Jacques Bon & Drux A Long Way 2xLP (Smallville)
Move D and Benjamin Brunn’s Songs From The Beehive was a formative techno full-length for yours truly, a minimal tech-house album that saved plenty of space for all its warm, weird, fuzzy underpinnings, wisely adorned by the cover’s colorful splots. Fourteen years later, German label Smallville continues that same mission of funky, non-aggressive tech-house with this new one from Jacques Bon and Vincent Drux (and just like Songs From The Beehive, its cover was also designed by Smallville’s in-house artist Stefan Marx). Bon and Drux do a great job of ignoring the past decade of electronic music’s multitudinous trends, sticking with a rich tech-house sound designated by booming bass-lines, hazy synths, pleasant levels of reverb and a consistently casual pulse. Nothing fancy or designed to provoke, just solidly-constructed tech-house with subtle detailing here and there. It feels very much in line with Perlon’s ’00s roster, the sort of thing that could be accompanied by a Villalobos or Luciano remix on the b-side. Though this one isn’t quite emo enough to be confused with the Giegling roster, they both inspire me to wish I was in some sleepy German town raving in a cobblestone courtyard flanked by coffee shops and a babbling brook. Not an essential release, though A Long Way conjures an essential feeling, which I insist you locate somewhere else if not here.
Carcáscara 2 LP (Hegoa)
Very pleasant combination of modern minimalism and traditional folk here from Carcáscara and their Basque Country residence. I appreciate a group that takes fifteen years to follow their debut, which is the case with Carcáscara’s 2 – they clearly aren’t pumping out content for the sake of it. 2 opens with a softly chiming acoustic guitar and sweet vocals reminiscent of Devendra Banhart’s early studio albums, but the album opens outward from somewhat traditional folk music to a sprawling suite of harmonium, pitched percussion, melodic vocals and plenty of resonant classical guitars. The label references John Fahey and Robbie Basho as influences, and while Carcáscara employ plenty of cascading acoustic guitars throughout, there’s a clear path to the many modern artists who utilize cyclical patterns as an almost meditative practice as well, from the tempered percussion of De Leon to the healing grooves of Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society. But whereas the work of many modern “fourth-world” ambient players can feel as thought it was stitched together on a laptop, the music of Carcáscara is particularly organic and natural-sounding. The sustained drone of a synth on “Aries Resurrection” is clearly electronic, but the rich tones that quickly envelop it could be flutes, an old organ, or something else entirely. All of these songs feel as though they were carefully rendered by human hands, and that tenderness has seeped into every crevice of this charming album.
Chat Pile God’s Country LP (Flenser)
It’s both cool and a little weird that some people seem extremely psyched on the debut album from Oklahoma City’s sludge / noise-rock outfit Chat Pile. This sorta aggro, noisy, mid- to slow-paced rock thing felt like its moment came a decade ago, but I personally find it an endearing sound regardless of time period, so long as it’s performed with style and intent. Chat Pile manage to merge the sludge-rock that filtered through the hardcore scene in the ’90s (think of Cavity, Gob, Deadguy and Floor) with some of Korn’s down-tuned groove and the “I’m a crazy guy who’s losing it” vibe of Daughters’ last (and presumably final?) record. It’s good! Chat Pile are clearly trying to write memorable songs rather than fill up a space with sound. Although a well-intentioned track like “Why” reeks of “31 year-old white guy realizes the world is bad”, they have some great moody moments that verge on Alice In Chains-level brutality, like “Anywhere” and even “Why”‘s lumbering opening riff. Not sure you’ll need to hear “I Don’t Care If I Burn” more than once, but it’s cool that Chat Pile are trying to create their own thing rather than follow the established blueprint. Many bands who attempt this style focus on the sound and aesthetic rather than the songs themselves, but God Country is a dynamic record, notably replayable in a genre that often prides itself on grueling monotony.
Claude A Lot’s Gonna Change LP (American Dreams)
Unrepentantly chill debut full-length here from Chicago’s Claude, who successfully coalesces a few different strands of popular underground pop (dream-pop, chill-wave, synth-pop). Her songs range from smoky slow-dances to caffeinated electro-pop, all unified by her confident and well-enunciated voice. She casually speak-sings for the most part, with each syllable sounding carefully considered and unhurried, and her delivery is probably the biggest draw for me. It’s so easy to sound disaffected and over-it these days, especially with echo-y synths and electronic programming, but Claude comes across as sincere and considered, willing to give a little of herself even if it means risking vulnerability. The album opens with a song about being in her twenties (“Twenty Something”), whereas I feel like most solo electro-pop singers would avoid admitting something as real as their age, no matter if they’re in their twenties or their sixties. I hear some Lana Del Rey, Tamaryn and Cocteau Twins in these songs, but also unlikelier artists like Pulseprogramming and The Postal Service (“What’re You On Tonight”) or, I dunno, Molly Nilsson covering That Dog (“Claustrophobia”)? Whenever I recognize a nice wide spread of related-unrelated artists in a record, it usually means I dig it, which is certainly the case here. Best twenty-something album of the month!
Caleb Dailey Warm Evenings, Pale Mornings: Beside You Then LP (Moone / Alien Transistor)
Moone label-head (and occasional Soft Shoulder member) Caleb Dailey bears his tear-stained, denim-clad heart on his solo debut, Warm Evenings, Pale Mornings: Beside You Then. Sometimes, we best express ourselves through the words of others, an approach Dailey favors here as this album consists entirely of covers, classic weepy country tunes written by Gram Parsons, Gordon Lightfoot and Blaze Foley. I’m sure these timeless gems would sound lovely performed on a broken washing machine and a theremin (that’d be better suited for a Gilgongo release), but Dailey gives them the proper rock instrumentation alongside a small collection of pals, adorning these songs with keys, pedal steel, banjo, harmonium and whatever else might be necessary to get the job done (including none other than Tori Kudo himself playing violin on “Brass Buttons”!). The recording is warm and lively; I’m reminded of some of those early Elephant 6 recordings where you can practically hear all the musicians shuffling their feet across the room, moving microphones and picking up instruments in a cluttered and convivial studio space. Played by one’s lonesome, these songs would be A-OK, but Dailey opens the blinds and lets their tender power shine (with a little help from his friends).
Doc Flippers Human Pork LP (Sophomore Lounge / Phantom / We Don’t Make It)
Since the beginning, German punk has always been one of the weirder forms of punk, and Leipzig’s Doc Flippers continue that proud tradition with their full-length vinyl debut, Human Pork. The artwork calls to mind both Lumpy Records and Sam McPheeters, and that same sort of restless desire to agitate is prevalent throughout the album, even as there’s no hardcore (and mostly just the essence of punk) to be found. If anything, it seems like Doc Flippers are purposefully making fun of punk while simultaneously playing their own form of it, if that makes sense… it’s not irony, it’s more like a deliberate nose-thumbing at the audience as well as themselves. Some of their weird guitar licks recall some of those tape-only post-Coneheads projects and early Chronophage, all with the same “half a dozen people on stage” feel of Natural Man & The Flamin’ Hot Band. Throw in an instrumental funk break where the joke is that it’s actually kinda good, and then just speed it up on a loop over and over? Why not! It’s a wacky party for sure – someone’s getting pranked here, and if you’re not sure who it is that’s getting pranked, there’s a good chance it may be you.
