Donna Allen Atom-ic Citizen Of The Dying Empire LP (Ever/Never)
Donna Allen (of the beloved Chronophage) strikes out on her own with Atom-ic Citizen Of The Dying Empire. It’s a tender marriage of folksy AM-gold rock and peace-punk perspective, an anti-capitalist ramble through the stranger crevices of our boomer parents’ record collections. Chronophage’s “Love Torn In A Dream” had a real ’80s downer sit-com theme song vibe, and Allen strikes a similar chord on “Candle-Watching”, an earworm-y melody (punctuated with “doo-do do do” backing vocals) ready to support Mary Tyler Moore as she dumps her loser boyfriend and moves to a commune upstate with shaved-head women who knit anarchist tapestries and grow their own mushrooms. The softer sides of late ’80s Flying Nun shines through as well, care of the deftly-worked, unexpected melodies and pastel textures; there isn’t a single distortion pedal to be found in the practice space, not when multiple acoustic guitars, keyboards and drum brushes are scattered about. Throughout, Allen deftly weaves hard-skinned reality into her fantastical lyrics, natural beauty and persistent survival intertwined to form a barb that latches onto the lapel of the empathy-lacking oppressor. Irritating for him, but inspiring for the rest of us.

Ball Satanic Ecstasy LP (Horny)
As the weather warms up and we look for fresh tunes to blast out of open car windows, have I got a new one for you! I don’t know how Ball haven’t been a part of my life up until now, but Satanic Ecstasy, goddamn, here’s a record to blast while robbing a liquor store, jumping fifty feet into a quarry with your jeans still on, basically anything risky and cool that you could’ve also done in the ’70s. Of course, I’m more the type of person who separates his recycling before dutifully putting it on the curb every week than one to conjure mystical fiends through heavy LSD trips, and yet I still feel as though my entry into Ball’s Satanic sex party is authorized, so righteous and timeless is their outlaw rock for all willing to follow it. Imagine, if you will, the sounds of Vincebus Eruptum as performed by the band in Stunt Rock but with El Duce on vocals, all swabbed in Comets On Fire’s self-titled drug-effects, and you’re pretty much there – this Swedish hard-rock outfit pushes overblown riffs and bad taste to the limit, recorded as if the room was, if not actively on fire, freshly charred. It’s sleazy and a little cheesy, but certain sounds, when committed to fully and unrelentingly, are God-like in nature, and that’s the case for Satanic Ecstasy from start to finish. I’ve never considered myself a religious man – maybe someday I’ll pick up a book about Buddhism – but Ball have me strongly considering changing my voter registration to “Satanist”. That’ll show ’em!

Coronary M.A.D.ness LP (Rad Girlfriend)
There’s no room for sub-par hardcore anymore, not even in Chicago! Coronary have been around since 2015 or so, M.A.D.ness being their second full-length, both on the daringly-named Rad Girlfriend Records (what if y’all break-up??). They’ve got a feisty, energetic sound, almost as if they want to play every hard-edged strain of hardcore all at once. There are power-violence blasts, ugly-face breakdowns, galloping heavy d-beats, metallic thrash leads, gang vocals, tricky stop-starts… if your face is in danger of being punched by any particular hardcore or hardcore-adjacent sound, Coronary will find a way to integrate it. Vocalist Ryan Morris somehow sounds like the least energetic member of the band, every other instrument flying off the rails as he digs deep into his gut for his persistent snarling bark. Cool stuff, as it’s not often I hear a band sound like Power Trip then Extortion then Look Back & Laugh then Bib then Bolt Thrower in the same minute-long song. Punks have co-opted the concept of mutually assured destruction for their band names and song titles since the dawn of hardcore, and it still clicks, especially for bands as furious as Coronary.

Cousin Wake The Town LP (Moonshoe)
Cousin’s newest EP is titled Wake The Town, though that seems an unlikely outcome from the chill music within. This Australian producer has delivered a steady flow of low-slung electronics, dipping toes in dub, ambient, deep house and techno (and lowering his entire foot into the vague and fertile pool known as “downtempo”), and this six-track album is an excellent showcasing of his skills. Opening with the title track, the mood is set: distant bongos on the horizon, an overzealously agile bass-line, the commingling of precise digital techniques and sticky jungle mist. Percussion is usually centered, yet Cousin’s tracks never feel like workouts; the hand-drum loop that guides “PicL” acts as a subtle evocation of spirits, not a dance-floor compulsion. That seems to be the key to Cousin’s music, the sense that his tracks are guided by sensuality and exploration while gently tethered to the meat and bones of rhythm. I could picture Sade listening to this as much as Richard D. James, is what I’m trying to say. Not a dud in the bunch here, nor does the album ever sag – a rarity for a techno producer’s first full-length! – but I’d direct you to “King Tide” as a particularly nice place to start. Over a light bed of crackly textures, a hypnotic new form of post-post-dubstep slowly takes shape.

Darkside Nothing LP (Matador)
Darkside is one of those projects that appears pretty perfect on paper (Nico Jaar with a guitar guy doing funky post-punk), and in execution? Perfect there, too! I’ve been a big fan since Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington released that first self-titled ten-inch, my god, somehow fourteen years ago, and the duo has continued to fine-tune its mix of showboat-y guitar licks with the outermost regions of avant-garde production. We are truly in an age of risk-averse music – what, would you want to disturb “the algorithm” and possibly reduce your play-count? – and I love that Darkside continue to make bold, unique choices with their music. Big decisions, like the sound of the vocals and the overtly funky riff selection, are as wild and hairy as the tiniest details: a cowlick of feedback here, a hook that is only teased and denied, a house-shaking party anthem where you least expect it, and so forth. Each track is packed with a variety of twists and turns, often feeling more like four songs in one – “Graucha Max” is a good example, shifting through a variety of upbeat dance rhythms before settling on a distorted closer. Nothing can be reminiscent of Jaar’s Against All Logic throwback dance trax rinsed with some of that good ’70s acid, but then maybe The Faint showed up with some Galaxy Gas, then wait, is Flea here now too, riding on Thom Yorke’s shoulders like a little kid? Did Daft Punk’s CPUs get reprogrammed as a Pink Floyd tribute act?? Nothing consistently showcases the best possible outcome of brazenly maximalist music, where the rush of the sounds, the rhythms, the ostentatiousness, the unself-consciousness and freewheeling vibe takes full control. It’s an absolute joy for the body and mind, with really nothing else like it out there, and I can already say with confidence that Nothing will appear high up my year-end best-of list in nine months’ time, may the algorithm forgive me.

Marie Davidson City Of Clowns LP (Because Music / Deewee)
There comes a time in every rational adult’s life where they learn about the concept of surveillance capitalism, and I say, why not have Marie Davidson provide the lesson? The French-Canadian producer/singer/DJ apparently got really into Shoshana Zuboff’s book of the same name in the time she was crafting City Of Clowns, her newest (and greatest?) solo full-length, the concepts of which inform her lyrics. Don’t expect a sleepy PowerPoint presentation, though – with the help of Soulwax, Davidson’s music is riotous and addicting, a brash mix of throwback electroclash, Brat Summer and catchy, personality-driven tech-house. Her lyrics are a highlight as well, as she’s not afraid to go over-the-top, land a hilarious zinger or speak an uncomfortable truth with the deadpan smile I associate with many of Aubrey Plaza’s characters. It’s like Green Velvet and Miss Kittin throwing a party in an abandoned co-working space after the tech startup failed. One of my favorite singles of last year, “Y.A.A.M.”, reappears here, alongside powerhouse synth-wave cuts “Demolition” and “Sexy Clown”, a thrilling one-two punch sure to convert even the most inert of audiences into a wiggling bacchanal. I listened to City Of Clowns driving en route to a wedding a few weeks ago and nearly crashed three times, which seems low considering how hard I was jamming with my passengers. The wedding DJ’s selections were as limp as my “roasted vegetables” entrée by comparison, but how could they not be?

Adrián de Alfonso Viator LP (Maple Death)
With more new music than ever, there’s more music that sounds like other music than ever, too. Not so with Adrián de Alfonso’s debut solo full-length, Viator, an occasionally beautiful and frequently jarring album of voice and guitar unlike much else. The instrumentation is consistently sparse, and the songs swerve between experimental guitar wanderings to painstaking repetition to various strains of traditional Spanish guitar (flamenco, bolero and such). There are surely some names in the Spanish guitar heritage that de Alfonso is drawing from, but my American ears are imagining some sort of campfire gathering of Jandek, Devendra Banhart, Derek Bailey and Dylan Carlson, the latter three all poisoned by Jandek, who commandeered final say of the resulting music. Some tracks sound like an acoustic guitar actively de-tuned beyond recognition (almost reminiscent of Vomir’s “shit-folk” as Roro Perrot), whereas others patiently pursue a two-note pulse over foot-stomp percussion and de Alfonso’s dramatic vocal. Viator finds itself frequently at odds: musical and anti-musical, traditional and groundbreaking, listenable and unlistenable, ludicrous and dead serious, an artistic sensibility in league with Mattin, yet a sound Adrián de Alfonso can comfortably claim as his own.

DOVS Psychic Georgraphy LP (Balmat)
Philip Sherburne’s Balmat label has been a fun one to follow. You’d think one of the best regarded electronic music writers of our time would know how to run a small-press label, and he certainly does, from the consistently gorgeous cover art designs of José Quintanar to the curation of artists, most of whom operate from left-of-center but not in a way that neglects melody or accessibility. DOVS is the duo of Mexican producer Gabo Barranco and Johannes Auvinen AKA Tin Man (whose third album I released way back in 2010, jeez has it been that long?), two open-minded technocrats who are unwilling to solidify into a single solid form. On Psychic Geography, they made the decision to do away with kicks or any sort of anchoring 4/4 pulse, preferring to let their synths frolic and explore like two adorable off-leash puppies. Auvinen’s synths are always identifiably downy – even at their iciest, it sounds like he’s recording in a room full of lush blankets – and his melodies remain poetic and pleasantly downcast here. His music often sounds like it was made by a friendless child forced to create their own rich and imaginative world, and whether or not Barranco tends to share a similar headspace, that’s certainly what’s happening here. Quintanar’s art really fits the vibe here, looking like the cover of a ColecoVision game where you find lonely sheep and feed them fruit candy. That’s at least where my psychic geography is at while listening.

