Album Review: Rabbit - Halo of Flies

It's genuinely a mark of quality that a band can shift their aesthetic modus operandi between releases and still end up sounding like the same band. In the same way that a stone in a river, surrounded by fresh, flowing water, remains unmoved... or how when you look in the mirror, day after day, it's still you, despite everything. NYC's Rabbit is one of those groups that remains remarkably consistent, despite their restless transformations between releases. Their demo had a crusty Swedish death-thrash feel, while their second EP, Bardo, is such a forcefully streamlined and vicious specimen of melo-death menace that it threatens to tear a whole through reality itself. But for my bottom dollar, their best release so far is their first EP, Halo of Flies. While still very much steeped in a raging conflagration of crust and death metal, there is more of an emphasis on atmosphere, with the band taking the time to stew on some incredibly bleak and turgid grooves while nurturing a fuming aura of deathly psychedelia and psycho-tap shoegaze. It sounds like you are glimpsing someone's mind eat itself while they're in the nth hour of a violent narcotic binge. An unapologetically apocalyptic record that chases a bleeding white hare down a deadman's windpipe to plunge in slow motion into a frozen lake of psycho-reactive bile that's had all the empathy flushed out of it. Like a promise to a dead god in a dying world. Like a rotten egg, pulsating in a chicken's coup, with a red-eyed serpent writhing inside. Halo of Flies is as potent as it is profane. 

Deny yourself nothing with Delayed Gratification Recs.

Album Review: Speech Odd - Odd World

God damn, what a nightmare! Not just a nightmare though... a presence. A nightmare that's more a premonition of something powerful and frighteningly imminent crashing through your bedroom ceiling and dragging you to hell with it as it plunged through the floor. Unfamiliar and terrible, but also hypnotically alluring. A rendezvous in the dead of night with a beast who speaks many tounges, none of which have been uttered out loud in the past century, but whose every gesture and pronouncement is intuited just the same- its coat like the plumage of crows, its joins creaking in the cold air, eyes never blinking. It's a truly discordant apparition which mars the senses. Seemingly unknowable, the creature still has a name, Speech Odd. It has swam all the way from Thailand to greet you with bared fangs and open arms. Most alarming is that it is actually a chimera of several tortured varmints, with one named Pam acting as its head, another anointed Bom serving as the heart, and a third called Nampan acting as the limbs. They emerge from the salty break of the ocean under the banner of Odd World to tear up the landscaping and resod it with chaos, dividing with plowshares, sharpened by powerviolence grooves, and ground forward at a pace that is more cutting than spite. Youth crew monks have honed their natural tendency towards barbarity, while demons from grindcore-infested spawn pits have cursed them with a deadly sense of timing and endeavored to wear out their empathy for the human race. It is an odd thing to behold, the on rush of your own doom. With luck, you may take it in stride. 

Album Review: World War IX - Phoning It In

I'm in the right state of mind to be writing about this record, so here goes.* NYC's World War IX is about as blunt as you can get in terms of influences, displaying them proudly like a black eye in the morning after winning a fight with a bouncer the night before. They play mainline, plugin-'n-blitz, early Black Flag-inspired punk and are not shy about it. The kind of stuff that sounds both comic and pissed off in equivalent tonnage. Their EP Phoning It In lifts off in a drunken haze with opener "Fire for Partying" which has a "TV Party" sorta of swing to it with a splash of the reckless, hedonistic chase of the first four OFF! EPs to give the gang-vocal fueled tale of fatuity the punt it requires to turn over into full-on, red-eyed, regretless folly. Two of the three remaining original tracks on the EP deal with the problems of aging men as they drift farther away from their wilder, oat-sowing years. The addiction adage "Coke Machine" is a bumbling, wildly groovy number with some very bossy energy about needing a soda fix to get through the day, while "Portrait Of Sobriety" confronts the listener with the parable of a gentleman who has managed to survive an entire week without a drop of alcohol and now believes he's the visage of Jesus Christ himself in the second coming, a bombastically braggadocious piece with a prickly, blunderbuss flow. The second and final tracks also pair well thematically, wherein the slippery and franticly off-kilter "Larry's House" depicts a neglectful, chaotic environment where teens can chill and get tanked on illicit substances, while the buzzy slug-fest "NYC Tonight," a GG Alin cover, presses the rager the band has built up out into the streets to paint the Big Apple an even darker shade of warm, sticky red. World War IX feels like one of those groups that will always be there- a fact I attribute to their classic compound of influences, as well as their sound, but more so because of how much fun they appear to be having on this record. If I could make a record like this, I don't know that I'd have the motivation to do much else with my life afterward... outside of hitting the studio to pump out another. It seems like some of their members have moved on to other projects for the time being, but I don't think World War IX will ever be gone for good. With how messed up and serious the state of the world is getting by the day, we need their brand of brash jackassery more now than ever to help lighten the mood. 