420 420 LP (Lustwerk Music)
Gotta hand it to Galcher Lustwerk for behaving in a sporadic and confusing manner that simply doesn’t jive with way the world works today (relentless online content and promotion). Rather than constantly chiming in on social media, Lustwerk seems content to fade below the surface, which is cool with me… more artists should make their fans chase them rather than the other way around. Case in point is this album from 420 – it’s perhaps Lustwerk’s most uninspired moniker, though the music is as sweet as anything released under his primary name. This is rich, supple house music with Detroit and German influences, deployed under the cover of night and in the darkest crannies of the club. “Untitled 1” is the upbeat party-starter, its speedy bongos giving way to luscious pads redolent of DJ Central and Omar S. If anything, 420 leans closer to traditional techno than previous works (see the Drexciya-esque “Untitled 6”) but it fits him as well as the downtempo house he’s refined over the years. Lustwerk’s vocals have always been one of the most striking and distinctive aspects of his music, and while he doesn’t rap on all of these tracks, his staccato vocal lines remain the show-stealer, at once energetic yet fully reclined. There’s a lot of Lustwerk material out there, the majority of which shares the same sonic aesthetic, but 420 feels particularly fresh to me right now. More of the same, but when the same is so damn good, who could complain?
The Frowning Clouds Gospel Sounds & More From The Church Of Scientology LP (Anti Fade)
This Frowning Clouds album went right on the turntable, sans research (or even really reading the cover), and as these dainty throwback garage/soul/rhythm-and-blues songs entered my head, I couldn’t help but think to myself, is this band completely unaffected by the world we live in? I was trying to figure out how a band could be so pleasantly, cluelessly carefree, retro-rocking without the slightest hint that they’re aware of the situation we’re all in, and then I finally looked on the back cover to learn that this album is a collection of The Frowning Clouds’ earliest material from 2011 through 2013. That explains it! They were based out of Geelong and Melbourne in the great country of Australia, and apparently no longer exist, but managed to put out a few albums back in those simpler times. Their songs are deeply rooted in a ’60s garage sound, as twinkly as The Byrds and Tommy James & The Shondells, snappy as The Kinks and scrappy as Los Cincos or The Black Lips. It’s extremely retro, unabashedly so, and if that’s the sound you want to hear, I can’t imagine you’ll walk away disappointed from this one. It doesn’t resonate too strongly with me, hearing it for the first time here and now, but anyone wearing purple-tinted sunglasses and multiple bead necklaces will surely find ample reason to groove along.
Isolationgemeinschaft Der Tanz Geht Weiter! LP (Phantom)
Quick advice for any punk and punk-adjacent bands looking to get a record out today – go send your demo to Phantom! I’m not sure how this German label does it, but they seem to churn out a higher frequency of vinyl releases than anyone else out there… maybe their dad owns a pressing plant? Anyway, Isolationsgemeinschaft (or as they’re casually known, I.G.) linked up with the label for their second full-length, and much like their 2020 debut, Der Tanz Geht Weiter! is a morose synth-wave album full of deadpan German vocals, oscillating synths and unfriendly drum machines. Cabaret Voltaire and Martial Canterel feel like compatriots if not outright influences, though Isolationsgemeinschaft are a bit less experimental than the former and less clinical than the latter. The immediate delivery and somewhat rudimentary songwriting feels more post-punk than cold-wave, even if there is nary a guitar in sight. They probably open for Boy Harsher when they come through Germany, or if they don’t, Boy Harsher’s agent needs to pay better attention to the underground. By no means a life-changing album, but would I lurk around a basement chamber wearing black eyeliner and a cape while listening to it? I believe I would.
Ben Klock & Fadi Mohem Klockworks 34 12″ (Klockworks)
If it ever feels like I write overwhelmingly positive words about the techno I review here, I think it’s because I don’t get sent a ton of this stuff, so I’m already kind of self-selecting, going right to the records that interest me most and passing over some of the less-inspired entries (in what is of course a supremely crowded field of artists and producers). This means I have more time to check out a new Ben Klock EP such as this, love it, and share the good word here with you. The last time Ben Klock teamed up with Fadi Mohem, it was for “a collaboration on a futuristic NFT in 2021” (insert queasy-face emoji), but I’m glad they’re back to taking their hardware jams to vinyl instead of wherever NFTs reside. Opener “Prefix” could entertain me from its opening drum loop alone, a ragged stutter-step that pleasantly increases my heart rate. They let that killer loop rip and proceed to craft a full tune around it, with lingering keys, EKG beeps and a pleasantly restless energy. The rest of the cuts continue similarly – don’t expect any epic build-ups or melodic leads, Klock and Mohem are here to drill a hole in your head with their mighty selection of hardware, very reminiscent of Planetary Assault Systems, Barker & Baumecker and the rest of Ostgut Ton’s heavyweight fighters. If the extremely German bleep/thwack of “Hydrocarbon” doesn’t resonate with you, I implore you to send me some techno that does!
Lolina Fast Fashion LP (Deathbomb Arc)
“Lolina is the Joseph Beuys of my generation” is a thought I had while listening to her newest, the head-spinning Fast Fashion, and while I don’t have a well thought-out explanation to defend my hasty assertion just yet, I can confirm that she’s dazzled and befuddled me over the past few years like no one else. What to even say about this one? I’d rather you heard it yourself, but until you do, I’ll start by kinda uselessly stating that the a-side encompassing cut “Looking For A Charger But Only Works On Batteries” is wild. She seems to be messing with some sort of time-squelching sampler for the length of the album, a Casio SK-1 modified to edit space-time as well as sample one’s voice, perhaps? The first cut is nearly twenty minutes long, and Lolina works it the hell out, even dropping a beat ala MF Doom for a brief head-bob excursion. In lesser hands, I’d struggle to get through such a frantic mess, but the track progresses with finesse and horror, a real marker of our times. The b-side is filled with a fairly consistent level of sampler madness, perhaps perfected on “”Mark Ronson’s Ted Talk Intro (Using Computer Remix)”, a track with a title that lets you know what’s in store. Now, I’m not going to Google it to figure out if Mark Ronson actually ever gave a real TED Talk, but Lolina chops his words of motivation with a Dada-ist impulse, whipping it into footwork-style loops seemingly on the fly. All of Fast Fashion feels immediate and unedited, though I accept that I’ll never know what truly took place to create these baffling rapid-fire edits. With some artists, you want to know how the sausage is made, but I accept Lolina’s world on her terms and conditions, too busy being delighted and stunned to react any other way.
Frank Marchi Jazz Odyssey LP (no label)
Trying to pick up enough of my brain matter off the floor to see if I can string a few words together about the record that splattered it there in the first place, Frank Marchi’s Jazz Odyssey. Marchi is a living West Bay legend, having played in bands as crucial as Plutocracy and Agents Of Satan while remaining active beyond their legacies (he even played bass on the new Tony Molina record!). And now he’s got his first solo record, what seems to be a dub plate full of solo material recorded earlier this year. It rules! I’m going to go ahead and assume that Marchi personally formulated a lot of what I’ve come to understand as the West Bay sound (while also being influenced by his countless friends and bandmates), as the material here is vibrant and alive with that distinctively West Bay form of smoothed-out aggression. It’s music for cruising down a highway with a giant joint being passed around, but also way more hostile and mystifying than the various other forms of music that enable the same behavior. I can certainly hear No Le$$ in these sour grooves, but I can also hear the beat-digging of Madlib, the cosmic riff meditation of Om and the hardcore-prog of Man Is The Bastard and Gasp. These songs are all instrumental, but unlikely and entertaining samples provide the occasional human voice, and Marchi’s freaky guitar noodling contrasts nicely with the funky breaks and dynamic bass grooves. It’s crazy to me that I can find zero information about this record online, only some clips on Soundcloud, considering the level of craftsmanship and quality. I kinda keep worrying I dreamed this whole thing up, that I’m going to look for it next to my stereo the following morning and it’ll be gone.