Dream Skills & G.W. Sok As We Speak LP (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia)
The few and proud among you who recognize the name “G.W. Sok” right off the bat will surely be excited about this one – a collaboration between The Ex’s long-time vocalist and something called Dream Skills. Turns out Dream Skills is the solo work of one Donald Grant McLean, a British artist with a history of underground music under his belt as well, and he provides the digital turf over which Sok croons, croaks and cranks. Dream Skills’ soundscapes are active and jittery, the lumps of IDM, ambient and experimental-techno smoothed over into something befitting the duo’s elder status. (Party music this ain’t.) McLean’s avant-rock group Action Beat had previously collaborated with Sok, but As We Speak is dislocated and sparse; on certain tracks, the lopsided rhythms of the music seem to have nothing to do with Sok’s vocal delivery, which is interesting, but I prefer when it seems like both gentlemen are actively engaged in a duet, like the weary balladry of “Rufus”. When it comes to pairings of tricky electronic production and legendary post-punk vocalists, it’s near impossible to top Von Südenfed (Mark E. Smith & Mouse On Mars), but Dream Skills & G.W. Sok aren’t competing, not with others nor with themselves. As We Speak is often haunting, sometimes screwy and occasionally profound.

Dry Erase Decay Model LP (Phantom)
Even as the Bay Area continues to be overrun with wretched tech-bros of the grossest order, new weirdo synth/punk/garage bands manage to spring up from that hostile environment, like weeds with mop-tops, horn-rimmed glasses and Rickenbacker bass guitars. Unlike many of these groups, Dry Erase only seem to share one member with the rest of that scene, Rob I. Miller (of Flex TMG and Blues Lawyer), and for whatever reason it took the German label Phantom to bring their first full-length to the masses. Maybe they’re outcasts among the San Fran post-punk outcasts, though their music fits in nicely, a loose and fantastical take on experimental synth-led post-punk. Their songs aren’t aiming for frictionless pop-song memorability – they act more as obscure little one-act plays, in the rich Bay Area tradition of Subterranean Records’ cadre of non-conformist freaks. They could’ve easily covered an Inflatable Boy Clams or Voice Farm track here, that’s for sure! These songs are unhurried, spacious and creepiest when they’re at their most major-key melodic, very much in the Residents school of electro-obscurity, but tethered to laid-back post-punk grooves ala Exek or Patois Counselors at their least guitar-centric. If years from now, the future’s version of a Numero Group or Soul Jazz decides to excavate this ’20s Bay Area underground scene with a definitive compilation, they’ll have to reserve space for “Thought Captive”, the gem of Decay Model. I’m gonna sing the chorus to my boss and see what happens.

Employees Of The Month In Space LP (Tradecraft)
With most records titled In Space, I would assume it’s meant as some sort of cute gag, but this one, coming from the duo of Dan Melchior and Adam Smith (of Columbus Discount recording artists Necropolis and Unholy Two), well… maybe they actually were in space when they recorded it?? These two musicians have clearly professed their love of the rock song from a quick scan of their prior musical resumés, but they explode that notion like a SpaceX rocket here. Melchior runs his guitar through the ugliest fuzz (there seems to be black mold growing on it) and chugs hard, while Smith thrusts his synth through the ’60s, ’70s and today, a choppy time-warp that off-gasses a burnt plastic smell. At only five tracks on a full-length LP, the Employees dig deep into these stanked-out portals, like if the Fuckin’ Flyin’ A-Heads got into transcendental meditation and couldn’t find their way back out. To be honest, Melchior kinda carries this one, what with his merciless guitar and astronautical muttering, but Smith’s synth-work is a nice cherry on top, a friendly reminder that Employees Of The Month is two freaks in agreement, not the work of one lone outsider. In Space displays a raw and unapproachable blues form, in the spirit of Joe Bussard’s collection but just as likely to have frightened him up the stairs and out of his record basement.

The Gents / Klint split 7″ (Goodbye Boozy)
The Goodbye Boozy I know got its kicks releasing one-sided seven-inch records, and now they’ve pressed two different bands, one on each side of the vinyl? This must be what it was like when the first neanderthal discovered fire. Don’t worry though, this pairing of German punk bands will destroy any freshly connected neurons Goodbye Boozy may have gained. The Gents are particularly dirt-brained; they’re behaving like the guys you’d want to avoid at any party and proud of it. Their mid-tempo snot-punk takes issue with coffee in “Coffee” and defecation in “I Can’t Shit”, what would’ve been the perfect party-starter for any time The Dwarves or The Queers came through Hamburg in the mid ’90s. This is the third release for Sven Klint on the Goodbye Boozy label (fifth if you count FLAC-only releases, which, come on, I don’t), and his artificially-sped-up electro egg-punk fits right in. The guitar sounds like it was played as a sample on a Casio, which is kind of a cool move, though the muffled fidelity reduces any power or thrills these songs might possibly have provided – did Will Killingsworth actually master this, and if so, why did he let it be publicly known? I would venture that Klint’s punk rock isn’t about power, nor thrills, so much as the annoying buzz of a gnat in the ear. In that case, it’s a job well done.

Gombeen & Doygen Prada / The Sequel 12″ (Wah Wah Wino)
Glorious return for the duo of Morgan Buckley and James Grünfeld, formally presenting as Gombeen & Doygen. This new single is right in step with their 2021 debut, a playful and stylish take on minimal techno ala Ricardo Villalobos’ Alcachofa. “Prada” skanks along with a bevy of sounds, from mute-picked guitars to swirling dub effects, all in constant restless motion. The secret weapon of course is James Grünfeld’s richly altered vocals, his words rippling with the force of an AutoTuned orchestra, generally unintelligible (not simply because they’re often in German) and almost painfully suave. It’s about ten minutes long, but I’m not sure what compelled them to stop there, as I don’t see any good reason to cut the party so soon. “The Sequel” locates a punchy house groove in line with DJ Sotofett, layered with a mutant New Order arpeggio that has me considering the track’s general Torn Hawk-like qualities, though Grünfeld’s semi-conscious mumbling moves the tune in a totally different direction. It has the sensation of sleeping through a rave, but in a way that wouldn’t raise the concern of your friends. Speaking of sleep, unless you were awake and on the internet at 8:00 AM GMT a few weeks ago, you probably missed out on the immediate sell-out of Prada / The Sequel. Mercifully, more copies have trickled out recently across the usual digital vendors, but who knows for how long? Delay picking up what will surely be one of the year’s finest electronic EPs at your own peril.

Gossip Collar Spinning Silk For Parasites LP (No Norms)
It’s fitting that goth is one of the most enduring underground aesthetics, seeing as it’s based around a fascination with death and the dead (and the undead) and the spooky beauty of it all. You simply can’t kill goth, but I tell you what, I could easily tile the roof of my house with all the goth / death-rock / dark-wave albums that have passed through these pages over the years, from the excellent to the middling. Spinning Silk For Parasites is the newest to haunt my record room, the full-length debut from Boston’s Gossip Collar. Good for them for having some unabashedly morbid fun, complete from the CD version released on their own “Bat Cave Productions” label to the back cover photograph of a The Ring-looking lady wandering through The Blair Witch Project to a song ostensibly invoking the tale of Dorian Gray (“Dorian”). Their music is firmly rock – no dark-Renaissance balladry with strings or ambient-synth atmospherics – and while I appreciate their preference to be a band with amps instead of a scripted drama, I wish the riffs and melodic progressions offered anything more than the most basic School Of Rock-ready pre-sets. Opener “Breakfast (For The Baby)” blatantly cribs The Cure’s “A Forest” melody, and nothing that follows rises to a level that could charitably called inventive, unique or gripping. For better or worse, it’s a by-the-numbers affair in essentially every way, though those numbers continue to satisfy so many fans and artists alike, so what do I know. Maybe after I’m done with my roof I can move on to the patio?

Hollow Eyes So Many Easy Ways To Pay LP (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia / Riot Season)
No matter how obscure an underground musical genre is, sooner or later someone is going to co-opt it and try to extract whatever wealth they can from it. Cool system we’ve got! While I don’t behoove any musician to refuse the money being offered to them, especially these days, I also want my Taco Bell separate from my hardcore, you know? This is part of why I derive pleasure in listening to a band like England’s Hollow Eyes (featuring members of Terminal Cheesecake, BONG and Head Of David), whose blackout-wasted noise-rock has zero capitalist function. They groove on a riff (or more accurately, a note) for as long as they feel like, which is usually kinda long, guitars sandblasting off in scattered directions while the bassist miraculously remains upright and the drummer keeps hammering on, playing like he’s in a band that might actually go somewhere. It has the misanthropy of Iron Monkey, the sourness of Rusted Shut and the primitive psychedelia found within that bizarre Solar Anus double CD that tUMULt released like twenty years ago. That Solar Anus collection was titled Skull Alcoholic, which feels like a similarly fitting moniker for this Hollow Eyes album too. “Speed / Dead Leaf”… what is even happening here, it’s like Upsidedown Cross running through the intestines of a dragon, all diverticulitis-like, yet the beers keep flowing regardless. Sorry Ozempic, there’s a new cause of bowel blockage in town!