* I've imbibed close to two liters of beer so far this evening. 

Album Review: Sugaar Pan - Hug A Tree And Burn The Forest

Composer and multidisciplinary, genre-agnostic maven Iker Garmendia presents a peculiar twist on the notion of sacrifice with his album Hug A Tree And Burn The Forest. The concept of a sacrifice is that the gods demand of a community that they give up something of value so that the functional order of the world may be preserved and the people might retain the divine's favor. Although, by the nature of such a gift to the gods, ultimately, one member, or a small group of members within the community, will bear the burden of this offering- a benefit to the many by the loss of a few. Iker turns this around on us. What if those obliged to sacrifice, determined that it was worth seeing the world burn so that an intended offering may be preserved?  What if you allowed an entire forest to char to cinders merely to save one tree? The lonely, winsome paragon of ghostly pan flutes, atonal guitars, super-heated feedback, and resonate throat singing, which Iker delivers on this record, telegraphs a trajectory that traces a discrete path through the bramble of assigned charges and nobel surrender, illustrating an anarchic breaking point with authority and obligation that reveals a certain symptom of liberation, as solitary as it may be. For what is liberty but the love of life, and what is love but the unassailable verdict that the object of one's affection takes precedence over all else? Even if such a choice leaves the world shattered, and its shards scattered like a fist full of sand dropped in the sea.   

Album Review: Possession - Exorkizein

With a band like Belgium's Possession you could easily assume you know what to expect from them, but then I think you'd likely be wrong. Sure, Possession looks like a second-wave black metal band- and they assiduously are- but comprehending a thing is different than experiencing it, and you really do need to experience Exorkizein firsthand. Possession released the record in 2017 as their first LP, and have yet to follow it up with a sequel. Of course, when you nail it on the first try, why take another swing? Especially when the first is still sailing through the air like a lightly singed bat escaping a smoldering belfry. Groups like Bathory cast a long shadow, and Possession certainly has staked out territory in that legend's sinister pall, but beyond the tremendous spin-tingling tremolos and arresting reptilian howls, their dark aura is manifested most potently through the atmosphere they cultivate. It's not a heavy ambiance, like Hooded Menace, but one of brisk peril and bewilderment, conjured by distant maniacal shouts, half-croak incantations, and highly engrossing cutaways that align to impress upon the listener that something truly diabolical is afoot. The album sounds like the arc of an unfolding calamity, baited by hubris and blind avarice. A satanic blaze that consumes a monastery and all its inhabitance as punishment for their transgressions against God and nature in a force majeure of cleansing absolution and exercise by fire- evil feasting upon evil, flame dosing flame, rot cured by conflagration, burning until nothing is left by ash and brittle bones, and the memory of a nightmare that came alive as a warning to all mankind. 

Become ungovernable with Invictus Productions.

Interview: Analogue Heart

I experienced a visit with a very friendly ghost in the machine and was able to capture our conversation as a digital recording for your enjoyment and vindication. If you don't already know, Analogue Heart is an anonymous elector-emo artist who combines skramz, midwest emo, and digital collage into a wild tapestry of contemporary sentiment and scrambled nostalgia. We get deep into their latest Lonely Ghost release, User Pleasure Guaranteed, their general motivations and goals for the project, and their thoughts on AI art in DIY spaces. Plug in, tune out, and feel the power! 

Check out the interview here:  

Listen to User Pleasure Guaranteed here: 

Album Review: Hey, ily! - Psychokinetic Love Songs

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 31: Peach*

It's a little difficult to compare emo chiptune extraordinaires Hey, ily!'s best-known record, Internet Breath, with anything else in their catalog, especially their more recent, debut LP, Psychokinetic Love Songs. It's one of those cases where the difficulty of equating two things is a sign that there needs to be a change in approach. Internet Breath may have grabbed people's attention as a brilliant proof of concept, but it is Psychokinetic Love Songs that truly tests whether they can rightfully earn your hard-won affection. By the time their 2022 LP had been released, the group had expanded beyond its singular composer, Caleb Haynes, in order to become a quintet, a fact that appears to have accelerated the writing process, allowing the band to wrap up penning the Psychokinetic Love Songs in around two weeks. Writing faster didn't result in cutting corners or resting on the laurels of past successes either, as the songs on the album have much sturdier and clearly defined structures, which still leaves room for delightful detours into the splendid and unexpected. While digitally-driven, midwest emo like Weatherday and Heccra continue to be important reference points for contextualizing the group's sound, experiencing the delight with which they wade into doo-wopy saccharine bliss in the midst of a topsy-turvy melody cascade such as on "Intrusive Thoughts Always," or get lost in a light orchestral ska-waltz on "Glass House," or crystalize a fusion of R'nB and new age meditation music on "Dreaming," or even how they manage to ride a sunny surf groove over the horizon into the thrilling oblivion of an ocean-breeze cooled, acid-house and skramz singed daydream on the title track shows that the band is simply at their best when they shred the old playbook and write a new one on the fly. What's most interesting about the direction the band is taking on Psychokinetic Love Songs, is that the sturdier song structures consistently call back to, intentionally or not, 80's powerpop both in terms of synth tones and emphasis on aesthetic payoffs through a variety of melodic hooks, an approach that contributes an additional dimension of recognition and sentimentality that synchronizes perfectly with their retro-electronic modus operandi. Psychokinetic Love Songs is like a clairvoyant kiss blown in your direction by a digital oracle, whose sign of tenderness catches you like a fish hook and reels you into a future you did not know was possible. There is no way to know what evolutionary path the band will take from here; all that I can say is that as bright as their past is, their prospects hereafter are that much brighter.  