Dan Melchior CB Odyssey LP (Sophomore Lounge / Feeding Tube)
Dan Melchior is a man of many talents – just check out his paintings on Instagram! – and even narrowing it down to merely his musical output results in a fairly vast selection. I’ve particularly enjoyed some of his more abstract and noisy releases, but CB Odyssey seems to be lyrically driven and is all the most entertaining because of it. Maybe he was always a fine-tuned wordsmith and I’d forgotten or somehow not really noticed, but CB Odyssey is full of lyrical gems, Melchior allowing the listeners to witness the futile insanity of the world through his keenly observant eyes. I think it’s the third track that features the couplet “the dog shat on a dead jellyfish / I suppose I should’ve made a wish” – it’s a line that perked my ears up immediately, and Melchior casually wanders through his songs with eloquence and hilarity throughout. The music never gets in the way of his words; most of these songs follow somewhat familiar melodic progressions with fidelity both crusty and glammy, vaguely similar to Timmy’s Organism and Debris but also kinda bluesy and welcoming, no noise for noise’s sake. The form might be conventional, but Melchior’s animated personality and unique perspective whip it up into something unfamiliar and captivating.
Михаил Минерал Лоб LP (Inu Wan Wan)
Feels like the previous Inu Wan Wan album (the improvised klang of Sheng Jie and BoYu Deng) is still ringing in my ears, and now I’m trying to make sense of this outrageous debut from Moscow’s Михаил Минерал (translated to Mikhail Mineral for us non-Cyrillic readers/typers). Opening with the kitchen-table clatter of “Infa”, I could tell this would be the sort of record I dig, a dazzling display of junk-drawer percussion that reveals its form after a couple minutes. I could go for a whole record of this specific style, little bits of tuned metal and wooden scraps getting shuffled around, but Mineral’s instrumentation expands throughout Лоб like one of those death-smelling flowers with giant otherworldly petals. These tracks are clearly the work of a highly curious mind, with details whizzing past at such a clip that it’ll take multiple listens to catch all the details. Throughout, I’m picking up a clear and direct lineage to the late great Ghédalia Tazartès, the way in which Mineral borrows from folk-song, hysterical Dadaism, jazz and DIY synth-forms to pull together their own vision of noise. “Burn Pavin” might be one of the most traditionally musical tracks here, and it’s also one of my favorites, a heavily messed-with horn given an extended solo over a persistent pulse and vocal chant. Лоб is absolutely teeming with life, both beautiful and repugnant. Recommended!
Мodal Melodies Modal Melodies LP (Anti Fade)
The restlessly creative Jake Robertson is seemingly unsatisfied with the thick stack of records he’s recently released under the Alien Nose Job moniker, now collaborating with vocalist Violetta Del Conte-Race in the form of Modal Melodies. Sure, he could’ve thrown us a curveball and had this band sound like Atari Teenage Riot, The Cult or ESG, but Robertson followed his synthetic heart for an album of lightweight synthesized pop the way he’s done it in the past. Modal Melodies cite Lena Platonos and Karen Marks as influences, two artists I rank highly, but I’m not sure Modal Melodies ever reaches the level of artistry, catchiness and overall weirdness of those artists. Instead, it finds a fairly inoffensive lane, mid-paced and melodic, closer to Jane Weaver, Kristin Kontrol, Ann Steel or Austra, to be filed under the general header of “indie goes electronic”. The sounds are nice, and some of these songs (like “The Sun”) have some cool stuff happening under the hood, but they’re delivered so passively, with Del Conte-Race’s vocals low in the mix and reverbed to the point where they become another melodic aspect rather than a commanding focus. I feel like lots of bands do this, they sort of coat everything in a hazy warmth, and while it can make the music more comfortable to pleasantly tune out, I’m the kind of listener who wants to either know what’s going on or be taken on a fantasy ride; this one doesn’t really do either for me.
Tony Molina In The Fade LP (Run For Cover / Summer Shade)
The only people I know who don’t like Tony Molina’s music are the ones who haven’t heard it yet. The man has been clearly and poignantly crafting his guitar pop for a good number of years now, kind of breaking out with 2013’s Dissed And Dismissed (has it really been nine years??) and continuing to forge his own path of wistful guitar pop with baroque melodies and thrillingly brief guitar solos. 2018’s Kill The Lights kind of swerved us with its blatantly Beatles-inspired acoustic pop, and now In The Fade kind of captures the full Molina spectrum, from tender instrumental strum to massive fuzz-pop hits. His sound has been compared to Weezer more than a few times, but it hit me while listening to In The Fade that the correct comparison is actually The Rentals – Molina shares Matt Sharp’s uncompromising pop vision, similar in both vocal delivery and impatience for the big chorus. Sharp fell in love with synths, but Molina is a guitar man through and through, and would also probably quit Weezer after a couple landmark albums for being unable to deal with the annoying main guy. Molina doesn’t need to hitch his wagon to a big star anyway, since his own glorious vision of guitar-pop is on full display here through what is his lengthiest album yet. It’s his longest and I’m already eager for more!
Мontel Palmer Wayback 7″ flexi (Tax Free)
The Tax Free folks continue to expand and dazzle my mind with this new single-sided flexi-disc from Montel Palmer, an apparent band (as opposed to a single person) with social ties to other Tax Free artists like Iris and Employee, both of whom I cherish. While those other artists follow a discernible albeit rocky path toward some form of pop, Montel Palmer fell off that cart long before it even started rolling. Their music consists of rough tape experiments, warbly guitar excursions and unrelated rhythmic accompaniment, all of which appear to be significantly jacked-up before making it to the mix. Reminds me of head-scratching DIY offerings by the mysterious File Under Pop, Milk From Cheltenham, Chips For The Poor and The Shadow Ring, with a smidge of the basement-techno-psych mindset I’d associate with Wah Wah Wino’s more esoteric offerings. Jump right to the impossibly catchy numbskullery of “Who’s Gonna Get It???” and see if Wayback isn’t the finest flexi-disc you willingly purchase for yourself in 2022.
Organ Of Corti Incus / Malleus 7″ (Dead Mind)
Dan Johansson has yet to offer a collaboration I haven’t enjoyed, this new one with iDEAL’s Joachim Nordwall and Altar Of Flies’ Mattias Gustafsson included. Johansson’s work in Neutral is my fave, but I’ve always enjoyed his solo material as Sewer Election, and now you can add Organ Of Corti to the ever-growing stack. I appreciate that many Swedes still utilize seven-inches as a meaningful format, and these two cuts are fun ventures into places that’ll permanently stain your clothes. The central rhythm to “Incus” is a wet sloshing sound, over which they lay digi-metallic interference, cut-up noise and electro-acoustic disturbances. It calls to mind John Wiese interrupting an Aaron Dilloway solo loop session with his chaotic range of fast-moving electrical shocks, which, come to think of it, probably already happened at some point in time. “Malleus” also brings forth a late ’00s Wolf Eyes style, with frantic industrial puttering placed up against eerie synth warbles, slowly gaining in intensity as drawers of rusty utensils rattle and the three noise-makers move from a passive conversation between their respective “instruments” into a lively three-way sparring. Even at the EP’s most frantic moments, these pros leave plenty of space for the sounds to breathe, embracing cooperation over competition. It’s scarier, and more fun, that way.
