Argy New World 2xLP (Afterlife)
Absolute brain-shrinking Euro techno here from Greece’s Argy (short for the trickier name of Argyris Theofilis). I hadn’t encountered him before, probably because my techno tastes tend to detour around this big dumb populist sound, but I’ll be damned if Argy doesn’t bring it here on New World. If you have any tolerance for neo-trance, you’ll want to promptly step to the fourteen hefty tracks here, full of ridiculous vocal-chant samples as hooks, power-drops and speed-runs, decadent rave sounds meant for packed capacity rooms with nary a single native English speaker on the floor. It’s like going to Six Flags or watching a Michael Bay movie: sure, these moves are studied and corny, but what’s cornier is complaining about them instead of simply giving yourself over to the music’s joyous over-indulgence. It’s euphoria by design, but it’s still a form of euphoria, and I’ll take it. What’s especially crazy to me is how, across fourteen lengthy cuts, Argy keeps the energy fresh and renewed, with a wide variety of samples and sounds and patches all lunging with the force and grace of a track star. It’s gaudy and beautiful and boldly unashamed, and I completely get it, Argy!
Broken Hearts Are Blue Meeting Themselves LP (Council)
Aww, are they? They’re blue?? This Michigan group materialized in the initial era of saccharine-sweet emo bands, back when a name like Broken Hearts Are Blue seemed like a reasonable choice to all of us, and much like every other ’90s indie band, they found their way back together in the 2010s. Unlike many of their peers, however, they wrote a lot more music the second time around – rather than relying on old material, Meeting Themselves is their second full-length since 2021. I hadn’t caught them back in the day, and at least by now they sound different than I would’ve expected, with really only the slightest essence of emo rather than the prevailing sound and style. Broken Hearts Are Blue play rootsy, downtrodden alt-rock replete with Ryan Gage’s Corgan-ish vocals consistently piercing through the fog. It’s languid in presentation and tends to avoid taking any big risks, for better or worse. These are subdued and shy songs, geared for slow-dancing after the party guests have left, writing a love letter and not sending it, or romanticizing feelings of anxiety and gloom. It’s less distinctive than Elliott Smith, Cloud Nothings or The War On Drugs, but would fit right in on such a playlist. I can’t say I am feeling these tunes myself, though I will always salute fellow grown adults who pursue their music and art solely for the pleasure it brings them. It’s just that my hater heart is red.
Canal Irreal Someone Else’s Dance LP (Beach Impediment)
Canal Irreal’s 2021 debut didn’t leave much of an impression on me, but the follow-up Someone Else’s Dance comes roaring out of the gate and doesn’t let up. Whereas the first album felt restrained and moody, and, well, kinda rudimentary, Someone Else’s Dance pushes goth-y melodic punk to dangerous speeds and I’m loving it. They’re going for that whole Second Empire Justice thing that’s been hot lately (Home Front being its most blatant worshippers), but these songs stand up on their own, not as spot-the-influence punk nostalgia. It really helps that they’re playing with such vigor and intensity without sacrificing hooks or melody… the first four tracks come in so strong, calling to mind Naked Raygun and Bad Religion back when they had dogs in the fight. It’s hard for me to get excited by any sort of moody, chorus-pedal punk these days, and while Canal Irreal may have spawned from that general sound, it’s clear that they have so much more to offer than the rest of the pack. I also made it this far into the review without mentioning that Martin of Los Crudos is the singer, trading in the full-throated squeal of his 20s and 30s for a harsh yet tuneful bellow befitting his hardcore tenure. He could carry any punk band to some level of success, but Someone Else’s Dance is greater than the sum of its parts.
Chalk The Beat Sessions 12″ (Tall Texan)
Tall Texan continues to convert recent and obscure cassette releases into appealing slabs of vinyl, this new one coming from Chalk AKA Barry Elkanick (otherwise of Institute). I recall Chalk’s 2022 full-length on Post Present Medium, documented in these very pages, as a cool-if-scatterbrained discharge of noisy, aggrieved post-punk, and this new offering fleshes things out a bit with plenty of bumps and contusions along the way. The guitar tone is about as raw as you can get while still sounding death-rocky – can that poor chorus pedal handle being pushed to such scalding temps? It’s a nice fit for songs that recall the miserable white-boy voodoo of Gun Club, the frantic unfocused energy of Iceage’s early years, Poison Ruïn’s melodic-goth punk and Crisis-styled post-punk marching, not necessarily far from what Institute initially came up with (if perhaps more dynamic). A track like “Prickly Pear” is a nice example: the guitar is sickly yet melodic and memorable and the vocals are absolutely belligerent, presenting like Chain Of Flowers if they showed up hours late after their van was stolen and the singer quit. Not sure if Elkanick is responsible for all the instruments himself… I’ll award bonus points if that’s his fantastic drumming on here, though I’m secretly hoping Chalk is a full band now and one that I might get to someday witness live.
