Arak James West Of Around LP (Ever/Never)
Moses Brown isn’t the only member of Institute living out his freaky fantasies on the side. Let’s add Arak James Avakian to the mix, whose lifelong participation within rowdy Texas punk rock has led him to this moment of whimsical introspection. Like a can of beans eaten over the fire, Arak James offers us the bare bones of cowboy music on West Of Around without dictating how they’re to be digested. These nine tracks flit between songs and vignettes, as likely to capture a tumbleweed caught on a barbed wire fence as the smoky ballad playing softly from a jukebox in the saloon across the road. It’s country music primed for the realization that the country is all gone, a real ghost-town sound that features both chirping crickets and burping frogs at different points. Make it through the second side and “Heaven Is Right Here” will soothe you with its Brian Protheroe-esque AOR smoothness, though you’ll need to traverse some desolation to get there. Arak James kind of feels like the light-hearted foil to King Dude’s demon preacher presentation here, or an Orville Peck you wouldn’t want to push down an open mineshaft, or the Black Heart Procession horse if it had its own solo project. Part jester, part prophet, Arak James bares his wounds and smiles wide as the whiskey stings them clean.

Eraser Operator! LP (Siltbreeze)
Eraser adopt the disconcerting guise of a corporate phone system on Operator!, their second full-length for the esteemed Siltbreeze label. They can try to pass themselves off as hollow smiling avatars all they want – once “Hahahaha” kicks in, with Pier Harrison’s extremely Ginn-like axe wielding, there’s no denying their delinquent edge. The Philly group is even more gritty and vaguely threatening this time around – lines like “if you were gonna fix it then it would have been fixed” and “for ten dollars I can pull my guts out like a string” poke out like liberty spikes, ready to stick you in the eye. It’s a sense of early art-punk menace that permeates, from an era when young punks were willingly risking their lives by walking across certain blocks on the way to the downtown club. As Juliette Rando works out some skeletally-funky rhythms on her drums, Eraser intermingle agitation and joy in a way that reminds me of the earliest punk-band-formation Chromatics records, a scrappy post-punk snarl powered by determination and self-reliance. It’s a sincere yet deranged album, like a love letter doubling as a bomb threat, and it moves fast – the title track outro sends us packing before the group had a chance to really break a sweat. Move over, Tim Carleton’s “Opus No. 1”, a new hold music icon has emerged.

Eroticism Effort LP (Hospital Productions)
Tara Connelly has accrued a host of projects in the noise / experimental / ambient realm with her husband, Mike Connelly (he of Wolf Eyes and Hair Police), with intriguingly colorful names like Yellow Gas Flames, Blue Snow Lights and Red Vein Blades. As Eroticism, Tara Connelly goes solo for one of power-electronics’ corniest areas of interest: deviant sexual behavior. Now I’m not here to kink shame, but Effort ironically doesn’t display very much effort at all. Over fluttering synth tones and light spritzes of static, Connelly layers samples of overtly sexual female moaning / speaking. That’s it. This conceit was already hackneyed by the early ’90s, when ponytail-and-goatee proto-incels were adorning their noise tapes with black and white Bettie Page portraits. I appreciate that Connelly surely has her own unique personal perspective on the matter, but Eroticism feels intentionally throw-away, like it was an idea she had in passing and put together (or should I say “whipped up”) in the ninety minutes between work and dinner. At a total vinyl pressing of sixty-nine (get it?) copies, perhaps Eroticism’s aspirations are appropriately low, but still, why not develop the concept into something compelling? Sexual perversions and aberrant practices deserve better representation in noise than they’ve been getting, though I can think of a few examples that rise above: Hospital labelmates Yellow Tears certainly made a splash (pun intended), and I hope there’s more to come from Rachel Slurr and Rosie Rae’s sensationally unsettling Candy Ricotta project.