Holy Tongue Ambulance 7″ (Trule)
Alongside Bruce’s excellent stamped-label single, is the British electronic vanguard having a moment with the classic seven-inch format? Too early to say? I won’t think too hard about it, as I personally find them appealing, especially when the music is as high-caliber as what we’re getting with Holy Tongue (and that phenomenal Bruce single). The trio of Al Wootton (propulsive techno savant), Valentina Magdaletti (number-one ranked avant-garde percussionist of myriad projects) and bassist Susumu Mukai (of Vanishing Twin) have been making somewhat traditional digital dub for a few years now as Holy Tongue, and while “Ambulance Dub” follows a similar trajectory, it’s a memorable tune nonetheless. Seemingly full-digital from bass to drums and everything in between, it’s a somewhat haunted cut, the sparse atmospherics conjuring a mood akin to Black Rain or even early Burial as the pulse persists. If it’s an ambulance, the passenger is sadly already dead. “The Bigger Tutti” claims the flip, and Magdaletti’s drums are, in a word, sick. She is in full coordination with the techniques of dub rhythms, but also simply beats the hell out of her kit. A stem of her drum tracks alone would be sufficient for my enjoyment (and I’m going to see her live in a couple months, so my wish may be granted), but the intermittent piano line and dubbed-out strings are a pleasant fit, the rare cut that would find both James Brown and Philip Glass unable to find fault, no matter how nitpicky they were feeling.

Homemade Speed Faster Is Better 7″ (Not For The Weak)
Obnoxious teenage energy comes through like an infected pimple on Homemade Speed’s debut EP. This Virginia hardcore band dismisses a formal bio, opting to insult three cities and one philosophy (Virginia Beach, Norfolk, New York and straight-edge) on theirs. Incorrigible! It’s not often I get a new record that immediately calls to mind Tuscon’s Useless Pieces Of Shit, so I’m having quite a bit of immature fun blasting Faster Is Better at inappropriate hours and volumes. It’s like the sonic equivalent of refusing to wash your hands after using the bathroom, in line with other nasty, early flailing hardcore offshoots like Stark Raving Mad, S.N.O.T. and Olho Seco. These songs fly by like the bug-eyed skate-punk on the cover, overly excitable in overall tempo as well as riff changes, performed as if the ADD they’re so clearly suffering from arrived in the form of a skin rash. I appreciate how direct, raw and unaltered it sounds – the vocals, for example, are unintelligible moans and screams, but natural, not delivered in a popular Zouo- or United Mutation-informed monster voice. If used as a soundtrack to a skate video, Faster Is Better would only work for a montage of slams and bails, gnarly full-body concrete contact with bleeding palms brandished alongside menacing smiles. Homemade Speed won’t quit until everyone is knocked over.

Ismatic Guru An Incredible Amount Of Overwhelming Information LP (Swimming Faith)
There has been an incredible amount of overwhelming records by John Toohill (he of Science Man, Alpha Hopper, The Hamiltones, Night Slaves and more, apparently all at the same time), and let’s add Ismatic Guru to that list, his “recording project” with Brandon Schlia. Wouldn’t you know it, they let their love of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart loose in the egg-punk cabinet, and managed to squeeze no fewer than twenty-six(!) songs out of it. These cuts are freaky, funky, loose and unhinged, difficult progressions and tricky riffs played without distortion alongside bass/drum tracks that sound artificially sped-up (in the proud egg-punk tradition). It’s like one of those non-essential (but still cool) no-wave records on Ze (or, say, The Stick Men’s This Is The Master Brew) crammed with more musical ideas than traditionally considered safe or advisable. I think some people get thrilled by this sort of thing, like Melt Banana or John Zorn obsessives – I suspect most ‘normal people’ would find themselves immediately drained – but for me, if I’m able to force myself to concentrate on the musical trash-tornado that is Ismatic Guru, and give in to the album title’s premise, I’ll admit that it ain’t half bad.

King Blood Eye I Aye Ivy LP (Petty Bunco)
King Blood is one of those artists that I never, ever wanted to mellow out or lighten up, yet Eye I Aye Ivy, his fourth full-length and first since 2019, is King Blood’s broadest-sounding release to date, and by my severe deliberation, his finest. If you recall King Blood’s previous material, it came in the form of biker-rock riffs jackhammered in repetition and delivered with a High Rise-esque molten crust, and while the same could be said for a majority of the tracks here, this album feels especially rich and vibrantly exploratory. I suppose that comes down to the riffs themselves – these songs live and die by them – and whereas King Blood heavily leans in the dark-stoner direction of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Rainbow and Electric Wizard, he’s not afraid to wriggle his bare toes in the grass here. Following a suite of gloriously punishing riff-demons, the a-side wraps with the introspective “Count To Nine”, which reimagines that moment where Slash was playing guitar on the edge of the cliff, though this time he slowly sails off the edge. It’s a reasonable prep for “Masques”, the b-side opener, which integrates synth arpeggios and a hazy guitar drift that has me envisioning Klaus Schulze in a black-leather trench coat (which, I’ll be honest, isn’t the first time I’ve had such thoughts). While mostly percussion-less, “Recoil” features some distant crashing of drums, whereas “(House Of) The Arrow” is like Brainticket in a cheap blender. There’s some streetwise Girlschool-style riffing happening too, and as was the case with the prior LP, Hocus Focus, the bass-lines wander away from the guitar riffs on occasion, a more complex yet no-less-satisfying approach. Petty Bunco shelled out for the full-color print job and fancy graphic design on this one, though you could slap an oily rag on the naked vinyl and it would be just as fitting. Is King Blood the Christian Marclay of stoner-rock?

Known For Catching A Stray / Known One LP (no label)
London’s Known For released two Bandcamp EPs in 2024, ending the year by collecting them in the form of one self-released LP. Smart move! I’m a little surprised they didn’t have a suitable label reaching out to get a piece of the action, seeing as their aggro rock n’ roll is easy for a wide range of audiences to enjoy. I say “rock n’ roll” not to be annoying but because their songwriting really spreads wide across the guitar-based terrain, veering from upbeat, anthemic riffs ala Eddy Current to bony-limbed post-punk ala Institute to the energetic party-punk blather of early IDLES. And then there are some good ol’ fashioned hard-edged punk tunes here, Damned Damned Damned-style riffing with all the attitude of a lead singer who just might swipe your drink and guzzle it in one fluid motion. Maybe it’s because they’re another ensemble of lads trying to figure their way through London without winding up broke or worse, but I can also picture them chumming it up with Chubby & The Gang at a pub with ratty old carpet and a bathroom the size of a phone booth – both groups tend to appreciate the foundational tenets of what makes working-class rock music exciting without taking themselves too seriously. At first, I thought the title was actually Catching A Stray Known One, some sort of cool Cockney phrase I didn’t understand, but it’s really not too late for Known For to make that into something. You see that guy fall sideways pissed into the kebab shop last night? He was catching a stray known one, innit!

Kevin Koplar To A Better Dark LP (no label)
File under WTF, which is easily one of my personal favorite files: the self-released debut full-length from singer/songwriter Kevin Koplar, originally of St. Louis and currently residing in Los Angeles. I have no idea how this guy realized Yellow Green Red is a place to send a record for a review, but I’m glad he did, as To A Better Dark has been an enjoyable experience. Standing at five feet tall, Koplar realizes he’s an outsider long-shot for rock stardom, but that isn’t stopping him from chasing his dreams. His music hits a folksy, Starbucks-pop sort of pitch, as if Jack White never started the White Stripes and instead tried out for American Idol and The Voice over and over again, only grabbing a little camera-time when Simon decides to be insulting. Koplar’s croaky falsetto is convincingly passionate, almost Daniel Johnston-esque at times, delivered with solo guitar accompaniment as often as with an array of studio musicians (was that a backing choir I heard on “Love, Lies & Lust”?). There’s the sense that Koplar is powerless to his muse, in a similar way to misunderstood or ignored misfits like Lewis (of L’Amour fame) and especially Tommy Wiseau. Similarly, Koplar also clearly paid for the production of this album with funds unrelated to his chosen artistic practice – according to his website, we missed his sole listed performance at the Viper Room on April 15th, 2023. I can almost guarantee that few of you will have read this review in full, and even fewer still will seek out the music of Kevin Koplar after reading it, and I’m fine with this; besides Daniel (see the sixth track, “Give This Song To Daniel”), it feels like I might be the only person on this planet to have shared this musical moment with Mr. Kevin Koplar, and that’s special.

Motorbike Kick It Over LP (Feel It)
Cincinnati’s Motorbike follow their 2023 self-titled debut with Kick It Over, and if I was tasked with writing a cheesy little one-liner for it, I’d say this time, the training wheels are off!. The debut was cool, if not necessarily the establishing of a distinctive new voice in garage/punk, and Kick It Over feels bigger and bolder in all the right ways. The songwriting is more confident, evident in the slower pacing and richer instrumentation. Sometimes a new punk band presents themselves like a public speaker anxiously stumbling through their speech at double speed, whereas Motorbike deliver their tunes with the calm and steady conviction of Obama (sans drone attacks). I hope I’m not making it sound like a “mature” record, though – Motorbike rock pretty hard here, tracks like “Currency” and “Afraid Of Guns” throbbing with the mighty pulse shared by The Adverts, Eddy Current, Reigning Sound and Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner” if they were loaded up on stem cells like that creepy billionaire trying to reverse his aging. Motorbike’s got full control of these tunes, simplistic riffs dressed up big and bold from the way in which the songs are written and delivered as one hell of a good time. I never thought of Cincinnati as a hard-partying city – to be honest, I never really think of Cincinnati at all – but with bands like Motorbike setting up shop at the cool bars in town, there has to be no way around that now.

