Let’s get a little personal: when my most successful high-school band got started (where many of my worst songs reside), Daughn Gibson was right beside me, also screaming into cheap plastic microphones in bedrooms, sheds and garages that belonged to neither of our particular families. It’s been an absolute pleasure to witness his artistry bloom over the ensuing decades, not only talented in all of the supremely boring ways (production, editing, mixing, musicianship) but also by the most important metrics that no amount of money, time or effort can buy. I’m talking the magical shock of sheer WTF creativity – aesthetics and concepts and execution that pre-date trends by a decade or still haven’t gestated long enough for the rest of the world and his adoring peer group (myself included) to fully grasp. He just self-released his newest full-length, Lake Mary not mysterious – it’s his first true album in eleven years – and it’s as opulent, striking and tragic as anything bearing his name. Meticulous yet feral, he’s like an island castaway who built a paradise mansion out of shipwrecked material on Lake Mary. I’ve released a couple of his albums on my indefinitely-hibernating label White Denim, and have probably heard more of his cutting-room-floor songs than anyone else, so this new interview series seemed like the perfect opportunity to get him on record with the one Daughn Gibson song he likes the least. You can listen along to it here.
YGR: Alright, so I don’t think I would have predicted your choice of “I Let Him Deal” if you gave me a dozen guesses. Why’s this your worst?
DG: Well truth be told it started out as my favorite song on Carnation. In fact, I drove out to Chicago mainly to get my man Jim Elkington’s chilly, serpentine guitar style laid down on top of it. And I thought what he did on this was awesome, to be honest its only redeeming quality. But prior to bringing it to Randall Dunn, the producer of Carnation, the song was quiet, dreadful, dreamy, with percussive elements so teensy that the song felt like malarial delirium. I wasn’t quite done shaping, but I knew that there was room for a more dynamic chorus, and probably only something a studio session could deliver. I wanted the thing to feel like waking up from a gentle nightmare on a raft in a slow moving river into a paralyzing death by orgasm or something.
So our first stop on the recording tour was in LA at Matt Chamberlain’s studio. And again this song was at the forefront of my mind, not as a single really, but something I thought was the most evocative, a centerpiece if you will. Matt is a brilliant drummer, Randall a brilliant producer, what could go wrong? But I have a strong belief that an entire song is shaped by the sonic character of a snare drum. This, unfortunately, is modern music making and the snare is the fulcrum by which all of culture spins. So we tracked drums, I told Matt to go with the guts. And what he played was something so huge, so burly, and so sharp, that I immediately got tricked by its power. Now the song takes a new direction in my mind. Big mistake. I was already off course, but it’s something I’d agreed with.
The problem with a big snare drum in a verse is you leave nothing for a death by orgasm chorus. It was a tense, dreadful verse, with smoky, mutating Lynch guitars, only now with a big ol’ crack every two and four. So we sauntered up to Seattle to finish with other musicians. And because of that snare drum, we had to start adding competitive sonics; beefy guitar strums, gnarled synths, the whole thing. Maybe even a freakin’ horn. Problem is, the chorus was already built with subtle washes, and kind of complicated vocal melodies and harmonies. It’s propulsive, but not something that asked for the musical equivalent of Mankind falling from a sixteen-foot tall cage onto an announcers table. And that was when I knew something was really wrong. Now we’re chasing around bigness in a song that wanted to be creeping and seductive, but way smaller. Like a hot, but evil, fairy.
So the entire time during mixing I’m just wincing. Everything cool is getting washed away in large, stray sonic ideas. I protested but keep getting reassured that it’s fine. I’m telling you the outburst bubbling up in me about this mess would have destroyed the entire session right there, I was feeling very Klaus Kinski about it. But you get second guessing in the presence of maybe more experienced producers who you respect and admire. So I just shut the fuck up.
At the end of it, we added so much horseshit to that damned chorus, just to get it to keep up with a snare drum that was already leaving the song bereft of dynamics in the verses. Chasing around a Sasquatch when I had something menacingly delicate in the first half hour of the song’s life. So yeah, if it were possible to break the “skip” button on your music system of choice I would have done it every time this song was on deck.