With Lonely Ghost Records, you're never alone.

* That's a wrap on the Sping Color Challenge. I'm feeling peachy keen about how it went and that's why I'm ending by writing about an album that makes me feel all fuzzy inside. Sayonara, folks!  

Album Review: Regulate - Regulate

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 30: Indigo*

I've held my peace about this one for a little while because when it came out it was getting a ton of hype and I'm not one to follow the herd, but when a band is doing something right, I can't not say something. Regulate's self-titled sophomore album lands the hit like a hook from a seasoned boxer, but what allows them to attack with such force is their finesse rather than a display of ferocity. The group can really hold the tension of a groove, allowing it to gain traction and get a running start before plunging into its intended payoff- like timing a manual gear shift in a desert drag race, it makes all the difference for their ability to pull ahead and assert their dominance. While whip-lash sweeps and brooding melodic churns a la Killing Time and Crown of Thorns are surely reference points for the band, they don't shy away from genuine, practiced showmanship either, discernable on the shaggy swagger and heavens piercing cry of the self-affirming ode "Hair," as well as the overly Latin psyche-grooves of "Ugata," and the vocal juggling act that just bearly keeps its self above the watery echo pulse that emanates from "Why Can't We"- each of these tracks contain unique theatric turns which electrify the mix and lend to an in your face feel that is more compelling then many live performances I've seen in recent years. To top it off, the band can still offer some satisfyingly savage twists on familiar punk sounds, like the lightening conducting pillar of Bad Brain's inspired fury of "You and I" and the East Cost hardcore screed-stomp of "New York Hates You." They call themselves Regulate, and it is with little irony that their prowess is revealed through their restraint and directed intention. God help us if they ever unleash the utter wrath of the potential pandamonium that clearly resides within them. 

Keep it level with Flatspot Records.

* You know the drill by now, indigo is today's color, and it inspired my review of Regulate's album because of their shared propensity to stain and enrich everything they come in contact with. 

Album Review: Tall Black Guy & Ozay Moore - Of Process and Progression

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 29: Purple*

The great chronicles of our age are full of epic team-ups- technoic individuals crossing arms to achieve something for the greater good. Like Godzilla and Jet Jaguar doubling up to put the hurt on Megalon, or Captain America and Falcon taking that bitch Red Skull to task, and so on and so on. Now, we can add one more: producer Tall Black Guy & lyrical bard Ozay Moore have combined their powers to take on the rest of the world's scoundrels, but rather than fighting with their fists, these gregarious gurus are waging a battle for peace and enlightenment with a battery of words and vibes. Of Process and Progression is the motto etched on the banner they've raised- a rallying point for a conscious appraisal of one's self-knowledge and history, electrified and illuminated by the power of Anderson .Paak-esque funk, spiritually charged boom-bap, and lush neo-soul that's been chopped and refashioned to meet the speed and ferocity of Ozay's delivery, like Kung Fu Kenny dicing up tomes of intangible wisdom until they servable as sushi-sized kicks to the cortex. What's notable about TBG and Ozay's combined efforts, is how much bigger the results feel than just the sum of their duel enterprise. In fact, it sounds like there is a whole community behind them, a larger-than-life cast breathing life into every verse, with each song on the album being drawn out of a different character they encounter while making the rounds of their neighborhood, checking in on all their comrades and associates and asking every one to expound on the world as it is revealed through their eyes. It takes a village to raise a child, and about as many caring souls with no shortage of love in their hearts to make an album like Of Process and Progression a reality. 

Dig it? Thank Coalmine Records.

* Today's color purple inspired my review of TBG and Ozay Moore's album because of the cool, rich vibe I associate with the color, which matches the cool, rich color of their album. 