ex_libris ex_libris 004 12″ (ex_libris)
Dave Huismans continues his sparkling run under the ex_libris moniker, freed from the baggage of genre expectation and the weight of his prior discographies as A Made Up Sound and 2562. You really can’t go wrong with any of the four numbered EPs he’s self-released as ex_libris since last year, but this newest iteration might be my favorite yet. (I think I said the same thing about 003 when it arrived, but what can I say, ex_libris’s power only continues to increase.) The three tracks here feel like they were borne of the same litter, bearing similar sonic trademarks yet with personalities all their own. “#12 (kinetic sculpture)” hints at its title through oddly textural percussive elements, as if Huismans had a showroom of Harry Bertoia’s tonal sculptures to pluck and thwack. “#11 (mirage)” catches on a potent loop, with loose metallic chimes that eventually serve as the foundation for a smattering of hypnotic hand percussion. “#35 (all over)” halves time and then doubles it up – it’s the dankest of the lot, a peaceful and unhurried excursion with deep percussive enthusiasm. It’s a standout EP because the grooves are all impeccable, brimming over with the communal joy of house music, but the sounds themselves are musty, foreign, and glitchy. Akin to Andy Stott’s “knackered house” approach but juiced up for the party – or in my case, the highlight of my weeknight dishwashing.

Eyes And Flys A Drowning Dog LP (Record Beach)
After ten EPs and now two full-lengths, Eyes And Flys, the Buffalo-raised, Long Beach-residing recording project turned live band, still doesn’t seem to know exactly which flavor of underground rock they prefer. So they try ’em all! The commonality that links Eyes And Flys songs remains a guitar tone so utterly, shockingly blown out, as if the songs were recorded from one tiny microphone taped to the ripped cone of a particularly haggard Marshall combo. From there, bandleader Patrick Shanahan runs through a variety of ideas befitting such a disrespectful tone. I’m hearing similarities to Bleach-era Nirvana, Ty Segall, Ohsees, and Sic Alps, as Eyes And Flys traverse grungy, folk-psych-y and power-rockin’ topographies. My favorite cut on the album might actually be their cover of Nick Drake’s “Know”, its familiar, tenderly tip-toeing melody bursting with Gatorade-colored neons, resembling the sidewalk scene where a car’s back window was recently broken into. It reminds me of King Blood’s interpretations of Guns N’ Roses songs (which I myself released on vinyl thirteen years ago), a familiar musical sentiment blasted to smithereens. Would love to hear more of this – can we get some Fairport Convention and Byrds songs rinsed through Eyes And Flys’ sulphuric treatment plant?

Invertebrates Accosted 7″ (Beach Impediment)
Richmond currently boasts two of North America’s greatest hardcore bands, Invertebrates and Public Acid. They recently toured together, and while I wish I snagged the tour edition split LP of their new EPs, those respective EPs have now hit their predestined seven-inch forms for the frothy masses. Invertebrates are the more American sounding of the two bands, and they do so comprehensively. You can tell these guys are absolute hardcore junkies, doctoral students of the genre who can surely name that tune by NOTA, The Fartz, Rebel Truth and The Worst with three notes or less. Invertebrates’ translate that hardcore intelligence into their songs; these are more like frenzied medleys, in which so many changes and parts are squeezed into a fast forty seconds. Impressively, they do so without losing that crucial sense of immediacy – they might cram six different parts in a single hardcore rager, but it never feels mathy or unnatural. In fact, they even generate some powerful hooks, like on “Derelict Destiny”, a Poison Idea-esque sing-along in celebration of their future’s dwindling options. If anything, Accosted is almost too perfect, like a bodybuilder with an uncanny lack of body fat, but what kind of a complaint is that? Sorry, Invertebrates, maybe try sucking a little next time!

Peter Jefferies The Day They Let You Out Is The Day They Might Not Let You Come Back LP (Grapefruit)
With the recent passing of Patrick Stewart (I apologize if this humble music blog is somehow the way you’re finding out) and this new Peter Jefferies album on constant rotation, I find myself comparing the two. Is Peter Jefferies the Patrick Stewart of New Zealand indie-rock? Lauded by peers and fans alike, a rich history of collaborative efforts with a wide range of close relatives and obscure weirdos, a timelessly cool style, a reverence for classical tradition while casually subverting it, seminal works delivered with quiet humility across many decades… it’s not too late to start referring to him as Sir Peter Jefferies, the first of the New Zealand knighthood. The Day They Let You Out is his first solo studio album since 2001, but you wouldn’t know it by listening – all the hallmarks of Jefferies’ tenderly artful sound remain in the same intriguing orientation as they did back in 1983. I want to say that Jefferies sounds particularly world weary here, wisened and sharp as a tack in his senior state, but he’s always come across this way, a sort of omniscient force seeking beauty in the darkest corners of quiet domesticity. With a patchwork crew of musicians at his stead, these songs stumble and creak with divinity, highlighting piano, voice, and acoustic and electric guitars with new catalog highlights like “Draw It By Hand” and “Can’t Fly”. Eleven lovely new songs, harvested from that same spring of timeless song craft to which Jefferies has maintained exclusive access.