YGR: Can you think of any instances where a sort of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ moment struck gold for you? Or one where perhaps your initial vision was switched up for something you liked more in the end?
DG: I’m usually tyrannical in a studio setting where other musicians are involved. John Baizley came into the Me Moan sessions completely hobbled by a terrible accident Baroness had in England. I mean, he wanted to do the session, but in the moments of tracking, my sympathies seemed to melt away and I worked him extremely hard. Consequently, I too suffered during those sessions from extremely high blood pressure. I went to a doctor in downtown Chicago complaining of dizziness and unusual fatigue and she mentioned being one systolic point away from the ER.
So by the time of the Carnation sessions I made a conscientious effort to tolerate just about everything. The result is a record I don’t listen to very often.
But to your second question, one song I love a lot that turned around completely was called “Won’t You Climb” on Me Moan. I tell you I grinded on that bastard for months trying to unlock what I insanely thought could be Glenn Campbell mixed with something off Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, mixed with “Steal My Sunshine” or some other 90’s Mixolydian slice of heaven. Anyway in this case persistence paid off by one single lift of a bass note going into the chorus. Song unlocked and under my nose the entire time.
It was only a matter of time before someone in Choncy decamped to New York City – you can’t play punk this swaggery without feeling compelled to try to make it in the Big Apple. Some of the more conservative members of the group remained in Cincinnati, where one can survive by working twelve hours a week at the Feel It record shop and snacking on buckeye nuts fresh from the tree, and thus Trademark was born (and recorded) in joint custody. Not that you can tell – these jokers sound tighter than ever, weaving their influences (punk, post-punk, egg-punk, garage-punk, hardcore-punk, not ska-punk (yet)) into a tangle you won’t want to escape. Imagine Parquet Courts going twice as fast, Uranium Club if they could grow facial hair, Le Shok if they never tried cocaine or the perfect Mother’s Day gift for the mom who only listens to Sweeping Promises, Plugz and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. These guys are subtly wacky in a modern way (mustaches, glasses, props and other aesthetic choices not entirely dissimilar to Oliver Tree) that can easily lead to solo-laptop hyper-pop projects, so I’m glad the four of them decided to be a band instead, their individual powers boosted in the form of a traditional rock band. If you love Choncy, let them go – if they manage to stay a band after driving across all of Ohio and Pennsylvania and back, it was meant to be. 
Beloved American indie-rocker John Dieterich (of Deerhoof, outspoken Spotify hatred and a million other creative and/or noble causes) makes friends everywhere he goes. This includes Phoenix, AZ, where he met fellow guitarist Michael Krassner and subsequently played together back in 2018. Their introduction led to a weekend-long recording sesh in Krassner’s studio, which led to the recordings I am about to describe to you, Bullish(ish). The a-side reveals loose, bantery guitar-improv, full of garbled half-riffs, off-kilter amp tricks and polite conversations in noise. When it teeters towards some scantily-clad form of the blues, I’m reminded of Tetuzi Akiyama’s improvisations, though the overall feel lingers closer to the stringy, sticky mess of Bill Nace’s solo guitar recordings and Max Nordile’s musical negations. The b-side offers an entirely different frame of mind, heavenly harmonic drones that rise, crest and decay with the grace of William Basinski on roller-skates. For a duo who just met, the b-side feels surprisingly vulnerable and personal, like a couple moving in together after only a handful of dates. I guess that’s what Dieterich does to you – you think your heart’s gone cold and then he shows up at your doorstep with a bouquet of tulips tucked under his guitar’s strings. 