Coffin Pricks Semi-Perfect Crimes LP (Council)
Ryan Weinstein released a great album last year as Coffin Prick, the name an overt nod to the group he had going for a brief time in the early ’10s in Chicago, the plural Coffin Pricks (alongside Chris Thomson of The Monorchid and Jeff Rice of Calvary). If you told me in the late ’90s that a band featuring Skull Kontrol, Ottawa and Cavity members would someday exist, I’d have dropped my peach Snapple in a fit of ecstasy, and I’m still pleased to check them out today in the form of this posthumous full-length comprised of live and studio recordings. There’s a through-line in all Thomson-fronted bands – his distinctive voice is unmistakable – and Coffin Pricks maintains his rep as an agitated punk vocalist par excellence. Coffin Pricks play(ed) an upbeat, driving form of melodic punk, perhaps lacking some of the youthful aggression of the three players’ earlier bands but far from easing into mellow post-hardcore retirement. “Cielo Drive” gallops like The Monorchid, though Thomson’s voice is understandably reigned in a bit throughout, surely a matter more of physical capacity than a softened disposition. It’s not too far from the more straight-ahead Skull Kontrol tunes, and almost nearing Government Issue or The Descendents at some points, a very polished and tight performance by three seasoned players who continue to understand what makes punk work (something too easily forgotten by many of their generational peers).
Container Yacker LP (Alter)
Few Americans have straddled the line between noise and techno with the success of Ren Schofield. More than straddle it, he’s basically ridden it like a mechanical bull over multiple stellar full-lengths (deliriously all titled LP up until this one). Charting through his discography, his beats are somehow more visceral and impactful, his synths more corrosive and dangerous, his outlook more curious and sinister than the majority of his cohorts. I don’t want to say he mastered squealing-hot acid-industrial techno, but for the non-LP titled full-length Yacker, Schofield takes a slightly different sonic approach, a warm and wiggly call-back to his Providence noise-rock upbringing. Utilizing the most “real” drum sound palette to date, he essentially morphs the classic Load Records style into his punishing digital realm. These tracks sound like synthetic versions of Lightning Bolt, from the tirelessly bludgeoning drum patterns and the way they subtly shift (and gain intensity) with repetition to the body-jab bass-lines which stick like duct tape to the percussion. It’s almost uncanny! The gear and overall sound is purely electronic, but the feel is ecstatic, rhythmic noise-rock, like Yamatsuka Eye whipping his glowing orbs at M Ax Noi Mach across a firecode-failing warehouse show space. It’s a great twist in the Container story, and a sound that no one else is doing, even with half the intensity. I can already smell the low-ceilinged-basement art-kid push-pit frothing up against Container like waves on a shore, and you know what, I want more than just a sniff.
Double Morris Sunshine Numbers LP (Half A Million)
The cover of Double Morris’s Sunshine Numbers makes it clear: never get between a toad and his moonshine. That’s par for the course with this appealingly perplexing release, apparently a 2013 recording of a Chicago-based group whose current activity level eludes me. They’re a rock group that is loose by design, the songs tumbling outward and onto the floor in a manner that feels close to US Maple, although whereas US Maple couldn’t conceal their seething contempt, Double Morris come across like hound dogs with broken hearts. These songs sound like they’re really going through it, to the point where it can feel as though you accidentally walked into an elevator where a couple are breaking up for the fifth and final time. The album opens with the lines “remember for years we didn’t speak? / then I tripped over you for weeks / well what is it you’re after? / after a six pack and muscle relaxers” and proceeds from there, spotlighting emotional wounds both fresh and scabbed-over. “The Cost” sounds like a hybrid of Dirty Three and Cows, a sea-sick shanty that wishes it could play some Mudhoney riffs were it able to get out of bed. It’s simultaneously a very Chicago-sounding record and pretty darn unique, like they could’ve had a Touch & Go run if they existed a couple decades earlier, confusing the stupider fans of Shellac and The Black Heart Procession if given half a chance.
