Sunday, March 17, 2024

Album Review: Nervus - The Evil One


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 17: Red*

There is a funny and frustratingly perennial discourse as to whether or not "rock" is dead. Granted, it's not as easy for rock bands to reach the level of success that once appeared plausibly attainable by even mediocre talents, due to a variety of factors, including media consolidation, changes in distribution, advances in technology, and plain old shifts in public taste, but the fact remains that the as much talent exists today to craft and perform fun and engaging four-on-the-floor bangers as there has been. Case in point: the band Nervus, whose 2022 album The Evil One is on par with the outpoint of any alternative rock band from the golden days of the '80s through the '90s. While their named influences run the gambit from rappers like Joey Bada$$ to crust kings Crass, in execution, their performance embodies an infectiously catchy merger of strummy folk punk and consciously melodious and mature indie rock in the vein of XTC or Manic Street Preachers- sort of like a version of the Hold Steady that really understands and mirrors the endlessly enduring popular appeal of a band like Pulp. Their album, The Evil One, might be named for the pejoratives projected on the group for their specific queer identities and orientations, but the truth is that if you believe in rock 'n roll, Nervus is your consummate ally, champion, and confidant. 

Feel good with Get Better Records.


* March is the Spring Colors Challenge, where I write an album review every day of the month inspired by a different color. Today's color, red, inspired my review of Nervus's The Evil One because of the warm, sanguine vibe it produces in the deep reaches of my person, kind of like merlot poured directly into my soul... also the cover of the album is red, so there you go.  

Album Review: Petra Hermanova - In Death​​​’​​​s Eyes


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 16: Liquid Lavender*

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "Your Body is a Temple." It's said so often and in so many different contexts that the expression has essentially lost all meaning. Like, does it just mean that you're not supposed to get a tattoo or else you'll upset your mother, or rather that you're supposed to be open for visitation at regular hours on evenings and weekends? It's unclear how far we can stretch the metaphor while maintaining credulity, but something like the latter is the inspiration for Petra Hermanova first solo record under her own name, In Death's Eyes. Ascending through the conference of her famed autoharp and a breathtaking bellow of a church organ, she makes her body and voices a sight through which to recognize and reconcile one's self with grief, loss, dying, and redemption. Fully exposing herself through the expression of religious hymns, mountain folk, and droning swaths of feedback, which are part doom metal rumble and part wordless psalm, she makes flesh a dream of transcendence beyond the anguish of the many slow deaths that we suffer before the final extinguishment. She gives herself over to the listener in a kind of eucharist, healing with purpose through the shaking loose of fear and the release of the frozen shrowd that weighs down the soul with the debt of regrets and a pride that foils our attempts to accept the potential for dispensation. The album ends with a bell tolling, and I ask you, for whom does it ring if not the imp that lives inside you, the one which turns the vice of self-spiting anger, a petty creature who can be dislodged from his perch through the bodily vibrations of song and pervasive quiver of sound, affirmations which give succor to the soul and confirm that you are blessed with both the passion and the strength to go on living. 


* March is the Spring Colors Challenge, where I am writing a new album review each day inspired by a different color. Today's color, liquid lavender, had me hunting for a liturgical sounding record which I thankfully found in Petra Hermanova's LP. 

Friday, March 15, 2024

Album Review: Conjunto Primitivo - Morir y Renacer


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 15: Pattens Blue*

It feels odd saying this about an album that is only two years old, but Morir y Renacer really feels like a record of its time, a capsule of styles and dissident exposition that were seemingly all-consuming at the time they were recorded but now represent a distant memory sprouting in a spoiled Eden. For whatever reason, there were a lot of groups combining cumbia and post-punk in very dark and interesting ways at the outset of this decade- it was just part of the zeitgeist for whatever reason, and Conjunto Primitivo gave us probably one of the most haunting and compelling examples to speculate up through the midwest's club scene. Released as the final album from now-defunct experimental dance label Chicago Research (who I interviewed just as they were winding down), this fascinating endeavor has the esoteric magnificence of a carnivorous flower, watered in quicksilver, which only blooms in under the gaze of a full moon. Ana Belén García-Higgins plaintively affected and chillingly canorous voice feels like it is reaching up from the still waters of an ancient cenote to gently grasp you by the throat and pull you over the rim of her pitted prison in order to drag you into the watery depths of the underworld. Her partner in this fearsome ritual is Cesar Robles Santacruz, whose electronic arrangments, are a practiced display of disquieting restraint, seemingly designed to slowly massage an unnatural life back into the dead, provoking them to dance in thrilling jubilee for as long as their rotten limbs will carry the rhythmic jolts of their tattered, willowy carcasses. Minimalist in approach and maximalist in impact, Morir y Renacer is a freeze frame, a lateral siloing of sound and spiritual conditioning that rests on a moment of teetering tension, a suspended gesture implying an impending collapse, lingering in a barren eternity before tumbling into the abyss.  



* In March I am writing an album review every day inspired by a different color. Today's color is pattens blue, a color that I associate with fading memories and the chattering ghosts of past lives. 

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Album Review: Born Days - My Little Dark


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 14: Blue*

In the cold, damp, dead of night, a voice can be heard. A disembodied vapor that speaks in a spectral cadence of legendary galleries of desire and sweet despair that spread out below the city like the roots of a great, invigorated forest. Shifting to suit the wishes of its inhabitants, it is like a nest of tranquil vipers whose gullets unfurl into dens of unknown pleasures. This fay voice and the spirit that commands it is known as Born Days, or as she is often referred to during the daylight hours, Melissa Harris. The debut LP from this outré, gothic-priestess, is titled, My Little Dark, a sonic atlas that guides the listener through a colorfully penetrating passage of serenely gothic ambiance, downcast dance beats, and severely contoured, dreamwave textures. A secret garden of escape, a deliberate space of disappearance, where one may decamp from the world they are forced to inhabit, and break through to the one where they were meant to belong. A warrant to walk amongst the mists of a dark deliverance like a sovereign of a lost kingdom, tasting in this protective shrowd of shadows, the ambrosia of her former eminence. 


