore, and The Stools are one of that fine city’s recent exports of this particular strain. How can you argue with any of R U Saved?? They appear to be a younger band, roughly the age where you can destroy your body for twenty-four hours straight and bounce back the next day with nary a headache or ingrown toenail, yet the spirit of John Brannon is alive and well here, one of battle-scarred endurance. These songs call to mind Laughing Hyenas mixed with the cooler side of ’90s Estrus/Goner, taking equal heed from Bo Diddley and The Fix to craft their sound. The Stools are stompy even when they’re fast, making any scarf-wearing garage-rockers sound like Coke Zero by comparison, and they even manage to squeeze some hooks in there when necessary: the repeated chorus line of “falling out the window / and into the street” (“Into The Street”) feels a lot like that first Hank Wood album, which is a clear sign they’re doing something right. Mean and friendly at the same time, you know? They’ll smack you upside the head and then hand you a free Bandcamp download code when you come to.
Sweeping Promises Good Living Is Coming For You LP (Feel It)
Can’t think of a more hotly anticipated follow-up in the past year or so than this one… who among us wasn’t enraptured by Sweeping Promises’s out-of-nowhere debut? Hunger For A Way Out was one of the few highlights of 2020, and after these last few years, doubts quietly crept in: could they follow it up with something as exciting? Was the first album a random confluence of greatness, and what’s taking so long with the new one? Seeing them live in 2022 reaffirmed my faith, as they were undoubtedly the best bedroom-project-turned-live-act I’ve ever seen, and now that Good Living Is Coming For You has, uh, come for me, all uncertainty is destroyed. They’ve got that same punchy lo-fi sound and the same knack for writing classic-sounding post-punk songs that somehow haven’t been written before. This includes re-writing their first album, which is always a possible pitfall, but these songs branch out tastefully, with more synth/sax/etc. peppering when needed. Even more notably, the songs themselves feel more varied and free, less constrained by “classic post-punk” songwriting (not that it was ever a disadvantage for them before, but you know, the walls of the genre are pretty firmly in place). Beats are slower and less energetic overall, but more distinctive and intriguing because of it. The funky “Walk In Place” would’ve stuck out on the debut, but its synth-bass and slappy strut makes perfect weird sense among the many other moods on here. Honestly, the biggest similarity to their debut is the complete lack of duds – Good Living Is Coming For You was worth the wait.
Telegenic Pleasure Concentric Grave LP (No Front Teeth / Feral Kid)
Both the artist’s name and album title are so extremely angular on the cover that it took me some effort to figure out which was which, and judging from the group’s sassy synth-punk, I’m sure they’d delight in my confusion. Telegenic Pleasure are a duo featuring at least one Mononegative, apparently hailing from both London, Ontario and London, England for added kookiness. Their songs are overtly synthetic, laced with choppy post-punk guitar and topped off with some mouthy glam vocals. The end result sounds a lot like Jay Reatard fronting Digital Leather, which surely happened at some early ’00s Gonerfest, or at least it should have. Very jittery, anxious stuff, which has me imagining Too Much Coffee Man, stressful calculus tests, the gobblier end of the Drunken Sailor catalog, big science-lab goggles, the first Intelligence album… that sorta stuff. Kind of a thin sound overall, which seems to often be the case with many of these punks who do bedroom synth projects… the lo-fi mid-range sound works well with feedbacking guitar amps, but doesn’t always deliver the same results with software plug-in synths, I suppose. What are you gonna do though, say “no” when your friend asks if you wanna sing on some wacky new electronic instrumentals he’s been working on, and there’s a label down to release it?
Gene Tripp The Ghost Of Gene Tripp LP (Moone)
Gene Tripp opens this new album with a soothing soundscape, pulsing like indie-pop ambient over a starry canyon, before settling into his primary form of expression: lonesome troubadour pop. Be it a softly-strummed guitar or the warm reverberations of an organ, Tripp blinks a rhinestone teardrop, only for it to run down his cheek and land on his fringed velvet coat. Hate to bring up the cursed vibe of Orville Peck, but Gene Tripp (also an assumed country-guy name) has a similar mood, one of mild glammy camp and a preference for aura over songcraft. Not my favorite, I gotta say! At times, I’m almost reminded of the occult country of King Dude, although Tripp’s voice floats in a middle register, and his lyrics are often difficult to discern without focus. There’s no dirt here either, as the constant synths droning in the background pull Tripp away from the Earth’s surface. Everything’s coated in a misty reverb, which some might describe as “Lynchian”, though I don’t think it’s quite unusual or atypical enough to fairly wear such a tag. Those opening drones are probably my favorite part, both sonically interesting and universally soothing, but I get the impression they were meant more as an intro. I dunno, at least he’s from a real desert-cowboy state like Arizona and not the litter-free suburbs of Canada!