Giulio Erasmus Second Attempt LP (Mangel)
Pretty cool case of the apple not falling far from the tree: Giulio Erasmus is the son of Factory Records’ founder Alan Erasmus and he’s been making his own music for a few years now. The young Giulio probably could’ve finagled that familial relationship into some sort of social-media influencer grift, maybe hocking his own line of rip-off Unknown Pleasures t-shirts (and having some actual claim to do so), but he takes the far nobler route of making music that actively avoids the spotlight. I wouldn’t expect to encounter the extremely warped post-punk of Second Attempt anywhere but tucked into a deep, dank NTS or WFMU show. It’s surely a home-recording / non-live deal, which allows Erasmus to tinker throughout, editing a variety of strange electronic snaps over backwards sped-up strings (check out “Tomorrow, In Winter”) with a seemingly wide variety of sound-making devices at his disposal. If the drums aren’t “real”, they at least sound like they used to be, knocking up against all sorts of crusty synths and errant pulses. A post-punk/dub groove is never far away from the madness, with tracks like “Collapsed, Speech” and “Strangers” sounding like Exek blown to bits or Mark Stewart kicking his gear across the room in a fiery act of protest, all with the nagging sense that Erasmus appreciates Not Waving and Actress as much as the classic post-punk canon. When it comes to effects-laden post-punk grooves, there’s a tendency to either gravitate towards the center or fling one’s self outwards: Second Attempt is out there in the deepest orbit and sporting a sly grin.
Famous Mammals Famous Mammals LP (Inscrutable)
Famous Mammals were the configuration I still needed to hear from that vague constellation of San Fran outré indie (Non Plus Temps, The World, Preening, Cindy, Children Maybe Later and so on), somehow sleeping on that Siltbreeze album that made some waves the way a solid Siltbreeze album will do. Inscrutable Records took the opportunity to release Famous Mammals’ 2021 debut cassette on the appropriate twelve-inch-sized vinyl slab. As far as UKDIY-inspired lo-fi pop goes, Famous Mammals is easy to enjoy. A drum machine sputters without fills or intros and bass-lines are deployed over top, leaving plenty of room for guitar, vocals and an assortment of sound effects to color the space with personality. Andy Human is one third of the group, and while I know he’s got roughly a hundred different bands under his belt with varying degrees of “success”, Fam Mam feels like a vehicle he can relax in, where precision comes in last place behind experimental tinkering, simple jangly melodies and (self-)amusing ideas. I love the squeaky clatter of the opening track “Psychological Housekeeping”, just as I appreciate not knowing if that’s an accordion or trumpet I’m hearing in “Ode To Nikki” (neither instruments are credited in the liners so it’s almost certainly a third thing). Time to go raid the Siltbreeze warehouse across town to snag a copy of their other LP – anyone have razor-wire cutters I can borrow?
The Follies Permanent Present Tense LP (Feel It)
Made it through a few songs on this vinyl debut from New York’s The Follies and I was thinking it sounded a whole lot like the Vanity guy singing. Turns out it is indeed Evan Radigan on vocals and guitar, and in our age of complete media oversaturation, it’s a nice trick to have a sound that’s not only memorable but recognizable as well. Radigan brings unsung axe-master Michael Liebman in on lead guitar (who first stole my heart in Vexx), and with a proactive rhythm section has quite the band going in The Follies. They tackle the era of late ’70s power-pop as it converged into hard rock, breathing fresh new life into its well-worn leather. They’ve got too much integrity to fall back on overused riffs, so these songs dart and dash in interesting directions, though never to the point where they lose the script, one of Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith, Socrates Drank The Conium, Rose Tattoo and the punker end of the Powerpearls bootlegs. These folks have clearly done many bands before this, yet there’s an excitement behind these songs that feels more like a group hitting the road for the first time than the seasoned players hooking up for their eighth new project that they are. Maybe this one’ll stick around!
Jayson Green & The Jerk Local Jerk / I Need Love 12″ (DFA)
Here’s a record that should’ve happened in 2006 but I’m glad it’s happening now instead… quite simply, certain sounds are best received when fully out of step with the times. Jayson Green is of course the frontman for Orchid (I say “is” instead of “was” because they’re playing shows again!), a longtime Brooklyn hipster/agitator in the best possible sense, and he shares his first material under his own name in the most appropriate manner: a big DFA twelve-inch single. I wasn’t sure what to expect exactly, but it turns out he’s serving the same undisputed, disco-fied, Ze Records NYC post-punk with which DFA established themselves back when Brooklyn was still meeting each other in the bathroom instead of on Taskrabbit. “Local Jerk” pushes the drums up front, fat and crispy, with a !!!-caliber bass-line, some sharp horns and a group vocal chant, garnished with some lively party chatter. Does Green even play anything on this track? Sure, it’s been done many times before (by this very same label), but if you don’t enjoy a cut like “Local Jerk”, chances are you’re a bit of a loser, I’m sorry. “I Need Love” looks to skewer DJ culture with a deadpan vocal over weirdly menacing guitar and industrial-funk bass, and while this topic has been successfully roasted countless times before, Green’s heart is clearly in it, a hilarious success that entertains throughout repeated listens. Orchid should cover it!