* In March, I am endeavoring to write a fresh album review every day inspired by a different color. Today's color, blue, inspired my review of Born Day's debut because blue is often associated with monarchies, and the album gave me the sense of a beautiful, dethroned princess wandering a dangerous, mystical land. 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Album Review: Ossuarium - Living Tomb


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 13: Nordic*

Living Tomb is a germane as titles come for the last testament of a deceased death metal band. Ironically, their final album was also their first. The group sprung to life in 2016, gnashed and gnawed their way into the hearts of thousands of die-hard heavy metal slaves before ascending into the void above, leaving only their iniquitous incantations as proof they had ever walked this earth in company with the shambles masses. Their legacy is a laceration that carves deep into the cleft of this mortal coil. Living Tomb is a sprawling monolith that stretches towards the sun like a great tree, seeking to pierce the sun with its spiraling branches, a rogue sentinal with bark-like shark skin, and boiling pitch for sap. Their etiolated aura is a pale doorway into infinity, locked behind a cracked mirror through which you can see the futility of your empty life telescoping in a dismal pattern behind you, rippling with a sickening splash like the waters of a tainted well. Blessed with a sour sense of callous mercy, Living Tomb has been biding its time, waiting to bestow its creator's parting gift to you so that you may find your place in the pale waxen shoals of oblivion. 

You could find cheaper fare than 20 Buck Spin, but I wouldn't recommend it?

* Every day I am writing a fresh album review inspired by a different color and will continue to do so for the entire month of March (don't try to stop me!) Today's color nordic is an unnaturally dark and cool shade of blue, a hue that seemed to fit the feel of a haunted tomb as snuggly as an undead fist in a rusted gauntlet. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Album Review: Tekla Peterson - Heart Press


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 12: Gossip*

Taralie Peterson is releasing another album as Tekla Peterson this month, so it's the perfect time to check out her debut with the project, 2022's Heart Press. The minimally composed but imposing pop album is a kind of break-up album with the world. Its new-wave-inspired bubble-bark rhythms, hypnotically star-scared tufts of synth, and garishly majestic melodies express a pure derivation of emotion that recoils and withers from the glare of reality like a thin wax sheet from a flame. A symbolic embryonic reversal produced by a shock of denial in the face of perceived rejection before the prick of judgment can land a bite. Turning one's psyche into a bath into which they may scrub themselves of the pretense of socially necessary reciprocity in order to shield an aching heart. A galvanizing listen that rides the suffering of a jilted heart as a platform by which one may fully submerge oneself in the death drive's tar-pool. Like being boiled alive on the dance floor in your own sweat. A club mix for the eternally, determinedly alone. 

Find your true path with Geographic North.


* Every day in March I am writing a review for a different album inspired by a color. Today's color gossip is suitably sickly in complexion, a flawless match for an album that rejects all of humanity in order to nurse it's wounded pride. 

Monday, March 11, 2024

Album Review: Oren Ambarchi - Shebang


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 11: Raw Umber*

Oren Ambarchi's music, like most things I enjoy, is something that I came across totally by accident. In my usual scrounging for curious, off-color stuff, he kept coming up... whether trying to get better acquainted with artists like Jim O'Rouke or perusing lists of recommended experimental albums, he was a recurring cast member. It wasn't until 2022's Ghosted that I finally became familiar with his sound, and again, not because I intended to, but because I was looking up Andreas Werliin, for some now lost to time, and happened upon the album which he had a hand in bringing to life. Like most things I've discovered by accident, I was actually very intimidated by his work once I started to come to terms with how different it was from what else I'd previously heard, and I became unsure that I understood it properly enough to comment on it. I've been listening to his Shebang record on and off since it was released two years ago, but I never really had the nerve to sketch out a tangible perspective on it... that is, until I looked up his Wikipedia page and saw his quote about learning the guitar. Apparently, one of Oren's primary instruments is not something he was ever formally trained in; one simply caught his eye one day, and he decided to start hitting it with drumsticks. The part of the quote that really sticks with me is this: "I never wanted to learn to play it properly, it was an object as much as an instrument." Wow... that hits me like a lightning bolt. It resonates with me because that's more or less how I blog as well. I have no credentials and I have no desire for them either. I simply find things that interest me and play with them to see if they have any potential; if it stirs loose an idea that I think is intriguing, I'll write about it- but I never want what I say to be definitive or reduce the potential of my object of examination to a vulgar basket of commodifiable conclusions. I write to try and give form to an experience, and I want your encounter with my writing to inspire you to form your own experiences the way that I have. As I said, Shebang is a record I've been holding onto for a couple of years now, but I've finally decided to say something about it because it occurred to me that I will never fully unravel its mysteries and that I really don't think I want to. It's inexhaustible, and so am I. It takes me to a different place every time I listen to it, Oren's dancing guitar chords are like variegated escalator steps below my feet, rising to match my steps as I am lifted onto yet another shifting, perceptual vista. I'm breathing in its low-key voltaic verve and discharging a flurry of fireflies. It tastes like marshmallows with the zest of an orange peel. It paints my lips purple and my eyelashes red, like I'm getting dressed for Mardi Gras, like I'm getting ready to kiss the moon good night. It makes me want to witness the changing of the celestial guards like a rooster on a telephone wire. Oren plays jazz in the kind of way that a drop of dew sliding from leaf to leaf down the length of a tree could be said to capture the spirit of jazz, or the way a spider building a web between two adjacent crags 10 meters above the crash of ocean spray against a bluff could be called a composer of a certain fashion. The fragile balance and rhythm of life's inextinguishable motion is the rail of his orbit, the cultivation of a sort of peace you find in freefall without any expectation of touching the ground again. It's not the whole of life's gran exhibition, but hopefully, it's enough to put some wind in your sails. 

Inhale, exhale; Drag City.


* In March I am writing an album review for every day of the month inspired by a different color. Today's color raw umber strikes me as a hue of clay. How this connects with Oren Ambarchi's Shebang, is mostly due to the album cover. See, if you were to combine many of the colors in that delicious-looking slice of cake in the right proportions, you'd get a very earthy-looking concoction. And since different color stripes are often used in combination to indicate the diversity of humanity, and in combining them, you get clay, I thought this was a nice little throughline that invokes the common substance of humanity, as clay is said to be the primordial element that makes up the human body. It's an appealing sentiment and one that intersects with the themes of the album quite well. 