Album Review: Oliver Ghoul - The Big Reveal EP

 Spring Colors Challenge - Day 28: Butterscotch*

When Oliver Ghoul isn't improving lives as a physician up in Montreal, he's saving souls with his music... Ok, maybe that's taking it a little far, but his debut, ostentatiously dubbed, The Big Reveal EP, is pretty damned good! Almost suspiciously good. What kind of deal did Mr. Ghoul have to strike with an unscrupulous devil to come to possess such prowess on the guitar? Hopefully, it wasn't anything that would compromise his professional ethics! Although, if it did, he could probably woo the disciplinary committee with a string of fat-bottom riffs that could convince them to let him off easy. Oliver's got this impeccable funky sense of rhythm that gives the groove of each of his songs an exhilaratingly bumpy terrain, making you feel like you're on a rollercoaster with a loose wheel, giving you an extra, unexpected jolt while coasting around the bend or dropping down an incline. While roughly describable as psychedelic, the EP feels just as indebted to a spacy schema of future rock that overlays well with southern blues chords and goes down smoothly like a spiked ice tea on a hot afternoon. Oliver could have kept this savory jar of jams to himself, having another life and career and all, but I'm thankful that he decided to tip his hand and let his gooey, fantasies spill out all over the internet instead. 

* In March I'm writing an album review every day inspired by a different color. Butterscotch is today's color, and it influenced my decision to write about Oliver Ghoul's EP because of how sweet and savory it sounds to my ears. 

Album Review: Gulfer - Third Wave

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 27: Cyan*

What is a "Gulfer"? Is it, A) a semi-aquatic mammal, similar in appearance to a seal, but with closer set eyes and a bit of a comical overbite, B) a retired gentleman who left his wife to live in a shack and practice his stroke with a 9 iron along the cost of the Seno Mexicano, or C) a Canadian band who released their fourth LP titled Third Wave with Topshelf Records on February 28 of 2024. I'm going to level with you, chief; there was a point in my life when I couldn't have answered this question. That time has passed, though. Not to spoil things for you, but if you're not on the up and up Re: Gulfer**, now's the perfect time to get familiar. While treading purposely in a very familiar cross-section of 4th-wave emo, shoegaze, and Pup-y-loving pop-punk, Gulfer really manages to catch the ear in surprising ways. One such brilliant penchant is the tendency to "theme" certain aspects of their songs to add a charming layer of ironic emphasis to their meaning and take full advantage of the medium's form. What do I mean by this? Well, for example, there is the track "Cherry Seed," where the lyrics express feelings of being overwhelmed and weighed down by future fears- particularly, there is a verse that reads, "as the sea fills / up with strange chemicals / we all wanna change but it's difficult / and we're mostly water anyway," and is sung in a washy, drifting lilt, as if the band was literally being carried out to sea while reciting these lines, a delivery that works in damning harmony with the white-capped waves of MBV-radiated distortion that waft off its guitar chords like smoke billowing up from the roof of a burning house- it's the kind of fire you could drown in. Then there is the overheated, pickup-press of "Too Slow," ironically one of the faster tracks on the album, rough riding rocket of a track that handsprings into a break-beat interlude of its finale as if to emphasize the absolute dissociation and provable suspicions expressed by the singer as he races against a world that threatens to leave them behind in its relentless, noxious whirl. Lastly, I'll direct you to "Vacant Spirit" whose mist-tinted, rubber-walled chords contain a strange guest in the form of a wistful shade of guilt- a stubborn spectral caller which the protagonist of the song attempts to ward off with repeated pleas of "I know, I know, I know..." saying as if he were thumbing through the beads of a rosary, pursuing unearned absolution, only to be swallowed by the spectator and dropped unmoored into a merciful haze of nostalgic splendor, indicating a kind of reconciliation with the object of his dread. As I hope I've made clear, Gulfer has put an incredible amount of care and forethought into this record, which, beyond any aesthetic twists, flat-out rocks as hard as you'd expect a record to by a group who counts Hotline TNT and Prince Daddy and the Hyena as their simultaneous peers and influences. Catch this wave while it's cresting, or get left high and dry! 

Only the best from Topshelf Records.

* In March I'm doing a little thing called the Spring Colors Challenge, where I write a review of an album inspired by a different color. Today's color cyan inspired my review of Gulfer's album because it kind of reminds me of the ocean, as does the album art for Third Wave. 

** The answer is C! It was C all along! 

Album Review: Fujiya & Miyagi - Fujiya & Miyagi

 Spring Colors Challenge - Day 26: Mint*

Fujiya & Miyagi's has more recent albums, but their 2017 self-titled crests above any other high-tide marker they've otherwise washed over. I've always felt Fujiya & Miyagi has received short shrift from the music press, likely because of the tendency of critics to compare them to the significantly less consistent but highly acclaimed LCD Sound System. True, they're also one of those indie bands from the '00s who stressed the pop potential of kosmische musik and dry, post-punk infused funk, but they're definitely a modern rock band first and pastiche second. The irony and nostalgia are there, but so are unsurpassable melodies, unbeatable grooves, and a will to bend time and space to meet people on level, sure-footed terrain. I'm glad that they made the move to give their sixth a self-titled** moniker as the group was well into their career when it dropped, but it feels they're truly in love with the material, and the record sees them playing like they've got nothing but their enthusiasm and something to prove to carry them into the future. It comes across as very fresh and sharp, like the band is carving up new territory and planting a flag in it as if it were their own demesne. They'd essentially lived a full life before this album, and another after its release, but their self-titled still feels like the moment when they really found their stride.