Lots of artists are interested in the idea of building a world around their music, but in the case of Ecology: HomeStones, the music seems to be but one aspect of an already sprawling cosmos. Having garnered a massive online following from an ongoing series of uniquely peculiar video shorts (the kids watch them on the TikTok), I’d like to relate The Cruel Quick Reverse as the sonic extension of Ecology: HomeStones’ dark-web presence, but that might be confusing because I’m not referring to the parts of the internet that avoid Google’s indexing – I’m talking about an actual dark web, a crawlspace overrun with generations of arachnids, poorly lit and crammed with detritus. Many of those Ecology: HomeStones fans who come for the videos might be baffled by The Cruel Quick Reverse, but those of us with a penchant for gnarly home-brewed electronics will immediately connect. Picture Mat Brinkman’s Forcefield project (costumes included) given a modern blade-sharpening ala Vessel’s Punish, Honey. The serrated electro-rhythms unlock novel ways to pulsate madly, strobe with epileptic danger and trudge ahead on dying batteries. “Buddycrusher” is like Queens Of The Stone Age bum-rushing a New Blockaders performance; “Fear Of Objects” is Coil without the weekend-long bout of ketamine constipation. Compared to the more abstract, harsh-noise textures of previous Ecology: HomeStones musical releases, The Cruel Quick Reverse is practically pop, at least for those of us who find Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” as old-time cutesy as “Surfing Bird”. I’m personally too scared to ever watch an Ecology: HomeStones feature-length film if/when it arrives, so The Cruel Quick Reverse is the perfect solution.
Few albums touched me like Music For Saxofone & Bass Guitar, 2018’s emergent duo recording from Sams Wilkes and Gendel. It revealed hidden tunnels between conservatory jazz and weirdo new-wave post-punk, delivering the epiphany that not only could you combine elements from both, the results could be quite thrilling (but in a chill way). Since that time, Gendel has released about a metric ton of albums: all sorts of collaborations, traditional ideas, triple LPs, bizarre experiments… he’s been going for it. It’s great to see Gendel and Wilkes back together with a similarly-designed (if you wanna call it that) cover, but the results are decidedly whatever. Whereas that original collab paired curious melodies from bass and “saxofone” (both in composition and texture), Unrelated doesn’t seem to have the same level of big, cool ideas behind it. Loops linger in place, with a focus on synths and pads, and resolve without undue delay. File under chill-wave, if there’s still any room left for new records to be filed there, though the genre’s sense of esoteric wonder is absent. The ECM smoothness isn’t stark enough, the emotion is hard to place, and even the cheese isn’t cheesy enough. Gendel’s discography is full of truly incredible records, as well as records that kinda miss the mark for me; unfortunately, this one’s landing in the latter category.
Steven Warwick drafted some of the finest wackadoodle art-pop of the 2010s, first as Heatsick and then under his own name. (He also delivered the reportedly drunkest performance of all time at Philadelphia dive-bar Kungfu Necktie back then, which is neither here nor there.) Show me what you’ve done lately, I say to anyone of this (still ongoing but) post-Covid era, and he’s answered with Splash Of Milk. Gush features Warwick on vocals (and presumably some programming) alongside Iván Brito, whose Vanya project exudes a similarly over-the-top approach to electronic dance (question mark) music. If you told me Splash Of Milk was a new Heatsick record I wouldn’t think twice, as the music continues to gesticulate like an Optimo DJ set with the erudite humor that can only be unleashed by gay men in vibrantly-colored outfits. There’s certainly a “Walter van Beirendonck at Berghain” sensibility at play here, from the alarming cartoon cow on the cover to the commingling of camp, aloofness and hedonism, all with an effortlessly cool soundtrack. Warwick remains an excellent narrator, shouting over the post-punk breakbeats of “Over” like a voguing Sleaford Mods and channelling the kind of synth sleaze that Dark Entries has spent tens of thousands of dollars reissuing on “Naked In Netto”. I’m only smart enough to understand half of what’s happening here, and I’m perfectly satisfied – imagine what it could do for someone like you! 