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Album Review: Ragana - All's Lost


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 10: California (the Color)*

Revisiting Ragana's All's Lost is like going through old photos and finding one that you don't remember having been taken. At least that's the way it feels to me, and it brings back a lot of memories. Some good. Others not so much. All's Lost dropped at a time when I was in a transitionary period in my life. I had been moving around a lot and having to start my life over from scratch ever couple of months. On top of that, I had finally decided to give heavy metal a try after having actively avoided it for years. I didn't understand what I was hearing on All's Lost then, but it seemed like it was coming from a deep, aching place. Its starkness and rough agitation seemed like a total scandal, but there was something about it that was altogether natural and familiar as well. Needless to say, I wasn't scared off. I recently checked out the group's latest LP, Desolation's Flower, which they released last year through The Flenser, and it prompted me to follow up with the 2022 remaster of the band's debut. The contrast between the releases is undeniable, with their most recent album finally reaching the summit of form they embarked on as early as 2013's Unbecoming. But recognizing their diverging paths doesn't cause a reencounter with their origins to be any less vindicating. All's Lost is still unique, even amongst black metal bands who have fully embraced the shoe-polish admiring, Ulver aestheticist click who attained grudging acceptance in the wake of Sunbather. Their outlier amongst outsiders status is owed to the fact that the duo of Maria Stocke and Coley Gilson bring a kind of witchy, love-punk energy to pine-dwelling, rain-soaked, American third-wave black metal, normally associated with groups like Wolves in the Throne Room- a kind of vibe you'd expect from a Kill Rock Stars signee, rather than somebody who'd know about, let alone have a favorite album by, Panopticon. There are even parts of All's Lost that almost give me a glimpse of what might have happened had Bratmobile given themselves a corpse-paint make-over and decided to devote their lives to furnishing free musical therapy and emotional counseling to bats and other nocturnal creatures. There is a beguiling manner in which Maria and Coley approach the material and songwriting on this release that is playful, even naive. Like a youth running into the woods to gather ingredients for a potion without any clear idea of what they're looking for, nor the intended effect of the concoction they aspire to brew- they are simply being called by the abundance of nature to seek out its secrets, leaving their imagination to fill in the gaps as necessary. It may begin with make-believe, but the lessons that are learned through the amusement of exploration can become the foundation for rituals and a formidable command of one's environment in later years. After all, the basis of all magic is the belief that the unreal can become tangled, that all that is there is not apparent from the surface, and that there are depths beyond the veil that the vessel of this world cannot expect to contain. Similarly, there is something irreducible about All's Lost, that, in defiance of its simplicity, remains captivating even as the duo define their legacy and shape their fate elsewhere. The album doesn't stand in the shadow of their later work, as much as in its only dark arena of reverie. 



*March rolls on and I continue my streak of writing a fresh album review every day inspired by a different color. Today's color is one that shares a name with our 31st state. It is named for a fictional island ruled by women, where no man who values his life should tread. California is also the place where the colonial project of the USA met its contiguous continental limit. There is nowhere else to go once you reach California. Still, people follow their dreams there year after year, and all those broken lives end up piling up into one long epitaph. California represents the absolute limit of one's individual potential and prospects- once there, you either confront that part of yourself that chased you to that sunny graveyard, or you go insane. Maybe both. Put another way, it's a place that only the bleakness of black metal can do justice to. 

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Album Review: I AM - Beyond


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 9: Blood Red*

Baptized in possibility and spirit, Beyond in multi-reedsman Isaiah Collier and percussionist Michael Shekwoaga Ode's interchange with producer Sonny Daze as an exercise in opening a portal through sound into a clearance point through which the immaterial can be grasped just as one may pluck an apple from a tree. Their collaboration is coined I AM as the jazz player's consciousness is meant to overlap and overextend into one another through the consummation of their exchange. Concentrated by tears from the sky and the rotation of sentinal spheres above, Michael's exhaustive drum work and Isaiah's lightning-fast, accelerative outbursts, tape and transform the flush hues of life and the full cast of quotidian sensations as if one were pulling a rainbow through the eye of a needle to mend the tatters of one's soul. If there is a place altogether outside this provincial plain that is knowable to human intelligence, then Isaiah and Michael may have succeeded in prying off the seal to a degree sufficient to glimpse the first tier of its venerated depths. 

Come together with Division 81 Records. 


*This March I am writing a fresh album review inspired by color for every waking day I breathe. Today's color, Blood Red, is representative of the ambition and dignified purpose that compels Isaiah Collier and Michael Shekwoaga Ode's efforts. 

Friday, March 8, 2024

Album Review: Snag - Death Doula


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 8: Charcoal*

Milwaukee's Snag released a collection of live recordings earlier this year, which they captured from a set they did for Brew City's famously eclectic local radio station, 91.7 WMSE. Curses. (the title of the previously mentioned live bout of on-air anxiety attacks) is certainly worth checking out if you're into heady, heaving, and emotional intemperate rockers in the style For Your Health or Youth Novel, and if you find that you dig on what they're laying down, then you just might want to reel the wheel of time back a little further to 2021 when Snag dropped their second LP. Death Doula is a fairly concise release, at just 7 tracks and about 20 minutes in total run time, but its brevity belies its depth. This was an ambitious record for the band, attempting to capture an urgent sense of crisis without becoming overwrought with despair; it's distinguished by powerful and impeccably timed performances that are embossed with unexpected flourishes that delicately clarify their intent. The serpentine rhythmic capsizes and revolutions of tracks like "Jar Spell" and dagger-sharp riff downpours, that will snow you into a world of hurt, a la "Weathervane," are what you'd expect from a band like Snag, (and son, do they deliver!) but it's likely not going to be these tracks as much as the spells of subdued tension that bide their time wading into the funerary brass procession on "Heirloom," or the prairie folk guitar picking of interlude "Next Morning" which will warrant an instant replay. You'll like need to hear these later tracks a few times in a row to make damn sure you just heard what you thought you heard, and it's not just the devil in your ear playing tricks. Trust your ear; there is nothing amiss. This is honest-to-maker, Midwest hardcore punk that hits hard like a February blizzard, and which permits emotions to bubble and roil up through the soil like slurry from a freshly dredged superfund site, but which has a cleaning cathartic balm to it, and the potential to leave you with a crisp sense of refreshment like you've just lept from a tire swing to land shin-deep in a clean, babbling brook. There was a time when people used to cop to the term screamo, but those days have been long since the past. Death Doula far more ambitious and far less weary of pretense than half the records you could have pinned that black badge back when it was something any self-respecting group of musicians might have averred to avoid. Whatever taxonomy you assign them to, you'd be right to put Snag near the top of the chart. 


*In March I am writing a fresh review for every day inspired by a different color. I picked Snag's Death Doula to go with the color Charcoal as it seemed to pair well with the album's environmental messaging and general anxiety about the planet's habitability in the near future. According to some, we might be living on one big black spinning brisket floating through space before very long. 

Thursday, March 7, 2024

Album Review: The Patterns - The Patterns Pop!