With a title like that, I was expecting all sorts of cakehole-based sounds ala Jaap Blonk, but the noise of Algae & Tentacles leans more in the Justice Yeldham direction (if I may reference another orally-fixated experimentalist), blending fields of feedback with crunchy potholes of distortion. “Voice and electronics” are credited to John Melillo (he being the complete and total personnel of Algae & Tentacles), and the end result is a vibrant, homespun noise record, something you’d hope to find in the distro boxes of Carbon Records or RRRecords fifteen years ago. The whole affair sounds like it’s happening live in front of you… there’s a delineated track listing, but each side flows from start to finish as fully-integrated suites, albeit suites that jump, scatter and swirl about. I prefer the more cut-up, rapid-fire noise jolts to the malfunctioning vacuum-cleaner drones, but there’s a nice balance between the two. For fans of Twig Harper, Cotton Museum, Bill Nace, pretty much any agreeable noiser with silkscreen-ink stains on their hoodies and a tableau of daisy-chained gear splayed out on the dirty basement floor.
I missed the recent Movement techno festival but rolled through Detroit about a week later, the festival’s richly positive vibes still emanating off the architecture. That’s how I stumbled up this promo-stamped EP from Salar Ansari, a Movement-based release stocked at the very-fine People’s Records shop. It has the techno vibe I was looking for, one bursting with punchy uptempo bass-lines, rollicking auxiliary percussion and cosmic overtones. The a-side opener opts for lush chords and a female robot voice straight out of Benny Benassi’s Hypnotica playbook, which is a pleasant way to set things off. It’s tried and true tech-house ready to light up any sound system, be it a portable box or fine-tuned club setup. None of these four cuts seem to be titled (the info on the screened piece of paper accompanying the vinyl offers little more than a name and email address), but it’s the second b-side cut that hits strongest for me, a rapid bassline darting up through the skyscrapers like Spider-Man hot on the trail of Dr. Octopus with a suitably shuffling drum loop in tow. Sounds great on my modest home system, but I wish I got to hear it blasting from a makeshift setup outside Conant Gardens Party Store while Omar S details his mustang convertible in the adjoining parking lot. Maybe next year!
Solo outing here from Lore City’s Eric Angelo Bessel, whose name is almost maybe nearly an anagram for Angelo Badalamenti. Lore City are the traditional ethereal cold-wave shoegaze project – a duo with his wife Laura Mariposa Williams – and Visitation is Bessel’s solo synth project, because if you’ve got all that gear sitting around, why not? It sounds kind of predictable, perhaps even ho-hum, and while I can’t say it isn’t, I’m also finding plenty to enjoy within Visitation, probably even more so than the work of Lore City. His melodies float through a layer of clouds, with no rhythmic elements to anchor them, drifting like an entry in the Pop Ambient series without any semblance of dance-floor behavior. Basic, but in a non-pejorative sense. I think I find it appealing because Bessel isn’t trying to do anything or be anyone here; this is nothing more than a humble presentation of soft, swirling melodies, the sort of thing you can sit back into and simply appreciate without any sort of pretense or overbearing aesthetic. Keyboards can sound pretty lovely, especially when coated in infinite reverb and delay, which Visitation offers up with care.
At first glance, I thought that the band was actually called Big Clown Beatdown, a name I wholeheartedly endorse, but as you can see, the band is actually called Big Clown and the EP’s titled Beatdown. Not quite as good, but that’s alright. I also assumed Swimming Faith was a label that solely existed in service of label-owner John Toohill’s varied projects, but Big Clown are a Memphis group far from the snowy plains of Buffalo, NY. Cool of Swimming Faith to get Big Clown on wax, then, as they’ve got an interesting mish-mash of modern sounds happening here. Think of Big Business fronted by Olivia Gibb of Warm Bodies, those thick syrupy riffs colliding with wild squeaky warbling, and you’re on the right track. As far as I’m concerned, beefy, stoner-adjacent riffs sound great with pretty much anything – Big Clown could’ve gotten away with an amateur turntablist instead of any singer at all and I’d probably still dig it – but the mix of loopy, over-the-top singing, concise songwriting (there are eight tracks here!), firm rhythms and dense tone is particularly piquant. Pair all that with some Cleveland-styled elementary-school pencil art and you’ve got a winner, even if the name isn’t actually Big Clown Beatdown. I guess only a band actually from Cleveland would take it that far.