Hooper Crescent Essential Tremors LP (Spoilsport)
Melbourne’s Hooper Crescent chose an approachably quirky painting for the cover, what with various fruit and objects spraying forth from a volcanic lava blast, and it offers a reasonable introduction to their (also approachably quirky) sound. They’ve got a synth-forward indie-rock style happening here, friendly and funky and silly without going overboard. The songs bop at a relaxed pace, with wry lyrical commentary on modern life delivered in an offbeat yelp. I’m reminded of Imperial Teen and the way they worked their way around synth-y power-pop with multi-gendered vocals and the sense of a historical relationship with punk rock. The melodies are busy without getting messy, darting around the fretboards in a manner that reminds me of fellow Melburnians Vintage Crop and Total Control, at least if either of those bands listened to lots of Pylon and Talking Heads. If that’s your kinda sound, Hooper Crescent present a fine offering in Essential Tremors, well-produced and sharp, though it might be a little too friendly and well-mannered for my personal tastes. It just sounds like a band where every last member is perfectly well-adjusted, competent and aware of their eccentricities, and well, how exciting can that really be?
Kite Losing / Glassy Eyes 7″ (Dais)
Very psyched to see Swedish duo Kite linking up with American synth/goth/industrial arbiter Dais, as perfect a fit as skinny forearms in black PVC opera gloves. Kite’s profile in their homeland has grown considerably through the years, performing in venues like the Royal Swedish Opera, the open-air limestone-quarry-turned-theatre Dalhalla and next year “on ice” in the Avicii Arena, yet it still doesn’t feel like these stadium-sized venues are large enough for the incredible bombast of their dramatic, romantic synth-pop. They’re certainly poised to be the Celine Dion of gothic synth music, and this new single (they only really seem to release singles?) is another heart-pounding requiem. The beat doesn’t show up for the first couple minutes in “Losing”, leaving plenty of room for Niklas Stenemo’s otherworldly vocals. He’s joined by Henric de la Cour, a vocal pairing that could invoke rich emotional pathos from a damn Family Guy script. Eventually the beat arrives and we’re wiping our eyeliner-stained tears and dancing. “Glassy Eyes” is another forlorn ballad, free of percussion or anything besides a keyboard’s mournful reverberation and Stenemo’s unmistakable vocal, like the eyebrow-less alien lovechild of Geddy Lee and Whitney Houston. The thought of building a colony on Mars seems pointless and silly to me unless Kite get to be the first group to perform there.
Laksa Voices 12″ (Ilian Tape)
Munich’s Ilian Tape makes it easy for dilettantes to keep up with the vanguard of European underground techno, covering a variety of styles with a trustworthy level of quality. I recognize Laksa from the Bristol-centered post-dubstep bass scene of the mid ’10s, folks like Batu, Ploy and Alex Coulton, and that’s more or less what he’s still up to here on Ilian Tape. You can’t call a track “Tech Steppas” and half-ass it, and he certainly does not – it’s a big mean skank, a double-time percussive loop over a half-time strut. “LED” whips some wobbling bass into a frenzy and “The Art Of Slip” goes hard on the cowbell and a big thick synth rip, sounding like God zipping his anorak up and down. I’m reminded of all those Hessle Audio singles that taught me to love forward-minded Bristolian bass music, but much like the best sides from Joe, Bandshell and Elgato, Laksa imbues his cuts with a playful creativity, like he’s having as much fun in the studio as I am in front of the stereo. Do I do it? Do I step up and purchase Ilian Tape’s full digital discography on Bandcamp for €501.38? It’s only a click away…
Love Child Never Meant To Be 1988-1993 2xLP (12XU)
From the endlessly fertile artistic grounds of New York City and its surrounding counties came Love Child in the years outlined in the title of this comprehensive discography release. A trio comprised of Brendan O’Malley, Rebecca Odes and a pre-improv Alan Licht, they swapped traditional rock instruments and took turns singing, each member clearly bursting with ideas different from one another but welcomed just the same. Nothing was off-limits if they could play it, it seems – paisley jangle, fuzzed-out pop-punk, no-wave freakouts and avant-minded college-rock are all on offer here, happily clashing up against each other like the varied characters you’d have found in Sonic Youth’s pit at the time. If you could uncover it, there was a wild variety of underground sounds happening at the time and it seems that Love Child soaked it all up, whether it was Pussy Galore’s noise or The Replacements’ tuneful debauchery. Two LPs of archival recordings is a lot to chew on, but the sheer excitement Love Child puts on display makes for an easy trip. Whether they decide to write a song called “Diane” and shout that name over and over until it’s just a sound, trip into an extended bout of dark and noisy psychedelia on “All Is Loneliness” or toss out a catchy new-wave bop with the casual cool of “He’s So Sensitive”, the pleasure they obviously shared in being a creative young band is both palpable and infectious.