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 7: Blue Marguerite*

The Patterns are probably the best match for a contemporary Slumberland Records signee, who are not actually signed to Slumberland Records. The Patterns Pop! is their only LP to date, having dropped in 2020, however the band is fairly active, releasing a scattering of singles since and continuing to play shows on a semi-regular basis. As you'd expect, the group has a warm, jangly sound that hits this instant saturation point between nostalgia and timelessness that seems to cut through all contemporary trends while embodying the best qualities of pop music all at once. They've also managed to cultivate a permeating, dreamy aura, which is suitably surreal and appropriate to much of the sometimes bizarre subject matter of the songs. Think Posies drunk on the nectar of a daydream or Peel Dream Magazine taking The Byrds's advice and following the Tambourine Man wherever his whim may guide them. They're catchy as a cold to boot! Nothing should burst your bubble so long as you've got some of their clever turns floating around in the ol' attic... unless you're one of those people who like to pop bubble wrap for fun, in which case, turn this LP up loud enough so that you can hear it over all the plastic bursting between your grubby little fingers. If you're going to have multiple pastimes, you might as well try and stack them! 


*This March I am writing a fresh review inspired by a different color every day. Today's color struck me as something one might find in a dream, so I wanted to write about an album with a somewhat dreamy quality, but not so dreamy that it might put my reader to sleep, something with a little peep, something, you could say, that pops!  

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Album Review: AVI - EQUINOX EP

 Spring Colors Challenge - Day 6: Persian Indigo*

Calgary electronic artist Avi's Equinox EP is a brief but impactful affair that tells a personal story of struggle and resolution in five tracks that each average about 2 minutes in length. Despite their transient duration, each track feels like its own self-contained world and manifests a depth that is conspicuous despite their duration. Clapping loops are consumed in cross-chatter as dire synth dip and dirge over the turbulence of disarmingly warm digital beats, cocooning and yoking Avi's plaintive voice as he pursues the flickering light at the top of the theater to prove that his sense of self is more than an empty projection on a static abyss. I like to think he succeeds in demonstrating the proof and merit of his existence by the end, despite the mournful anguish expressed on the closing track, "Mudslide." You may have your own interpretation. Such is life.


*Every day in March I'm writing a fresh album review inspired by a different color. Today's Persian indigo inspired my review of Avi's EP because indigo has always communicated a sense of permanence and longevity, which are some of the states that Avi appears to be seeking on his EP. 

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Album Review: Fatima Al Qadiri - Medieval Femme


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 5: Dark Cerulean*

Medieval Femme is the third LP from Kuwaiti musician Fatima Al Qadiri. Inspired by Arabesque melodies, it is an exercise in summoning the voices of women throughout the eons so that they may breathe their wisdom into the present day. Its sound and sensibility cut across a horizon that permeates the interstitial domain between night and day, death and life, blood and water, flesh and stone- melding these disparate destination points and states of being into a single continuum that defies the pretense of borders and the rake of the void. A fairytale without end, which depicts the contours of our reality as far more malleable and permissive than we could have imagined. An arrow through time whose arc bends towards an immediately attainable paradise. 

 Relax with Hyperdub. 


*Every day in March I'm writing a fresh review of an LP inspired by a different color. I selected Medieval Femme because I wanted to write about an album that had the same mood as very dark shade of blue and Fatima Al Qadiri absolutely meets that criteria. 

Monday, March 4, 2024

Album Review: Stuntdriver - Saga


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 4: Forest Green*

I've been sitting on this one for a while, which is a shame because it's really something special. Maybe I felt like it was more special because I was keeping it to myself? Like it was some scare commodity that acquired an inflated value by my bogarting it. Well, I'm done being stingy with the goods, selfishness never suited me anyway. Saga is the album that accompanied a multi-media extravaganza which premiered in the fall of 2021. It's a punk rock opera that roughly traces the beats of the Wizard of Oz, only with all of the wonder and whimsy of L. Frank Baum's fairyland peeled off and replaced with the grit and depravity of LA. The album follows the journey of the Stuntdriver as she evades the overbearing Orwellian oversight of the episode's villain, the Influencer, while seeking authenticity along the crimson bricks of the Red Road. For a project that combines the camp and edge of New Wave Theater with the unpredictable theatrics of a traveling carnival caravan, Saga has a surprisingly solid, and classic, structure: There is the "call to adventure" introduced with the ominously marshal, slam-poet procession of "Red Road;" then the "crossing the threshold" portion of the escapade transpires on "Battle Song" which sounds like it's accompanying the escape from a darkwave-fortified maximum security prison located on an island in the middle of a shark-infested ocean; next we find Stuntdriver surviving her primary, strengthen garnering "ordeal" on the anthemic and lean-funk fast-ball "Fugitive;" after which we witness our hero's triumphant return (ie "the road back") on the spiritually ascendant and corporally industrial rhythm-rumble of "Trapped in a Body;" all leading to the final conquest of evil on the cathartic, cleansing cycle and scrub of "Bad Bath," where the villain is defeated by, you guessed it, a shower they didn't ask for, but definitely had coming. It's an absolutely wild ride, one brimming with imagination, personality, and some very aggressive self-care. Like most hero's journey's, you may find yourself irrevocably changed by the end. Don't blame me if this album turns out to be the first chapter in some new, reckless phase of your life- thank Stundriver for whipping some vitality back into your flatout conformist existence! 


*Every day in March I am writing a review of a different album inspired by a different color. I picked Stuntdriver's Saga today because I wanted to write another review inspired by a shade of green and the story arc of this album takes place at least partially in a forest... also the cover art has a lot of green on it. 

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Album Review: Aren't We Amphibians - Emergency, Exit


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 3: Myrtle

Aren't We Amphibians's Emergency, Exit first caught my eye purely out of my love of the color distortions of old disposable and poloroid cameras. I just love how green it looks- like it was etched out of moss or something! I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand how any one change of hue ends up emerging as the dominate pallet of a developed photograph, but I do know that they can really add to the depth and narrative of an image. For example, the cover of Emergency, Exit feels cool and humid, like the air in early April, and I feel like I could have taken this photo on a school trip of my own to the aquarium, or some such educational environment, many moons again. Thoughts and memories sprout out of it and pollinate my consciousness. It's a perfect image for an emo album cover, and it's no surprise that the music on Emergency, Exit is similar to furtile. The group favors winding lead guitars that lend themselves to attention-arresting key changes, which grab you in a playful headlock as you're pulled into the next rollick melodic turn. Vocalist Josh has a tendency to yell the lyrics for each song at top of his lungs, which would seem to put a phenomenal strain on his throat, except by some strange feat, he only seems to get more powerful at projecting his voice over the course of each track- like an emo tornado siren heralding the next cloud burst of sparkle chords and twisty, headlong, impetuous grooves.  It's almost like the entire band is working to get these songs out of them as forcefully as they can before they explode. Emergency, Exit is not just the name of the album, but a description of how these sounds move through the band and escape into the world.  