Good god… every year a new Blawan EP seems to arrive from the near future to reconfigure my senses, and I’m starting to feel silly about it. Is it really that good, or am I somehow hypnotized by this guy, unable to rationally process what I’m hearing? I’ve sat with Dismantled Into Juice for almost a month now, and I don’t care if he’s Criss Angeling me, I’m absolutely enthralled by tis extraordinarily bad-ass cyborgian techno, this new one a standout even among the other standouts. The word “techno” can imply some sort of grid-based beat programming, whereas these songs eschew formality for something entirely fresh and demented. It’s extremely heavy and yet the 4/4 kick is more or less absent, preferring to follow bass-lines as thick and disruptive as an oil pipeline, sloppy-wet high-end slaps and soaring metallic savagery. Of the five stellar tracks here, two feature the vocals of Monstera Black, whose Rihanna-esque club-moan might very well be some sort of AI sonic hologram, which would certainly fit the sexually-appealing techno-dystopia that Dismantled Into Juice conjures. “Toast” is the highlight for me, leaving me feeling like I’m getting Three Stooges-slapped in fast-motion, but the whole thing is truly next-level, a term I don’t think I’ve ever felt compelled to use when describing any piece of music on here before. If there’s a more exciting and ingenious electronic EP released in 2023, I’m not sure my delicate heart will be able to handle it.
Sorry, it’s not that Bono! My hopes were up that Maple Death somehow coaxed the billionaire liberal into a one-off duo release, but this is probably a better result: Francesca Bono on a trusty Juno 60 synth and Vittoria Burattini on drums. It’s a fairly stripped down setup, yet these songs are recorded with power and gusto, filling the room with the synth’s meaty chords and the propulsion of the drums, even when the songs call for a moody atmosphere and restrained tempo. In the spirit of Goblin and Silver Apples, but streamlined care of the modern production and slick recording. The hype sticker references library music, and while I can see that too, the duo are clearly writing for their own pleasure, not commercial-grade production… there’s a piano in there too, and when they layer it over the Juno’s bass-lines and the swing of the drums, I find myself transported to an Italian movie filled with reprehensible protagonists and a bottle of J&B prominent in every scene. If the more popular Bono accidentally wandered onto the screen, you know he’d get tossed through a closed window within seconds!
From deep within a pile of colorful patch cords lies Ben Carey, a young wizard of ancient modular synthesizers which require the assistance of a U-Haul to transport. On his second vinyl full-length for Hospital Hill, Metastability, Carey digs into the electronic guts of a 1975 La Tribe Serge ‘Paperface’, which I assume to be like the Lamborghini Countach of synthesizers. The literal creator of this particular synth, Serge Tcherepnin, weighs in on the cover’s hype sticker even, stating that when it comes to synths, Carey “doesn’t play with them. He plays them.” High praise! From my vantage point over here, with only a vinyl recording to judge, I have no reason to disagree with Tcherepnin’s statement, as both lengthy sides of Metastability are lively and inspired, bustling with fabricated sounds like some sort of, umm, alien ant farm? But not like Alien Ant Farm. It still sounds like one person manipulating a large and elderly modular synth, but Carey coaxes more than just electronic burbles and wheezes from it, he puts together some sort of elaborate and compelling narrative through its wide spectrum of sonic possibility. Even if it remains an elusive mystery to all but him and Tcherepnin.
Back when Civilistjävel! first hit the scene (those halcyon days of 2018), they piqued my interest with their subtly occult electronics and grayscale ritualistic techno moves, as well as the allegations of being a long-lost ’90s project, which of course ended up being not true. Instead they released a ton of immediately-expensive records in the following years, and along with the exclamation point at the end of the name, the whole vibe left me prematurely satiated, but I figured it was time to check back in with this mysterious Swedish producer and see what’s up. And now, seeing as gothic industrial-techno has kind of faded out of fashion, Fyra Platser is a refreshing dose of the dark-ambient electronic style. I’d say it comes closer to the last few Andy Stott albums than anything else, as there’s a certain poise and elegance to Fyra Platser, if perhaps a lot more straightforward overall and a little more Ant-Zen than Stott’s adventurous productions. “Louhivesi” is the clear standout, featuring the commanding vocals of Cucina Povera, whose radiant and cavernous voice commands like the ghost of Nico on an enchanted misty isle. Even without her voice, these songs opt-out of muscular bravado or showy feats of testosterone, preferring to emanate grace and control, or at least the level of control a person can maintain at a midnight seance in the forest.