Contrary to the plethora of record covers that showcase the violent, outrageous energy of hardcore-punk, I love when bands take a more honest approach. Look at the shadowy figure on the cover of Indikator B’s second self-titled EP… hands in pockets and shoulders hunched, he’s sandwiched between graveyard fence and prison fence, awaiting a bus that will never arrive. It really sets the mood for this Croatian hardcore band – their music rages with a post-war coldness, the scent of societal failure lingering in the air. “Ovdje, Baš Tu” is panicked and guarded, to be played with fingerless wool gloves and a moth-eaten scarf blocking the bottom half of your face, like Kalashnikov’s sole EP and Junior Achievement’s (likewise sole) LP. Unlike much of today’s hardcore-punk (even the really good stuff), these four songs don’t sound like the product of thorough studying, but rather a natural reaction to life’s pressures. The guitar is raw like The Faith, and vocalist Karlo (who also plays the guitar) knows when to throw in a melodic ahh-ahh-ahh (just once, halfway through “Zadnja Stanica”). At three minutes, “Ukopani” walks with a limp as it mourns some sort of tragedy. Indikator B are clawing their way out of the muck, even if muck is all that’s visible for miles around. Recommended!
The 1982 Maximumrocknroll compilation Not So Quiet On The Western Front wasn’t simply a formative record for my personal journey into underground punk, it was the record, played incessantly once I hooked up my parents’ old turntable a good thirteen years after it was released. Intensified Chaos kicked it off with the magic of a song also called “Intensified Chaos”, and while those fifty-five seconds are permanently etched into my memory, I now have five other tunes and a live set to enjoy in the form of That’s Not Freedom 1982. Good news: “Intensified Chaos” is featured not once but thrice here (the Not So Quiet version, mysteriously lacking the original sample, plus two live versions), and while the other songs are on par as far as sound quality and style, like many obscure punk reissues, it’s a release that best serves enthusiasts and completists, not dabblers, poseurs or cops. I personally can’t get enough of vocalist Rob Noxious’s phony British street-punk accent (he’s gotta be what, one of at least a thousand “Rob Noxious”es out there), and it was illuminating to hear his self-described boot-boy status (“Boot Boys”) and religious haranguing of the audience (“Romans I & II (Live)”). Even with a growing number of retrospective collections from this unruly stable of bands (that Maniax Lost Tapes collection remains the pinnacle), so many mysteries from the Not So Quiet roster remain – who will pry open the remaining vaults of Lennonburger, Bent Nails (pre-Mr. T Experience!) and Juvinel Justice?
From the ashes of West Bay hardcore outfit Healer comes Jailed, committed to holding down the strict gangsta integrity of Plutocracy and No Less. Healer’s nimble, blinked-and-missed approach to post-power-violence hardcore-grind is sanded down to an even sharper point as Jailed; while there are nine different tracks on this EP, I’d be surprised if the entire record breaks three minutes. In true West Bay fashion, song and dialogue samples bridge these microscopic hardcore blasts, almost all thematically linked to heavy drinking here. The songs themselves are two or three parts at best, epitomizing the short, fast and loud aesthetics that a zine dedicated to this particular scene once named itself after. It’s almost as if those Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! comps were the work of one focused band, completely content with writing songs that are shorter than the average professional bull ride. I’m not entirely sure who is in Jailed versus who was in Healer – it’s probable that Tony Molina and Frank Marchi (of Agents Of Satan and Plutocracy!) are/were in both – but this scene has always venerated the tightness of the crew over the popularity of a specific individual. We could learn a lot from them: the power of the tightly-knit collective and danked-out hardcore riffs. 
Jump Source throw it back to the cusp of the digital era with their full-length debut, when stuffing a compact disc with music was your best bet for getting your name out there. Fold has that turn-of-the-century dance-music feel of albums-as-events, where a single, lengthy release was purposely crafted to navigate all of the evening’s moods, from lightweight warm-ups to ecstatic release to post-rave comedowns. And they nail it! The Montreal duo’s nimble, pop-friendly techniques hit big here, calling to mind all of those indispensable Luomo albums (some of which still somehow haven’t been pressed on vinyl). Cool guests vocalists are all over this one: Helena Deland is a provocative diva on multiple tracks, POiSON GiRL FRiEND offers her uniquely narcoleptic charm on “Close”, and you’ve even got billy woods’s breathless flow on “Empty Bars” in true Galcher Lustwerk fashion. These eleven tracks bridge the gap between short-form pop nuggets and extended dance mixes, ready to engage today’s dopamine-damaged Instagram user-base as much as old-heads who fondly recall digging through bins of well-worn Kompakt, Force Tracks and Perlon twelve-inches (back when hamburgers cost a nickel and rent was pay-what-you-wish). If I blare “Fold” loud enough in the dark, I find myself transported to a pre-9/11 dance-floor… maybe it’s still the year 2000 in Canada?
