Alpha Maid Is This A Queue LP (AD 93)
Let’s kick this off with a grotesque proportional analogy: Warp Records is to The Uncanny X-Men as AD 93 is to The New Mutants. I say that as a person who hasn’t read a Marvel comic since childhood, yet I know in my heart there’s something to it, seeing as the AD 93 roster is unconventionally skilled in its own unique and unprecedented ways yet beholden to a larger history of avant-garde, electronic, UK-centric artists. Amazingly, the label’s handful of guitar-wielding artists might even be the strangest of the bunch, case in point Alpha Maid. It’s the name that South London guitarist / vocalist / producer Leisha Thomas has chosen for herself, and Is This A Queue is her delightfully baffling full-length debut. It almost sounds like she’s completely unfamiliar with traditional song-form, which I mean as a sincere compliment. How else to explain why someone would open their album with “6-9”, four minutes of a slow industrial post-punk drum-loop and little else? Or lay down the ambivalent guitar stabs and sparse spoken vocals over Valentina Magaletti’s wild percussive trip on “Why We Have To Move”? Or pair the 4AD-meets-emo strum with clashing AutoTuned vocals in “On Smoke”?? None of it makes any commercial sense, or even typical “experimental” sense, which is a rare achievement for anyone putting together an album of songs centered around an instrument as established as the electric guitar. I can’t point to a better song to explain the mood of London’s weird 2025 vanguard than album-closer “Palimpsest”, featuring AD 93 alum Coby Sey’s lyrical flow, Ben Vince’s bizarrely processed saxophone and Thomas’s noisy no-wave guitar. By the time the rest of us catch up, there’s no doubt Alpha Maid will be onto something else.

Cairo Pythian Pressure Treated Cross LP (Industry Standards)
The last few years have done a number on all of us – who doesn’t have a friend that recently went off one of the many deep ends currently available? Case in point is Cairo Pythian. We last heard from him in 2015 with Touched, a devious glam-noir album that arrived ahead of the curve, and now he’s back, cosplaying like a Judgment Night extra on the cover. While my ears remain open for a Cairo Pythian rap/rock hybrid, Pressure Treated Cross doesn’t diverge from his prior formula, though he seems more willing than ever to follow his fascinations down the rabbit hole. Vocally, he still kinda sounds like early Marilyn Manson (a good thing in my book), whereas the music seems to fuse the lost-mind abjection of ’90s Coil with the aesthete synth-pop of Total Control’s final years. It’s music led by an unreliable narrator, which makes for an exciting listen; certain tracks eschew pop-song structures in favor of funhouse mirrors, but Cairo Pythian always grabs the wheel before careening off the cliff entirely. He seems to be writing with the understanding that either no-one or everyone is watching, which leads to song titles like “My Pregnant Girl”, “Bent From The Benzos”, “Trans Human Kiss” and “Diary Of A Pussy Fiend”. I assume he means well, but let’s be real, there’s gotta be some alarming Blu-rays in his personal collection.

Chopping Block Disfigured 7″ (Blood Soaked)
Topping my “records that would’ve made my year-end best-of had I heard them a few days earlier” list is Disfigured by Chopping Block. Yes, that Chopping Block, the one that released a sole seven-inch titled Grizzly Fetish in 1991 alongside other extreme hardcore acts that helped formulate what was later to be understood as power-violence. There are eight songs here, some of which go back as early as 1984, all of which were recently recorded and released by guitarist Dave Keck on the same Blood Soaked Records label that released their first EP thirty-four years ago. Someway somehow, Disfigured is one of the most urgent and ferocious hardcore records I’ve heard all year! Chopping Block haven’t lost a step, and I would argue they’ve tightened their songwriting and upped the brutality – it’s kind of astonishing. These songs are in league with Crossed Out, with breakneck shifts and psychotic breakdowns redolent of No Comment, No Less, Iron Lung and even Crumbsuckers. If this was a brand new band, I’d be stunned by the flawless authenticity on display, but I’m honestly maybe even more stunned that this is a group of guys who were around for the advent of the style and they still manage to completely nail such a thrilling and extreme form of hardcore-punk after a multi-decade hiatus. Highly recommended!

Copiers Drama / Anxiety 12″ (Future Heart Works)
Louisville’s Copiers get conceptual (but not too conceptual) on this fun new two-song twelve-inch single. The premise is thus: throw a single spoken-word into a loop pedal so that the band can cook something up around it. The plainspoken “Drama” is met with a shimmying bass-line / drum rhythm, and the guitar mostly meanders in and around it as four “drama”s descend in perpetuity. “Anxiety” prefers to skitter than to groove, perhaps finding some inspiration in the definition of the word they chose for this extended jam. The repetitive vocal samples calls to mind some of Bill Orcutt’s programmed music of the last few years, as well as Moin’s pensive post-hardcore techniques which have also center sampled spoken-word. Orcutt and Moin both seem a little too artfully-minded compared to what Copiers are doing here though, which feels far looser and less restricted, closer perhaps to Oren Ambarchi’s Stacte Karaoke EPs wherein he sets up karaoke backing tracks and shreds on guitar over top. I’ll have to check my Oblique Strategies deck to see if there’s a “rock-band jam over a vocal sample” card in there, but even if not, I’m sure Brian Eno would approve of the curious musical prompt Copiers developed here.

Distoromance Déjà Si Mort 7″ (Galakthorrö)
A new artist on the Galakthorrö roster is noteworthy and scarce, so why not toss the debut Distoromance single in your black velvet rucksack? I am along for the ride with this label til one of us perishes, with the understanding that whatever they release will be highly discerning in quality, sensuality and morbidity. That’s certainly the case with “Déjà Si Mort”, its gothic drama dripping like black wax around a patient, frightened beat. The vocals (presumably from member “Sandrine”, not the one named “François”) are some of the most enchantingly tuneful that Galakthorrö has ever released, and they elevate the track to a top billing on any respectable “music by and for haunted dolls” playlist. “Ornières” is under the power of its hypnotic synth throb; Sandrine’s vocals are a little more forceful here and, to be fair, perhaps at odds with the music’s video-game-dungeon pulse. It’s charmingly stilted in a way that reminds me of Belgian cold-wavers Bernthöler, though Distoromance are clearly French – these are red-wine synths, no doubt. I’d love to hear more, and if Galakthorrö’s track record means anything, there’s a good chance I’ll be able to when Distoromance return with an LP in two or three well-considered years.

Dopplereffekt Metasymmetry 12″ (Tresor)
Living legends Dopplereffekt have dwelled in the distant future for three decades now, and while one could forgive them for easing into a comfortable stasis, that’s simply not their style. They’re restless techno scientists, finding new usages for time-tested technologies, which includes the kinetic electro-dance and alien-ambient styles that comprise this four-track EP. “Time Modulation-Graviton Pulse” is Kraftwerk subjected to the violence of a Terminator 2 chase scene; “Multiverse Wavefunction” is the beat-less, revitalizing energy-pool that restores those robotic mannequins to full functionality. The pattern follows on the second side, with the rubbery thwock of “Collapse of Simultaneity” waking up all the sleeping clones in their aquatic cells as the THX-quality atmospherics of “Olbers Paradox” survey the damaged battlefield, taking stock of losses through angelic vocal sweeps and glimmering synth pads. As always, the music of Dopplereffekt is clinically precise and body moving, but theoretical and impish too, a poltergeist caught in the mainframe. Who else could release a collection with the academic title of Gesamtkunstwerk and fill it with tracks called “Pornoactress”, “Pornoviewer” and “Plastiphilia”? Dopplereffekt know the truth: robots, as it turns out, need as much sex as the next guy.

Dridge Wind LP (Drin)
“Dridge” could be a great word for the stagnant filth composed of organic and inorganic material that congeals outside of industrial processing facilities, but it’s also well-suited to this West Philly doom-metal trio. They build upon the epic sludge of 2023’s Dying Out with Wind, another spiteful march to the gallows. There are three tracks here (respective track times: 17:02, 4:58, 19:20), which gather the down-tuned tones of Warhorse and Asunder and whip them into disgruntled action. The music is sluggish, the riffs are simplistic and unmemorable, the vocals are a Rolf / Cookie Monster hybrid, and before you know it, Dridge have swallowed up a half hour of your life in their primordial din. Even their phaser pedals are operating on the slowest possible settling! It’s all about the totality of these lengthy tracks and their many peaks and valleys, a foul atmosphere befitting Mark Erskine’s inhospitable landscape painting on the cover. Dridge conjure that ancient desolation in their music, to the point that when the first painfully glorious guitar solo hits in “Inner Sanctum Of The Icy Realm (Wind)” (ten minutes in?), it feels well-earned, a cache of weaponry discovered on a craggy cliff. Those cave fairies that restore your hearts back to full health? Sorry, those went extinct centuries ago.

The Educated Fools Tantric Decapitation: 69 Mins. Of Trichotomy And Liquefaction 2xLP (Total Punk)
No longer satisfied with swapping out wacky new definite articles in front of their name, Retail Simps have donned new costumes entirely as The Educated Fools. I can’t quite follow the plot – whatever Easter Eggs and inside jokes are lodged in their new aliases, the song titles and cover diploma, it’s all lost on me – but as for their debaucherous rock n’ roll, it makes the same profound sense as a chicken that can play Tic Tac Toe. Imagine if John Candy and Black Randy formed a band for the sole purpose of irritating their neighbors, sweating through their suits-and-ties and ruining their roommate’s saxophone by drinking egg nog out of it. There’s at least one “whop-bobba-loo-bop” to be discovered here, though if you could crack Tantric Decapitation open like a fortune cookie, that’s the message I’d expect to find printed within. As they stretch out over two full LPs, the songwriting isn’t as inspired or tight as the last couple Retail Simps albums, but I’d be an uneducated fool if I thought airbrushed songwriting was their intended goal. No, this is a full-scale intestinal clean-out of all their trashy rock mania – now that you’re nice and empty, it’s time to schedule those colonoscopies, gents!