* In March I'm writing an album review inspired by a color every single day god help me (!). As I said in my review, Fujiya & Miyagi's S/T is a very fresh-sounding album, and that is why I'm pairing them with mint green. Fujiya & Miyagi! For A Good Clean Feeling. No Matter What. 

** It's worth noting that their self-titled album is actually comprised of a collection of EPs that were released separately. Still, the album's mix flows together perfectly, and you wouldn't likely know if no one told you- it certainly doesn't stop it from being my favorite release of theirs either. 

Album Review: Daymé Arocena - Alkemi

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 25: Gold*

A couple of years back, when I was better about keeping up with contemporary Afro-Cuban music, I became aware of Havana-born, London-residing, singer and composer Daymé Arocena through the buzz her Latin-jazz fusion generated. While I thoroughly enjoyed many of my one-off encounters with her music, her fifth Alkemi is the first full length that I've sat with and felt like I've had the opportunity to fully absorb. It's a pretty drastic departure from the Earth-shaking rumba I previously associated with her, as the record appears to be geared toward a wider audience of potential pop enthusiasts. While the performances are less mighty and forceful, the benefit of her new approach is an embrace of highly memorable pop melodies that manage a certain air of sophistication while not sacrificing any of their essential, bouncy energy. Here, Latin folk encounters the iconoclast uplift that American blues and jazz did when elevated by neo-soul in the late '90s, with results that verge on the experimental without sacrificing accessibility. What I'm most delighted about with Alkemi is that it breaks through a certain bottleneck that I experienced within Latin pop, which had been, frankly, a bit of a turn-off. There is a tendency to metabolize these traditions as either raw calories for EDM or abstract them to the point of sterilization and bizarre meta-criticism. Thankfully, Alkemi navigates around both like a ship threading the strait between Scylla and Charybdis. While Daymé' certainly has her exploratory side, the focus with Alkemi never loses sight of the essential, democratizing roots of her music, namely that a great rhythm paired with a beautiful melody can feed the soul while motivating the body to express freedom through movement all people yearn for through dance and a transformative appeal to community. 

More great records from Brownswood Recordings. 

* In March, as you may well be aware, I am writing a fresh album review every day inspired by a different color. Today's color, gold, inspired my review of Daymé Arocena's Alkemi because it is not only a prominent feature of the cover art, but, more importantly, I think it's a solid gold hit! 

Album Review: Voice Actor - Sent from my Telephone

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 24: Grey*

When it comes to an album like Voice Actor's Sent from my Telephone, there really isn't a single point of entry or an appropriate frame of mind with which to engage with it. It's a project that more or less overwhelms attempts to provide context or synopsis. The 4 1/2-hour record is comprised of more than a hundred tracks which were recorded and produced by Noa Kurzweil and Levi Lanser over a three-year period, and was originally meant to be a radio play of sorts- a drama that one tunes into nightly to catch the latest cliff hanger between Ovaltine and detergent ad copy reads. At some point, the production became overgrown and rebelled, escaping the confines of its concept, like a mutant ficus plant that has started growing up the walls and prying up the floorboards with its roots... and Noa and Levi apparently never felt compelled to prune it back or attempt to tame it. The wild behemoth at the center of this little shop of subtle horrors is the result of their nurturing and emboldening negligence, a disembodied aggregation of hailing drone transmissions, spoken word poetry jamming, cracked baroque accompaniments, Tourettes afflicted triphop, plunderphonics prestidigitation, cathode ray lobotomies, and uranium-plated R'nB loops- offering vignettes into the modern industrial world, not as it appears, but as it really exists in the subcutaneous layers of our chemically peeled and badly scarred psyches. Each song is like a little piece of a hyper-noir you half remember from a broadcast on a now-defunct classic movie channel, taking on the guise of a surrealist psycho-drama through the pulverizing process of years of mingling with repressed memories and forced recollections- minced, rolled, and served like suspiciously warm sushi at an all you can eat buffet with an adjoining rest stop. There is no contiguous order to the 109 tracks other than the fact that they are mixed in alphabetical order by title, leaving the story, to the extent that it is decipherable, about as orderly as a toupee being rung through a taffy puller. If you're up for it, I recommend that you listen to the album as it was originally intended, thirty minutes at a time, over the course of several evenings. That way, you can digest enough of its jealously guarded secrets and mutilated memorandum to begin to trace an outline of a narrative through mediation on its frayed tendrils. Each track calls out to you in a mismatched, exhorting tone, pleading for relief; it's up to you to play detective and mortician and piece the scraps back together until they once again resemble something human.   