Kilynn Lunsford I Woke Up In The Body Of Peter Pan With A Pinocchio Nose LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
Kilynn Lunsford has been ransacking stage and airwaves alike since stepping out solo a few years back; this new trove from Minimum Table Stacks is a reputable document of such activities. These twelve tracks are collected from two different WFMU sessions (finally, Mona Dehghan’s voice pressed to wax!), a couple live gig recordings, and a session for something called Lemon TV. I’m already a big fan of Lunsford and her two studio albums, and while the material here is largely drawn from both – eight from Promiscuous Genes, three from Custodians, and one song I don’t recognize – I Woke Up In The Body Of Peter Pan offers a feral, fleshy perspective. Lunsford and her three bandmates cut straight to the point on these live recordings, which push funky post-punk grooves through a drugged-out haunted house, full of unsafely-wired strobes and fog machines that can’t be turned off. Bass and keys are forefront in these various mixes, with Lunsford’s vocal leadership falling somewhere between Johanna Went and an undead carnival barker. She’s always managed to strike the perfect balance of kooky and menace in her music – when we dance along to “3 Babies Make 10”, what are we endorsing, exactly? – and these recordings showcase that skill nicely. It’s a timely refresher for pre-existing fans and a worthwhile entry point for newcomers.

Pearson Sound & Marie Davidson Heat 12″ (Pearson Sound)
Pearson Sound and Marie Davidson is a wild electronic combo on par with Donato Dozzy and Batu: two distinctive, dissimilar forces brought together for the thrill of it. We only get one track out of Pearson Sound and Marie Davidson (for now, that is), but it’s a seductive weapon worthy of any EBM assassin’s bag. I’m not sure if Davidson contributed more than just her increasingly-iconic voice to its creation, but the track itself falls much closer to her downtempo, less-is-more production style than the limber and acrobatic “bass music” techniques of Pearson Sound. Works for me! “Heat” is geared for close physical contact in slow motion, creeping with the tuff n’ steady momentum of my favorite Alek Lee track, “Sfarot”. This vinyl pressing provides an extended mix of the three-minute original, so on the chance you’re focusing on your gyrations too intently and miss Davidson’s lyrics, the extended mix ensures you’ll catch “shirtless bodies / bending waistline” and “you are the fire / you are the heat / smell of strangers” as they leave Davidson’s lips. Autumns raises the pulse and ups the percussive ante on their b-side remix, offering a more abrasive form of this fine nocturnal liaison. Michael Mann currently has Heat 2 in the works; let’s hope for the same from Pearson Sound and Marie Davidson.

PISS you made me / skin on linen LP (Sub Pop)
Music as art, music as entertainment, music as, uh, “the soundtrack to our lives”… these are the customary ways in which we are familiar. The music of PISS, however, fits none of these categories. Vocalist Taylor Zantingh takes the opportunity to self-exorcise her most personal demons via this Vancouver art-punk screamo outfit, baring her rawest emotional scars while her three bandmates slam through a hybrid of lumbering Chat Pile-esque noise-rock anti-grooves, violent hardcore-punk seizures and jarring spoken-word noise collages. Zantingh dumps some trauma, no doubt, but she spends more of her time interrogating the decision to do so, questioning her audience for the ways in which they’re complicit, and refusing to fall into any sort of simplistic, (un)comfortable narrative. In that regard, I find it tricky to process – she’s obviously performing, surely aware she was in a studio setting with Colin Stewart in the other room at the mixing board, but her violent whimpering, guttural screams and desperate muttering seem to transcend “performance”, closer to an actual gunshot wound than a comic book drawing of one. She’s in full control even when she’s out of control, which renders the hookless, chorus-avoidant thrashings of PISS secondary to her candid, gut-wrenching exposition. The chaotic run, stumble, and fall of “there was a door” is almost a relief compared to the sincerely distressing vocal performance of “blocking a scene you can’t remember”, or “manon on the trial of gisèle pelicot”, one of the handful of tracks that prominently sample writers and theorists renowned for their critiques of gender-based violence. The truth is an imperative starting point for any sort of progress, and PISS are willing to take us to it no matter what it costs them.