Francisco Mela & Zoh Amba Causa y Effecto, Vol. 2 LP (577)
The second summit of saxophonist Zoh Amba and drummer Francisco Mela is uplifting enough that my back pain recedes while I sit here listening to it… they’re like chiropractors of the soul! As a duo, Mela and Amba perform a fairly traditional form of drums-and-sax free-jazz, while also revealing that the very nature of the music can easily slip into timelessness when performed by devout practitioners with a deep love of both sound and each other. Amba slips into countless melodic phrases, as repetitive and different as the flow of a stream, and Mela takes a relaxed, congenial approach, as if he’s setting the table for Amba’s colorful charcuterie. Mela also sparsely sings throughout, seemingly off-the-cuff and only when his spirit is moved towards vocalizing; “Experiencias” opens with his lively babbling before Amba even steps into the room. They never reach full-throttle freakout mode, which of course isn’t their point anyway.
The Minneapolis Uranium Club Infants Under The Bulb LP (Static Shock / Anti Fade)
It has truly never been easier to make music than right now, what with the proliferation of cheap/free recording software and the vast and unpaid marketplace wherein to hock your wares digitally. Any one of us could whip up an egg-punk band over the next weekend and probably have it sound halfway decent, which is simultaneously good and depressing. As such, I find myself drawn more than ever to qualities that cannot be replicated with ease, namely artistry, effort and vision. The Minneapolis Uranium Club (I call ’em “Uranium Club” for short) are thankfully here to provide me with musical and artistic concepts that can’t be churned out overnight – take the cover of Infants Under The Bulb for example, which apparently involved hiring like a hundred people to wear costumes all in a choreographed group shot, solely because Uranium Club had this weird idea and carried it out. That dedication to finding their own thorny path seeps out of this new album, one that maintains the high level of quality I’ve come to expect from the group. The songs continue to skip tightly and rambunctiously, somewhere in the vague realms of The Fall, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Coneheads and Parquet Courts, with vocals that either react to the music dramatically or ignore it entirely, spools of cleverly-constructed lyrics decrying our uniquely awful time. There’s a spoken-word audio-play in three parts, a song that turns the luxury fashion tag “Tokyo Paris L.A. Milan” into a catchy refrain, and most importantly, an inspired collection of ideas and songs from top to bottom that you won’t find anywhere else, not at least until PunkMusicGPT gets wind of it.
Nah Totally Recalled LP (Viernulvier)
Normally when there’s a project based around cut-up drum loops, breaks and samples, you’d think weed would be the associated drug of choice, but in the hands of Nah (AKA Mike Kuun) it’s all distilled into pure Monster Energy. Kuun’s restless spirit pushes his dynamic and fast-changing tracks closer to something like footwork, though Totally Recalled flows with a polished slickness, with many sonic motifs appearing for a blip or half a blip before disintegrating, a different approach from the jackhammering repetition of classic footwork. It’s all about rhythm with Nah though, and the rhythms are frequently dazzling – I’d point you to the ecstatic drum workout of “Hallucinated Several Times” in particular, which reaches a manic techno-adjacent frenzy I’d expect to hear at a Príncipe DJ night. I could live in that fist-pumping, snare-driven rave stasis forever, but Nah swiftly shifts patterns like an Ioniq cutting across multiple lanes on a highway, each new idea introduced with a treacherous burst of excitement. Totally Recalled is an album unable to contain its enthusiasm, a sonically transmitted boost of energy no matter where Nah originally sourced its components.
Olsvangèr Icy Hookups 12″ (Kalahari Oyster Cult)
Amsterdam’s Kalahari Oyster Cult is a strident contributor to the Euro techno scene and beyond, dropping like a dozen EPs a year with some full-lengths peppered in for good measure. They’re a crucial lifeline for a guy like me who isn’t out there in Berlin, Antwerp and Copenhagen four nights a week, and their track record reeks of quality and discernment. This brings me to the new EP from Berlin’s Olsvangèr, coming correct with four tracks of not-too-hard tech house. These cuts nod to big-time ’90s rave moves, calling to mind the echoes of Underworld and Darude (you know, “Sandstorm”) but updated with today’s post-internet aesthetics in mind. I think “Paranoweed” might be my favorite, a real throwback gem that finds new angles to familiar chords – it’s like the techno that accompanies the pause screen of a Dreamcast racing game from 2001, eerily able to stick in your mind long after the power is turned off. After years of groove-less industrial-techno infecting my bloodstream, the swing of “Bubble Toy” and the maximum-vocoder twist to “Grand Slammin'” are welcome mood shifts, uplifting and effervescent with trance and funky house touches.