Emer Fog LP (Short Span)
Lots of evil people out there these days trying to convince us that machines can have souls, yet the only time I’ve recently found myself considering this possibility is while listening to Fog. It’s the first full-length from Brussels-based sound artist Marija Rasa under her Emer moniker, and you might also find yourself charmed by the warm and prismatic tones that emanate from these seven tracks. From a layman’s perspective, imagine Autechre and Vladislav Delay given free range to manipulate and remix Jessie Ware and Sade stems, the after-hours melodies plucked apart and smartly reassembled. Much as Pole took a scalpel to classic dub does Emer carve paper dolls from soulful trip-hop elements, similar to something you’d enjoy on the False Aralia label. The sounds are abstracted and dislocated, but Emer materializes her tracks with lopsided rhythms and casually-looping patterns – for as unusual as “Nobody Speaks” is, there’s no denying that it’s a song, not an experimental process. My favorite cut might be “The Evergreen Fog” – its repeating melodic motif is as soft and tear-stained as Prince’s favorite pillow – but the whole album is a joy to behold, a heavy-lidded downtempo trip through a deep sea of blankets (to borrow a phrase from John Mayer’s creepiest hit, “Your Body Is A Wonderland”).

Equipment Pointed Ankh Eggs A Little Late LP (Petty Bunco)
It’s been a banner year for Ryan Davis and friends, and what better way to cap it off than with a new one from the most welcoming and open-minded project he’s a part of: Equipment Pointed Ankh. My understanding is that this is mostly Jim Marlowe’s baby, but we’re not dealing with a crew of self-obsessed egotists – if there’s a glare in any one of the ten(-plus) members’ faces, the others will offer up their sunglasses without a second thought. For the uninitiated, the ‘Ankh sound is omnivorous and free-spirited, an ultra-talented mixed bag of characters (and instrumentation) that will follow any thread of an idea out of their own sheer amusement (and subsequently, ours). That means that a horn section might bubble up over some folksy guitars, or a kraut-rock groove could stumble into some funny sound effects; how about one person reads poetry written by a different band member over hummingbird strings and dub drums? It all happens here, like a big-band Blues Control with unabated studio access, or The Olivia Tremor Control meets The Scientist At Cropped Out Festival, though more often like neither. I still can’t get over the inventiveness of 2023’s From Inside The House, or the hilariously inappropriate cover for 2019’s Live (I think about that guy’s predicament way more than I should), so I look forward to eventually deciphering what they’re on about this time around with Eggs A Little Late.

Frigöra Fullständig Frigörelse LP (General Speech)
As we near total reissue completion of ’80s Japanese hardcore, we can now safely move into the ’90s – no MCR Company release is safe. Frigöra hailed from Kawasaki City in the mid ’90s, and their form of noisy hardcore-crust carries no signs of maturation or evolution from the style’s earliest practitioners (Confuse, Mob 47, LSD, Extreme Noise Terror). Fullständig Frigörelse captures the group’s twelve-inch and seven-inch EPs, the split EP with Diskonto and three unreleased tracks for good measure (including a Mob 47 cover), presented with the class and exquisite graphic design we’ve come to expect from General Speech. That means there’s a big booklet full of lyrics, which illuminate Frigöra’s staunch animal-rights stance, and allow me to now sing along to “Ett Dyurförsök (Stinker)”. The mid ’90s are generally considered a fallow period for molten-hot d-beat crust, even by Japanese standards, but Frigöra are a shining exception, maintaining their convulsive drumming and scalding guitar sound across these four different recording sessions. Those of us with weaker constitutions may need to tap out after one side, but anyone among us who ever accidentally poked themselves by sitting on their own spiked leather jacket will relish Fullständig Frigörelse from start to finish.

Zach Hill & Lucas Abela Bag Of Max Bag Of Cass LP (Warp)
If you’re going to collaborate with the guy who smashes oily glass against his face, you have but one option: go harder than you’ve ever gone before. Phenom drummer Zach Hill clearly lusts for such a challenge, and we all know Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham) has no sonic conscience, so let’s hope whoever greenlit this project at Warp has an airtight employment contract. A populist crowd-pleaser this ain’t! Bag Of Max Bag Of Cass is unrelenting digital noise from start to finish, a tornado of wasps riding a tsunami across an active volcano (inside a giant dishwasher… on fire?). There are occasional moments of coherent drumming (on mostly electronic kits?) buried in the sonic sludge, giving it a Black Pus feel (see “Combat Boxes” and “Bent On 13”), but the album ultimately gushes forward like Hanatarash’s physically violent freakouts had they been delivered via Russell Haswell’s most evil laptop. It’s as thick and imposing as your finest harsh-noise-wall artists, but the constant, dizzying activity is what pushes Bag Of Max Bag Of Cass to unforeseen greatness, the duo operating at thrillingly reckless speeds. No need for Abela to smash the glass on his face for this one – this music has already shattered it.

Idea Fire Company Hot Enough For You? LP (Horn Of Plenty)
There’s a good chance Idea Fire Company are your favorite deeply-underground experimental band’s favorite deeply-underground experimental band. Their debut album came out a year before Nirvana’s Nevermind, and while the global response to these albums differed wildly, Idea Fire Company have always sounded fresh, and if not ahead of time, then wholly outside of it. Consistently releasing music since then, Hot Enough For You? is their 21st or 22nd album depending how you’re keeping score, and it’s as restlessly creative as anything else in their vast archives. The core duo of Scott Foust and Karla Borecky are joined by Robert Beerman on percussion, Matt Krefting on alto sax, Mike Popovich on bass, and Timothy Shortell on clarinet this time, but don’t let that big-band lineup fool you – these songs are full of the same eerie, repetitive, ominously creaky vibes that have permeated the Idea Fire Company oeuvre through their history. Some of these tracks seem downright painful to play; the closing title track is case in point, a disorienting slow-motion lurch that reeks of nausea. It’s like a jazz-bar house band rehearsing the music of Earth and Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society, but substituting the right notes with wrong ones, and refusing to let go. Or more simply, it’s another uncompromising success – in this way (and the water-themed art), kinda like Nirvana’s Nevermind.

Nape Neck The Shallowest End LP (Dot Dash Sounds / OCCII, Amsterdam / Red Wig)
If Dislocation Dance wasn’t already the name of a band, it’d be well-suited for this rambunctious post-punk group. Nape Neck’s EP collection from earlier this year introduced the group to an audience beyond their native Leeds, and The Shallowest End comes in even hotter, a three-way scuffle between bass, drums and guitar. And like a true communist guild, they all share singing duties! Claire Adams’s bass and Bobby Glew’s guitar are at constant odds, and drummer Kathy Gray occasionally picks a side, or sticks it to them both. To be clear though, this isn’t improvised: their off-kilter post-punk is in league with Erase Errata, Huggy Bear and The Pop Group, though they refuse to leave an inch of breathing room in these songs (as if Sleetmute Nightmute met at a jazz conservatory). Even as it falls apart in the middle of “The Rabbit”, someone takes it upon themselves to blow a safety whistle over the deconstructed din, over and over. The trio save The Shallowest End from solidifying into a mass of impenetrable math-rock through the obvious fun they’re having; the performance is tight but not to the point of discomfort. Nape Neck clearly relish their time together and the fact that they can pull off such nonlinear post-punk tunes, both inspired and inspiring.

November Növelet Electrical LP (Galakthorrö)
Kind of ironic that long-standing German gloom-wave duo November Növelet decided to call their new album Electrical, with lighting streaking across a dark sky on the cover, considering how perished it sounds. This record is electrical in the same sense that a dying charger plugged into a faulty socket is electrical, its cord fraying to the point of exposing its wiry guts. As November Növelet, Mr. and Mrs. Arafna have always reveled in the empty space between heartbeats, and Electrical might be their most subdued effort yet, an empty hospital bed of a record. Of course, this is part of what makes them so alluring: the restraint, the below-freezing electronics, the soft touch with which they deliver their doomed prophecies. Their aesthetic really hasn’t changed since they started the group back in the mid ’90s – you could listen to the title track here (or any of them, really) and enjoy many of the same greyscale oscillations and ghostly keyboard settings found on any of their prior releases. There’s a comfort in that for fans such as myself, the Arafnas unwavering dedication to their distinctive artistry, though it wouldn’t be a comfort if their music was mediocre. If you’re the member of your family most likely to linger on the beauty of a dead crow laying in a fallow field, I have good news for you – Galakthorrö has once again resumed shipping to the United States.

Oh Mr James I’m Not Here EP 12″ (Analogical Force)
Rephlex Records coined the term “braindance” back in the ’90s to simultaneously mock and evolve one of the worst genre names of all time, IDM (“intelligent dance music”, woof). It’s that foundational mix of hard electro beats and dazzling synth-play that shines through the new EP from Welsh producer Oh Mr James. Opener “Sometimes” is universally undeniable, a wild filleting of Speak & Spell voices over a punchy beat of Juan Atkins-ian origin. The title track follows suit, electro in Drexciya’s school of thought (which allows for silly playfulness to poke through). The beats cannot be shamed by even the stodgiest of electronic music enthusiasts – in this track’s case, it’s elevated to greatness by the variety of oddball voices reciting the track title. “The Bishop”‘s sprightly, off-kilter melody over propulsive breaks nods to Aphex Twin; “Ground Control Acid” floods the zone with rubbery kicks and processed vocals as thick and wet as paint. And there are two more tracks of equal regard! It’s impossible to imagine Oh Mr James not having the time of his life making these tunes, texting unmastered clips to his mates at 3:00 AM and expecting immediate emoji reactions in validation of his freewheeling braindance style. See if “Sometimes” doesn’t make you feel the same way.