Sockeye Barf On A Globe – 7 Inch Vinyl Collection 1989 – 1998 LP (Almost Ready)
An older, weirder friend once regaled me with a tale of seeing Sockeye live in the ’90s: “They played in an outdoor pavilion in the middle of a park to like six people, and their singer ate a seven-foot-long Slim Jim during their set.” Sockeye weren’t total dork pretenders – they lived and breathed the total dork lifestyle, as evidenced by the library of songs they’ve left to posterity (and my personal favorite t-shirt design: a pair of tighty-whities crucified on a cross). In possibly the last generation of outcast weirdos who didn’t have the option of hanging out online to find their people, Sockeye banded together against the jocks and cool kids, gleefully doubling down on total loserdom in an all-important effort to crack each other up. Their primary weapon? The most ridiculous lyrical songwriting ever put to tape. If you’re not already familiar with “Tittyfuck A Coalminer”, “Your Boob’s Poop”, and my personal favorite, “Buttfuck Your Own Face” (which deserves a permanent entrance vestibule showcase in the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame), this new vinyl issue of Sockeye’s singles collection (previously released in comprehensive CD form back in 1999) is key. I’m not going to spoil it and tell you where they pour the mushroom gravy in “Mushroom Gravy”, but I can’t resist reprinting the lyrics to “Chant” in their entirety: “Funeral’s over / let’s eat!”. There’s bad taste, there’s terrible taste, and then there’s Sockeye, bless their hearts.

Soup Activists Where The Rubbish Goes LP (Feel It)
Much like Jason Alexander, Martin Meyer’s most lauded role eventually grew into a creative burden. Many still know Meyer as the titular Lumpy of Lumpy & The Dumpers (and Lumpy Records), but to his credit, he’s pursued reinvention over the safety of the familiar, even if he managed to rub some folks the wrong way with his anti-egg punk essay (which I will chalk up to good intentions from all involved parties). Soup Activists is his main squeeze now, and he’s done more than swap out the slime pit for a bubbling cauldron of French onion. Punk in spirit, Soup Activists are an untamed indie-pop act, proving that even feel-good, major-chord melodies can be used to creep out the squares. I enjoyed the project’s 2024 debut, and I’m enjoying Where The Rubbish Goes even more – the songs are more confident in their unabashed strangeness, covering more stylistic ground without sacrificing aesthetic cohesion. The influence of The Clean looms large, but there are also moments that call to mind The Vaselines’ sweet perversions, Doc Dart’s Patricia, and Jonathan Richman’s goofball-on-campus act, all with the plucky spirit of your favorite nobody-band buried deep on a Hyped To Death CD-R, and the skin-crawling aftershock of experiencing King Missile as a teen. The childlike imagery is made unsettling by the lyrics (“Chateau Kids” should send a shiver down your spine), but the mix of innocence and terror, pop and agitation, seems to be the point.

Waakya Standing On Smoke 2xLP (Hospital Hill)
The production quality of Hospital Hill releases is exquisite: premium tip-on gatefold sleeves with consistent design and bold artwork in the spirit of CTI. They look like they should be for archival, in-library use only, but luckily for us, we can take this entrancing debut from Waakya home with us. It’s a cross-cultural collab that deserves such an elegant presentation. “Ceremonial songman” Daniel Wilfred and yidaki player David Wilfred are Yolŋu people from Australia’s far north, and they’re joined by experimental turntablist Martin Ng, modular synthesist Ben Carey, and sound engineer (and Hospital Hill label-head) Matt McGuigan, fellow Australians all. The quintet’s collective skills are vast and varied, their music dissolving the boundaries between distant pasts and foreseeable futures. Daniel Wilfred’s transcendental vocalization is the planet that the other players orbit, their electronics fluttering like mechanical dragonflies, humming like Fennesz on the moon, and adding tasteful earth-toned shades to Wilfred’s raw canvas. For as many players as there are, they display an admirable level of restraint – across the eleven tracks, there’s never a moment that feels overstuffed or hectic. The reflective space of the first LP is great, but the side C tracks might be my favorite: think of Sun Ra’s cosmic spoken-word meditations, had his spaceship first touched ground in the land down under.