Assumption is an indie post-punk record vividly, indisputably borne of Trump’s second term. Even the privileged are no longer able to smirk their way through things: the dark comedy of it all has simply turned dark, those hurt before are hurt worse, the rest of us newly hurt, and Landowner are painfully aware of these pitiful circumstances, seamlessly infusing it into their music. With nary a distortion- or fuzz-pedal in sight, the dual-guitared quintet set their fingers ablaze with simple-yet-maddeningly-cyclical patterns as vocalist Dan Shaw reads today’s internet back into our wearied faces. Right now, it’s unpleasant to dwell on, but if we someday come out of this on a happier, greener side, schoolteachers will look to “Expensive Rent”, “Assumption” and “Unboxing” to explain what American life in the 2020s was like to their engaged student body. When the songs are fast, they share the feel of RMFC (like a rollercoaster with the brake lines cut), and when they move a little slower I’m reminded of The Embarrassment and The Feelies. It’s the snark of Shellac with the acumen of Protomartyr that shines through consistently, and Landowner, uh, own it. The world really doesn’t need any more self-assured white guys telling it (hollering it) like it is, but until we somehow manage to learn more productive social skills, Landowner’s Assumption is a positive outcome.
Italian artist Antonio Tricoli has pursued a darkened path through noise, industrial and experimental territories for over a decade now. These travels have been more than just conceptual: in 2024, he underwent a six-week residency in Palestine (care of Radio Alhara), in what must have been a deeply emotional (and undoubtedly dangerous) engagement with traditional musicians from Bethlehem and Ramallah. Palestinian artists such as Ussama Abu Ali and Maya Al Khaldi contribute to Karakoz, an album that is not simply inspired by Palestine and its people – it couldn’t exist without it. Understanding this, Tricoli is more of an assembler than a composer here, blending traditional singing, percussion, the yarghul and the bouzuq (and archival recordings from the Palestinian Sound Archive) among his own understated synth warbles and humming textures. The similarities to works by Muslimgauze and Zoviet: France are overt, though it feels like Mai Mai Mai really has skin in the game, a grateful outsider who lived alongside and learned from this resilient, besieged population. The progenitors of industrial music have alleged that their shock tactics were in hopes of pulling back the curtains of social decorum and revealing the unflinching truths of the world. Some misguidedly interpreted that as infatuations with serial-killers, BDSM or even right-wing theories, but for Mai Mai Mai, it’s the mournful beauty of Karakoz. 
It’s crazy to me how people continue to hem and haw over supporting Morrissey in 2026 when Glenn Donaldson is calmly sitting right over here, absolutely not preaching xenophobia or right-wing nonsense. And removing the personal from the equation, Donaldson’s work as The Reds, Pinks & Purples is culminating into some quiet form of genius regardless of how you stack it, his charming, insightful, whip-smart lyrics central to the experience. The music has always seemed to arrive painlessly for Donaldson, quick sketches of silver-lined indie-pop to carry his words (ala The Cure, Another Sunny Day, Brighter, etc.), but Acknowledge Kindness feels ever so slightly more labored over, as though there might have been someone else in the room during the recording process. There are overdubs and distinctive leads, with various shimmering textures to pad out the sentimental moods while stepping out of the closed-door bedroom and into the fading sunset horizon. “Houses” could be his Goo Goo Dolls “Iris” – it has that same tender, catchy sway – but it never feels like Donaldson is toying with our emotions so much as bloodletting his own. He’s written an incredible number of songs in the last few years, and I’m glad that process took him to “Emo Band”, an appropriately stinging take on the reunion industrial complex: “I saw your emo band / keep it going if you can / another show, can you still pretend / to have feelings inside again”. You can scream and curse all you want in your songs; Donaldson’s droll delivery is responsible for some of the most brutal blows.