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Album Review: Buddy Junior - Rust


Spring Colors Challenge - Day 2: Tenne*

There is a tendency to equate Millenial's nostalgia for the '80s and Zoomer's embrace of '90s aesthetics as essentially equivalent, as part of a continuum of 20-year cycles of fashion and signifiers that superficially indicate a desire to return to an unmolested state of naive bliss. I don't think that's necessarily true, though. The adoption by Millenials of all things '80s kitsch, especially its darker aspects like John Carpenter films, grainy VHS reels, thrash metal, and disturbingly dark anime, always betrayed a certain yearning for the wealth and opulence of the era that produced these cultural ephemera- even in its most alienated expressions. The assumption of '90s aesthetics feels very different in contrast- as it should! While the '90s were similarly a period of prosperity for many, there was also a prevailing sense that "THIS" was as good as it was going to get, and shit was going to start sliding downhill, soon and fast, if it hadn't hit the skids already. It's this bleakness that I sense in contemporary group's like Buddy Junior (whose name I would not be surprised to learn that they came by in a similar manner to Dinosaur Jr.). Buddy Junior's second full album Rust has a certain fondness for precious jangle chords and slow dreamy melodies that rend and gesture in the direction of spinning charmers like Catherine Wheel, but what is most arresting about the album's arrangments and aural attributes is the pervasive sense of corrosion which it conveys via 31 flavors of despondent distortion and the fateful manner in which it trust falls into them. Opening with the weighty wall of noise and claustrophobic collapse of the title track, it braves through execrate waves of Robert Smith-kissed desolation on "Possession," before cascading through the telescoping misery pump "Holy," and finally nose-diving into the penultimate, deathly ripple of "2 Cents," Rust is like a psychically deployed oxidation technique that threatens to eat through your very soul- a cluster of reverberating dispatches from the cold, knife's edge of eternity, cutting through the pretense of one's personal history as anything other than a flat-circle, rotating uneasily on its edge and speeding towards the slot of a sewer drain. 

Find more soft, pale dread from Cherub Dream Records. 


*Day 2 of the Spring Colors Challenge where I write a fresh album review for every day in March. Today's color: Tenne, aka Tawny, aka Rust. 

Friday, March 1, 2024

Album Review: Këkht Aräkh - Pale Swordsman

 Spring Colors Challenge - Day 1: Black*

There has been for some time an inexplicable notion that I've carried with me about one-man, black metal maestro Këkht Aräkh's second LP, Pale Swordsman. That dim hunch grinding between the gear-teeth in my thought-pit is that, despite all signs to the contrary, this is a sping-time album. Of course, when I looked it up, low-and-behold, the album dropped in April of 2021. There are times when even the daftest of my intuitions prove correct. This, apparently, is one of those times. But the serendipity of a release date is all about spreadsheets, logistics, and record-label blarney- what about the substance? How spring-like are Pale Swordsman's words, sounds, and stride? Well, if we're being honest, very spring-like- if statistics on depressive ideation are an acceptable reference point. As you may well know, spring is a dark time for a lot of people. The decreased sunlight and forced isolation of the colder months of the year can wreak havoc on people's minds and emotions. Following winter's chill with a damp and unpredictable period that usually combines heavy rain, hail, and sporadic heat waves certainly does not do any favors for the nerves of folks who are readily affected by such things. In the depths of the seclusion and erratic nature of the environment, some very dark thoughts can creep in. It's in this low sling where one might find the entrance to Këkht Aräkh's keep. His second LP, Pale Swordsman, draws heavily from early US side DSBM, with its dry, heaving cries, the clattering serrated anguish of its grooves, and the cold distant pull of its tremolos, all gestures of despondence evoking the struggle of someone attempting to beat back the demons that have incubated in a broth of alienation, deep in inside his bowls, and are now clawing their way up and out the man's throat. Pale Swordsman is fairly typical, if slightly more compelling, than most singularly composed, second-wave indebted black metal albums, but what will likely catch your attention immediately, and stick with you long after your initial listen, is not the blitz but the balladry which Këkht Aräkh etches around and between the expected storms of frost barbarian razzia. Piano interludes drift in like rumors from a far-off land, and are received as genuinely brief, brittle and beautiful, performed with a pained delicacy and weariness as if there was a marked fear that the keys may turn to dust beneath the player's dancing fingers- a combination of frailty and resigned realism that recounts a lust for things lost- an ache like an old scar which continues to tease and burn like embers of a funeral pyre below bruised the skin. The album's woeful cultivation of romanticism is allowed to effectively bloom and fully part with inhibition on the closing track rawly opulent and emotive "Swordsman," which may be the best, and only, existent example of Midgard emo to surface in the modern age. Worrier he may be, Këkht Aräkh is not one to fear wearing his heart over his chainmail. 

I see your future in a scattering of Sacred Bones. 


* I often write about how inspiring I find the music that I review, but rarely do I allow such an inspiration to influence my day-to-day. I've felt like this was a missed opportunity for a long time. I would pick up an album, allow it to draw some thoughts out of me, and then go on my day (or, realistically, go to bed) after I click the "Publish" button on an article. This month, I've decided to change things up and allow the influence of a single album to linger with me for longer (30 days to be exact). That's why in the month of March I will be writing an album review ever day. It is my version of Hemlock's songwriting project May, an exercise to prove my skills and push to see how much I can give to this blog and my readers. As an added dose of flair, I will allow a color to influence my selection of album to write about and/or flesh out the tone my reflections. Today is the first day of the challenge, and the first color my unruly ass has selected is black. Get ready because this exercise will likely only get weirder the longer I run with it. - Mick