Couldn’t resist the non-Arafna-related releases in the new Galakthorrö drop, Da-Sein’s third album Sore being one of them. I own their first two full-lengths, and while it’s perfectly entertaining dark-wave industrial (as it has always been), they could’ve just repackaged one of the duo’s earlier albums and I’d probably never realize it, I’m sheepish to admit. Da-Sein fits so seamlessly within the Galakthorrö universe, even looking like a younger version of Mr. and Mrs. Arafna, that it’s almost too on-the-nose, an uncanny reflection of the core Galakthorrö artists, but when it sounds as sensually sadistic and spiritually bereft as Sore, what’s not to like? Da-Sein do a fine job of weaving the cold-wave-presenting mortuary synths and low-key electro pulses with the boiler-room clangor of heavy industrial, certainly leaning closer to the cold-wave side of the equation but always with the appropriate level of tortured artistry. For such an intentionally numbing and despondent style, I still find myself getting excited by the static-y creep of a track like “Master Of His Own”, even if the aesthetic intent is to reduce me to some comatose form drifting down an underground canal. I’d wonder if they intended to mortify my flesh with this release, but of course they did – there’s a song here literally titled “Mortify Your Flesh”. Another reliable and fully-committed work from my favorite source for gloomy analog electronics.
Anytime I’ve seen the FACS name it’s been in the form of someone praising the Chicagoan trio, and now I’m finally peeping this group care of their fifth studio album, Still Life In Decay. It’s very Chicago-sounding in that sort of Y2K Touch & Go way; how can it not be, when you’re an arty math-rock combo recording at Electrical Audio? They’ve got that dry and icy presentation and sound, but FACS aren’t another cookie-cutter noisy/mathy post-punk group. Far from it! Their songs are patient, spacious and often hauntingly beautiful without the faintest whiff of corniness. While the drums are insistently taut and inflexible (which is a great way for these drums to behave), the guitars are pleasantly textural throughout, surprisingly soft and soothing at times. I’m thinking of those great Drose records without all the emotional spasming, Microwaves on sedatives, Slint furbished with today’s extended reverb studio techniques, or the music of New Brutalism as interpreted by those Ex Machina humanoids. The b-side gets particularly gauzy, content to let the essence of song fade out of form, reduced to luxuriously rich tones that shift like sand. It’s those two lengthy b-side tracks that resonate with me most, as FACS are most fascinating and sensual at their calmest – the guitar solo on “New Flag” falls in and out of consciousness in the most gorgeous way and I’m right there with it the whole time.
Top-shelf Euro-sounding American hardcore is a hot commodity and Brooklyn’s Fairytale are one of today’s finest purveyors. I loved their 2021 debut EP and Shooting Star builds on that nicely, jumping right to the full-length format without sacrificing any of the intensity of a hardcore EP. Part of the trick has got to be the recording, coming from the D4MT Labs crew and really dialing in the perfect mix of power and crispness with an authentic crust-punk vibe. The songs never stray far from the d-beat, but they use that as an artistic starting point rather than the full and final concept. It’s a sick beat, perfect for fist-pumping splashes of basement beer, but Fairytale find ways to modify the style, whether its through a wretchedly acidic guitar tone, manic cymbal-work (“Possible To Grow”) or, on the song titled “Fairytale”, a beyond-extended instrumental d-beat passage which draws into focus the music’s hypnotic properties, twisting time in their fist. Must’ve been wild to play, and it’s certainly wild to listen to, all with a singer whose banshee wail falls somewhere between Nog Watt and Detente. No state but a toxic one!
Parked Up is the first vinyl full-length from Greymouth following a number of singles and I want to be friends with anyone who eagerly awaited it. Music as unfettered and frantic as theirs fits any format, from a split five-inch to a USB duct-taped to the ceiling of a convenience store bathroom, so it’s just nice to hear so much undiluted Greymouth here, all in a row. For those not hip to their style, the band is a duo of guys (both named Mark) who more or less utilize guitar (electric and acoustic), percussion and voice, but it’s all completely ramshackle and at the mercy of what seems to be rudimentary/haphazard recording techniques, with plenty of unidentified noises passing through. I swear, some of these songs might have other Greymouth songs playing quietly in the background, as if they were listening to themselves while recording, or the remnants of an old song bled through the four-track tape. Imagine The Shadow Ring as interpreted by Fat Day, or Instant Automatons if they were actually a Dead C side-project? As I understand it, this duo is New Zealand-raised but stationed in Japan, which sounds like a pretty fun overall existence, if an occasionally destabilizing one. Fun and destabilizing, that’s how I’d describe these wacked-out songs too!