Might this be the first True Panther Sounds release that actually sounds like a true panther sound? Keyboardist Elori Saxl and woodwindist Henry Solomon have struck dusky, velvety gold with this collaborative album, comfortably situated within today’s neo-new-age jazz-ambient fallout zone but an exemplary offering at that. Saxl’s keys radiate warmth like the belly of a sleeping cat – just peep the restorative flutter of “Dream” and nestle in close. If Brian Eno was an electric vehicle, you’d want to hook him up to this track when his battery light starts flashing. These nine tracks follow their own paths, be they playful dance choreography, fog-sector levitations or jazz-in-dub, all with the high-gloss shine of modern pop production. Unhurried, outward-facing and opulent, Seeing Is Forgetting often feels like curtains pulled wide open after weeks of rain. Opener “Reverence” reminds me of Earthensea’s recent live performances (a lone saxophone beaming out all the stars of the galaxy); “Raindrops” feels attuned to Laurel Halo’s exotic-virtuoso landscapes. “A Thousand Steps” is the cosmic jazz-trance cousin of Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever” you might not have thought you needed… but I knew. I knew. 
I wish there was another way, but really, you just have to send all your money to Short Span. I know, it’s climbing up to like fifty bucks an album now, and it hurts, but in the end it’s only money, and you’ll have a stack of exceptionally-crafted electronic records to enjoy in perpetuity. With every detail smartly considered (right down to the artwork design), Short Span Cares™, so the ongoing partnership with talented and adventurous producer Yu Su makes perfect sense. This relatively succinct album builds off last year’s twelve-inch single – “Foundry” was the a-side of that one, and its encore appears here in the same party-pumping guise, the upbeat centerpiece of a collaboration-friendly album whose gorgeous still-life electronics generally maintain a lowkey demeanor. “Os Cionn” plays with light and texture in a way that almost feels like techno, and “Ripe Fruits” pulses through a number of ornate little rooms, but Foundry on the whole welcomes seated, motionless listening. “Sunless” (featuring Memotone) trips out on some Jon Hassell-esque new-age styles; the Seefeel-assisted “One Place After Another” lounges on the softer side of electronic shoegaze techniques before a dream-like spoken word borrows stage settings from The NeverEnding Story (1984, dir. Wolfgang Petersen). It’s peak-operational Yu Su: graceful, playful electronic music that sways like fields of tulips in colors you’ve never before seen. Remind yourself of this when you overdraft your account for the second time in a month. 
There are claims that electronic duo Zaliva-D hail from Beijing, but the slimy metallic residue that trails behind their music appears interplanetary in origin. I often seek out techno and industrial music that comes with an otherworldly sheen, but few aspects of Zaliva-D’s music are customary or routine. The pacing is ritualistically slow, their sounds merge the animalistic and the digital, and perhaps their most signature motif is this crazed, vocoder-like effect that simulates some big wet slug baby giving birth to goats, over and over again, the viscera all different neon shades of green and purple. Real body-horror electronics: the dank slurp of “长淫 Long Obscenity” spells it out quickly, whereas “不是歌谣 Inexistent Ballad” is Drexciya at quarter-speed, with some sort of parasitic nest lurking behind the walls. Amazingly, Zaliva-D have developed this sound for over a decade now, 好奇 Curiosity their most purposeful and direct statement yet, substituting some semblance of pop structures in place of the harsher tones of prior releases. That’s ostensibly a repeated verse happening on “蟒头果实 Boa-Head”, even if it sounds like an eel has wriggled down the vocalist’s esophagus prior to singing. For however weird I’m making 好奇 Curiosity out to be, trust me – it’s actually weirder. 
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