Orange Whip Orange Whip 7″ (100% Breakfast)
My immediate thought is that Orange Whip should do a split with Yellowcake, and then I realize I’m simply describing the ingredients to a classic Hostess cupcake. Remind me to not write these reviews on an empty stomach! Orange Whip are a new punk band outta Cambridge, in kind of the best position any band will ever be in – releasing their first seven-inch EP after a demo debut. Punk is a game of inches, and I like where Orange Whip are positioned: the vocals are shouty-sassy, and the music toes the line between speedy garage and first-wave Cali punk. If you want to look back to the permanent dead-zone of music (which is to say, between fifteen and twenty years prior to the current moment), I’m reminded of Clorox Girls and Brain F≠, two bands who probably also looked back to The Wipers or Angry Samoans or The Gits or Urinals or The Donnas to help develop their sound in the truest manner possible. My favorite of these five tracks is probably “Pepsi Clear”, partially for the title (am I crazy or was it actually called Crystal Pepsi?) and mostly for the way it weaves in threads of poppy grunge, like a DIY-basement-circuit Belly that hangs out with Fucked Up whenever they come to town.

Real Lies We Will Annihilate Our Enemies LP (Tonal Recordings)
While other men my age exacerbate their mental illnesses by befriending AI chatbots, I choose to listen to records like We Will Annihilate Our Enemies by Real Lies, which has me convinced that I’m an Instagram-famous nineteen-year-old club-kid dating two rival drug dealers as I fly back and forth between London and Miami. Of course we can order bottle service – my absentee entertainment-lawyer father just wired me twenty Gs! This is an album that builds rich worlds around it, with the fabricated sheen and sparkle of a strip club from the Grand Theft Auto universe. Real Lies don’t simply mimic the sounds emanating within a London mega-club, they narrate them as well. I also find myself thinking of the characters and settings of HBO’s horniest young-people shows (Euphoria, I Love LA and Industry, obviously), though We Will Annihilate Our Enemies is too on-the-nose for music supervisors to actually work with. Over corporate-sounding house, big-tent UK garage, breakbeat-ambient and modern dance-pop beats, mostly male vocalists wax forlornly about lost love, the exhaustion of aesthetic sexuality, anomie for the terminally online, and cigarettes after sex over the weekend (or perhaps Cigarettes After Sex and The Weeknd). You can stay home if you want – the opening double-shot of “Loverboy” and “Towards Horses” are completely over the top and cheaply cathartic and I relish every second of them, ready to chase the Real Lies tour bus through the never-ending night.

Rigorous Institution Tormentor 12″ (Roachleg)
You can smell great hardcore-crust from a mile away – literally, I mean. If I don’t wash my clothes immediately after listening to Rigorous Institution’s new twelve-inch EP, I’ll probably just have to throw them away – their stench has never been more piquant than on Tormentor, an excellent seven-track EP that pairs a hideous artfulness with plain-old hardcore fury. It’s always fun when traditional-sounding hardcore bands lose their minds a little (and with it, the musical plot), but Rigorous Institution really deliver the best of both worlds here, cooking up their own Tolkien-esque sonic battlefields (darkly atmospheric synths, lengthy instrumental passages) without neglecting the meat-and-potatoes heft. Their songs pound in a manner similar to Amebix at their fastest and His Hero Is Gone at their slowest, with riffs that avoid typical Sabbathian progressions or public-domain d-beat. Flee from “Preach To The Converted”, which appears on the horizon like a modified Mad Max steamroller, or grievously sway to “Hidden Ruler (Kang Sheng)”… there’s no sunlight here, only harmful ultraviolet radiation. The Tormentor calls to mind some heinous gargoyle-faced tyrant on his throne of skulls, barking out war declarations against the feudal domains of King Diamond and Mortiis; the cover’s decrepit orc prisoner could’ve come from either battalion.

ROLROLROL Dinner LP (Ilian Tape)
The Dinner served by German duo ROLROLROL is a wide-ranging electro buffet. Many moods are explored here, though through most of them, you’ll understand that party-rock is undoubtedly, indisputably in the house tonight. “Paper Plane” pulled me in from the jump, a dazzling arpeggio layer-cake that clocks out in under a minute, and I keep sticking around for the rest. There are laser-light-show techno cuts, inventive futurist g-funk grooves and plenty of left-field hip-hop beats, all moving at a brisk downtown pace. Feels very aligned with Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder camp, the exuberant electro of Dorian Concept and a general hyperactivity I’d associate with Adult Swim’s bumper music of the last ten years. Some of it might go too hard, fast or weird for the general population (that squeak toy in “Popcorn” is an attention-grabber that will push some listeners too far), but then there’s “Sliders”, a b-boy chop fest of the highest order that no living human could deny. I don’t spend a lot of time with instrumental hip-hop beats, so I appreciate Ilian Tape’s gentle reminder that there’s a bright, busy world of this stuff happening at the same time as everything else. Not sure what that is on the cover – carpet, skin, the soft crust of a pie? Whatever it is, I suppose it’s Dinner.

Save Our Children / Stunted Youth split LP (Unlawful Assembly)
A split LP between two Texas hardcore-punk bands with names that reflect negatively towards adolescence? I’ll be there just as soon as I lace up the knockoff Doc Martens I skateboard in! Neither band seems to have much of a social-media presence (Vince McMahon smiling meme) and while a good part of the fun of any given hardcore-punk split LP is figuring out which of the two bands “wins”, Save Our Children and Stunted Youth each deserve a trophy. It’s like being beaten up by two people at the same time – how can you determine who left the worst bruises? Save Our Children (AKA S.O.C., proudly upholding the three-letter acronym hardcore band-name format) are magnificently old-school in their sonic approach, fast and down-to-earth in a way that reminds me of Ill Repute, White Cross and Neon Christ. Not even the subtlest trace of metal, just skinned-knee hardcore-punk with songs that average around a minute a piece. Stunted Youth sound exceedingly similar, even by the fine gradients with which I enjoy dissecting this perfect form of music. Maybe there’s a shade more meaty chaos on their side, as if S.O.C. found a weight-bench on the curb and started lifting while listening to Headcleaners MP3s. Stunted Youth also treat us to “Dipshit Secrets Pt. 1” and “Dipshit Secrets Pt. 2”, sounding like they skipped school to listen to Poison Idea all day. What can you learn in social studies that Kings Of Punk doesn’t already explain, anyway?

Scrabbled Plough Through The Rust LP (Wormwood Grasshopper)
There is a small subset of Aussie indie-underground enthusiasts that gets excited by new Wormwood Grasshopper releases, and we all share the common trait of being very, very attractive and cool. The label has mostly been out-of-office for the last decade, so I appreciate that they recently put together this Scrabbled LP, mostly comprised of studio recordings from 2015. (I told you the label takes it nice and slow.) As is often the label’s predilection, Scrabbled are proudly ramshackle, songs held together by a stanked-out guitar or two as a snare drum tries to keep up admirably, and what’s that, someone brought a violin? Cool, they might as well play that too. Scrabbled’s songs land somewhere between Mad Nanna’s patience-testing deconstruction and the lively amateur pop of Alternative TV. There’s a good bit of irritation here as well, which may set Scrabbled apart from some of their cheerier peers – check “N.K.O.T.B.”‘s undiluted fury, replete with a chorus that rhymes “shit for brains” with “video games”. I’m not sure if they call it gobbing in Australia or if that’s just a British thing, but many of these songs are ripe for the members of Scrabbled to angrily spit on the floor whilst playing. A belated sadness hangs over Plough Through The Rust though, as vocalist Bek Moore passed away shortly after the recording… this album’s a worthy, if untimely, final word.

S.K.V. + CazU-23 転 -Marobashi- LP (General Speech)
Upon listening to this album by S.K.V. + CazU-23, I received a phone call informing me that if I did not play it for someone else within seven days, the vengeful spirit of Sakevi would emerge from a reflective surface to kill me. Okay maybe that’s just The Ring‘s central plot device, but I approached this album with wariness and caution – the legendary G.I.S.M. vocalist may no longer walk among us mortals, but I can’t imagine he’s not out there wreaking havoc on some other plane of existence. 転 -Marobashi- documents a 2016 live performance of Sakevi alongside CazU-23 on noise guitar, and like any Sakevi-related material, it’s no half-measure. Sakevi delves deep, rooting out his most primal vocalizations like clogs in ancient pipes as CazU-23 sustains his unsettling timbres, an ambient drone that provides neither ambiance nor solemnity. Genre-abiding punks won’t know what to do with this besides politely nod at yet another piece of evidence that points towards Sakevi’s lunacy, and that’s fine – nothing about this record is “for everyone”. I wish I had attended this performance when it happened, but I’m thankful that none other than Hijokaidan’s Jojo Hiroshige penned the unexpectedly touching liner notes, detailing his musical relationship with Sakevi through this collaboration. I continue to hope to be proven wrong, but they really don’t make ’em like this anymore.