Monday, February 26, 2024

Album Review: Creep Show - Yawning Abyss

They've dubbed themselves Creep Show, and they call their second album Yawning Abyss, but I'm struggling to find a degree of tribulation in their sound. Instead, I'm witness to a discreetly lavish and claiming fertile sphere of experience- one that rests on a slowly turning horizon, a place where things could be worse, but they could be better as well, and even if the next rotation of this spinning local dumps us into a deeper, more impoverished depth of sunless desperation, it is acknowledged that there is still some virtue in soaking up the warmth and reprieve on offer today. I usually try to dip a toe in the mindset of the artist when I write about their work, but I can't say with much measure of conclusivity if I'm hitting close to the mark here. What I can tell you is that this analog synth-driven record has a pensive quality to many of its rhythmic segments, while the vocal performances, especially on "Yahtzee," can take on an intensely farcical quality, like the yodel of a dodo with a rubber sole. There are also times when the band seems to be setting the stage for something approximating an unglued theater performance, with a single character emerging as a protagonist to deliver an absurdist monologue, such as on "Bungalow," where mischievous and plastic strands of sonic, multicolored plaster-cast mold to the silhouette of a toothy crooner who psychic profile is that of a wolf posing as well-bred suburban accountant on his day off by the pool. Then there is "Matinee" which seems to follow some charmingly ugly creatures as it sweeps around the corridors of an underground auditorium, drinking in the shadows, while a fizzle of battery acid bubbles in its veins after drinking a martini prepared by an impetuous android whose badly in need of a tune-up and an attitude recalibration. Where I think the album coheres together most thematically and sonically is on the title track, "Yawning Abyss," wherein the titular chasm is revealed to be a pervasive, but inoffensive, even comforting, envoy of ennui, a setting where melodies fluctuate with a placating verve like the breeze through your hair on a mild summer day, and a pacifying prattle of synths pop and parish with delight like selzer bubbles quenching a parched palate. It may be the case that the title song is the pigment which colors my impressions of the entire record, but that's not a bad thing. Every record needs an entry point for the listener, and this one is mine. Besides, I really don't think there is anything wrong with enjoying the slow, steady, palliative qualities of the mundane when such quiet moments of reflection are on offer- even when it means that you're dancing on the crest of the literal/metaphorical apocalypse. I mean, if you're going to crash anyway, you might as well enjoy the ride, right? 

Be the bella of the ball with Bella Union. 

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Album Review: Coco Bryce - Night On Earth

It's almost a shame to single out an individual release from jungle producer Coco Bryce for review.  He's quite prolific for one, but also, like most producers, his scattered catalog, taken on the whole, just represents a total vibe that you're not going to be able to tap into if you're only familiar with a single here or there, or even only an individual EP. What I jive with when it comes to Coco and what is consistently true about his output, is that he's one of those fellas who can do nearly anything with only the bare essentials of ingredients. He's the kind of DJ who can pick up a lowly and timid beat or bass line and show it the TLC it needs to become a fully-fledged banger. His mixes tend not to be overbearing or bracing either, which is refreshing for someone who makes his bread and butter from breakbeats. With all that out of the way, I have to admit that I have a special affinity for his 2019's Night on Earth EP. The production is very damp and dubby without getting all gumshoey and turgid. Instead, the basslines sound dry as a bone, like they've been baking in a brick oven and acquired a tasty, black char. These dry-roast beats are then drizzled with zesty synth timbres until they glisten like freshly cut gems. While honoring the chill detachment of the night, there is a roaming romance to the music that belies inhibition- like the wandering eye in a Jim Jarmusch joint, the listener will find themselves trespassing innocently into others' lives, witnessing the climax of some epiphany decades in the making, only to be whisked away by the caprice of the wind and transplanted into another scene of dramatic intrigue transpiring on another continent. Night on Earth has a restless essence that is somehow both persistent and subdued, embodying the subtle electricity of a tranquil city street squeezed between the bustle of the drag and a row of refurbished storehouses, each with a rave blowing up its basement or boiler room. The serenity between storms. An equator of calm linking living adventures. You're smoking a cigarette while you're waiting for a cab; it's cool but not so brisk that you need a jacket; a text comes in from someone you just met at a bar; they're already at the next hop and are warning you about the line... you really like them and think their friends are fun too. It's a good night on this lonely rock. 

Keep it crisp and clean with Fresh 86 from Red Eye Records, or make it massive with Coco's own label Myor. 

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Album Review: Hemlock - May

I'm feeling pretty inspired after checking out Hemlock's most recent (non-live) collection of songs, May. Not because it's particularly unique within her discography, or because I think it crystalizes or elevates some pervasive themes of her artistry. It doesn't. May is part of a series, one where Hemlock challenges herself to write and record a song every day for a month. It's the 5th such sonic-scrapbook that she's curated since she started recording under the name Hemlock in 2018. It's also not definitive, as I don't believe any single work by the artist is. She is one of those prolific writers who is almost compulsively productive, and therefore, their discography is less of a clean trajectory and more of a fog you have to wade through- like you're chest-deep in marsh water, dredging for some misbegotten stash of treasure a mobster dumped in the quag back in the '30s. Thankfully, Hemlock is as masterful as she is generous with her output; and unlike the mire of my previous metaphor, you'll be stumbling over an ample cache of gems before you know it. The rewards are plentiful and immediately in reach. What I probably appreciate the most about Hemlock, her May collection, and her work in general, is that there is a sense of fruitful progress in their work- she puts all of themselves into it, and while new works don't replace the old, the continuity between songs and projects does successfully capture an accumulated quotidian wisdom- an acknowledgment that the performer and the listener are renewed and enlighted with what they take from each day, but are still the same person that they were when the sun rose as after it set- a cohesion that is maintained not only through physical processes, but the experience of reflection as well. Most of us don't make the effort to record our thoughts and feelings or our state of awareness throughout the day, and as a result, we lose track of the person we were as we become the person we will be. It's a natural operation of amnesia that a work like May disrupts in course, nabbing and preserving moments of sound and thought and slivers of liminality to be examined later in different lighting and with a studious gaze. Not every moment needs to be preserved for the ages, but leaving one's life to be wholly swallowed by time is a curse of a different category altogether. It's good to be reminded of what your cat sounds like when she wants attention in the afternoon, how the birds chirp as they forage outside your window, or how gravely your SO's voice gets just before they fall asleep, or even just the way your guitar sounded after you tuned it on a particular afternoon. All of these things that make up your day, that define and shape its textures, are worth having small swatches and reminders of, and so an exercise like May is something that everyone should attempt for themselves at least once. But in the case of May in particular, the mementos and small monuments that anchor it in the soil of the extraordinary mundane are also wrapped and encompassed by some beautifully realized, wavy folk troubadourship, that greets the senses like drops of golden dew drizzling off a honey dipper. Without meaning to sound like I'm making any bold proclamations, listening to May has inspired me to try something adventurous with this blog. I don't know what yet, but it will be something that I do every day to affirm the purpose of my writing, and which I believe will enrich others by engaging with. When I start, you'll know. Until then, and beyond, I'll encourage you to dream of a creative affirmation of your own to commit to, as Hemlock's May has done for me.  