White Gourd (To Walk In) Justice (Calls For) Strength LP (Feeding Tube)
White Gourd season is upon us, that ginger-spiced time of year in which mystical avant-folk music is a fitting soundtrack to our carefully-arranged squash harvest decor. Suzanne Belle Stone is White Gourd’s sole channeler, a Belfast, ME resident who clearly lives her art, conjuring her devotional occult strategies through live-looped acoustic instruments. As her open-ended, time-bending songs slowly accrue complexity, I envision Stone kneeling on the floor with a crescent of gear before her, and lo and behold that’s precisely how she’s pictured on the back cover of this album. Maybe I’m a little mystical, too! It’s hard not to recall the glory of Fursaxa in her heady New Weird America days (daze) as this album spins. White Gourd displays a steady patience and intensity verging on the paranormal in Fursaxan ways, though her music incorporates a wider range of instrumentation, less solipsistic and more world-building. For one thing, her bubbling cauldron is full of saxophone, which generally behaves like minimalist composition, not jazz (nor skronk); other tracks will focus on vocal patterns or ceremonial drumming, or eye of newt and Adder’s fork. The amorphousness of White Gourd’s performance ensures all channels remain accessible, as though the watercolor edges of her songs are forever bleeding out onto each other.

Yuasa-Exide Warm Up The Citizens Band – A Blip History Of: LP (Tumble Mat Tapes)
If you can’t appreciate the timeless love affair between a DIY tape label and the local weirdo for whom they’ve scraped together a vinyl release, it’s time for your intervention. Yuasa-Exide is primarily the work of Doug Busson, one of those types who bursts with endless reams of home-recorded songs in the grand tradition of Daniel Johnston and Jandek. Warm Up The Citizens Band comes with all the hallmarks of vinyl production as a personal endeavor: locally screen-printed, hand-assembled covers; smudgy stamps and homemade stickers on every available surface; recycled “eco-mix” vinyl a color so ugly only its mother could love it. Tumble Mat’s tender care extends to the music as well, as the label lovingly sifted through stacks of Yuasa-Exide’s tapes, collecting their favorite songs for this introduction to a relatively larger audience. With musical assistance from a small group of friends, Busson utilizes his recording technology as a phantom member of the band, ensuring that the various instruments used to create his scrappy indie-pop are caked in lo-fi hiss and organic distortion. I’m reminded a hell of a lot of Psychedelic Horseshit, particularly in Busson’s bedheaded delivery of pop hooks (maybe he uses a cardboard box as a kick-drum too!), and the sense that Pavement and the Flying Nun label may have played a role in his particular artistic journey, though who’s to really say which particular outsider singer-songwriter showed him that noisy bedroom pop was a viable artistic pursuit. Could’ve been Rose Melberg… could’ve been Weird Al!

When unfortunate word came down that Pharmakon had to drop off the weekday noise gig two days prior, I was struck by a bold idea. What if I still went to the show anyway?? I’ve somehow failed to catch Pharmakon live after all these years, but it’s nice to have goals to strive towards, and I was overdue for an evening of heavy noise abuse regardless. With an open mind towards homeopathic medicine, the proposition of a sonic colonic was particularly appealing this evening, as the sustained barometric pressure of the late summer had left our corporeal forms demoralized and weary.

I met up with a fellow noise enthusiast – let’s say their name might rhyme with “Kill Face” – whose perspective I was eager to tap into, being woefully unfamiliar with the evening’s remaining performers. Through our pre-show conversation, I gleaned that opener Patrick Gallagher’s participation goes beyond performance – he’s one of those crucial behind-the-scenes guys who make things happen in a scene that has more than its share of unstable and unreliable personalities. He booked a show for the troublingly handsome Philly-via-Providence noise quartet Pool a few years ago that I really enjoyed, and with his own table arrangement of laptop, mixer and a spaghetti buffet of cords, I found his sounds to be the evening’s most engaging. Presenting like an orientation-fresh Ice Road Trucker in camo ballcap and collared shirt, Gallagher deftly pulled a variety of organic / inorganic confusion out of his laptop. Picture Aaron Dilloway painting with Tod Dockstader’s colors. Gallagher’s approach was patient yet persistent; he cycled textures in and out, favoring bewildering sounds over oppressive frequencies. I have no clue what he was actually doing, of course, and as my mind wandered to thoughts of what it’d be like if it became the norm to project the laptop screens of the live performances that utilized them, I realized that I actually prefer things the way they already are. I don’t think I’d want the advance notice that a DAW screen provides, and would rather be surprised by an abrupt cut or creeping tones entering the mix, especially if the sounds and textures are as freaky as Gallagher’s.