In America STROOM.tv watches you! 

* In March I am writing a fresh album review every day inspired by a different color. Today's color grey inspired my review of Voice Actor's album because its one of those deals that requires you to flex a little grey matter.

Album Review: S.​​C.​A​​.B. - S.​​C.​A​​.B.

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 23: Sky Blue*

Scab
noun

    1. a dry protective coating of blood that forms over an abrasion to promote healing.

    2. a sign of mange or other skin disease found on an animal.

    3. a little bitch who will take your job while you're on strike. 

Scab 

verb

1. to become encrusted or covered with (redundantly) a scab, or (even worse) scabs [multiple].

S.C.A.B

organization 

     S.C.A.B. stands for Secret Cake Appreciation Society, an occulted organization dedicated to enjoying sweets while outwardly appearing to maintain a strict and nutritious diet. Located somewhere in the five boroughs. 

S.C.A.B

Music Group

    A post-punk group formed in New York City in the late 2010s, it comprises members Sean Camargo, Cory Best, Alec Alabado, and Brandon Hafetz. They have two LPs: 2020's Beauty & Balance and 2022's S.C.A.B.

S.C.A.B

LP/Album

    

    A nostalgic collection of melodic reflections on New York City and its residents, the sentiments that its sights and sounds conjure, the harsh light reflecting off office buildings, the smell of sewer gas escaping from the vents in manhole covers, the coo of pigeons resting on a balcony above your apartment at night, the taste of a cold beer in the park on a summer afternoon- the ghosts of past selves that live one, trapped in the dimensions of our senses and chained to our memories. A lonely walk home after work. The specials at the bar on the night your ex-girlfriend told you she was moving out and going back to school. Getting off the bus at the wrong stop. A train car on fire. A distant tragedy. A closely held triumph. An echo from your future, arriving to warp the present and reorder the past. Things you do for others. Things you do just for yourself. The realization that there is a wound in a hidden place on your person that is always healing, and will be for as long as blood flows beneath the hot glue of your plaster-mask skin. Never better, but getting better. The sky is so blue today. 

Get juiced with Grind Select.

* I'm writing a different and fresh album review every day in March inspired by a different and fresh color. Today's color sky blue inspired my review of S.C.A.B's album because of how much sky is visible on the cover. It's really stupendous! I feel like I could just jump into it and fall upwards forever and disappear into infinity. 

Album Review: Aaron C Schroeder - Entertaining Night Friends

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 22: Orchid*

So, I was scrolling through Twitter, avoiding work today, thinking about some of the albums I wanted to write about, and I came across a video of a Queen of the Night blooming. It was completely captivating! Known as the Epiphyllum oxypetalum, it's a variety of night-blooming cactus that pollinates with the help of bats and other nocturnal creatures, which it attracts by releasing sweet-smelling scents into the air. It has a very delicate, layered, and ornate pattern to its petals that make it look almost like it's from another planet. Surprisingly, they're actually very easy to transplant and grow in your own yard if you live in the right part of the world. Something about watching that magnificent flower bloom caused things to finally click for me and Aaron C Schroeder's debut LP, Entertaining Night Friends. The album is a collection of electronic mood pieces that reflect on various sources of detachment, with each track seeming to grow out of the soil of some thought that might keep one awake at night, almost like an unexpected guest barging in at an inopportune stage in the evening and demanding your full attention just as your about to drift off to slumberland (hence the name). I'm mostly familiar with Aaron's work from albums that he's produced for Seatle-local indie artists like Wimps and Zebra Hunt, and I really liked his work on Danny Denial's fuck danny denial (which I covered for a Juneteenth recommendations list a few years back for a magazine). Sonically, this is a very minimalist album, with Aason seemingly picking up stripped-back, melodic threads and distortion loops inspired by Sonic Youth or New Order ditties, and maximizing the obfuscated linear floss of their prospective geometries with the aid of some starkly tuned robo-beats and swarthy, synth-layered atmospherics. It's haunting, but only in the manner that you could say that your own thoughts haunt your head- a kind of bedeviling, simple intimacy that you can't live without. These are short, fleeting tracks too, often sticking around only long enough to make an impression before folding back up and disappearing behind the verdure of a dream-like foliage- just like the Queen of the Night. 

* In March I'm supposed to be writing a fresh album review inspired by a different color every day, but I'm cheating this time because the review was actually inspired by a flower. To get back on track, I selected orchid (the color) because it felt appropriate given the throughline of logic that produced this review.  