Persona Free Your Mind! 12″ (Iron Lung)
Hasn’t been a shortage of New York hardcore in decades now, and I’m not even including the ever-popular gangsta-beatdown style when I say that. Persona must be kinda new, but they’ll fit right in with all the crusty, dressed-up punks who bring a handful of fireworks to every gig. These songs are chaotic and raging in that distinct vein of American-influenced Japanese-influenced American hardcore. I’m hearing plenty of H-100s and Nine Shocks Terror here, fast but never grindy with shifty riffs and drumming that has no choice but to pummel. The vocals appear to be studio-distorted, which places them in more of a modern lineage than an actual 1999 hardcore-punk band, but there’s no mistaking Persona for Blazing Eye, S.H.I.T. or Lebenden Toten – they don’t seem particularly interested in “hardcore as noise” so much as “hardcore as a means for destroying the system (or at least someone else’s property)”. Cool with me! There’s more value than ever in hardcore music that speaks to a wide audience in both riff and lyric, as opposed to having to guess which $1,200 Swedish hardcore seven-inch inspired which song, and Persona make it work, even while living in the most expensive city in America.
Personal Style False Memories 7″ (no label)
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more rock bands in Buffalo and Albany than the five boroughs of New York City at the present moment. Not sure what’s going on up there – haven’t they heard of home-recorded chill-wave yet? – but it’s cool to see such activity in an area that’s never really snagged the spotlight. Anyway, Personal Style are one of these bands, and they’ve got this new two-song single, which rocks in kind of a “polished ’90s alt-rock meets firehall punk shows” way. “False Memories” lands on the smoother side of the intersection of radio rock and post-punk emo, a simplistic stomp which has been utilized in a similar fashion by bands like Foo Fighters and The Hives to crowd-pumping success. “Heartbeat Memorial” is poppier and faster, like The Get-Up Kids covering Queens Of The Stone Age perhaps? The bassist wrings a lot of joy out of what would be a fairly rudimentary riff in someone else’s hands, and the singer manages to slightly strain without losing tone, reminding me of The Jazz June’s Andrew Low (whose last album remains criminally under-appreciated). Ironically, there isn’t a ton of personal style on display here, but that’s kinda what makes me enjoy the seven-inch; Personal Style aren’t trying to do something unprecedented or abnormal, they just wanna play their poppy emo-punk to the best of their abilities and I commend them for it.
Shackleton The Majestic Yes 12″ (Honest Jon’s)
I’ve been patiently waiting for this one, a Shackleton record where he returns from the mathematical occult outer-realm he’s floated off into over the past few years and gets back to the stuff I love the most – mildly creepy tribal-drum madness. This one features no guests, no outside influences, just the man himself and his ability to whip up a heady mix of rich percussive workouts and dark cosmic exploration. While clearly bearing his sonic signature, the three originals here are a bit more direct and live-sounding than previous material, solidly outside of the traditional club realm while deeply rhythmic in nature. Shackleton uses a very natural-sounding set of percussive motifs here, with the sounds of stretched rawhide, tuned wood blocks and caustic cymbals taking precedence over anything blatantly synthetic. While the drums lend themselves to repetition, these tracks are far from monotonous commutes; patterns shift, juke and split in two, or in the case of “The Overwhelming Yes”, speed up and overheat about halfway through. Wrapped with a Mark Ernestus dub of “The Overwhelming Yes”, The Majestic Yes is a fine return-to-form for one of Great Britain’s most remarkable producers of the ’00s, ’10s and beyond.
Short Cuts! Find Us / Seeds Of Doubt 7″ (OBS)
Is it just old dudes reliving their teenage years who are releasing seven-inches anymore? I sure hope not, but there seems to be a good amount of guys my age or older putting out these financially-irresponsible EPs because they’re the only ones with the fiscal means to do it in our current inequitable hellscape. Anyway, I can’t quite figure out where Short Cuts! are from, but I’m narrowing it down to Southern California by way of London, England. At least that’s how they sound, as they inexplicably cop the trademark Fat Wreck Chords sound on these two tracks with vocals that are some strain of British (or perhaps merely trying to be). “Find Us” is like Lagwagon with the sing-along resonance of Good Riddance, a phrase I didn’t expect to share here in 2022, but I’m truly not mad at it, particularly after spinning “Seeds Of Doubt” on the b-side, which confirms this as their sound. The b-side’s not quite as fast, but it calls to mind my early teenage years, encountering pop-punk bands from the Poconos doing their best impressions of Anti-Flag, NOFX and Bad Religion at the show while wondering if anyone will enjoy my wannabe power-violence band’s demo tape. I deeply appreciate Short Cuts! for surprising me with these nostalgic feelings, and I hope they’re able to find a similar sense of satisfaction in what they’re doing.
Troth Blood In My Hair / Lumena I 7″ (I Dischi Del Barone)
Been a minute since I had heard from the great I Dischi Del Barone label (the Goodbye Boozy of the post-noise underground!), but don’t pour one out for ’em just yet – the singles-based label dropped two new ones in 2022, one of them being this Troth offering. Here’s a group that continues to find their path with each new record, moving from a more nondescript position into its own form of weirdly crunchy chill-wave, like a soft blanket speckled with dried leaves from yesterday’s picnic. “Blood In My Hair” pushes the electronic rhythm right up in your face, a wet smack that’s almost incongruent with the hushed melodic tones and Elizabeth Fraser-esque vocals (near impossible to follow, even with the lyric sheet!). Troth make it work! “Lumena” starts off sounding like a King Diamond interlude with its spooky harpsichord progression, but then Amelia Besseny’s vocals hit and the thing switches to mid-’80s 4AD mode, a pensive gothic pre-game suited for brewing some rose-hip tea and applying one’s eyeliner before going to the Lords Of Acid gig much later in the evening. Long may the Swedes and Australians cooperate on ventures such as this!
Tsap Crimes Against Time LP (Altered States Tapes)
Tsap is the duo of Cooper Bowman (Troth) and Chris Colla (Low Life), and they’ve crawled out of the murk of their debut LP, Flickering Lyghte In Campsite, without cleaning themselves up for Crimes Against Time. Whereas the first one had a loose industrial-techno feel at times, Crimes moves its cloudy synths in a different direction. Essentially all of these songs feature lightweight drum-machine patterns and what seems to be the tiniest synth on the table, its high-pitched melodies sounding as though they’re one AA battery away from cutting out. Imagine a Suicide that runs on Diet Coke instead of, umm, actual coke, and replace the “Elvis impersonator trapped in a well” vocals of Alan Vega with a distorted industrial yowl redolent of Michael Berdan (with a subtle Australian accent). Or imagine the fragile moodiness of Trop Tard disturbed by a belligerent punter on the bus. It’s an interesting combo, these unimposing synths/rhythms and the angry shouts of a man choking on his own smoke in the other end of the basement. Took me a couple listens to really settle in, but I’d say I “get it” at this point, and also quite enjoy it, even when the synthetic bass lines recall the intentional chintziness of Sleaford Mods. If anything, Tsap feels like some act that would’ve appeared on a single Broken Flag compilation cassette before immediately vanishing forever… what’s not to like about that?