Monday, February 19, 2024

Album Review: Rabbit Junk - Apocalypse for Beginners

I used to listen to a lot more industrial music than I do now. The town that I grew up in had a bar that would host a "goth night" on Sundays, and it was something of a mecca for more for about 8 months. Now, getting blitzed on Pabst while listening to the same dozen or so VNV Nation and Aesthetic Perfection tracks every weekend was hardly a glorious existence, but the memories of that time are still a mental refuge for me in times of stress or uneasiness. After I moved away, I casually kept up with industrial music until I decided that I was old enough to develop the habit of listening to serious and mature music that would ease my passage into adulthood- stuff like the Decemberists and anything else the writers over at Pitchfork were recommending 10 years ago... and now, a decade and a lifetime later, here I am listening to and loving Rabbit Junk's Apocalypse for Beginners. For all the effort I made to develop "respectable" tastes in music, I'm now an old ass man, back to gyrating and banging my head to dark, sweaty industrial metal again- except now that most of my blitzing hours are confined to my living room and/or home office. Makes you wonder why I ever strayed... Now Rabbit Junk isn't a strictly industrial metal outfit, nor a traditional metal band- the project, masterminded by the singular (singularity?) JP Anderson, is an ever more complex and evolving, technical and emotional roller coaster, one that he tunes up and torques to an even higher level of devilish perfection with each release. It is an endeavor that defies categorization beyond the gestalt of his insoluble will. The truth, though, is that even though the project is clearly something that JP is driven to do for himself, and seemingly only himself, it's hard not to feel like he's giving his all to bring the audience into his world and up to his eye level. Every track on Apocalypse for Beginners is incredibly anthemic and impeccably produced, with massive sweeping, righteously endowed choruses, buffered and buoyed by fearsome electronic percussion, whose rhythms are lashed to the cadence of a hot beating heart as a war horse is yoked to a charging chariot. Industrial disco devil dives crash and cascade around the adrenaline-spiked vocal delivery on opener "Heavy," while "Love is Hell" with its soaring vocal delivery, confessional overtones, and steel-marbled guitar work captures a combustible theatricality that causes the song to resemble in its tortured spirit, a kind of nu-metal overhaul of the Phantom of the Opera, surf riffs splashe off thrasher grooves on high-flying firestorm "Bodies," while the bouncy rush and rip ong "Rabbit Out of Hiding" resembles a surprisingly elegant, Brundlefly-esque amalgamation of Blondie and Sisters of Mercy. If you're in the mood to kick-start the end of days, you'd be hard-pressed for a better instruction manual or soundtrack. 

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Album Review: Lee Paradise - & Co

We all get by with a little help from our friends, or so the saying goes. I'm not disputing the premise; I'm simply restating it for clarity's sake. You're always connected to someone, depending on them, trusting them (ever so implicitly)... You can act like you're on an island, but really, you're only just a peninsula with a mote- maybe a very wide mote- but you can never completely defy your attachment to the mainland that is the remainder of humanity. That heart of stone is counted amongst the rhythm of countless others in the orchestra pit of a civil concert, and its part in the unison of creation is certain and unquestionable. So why not admit as much and make some sweet music with your fellow homosapiens? It's worked for Lee Paradice, at least. For his second LP, the composer-turned-sherpa, Daniel Lee has embarked on an upending collaborative project, allowing "guest" musicians to determine the course of his record in a total spirit of collaboration, with Dan positively keeping pace and producing the outcome to the best of his abilities. & Co is incredibly interesting in this regard, in that it is a record that works diligently at a conceptual level to deliver something that is both unenforceable and retentive. Daniel's collection of Yamaha and bass grooves set the guide rails, but otherwise, the funk train has no predetermined destination, almost like it's skipped the tracks and landed on a frozen lake and is now keeping from capsizing by tracing brilliantly articulate patterns on a knife's edge as it glides on the unpredictable surface. & Co has the vibe of a jazz record, only instead of a heady avant-brew of a free associate of rhythm and measure, the result is more akin to kaleidoscoping new wave and funk record of mint, beating-breast of the '80s vintage- a refreshingly adaptable and accessible encounter that you certainly don't require more than a passing appreciation of the Eurythmics or Zapp to safely and comfortably immerse yourself in. A testament to what can be done between friends when one hocks their compass overboard and lets themselves be guided by the elucidating thump of the sound of their hearts reverberating in the open air.   

Pick up! It's Telephone Explosion!

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Album Review: London Brew - London Brew

I've come to the conclusion that many jazz albums are simply vehicles for artists to have an excuse to hang out with their friends. You'd think this would make most of them insufferable, given the results that this motivation often produces in the form of podcasts and streaming content, but you'd be wrong. At least in the case of the ensemble I'm focused on here, London Brew. In this instance, the pretense of seeing people that one likes and admires and doing something creative with them pans out for the benefit of all those involved, as well as the observers (ie, us, the ponderous rabble). The thirteen-member creative coven essentially does what it says on the label- concoct a heady draft of rhythm and pulsating sound, intoxicating in its impeccable fluidity and blurry integrity, vibrating within the membrane of a discernably nebulous anatomy that can barely contain the power of their potential- a mingling of complimentary chaoses that burns so hot it threatens to raise ocean levels the world over. The continuity of the group's output is a consequence of their shared metropolar habitation and ready repport, propelled by the excentric diversity of their talents and backgrounds. As you might have guessed from the name of the group, a primary concern of this congregation is to reinterpret and express an interest in dialogue with Mile Davis's 1969 masterpiece through the personality and prowess of their colleagues. The reverberant flavor of the resulting concoction is the fusion of these aptitudes and affinities in such a manner that smooths London out like a glop of marzipan- the sounds that define it, the culture it houses, the people who call it home- spread into an entirely plastic and malleable plane of potential that spans as far as sound will travel- a primordial soup of precognition, a boundless tillage of raw seeping clay of the sort which humankind was born from in which to plant the seeds of the next stage of enlightenment, a destination that you can only arrive at once you've contented yourself with standing still and feeling the moment. At the very least, London Brew's debut will make you wonder what you and your group of friends might be able to accomplish if you assembled your talents and aligned your passions- maybe just take a pause if you see yourself headed in the direction of launching another podcast into the ether... there are already so many. 

Make mine Concord Jazz.