Split Apex Thoughts In 3D LP (Ever/Never)
Ever/Never seems to have reduced its ambitious release schedule in 2025, but whatever they’re lacking in quantity is surely made up for by the quality of Split Apex’s debut LP. They’re a new duo out of Croydon, South London, featuring Peter Blundell (of the late great Mosquitoes) and Jussi Palmusaari. As far as experimental post-punk goes, it’s like they were conjured straight out of my dreams: a part-Sightings, part-Shadow Ring amalgam whose mutant-power crashes the WiFi router each time it yawns. Blundell unleashes some gorgeously weird bass-lines – think Jah Wobble crammed in one of those precocious British phone booths – as he mutters Tim Goss-style over Palmusaari’s beguiling array of effects. I’m reminded of those great C.I.A. Debutante records from a couple years ago, or the more inspired tracks from one of those early-industrial Vinyl On Demand boxsets that span like eight LPs. Not sure I want to go as far as to call these tracks “songs”, but there’s a coherence, or a premeditation, that has me remembering them as easily as I can identify Wolf Eyes’s “Stabbed In The Face” from its first few seconds (a neat party trick). Some people will need more than this – verses and choruses, a tidy resolution, drums – but for my money, Thoughts In 3D is exquisitely reduced, with only the strangest and most potent elements given full reign. Recommended!

Tapes Photos Of My Frog 12″ (Jahtari)
There is no misinterpreting what Jackson Bailey AKA Tapes is referring to with “Photos Of My Frog”: throughout a pleasantly fidgety digital dub, frog-croak and camera-flash sound-effects volley back and forth. That’s a taste of the ludicrous fun to be had on this new EP care of the Jahtari label, an ever-reliable source for overtly digital, mostly instrumental reggae music. “Photos Of My Frog” is the one you’ll want to play for family and friends, but the remaining three songs (two of which are supplemented by “8-bit” versions) are charmingly artificial as well. “Cleat Skank” sounds like a Donkey Kong Country island level, whereas “Cleat Skank 8-bit” cleaves the processing power by a power of three. This irreverently old-school digital style been the Jahtari MO for years now, and while Tapes sometimes strays from the digi-dub reggae script (his “Summer Jam” from 2020 is muzak-cheese of the finest grade), their frequent team-ups are guaranteed crowd-pleasers, even if the crowd is just you, your cat and your Taco Bell mobile order at one in the morning. I’m gonna fire up my Nintendo, mute the TV, throw on “Back Cramp 8-bit” and see if it gives me the confidence to finally beat Hudson’s Adventure Island.

Teengenerate Live At The Empty Bottle LP (HoZac)
Teengenerate deserve a spot in the Japanese punk hall of fame (or any punk hall of fame, for that matter), but you know who wins this one? The Empty Bottle crowd. I’ve been lucky enough to perform at that beloved Chicago-punk institution close to a dozen times now, but I’ve never witnessed an audience like the one caught on tape at this Teengenerate show some thirty(!) years ago. This crowd is absolutely frothing at the mouth, squealing and screaming and losing their minds, a wild reaction somewhere between Showtime At The Apollo and The Beatles’s Live At The Hollywood Bowl, and Teengenerate bounce that energy right back. The recording is already hot (in a punchy, not muddy, way), and while the band’s carefree swagger remains evident on their studio recordings, Live At The Empty Bottle thrills from the two-way connection between band and audience. Originals like “Sex Cow” and “Get Me Back” are fully revved up, as if Teengenerate were flying high on the rest-stop amphetamines available back in the mid ’90s, and while I’m sad to see that they skipped their cover of The Zeros’s “Wild Weekend” this night, an unexpected rendition of The Queers’s all-timer “Kicked Out Of The Webelos” more than compensates. At one point, someone in the audience shouts “I love Japanese punk!” with sincere conviction, surely unaware that they were being recorded for posterity. Nowadays, everyone at every show is aware that they’re probably being filmed one way or another, which is one of the deep shames of our age. The best punk rock happens when no one is watching.

Vehicular Vehicular 12″ (False Aralia)
Mysterious techno imprint False Aralia strikes again, and much like serial killers, they follow a pattern. With abstract black etchings centered on a white cover, the productions are attributed to a lone Izaak “IS” Schlossman, each release given a distinct artist name and title even if they all seem to flow from the same creative well. They’re all mesmerizing swings at abstract ambient/dub/techno, and the fifth release, as Vehicular, might be my favorite of the bunch. On the uniformly titled “Vehicular 01”, we get a guest vocal spot from Lucas Deleon (aka De Leon, remember that pivotal album from 2018?). It’s not fair when an artist is great at more than one thing, so I’m mad at Deleon for having the voice of an angel and keeping it a secret until now. His singing is suited for mainstream Latin pop, but instead he chose to tuck it into this blissful sway, like digital algae in shimmering tide pools. “Vehicular 02” goes instrumental, tethering that same tropical-Alva Noto atmosphere to a sturdy low-end melody, whereas the fifteen minutes of “Vehicular 03” provides only the haziest essence of what preceded it, that cloud of salt and soot that remains when a squid is rousted from its camouflaged hiding place. Like many of this year’s best electronic releases, the vinyl vanished within hours or days, but the digital is freely available to console those of us caught sleeping (or working, or hanging out with friends…).

Visible Light Songs For Eventide LP (Permaculture Media)
If I think of the secret-richest artsy couple I know, and imagine who they would’ve hired to perform a live ambient set during their outdoor wedding reception’s light refreshment and cocktail hour, I keep landing on something like Visible Light. They’re a duo, Amy McNally on cello and Matthew Hiram on flute, synth, bowls, and sure, field recordings too, and as I look upon them dressed in white, peaking through a forest meadow under the sweet dappling rays of sunlight on the cover of Songs For Eventide, I can’t shake that sense of elegant matrimonial ambiance. McNally bows rich, slow tones from her cello, following patterns that sway and shift without the formal rigidness of sheet music, and Hiram’s flute adds a flavor not unlike the instrumental segments of Céline Dion’s immortal “My Heart Will Go On”, though darker, more cryptic melodies are explored as well. The range of ambient music being made right now has never been deeper and wider, from lightly-processed refrigerator hum to the dulcet, classically-informed sounds of Visible Light’s woodwinds and strings, but I encounter more of the former and less of the latter. Maybe it’s because you actually need some time-tested skill to make music like Visible Light, or maybe it’s because the sentimentality of this traditional-instrument style is more likely to accidentally drift into cornier territory. Regardless, Visible Light are a safer bet for your hallowed ceremony – Claire Rousay would probably end up DJing Euro-trance.

Vorhex Angel Heavenly LP (Electric Outlet)
Can’t say I ever checked out JEFF The Brotherhood, what with the unappealing name and all. It’s two brothers, Jake and Jamin Orrall – yet the brotherhood is some other person named JEFF? And it’s an acronym in all caps, like some sort of supercomputer robot from the ’60s? It did not entice me then or now, but the brothers Orrall have recently joined up with guitarist Kunal Prakash for a hard reset as Vorhex Angel. If it turns out JEFF The Brotherhood sounded like this, I’m gonna kick myself, because Vorhex Angel are harsh psychedelic noise-rock in the fine tradition of High Rise, and they destroy. Some of these songs practically hit tribute-band status, but that’s fine by me – High Rise deserve to be tributed every single day, everywhere. The opening title track is a molten jam not unlike Air Conditioning at their peak, but when the rock grooves settle in (and boy do they), I’m reminded of the earliest, speed-addled Comets On Fire recordings and the heaviest Acid Mothers Temple stoner-epics (from Makoto Kawabata’s Degeneration X jersey era). “Spring” delivers Laddio Bolocko-esque thrills before the album-closing “Lemon Tree” offers a soft-swaying come-down from the heightened fury that preceded it. What’s next, are you gonna tell me that Be Your Own Pet actually sounded like Urban Waste and I need to check them out too??

Ian Wellman Particularly Dangerous Situation LP (Elevator Bath)
Less than a year after the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires, Californian sound-artist Ian Wellman releases his first LP for Elevator Bath, a direct sonic document of that devastation. On January 7th, 2025, Wellman drove towards the fires, recorded the winds whipping the crap out of his gear, came home covered in ash and used those recordings as a base for the expansive, harshly soothing drones of Particularly Dangerous Situation. We all process grief and loss differently, but I gotta say… this one is coming a little too soon for my personal tastes. The horrific whistling winds and the crackle of flame are all too real and direct, these circumstances and tragic repercussions still being felt by an untold number of people, some of whom I call friends. Wellman is also processing this grief – I have no doubt that he’s been personally hit harder by the fires than my East Coast-residing self – and while I am glad he’s been able to turn to music to purge these emotions, it’s still too immediate for me to enjoy art inspired by this particular devastation. Maybe for others, such a listen might offer some form of catharsis, but if I’m going to enjoy some avant-garde disaster-porn, it’s going to be a techno album about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs or an industrial soundtrack to Pompeii being buried alive, not a tragedy fresh enough to still have its own outstanding Gofundme campaigns.