Reek Minds Malignant Existence LP (Iron Lung)
Quite a potent distillation of fast n’ ugly hardcore here from Portland’s Reek Minds, a righteous full-length follow-up to their two great EPs. They remind me of when power-violence bands would slow it down half a notch and play fast hardcore instead of grind for a song or two, capping it off with first-wave death-metal vocals over these aggro rhythms in the spirit of Koro and YDI. “Cast Me To Hell”, for example, careens through alleys in a manner befitting No Comment, though the whole thing feels notably grosser, like you’d have to finally wash your jeans if Reek Minds brushed up against you in the pit. Malignant Existence is the least approachable form of classic American hardcore, stuff that the clean-cut folks who mostly collect all the early Revelation and Dischord stuff will never fully appreciate, which of course is a sign of top caliber hardcore-punk. Why spend your paycheck on the fifth-coolest Minor Threat variant when you can pick up Battalion Of Saints and White Cross EPs instead? The cover art is a fittingly modern corollary to the monstrous imagery Morbid Mark was known for back in the late ’80s, and that same spirit carries over to Reek Minds’s sensibilities. If there’s ever a sequel to the Apocalyptic Convulsions compilation, Reek Minds deserve the side-one track-one slot.
Regler + Courtis Regel #13 [Noise Rock] LP (Nashazphone)
Regler, the occasional duo of Brainbombs member Anders Bryngelsson and the infamous Mattin, are joined by Anla Courtis of Reynols for the thirteenth thematic Regler album, this time tackling the genre of, you guessed it, noise-rock. Overly saturated yet well-suited for the talents of these three, Regel #13 [Noise Rock] operates much as I suspected it might. That is to say, the fun is sucked out of it completely, offering zero concessions to the listener in search of the deepest darkest noise-rock truth, somewhere in its base atomic form. I think it’s Bryngelsson on the drums, and of course he plods ever forward, nary a fill or break in sight, as Mattin and Courtis unload their tuneless guitar distortion like cement pouring into a cavern. They’ve certainly got enough to turn the Grand Canyon into a skatepark, pouring it out with the jet-engine thrust of Skullflower at their least friendly. That’s the a-side cut, whereas the b-side dispenses with any notion of “rock” for a digital hurricane of harsh noise, as if The Rita got ahold of the stems to the first side and tossed it like chum into his shark tank. The pitch of the frequencies are always changing, but the harsh-noise-wall outcome is consistent, a powerful clog remover for even the nastiest of drains. Cool stuff, though “noise rock” seems like a softball for these guys – let’s hear your spirited take on hyperpop, Regler!
Rosali Bite Down LP (Merge)
Gotta hand it to the hardest working rocker in the biz, Rosali Middleman! Alongside her band of scruffy, smiley beardos, she’s been on the road more than at home in these post-lockdown years, opening for bigger bands, cutting out on headlining jaunts and promoting it all in the soul-killing social-media way without appearing even remotely beleaguered – just going for it. As I write this, she’s on tour and posting at least one new Instagram a day to help get folks to the gig. I’m exhausted just thinking about it! I enjoyed the tender yet complex vibrations from her solo material, but it’s fun to have a band, and Bite Down showcases some of her most widely-appealing Americana indie/rock/pop, all with a gloriously unsettling cover image sure to scare off those with weaker constitutions. These songs feel true to her heart, one where the weathered velvet of Fleetwood Mac and Aimee Mann meet the patched-up denim of The Band and Steve Gunn without clashing in the slightest. It’s a warm, inviting sound, and she’s got some great hooks this time around, like the endless chorus of “My Kind” for starters. Opener “On Tonight” happily carries the spirit of Lou Reed via rickshaw down an overgrown country road, and the way she says “fuck me or fight me it’s all the same” on “Slow Pain” will make you blush and believe. Feels like it was engineered to be a “breakthrough” record in a way, but even so, the songs themselves ensure that whatever breakthrough might happen is fully deserved.
Claire Rousay Sentiment LP (Thrill Jockey)
Claire Rousay is a fun experimental artist to follow. For one, she’s constantly putting stuff out, and for two, the depth and variety of styles she takes on is both impressive and fun. I would’ve been content if she just kept releasing inscrutable solo percussion works, bouncing quarters on a snare drum while rustling a newspaper with her feet, but Rousay’s mind is far too active and impatient to remain in any one sonic mode for long. Sentiment is her newest left-turn, albeit one that (perhaps savvily) points towards a melange of trend-friendly underground sounds. Easily qualified as her “emo” record, Rousay enlists acoustic guitar and violin, softly domestic field-recordings, synths and her extremely AutoTuned vocal, resulting in some new strain of digital-emo slow-core, all at a time when the prospective audience for such a sound couldn’t be riper. It’s like Very Secretary, Pedro The Lion, the slow songs on Clarity and Duster given a Zoomer TikTok makeover, ready to soundtrack grainy social-media posts that swipe up and down seconds later. The songs are as appealingly mopey as her bedroom portrait on the cover, grappling with messy emotions without any sense of resolution in the way that the best mainstream indie-emo always manages to do, vulnerable intimacy facing forward. Sentiment might be a little brazen in its aesthetic references, but I for one have no time for half-stepping emo moves at this point, and appreciate Rousay’s restless ingenuity, even when it arrives in the form of actual pleasant music such as this.