Monday, February 12, 2024

Album Review: Snapped Ankles - Forest Of Your Problems


Generally, the wilderness, as represented by the forest, is deemed a mysterious and often intimidating place, teeming with potential. Well, when there is no more forest, then what? Humans are extraordinarily good at terraforming the planet and making it habitable for themselves by building things like highways, malls, and condos with central air, but this comes at a cost- as more spaces are tamed, fewer prospects remain, and the more clear the human races limitations and failings become. One of the regrettable consequences of human civilization as such is that it tends to generate a lot of trash (and no, I'm not just speaking in terms of culture)- filling the groves that farrowed so much whimsy in the past with heaps of discarded things. Whatever creatures still cling to a meager existence in our shadow, they are forced to make do with our scraps- whether they be flora, fauna, or... something altogether different. London's Snapped Ankles might just be the best example I can offer for this third unusual category. The alternative punk group have a taste for the deranged and theatrical, in both their music and sense of fashion; donning very naturalistic-looking ghillie suits that incorporate moss and twigs with obvious instrumental materials, while performing with instruments that blur the line between driftwood and electronic waste. Adorn with these strange accessories, Snapped Ankles come to resemble woodland spirits who have been forced by circumstance to acclimate to encroaching urbanization. It's a look that certainly compliments their sound, especially on their latest fourth LP, Forest of Your Problems. On this album, the group adapts a groovy vantage point on post-punk to ignite a stomp-worthy ruckus of unprecedented and ultramodern primitivism, somewhere between a reincarnated Residents and a refurbished Sparks. Commanding basslines bully and steer repetitious ritual rhythmic dynamics in an absurdist reformation of modern affirmations and derelict, latterly-digitized oaths. The cries of displaced dryads are pulled through the circuitry of overheated synthesizers like ore through a furnace so that they might serve to tighten the links of locked grooves, and salt each recurrent phrase with notes of heartache and sticky homesickness. Frantic assemblages of plastic melting, mashing beats cut and combine adrenaline with a compulsive sense of delirium that drags you to the hairy plain of its bosom like a woodsman's axe etching its wielder's fatalistic intent into the trunk of the tree. The only problem you'll find yourself having in this burly thicket of grooves and gnarly electronics will be convincing yourself to turn it off long enough that you can stop dancing and rejoin society. 

Float were you please with Leaf Label.

Saturday, February 10, 2024

Album Review: Weaves - Wide Open

 
Weaves's Wide Open was released well over a half-decade ago, and listening to it now, it feels like a time capsule of some trends that seemed enduring at the time but appear merely ephemeral upon reflection. The elastic melodies and strong rhythmic cohesion were mainstains within the indie genre at the time- as were the agitating angular chord progressions. The blogger-driven era of 2007-2017 was a particularly nauseating period in music journalism when just about any group could be labeled as a "disco-Gang of Four," and unfortunately, it would stick (much to the confusion of artists and audiences alike). Weaves could certainly get stuck with the label as well, although, if memory serves, they did end up dodging that particular trope. Something else that feels reminiscent of the late '10s era of indie rock is the tendency of singers to draw out the pronunciation of certain phrases only to jerk them back with a shriek as they switch keys or tempo- you can call this the "Karen O" curl, and it's certainly a style of singing that vocalist Jasmyn Burke is adept at. While a lot about Wide Open feels dated, it's also a record that positions itself against trends and stands as a conclusive statement by an evolving artist. It feels like the band was trying to capture a certain disposition within the American zeitgeist that might still be inchoate to this day- a kind of opposition within oppositions, a fear that only the proud know, and a mirror that you can only reflect back your image when you are facing away from it. There is an authentic, anthemic quality to these tracks that is inseparably rooted in the experience of common people, with lyrics that express a zeal for connection and truth in a world that can only offer alienation, isolation, and bureaucratic rebuff- a conclusion that is helped along by numerous inclusions of lap steal, big bluesy guitars, and other staple folky accouterments but also the way that the harmonies swell and then bust into a flood of exuberant emotions in a human cloudburst. It's reminiscent of the kind of animation and energy that a gospel choir may employ to fill the faithful in attendance with the hope of a sanctifying spirit, but in the context of a rock band like Weaves, this kind of catharsis takes the shape of burly balladry and robust, grit-sown rhapsodies in the vein of Bob Seger or Tom Petty- hooks and harmonies that heal the heart and salvage the soul. It might be the case that Wide Open is too conclusive of a statement of the band's identity and their feelings about the world, and that's why we haven't seen another record from them since. This is alright because their prescience still strikes as piercing and true, even in a world that is drastically different from the one in which the record emerged. 

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Album Review: Attawalpa - Presence

In the first instance, an album titled Presence would seem to indicate some stupefying or haunting encounter- an experience somewhere between running into your favorite author at a coffee shop and waking up in the middle of the night to discover your long-deceased uncle floating overhead and smiling down upon you. Both could be considered disconcerting in their own right (especially if your favorite author has also allegedly left this mortal coil). Presence from Luis Felber's Attawalpa represents something of a third-option thought- a calming departure from the ordinary and a point of fluctuation in the strained fabric of modern life. On this album, Luis plays the role of the white rabbit, leisurely leading you astray- unhurriedly persuading you away from the babble and bustle that typically overtakes you and into a new train of discrepancy with the potential for alignment with a higher intendment of one's purpose. He achieves the ends of this diversion through an embrace of simplicity and a streamlined sanctity of purpose- sleek but sturdy guitar work buttresses varicolored harmonies that flourish in an anchored state of antigravity. His voice is like a cloud, the rhythm is like the wind, and the motion of the music is like a ship embarking on a voyage towards a castle in the clouds. Presence is as lofty as it is ambitious. 

Monday, February 5, 2024

Interview: WereGnome Records

Through the mists and mystery of time, and from a tomb burrowed into the mantel of a lost and ancient land, comes Nicky the Gnome, chief mage of curation over at WereGnome Records, to share the treasures of his keep with you, dear listener. Dropping the exaggerated prose, for this episode, Nicky and I get into the ins and outs of running a cassette label focused on promoting black metal, chiptune, dungeon synth, and, in general, weird underground music with a lot of personality. If that sounds like your bag, then you are in luck! WereGnome Records is a unique and oddly approachable label in a space that is not known for its welcoming vibe. They break the mold so you can reap the benefits. (Warning! Listening to this episode may convert you to regularly wearing Crocs around the house.)

Get all your Gnome gear and check out WereGnome's extensive catalog on Bandcamp. 


Music featured in order: 
"That Wretched & Beautiful Cursed Object" by Hermit Knight
"Rupees in the Sky with Demons" by Retrogoblin 
"Carpathian Blood Waves" by Necrosferatulum
"Jar of Teeth " by Flower Ranger
"Don't Fear the Sleeper" by Purzum