Robert Robert The Record LP (Bunkerpop)
Bunkerpop’s sixth release is as tantalizingly cryptic as the first five, another reissue from some forgotten sticky corner of the post-punk sub-underground. Robert was apparently the band that followed ?Fog (whose seven-inch Bunkerpop previously released), and I can understand why the label threw a little money behind this one, replete with an attractive booklet full of color photos and a lengthy, illuminating band interview. Anyone still demanding more Robert content after picking this up is being unreasonable. The music certainly deserves to be given a fresh chance, as this group had a cool thing going on, an artfully bratty spin on post-punk. I’m willing to assume and state plainly that The Fall must’ve been a major influence (and rightfully so), but I’m also hearing a touch of Flipper’s groove-based nihilism, with the boomy production and vaguely menacing presence of Campingsex. “Waste Your Life” adds an extra note to the “Sex Bomb Baby” riff, but instead of ripping into a shirtless acid party, Robert simmers over low heat, big ’80s reverb drums flapping around disinterested guitars and an aggressively spoken vocal performance. Like an uncertain treaty between Crass Records’ sonic anarchy and Onset/Offset’s homespun charm, brought to you by an unclear number of creative housepunks. There’s a great shot in the booklet of their red Victorian-era weatherboard terrace with no fewer than sixteen punks hanging in and around it, looking like a deleted scene from Dogs In Space, the iconic Aussie punk film from 1986, the same year Robert The Record was originally released. What are the odds Michael Hutchence ever crashed on Robert’s couch?

Sa Pa The Fool 12″ (Short Span)
German producer Sa Pa trades in extremely lowercase techno, dance music for white-walled gallery spaces where absolutely no one is dancing, if anyone is even in the room at all. His production teeters on the edge of perception, often little more than a 4/4 thump and some subliminal digital scratching, and while I am the one writing this and find my own description to not be particularly enticing, trust me – it works really well! Opener “Captigon” sets the stage with a barely-there, flickering pulse, a rave of windowsill dust. “So Simple” is ever-so-slightly more lively, the basic nervous system of dub-techno quarantined with fragmentary sonic accompaniment, like sifting through the wreckage of a dance track that was unplugged twenty years ago. “Boredom Memory (Extended Mix)” has a bit more flair; Sa Pa adheres its hushed pulse to the strange discordance of plucked strings(?) and rattled materials, like one of those barely-audible Marginal Consort performances forced to volley with a dying electronic vibration. At thirteen minutes, it’s a slow-release novocaine shot, a zone I keep wanting to re-enter. “Gausian Ecstacy” finishes the EP without any pulse or vibration, focusing instead on distant piano and up-close shocks of digital effects. Paired with the curious terrain of Will Bankhead’s cover photography, The Fool whisks my mind into a low-lit state of inaction. If Sa Pa could bottle this stuff, he could market it as an anti-energy drink, sold in a separate cooler next to the Red Bull and Monster displays.

The Scumbag Scumbag 12″ (Beach Impediment)
Interesting reissue choice here for the ever-reliable Beach Impediment label: Tokyo’s unheralded hardcore-punk act (The) Scumbag, who existed from 1988 through 1989. They didn’t make much of a splash in their day, and listening to this compilation of their studio material now, I can’t imagine a modern-day re-assessment will reveal a missed opportunity for stardom. Scumbag’s poppy, thrashy, un-serious take on hardcore certainly isn’t en vogue in this moment, but “popular trend” isn’t a metric that any true hardcore lifers abide by. I’m reminded of later-period Lip Cream, where it gets a little more melodic and poppy, maybe some RKL in there too, and I dunno, a goofiness that verges on the Anthrax-esque – the set opens with a silly instrumental-thrash pisstake, just because. Judging from the photos of the band, along with their sound, I get the impression that the skater culture of the time resonated with them, back when Thrasher was a legit beacon of underground culture, weed was lumped in with crack and heroin as “dangerous drugs”, and as long as your shorts were baggy and cut way past the knees, it didn’t matter if they were garishly gingham or Dockers khakis (size 42 waist with a braided belt). There are probably a thousand bands like this, all existing for a short blip, all memorialized on the MCR Company label, and all awaiting rediscovery. Is it too early to get construction going on the MCR / H.G. Fact wing of the Punk Rock Museum?

Sunfear All At Once LP (Dark Entries)
Dark Entries’ reissue game is so strong that I had forgotten they also dabble in contemporary artists, which they’re also quite good at. Istanbul’s Eylül Deniz released her debut with Dark Entries back in 2022, and All At Once is the follow-up, serving up exquisite goth hair on the cover and extremely dreary song-fractures on the vinyl. Imagine Grouper stripped down even more than her music already is – her rickety rowboat reduced to a single oar, her forest cabin replaced by a canopy of twigs and branches – and an image of Sunfear’s noise-ambient atmospheres is revealed. “Daycare” is slower than Noothgrush, a post-suicidal sound that drifts like Mammal’s most recent offerings with barely more light filtering through the cracks. It’s kind of a dangerous place to dwell in, but it’s also kind of sumptuous too, the textures redolent of velvet not leather, even at its noisiest (and Sunfear is not afraid to get down in the murk). The watery sounds of “Steps” pulls you deep below, but its adjoining bass-line at least ensures you’re going out in style. It’s not until the final track “Form Changed” that it feels like you’re listening to an actual “song”-song, replete with intermittent guitar strum, timekeeping percussion and melodic vocals, but even then, Sunfear refuses to ensure safe passage, All At Once leaving its mark on its audience like a mystery bruise.

TV Dust Transition LP (Maple Death)
Milan’s TV Dust are a victim of their own hype sticker, which describes the group’s full-length debut as “an incredible collection of no-jazz, breakneck rhythms, mutant-wave, trance-funk, shredded sax jags and furious, yet mysterious assaults”. That sounds pretty bad-ass to me (though I’m not sure the ostensible play on no-wave of “no-jazz” really holds up as a descriptor), and I was eager to give it a spin! Perhaps it’s impossible for any group to live up to such a wide-ranging assortment of exciting hybrid genres, but Transition isn’t really doing much for me. The bass/drums/sax trio suffers from uninspired, stock melodies, played in a frantic (but not too frantic) Y2K post-punk sort of way, sounding like a group whose demo Troubleman Unlimited would’ve received and passed on. It’s not nearly experimental or virtuosic enough to dazzle, and with such typical melodic progressions, I’m surprised they didn’t bother enlisting a singer (or try singing themselves), considering the large amount of empty space in these songs primed and ready for an injection of character. I’m hearing bits and pieces similar to groups as varied as Viagra Boys, Fabulous Diamonds, Tussle, Guru Guru and Naked On The Vague, but guitar-less, vocal-less versions sans captivating hooks or irresistible personality. Probably would be a bad idea to put that on the hype sticker, though.

Upsammy Open Catalyst 12″ (Dekmantel)
Have you ever heard anyone say they were running out of new ambient music to check out? Me neither! Upsammy exfoliated my brain back in 2018 with her dazzling Words R Inert EP, but turned to exploring ambient music’s crowded precincts in recent years, much to my declining interest. Open Catalyst, a new four-track EP for Dekmantel, picks up where her earlier explorations of sparkle-pop drum n’ bass left off, and I’m learning what it feels like to be born again. It’s so good! “Relict” is the sonic equivalent of that first sip of McDonald’s Sprite after a sweltering summer’s day, its effervescence dancing on the tongue inside one’s mind. It’s like the rave-pants-wearing child of Drexciya and Sophie, and they are proud as hell of their offspring. “Telluric” squeaks and snaps in a hyper-speed half-time, the sort of thing that Missy Elliot should be rapping over in 2025, but instead I get to enjoy it all by myself, with or without headphones. The other two cuts come from the same sonic embryo, and the results are just as satisfying, a restorative barrage of tiny techno bubbles. This music is probably already being rolled out as a fancy new spa treatment in South Korea or Switzerland, but you can stay ahead of the trends and pick up a copy of Open Catalyst this very minute, for home or travel.

Why Bother? You Are A Part Of The Experiment 7″ (Feel It)
The why might remain unclear, but Feel It has bothered quite a bit with this Iowan synth-punk group, releasing eight, count ’em, eight Why Bother? full-lengths since 2021. They’re fixing to become the Zoogz Rift of Feel It Records with these kinds of numbers! With this already expansive discography, I’ll admit to having always enjoyed this group but never really finding the appropriate time (or, I suppose, inclination) to stick with any one of those particular albums. You can add this new seven-inch EP to their stack, and I don’t know if this abbreviated (and punkest of all) format is doing it, or if the tunes are just particularly enthralling, but I feel like I need to pick out at least one of those earlier Why Bother? albums and get re-acquainted, because this EP rules! Opening with a sample of propagandized dum-dums, “Listen” tackles the unexpected theme of modern food frustration in the form of a fuzzed-out poppy punk zinger, ripped from the early pages of Killed By Death and just as memorably gristly. “Inside The Medium” sequesters an old-timey blues riff inside a psychedelic Twilight Zone haze, very Dan Melchior-esque and a real delight. I love that they go even further out-there on the second side; “Speck’s Lament” offers a hesher-metal intro that wanders an abandoned cul-de-sac before briefly peeping in Robert Smith’s window, and “The Older Witness” wraps things with an early-industrial discharge not unlike Nocturnal Emissions or Robert Turman. Why Bother? don’t care if they blow it all to hell, they already gave up sugar and folic acid on the first track and concluded the EP with America’s newest pastime: picking through the wreckage.

Wild City Alchemist Junkyard LP (no label)
Melbourne’s Wild City are hoping to impress with their brash rock n’ roll moves, and I for one am buying it. For example, they sent me their LP in a soft envelope all the way from Australia, bent-up on arrival. Their music hearkens to a time when records were played hard, left sleeveless on the shag carpet, ashed on and generally treated with basic disregard, so why capitulate to the modern trends of treating them like collector’s items? I had no trouble spinning Alchemist Junkyard (kick-ass title!), which shimmies and slams in that ’80s underground hard-rock sweet spot, somewhere between The Saints, Mudhoney, Crime & The City Solution and maybe a lil Fat White Family for good measure. They aim high with their songs, carried not by unique hooks so much as timeless rocker chutzpah, sunglasses-indoors type riffs/grooves that welcome bad news and laugh at the devil himself. I don’t know much else about the band, like if they have any toxic interpersonal relationships, or a history with the law, but I can only hope that if their reputation doesn’t precede them, it’s because they’re still in the process of crafting one. If it turns out they’re just friendly, good-natured geeks dabbling in homemade garage-rock pyrotechnics, I will take the laptop I wrote this on and light it on fire.