I met a couple of the guys who played on this record when I got it, both of whom independently were like “yeah, I played on that piece of crap” when referring to Earth Abides. I’d say they were being unreasonably hard on themselves, although the negative mindset was probably advantageous when slamming down these four heavy noise-rock tracks. Like The Hammer Party’s full-length, their songs follow a somewhat traditional path with explosive bursts, back-and-forth riffing and pendulous rhythms. It’s a somewhat native trait, as this Rhode Island group features Dan St. Jaques of noise-rock visionaries Landed on vocals (and Six Finger Satellite’s Pelletier lends his sax to “Walk The Walk”). Whereas Landed’s songs toed the lines between frustrating reality and unfettered fantasy, Earth Abides is fully grounded in the drudgery of the real world, with “Flat Earth” taking conspiracy theorists to task and “Federal Reserve Blues” managing to summon the low-level misery of tax day through only a small handful of words. St. Jacques’ voice is croakier than ever here, downright Beefheartian at times! His weathered throat ably suits the tunes, which operate in the same general territory that Shellac, Lubricated Goat and Teenage Jesus have all been spotted at various times through the years. Hate to argue with the members of The Hammer Party, but Earth Abides ain’t half bad!
Arafna Cultura Forever! I don’t think goth-tinged German electro-industrial music gets any better than Haus Arafna, the long-running project of, umm, Mr. and Mrs. Arafna, released consistently and exclusively on their in-house Galakthorrö label since 1995. Curiously, this is their first release entirely in German, and while I’ve always enjoyed their intriguingly dark English lyrics, I don’t need to understand their words to get the message. “Dunkelheit Bleibt” is a stiff industrial march, the rhythm pounded out by not traditional percussion but some sort of commercial-grade metallic malfunction. Eerie synths creep at chain’s length while Mr. Arafna barks his orders. As they say in Germany: bravo! “Welt Verzicht” uses the same palate (hell, they kinda always use the same palate) but at a slower pace, more agony than anger as oxidized metal clangs through a dim basement hallway. You can tell that Haus Arafna really labor over the fine details, content to make sure every aspect is perfectly in order and unconcerned if it takes a number of years between releases to get it right. They’re not one of these cold-wave fest-circuit groups churning out constant “content” in an attempt to stay relevant – they’re the damn masters.
Klon Dump hooked me in with 2021’s Klon001 and this new one, what with its shade-throwing title and funny center-label faces, wasn’t going to pass me by. I’m not sure what he’s on about exactly but I find his vibe appealing, and for as explicitly mocking as this EP’s title is, these two club cuts are pure inclusive fun. “Let’s All Be Influenced” is a high-energy house bop, with some sugar-free acid lurking under the shiny chord changes. Reminds me of Steven Julien when he gets on a disco tip, energetic dance music for roller-rinks and breakdance routines. “By The Same Things At The Same Time” (see what he did with the titles there?) is a little more mysterious, working ’90s trance and Cybotron’s retro-futurism into something that could’ve conceivably made it to Perlon’s desk, as the whole thing is still elastic and minimal tech-house (even including the robot vocal). It breaks down entirely about three and a half minutes in, locating an entirely new bass-line punctuated by buoyant acid swells. Taken as a whole, the track feels like a pleasant space-shuttle between terrestrial planets with Tin Man as concierge offering light refreshments and mood lighting. It seems likely that I’ll go wherever Klon Dump wants to take me.
Shout-out to the All Night Flight record shop newsletter, as their almost-comically effusive praise for this Christian Mirande album made it irresistible. It’s funny that it took a wildly exuberant British guy to hip me to the work of an experimental musician in the same lil’ city where I live, but that’s how life sometimes works in this globalized era. Anyway, onto Beautiful One Day – it’s a weird one! The first side is comprised of nine brief, deeply strange pieces, mostly consisting of tweaked sinewaves, silence, interference, some talking… and not much else. Very Cage-ian in its approach to sound (and lack thereof), to the point where I started wondering if I was duped, the victim of some obscure hype that none of my loved ones would ever understand. Mercifully, Mirande balances his Subotnick- / Docstader- / Idea Fire Company-inspired modular experiments with the flowing title track, encompassing all of the second side of the record (though listed as four parts). This side is clearly, surprisingly music, opening with some drifting tones overlaid with a playful field-recording and expanding into a slow-burning jazz-funk groove, replete with live drums and bass. It’s a true dazzler; as the track dissolves into sustained organic plucking like a drop of food coloring in a glass of water, it imparts an unexpected comfort, like your personal favorite Radiohead b-side or Aguirre Records release that no one seems to know but you. Taken with the knowledge that some Mancunian music enthusiast is absolutely freaking the hell out over it, Beautiful One Day, Perfect The Next is an audacious and tender ray of sunshine.