Alien Eyelid Vinegar Hill LP (Tall Texan)
Houston’s Alien Eyelid continue their march through rock music’s bell-bottomed past with their third LP, Vinegar Hill. Like previous efforts, this comes from a large ensemble of players, a necessity to produce any sort of cosmic-country worth its weight in hash. It’s incredible how their music seems utterly unaware of the last, say, fifty years of rock music – in the world of Alien Eyelid, Metallica never existed, and Jethro Tull rightfully deserved that Grammy in 1989. Flutes and and pedal-steel often take center stage, as Alien Eyelid’s songs are more laidback than ever, slow-burners whose embers glow late into the evening hours. It’s really kind of eerie how out-of-time Alien Eyelid come across here – Fleet Foxes sound like Interpol by comparison – but it never feels like artifice or an ill-fitting costume. Maybe they really do live and breathe this classic style and the lifestyle it entails? Tall Texan offered a few distinctly Americana records recently (the undiluted Texas country of Shinglers and Garrett T. Capps is admittedly way more cowboyish than this Yankee writer can handle), and I’d say Alien Eyelid are the cream of that unfiltered crop. I’d also say they unfortunately missed the chance to open Kansas’s headlining 1976 tour, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Kansas are still touring the American midwest summer-fair circuit today, to many of the same folks that saw them originally. Would it kill them to bring Alien Eyelid along for the ride?

Applejuice We All Dissolve LP (no label)
The recent Steve Peffer / Jayson Gerycz creative collaboration keeps paying dividends, now in the form of Applejuice. Peffer deserves his own Cleveland Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame at this point, but rather than dwell too long on past accomplishments I’ll remind you that he did the great Peer Pressure Zombies album earlier this year (menacing synth-punk recorded by Gerycz, who’s otherwise known for his band Cloud Nothings). I’m still singing “Reeking Garbage Pile” to myself in the shower, but now I’ve got this great Applejuice record to reflect upon, and reflect I shall. On first blush it has a “Gary Numan playing Flipper songs” vibe, particularly in the opener “Lovestreamz” and its Will Shatter-y chorus, but We All Dissolve is far more nuanced than it has any right to be. The bass is big, the synth is bigger, and they fit some guitar in there too, almost like a Rentals album if Matt Sharp had an intense period of Sheer Terror fandom but mostly kept it to himself. Peffer tends to muffle his words one way or another, be it vocal mix or listener comprehension, but We All Dissolve strikes me as a high-point in his lyrical career, flashing modern life’s mundanities back in our faces like a laser pointer at an airplane. It doesn’t hurt that the songs sound so good, Gerycz’s punchy recording making everything pop a little harder, right through the unwittingly dance-y closer “Freeware” (featuring Gerycz’s fellow Cloud Nothing Dylan Baldi on sax). The vinyl is limited to one hundred copies, and once they’re all sold, I’m fixing to get all one hundred of us together to hang and talk about how great this record is. And drink apple juice.

Aweful Kanawful Endless Pleasure LP (Folc)
Help! It would appear from the cover photo that Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers kidnapped one of the Aquabats. Or is the Aquabat now an evil Aquabat, a fallen-from-grace Judas who took up cigarette-smoking and sports-betting with some new “friends” he met in the big city? I could fantasize about this crew for a while, and as Endless Pleasure spins, I feel like I’ve got nowhere else to be anyway. While the cover (and let’s face it, band name) will turn off certain serious listeners, they’re missing out on some pretty swell power-pop, if they even care. These songs are energized and with just enough dirt under the nails, feeling like authentic early-’80s skinny-tie nuggets without the sense that Aweful Kanawful set out to specifically replicate a historical vibe. (They probably wouldn’t have done the whole Aquabat look if so, for starters.) The guitar playing is nimble in an Albert Hammond Jr. kinda way, and for a style as shop-worn as power-pop, their songwriting doesn’t take any cheap shortcuts. Back when The Beat and 20/20 were gigging, there was still a reliance on live bands for nightlife entertainment, and Aweful Kanawful seem better suited to that era, where good songs on the bar’s back-room stage mattered more than video-clip influencer-tainment. Maybe the costume will come in handy if they ever decide to pivot?

Brainbombs Die LP (Riot Season)
Depending on your particular point of view, a new Brainbombs album might cause you to race to the internet in hopes of procuring a copy or roll your eyes and go back to bed. I think my own perspective falls somewhere between those poles – while I’m still willing to fall on the “Brainbombs rule” sword, it also feels like there’s already simply enough of their music to suffice. They’ve variated on the same theme for decades now – if you aren’t already intimately familiar with their work, a song from 2009 sounds much like a song from 1996 (or 2020, or 2004, or 1994), a testament to their durability and staunch lack of outside interference. Even so, some of their typical “I Wanna Be Your Dog” riffing has felt less-inspired on the last decade’s worth of albums, a seemingly unavoidable dip in quality for any one-track-minded band. Maybe I’ve just taken enough time off, or maybe Die is simply a cut above, but for whatever reason it’s been a pleasure spinning this one, more so than I anticipated. The vocals are delivered with moderate-to-severe indiscernability, our favorite unrepentantly sadistic Swedish serial-killer delivering his snuff-film plots with the halfhearted bloodlust we’ve come to expect, and the riffs drip with sweat and sleaze. Like any good horror franchise, Brainbombs keep coming back, even after their grisly demise seemed certain and complete. I wonder if Rob Zombie has ever heard them?

Call Super A Rhythm Protects One 2xLP (Dekmantel)
London’s Call Super is nostalgic for the minimal tech-house of twenty years ago, and much like civil war re-enactors who ensure every final detail is period-accurate, Call Super has fabricated (get it? Fabric-ated?) his own little petri dish of club sounds in A Rhythm Protects One. What is credited as a mix of various artists such as Ondo Fudd, Conny Slipp and Clam1 is all the work of Joseph Richmond-Seaton (AKA Call Super), creating new characters to fill out his fantasies ala Fucked Up’s David’s Town (or the entirety of Killed By Death #11). In the A Rhythm Protects One cinematic universe, the towers of Villalobos and Luciano loom large, with springy, rubbery beats, grid-phasing effects and plenty of offbeat cameos, from lonely jazz horns to crooning female vocals seemingly unaware of the track they’re sharing (a Villalobos trick if there every was one). While not replicating tracks of old, the sound, style and demonstration are all rich with the vivid RGB shine of Perlon and Playhouse. It nails the assignment, though I’m a little surprised such a retro feel was Call Super’s goal to begin with, as his previous records struck me as more curious about the future than the past. Contemporary producer Jorg Kuning uses similar influences to springboard himself onto new levels of expression, but A Rhythm Protects One is content to stay right where it is.

Carrier Rhythm Immortal 2xLP (Modern Love)
Guy Alexander Brewer has struck gold with his Carrier alias, releasing some of the most intriguing post-dubstep / post-post-techno productions over the last few years. His sound is immediate but hard to define, and it’s within that sweet-spot that we get Rhythm Immortal, the project’s first full-length. Whereas previous releases focused on dazzling percussive flurries (Fathom and In Spectra) or unexpected hooks (“The Fan Dance”), Rhythm Immortal delves into the deepest trenches of sparse percussive sound, apparently scrutinizing the album’s title as its own mission statement. Most tracks consist of little more than “kick and snare” in the general sense, with organic / unintuitive rhythms relaying some sort of natural element while the sounds themselves, processed down to the very strands of their DNA, are alien in origin. Take opener “A Point Most Crucial”, which feels content to investigate the inner-workings of a cavernous kick and a scratchy hi-hat in what sounds like an abandoned chemistry lab (a lone Bunsen burner flickering in the corner). This is music that rewards focused listening; the deeper you concentrate on Carrier’s meticulously refracted percussion tracks, the richer the experience. In a way, it makes me sad that The Spaceape is no longer with us – his vocals would’ve absolutely slayed on these – but Rhythm Immortal is a stark reminder that less can be so much more.

Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo In The Earth Again LP (The Flenser / Computer Students)
One could easily peg In The Earth Again as a hyper-contemporary sludge/doom album from a couple pieces of evidence: one, the collaborative effort between two artists with contrasting fanbases, and two, the fact that there are no fewer than eleven vinyl variants (fourteen if you want to include the cassette, CD and digital versions). On one hand, I find these aspects to be turn-offs – the recent trend toward artist collaborations can feel like a desperate ploy for greater social-media reach, and the shameless collector-bait is certainly lame – but on the other, I don’t fault dirge-y noise-rockers Chat Pile or acoustic guitarist Hayden Pedigo for existing in the time we’re in. Unlike other collabs of recent years (especially in the metal/hardcore realms), I get the impression that this one came about organically, a random idea between new neighbors (Pedigo relocated to Chat Pile’s Oklahoma City) who dug each other’s vibes. And as for the vinyl thing, all these labels seem to think it’s the only way to actually sell records, and if it works, it’s surely a better result than the few remaining underground-supporting labels going bankrupt. Finally getting to the actual music, this album pretty fluidly combines Pedigo’s expert guitar-wrangling with Chat Pile’s slow tilt towards desolation soundtracking. I’d presume the average Chat Pile enthusiast wants to sprain their lower backs headbanging to stuff like “The Matador” and “Fission/Fusion”, but this band has gathered so much goodwill over the last couple years that it would seem fans of their Korn-derived aspects are perfectly content to stand with their hands in their hoodies through the extended Godspeed You! Black Emperor-esque passages here. Even the acoustic guitars are overtly depressive (in a comforting way), though when it comes to the heavy stuff, Chat Pile follow a timeless rule of show business: leave ’em wanting more.