Paul Arambula Still’s Keep LP (Gilgongo)
In Gilgongo’s art-damaged universe, Paul Arambula is its lonely yet contented troubadour. He’s played in raucous post-punk bands like Vegetable and Soft Shoulder (and probably still does), but cutting out on his own, his songs are lightly baked and charming, propelled by lush chords, sputtering drum machines and classic melodic interplay. You could take the form all the way back to Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, but I’m most significantly picking up the echoes of Blanche Blanche Blanche’s bedroom pop, the inscrutable contemporary art-rock of guys like David West and Thomas Bush, and the junk-store nostalgia of pre-MAGA Ariel Pink. Arambula doesn’t have a singer’s voice, but that hasn’t stopped lesser men; I’m reminded here of Doc Dart’s Patricia at times, in the way that Arambula strains through his nose over college-rock jangle and animated bass-lines. Still’s Keep could be reasonably filed within those (micro-)scenes, but it’s not a cookie-cutter affair – however you care to categorize the brooding, bass-driven bop of “Had They Heard”, it’s the only song I can think of that sounds like Death In June covering Red Hot Chili Peppers. If no one else is exploring these unlikely sonic corridors, you can rest assured that Paul Arambula is having a ball out there on his own.

Michael Beach The Sea / De Facto Blues (Demo) 7″ (25 Diamonds)
Who better to tell us about the sea than a man named Michael Beach? This single was released in support of his 2024 tour with Tropical Fuck Storm, and if he managed to bring along the lineup that performed “The Sea” – Mick Turner on guitar, Joe Talia on drums, Maddy Macfarlane on sax and Beach himself on piano and vocals – I’ll be extra steamed that I missed the Philly date. What a beautiful song “The Sea” is – its loose and lithe form intertwines the styles of Steve Reich, Kurt Vile, The Necks and Bob Dylan like braids on a hippie’s noggin. It’s engrossing and majestic in a manner befitting its titular subject, sounding gorgeous at low volume and downright transcendent blasted on ten. “De Facto Blues (Demo)” also lives us to its title, just Beach and his acoustic guitar in front of two microphones at best, working out a rocking strummer that could easily be transformed into a rock explosion that might finally grow some hair on The War On Drugs’ chests. Being familiar with Beach’s work, I could also see him slowing it down to half-time, a simmering torch song, or ripping it even faster ala The Sonics – Beach has performed at Gonerfest, after all. As for me, I’m going to slowly dip myself into “The Sea” one more time before bed…

Blacksea Não Maya Despertar LP (Principe)
If there’s a lousy record on Principe, I’ve yet to encounter it – it’s like Lisbon’s dance-oriented answer to Dischord, a locals-only labor-of-love imprint that acts as both a showcase and farm system for local talent worthy of worldwide exposure (though to be fair, we all have at least one or two Dischord records we absolutely hate, which is also part of the fun). Blacksea Não Maya was the trio of DJ Kolt, DJ Noronha and DJ Perigoso (DJ Kolt is now in full control), and Despertar arrives hot on the heels of his excellent Verdadeiro (also on Principe). Under the Blacksea Não Maya moniker, DJ Kolt blends strange samples and textures and smacks the resulting mixture into party-friendly forms. There’s a fearlessness at play here that comes with DJ Kolt’s relatively young age, working to impress both his peers as well as any Lisbon crowd that wants to grind up on each other in less-than-sober atmospheres. I saw Aaron Dilloway posting excitedly about picking up Despertar on social media, if that’s any indication as to the vibrant and bizarre sounds that Blacksea Não Maya are working with. Honestly, it’s not a total stretch to say that opener “Reborda” could’ve appeared on that great Aaron Dilloway / Lucrecia Dalt collab LP, but it could’ve just as easily emanated from the cracked window of a Bristol experimental dubstep party, too. The word “polyrhythms” can conjure images of bespectacled professors shuffling through sheet music, but Blacksea Não Maya’s Principe logic ensures that the paths of avant creativity and sweaty club beats can (and should) comfortably overlap.

Blawan BouQ 12″ (XL Recordings)
The master of madcap forward-minded techno is at it again with this new four-song EP, continuing the livestock design-theme of 2023’s Dismantled Into Juice. You’d think the ability to consistently push sound design forward without obliterating it into failed-experimental territory would be a fleeting one, and yet Blawan continues a years-long hot streak here. As XL singles sometimes cross over into the mainstream (his labelmates include Thom Yorke and the one and only Adele, after all), Blawan somehow manages to finagle his jarringly aggressive textures into the good graces of big-tent crowds. The pop vocals help, though I have no idea what is actually happening with the voice on the hair-raising “Fire” – could be (probably is?) some sort of AI-generated diva-bot, but whatever process he subjected it to here comes across like Rihanna if she was the animatronic Lou Reed in his “No Money Down” video. “Done Eclipse” twitches and shudders like my favorite Powell tracks, the spotlight snaked by yet another voice subjected to ghastly digital degradation, a trick that Blawan continues to sharpen. I know Blawan is out there influencing new (and old) generations of boundary-pushing techno producers, and yet his musical personality is so unique that no one has successfully cloned it yet. In that way, I’d place him in league with Burial, though in the case of Blawan, his best work is continually the most recent thing he’s done.

Bruce The Price / Mimicry 7″ (Poorly Knit)
Bruce first entered the electronic underground as a Hessle Audio-approved post-dubstep bass linguist. He rode that all the way to a slightly underwhelming full-length (as much of the Hessle Audio crowd is wont to do), then switched gears in 2023 for the digital/cassette release of Not Ready For Love, his first production based around his own pop-minded vocals. As any new piece of music, particularly electronic music, struggles harder for the masses to notice, it doesn’t seem like much of anyone gave it a proper listen – I’ll cop to listening a couple times on my laptop before deciding it wasn’t for me – and now he’s making another turn with this stamped seven-inch single. I hate to break it to him that seven-inches aren’t exactly the path to success in 2025 (present company excluded – we still love these things), but if there’s any semblance of a meritocracy, these tunes should shoot him back into the underground spotlight. “The Price” is an oddly jovial bop, full of on-the-fly melodic leads, laser blasts, angry voices in the ether, just a raucous circus of a lopping techno track that doesn’t sound like anything else. The melody is nightmarish enough that I can picture Coil grinning along wherever their spirits currently reside. “Mimicry” is equally strange, full of AutoTuned yawns that eventually give way to a spacious, Hessle Audio-friendly soundscape, futuristic but for an unforeseen future. Recommended!

CPC Gangbangs Roadhouse 7″ (Slovenly)
I thought Montreal’s CPC Gangbangs had banged their last gang years ago, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s that no band will ever actually stay dead. In this case, it’s fine by me, as Montreal’s scene seems so friendly and cooperative and thriving, what with all those friendly Celluloid Lunch folks, that they could use the bad stinking attitude of these old guys ruining what was an otherwise pleasant evening every once in a while. It’ll keep ’em humble! “Rock’n’Roll Enemy No.1” has a title befitting a classic Killed By Death cut and it sounds like one too, trashy punk rock in league with the modern sounds of Sick Thoughts and the classic sounds of Viletones. The title track goes further back in time, a Stones-y blues jamboree that refuses to honor your sober wishes, followed by another up-tempo garage-punk stomper, “Going Back To Philly”, their rendition of a Bobby James original. If any of you have personal insight and are thinking about sending me a message to confirm that CPC Gangbangs are actually nice folks and friendly with everyone else in Montreal, let me ask you – do you get off on ruining the rock n’ roll fantasies of a kindly old man? Is that how you get your jollies?

De Nooit Moede RIP 7″ (Kontakt Group)
I’ve said it before, but why is it so much better when techno peeps pick up guitars than when rockers start making electronic dance music? Maybe it’s because I listen to so much rock music made by rockers, but the bands formed by otherwise electronic artists often feel off in a delightful way… see: Moin, Persher, Milan W., Mount Kimbie, etc. I’m offering a lot of conjecture here, particularly under the guise of a review of De Nooit Moede, a Brussels-based sextet who managed to get out these last four tracks before calling it quits. They feature Victor De Roo in their ranks, an inspired (and Stroom-related) synth/ambient artist. The music of De Nooit Moede invents a history where the cold-hearted new-wave of Microdisney, Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes collides head-on into the moodier end of the ’90s alt-rock explosion (somewhere in the midst of Belly, Sponge and Medicine). Bass-lines are prominently (Peter) Hook-y over artificial drums, with a host of hushed and/or spectral vocals and a guitarist that prefers picking single strings over strumming. One can’t deny the primacy of Sonic Youth on this sort of simmering, divergent, post-punk-revenant approach, but De Nooit Moede sound European even setting aside the Dutch vocals (which are front and center), as though they’re freezing through colder, damper winters in their threadbare cardigans and vintage army trenchcoats. They somehow fit like thirteen(!) minutes of music on this seven-inch record, yet the fidelity is as clear as one’s reflection in a puddle amidst the cobblestones of a lonely town square.

Doc Sleep & Delta Rain Dance Beats Unlimited 2 7″ (Hypno Discs)
As part of the more under-the-radar, trend-agnostic gathering of German techno heads that orbits the Tax Free and Hypno Discs labels and the like, Delta Rain Dance maintains a relatively low profile. This is funny, since Delta Rain Dance certainly has the highest profile among his many other aliases like Eye Soul8r and DJ 1999, info that I am able to gather solely through the generosity of intrepid Discogs contributors. He also tends to release seven-inch singles, one of the more cost-prohibitive ways of ensuring your music is ignored by the masses, but that just means a new single like Beats Unlimited 2 is a special treat for folks like you and me. Alongside Doc Sleep, this new seven-inch follows that same inconspicuous trajectory, though that’s not to say the tunes are difficult, demanding listens. Opener “Virta Chords” is smoothly sculpted dub-techno with lively drum programming and soothing chords, not unlike something off Hessle Audio’s shelf in the mid 2010s. “Speed Dub” lives up to its title, a 33-at-45 sprint that recalls Sasu Ripatti’s Ripatti EPs, glistening like two freshly-washed passenger trains whizzing past each other. Closing b-side cut “Transition Env” parks us in a lush and vibrant ecosystem, insects and birds calling to each other just past the waterfall of synths, only lacking Gas’s 4/4 heartbeat to pass as, uh, Gas. I can only hope the unlimited nature of their beats is more than just a snappy title.