Just when I thought Nusidm and the various works of its creator Glen Schenau were too uncompromisingly eccentric to find a label to call home, the mighty Bruit Direct steps up in what is undoubtedly an appropriate pairing. Nusidm’s 2021 album was a righteous entry in the crowded field of post-punk no-wave, cutting its own choppy path as what I thought might be the first “free-dirge” record, and The Last Temptation Of Thrill is a stellar follow-up, a sharpening of Schenau’s warped blade. Nusidm remains a fully deconstructed rock group here, with songs that have me picturing motorized limbs flailing without bodies, the sort of thing you’d expect to find lingering in Boston Scientific’s dumpsters. From the warbly bass-guitar to the clattering drums and steel-wool guitar, each instrument behaves in only loose accordance with each other, pushing onward to somehow form a song in spite of themselves. I’m still hearing the most out-there moments in the Slugfuckers’s brief discography, or perhaps The Pop Group drained of all funk (imagine if you can!), or Mars deprived of air (just like Mars the planet), though the language of Nusidm is ultimately more feral and cracked. “Run To The Shops”, for example, opens with a couple minutes of the drums all by themselves, clanking contentedly while the rest of the band goes on smoko. Is there even a band, or is it four Glen Schenaus wandering around the room?
Congrats to Obituary on their twelfth studio album! I’m not even going to pretend to be familiar with half of their full-lengths (I’m a The End Complete and Slowly We Rot guy), but judging from the gruesome cover paintings and violent album titles that span their lengthy discography, it would appear that this long-running Florida death metal group has yet to waiver from their death-metal mission in nigh thirty-five years of existence, or even center-parted long hair for that matter. Theirs must be a fairly unique reality, one that is so dedicated to essentially the same thing for such a significant amount of time, and one that I presume will only come to an end in the event of, ironically enough, their deaths. (Though, with two prior members already sadly deceased, it may take even more than death to halt Obituary.) Anyway, Dying Of Everything is here now, and it sounds almost precisely as I’d hope and expect: grinding mid-paced grooves, heavy blasts, evil-yet-intelligible vocals in the Tom Araya vein, a production as slick and precise as it is thunderous and imposing. A track like “Without A Conscience” is pure metal comfort food, with exquisite bass-drum placement and grooves as beholden to ’90s Deicide as ’80s Crumbsuckers. It’s followed by a rumbling intro filled with literal gunfire for the appropriately titled “War”, a grotesque mosh perfectly suited for the entrance theme of an occult-based pro-wrestler. You’ll have better luck knocking off Jason Bourne than putting an end to Obituary.
We all love Bill Orcutt, the true American treasure that he is, and rightfully so! He blew our wigs off with Harry Pussy and glued them back on with his numerous solo guitar outings, but I want to call attention to what might be my favorite version of solo Bill Orcutt: computer software mode. He did it with A Mechanical Joey a year or two ago, editing a Joey Ramone count-off into a vivid cascade of sound, and he’s doing it again with The Anxiety Of Symmetry. This time around, Orcutt takes six female voices singing the corresponding six notes in a scale and whips it into a dazzling vocal orchestra. Very much in the spirit of Philip Glass and Roberto Cacciapaglia, but also similar in atmosphere and tone as like, Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity and Howard Hello’s Don’t Drink His Blood, two lightly IDM-infused emo masterpieces of the Y2K era. Throw a pillowy kick under it, get Ben Gibbard to whine a pleasant melody and boom, new Postal Service album! I kid (slightly), but only because The Anxiety Of Symmetry is such a gorgeous and deeply pleasant album, too complex for my brain to fully comprehend but effortlessly easy to enjoy.