Up next was $5000 – an amusing moniker befitting an amusing performance. It’s the name that Zeno Ben-Amotz has been using for his solo work, though you might recognize his (quite recognizable) name from the amorphous Crazy Doberman ensemble. (This reminds me: I saw another Crazy Doberman alum, Drew Davis, perform a few weeks ago. His set, wherein he picked up various blow-able objects and blew them sequentially for about ten minutes, further enhanced my appreciation of what a weird ass anarchist-democracy that band must’ve been.) Ben-Amotz spent about as much time getting two little flying drones (physical drones, like ones sold at Best Buy or Wal-Mart) in working order as he did “playing” them, which loosened up the room’s atmosphere nicely. We were all rooting for him, particularly after one of his drones struck a PA speaker and tumbled to the ground with a jolt. Such was the nature of this performance: Ben-Amotz mic’d up two frisbee-sized drones, controlled the unwavering pitch of their buzzing engines through a mixer, and did his best to make sure they didn’t break. As a sonic experience, it wasn’t much, but as a performance, it was a delight. I personally find the concept of drones to be viscerally unpleasant, which was surely part of the point. Their imposing, amplified buzz had me full-body bristling, a timely reminder that we walk among people who actually like this sort of technology, delivered with the wink of the obvious “drone” pun, a dad-joke groaner to ensure no one was taking themselves too seriously. A simple but effective trick – let’s hope his next performance involves Flock cameras and a Bart Simpson slingshot.

With drones powered off and fully secured, Jacob Winans assumed the center-stage table position in short order. He’s bounced around for gigs or temporary residence in noise-friendly enclaves like Western Mass, Brooklyn, and Japan, and faced the agreeable situation of a loosened-up noise crowd eager to receive his harsh abstractions. It was the first set of the night to really hone in on those painful higher frequencies, which he delivered in layers: sharp-snapping glitches; the missing tones of a tinnitus-riddled eardrum; ominous builds that cut to silence at the slap of a button. Like Gallagher, Winans opted for a seated position, but unlike Gallagher’s air traffic controller poise, Winans drifted into spells of thrusting, physically compelled by his cacophonous mix of analog and digital deconstructions. I was particularly compelled when intangible patterns emerged, with the unquantized feel of a knee nervously tapping or steam pinging through old pipes. If I came out to the gig hoping someone might drill a hole to connect the empty space between my ears, Winans said hold my beer.

It was with a conflicting mix of sonic fatigue and weeknight-out merriment that I met Relay For Death. The duo of identical twin sisters Rachal and Roxann Spikula boasted the most decorated discography of the evening, having recorded for lauded scene lynchpins like Hanson, Helen Scarsdale Agency, and even RRR. Sporting camo trucker caps that might’ve come from the same country rest stop where Gallagher got his, the sisters divided their roles evenly, one operating a wooden box with metal accoutrements, the other handling the knob-twisting and level-adjusting. They delivered a punishing mid-range, winning the unspoken loudness competition that takes place at every noise show (with the exception of the noise shows with unspoken competitions to see who can be the quietest). Towers of noise crumbled over each other, tectonic plates crackling and snapping in sustained motion. The jet-engine blast led Winans and Gallagher to high-five each other at one point, front and center on the floor for Relay For Death, erupting with the goodwill seen in Van Halen fans when the band finally kicks into “Hot For Teacher”. Chalk it up to Relay For Death being the fourth consecutive noise act of the evening, but their set struck me as the least engaging – a harsh, unrelenting tumult that never aspired to be anything but. Appealing, but in a way that countless other noise acts are appealing. Maybe that’s just me, though: the crowd, consisting far more of friends and social acquaintances than segregated “fans”, seemed quite pleased by what they were witnessing. In such a community-driven, underground genre, it’s sometimes difficult to discern what the audience is revering most: the music, or the cult of personality that surrounds its maker. I suppose I could solve this problem by choosing to only listen to music made by repellent friendless loners, but where’s the fun in that?

Thoroughly cleansed by the would-be Pharmakon openers, I stepped outside to discover that the humidity had broken in the form of a massive storm during the show. Blacktop puddles and downed branches offered evidence of the sky’s violent eruption. It would’ve been a fitting backdrop for the show if the small club venue, Nikki Lopez, had any windows in its second-floor performance space. I found out the next day that another act followed Relay For Death to headline the gig: Housefire. The North Carolinian has a record advertised as “natriarchal psy-op trance”, and while I’m sad I missed it, there’s always next time. Maybe with Pharmakon?