Evicshen Cistern Screw / 2Raw 10″ (Ballast)
Evicshen is one of the pivotal fixtures of contemporary American noise, though that doesn’t seem to be reflected by her fairly sparse discography. I suppose that when so much of one’s art is based in the physical space of live performance, recorded documentation can fall back as a secondary concern. I’m such a fan of her inventive and confrontational style, where unexpected aspects of her body are weaponized, from acrylic fingernail styluses to contact-mic’d combs in her tangled hair to, well, a big-ole’ bullwhip that could probably decapitate your typically emaciated noise fan. I’m so much a fan (and for the record, I’m working on putting on a little muscle) that I shelled out for this new and limited lathe-cut ten-inch record, knowing full well the pleasure it would bring me is as much as an objet d’art than something to gather around with friends and listen to. It’s a cool entry in the traditional sense of handcrafted, low-edition noise releases, as the b-side features a literally chopped-up n’ re-glued flexi disc affixed to it, a form of cruel and unusual punishment for any innocent stylus. The Haters would be proud. The a-side features some traditionally playable recordings, opening with a surprisingly sparse series of horns(?) before entering a hissing tornado of greyscale noise and ending on a segment of serrated, glitching loops. On a purely sonic level, no new noise revelation is revealed through this recording, but Evicshen’s deal is far more than pure sound alone – the Evicshen experience is more about the body’s control (or lack thereof) over it. It’s nice to commemorate that with a cool record once in a while.

Fish Narc Frog Song LP (K)
The Pac Northwest-based Fish Narc blew up as a Soundcloud beatmaker (gaining fame for his work with Lil Peep), but he’s a punk rocker at heart who likes Germs and reps Vomir while also playing unabashedly emo sing-along pop-punk. And while the instrumentation can vary greatly, from Ableton presets to beat-up guitar amps in a garage, the signature of Fish Narc’s songwriting – uber-catchy melodies with soft, wounded vocals, the perpetual tenets of emo – remains indelible. For my money, it’s hard to top 2021’s Wildfire, modern poppy punk that should’ve made Fall Out Boy immediately seppuku themselves, but Frog Song is full of pillowy, heart-on-sleeve pop on par with the best that Jade Tree and Doghouse had to offer in the late ’90s. “My Ceiling” comes first and it’s the album’s catchiest cut, a major-key sing-along powerhouse that should be blasting on repeat on MTV2 in every dorm if MTV2 (or TVs in dorm rooms) still existed. Most of Frog Song centers acoustic guitars in all their layered, melancholic beauty, giving things a Pedro The Lion or, stick with me, Dashboard Confessional feel that scratches those itches of which I feel no guilt in admitting. A little alt-shoegaze in there too, as is the way of the times – “Old Band” could be a Narrow Head tune, though the focus is on the melodic invention and songwriting, not the flawless chain of arena-ready effects pedals. It’s on K Records after all, where imaginative pop music reflexively dismissed by the punk rock cognoscenti has flourished for decades.

France Destino Scifosi LP (Standard In-Fi / L’Amour Aux 1000 Parfums)
Wimps and poseurs, leave the hall – France is back! The secretly-legendary trio (from the French city of Valence) is celebrating their twentieth year of existence of doing basically the same thing they’ve always done, which is hypnotic, minimalist drone-rock care of bass, drums and hurdy-gurdy, directly descended from the Tony Conrad with Faust school. France go deep, then deeper, then beyond whatever you thought was deepest, one-note bass-guitar and kick / floor tom / snare drum firmly locked in place as the hurdy-gurdy blasts straight through the clouds and into the heavens, the opposite of doom-spiraling. Like most (all?) of their releases, Destino Scifosi is recorded live, these two side-long pieces coming from an outdoor amphitheater performance in France back in 2022. It might as well be from 1822, or 2022 BC, so eternal and Lindy is their primordial sound. For a live recording, the mix is loud and robust, and seeing as the essence of their communal presentation wouldn’t make sense as a multi-take studio project, their commitment to live recordings ensures we are as close to their divine source as a vinyl record makes possible. There’s some sort of explosion that pops off halfway through the a-side, which I can only assume is the sound of an audience member’s head spontaneously exploding. As it comes to a close, the remaining members of the crowd hoot and holler as things wind down, because how can you not? Music this spiritually enriching demands all the “woo!”s you can muster in return.

Great Area Light Decline 12″ (Relaxin)
Lolina generally uses her Relaxin imprint to release her own projects, so when she brings someone else into that inner circle, I take notice. She released the aggressively weird / gloriously performative Rap Star album by New York last year, and has released a number of things from London’s Great Area, including this new one-sided twelve-inch. I’m always ready to be pranked by her – this is what it must feel like to get lunch with Nathan Fielder – but Great Area are, at least from what I can surmise, a pretty normal-ish electronic indie group. Featuring pre-set drum programming, live guitar/bass/keys and doleful British vocals, Great Area offer a laptop-driven corollary to Alison Statton’s time spent with both Young Marble Giants and Weekend, Virginia Astley, Broadcast’s gloomier moments and the modern monarch of sedated post-punk that de-centers the guitar, Carla dal Forno. At thrice the speed, “100% Enthusiastic” might sound like Madness, but its lite-reggae bounce is brought to a crawl with plenty of space between notes and hits. In vibe and presentation, Light Decline is not unlike another London-based group who favor all-lowercase fonts and an art-wavey social distance, Bar Italia (often stylized as bar italia), and I have to wonder what happens when they encounter each other at a pub. Let’s hope they’re chums, as a battle of aloofness between the two could be powerful enough to crack drywall.

Guiding Light Guiding Light 12″ (Tall Texan)
Couldn’t be happier that Guiding Light’s fantastic debut cassette from Down South Tapes last year is now preserved on solid black vinyl for generations to come care of Tall Texan. These five songs were, and remain, a frenzied jangle-punk revelation. Sometimes guys even older than me (if you can believe it) wax poetic about the glory days of Meat Puppets and Minutemen, and then you pull out the records to verify and they don’t fit your modern-grown tastes – Guiding Light’s five songs here are the perfect solution to those moments of generational disconnect. The no-fuzz-pedals guitar jangles with the freedom of those aforementioned bands (quite nearly entering early Red Hot Chili Peppers territory on “Lost In Voices”, if we want to be real), played unreasonably fast ala CCTV and dripping with those staunch post-punk qualities shared by the Sara Goes Pop double EP and The Embarrassment’s first couple of records. Or how about a desert-fried combination of Saccharine Trust and Nixe? I’m throwing out all sorts of names, which often happens when I get this excited about a new band who pulls so many great and varied sounds together for something so unexpected and exciting. Recommended!

Hardware Untitled LP, 1979 LP (Dirty Knobby)
If you’re running out of ways to shame that one guy at the record shop who’s obsessed with The Fall, I have an easy suggestion – casually mock him for not knowing that Mark E. Smith once played bass in a band called Hardware! Seattle’s Dirty Knobby crossed all of North America as well as the Atlantic for this group’s well-designed LP collection, clearly a sign that the compulsive desire to reissue unheralded/unknown UK DIY is a globe-spanning sickness. Untitled LP, 1979 collects the Cheltenham group’s two 1979 EPs alongside two previously-unreleased tracks, and what stands out to me most is how decidedly American this British group sounds. Rather than strum n’ pout like Joy Division or Wire or even Desperate Bicycles, Hardware found a way to finagle a proper pop-rock musicianship into the nascent post-punk forum. I’m hearing a lot of Talking Heads and Television, thanks in large part to vocalist John Danylyszyn’s unwieldy squawk, a voice I assume sounded like at least half of the dudes in The Mudd Club on any given evening in the year of this recording. Interesting! And yes, that’s the legendary MES on bass on a few of these songs, who amazingly must’ve been told what to do by the other band members at some point. Can we follow this with a reissue of some old practice tapes? If footage of Mark E. Smith following someone else’s instructions exists, we deserve to experience it.

Impotentie Zonder Titel Deze Keer LP (Roachleg)
A pal of mine recently said “I never need to hear another band ‘for fans of Camera Silens’ for the rest of my life”, and if you’re as cantankerous of an old punk as he, perhaps this new LP from Montréal’s Impotentie might not be for you. I’ll cop to this increasingly ubiquitous sound not being my top-favorite either, one where plodding mid-tempo rhythms and brittle guitar melodies meet gruff vocals, a dour and European-sounding strain of Oi-inspired anti-fascist punk rock that toes the line between Blitz’s Voice Of A Generation and, uhh, Blitz’s Second Empire Justice. To Impotentie’s credit, they manage to inject some energy into their street-punk cadence, always sure to wedge a fist-pumping, upbeat sing-along chorus where they can, even if my non-existent Dutch keeps me from properly mouthing the words to “Wijken” and “Sloop De Grens”. I can raise my pint glass in solidarity, at least! It surely helps my experience to know that the members of Impotentie play(ed) in hardcore bands as diverse as Justice, Secretors and S.H.I.T., so even if the premise of a lot of street-punk is more or less “hardcore-punk but make it long and boring”, the members of Impotentie are too amped up and knowledgeable to succumb to any such temptation completely. Still not my favorite sound from these guys or otherwise (gimme a new Secretors record ASAP, please!), but the legions of Rixe and Home Front fans will surely disagree.