Sexpill In Dust We Trust LP (Beach Impediment)
Didn’t expect to find myself fleeing in terror from a band called “Sexpill”, but here I am, cowering in an alley as the sound of their hardcore draws nearer! With a name like that, they should be a Blood Brothers side-project or something, not the Mad Max steamroller exploding from my speakers and liquifying my intestines. The songwriting of this Texas outfit is more or less typical pogo-core for the times, so I suppose the vocalist (whose pronouns seem to be it/that) is due a large chunk of the credit for making In Dust We Trust such a standout. It’s almost as if they had never heard hardcore (or even rock music) before, ignoring standard vocal conventions such as timing and pitch in favor of random moans, guttural squeals, coughing with effects pedals turned all the way, snot dripping from the ears and black tar on the tongue. Sometimes they even sing more when the song is over than during the actual track! It’s refreshing, and combined with the absolutely earth-shaking production, In Dust We Trust is a full-scale riot, closer to the wartime feel of Kriegshög or even Forward’s bullying than any American hardcore acts. The songs themselves are secondary to the presentation, one of utter sonic decimation without pleasantry or concession. There’s simply no way to market this sort of sound to any respectable audience – Liquid Death would run from this madness – which is precisely what hardcore should aspire to do, now and whenever.
Soup Activists Mummy What Are Flowers For? LP (Inscrutable)
Martin Meyer has spent much of his musical career answering to the name “Lumpy” – he sang for Lumpy & The Dumpers and ran Lumpy Records – and I for one can’t blame him if he decided it was time for a change. Now he’s got his new label Inscrutable Records going, along with the vinyl debut of Soup Activists, his calmer, poppier solo-project. While there’s nothing remotely hardcore going on here, these cutesy, charmingly DIY pop nuggets are clearly still beholden to punk rock, a scrappy performance that’s rough in all the right spots. Mummy What Are Flowers For? has a distinctly American DIY feel, sharing the attitude and presentation of K Records, Dead Milkmen, the goofier side of Lookout!’s first few dozen releases and those Messthetics-related Homework compilations of obscure fly-over early ’80s new-wave power-pop groups. You know, true outcast weirdos who bared all their silly little romantic feelings over simple guitar chords that very few people would ever hear, virtuosity and machismo be damned. “Chaos Girls” is an easy recommendation, like a sugar-coated Beat Happening pill that’s particularly easy to swallow, as is “The Times”, whose vocal chant and chugging riff remind me of that great first Rentals record (which still hasn’t been pressed on vinyl – are you listening Record Store Day??). I still love those Lumpy records, but I’ll admit, it’s nice to engage with Meyer’s artistic sensibility without having to worry about slime staining my clothes.
Ulla & Ultrafog It Means A Lot LP (Motion Ward)
Kind of a funny title, because let’s be honest, this genre of music doesn’t really seem to mean very much at all. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ulla’s abstracted ambient – it’s like incense smoke refracted through a series of prisms, both sensually satisfying and inexplicable – but it’s not like there’s really much meaning behind it, is there? Naturally, the title could be referring to something completely separate from the contents of this nice new collaborative album with Japanese producer Ultrafog, but as is the case with Ulla and the Motion Ward posse, nothing ever comes close to being explained… half the time you have to look up the record online to figure out the track titles, so hermetic and unforgiving is the typical design. That said, in typical Ulla fashion, this record is a winner! I’m not sure which of the two is responsible for the gauzy, lazy guitar chords that take center stage, somewhere between ECM jazz-guitar and Cocteau Twins (and drastically reduced to the simplest form), but they act as a cornerstone throughout. Digitally-tweaked synths, patches and effects twinkle and warble patiently, with hushed, processed vocals confirming some vague sense of human involvement. There’s some of Fennesz’s classic Endless Summer in here too, although It Means A Lot stands just outside of the sun’s rays, blissfully lounging in the shade. If you don’t have any Ulla records already, you need this one, and if you have the rest, what are you gonna do, not keep up?