Vintage Crop Kibitzer LP (Anti Fade)
Fourth album from Melbourne’s Vintage Crop, who, despite their spicy name, revel in the mind-numbery of domestic life, not BDSM gear. They also have managed to not really change their sound all that much, as Kibitzer is a very reasonable and congruous follow-up to 2020’s Serve To Serve Again. If you’re a stranger to the Vintage Crop experience, they’re like if one of those mandatory corporate human resources training videos was a post-punk band, but in a good way, since they’re not actually a part of your terrible office-cubicle job. Sounds odd, but it works! If anything, they’ve toned down the “-punk” aspect of their sound here for a more polite and manageable indie sorta thing, like a pre-funky Parquet Courts, a less-manic Uranium Club or, at their friendliest, The Shifters. It’s not until b-side “Drafted” comes on that I can picture their crowd bopping into each other, but I’m not mad about it – Vintage Crop seem to deliver their message best when their songs are melodic and relaxed, which tends to be the dominant mode here. Why rush screaming into the modern dystopia when we can calmly take the elevator, humming a little melody to ourselves?
Winged Wheel No Island LP (12XU)
The pandemic home-taping repercussions continue to roll out, but for the most part I’d say it’s been a good thing – humanity’s on a steep decline but artists are experts at finding workarounds. Case in point is the mail-collaborative project Winged Wheel, featuring folks from Spray Paint, Tyvek and Powers/Rolin Duo (Matthew Rolin to be precise). Based on drum loops and big beautiful guitars, No Island ends up sounding like Trans Am meeting Beach House or something like that. Maybe one of those marquee Oren Ambarchi albums if he had a little bit of indie/emo in his bloodstream, too? The drums are krautrock-esque in their unwavering repetition, and the guitars brighten the corners with chiming melodies akin to (the under-appreciated) Ulaan Markhor, the CT psych-rock scene and of course at least a smidge of Neil Young. For a recording project, it certainly feels like a “real” band, one with a strong predilection for loose and expansive grooves, content to pleasantly loiter for as long as they like. Wherever you’re headed, No Island is a ride worth hitching.
Some names just draw me in, case in point Amphibian Man II and this twelve-inch release on Estonia’s Porridge Bullet label (another absolutely smashing name). Turns out Amphibian Man II is a new alias from Kiev’s Dmytro Nikolaienko, and I really hope he’s holding up alright, not only because his music here is absolutely killer but because everyone deserves to not live in a war zone. Anyway, my ears perked up immediately upon the smoothed-out dub-detritus of “Crimea 2084”, the opening cut. It’s got theses rich and deeply messed-with organ stabs and just kinda floats on its own weird waves, which is a hard thing to do. Other effects crackle and pop over a deep bass-line and it all comes together in a strike of genius, followed by a proper rinsed-out edit in the form of “Crimea 2084 (In Dub)”. It’s like the perfect halfway point between Morgan Buckley and Pender Street Steppers. “Yalta” follows with a level of intrigue befitting the “imaginary movie soundtrack” that apparently inspired Nikolaienko to create Amphibian Man II, running cool synths through even cooler delay machines, a beatless journey across tape warble and effects. Following a twitchy “Yalta” edit, Amphibian Man II wraps it with “Balaklava”, which continues the EP’s style of sounding like Aaron Dilloway remixing Jan Jelinek. Porridge Bullet doesn’t seem to miss!
Culturally, it feels like all us artsy music types are one step away from moving out to the remote countryside for good, that is if we haven’t already. It just seems less oppressive, at least to a city slicker like me, and perhaps that’s why a good portion of underground sounds are favoring bucolic, outdoorsy motifs these days, free from metropolitan hustle and bustle. Blue Lake’s new album Stikling sure fits the bill, a shimmery and breezy affair that centers Blue Lake’s collection of homemade zithers, something not many musicians can claim to have. Building one’s own zithers sure seems like a rural activity to me! These tracks are gorgeous and easy, from the meandering experimental drone-work of “Thread” to the respectful groove of “Shoots”, which gives rhythmic praise in a manner redolent of Natural Information Society at the height of their morning-yoga powers. This music is credited entirely to Danish musician Jason Dungan, yet it feels like a rich communal experience the way in which the percussion, strings and featherweight drones intermingle, resulting in a congenial melodic conversation that never gets too chaotic or busy. Sure, there are probably never-ending rodent/insect issues and nothing to do after a month, but Stikling continues to beckon me towards the rolling grassy hills of elsewhere.
When Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox talks, I listen, so I found myself eager to throw on this new one from (the presumably British) Thomas Bush, whose previous full-length Old And Red twisted my head in a pleasant direction. On Preludes, he continues to approach each track as its own little planet, switching instrumentation, tenor and style completely, though the distant sense of emotional longing seems to remain in place throughout. Some of the instrumental tracks remind me of the domestic solitude of People Skills, though he’ll throw an actual guitar-based song in there too, slow-core ala Bedhead, or fingerpick an acoustic guitar like someone else entirely. At its song-iest, Preludes feels like a lost gem from the UK’s earliest minimal-ambient post-punk era, akin to Virginia Astley or Flaming Tunes, though it’s just as likely to drift off into its own snuggly abyss, a track like “Odeep One” falling somewhere between the inscrutable oddity of John T. Gast and the librarian dub of Young Marble Giants. And there’s also “The Remote”, a slippery drum-less pop song that feels like something David West would’ve conjured from his bedroom. As you can surmise, a lot of things happening here, but they all play well together, resulting in an unlikely feat of savory experimental pop.
It appears that Texas post-punk unit Institute is no more, which is a bummer, though I suppose not every band needs to last forever. They had a solid handful of great records, which is more than most can say! Their members seem to be active with new projects anyway, with Barry Elkanick flying solo as Chalk (though not opposed to bringing in friends to collaborate along the way). Like many contemporary punk-adjacent solo projects, this one flutters through a wide range of sounds and styles, as partial to a rough-edged collage as a dour post-punk requiem or a blaring house loop. Those with attention deficits will sit through Neophobia comfortably, so quickly does it shift from style to style like a hand nervously flipping through a dial of early-morning college-radio shows from the ’80s and ’90s. For as varied as it is, there isn’t any moment that sticks out to me as a mistake; even the inconsequential string jangle that opens the b-side feels like a welcomed pause between the many home-fangled post-punk screeds that ooze through Neophobia‘s cracks. I’d actually love to hear a more focused Chalk, not because Neophobia needs it so much as because it seems like everyone else does it this way too, almost to the point of being the standard form of experimental post-punk expression. In a sea of weirdo punk malcontents venting their frustrations through home-recorded nonsense, the trick is finding a way to really stick out.