Cowgirl Clue Total Freedom LP (Vada Vada)
It’s rare I get to share a phrase reaching the mystification of “Baby “Gronk rizzed up Livvy Dunne” here, on account of my generational standing, but this might come close: hyper-pop maven Cowgirl Clue is dating The Garden’s Wyatt Shears, whose Vada Vada label released Total Freedom. If none of that means anything to you, join me in the senior’s lounge, but I’m hoping to hip you to the fact that Cowgirl Clue rules. I got hooked on 2023’s Rodeo Star last year, beguiled and entranced by her combination of small-town rural anomie and trance-pop aspirations, and Total Freedom scratches a similar itch I didn’t previously know I had. Her music is busy and overloaded, like the newest iteration of a Sonic & Knuckles arcade game, filled with unforeseen arpeggios and high-speed digital motion. It can sound like Cold Cave’s Cherish The Light Years at 1.5 speed, though we’re never far from Cowgirl Clue’s signature pedal-steel twang (synthetic or otherwise) to bring us back to a dusty parking lot in the Southwestern countryside’s flat expanse. Her singing is unenthusiastic and moody, never even attempting to belt one out or compete with the recognized pop divas. No, the Cowgirl Clue vibe comes from the cool girls vaping gross flavors in the back of someone else’s car, her thoughts turned elsewhere as the rest of her friends venture inside the club, phone battery at one-percent and completely unbothered. I wish her and Shears the best, if only because I don’t think I could handle a Cowgirl Clue breakup album; the black-hole force of its unmitigated disaffection would pull the flesh off right my bones.

Efdemin Poly 2xLP (Ostgut Ton)
Can we get more of this? I’m talking about techno producers who take years between albums, and when they do, the results are worth the wait. Minimal techno is a style of music that can easily be pumped out, assembly-line-style, without necessarily suffering in quality, but you can also tell when someone has tinkered with their work until it attained a glorious final form. That’s certainly the case with Poly, an immersive double LP that refines, rather than reinvents, the style. Efdemin’s first full-length since 2019’s unexpectedly folk-tinged New Atlantis, Poly seems to be a tribute to the thrill of sound itself, the unpierced ear on the cover offering a clue. Like most Ostgut Ton techno, it plays out stoically with clinical details, from the residual echoes of “Lost Somewhere In The Day” to the nocturnal purr layered within “Signal To Noise” (imagine a cat gently sleeping on your lap inside Berghain), but Efdemin’s tender heart is always on display. It might be as close to emo-techno as a German could get (which isn’t close at all of course), a reverence for beauty that takes time to fully unfold. I get the impression that Efdemin is someone who has cried ecstatic tears while listening to techno music more than once in his life (and not just because of the drugs); Poly is a masterfully-rendered love-letter to those moments.

Endless Joy Endless Joy LP (Iron Lung)
Iron Lung has had a few great “house bands” in its lengthy tenure – Iron Lung the band, I guess, being the most obvious – and I’d like to add Endless Joy to that shortlist. They’re a new concern from old men, namely Nick Turner, Jensen Ward, Shaun Dean and Ian Jefferies. You’ll recognize the first three names from Cold Sweat (and the first two from Walls), and if there are any concerns in your head that their current tastes may have wandered from ferocious, unmarketable hardcore-punk, you’ll need to banish those this instant. Cold Sweat is one of those “gone too soon” hardcore bands (rare after, say, 1983), and Endless Joy feels like a fresh tank of gas in that old violent machine. It’s hardcore with a working knowledge of both power-violence and My War that doesn’t particularly sound like either. I love when they go completely hog-wild: “The Future Is Now” delivers a moshy amuse-bouche, takes a breath and then rips into a cacophonous speed-race with guitars so mangled, Nick Blinko might give Endless Joy a call to make sure they’re okay. Vocalist Shaun Dean has always had a knack for handling dirges – not every hardcore screamer knows what to do – and his band provides plenty of bleak, toiling slow-parts for him to pop every last forehead vein through. As it’s running you over, it won’t matter if it’s a brand-new wheel or a somewhat-familiar old gnarly one – you’ll still be a wet stain on the concrete.

False Persona & Mall Grab Crazy 12″ (Fragrance Recordings)
The cover image of DJ/producers False Persona and Mall Grab has a certain “Live at CBGB” je ne sais quoi that I feel deeply appealing. If Bold and Gorilla Biscuits were twiddling knobs on synths instead of playing guitars and drums, it would’ve looked like this, which is appropriate as these upbeat dance tracks from the two UK-based artists conjure images of windowless clubs rippling with the savage energy of youth. “Crazy” goes hard from the drop, upbeat Euro-dance with an incessant vocal hook running through Burial-esque filters. What else do you need? Not sure it’s possible to play this one loud enough, but we can (and must) try. The b-side features two versions of “It’s Time”, a galloping UK-garage cut that overloads the vocal samples in the manner of Baltimore club, ensuring every t-shirt is soaked through no matter if Balenciaga or Primark. Released a good number of months after the digital version, it was clear that “Crazy” needed more than a Soundcloud URL, so while this twelve-inch is decidedly no-frills, let’s hope it’s getting blasted from the decks of your favorite club basement this weekend. Maybe Don Fury can produce the next one?

Felinto Festa Punk / Festa Block 7″ (Bokeh Versions)
Bristol’s Bokeh Versions label is closing up shop at the end of the year, some ten years after first delivering their mischievous, noisy and omnivorous takes on bass-forward sound-system music. What better way to wrap things up than a seven-inch single from São Paulo baile scum-rockers Felinto? These two party tracks are vehemently anti-fascist in nature, the red-hot glow of their rage leaping from the grooves. “Festa Block” hurls all sorts of wet electronic chunks, replete with gang vocal chanting, dub-reggae effects, brittle drum-machine beats, layers of lo-fi synths, and what’s that, an undistorted guitar playing a Discharge riff at the end? “Festa Punk” gets aggro with the breakbeats, offering an even more imposing soundscape for the same vocal melody, a disfigured robot recalling FNU Ronnies at their prime. It feels like a no-budget South American analog to Atari Teenage Riot, with more at stake and a clarified purpose. You know with certainty that Felinto’s fans dance to this stuff, and I really need to see it in action: unless it’s some unholy new twerk / mosh hybrid bursting with joy and violence, I’m going to have to lock myself in the basement and workshop such moves on my own.

Greydini Freakdini LP (Celluloid Lunch)
Consider us forewarned: the album is not titled Normaldini. Greydyn “Greydini” Gatti is a Toronto local who might someday become a local legend, depending on how long and at what frequency he continues his musical exploits. Unlike lots of solo projects, Greydini could really only ever be one person, a mad-scientist of tape-hissing synth-punk with a singular point of view. And just in the way that Screamers and Cabaret Voltaire utilized the cheap technology available to them, Greydini works with a grody free-ware sound befitting his own generation. Drum loops, Casio-sounding synths and digital-everything all collide in the corner of his bedroom with the most electric outlets, like Atom & His Package and Half Japanese trapped together in a tangle of USB cables. “Outsider” can be used as a marketing term, but in the case of Greydini it’s simply the truth: there is no fanbase being developed here (and even less money being made). It’s simply one frazzled gentleman trying to make sense of the world in the form of sticky, splattered electronic punk. My favorite part might be the fact that Greydini thanks no fewer than three different family members in the credits (and possibly more – I only could verify those with the same last name), one of whom painted the hallucinatory cover art back in 1974. How far back does the Gatti family freakery extend?

Headache Thank You For Almost Everything 2xLP (PLZ Make It Ruinz)
Joseph Winger Thornalley produces music under the wretched moniker of Vegyn, whose profile has blown up care of a James Blake co-sign and Frank Ocean production credits, but it’s his Headache profile that resonates with me most. (Certain readers might be amused to learn that Thornalley’s dad was in Powerpearls staples The First Steps, whose “The Beat Is Back” is prime-cut British power-pop.) As Headache, Thornalley crafts heartstring-pulling trip-hop enhanced with a digitally-rendered British male voice reading the poetry of one Francis Hornsby Clark (whose existence remains curiously unverified online). The instrumentals are clean and well-fashioned, a Balearic take on the Brit-pop sound we might associate with The Verve and Charlatans UK, full of hold-music pianos, soul-stirring strings, blissful synth pads and stadium-quality drum loops. Like the first Headache album, Thank You For Almost Everything comes with a vinyl LP of the instrumentals, but it’s the spoken-word originals that make it pop. Hornsby Clark’s prose can be disarming, funny and sad, often in the same track (or phrase), an incisive observer of life’s follies delivered with the unnerving artificiality inherent in a computer-generated voice. I can understand if the “is this somehow AI?” feel turns some people off – I dry-heave at the thought of computer-generated “creativity” myself – but Headache’s combination of panoramic trip-hop wonder and cheeky prose came from the mind of a guy whose dad once played in The Cure and his low-profile-keeping wordsmith friend.

Her New Knife Chrome Is Lullaby Deluxe 12″ (Julia’s War)
Let me start with a confession: earlier this year I actually wrote Her New Knife asking if I could release Chrome Is Lullaby on vinyl, to which they kindly explained that it was already in the works care of Julia’s War. It’s not the sort of impulse that usually comes over me, but I couldn’t stop listening to this EP from late last year, and it felt like, well, if no one else was gonna memorialize these MP3s into a permanent physical form, I might as well be the one to do it. Their music is a fantastic combination of the quieter end of Y2K-era emo (I’m thinking of the artsier side of labels like Crank!, Southern and Doghouse at the time), the hooks that arise from Sonic Youth’s inscrutable guitar-tunings and a touch of the nu-gaze scene they’re most generally aligned with, all delivered by young adults who probably grew up watching Adult Swim and making many of their real friends online. Take “Purepurepure” for example, which sets a miserably sludgy bass-line against shimmering minor-chord melodies and hushed vocals. It’s glitchy, deviant and weird, like a Manga whose cute cover betrays its supernatural-sex-horror storyline. The whole EP is fantastic – no two songs sound the same but it all sounds like Her New Knife, which is the mark of a great band. Padding out this vinyl version are remixes of each of the six originals on the second side, coming from artists with names like Angel Emoji and Silicone Valley (as well as local pals They Are Gutting A Body Of Water). They’re mostly what you’d expect to hear in chopped-up electronic remixes of moody indie guitar music, offering a nice moment to ponder what Her New Knife might share with us next.