Kop-Z A Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamic System 12″ (Second Born)
Industrial-techno is given a futuristic mechanical upgrade here on Kop-Z’s debut vinyl EP. He’s been a lively party-starter in his local Salford-Manchester stomping grounds for a few years now, but A Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamic System takes his state-of-the-art ballistics worldwide. He tends to favor a combination of high-speed processes alongside eerie tone-float, simultaneously pummeling and soothing the listener in a manner I find deeply enriching; the resulting sensation is like sparring in a Muay Thai gym while slathered in Icy Hot. Both “Ape-Essence” and “Revision” are shining examples, the propulsive machinery I’d associate with Carrier, T++ or Nkisi delivered with a post-jungle, post-industrial mindset. It’s like twice the speed of hardcore gabber, yet you can somehow groove to it (or, if conditions are right, mosh to it). “Remote Actions On A Non-Linear Path” shifts the atmosphere to a ghostly tube station, invoking the grit of classic Huren, whereas closer “Eat Go Shop” refracts a jungle break through enough hacker VPNs to fully obscure its origins. Kop-Z’s music feels very much in the spirit of Sandwell District, though not as beholden to its rhythmic framework. The aggressive, sinister nature of this music is designed to hurt you, and that’s a large part of the appeal.

Suzanne Kraft What You Do To Me 7″ (Soft Rock For Hard Times)
The Universal Cave DJ crew / record-label is always buzzing with something new, often from extensive crate-digs or the furthest reaches of a file-sharing K-hole. Their Soft Rock For Hard Times compilations are already legendary – the bar by which all other private-press soft-rock excavations should be measured – and now they’re cutting wax of their own with a new series of seven-inch singles highlighting some of those signature cuts. This is the first of the series, a faithful adaptation of Sugarcane’s dark-soul rarity, “What You Do To Me”, as performed by digi-ambient new-age stepper Suzanne Kraft. Rather than reinterpret the buttery keys and single-teardrop vocals of the original, Kraft shines up a strikingly true-to-form rendition, no detail left behind. It’s like the original’s dirty antique mirror is given a fresh, professional buffing, right down to the dead-on synth solo, performed here by producer Jordan Czamanski on appropriately vintage gear. Incredible earworm of a song… there’s no getting that melody out of your head once it’s in there! Secret Circuit dubs it out on the flip with supple bass, ample space and, hmm, rhythmic grace? I had to finish the rhyme. Most intriguingly, the record comes with a postcard listing all eight prior Soft Rock For Hard Times mixes and a (what appears to be very real) submission request for cover versions of these songs for possible future release. Who wants to work on a rendition of Uncle Rainbow’s “Kingdom Come” with me? We could hit it big!

Willie Lane Bobcat Turnaround LP (Cord-Art)
Exclusively fond memories of seeing Willie Lane around town back when Philly’s underground guitar/folk/freak scene was peaking in the late ’00s: Meg Baird and Mary Lattimore still lived here, Jack Rose wandered among us mortals, Kurt Vile was dubbing CD-rs in between forklift shifts, Watery Love were dominating every fifty-cap room in the city, and Willie was hanging around, the first dude in that crew that I can recall as having a serious girlfriend, at least from my particular vantage point. It’s been a while since he trucked up north, but his infrequent solo albums continue to receive a warm welcome in Philadelphia and worldwide, Bobcat Turnaround being no exception. What’s new this time around is that Lane has decided to unzip his lips and sing over his relaxed-fit folk-rock, backed by Rob Thomas (no not that Rob Thomas – this one’s from Sunburned Hand Of The Man) on bass and Ryan Jewell on drums. Neither player invades Lane’s space, the perfect approach to supplement his inspired country-blues licks. Steve Gunn is an obvious comparison, another skilled underground guitar slinger whose Grateful Dead obsession results in tunes both traditional and fresh, but Lane’s music consistently takes the long way home, a touch of Agitation Free’s precise mellowness and Frigate’s blissful narcolepsy alongside his rootsy fingerpicking and unobtrusive singing voice. A wise ketchup once said that good things come to those who wait, which continues to be the case for the music of Willie Lane, shared at the artist’s leisure not the music industry’s demanding impatience. Priced at barely over twenty bucks, it seems Cord-Art is still operating on 2008’s pricing models, so don’t delay!

The Lights Beautiful Bird LP (Wäntage USA / The Swingline)
As I sit here trying to understand Wäntage’s rationale for pressing up an old unheralded album such as this, the answer becomes quite clear: it’s just really good music! I can’t imagine there’s any more intricate reasoning – it certainly can’t be about turning a profit – but as I sit here spinning The Lights’ 2003 full-length debut (originally issued on compact disc by Bop Tart Records), I’m so glad they got it out there for another go-around. This Seattle trio played stripped-down yet quirky rock, kind of right there in the immediate post-White Stripes explosion, but I’m also reminded of MOTO’s goofy garage genius and The Starlite Desperation’s sassy infiltration of underground punk. It’s anything but straight-ahead Ramones-derived pounders – The Lights allow each other plenty of space, with the guitar, drums or bass equally at risk of simply cutting out to let the others have at it. A song like “Victims Of The Pleasures Of The Sense Of Hearing” would’ve been an indie hit had Spoon or Pavement written it, a cool (but not too cool) pop jangle broken down into pieces small enough to fit in the backseat of a sedan, but instead it’s a secret nugget awaiting the few who come to learn what The Lights were all about. (Final note: I’ve long since ceased to be any sort of colored vinyl lover but I have to say, the “bird-shit splatter” that they put together here couldn’t be better.)

The Massacred Nightmare Agitators LP (Active-8)
There’s meat-and-potatoes hardcore, and then there’s Nightmare Agitators by The Massacred, which is akin to a container truck unloading pallets of frozen beef and industrial-canned mashed potatoes directly onto your skull. This Boston group is comprised of lifer punks (with a resume to include stints in Bloodkrow Butcher, Scapegoat, Koward, 2×4, etc.) and rather than settle into routine or the mundane pleasure of going through the hardcore motions, Nightmare Agitators levels all buildings within a healthy radius. Produced by Chris Corry, the overall sound here is burly and explosive, from the extra-thick guitars to the front-and-center drums, replete with a deeper snare sound than most other punk bands’ floor toms. These songs aren’t overtly American-sounding, perhaps looking more towards The Varukers, early GBH and Discharge (especially in the vocals), the Ultra Violent seven-inch and Anti-Cimex’s first two EPs for inspiration, but they never fall into tribute territory. The power behind these songs (as opposed to the actual songs themselves) reminds me of first hearing Talk Is Poison in the late ’90s, back when I still had a wig that could get blown back by the sheer ferocity of modern, expertly-produced violent hardcore music. My only question (it’s really more of a comment) is that it would’ve made more sense to switch the band name and album titles – this record sounds like music made by fearsome subversives, not the already-slain.

Dan Melchior Hill Country Piano LP (Penultimate Press)
To my knowledge, Dan Melchior has never made a piano record before, not even once in his impressively vast discography across decades and various solo and group endeavors. Establishing Hill Country Piano as his first then, what I find most striking is how, even through this unfamiliar configuration, it still sounds like Dan Melchior. That’s kind of what all artists want to achieve, right? To appear as themselves and only themselves regardless of the medium, so kudos to Melchior for casually achieving it. It’s in the weird melodic twists, the way the last note rolls down a cliff or turns sour, that vague inebriation pretending to be sober, that I believe defines his melody sensibility here and elsewhere. I happen to like it a lot in this formulation, too – he loops simplistic melodies on the piano with banjo, domestic percussion and various other digital frequencies, almost like Blues Control sans tape noise (and I miss Blues Control now more than ever). These four, leisurely tracks are ruminative in their own way, and certainly in line with the adventurous avant sounds I’d associate with the Penultimate Press label. Can we get a Dan Melchior acid-house record next? Is that too much to ask?

Mob 47 Tills Du Dör LP (D-Takt & Råpunk / Beach Impediment)
Now that Gauze have called it quits (a reality I’m still coming to terms with), are Mob 47 the eldest truest hardcore band on the planet? They got started in the earliest of the ’80s, and while they spent a couple decades more or less inactive (I believe all Swedes are provided with generous paid vacation time), they’ve been an active force for most of this century. After all these years, one could expect Mob 47’s sound to evolve, or even (gulp) mature, and if it did, we as a sympathetic audience would surely understand. Amazingly, Mob 47 have shown zero interest in softening their edges or reducing their speeds by even the slightest of increments, instead playing the same ripping, quick-riff Swedish “mangel” hardcore style they more or less helped create. The clarity of a digital recording is the only clue that these songs were recorded after cell phones were invented – they don’t even look that old in the (admittedly high-contrast) live shots on the back! Still, if you told me Tills Du Dör was written in 1984 in a squat after gigging with Indigesti and Headcleaners, I wouldn’t doubt you – even the large spike-haired skull on the insert could’ve been drawn in the Reagan era and preserved until now. It’s sad that so many of hardcore’s great characters have died at this point, and while their legacies have the luxury of being frozen in time, I’m interested in seeing what becomes of those who continue to live, and live in communion with an actual hardcore ethos, not just some embarrassing nostalgic retail version. Why is it apparently so hard to stay true, when Mob 47 makes it look so easy?

Pissgrave Malignant Worthlessness LP (Profound Lore)
Philly’s exquisite death-metal merchants return with their third (and possibly final?) full-length, Malignant Worthlessness. Props to them for continuing to release albums with cover images too disturbingly grisly to be shared on social media – kvlt metalheads take note, you don’t have to flirt with bigoted views and imagery to maintain an unmarketable existence on the explicit fringe of society! Pissgrave are highly regarded in snobbish death-metal circles, and rightfully so, as they continue to demonstrate a slavish attention to detail as well as a commitment to total and utter filth. One might think those two strategies would clash, but death-metal is one of those rare forms of art where precision and savagery go hand in hand, alongside competitive eating and knife throwing. These songs are relentless, full-throttle blasts, double bass-drum rolling on a constant boil (even through the occasional breakdowns), guitars speed-picked to the point of inevitable Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Tim Mellon’s incomprehensibly guttural vocals scaring children and the elderly. I’m old enough to remember when accusations of studio-altered vocals haunted extreme metal’s headlining acts, but here in 2025 digitally-altered vocals are par for the course of anything from dance-pop to porno-grind. Unlike the comical pig-squeals of Gutalax, Mellon’s vocals aren’t amusing, nor are they distanced from the brutal immediacy of the music. Rather, they conjure the cover image’s wretched, maggot-riddled pustulence come to life, the anguish of a corpse caught in a storm drain conjured in voice and song. There’s a lot of Liquid Death-caliber death-metal out there these days; Pissgrave are a bottle of virulent pus by comparison. Consume at your own risk!