For as much as I like to profess my love of early ’80s Orange County hardcore-punk, I’ve never checked out Eddie And The Subtitles. Come to think of it, I have no interest in Eddie And The Hot Rods either, and have yet to hear Eddie And The Tide… it appears I harbor extreme prejudice towards any band that allows an Eddie to steer their ship. Anyway, Slovenly has entered the classic punk reissue fray with the reissue of the debut Eddie And The Subtitles album, Skeletons In The Closet, originally released on the band’s own No Labels label. I’m at once relieved and disappointed to discover that I wasn’t really missing all that much by not hearing it until now, kind of an unremarkable album in a sea of first-wave punk and new-wave classics. It definitely leans on the power-pop/wave side of things, including rockabilly moves (see “Boppin’ Little Bobcat”) that simply aren’t for me, and sloppy punk jams that are more to my liking (“No Virgins In Hollywood”). Eddie And The Subtitles played shows with Rhino 39 and Circle Jerks, but their material doesn’t really compare, closer to a warmed-over X and the power-pop that was coming out of New York City around that same time than anything Mystic would chase after. All said, I’m certainly glad I’ve finally heard the group – it’s by no means a bad album, just kinda sub-par for their time and era. Maybe I’ll fare better with the Hot Rods, but I won’t be seeking them out on purpose, sorry!
If I had a record store, I’d insist on having a section of records filed under “repetitive to the point of madness”, and in its “new arrivals” section, you’d be sure to find a copy of this new twelve-inch single from Cologne’s 82J6. I’ve seen the a-side cut “R228 (Maison Mix)” described as a “heavier Muslimgauze”, and while the Middle Eastern horn loop certainly calls to mind a similar sonic geography, 82J6 blasts the loop into relentless orbit, an unchanging reiteration that I wouldn’t necessarily expect from Muslimgauze. If anything, I’m reminded of late ’00s EPs from Luciano and Mirko Loko, back when Ricardo Villalobos’s acolytes gleefully echoed their South American, Middle Eastern and African samples over minimal techno beats. The incessant horn rides the electro beat with ease, calling to mind elegantly-adorned elephants dancing in a celebratory procession, or, you know, Ricardo Villalbos going into the fourteenth hour of his DJ set on some tiny Mediterranean island, all sweaty and jubilant. The b-side is a “beatless” mix of the same track, and kind of unnecessary, unless you’re planning to do some magical DJ tricks with it (and even then, you probably don’t need all ten minutes of it). I could’ve gone for an additional different cut instead, but if 82J6’s intention was to leave his horn ringing in our ears for hours after listening, well, mission accomplished.
Flasher are swell folks, some of whom I’d known prior to the group’s existence, so I probably would’ve enjoyed their debut album on some level regardless of how “good” it actually was. This is probably why I was so stunned by how much I ended up loving it – it’s a rarity that anyone makes classic indie-rock sound so pertinent, fun and memorable, but they sincerely blew me away with Constant Image. Now, on Love Is Yours, they’re down to a two-piece, and they’ve drifted from fairly traditional rock-trio instrumentation towards the shiny realm of synths and electronics, but their core being remains the same. Which is, they know how to write a damn catchy song! It’s a smoother, more polished sound overall, but it suits their songs, which are both dazzlingly intricate and easily digestible. There’s kind of a root sound reminiscent of Quasi, Yo La Tengo and Imperial Teen, but Flasher do so much with it, coming up with all sorts of unexpected earworms, melodies that conjure confusion and happiness at the same time, and lyrics that spell it out while leaving plenty of space for personal interpretation. There’s nary a dud in the bunch, but I’d point you directly to “I’m Better” if you want a taste, a fun romp that makes excellent use of detuned(?) guitars(?) on the verses which then lead into a pop chorus I’d expect from The Apples In Stereo’s Robert Schneider at his prime. Thirteen fully-grown tracks here, and they whiz by every time. 
Nope, that’s no typo… this is Population III! I didn’t see this coming, but the moment I got word of its existence I had to track it down, knowing full well it’s essentially impossible to match the shamanic rock glory of Randy Holden’s godlike Population II, but I think my expectations were reasonable and my mind appropriately open. After a few spins, it’s definitely a different beast, notably smoother/flatter than the Randy Holden of 1970, with the digital studio recording subtracting a bit from Holden’s imposing presence. His voice is strained and lighter as well, which makes sense considering how old he must be. As for the feeling, it remains evident that Holden is a firm believer in the power of the guitar and his ability to simultaneously spread its gospel, amazingly leaving his stamp of blue-collar mysticism all over this one. These songs are long, loose and sprawling, full of harmonica solos, guitar solos and caveman-thud drumming, and Holden’s tone is still rugged and uplifting, even if the clean recording robs some of its power. Knowing that Holden is back in the game, can we get some young people (and by young I mean in their fifties and sixties) to work with him next, maybe record Population IV? The Om-like bass in “Sands Of Time” and grinding chug of “Land Of The Sun” would truly explode if the guys in Goatsnake or Mudhoney were in the studio engineering, producing or backing up. If Randall Dunn isn’t frantically trying to get in touch with Holden’s team right now, he’s making a mistake!
It would’ve been damn near impossible for Portland’s Horrendous 3D to top the title of their debut EP (The Gov. And Corps. Are Using Psycho-Electronic Weaponry To Manipulate You And Me…), so I can’t blame them for a no-frills self-titled follow-up. Thankfully, the music hasn’t softened one iota. If anything, their bombastic noise-crust has tightened its gears here, with a righteously thuddy drum sound and a refined tone, completely relatively speaking. Their songs are more detonated than performed, with a mix of ugly distortion, power that is difficult to achieve and vocals that recall one of the finest hardcore bands to never reunite, His Hero Is Gone. They mix it up a little with the rotten stomp of “Utterly Fucking Useless”, easily the slowest song in their catalog to date, but it’s a welcome addition. Fans of Framtid, Public Acid and Kriegshög would revel in Horrendous 3D’s shockwaves, though I’d imagine anyone into those three bands is already well aware of Horrendous 3D at this point. Another fresh and invigorating crust attack from the fine folks at Black Water!
Inu Wan Wan grabbed my attention with their fantastic inaugural release from China’s Gotou, and the Seattle label continues their connection to the Chinese underground with this full-length from Sheng Jie and BoYu Deng. Unlike Gotou’s rigid and icy post-punk, Sheng Jie & BoYu Deng improvise this sprawling affair, a free-noise collision of drums and cello (distorted via RAT pedal). On the first side, they get messy and splatter against the wall, but not immediately; Jie and Deng follow a warped, winding path towards chaos, locating an arhythmic pulse that eventually builds towards wild instability. Flip it over and the drumming intensifies against a cello that can no longer claim any level of innocence. It sounds like it’s being held down in various incapacitating chokeholds, the fluttering feedback eventually giving way to what sounds like soaring guitar leads on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere as the drums try to confuse and deflect. It’s like a funeral procession and an exorcism at the same time, and it leaves me feeling very much alive and in excellent health.
A lot of people were raving (pun intended) about Joy Orbison’s album from last year, but it never quite grabbed me like I’d hoped. I’ve loved some of his singles through the years though, and this new one is another peak-time banger for forward-thinking clubs (or, in more my case, USB speaker dishwashing playlists). Released on the unfairly-reviled ten-inch format, no less, “Pinky Ring” manages to sound fresh in spite of its two somewhat-dated tricks: a snipped-and-clipped vocal sample and dubstep bass wobbles. Maybe it’s just been a while since I tapped into a new track like this, one that confidently fuses house, dubstep and UK garage, but I think the more likely case is that it’s simply a standout track. Reminds me of the way Pangaea used to twist vocal melodies into wordless electronic bliss, only somehow sharper and more effective. The b-side cut “Redvelve7” is no slouch either, Joy O’s machines slowly starting up before a beat kicks in, reminiscent of that breakout Mount Kimbie album in the way that it sounds techno but feels post-punk, as likely to jive with Cabaret Voltaire as Aphex Twin. Kind of a cool-down after the a-side’s blissful sophistication, but in this heat, we need it.