JJulius Vol III LP (Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox / DFA)
Double-Jay Oolius refuses to abide by typical genre constraints – that’s how he’s / they’ve always been – but never has it felt more comfortable, more natural than on this third full-length volume. While “guitar pop” is as fitting a blanket term as any for the music herein, every aspect is considered, then reconsidered, until the various paths JJulius has taken to get to “guitar pop” are indecipherable. No element is safe from dub effects, from the drums (care of Viagra Boys’s Tor Sjödén) to the Fender Rhodes, the field-recordings, the synth, the sax, the vocals. Never all at once, though – every song has its anchor, be it a syrupy bass-line or school-yard vocal hook, while other instruments fade in and out of focus. This has become the trademark JJulius sound, where the studio mix is having as much fun as the musicians themselves, and it has me imagining Orange Juice, Belle & Sebastian and Arthur Russell sharing a pot of tea at This Heat’s Cold Storage studio, working on an album that they will keep entirely to themselves. I’m not sure what anyone associates with the DFA label anymore, but production has always been high on their list, so it’s no surprise the playfully raw sounds of JJulius have found a steady home there. Vol III might be the most easy-listening experimental album (or most experimental easy-listening album) you catch this year.

Erica Dawn Lyle On Fire 12″ (Half A Million / Feeding Tube)
Layers of meaning can be found in the title to Erica Dawn Lyle’s new EP. Recorded in a time when both Los Angeles and Canada were on fire (okay, one of the many recent times), Lyle dedicated this music to the resilient communities affected, the self-immolating activist Aaron Bushnell, and also Van Halen, whose “On Fire” she interprets as a “hot trans girl anthem”. In practice, this means that Lyle picked up her electric guitar and shredded the hell out of it in a free-wheeling, volcanic approach akin to Bruce Russell and Keiji Haino. The b-side goes even harder, as if Lyle is trying to carry the weight of all of Acid Mothers Temple at once, a prickly choogle running a gauntlet of cattle prods and barbed wire. Both shred-fests are buffered by soft renditions of David Lee Roth’s “On Fire” lyrics, brief cracks of light between dark storm clouds. The second take expands that segment with live drums and a subdued, seasick guitar melody, an ecstatic alt-rock send-off for what was otherwise a scalding pipe-burst of guitar. Even for the most privileged and healthiest of us, it’s been a rough couple of years to process – Lyle’s coping technique of tormenting her guitar and daydreaming about Van Halen lyrics is something worth considering.

Matthew Smith Group Matthew Smith Group LP (Tall Texan)
Look at this Matthew Smith Group, smugly poised like the party of six in line ahead of you for the best brunch in the city. Yeah, I know, I know, it’s at least an extra hour wait because of them… we’ll go somewhere else, thanks. There are probably a million Matthew Smiths wandering the United States right now, but this particular one played in the beloved Detroit rock outfit Outrageous Cherry, and now he’s moving forward with this group under his own name. His ensemble brings an airy touch of fried psychedelia to whimsical paisley pop in the spirit of Pernice Brothers, The Beach Boys and Rain Parade. A ghostly reverb lightly hovers over every sound, bestowing the proceedings with an aura akin to daisies sprouting up alongside train tracks within a mountain tunnel. It was cool to see Chris Pottinger on synth duties (his illustrations are as gloriously mind-bending as his analog noise under the name of Cotton Museum) but he read the room, delivering understated, mellow contributions. At times, it can feel too translucent and lightweight for me to really grasp onto, like powdered sugar in the wind, but when I stop demanding such sober and terrestrial behaviors from Matthew Smith Group’s dreamy indie strum, the satisfaction slowly but surely ensues.

Midnight Mines Feel I’m Slipping Away Now LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
You ever find yourself furious that a song ended? It’s not a sensation I frequently experience, but “Parts & Pieces”, the opening cut on Midnight Mines’ newest album Feel I’m Slipping Away Now, should still be going. It should be the whole LP! An outlier in their repertoire, “Parts & Pieces” locates a firm bed of two-tone ska and splatters and sputters all over it, horns and dubbed-out vocals and whatever else in wild druggy abandon (yet also well-suited for a lively Sunday barbecue). It’s essentially perfect music, and as you can see, I’m still coming to terms with the group’s decision to abandon this style for eight other songs. Thankfully, the rest is cool too – this London-based duo haven’t met a guitar style from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s that they don’t like, or at least like enough to bend, twist and demineralize. You might find some similarities in that manner to The Jesus & Mary Chain, Cindy Lee, Cheater Slicks, Cramps and Black Time (the latter of which shares some sort of personnel with Midnight Mines), though Midnight Mines don’t care if their pyramid of champagne glasses comes tumbling down in a jagged, dangerous mess. It’s a raucous trip through the rusty pipes of party-rock history, though maybe it’ll take an extended twelve-inch “Parts & Pieces” single to calm me down…

Tony Molina On This Day LP (Slumberland / Speakeasy Studios SF)
If you’re at all like me, you expect your baroque indie-pop songsmiths to carry a deep appreciation for the music of Excruciating Terror, which is one of the many reasons why Tony Molina is the greatest pop troubadour of our times. If you’re already familiar with him, I assume that not only are you a fan, you’ve also already been alerted to the release of On This Day, Molina’s newest and most comprehensive album, but if not, I’m excited to share the good news! Molina’s music moves in a few time-tested directions: when electrified, Weezer and/or Guided By Voices (feat. Slash on lead guitar) are clear comparisons, and when acoustic, images swirl of mop-topped Beach Boys and bespectacled Apples In Stereo dancing like sugar plum fairies. On This Day leans towards the latter – sorry, the screaming lead guitar solos are absent – with Molina’s signature under-a-minute song lengths to keep us on our toes. It’s a whirlwind of timeless pop perfection, pared down to the essentials (which should (and does) include bells, Mellotron, piano and trumpet). Fans will rejoice, and newcomers will quickly fall in love for the first time. On a side note, Molina’s rendition of the Shirley Collins-popularized “Just As The Tide Was Flowing” here reminded me of Home Blitz’s version, which has me thinking: is a duet from the two of them too much to ask? For Christmas??

Optic Sink Lucky Number LP (Feel It)
Memphis’s Optic Sink leaned on their countrywide punk network for Lucky Number: Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright provided input on the songs, Sweeping Promises’s Caufield Schmug produced the record, and Cincinnati’s Feel It released it unto the world. They certainly seem like a band worth rooting for, ever since Natalie Hoffmann picked up a synth and realized she was making music befitting something other than her minimalist garage-punk group Nots. With Keith Cooper and Ben Bauermeister on bass and additional synth respectively, Lucky Number is poised to be the next step in the group’s evolution. Unfortunately for me, I’m not really vibing with the album, no matter how much I will myself to. The songs are uniformly on the slow side of mid-paced, and Hoffman’s vocals, given a bit more room to stretch out and steal the show, are delivered in a distant, consistent monotone. It’s not particularly different from the Optic Sink approach of prior records, but a song like 2023’s “A Face In The Crowd” has some bite to it, an appealing desperation that’s generally absent from this album. There are some cool playful bass-lines, and plenty of that same-old retro drum-machine sound that we all enjoy, but can you sense me grasping to put a positive spin on Lucky Number? If there’s a catchy hook here, it hasn’t caught me yet, but I’m gonna keep trying – check back in after another dozen spins and see if my tune hasn’t changed.

Out Of The Blue Shut Up Shut Up And A Double Fuck You 7″ (no label)
Is that a Happy Gilmore quote? It’s certainly a robust insult, but I get the impression that new Massachusetts punk band Out Of The Blue are only having a lil’ bit of fun with their debut seven-inch’s title. At least that’s how these three songs hit, a garage-tinged hardcore-punk sound that I’d slide somewhere between the earliest recordings from White Lung and Carbonas. It seems as though they intended to sing these songs but the energy often pushes them over into screams, a dual-vocal attack with stabby guitar and a drummer who plays too skillfully to be recorded this poorly. Tough luck – go join Pink Floyd if that’s what you’re after! Out Of The Blue cover “Up Front” by The Wipers on the b-side – a gold-standard songwriting influence in modern punk rock, to be sure – and I hope they don’t mind me saying that it’s my favorite of the three. They’re legends for good reason, right? In what is exceedingly rare these days, I can’t find any Out Of The Blue presence on the internet after a few dedicated minutes of searching. This is the sort of hot tip that brings you to this corner of the web, though… with a noble tear in my eye, I am here to reveal to you that Out Of The Blue features ex-members of Funeral Cone and Bone Zone. To unlisted regional punk rock, I am but a faithful servant.