Unchained Gabbeh LP (A Colourful Storm)
Seeing as Unchained-the-project is one and the same with artist, musician and academic Nate Davis-the-person, the two entities have morphed, adapted and evolved in tandem over the years. Whereas Unchained recordings from decades ago favored harsh noise, field-recordings and lo-fi experiments, Gabbeh reveals Davis as the richly developed man that he is, passing through life at a leisurely, distinctly European pace (even if he grew up in the neon-splattered Providence underground scene). You may have enjoyed his tasteful little bass thumps in Francisco Franco (and later Francisco Davis), and this record kind of follows suit, softly quizzical vignettes that linger like charcoal smoke in an open-air market. It’s mostly a guitar record, kind of a private-press acoustic / bossa nova sort of thing with bass-guitar and percussive accompaniment, as loose as Jandek but served by familiar melodic tunings. Much like Davis’s fantastic newsletter Hôtel de la Gare, his music wanders without any purpose that extends beyond the moment, the sonic equivalent of biting the tip off a fresh baguette and doing all you can to really taste it, to bask in simple pleasures easily taken for granted. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you sipped some coffee while reading an engrossing novel and forgot that Gabbeh was on in the background… it’s proudly, almost defiantly mellow when you consider what the rest of this ugly world is like.
Yokel 4 A.M. 7″ (Accidental Meetings)
Seven-inches are increasingly maligned, fiscally-irresponsible (for both producer and customer) and more or less obsolete, but I love sitting there and listening to them, and applaud the folks who still release them against all better judgment. I especially love it when the music is as ambiguous, evasive and cool as the four tracks offered up here by Bristol’s Yokel, a name tied to the thrilling Bokeh Versions and Avon Terror Corp camps that I haven’t yet otherwise encountered. It opens on a dour note, with the funereal gloom of “M3D”, an ominous portent of dungeon-synth that has seemingly nothing in common with the three tracks that follow it. “Pill Creek” shifts from black church clothes to black leather, a grainy cut of instrumental dark-wave that borders on L.I.E.S.-styled house if it wasn’t so overtly sinister. Flip it over and take a guess at what a track called “Seitan BBQ Junt” sounds like: chances are you didn’t expect this tweaky electro post-punk groove, like an aggressive dub of Fad Gadget that increases in intensity towards the end. I’m picturing Cosey chasing Chris around the studio with a cat o’ nine tails. That’s already plenty of great tunes, but “One 4 Zee” wraps it up with an electro b-boy groove, the incessant ringing of school bells and someone trying to rap yet failing to say more than just the word “rhythm” over and over. The whole thing goes by quick, but that’s where the listener steps in, physically flipping the record and starting it over at the beginning. Try it, it’s fun!
Hex Enduction Hour compilation LP (Easy Subculture)
Had this website started in 2001, it could’ve very well been CD-r focused. It was an extremely fertile time for cheap handmade underground sounds, case in point the Easy Subculture Hex Enduction Hour compilation CD-r, originally released back then. Some twenty-three years later the vinyl version is here, a bucolic time capsule of pre-codified New Weird America sounds. Notably opening with the first-ever solo Steve Gunn recording (a folksy fingerpicked instrumental bearing signs of his future styles), it gives way to lesser-known artists like Millbrook, The Twin Atlas and xPlanet And Bethx, all of whom kick the pollen around in those twilight hours of our society before we all had cellphones and could comfortably cease in-person interaction entirely. Each artist is warmly lo-fidelity, sounding like their songs were transferred to two different cassettes before making their way to vinyl mastering, which is precisely how the organic sounds of Currituck County’s “Locomotive Rag” and Millbrook’s “Spring Time” are best heard. Perhaps one day, after a particularly nasty solar flare shorts out our satellites, we’ll be forced to go back to CD-rs stapled into photocopied sheets of paper by hand as a means of connecting with like-minded souls, and I hope I’m still around to be there when it happens.
Kosmoloko 3 compilation LP (Galakthorrö)
Over three decades in and Galakthorrö continues to operate strictly on its own terms, one where design, aesthetic and mood are as stoic, entrancing and imposingly beautiful as the Salk Institute. This label might be the rare case where it feels like you’re dancing to architecture, come to think of it! Galakthorrö has always had a strong commitment to its own roster, nurturing a restricted number of artists through the years, sparingly releasing only the finest industrial / goth / dark-wave / electronic music. If you’re a fan of this stuff, you’ll never feel cheated investing in Galakthorrö product. This newest release, the third iteration of what is essentially a label sampler, is a perfect example. Ten Galakthorrö artists contribute one new and exclusive track a piece, with nary a throw-away or filler cut in the bunch. Two of the artists, Haus Arafna and November Növelet, share the same exact personnel – that’d be Mr. and Mrs. Arafna, who also run the label – and their tracks are stunning, from the haunting “The Other’s Joy” (“your sorrow becomes the other’s joy”, oof) to the weepingly melodic “Black Rain”. The rest of their roster, while sounding so similar as to verge on the interchangeable at times (that’s part of the fun), are strong across the board – Te/DIS, Sühne Mensch and Hermann Kopp stand out to my ears in particular, but Kosmoloko 3 is as high quality as we’ve come to expect, another essential document from this insular and resolute stable of artists.
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