Album Review: Pink & Yellow - Outside

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 21: Pink & Yellow*

Somewhere in New Orleans, amongst the whisky hovels and the whispers of ghosts, a zealous architect is tinkering with the instruments of perception. Methodically molding spings of molten malaise, twirling them around spider-limbed phalanges into blood-seeking projectiles, and discharging them in periodic bursts like a kettle full of hornets- Pink and Yellow is a designer of many a dissident wave. The latest missive from the swampy underbelly of the Big Nasty is coined Outside. Comprised of four tracks recorded at different stages over the past serval years, it is yet another deliberately brassy trespassing into the realm of electronic music, inducing a darkly enlightening incursion of industrial dance, doom metal, hip-hop, and the legacy of the blues, which begs one to question the arbitrary barriers that separate these fields of music outside of the specifically strident specimen of this album. "Digital Garden Walkway" swarms with scanning, sinewy basslines that pop and flex like the straining muscles of a living cadaver cursed to turn the gears of an enormous infernal machine by hand. "Get Away" feels like Boy Harsher supporting the coherence-leaking, neurotic busking attempt of a young Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, while "Never Heals" slithers and skitters through a sizzling and thorny shower of growling guitars and rusty, ill-threaded beats, echoing a horrorcore mix tape recorded in the belly of an abandoned abattoir. Not wanting to let you off the hook too easily, the EP leaves the listener with a final taste of despair on "Drive / Outside," a bubbling quicksand pit, that sucks you down into an airless chasm with ghastly, siren-shadow bassline and curving synth billhooks that get between your ribs and hold you in an afflicted embrace. Once you enter Pink & Yellow's keep, you will always find yourself estranged from the safe and ordinary. 

* This month, I am writing an album review inspired by a different color every day. Today's color(s) pink and yellow inspired my review of Outside for reasons that should be self-evident. To be honest, one of the reasons I started challenging myself to write color-themed reviews was to goad myself into writing about one of Pink & Yellow's albums. Each one is really interesting and challenging in its own way, and I felt like I needed a theme to help lighten the burden of the writing process in order to give the artist their due on the blog. Now that one of my primary goals of the Spring Colors Challenge is completed, will I still see it through to the end of the month? Check back tomorrow to find out! 

Album Review: Ellen May - A Lonely Way To Go

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 20: Eucalyptus*

Admittedly, I'm a bit of a card when writing about music, and pursuant to my nature, I get the sense that I should begin this review with some kind of cowboy-themed line as the band I aim to tell you about is very likely named for a character from the show Justified...** It's more than a little amusing to me to think of an Australian band naming themselves after a former hooker from a '10s FX series about a rogue US Marshall with his own sense of justice, but then again, the outback of their native continent is a pretty treacherous place, which dwarfs the perries and dust bowl terrane of the American West, making our cowboy-cop dramas seem quaint and warmly relatable when viewed through their eyes. I mean, any yankee cow-poke caught out in that Australian scrub for even a day would likely be crying to his maker to be catapulted back to the rocky crevasses of Wyoming, if for no other reason than the fact that they have roughly four times the variety of venomous snakes on that big dusty island of theirs. But that's enough rambling through prolog- it's about time we gave these buckaroos their due. Ellen May are a pop-punk band itchin' to rustle up some feels on their EP A Lonely Way to Go- a record that explores the way in which relationships become strained through time and poor decisions, as well as how lonely the prospect of death is at the end of this long, taxing, indignant trot we call life. The morbid subject matter, as well as the way that the band's vocal delivery tends to draw out certain symbols to put special, gravelly, pain-stricken emphasis on them, certainly evokes comparisons to Alkaline Trio, but the guitar playing, and general melodic quality of their songs, has this bright, shimmering quality to it that you'd never hear from said gothic trifecta, instead calling to mind the rafters seeking, arena-sized, public confessional-boosting sonics of The Wonder Years. This is only a four-song EP, but it feels so much bigger than that, which is incredible because it doesn't immediately give off the pretense that it should be that momentous of a listen... And yet, it keeps managing to top itself. The EP starts with the slow burn and sudden burst of "How It Came To This" which will rattle your marbles like the cherry of the cigarette you've been slowly dragging on exploding into cinders after being caught by a stray bullet just beneath your unsuspecting nose. After this initial foray of excitement, we come across "Misconstrued," which kicks and stretches its way up the walls of a collapsing sinkhole. We then see the record gain its footing back just in time for the full-court dash of "Hawthorne," before leaving gravity behind entirely in a heady whirlwind of regret that rages on "Back To The Start," a track that blasts the listener into the air like a life-raft caught in a waterspout- thrown to the mercy of the elements and left suspended in a limbo of heated introspection. A Lonely Way to Go is anything but a desolate place to lose one's self. Instead, it's Ellen May's way of throwing down a ladder to help you climb out of whatever shallow grave you might have been digging.