Permanent Opposite Permanent Opposite LP (Inscrutable)
Jared Leibowich has built up a pretty substantial body of work over the last fifteen years or so, from The Zoltars to The Infinites, a couple solo albums, and now Permanent Opposite. This one is also a solo album, now with a more enticing moniker than “Jared Leibowich”, and like everything else he’s done, his conspicuous voice guides this little ship through the sea at night. He has a gracious, wearied warble, and it takes us through eleven songs of mild jangle and patient psychedelia, the typical full-band setup studio-assembled. It certainly fits in with Inscrutable’s roster of offbeat indie-pop, as Permanent Opposite is poppy while avoiding typical pop-music behavior. Permanent Opposite adheres to typical Jared Leibowich behavior, however – he’s been toiling with his own form of introverted, melancholic indie music for as long as he’s been putting out records, and Permanent Opposite does not deliver any sort of stylistic jump or unexpected new development. Fine by me! I’m not particularly desperate to hear his personal takes on drum n’ bass or Oi, though if you’re sitting on any unreleased tapes…

Pyrex Slugman 7″ (La Vida Es Un Mus)
Goo-goo g’joob! Brooklyn’s Pyrex head over to the hardcore-for-the-hardcore La Vida Es Un Mus label for a quick EP, confirming that their noise-punk is rubber-stamped by the underground hardcore elite (in addition to rabid celebrators of the Total Punk catalog). Makes sense to me, particularly on these four songs, which rip forward like a Lime scooter straight into the East River. Play to your audience, that’s what I say: no dirges or sadistic cover songs this time around, only four fast cuts that might lead you to believe that Pyrex were raised exclusively on Discharge and Die Kreuzen, not Halo Of Flies and Action Swingers. I probably need to see them live to fully understand Pyrex’s deal, and I’m overdue in making that happen – my understanding is that they’re a trio, and I’m always a little fascinated by aggro punk/hardcore with a lead-singing guitarist. It’s tricky territory, especially when you can just recruit your biggest idiot friend to scream into a bent-up Shure and solve that problem. Pyrex keep it tight though, clenched even, these songs providing not the satisfying release of a well-delivered fart so much as the tense discomfort of holding one in. And now they’ve got a new mascot, if they want one: assuming that’s the Slugman himself on the cover, he’s positively jacked.

William Scott / BJ Armour Peace Makers In The Summer Time LP (Beauty Music)
Studio Route 29 is an art studio / gallery in the lovely burg of Frenchtown, NJ. It’s also the home of the Beauty Music label, which “centers the musical practices of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities”. This collaborative split between visual artists William Scott and BJ Armour is the label’s first physical release, and if you aren’t enamored by these two, I will light a candle for your shriveled heart. Both artists worked with musician Hop Peternell to bring their musical ideas to life, discussing moods, melodies and sonic directions. Peternell put together the instrumentals (guitar, synth, drum machine, computer) and Scott and Armour jumped right in. Scott isn’t shy in front of the mic, as he seems to sing the guitar lick to “Whole Wide World” (which I believe is precisely how Pushead helped write Septic Death songs). Scott’s tracks are nice and slow for the summer heat that I do not currently miss. Armour’s music has more of a youthful touch (in a post-Y2K way), with autotune vocal processing and a sweetly melancholy singing voice that seems to exist squarely in this post-Frank Ocean world. “Swimming In The Spa” goes raw-confessional in a Lil B way, to name another modern visionary invoked by this music. Adorned with a striking William Scott painting on the cover, there’s a sticker on the sleeve that quotes kind words towards BJ Armour’s “Fall Is Coming” from none other than… Vashti Bunyan. We’d have such a beautiful world if we could only get rid of these miserable little fascists running around.

Twenty One Children Twenty One Children 7″ (Slovenly)
For their three-hundredth release(!), the globetrotting Slovenly label finally offers us some African punk. Is Antarctica the only continent they haven’t tapped? From Soweto, South Africa, Twenty One Children are a drums / vocals / guitar trio that sound like they could’ve come from any given Southern Californian suburb in 1983, which is a-ok in my book. Opener “Ice Cube” is one of those punk songs so gloriously simple that it glimpses toward perfection – over a stop/start riff, they shout “today was a good day” before hitting the sing-along chorus of “Ice Cube! Ice Cube! Ice Cube! Ice Cube!”. It’s one of the purest distillations of punk-rock as I understand the form, and you really ought to do yourself a favor and give it a listen. The other three songs are just as rough and ratty, somewhere between that first-wave So Cal sound ala Circle Jerks and the Gilman St. scene that followed some ten years later (ala Corrupted Morals), rambunctiously, joyously amateurish. The guitar tone is cheap-heavy in that SOA No Policy sorta way, all the way through “Looney Bin”, whose lyrics “here I am at the looney bin” are repeated at least a hundred times. Please join me in trying to manifest this scenario: once Greg Ginn ditches his current Black Flag zoomer bandmates, he enlists Twenty One Children to replace them, and they kick him out and only play new material going forward.

Ugnė Uma Strange Love / Someone Call Donna 7″ (Somewhere Press)
It only takes three sonic elements for Ugnė Uma to whip up the thrillingly dour “Rage Love Strange Love”, proving once again that less is more, so long as the less you’re working with bears some element of magic. Her drum machine ticks like a malfunctioning Kit-Cat Klock, her piano chords are barely visible through the unventilated smoke, and her voice is almost comically deep, steeped in the Anohni school of vocal drama. And the only lyrics are the song’s title, over and over! “Rage Love Strange Love II” turns off the clicker and finds her digging deeper into a mournful jazz / R&B style, as if Sade was a mortal human being who hung out with Sam Gendel and Schatterau (Uma in fact has worked with both). For a third distinct flavor, “Someone Call Donna” sets up a downtown NYC funky bass-line with telephone-conversation voice and R&B vocals that waft in through the loft’s open window. Taken as a whole, these three songs are unstoppably charming, the work of a busy mind that never takes an errant step, even if there are footprints scattered all over the place.

Jim White Inner Day LP (Drag City)
As a collaborative drummer, Jim White has given us so much: records from Dirty Three, Venom P. Stinger and The Hard Quartet; tours with Cat Power, Will Oldham and Bill Callahan, to list a few big-name highlights. I first saw White perform with Callahan a few years ago and he nearly stole the show right out from under his bandleader – a more charismatic drum performance I don’t think I’ve seen this side of Han Bennink. So we know he’s good with other people (and on stage), but the man’s internal monologue deserves some time as well, which is what we get with Inner Day, his second solo full-length following last year’s All Hits: Memories. On his typical drum-kit accompanying synths and keys, he doesn’t sound particularly rehearsed, or that he considered what he would be playing before he started playing it. His synths wander, and the drums tend to follow like an off-leash dog on an empty trail, running up ahead, lagging behind, mostly just sniffing around. Inner Day is a daydream meditation in that way, with the exception of “I Don’t Do / Grand Central”, featuring saxophonist Zoh Amba. Apologies to all the other songs released this year, but “I Don’t Do / Grand Central” is my favorite of them all: alongside a calm percussive tumble and hypnotic, Natural Information Society-esque strings, White and Amba interact like Statler and Waldorf, their dialogue inexplicably shifting in and out of the unexpectedly catchy lyrical hook. They’re the odd couple I desperately need in my life, intergenerational true-blue weirdos who just wanna sip coffee on the subway and eat oysters before the gig. I’ve been playing this tune for everyone I know, really sitting them down and making them listen, and if you finish reading this without pulling up the accompanying music video, please understand that you’ve hurt me.

Who’s The Technician? ? LP (Wah Wah Wino)
The latest blink-and-missed Wah Wah Wino release comes from Who’s The Technician?, an unidentified producer whose name you may recall from the label-defining Absolutely Wino compilation (I know I did!). It’s ridiculous that these records are so difficult to come by, as ? is a wild rumpus of live-action techno, as deliriously fun as the rest of the label’s 2025 releases – they should be teaching this stuff in public school, not limiting it to whoever is online within the first fifteen minutes of it hitting digital shops. Anyway, for those of us lucky enough to hear these tracks one way or another, the charm quickly soothes those gripes. The general template is an athletic, all-hands-on-deck sort of acid techno, frequently enhanced by what sounds like an Otamatone (that child-friendly Japanese mouth-sound synth shaped like a music note). It’s an addition that immediately cracks techno’s seriousness to pieces, as Who’s The Technician? is in fast pursuit of fun no matter how many pretentious brows are raised and/or furrowed. “I’m A Klepto” might be my favorite of the bunch, its gnarled vocal line recalling something grown in Beau Wanzer’s dungeon laboratory, but the whole thing is gold, ending with the self-explanatory “Live Excerpt OE Festival – Sherkin Island, Co.Cork ’18”, which offers an intimate glimpse into Who’s The Technician? live gigs. Spoiler alert: it sounds nuts.

Yu Su Foundry / Bonita 12″ (Short Span)
Yu Su has been a premier name in the ever-expanding field of ambient dub-techno since the mid ’10s, and for good reason. EPs like Preparations For Departure and Roll With The Punches are as unique and fresh now as when they came out, all signs pointing to Yu Su as a restlessly creative spirit. Now on this new twelve-inch single, the copy references her Polyphonic Eating series(!?), what is described as “a transformative approach experimenting with modern culinary environments”(?!) – see what I mean about the restless creativity? She’s apparently out there thinking deep about music and food, and while I could’ve gone for more of her ruminative ambient electronics, she goes and throws us two club bangers instead – precisely what I didn’t know I needed. “Foundry” sashays into view with some upstroke hi-hats, 8-bit synths simultaneously tooting / swirling and a delirious pulse. Mid-paced with plenty of bounce, I can picture her deploying this at one of her non-culinary engagements to the delight of dance-floor crowds. “Bonita” is a little chillier – if I can picture the vegetables dancing in her fridge to “Foundry”, I’m now picturing the contents of her freezer vogueing in line. It’s downtempo but not to the point of total relaxation, even if those ice-drip melodies hit like the strongest peppermint candy allowed on the market. I’m not trying to butt in and offer her menu suggestions for the next Polyphonic Eating event, but if she’s asking…