Seudo Youth Nobody Gets Down Like… LP (Going Underground)
As hardcore-punk runs out of classic elements that haven’t already been stolen a thousand times over, LA’s Seudo Youth crept up and lifted the guitar sound from Zero Boys’ classic Vicious Circle album when no one was looking. Someone had to eventually, and I’m glad it was this new group, featuring members of G.U.N.N. and People’s Temple (the latter of which being responsible for one of the rippingest modern hardcore seven-inches of the last decade). I hope People’s Temple are still an active concern (though I fear they aren’t), but thankfully Seudo Youth gives me plenty to chew on with Nobody Gets Down Like…. That guitar sound deserves a proper rhythm section, and thankfully the bassist and drummer (especially the drummer) are up to the task, absolutely shredding through these frantic and tumultuous hardcore-punk tunes with exquisite detail, a performance on par with the generally peerless Vicious Circle. Seudo Youth exist in a hardcore landscape dominated by the metallic beatdown variety, and while the band might appear in tagger-font show flyers (and the singer wore a track jacket over a Youth Of Today shirt in some live pics), this record rips with unabashed first-wave velocity (ie. the first Jerry’s Kids and Suicidal Tendencies albums), only teasing a mosh-em-up moment on the tenth track, “Punishers”, which takes ignorant dudes to task. I might not be able to get down like Seudo Youth, but I can certainly get down with them.

Top Sinnaz Sink Water & Wonder Bread 12″ (Almost Ready)
How about some Jadakiss-cosigned New York metro-area rap from… Almost Ready Records?? Throw whatever rulebook you thought existed out the window – anything goes in 2025, all formal avenues of music distribution are broken and annoying, and garage-punk labels are out here releasing top-shelf hip-hop in plain black DJ sleeves. Sink Water & Wonder Bread looks like a record that would be sold from behind the counter at a center-city stereo shop, and while hip-hop dreams are as easily faded as any other artistic aspirations, Top Sinnaz are a wonderful new mystery to me. With Jadakiss offering his seal of approval between songs (complete with his signature chirpy “ha-haa!”), the East Orange, NJ duo flip funk/soul loops into smooth yet street-conditioned beats, very much in line with the classic late ’90s New York school. The title track pairs a powerful Clipse-like flow with a silky chorus I’d expect to hear on a Do Or Die album. The wordplay is colorful and passionate, weaving tails of slum-life and the hopes of leaving it behind without pulling any punches, right down to the titles: “Peasants”, “Poverty” and the memorable title-track. It appears these songs hit Spotify back in 2023 (with nothing since…?), so while this may be the first and final testament of Top Sinnaz, Almost Ready did us all a solid by preserving these cuts in a non-cloud-based format.

Torn Hawk Flip To Raw 12″ (Fixed Rhythms)
If you aren’t following Torn Hawk online, you’re doing your feed a disservice! I can think of few modern electronic artists (or artists in general, really) with such distinctive personalities, that inherent star power that can never be taught, only unleashed. Or at least, if there are other conventionally-handsome electronic producers/DJs with Joe Pesci accents and a penchant for dress suits and comedic chopped-up spoken-word, please tell me who they are so I can follow them too. Torn Hawk’s style has progressed and shifted through the years, first entering my consciousness via his L.I.E.S. EPs over a decade ago, which melded lo-fi house rhythms to nostalgic new-wave guitars. His most recent work has leaned into his edge-of-coherence ramblings (it’s a crime how overlooked (and unfortunately digital-only) his Power Without Guilt, Love Without Doubt album from last December is), but Flip To Raw goes back to his dance roots, an unfussy six-track session of vaporwave- and trip-hop-induced techno, and in the case of “Oh Yeah (Cop Collab)”, gratuitous electric guitar soloing. I get the impression Torn Hawk didn’t overthink these cuts – the Flip To Raw title rings true, yanking some immediate and inspired tracks direct from his hard-drive and sharing them with us, because why not. Please, I implore you to check out any of his recent vocal-based offerings (2023’s Ramada Thoughts is unheralded genius on par with The Gerogerigegege), and once your head stops spinning, you can cool off with Flip To Raw.

Tunnel Dancers Energy Is Residual LP (Mad Habitat Recordings)
The collective retreat into cozy womb-like hibernation continues! The stock in instrumental electronic contemporary-new-age ambient rises by the day, and if you are one of the few remaining hip adults who hasn’t ordered a personal relaxation chamber off Temu (or simply want something new to add to your meditation pod’s built-in playlist), Sydney’s Tunnel Dancers submit their debut full-length Energy Is Residual for your approval. The duo wields a modular synth and a Jazzmaster guitar in their fight for total relaxation, zero friction for our frictionless times. Vaporous atmospheres preside over the synth’s round-edged burbles, and the guitar chimes cautiously, never to wake the baby. On one hand, Energy Is Residual is a beautifully-formed piece of ambient driftwood, and on the other, I’m kinda getting sick of this prevailing trend. I realized I just typed that last line moments before heading out the door to go watch ambient artists perform alongside a trippy light-show inside an old church later this evening, so maybe it’s actually just myself that I’m getting sick of.

U.e. Hometown Girl LP (28912)
Ulla Straus has put together a body of work as beautiful as it is obfuscated, and this newest album continues that intentionally-mysterious trajectory. She’s going by “U.e.” here, as if the mononymous “Ulla” wasn’t already the bare minimum – how long until any of her monikers fade away entirely, just an empty puff of air where the artist’s name usually goes? Still, I love her music, and the way that she consistently refuses to provide any sort of context or information for it, nary a song title or musical credit to be found on the physical product. Hometown Girl ventures into her various comfort zones, from jazzy, piano-led slow-core to up-close tape-warble ASMR to Perfect Fit Content-adjacent chill-zones to experimental musique-concréte. Some of these tracks definitely feature multiple players, the ones that resemble a somber ensemble patiently grooving together in a dusty attic in particular, or is my mind playing tricks on me? The sounds throughout this album are more organic in nature than her earliest works, in the way that ink smudges and steamy saunas are organic, though Straus’s production always retains a light (or heavy) electronic touch, offering a slightly less depressing version of the feeling you get when you realize it was an AI chat-bot and not a live person who helped resolve your online banking issue. Fennesz’s Endless Summer has always loomed large over Straus’s work, and while it remains a reasonable touchpoint for many of the tracks on Hometown Girl, her own sonic lexicon has never been clearer (and by “clearer”, I also mean “foggier”).

USA/Mexico Live In Paris LP (12XU)
Esteemed Texan sludge trio USA/Mexico deliver us their own personal Earth 2 care of this Parisian live set. Glacial, crushing drone-rock such as this is a test of both body and mind, and the fact that Nate Cross (of Water Damage), King Coffey (of Butthole Surfers) and Craig Clouse (of Shit & Shine) decided to unleash this on a live audience is proof of their commitment to the form. Previous USA/Mexico records contained songs, albeit uneasily digestible ones, but Live In Paris is one big cavernous slog through detuned chords, the meter carried through Coffey’s drums, of which only the kick and crash cymbals really cut through the mix. (Maybe that’d all he played?) I think I hear some occasional vocals as well, delivered with the unnaturally-deepened pitch of gore-grind, though the ringing-out power-sludge riffs leave little room for anything else. I’m reminded of Black Mayonnaise’s filth-encrusted doom, but again, USA/Mexico were out there vibrating plates of Brie and baguette off this audience’s tables, not safely recording their music in a cozy studio setting. I’d suggest that USA/Mexico ignore traditional safety codes and padlock their crowds in the venues, unable to flee the brutality of their unrelenting sound, but even with viable escape routes Live In Paris is exquisitely stifling. As an oxygen-breather, I found it an anti-oxygen record…

Voice Actor & Squu Lust (1) LP (Stroom)
Much like Cindy Lee and their Diamond Jubilee, Voice Actor got a recent underground buzz going from their exorbitantly-long Sent From My Telephone release back in 2022: a hundred and twelve digital tracks in alphabetical order! Now down to solely vocalist/lyricist/producer Noa Kurzweil using the Voice Actor moniker, she’s enlisted her Soundcloud buddy Squu to share his fractured chill-wave beats for Lust (1), her (and his) first intended-for-LP release. Voice Actor did an interview with the great First Floor newsletter recently, wherein Kurzweil seemed disinterested in providing any real insight (or even talking about the project at all), but managed to explain that she would pick from Squu’s various tracks, send him vocals, sing over parts and cut-and-paste others. It’s interesting listening to Lust (1) with that understanding, then, as Kurzweil’s vocals are only occasionally prominent; perhaps they’re smeared to a fine translucent layer, or on some tracks, they’re probably absent entirely. Instead, Squu’s reduced-fat elements of techno are granted their own private space to roam – a fluttering rave loop here, kicks with sweltering reverb there – with Voice Actor’s vocals playing a game of left-field ambient-techno Where’s Waldo?. It’s cool enough, but the whole thing depends on being a vibe, the way in which we are all slowly being trained to engage with music (read Liz Pelly’s excellent new sci-fi horror book Mood Machine for a better explanation). Saturn is a gorgeous planet from afar, but it’s all gas, and that’s kind of how I feel about Lust (1): pretty and moody atmospherics, but no solid footing to be found.