Give We're Trying Records a chance!

* In March I am writing about a different album every day inspired by a unique color. Today's color eucalyptus inspired my review of Ellen May's record for... well, fairly obvious reasons. 

** I have no hard evidence for this conclusion, but it makes a certain amount of sense... 

Album Review: Daiistar - Good Time

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 19: Cadet Blue*

For a part of the country that regularly registered temperatures in the mid-to-high 90°s, Austin, TX, sure churns out some cool bands. And "Cool" is definitely a crucial term when encountering Lone Star quartet Daiistar and their debut, Good Time. The group shows themselves to be dependable restorers of previous eras' neo-psychedelic pop revivals, spiritually succeeding the impulsive groove-belt magnetism of groups like Brian Jonestown Massacre as well as the dirt-kicking soul of The Warlocks, while landing, with conscious aim, closer to the melodic milieu of the clean but shaggy, hook-heavy mantle of '80s Primal Scream. As much as grand catchy vocal sweeps and brazen guitars with extensive tangles of hirsute distortion are important elements of what makes Good Time, well, a good time(!), it's really the rhythm section that keeps these tracks cohering and commanding, maintaining the songs on a tight and tops-tervy rail that always feels like it's going to launch the band off the chain hill and into the sun, but instead directs their kaleidoscopic trip through lapping loops of hammer-headed trip-hop and spacy shoegaze, driving through ever denser and more enticing cornets of blindingly pyretic mirages to be delivered onto a summit of pure pop perfection. These cats really know how to make the heart purr with delight, with every track demonstrating that they knew exactly what they were doing when they named this album. 

Give Fuzz Club a scratch behind the ears, they deserve it.

* Cadet blue inspired my decision to write about Daiistar's Good Time for the 19th day of the Spring Colors Challenge because it's a tonally "cool" color, and they're frankly (as I've said above), a very cool band. In addition, I initially thought the cover showed someone looking through some kind of an ice formation... I've since realized that it's a dude peering through a shattered windshield, which is a cool visual in a completely different way.

Album Review: Lanayah - I'm Picking Lights in a Field​.​.​.

Spring Colors Challenge - Day 18: Peridot*

With how much overlap there is between the fan bases of shoegaze, post-rock, and doom metal, it's incredible that the sounds of these genres tend to be so strictly defined against each other. They are almost like siblings, sonically speaking, representing three areas of music which are molded by a reliance on heavy, hazy atmosphere, excessive volume, fluctuating structures, layered textures, and often, engaged, propulsive percussive elements- yet they're rarely invited to the same festivals, fiestas, and family functions. Maybe it's because they share so much in common, or maybe it's because they don't share enough. Regardless, you'd have to be some kind of a bold freak to actually want to cross-pollinate the three and hope to maintain any semblance of order in the household. The musical collective Lanayah is just that kind of bold, though. Heck, you could even call them brazen! Closing in on only a few years shy of a decade into their career, their latest LP (and third overall), I'm Picking Lights in a Field​.​.​., is habitually unpredictable in its moment-to-moment transitions, while exhibiting a prevailing coherence that is attributable to more than it simply having been conceived of, and recorded as, one, long track. Not only does each song tie together like some kind of grotesque, trauma-bound quilt, or a brutalized, localized reenactment of Hands Across America, but the repetition which binds its flesh to its bones through a litany of softSPINNYsoft, AGONYreliefAGONY, and calmPEALINGcalm variations, exhibits a violent recursive nature that seems to deny itself serenity even in its affirmations. The record probes unsettled baths of tension and engages in uproarious bouts of ready-fire, hardcore aggression, only to slide perceptively but unobtrusively into murky tides of tranquil creeping ecstasy, revealing in a balance of hurried turmoil and blasé transcendence that intersects with the bored absurdity of life in the same way a paintball traverses the cross-hatches of a screen door, that is, in a brilliant, richly-hued chaos-cloud. It's proof that you don't have to pick and choose between the things that breathe life into your world, choose one way to feel, or even work within one set of rules, provided you can sheer, sew, and embroider all the things that inspire you into a monstrosity whose unorthodox physiognomy is almost too fascinating for words.

Drongo Tapes, a smart choice.

* Spring Colors Challenge is a little thing I am doing where I write a fresh album review every day of the month of March inspired by a different color. Today's color, peridot, has some what of an ambiguous profile. It's not quite green, and it's not quite yellow, it's clear but kind of murky at the same time. Kind of like slime, a primordial substance that contains all the essence of life, but none of it in exacting or easily discernable quantities, sort of like a certain band whose music could be classified as shoegaze, post-rock, hardcore, or doom metal, while not being definitively any of those things to the exclusion of the others. 

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. 

Put your faith in Unguarded.

* 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. 

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.  

Conduct your own forensics with the remains of Chicago Research. 

* 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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.