An unpredictable record from an unpredictable label, Kalahari Super Voodoo have put to vinyl their original soundtrack for Maher Al Sabbagh’s 2007 documentary The Arabian Dream. That’s the what, who, where and when, but the why remains pleasantly out of reach. As far as soundtracks go, this one is more active than passive. Sure, it’s a mostly synth-driven electronic affair, but these tracks make their presence felt, sometimes like a lotioned massage of the neck, sometimes like a pebble in the sock. I’m not sure how the field recordings came into the soundtrack – are they are part of the film themselves? – but there are distinctly human beings operating here alongside outstretched synthesized melodies and churning electronic pulses. There’s even some sort of old-timey recording of a Western ragtime song lifted directly from its source, a jarring dose of antiquated pop alongside Kalahari Super Voodoo’s more subdued exploits. How does this all fit together, many years later, for release on Rotterdam’s Bergpolder label? My English-speaking, Dutch-ignorant mind can’t help but wonder.
There’s been a creeping fantasy element in the garage-rock scene for the past few years, perhaps ushered in by big guys like King Gizzard and The Oh Sees, and I’m hearing plenty of that in the debut from Louisville “horror-rock” group Kids Born Wrong. They’ve got at least one member from garage-blasters Archaeas, and they squeeze a lot of style into these songs – they’re no GWAR, but you know they don’t merely sing about Dungeons & Dragons, they obsessively play it too. The presentation is very much within traditional fuzzed-out garage-rock confines, but they take these songs in weird directions sometimes, willing to dabble in sounds and transitions one might describe as “epic”, “prog”, “fantasy” or “metal”. “Killed On Video” swings a garage-punk version of the “Tainted Love” melody with a shouted chorus of “I just wanna see people die”, and while there’s plenty of songs that don’t sound like this, it’s as valid of a representation of Kids Born Wrong as anything else on here. Not sure who they’ll be covering at this year’s Halloween cover-band show, but I can’t imagine it going down in Louisville without them.
Mysterious-yet-Brooklyn-ish dark techno concern Nihiti is at it again, with their starkest and perhaps most effective album to date. Three long tracks here, which simplify their approach to what is more or less power-drone. Works for me! The a-side, commissioned for the Sustain/Release festival, originally debuted “on an endless loop in a semi-hidden cabin” at the fest’s first year, and I can’t think of a better place for it. A pretty simple electronic loop decays over and over, somewhere in the tradition of William Basinski. It doesn’t particularly transcend the style’s forbearers, but it’s a sick loop nonetheless – very easy to put it on, check the clock a few seconds later and realize ten minutes have passed. The b-side offers some variation with the choral blast of “Tetrachrome”, an all-keys-held-down squall recalling Fennesz or Phil Niblock at their most triumphant, and my favorite cut of the three, “If The Color”, which takes a Twin Peaks downer synth melody and adds some intrigue alongside one of those pitched-down, roughed-up vocal filters that I will forever find irresistible. Simple and effective for both remote cabin and inner-city artist loft.
Being surprised by music is one of my favorite sensations, and this might be the most surprising record of the month. The tattoo-flash cover, band name and label association had me expecting some sort of blackened thrash, but New York City’s Phantasia offer no thrash here, even if some of its members’ prior bands raged hard. Instead, they play a tuneful, simplistic form of goth-indebted indie-pop, a familiar sound to fans of The Cure, Modern English, Siouxsie & The Banshees and all of those classics who somehow continue to headline goth fests the world over. Kind of a crowded field, as a multitude of crusty punks seem to have shifted their gaze towards morbid synth-wave over the past decade (even just locally, Haldol and The Guests immediately come to mind), but Ghost Stories really stands out. A significant portion of the credit is due to vocalist Tara Atefi, whose voice goes from a soft and tuneful post-punk sing-shout to a truly over-the-top gothic warble. At first it was almost unappealing, the way in which she seems to be singing in a completely made-up voice, cartoonishly low and dramatic, but on second thought, perhaps most other goth vocalists aren’t dramatic enough. Besides, it’s not like death-metal and grind and hyperpop etc. etc. vocalists use their “real” voices! Her voice absolutely commands these catchy tunes, my favorite being the record-ending “Leftoveryou”, which digs its hook deep into my brain, and leaves me feeling more emotional than I could’ve anticipated. I told you, the surprises just kept coming with Phantasia’s debut.
Believe it or not, I had the pleasure of listening to this Puppet Wipes album for the first time with a friend (in real life!), and he made the astute comment that, if he were watching Puppet Wipes play these songs live, he’d probably find it intolerable, but on a record, it’s great. Funny how that can be – I’d certainly prefer to listen to Philip Corner’s Coldwater Basin on vinyl than an actual dripping sink – and while I probably have a higher tolerance for deliberate post-punk tomfoolery in a live setting than he, the point was taken. Puppet Wipes have the distinction of being the first contemporary act on Siltbreeze in quite a while, and it doesn’t take long to see how they fit in, moving from semi-tuned guitar-guments to toy xylophone/horn duets and dying-battery synth-sploitation. Very much in line with the endless joy supplied by early DIY labels like Deleted Records and Terse Tapes, long columns of bands that existed purely for their own satisfaction, thumbing their nose at the very concept of “being a band” in the first place. There’s also a thread to Puppet Wipes’ chaos that I find particularly reminiscent of Die Tödliche Doris, an appealing trait indeed. Considering their art-noise was a direct reaction to the imposing surveillance state in a time of global nuclear threats, it makes sense Puppet Wipes might behave similarly in our near-identical circumstances.
Boomkat really excels at records like this, smart-dumb gimmick records that probably won’t be all that important or interesting by next year but are perfectly intriguing in the here-and-now. And I’m often one of the first in line to buy records like these, so don’t take that as me looking down upon them! For this album (and its accompanying cassette of additional material), Romance slows down Celine Dion vocal snippets, loops them, and layers them over gauzy ambient drone the colors of twilight. I chuckled when I saw it described as “crybient”, but it’s a fitting tag, as Celine’s suddenly un-gendered voice repeating lyrics of hope, love and loss will certainly tickle the blue side of your emotions, in case you weren’t sad enough already. It’s a pretty basic vaporwave trick, but I loved that ” I Wanna Be 5 Semitones Down” Brandy edit someone did last year too, and will probably continue to enjoy listening to pitched-down singing voices applied in ways both expected and new. Only the emotional spirit and pitch-perfect vocal cords of Celine remain, wrapped in soft blankets of ambient synth drift, and when I remember this record exists in a year or two, I’ll fall in love all over again, if only fleetingly.