No known relation to Post Malone, Post Moves is a Western Mass guitarist who takes a collage-y approach to composition. By the mainstream’s standards, it’s weird, but within our little Yellow Green Red world there seems to be a number of folks messing around in similar ways these days: turn the buzz of a guitar into a drone care of some effects pedals; layer a field-recording of children playing; fingerpick on an acoustic in a lightly jazzy manner; stack various twinkly melodies until the whole thing is bursting with color. Whereas many of these artists like to conjure tropical beaches or intergalactic vistas with their guitars, Post Moves renders images of faded barns, fields of clover and chicory and creaky rocking chairs on a front porch with his music – I’m pretty sure I heard some banjo in there, for example. Imagine a faded old stack of VG-/G ECM records in a bin marked “free” outside a bookstore/health-food co-op in some sleepy mountain town… that seems to be the vibe Post Moves is seeking (or seeking to tastefully update) here, even if the colorful artwork and graphic design elements reveal Recall The Dream Breath as the work not of a hippie boomer but an art-schooler born in the ’90s. The perfect soundtrack for the curvy, tree-lined drive from Northampton to MassMOCA, one I’d assume Post Moves has made countless times himself.
Lots of labels profess to do whatever they want, but Dublin’s Wah Wah Wino professes nothing while displaying fully dedication to their own unique internal logic. Case in point is this new seven-inch single from Houston rapper SG Rilla Mane (aka Slim Guerilla), a gorgeously syrupy cut of authentic Texas rap. I’m certainly pleased to make SG Rilla Mane’s acquaintance here, as “My Cadillac” is an instant hit. The beat is out of this world, based on a sampled slice of new-age jazz guitar(?) that’s as pristine as a white leather couch straight from the factory line. It’s just too good, sounding like something James Ferraro would’ve sourced for a new vaporwave project, but instead the sample is laced up with a rich low-end and an indifferent beat for Southern hip-hop perfection. It’s nice to own on a seven-inch, but I wish I had this on a scratched-up CD-r and a 2005 Honda Accord with subwoofers in the trunk from which to blast it. The b-side is a Morgan Buckley remix, which chops and speeds-up the original into a pile of noodles; it’s fun, but there’s really no way to improve upon the original, and Buckley wisely doesn’t seem to try. “My Cadillac” is a stunner regardless of how it’s presented, though, and further proof of the wide-ranging tastes and voracious musical appetite of the Wah Wah Wino crew. 
Not sure where all the wacked-out DIY post-punk record labels have gone in the last few years. I realize it’s a harsh financial environment (tapes are so much easier and safer, not to mention digital), but damn it feels good that Minimum Table Stacks is dropping a surprisingly thick stack of vinyl since its inception last year, and it’s all worth hearing. The Sheaves’ debut album Excess Death Cult Time was a cassette-only affair care of Moone last year, and now I’m uncomfortably blasting it on the format it deserves. Weird band, this: from Arizona (and featuring personnel from Soft Shoulder and Humiliation), The Sheaves play a brittle, ramshackle form of traditional 1979 British DIY. The album sounds like they all met at a Fall show in some university hall and decided they could do it too, even though they aren’t teenagers and are baking in the American desert, not soaking in a Cardiff bog. Fans of Shoes This High, Homosexuals and Puritan Guitars take note! The drums are dry, the guitars sound like their strings haven’t been changed since being purchased second-hand and, most compellingly, the vocalist has a voice entirely his own. I’ve come up short figuring out which member is the singer via online sleuthing, but it’s gotta be whichever one has yellowish-green skin and is wearing a deteriorated funeral suit, as the vocalist sounds like an actual zombie, only partially aware of his presence as the singer in a rock n’ roll band. It’s just the right amount of ludicrous and enhances these already-cool tunes into a modern post-punk gem.
The experimental bonafides of Mary Staubitz and Russ Waterhouse are undeniable, she as the inventive Donna Parker and he as half of the inimitable Blues Control to mention but one detail each. They’re a duo in life and music, and as a recording project they’ve turned their focus to field recordings, of which Out And About is their vinyl debut. It’s an overcrowded field with a very low barrier of entry, the field-recording biz, which makes the peculiar joy of Out And About that much more exceptional. These recordings generally speak for themselves; any editing is tasteful and minimized, allowing the richly human scenes they stumbled upon to shine uninterrupted and with startling clarity. “Jazz Conversation” is self-evident by its title – a heated discussion of jazz superiority over the clinking of glasses and ringing of phones, like a Sopranos outtake but real – whereas “No Recess” documents some antsy faculty members trying to quiet a school cafeteria with the mixed results we’d expect from our youth. Track titles give us some clues, but certain sounds will forever be unplaceable (what was that ungodly buzz a few seconds into “Night Sweats”?) to anyone besides Staubitz, Waterhouse and those who experienced them firsthand. Much like skilled photographers manage to render exceptional images from the banal, Staubitz & Waterhouse reflect the sounds of our world back to us in fascinating and unexpected ways.
Seven new tracks here from playful French experimental producer Terrine, whose work has always toed the line between the absurd and the serious (before falling over into the absurd). Standing Abs is no exception, and the first time I’m picking up on the aesthetic correlation between herself and another of my favorite European post-techno provocateurs, Lolina. They both operate in a simultaneously po-faced and hilarious mode, toying with their electronics in inventive new ways while never fully revealing their intentions. Warped synths, shuddering electronic beats and a vague sense of inside-joking are all key to the process. They both frequently use song titles as punchlines too, and with “Carrageenan Do Dad Jokes” and “Bâton XXL Will Make A Record One Day” on here, that tradition is maintained. Whereas earlier Terrine records took on more of a collage approach, using scraps of found-sound along side a wide range of instrumentation, Standing Abs feels more unified in its software/hardware, somewhat tightened up and more focused, at least relative to prior albums, with acoustic piano improvisations providing the heart and soul. I loved those early, extra-messy approaches to album-building, and I love this one too, sounding like Misha Mengelberg trapped inside a cell shaped like the Aphex Twin logo. 
Melbourne’s Terry keep things Terry-centric with their fourth full-length, Call Me Terry. I understand them as kind of an indie-pop cousin to Total Control, though with four albums and a significant stash of singles and EPs under their collective belt, they’ve certainly carved their own niche. In a Mikey Young-based or tangentially-related constellation of bands, The UV Race always felt like the spastic little brother who leaves plastic toys on the floor, whereas Terry are the cool older sister, wearing a beret and reading French philosophy at the breakfast table. Call me crazy but that seems to fit the vibe of Call Me Terry, which goes fuzzy and simplistically-poppy while still maintaining an undeniable level of cool. Reminds me a bit of Dan Melchior’s many garage-pop endeavors, but the shiny-happy subversiveness of “Gold Duck” feels like it could’ve worked on that last wonderfully-weird Total Control record too, if I may repeatedly bring up a different band in this review. While not the sole project of many of its members, Terry is without a doubt its own distinctive group, somewhere between the obscure pop beauty of The Bats and the charming insouciance of Swell Maps, replete with customized melodies, clever song-play and the breezy confidence that only comes with knowing you’re a really good band. 
Nice follow-up here from Austin-based perpetual groove machine Water Damage. If you weren’t already sucked down the cosmic drain by their debut, allow me to provide some basic info: they are a drum-centered octet featuring members of Spray Paint, Black Eyes and Marriage alongside the Texas rose Thor Harris himself, and they improvise lengthy curls of instrumental drone-rock. They find a note, hold it, and crush it like a beer-can on their forehead, all while the multiple drummers lock in on some simplistically spacey groove and the rest of the crew hums along. Very much in the manner of Tony Conrad with Faust and France (who, if you haven’t heard, you gotta check out France), the type of music that’s probably easy and satisfying to perform with the same spiritual gratification extending to the listener. The first side drones confidently over a patient break-beat, sounding like a family of air conditioners crossing the river Styx without incident. The b-side is immediately more psychedelic, as the beat is mostly the same (if sweetly dubbed out) and someone found a set of triangles or something, unleashing some chiming metallic tones over another supremely dank groove. Once the keys come in, it feels like MF Doom could unleash an otherworldly verse, though “killer cut to rap on” probably wasn’t a consequence Water Damage foresaw. Seems like Water Damage can conjure these infinite jams at will, only limited by the length of the tape… heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were jamming out a new one right this very moment. Makes you think.
Refreshingly quirky experimental pop (but not hyper-pop) here from Brooklyn’s Water From Your Eyes. They seem to delight in messing with their prospective audience – I mean come on, their name is just a clunky way to say “tears” – and to be honest, it’s a delight to be messed with by them! They seem to come from the ’90s indie lineage of Stereolab, Broadcast and Pram, but they also kind of up-end it in a playfully modern way, using the full capabilities of digital editing to warp the mix in ways not reasonably possible in the ’90s. It’s like these songs want to be upbeat indie-pop in their heart of hearts, but there’s a Daniel Lopatin-esque dissolution happening all the time, where voices melt, samples override the melody, rhythms arrive from left-field… basically anything to shake things up. I’m reminded a bit of Katie Alice Greer’s solo debut, in the way both artists insist on pairing catchy melodies with absolutely mangled instrumentation / experimental non-instrumentation, but Everyone’s Crushed is shiny and polished even in its roughest moments, as if the Empire Records soundtrack was forced into one of those elastic latex bodysuits Arca has laying around. I like it when they go completely inaccessible, but tracks like “True Life” and “Barley” bring the restless energy of Erase Errata to the populist bop of like, a Moby remix. Recommended from top to bottom!
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