Sax players Patrick Shirioshi and Marta Tiesenga discovered an underground tunnel under a “permanently-closed” restaurant in Los Angeles and they did what any good free-improv jazz player would do: they recorded an album in it! They show an astounding level of restraint on the a-side’s two pieces, which barely hover above the level of a singing wine glass. Together they softly locate the upper-register pain-spot on their respective horns and just levitate there, like a fly trapped between two panes of glass. I find it to be kind of a baffling approach, when free players simply maintain the most astringent pitch possible for as long as possible, but maybe I need to try it before I knock it? The b-side opens things up quite a bit, with “On A Stone Pillow” getting downright cozy in its scattered melodies, the echo of the abandoned tunnel providing a rich resonance. They reach some impressive tones here, recalling a children’s choir or seagulls at the end of a lonely pier, and always give the tunnel and each other plenty of space to explore or contemplate. Imagine being some average rat, minding your own business in one of your favorite underground pathways, when two humans shuffle in and spritz the room with their saxophones. Must’ve been the best day of its filthy little life!
Certain records are perfectly encapsulated by their cover imagery, and this new Slicing Grandpa 12″ EP, featuring a zoomed-in-to-the-point-of-pixelation image of a syringe in a toilet, is one of them. John Laux’s Slicing Grandpa project has been stirring the sludge for a good two decades now, faithfully churning out various lo-fi and grotesque sludge-punk recordings regardless of who might or might not be interested. Following his first pandemic-era release under his own name (reviewed in these pages a few months back), he’s now back in Slicing Grandpa mode, and it’s a stubborn pipe-clog of lazy rhythms, impotent riffing and airy noise, all of which I mean to be taken as compliments. I love bands like Satanic Rockers and Gary Wrong Group, artists who kind of use Flipper as their jump-off point to pursue weirder, heavier, more textural or more annoying concepts, and Slicing Grandpa fit right in those ranks. FNU Clone’s Jim Veil produced Casual Pain, a fact that is inarguable upon listening. Isolated and kooky, I can’t blame someone for wanting no part of a record like this, yet I find it eerily relatable and poignant, a deflated noise-rock gasp that goes against any grain you can find.
The Swedish underground has been tearing up the folk, noise, indie, ambient and improv scenes for a few years now, but electro-pop felt somewhat underrepresented in their global dominance. That’s where Soft Estate come in, a new group I know little about beyond their association with JJ Ulius’s Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox label, whose quaint synth-pop tunes quickly found a soft spot in my heart. Teetering on the edge of pop into experimental post-punk asides, these songs certainly reflect upon “forty years of art-school electronics” as the record’s promo sheet states. Young Marble Giants might be the simplest comparison, though I’m reminded of those great (and still cheap!) early Anna Domino EPs, Anika, Francisco Franco, Microdisney, Molly Nilsson and Domenique Dumont. Phew! Soft Estate might be cooped up in a snowy flat in Sweden somewhere, but The Painted Ship is pleasantly Mediterranean; you can practically sniff the sea breeze as it accidentally blows your crudités onto the patio floor. Their drum machines sparkle and puff, and the vocals and synths swirl the melodies like a soft-serve twist. Stay cool!
Cool lineup of dudes here in Water Damage, with drummers Mike Kanin (of Black Eyes!) and Thor Harris, Jeff Piwonka and Greg Piwonka (of Marriage) and Shit And Shine’s Nate Cross. The secret is in the title here, as Water Damage churn through two sides of unrelenting repetition, slo-mo psych-rock grooves that do the cool trick of spiraling out into the cosmos while remaining firmly rooted in the ground. I love when Tony Conrad did essentially the same thing with Faust, and I might love it even a little more the way France keeps doing it (that’s the band called France, though the country is also one of the more alluringly hypnotic nations I’ve visited), and now I’ve got Water Damage if I ever decide I need more, which I do. I find it interesting that a lot of wild noise music can be fun to play and less fun to listen to, whereas the locked-in drone-rock of Water Damage is quite enjoyable to hear and probably a mind-numbing pain to perform. They’ve got three drummers all playing the same simple beat together! It’s a beautiful thing. On the b-side, things get a bit more energetic, which is cool and maybe closer to the tradition of Laddio Bolocko’s time-warping rock experimentation, but it’s all about the unhurried a-side for me, a staunch vortex of sound that quiets all the pesky distractions in my head.
The (Wilful) Boys are back in town, with their 2020 stimulus checks long gone and their desire to keep trudging forward lessening by the day. This group of New York-based men (some originally from Australia) has been on this path for a while now, and the dull pain of their approach remains stubbornly intact. Like their earlier records, this tongue-twisting album sounds like an Australian Watery Love covering Motörhead; hard-rocking punk whose disgust is palpable and based firmly in reality. There are moments of Thorogood-ish groove that remind me of Viagra Boys as well, but there’s nothing Vans Warped Tour- or Adult Swim Block Party-accessible about Wilful Boys, who prefer to sit at the far end of the bar and speak to no one. It’s admirable how World Ward Word Sword avoids catering to any current trends, satisfyingly traditional and angry without feeling insincere or rote. Hell, they even end the record with a Discharge cover, because when you live on your own and pay your own bills, that’s exactly the sorta thing you can do if you want. 
The final Nine Shocks Terror seven-inch ends with the sound of a bowling strike, and almost in a passing of the torch, fellow Clevelanders Woodstock ’99 utilize a gong sound effect after many (all?) of their songs on this new twelve-inch EP. I never understood why so many hardcore bands, presumably made up of social freaks who have no interest in regular mainstream behavior, don’t do more lunatic stuff with their recordings? Praise to Woodstock ’99 then, who not only picked one of the dumbest band names in a while, they also do whatever the hell they want, be it ripping through classic fiery hardcore-punk or completely goofing around with the idea. Classic rock guitar solos, CB-radio vocals, more of that damn gong, sure why not! What blows me away about these Cleveland bands, besides their unified vision in praise of idiocy and fun, is that they all tend to have these incredible drummers who propel the music to a higher level; they just don’t seem like the kind of people willing to spend hours practicing anything. When Woodstock ’99 really get pumping, I’m reminded of a mix of Crazy Spirit and the aforementioned Nine Shocks, though there’s so much personality on display here that it never feels like another average hardcore band content to sound like the sum of their influences. This world is more unhinged than ever, so why aren’t more hardcore bands answering it with songs like “Beatboxing In Viet…Nam!” and its funkdafied intro/outro??
I love a scene that’s so interwoven it’s practically impossible to unknot, which seems to be the case with the Dutch underground these days. Here’s what I mean: Yuko Yuko is the solo project of Elias Elgersma, who plays in (Sub Pop recording artists) Homesick with Jaap van der Velde; van der Velde is joined in Korfbal with Leon Harms, who also plays in Yuko Yuko; Lyckle De Jong made a great solo electronic record in 2020 and he also appears on this demo collection alongside van der Velde and the rest. Or so I think! I haven’t heard Yuko Yuko before, but I know enough of their crew and the sterling reputation of Bergpolder to trust whatever this is to be cool. Turns out it’s a pleasant, easy-to-listen-to indie-pop outfit with mild psychedelic flourishes, kind of throwing things back in a retro paisley way while also not really. If anything, it reminds me of Ariel Pink circa Before Today, a well-written, indie-minded take on Beach Boys psychedelia, generally speaking. Not totally my thing, but I have no qualms with it either. Yuko Yuko would fit snugly in a playlist of artists like The Walkmen, Beachwood Sparks and even Father John Misty, though there’s a notably cheerful, care-free attitude imbued in these songs, presumably because of the world-renowned Dutch universal healthcare that surely nullifies the constant low-level personal uncertainty us Americans have buzzing in the background at all times. Must be nice!
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