Interview: Coupons

 

Image thanks to band

I was able to catch up with Dan Maddalone of Albany based indie rockers Coupons for New Noise this month. We talked about their new record Up & Up and his love for his local DIY scene. Talking with Dan definitely made me think twice about hunkering down in Chicago for the rest of my life. I may have to make a trip out east to check out his neck of the woods once this virus thing gets sorted out. 

Read interview with Dan of Coupons at New Noise. 

Grab a copy of Up & Up here. 

Album Review: Quin Kirchner - The Shadows and The Light

One of these days we need to put Quin Kirchner, Makaya McCraven, and Chad Taylor in a steel cage with their drum kits of choice and just see what happens. Smart money will be on professional, amiable greetings followed by one of the most tactile and nuanced polyrhythmic choreographies witnessed in this or any lifetime. But I'm a betting man. For me, I'm willing to drop my dough on the off chance their combined rhythmic forces peel a sliver sized crack in the space-time continuum into a yawning wormhole and causes the world to invert and pass through into a parallel dimension. Maybe one where universal health care is a political possibility. It's just a thought. On a somewhat related note, my partner's insurance just informed her that they're no longer covering one her medications. A drug that she needs, which is prescribed by her doctor, and that she takes at her doctor's direction. But her insurance company decided she doesn't need it, so… If you have a better idea than rupturing the fabric of reality to prevent bureaucrats from coming between us and health decisions made between us and our doctor, I'm open to suggestions. 

I digress, I digress, I degrees... Sometimes the only thing that seems good in this world is music. And music is always good. Especially, Quin Kirchner's music. If you hadn't gathered from the intro, Kirchner is a Chicago based jazz percussionist. A go-to performer for many fellow travelers in northern Illinois, from indie-folksys like Ryley Walker, to accomplished jazz ensembles such as the Nick Mazzarella Quintet, even to more experimental outfits including Brian J Sulpizio's Health&Beauty. Kirchner's latest full-length record is The Shadows and The Light, and it is a deeply adventurous and optimistic exercise that combines Kirchner's love for Chicago's tradition of free jazz, filtered with modern interpretations, and strained through concerted silos of post-bop concessions. The album is a mix of original songs and humbly ambitious revues, such as the sweeping, funky, heel-clicking cover of Frank Foster's "At This Point In Time" and the deftly measured, horn lead repartee of Carla Bley's King Korn. The material embodied on these two tracks represents the more formalist, tonal side of the album's character. The other half is best exemplified by the clattering surge and spacy scatter of "Ecliptics" which makes use of confounding polyrhythms and a wheezing Electro-Harmonix Memory Man to create the impression of a single, unbroken groove, which changes shape and color without losing its texture. Between the poles of the functional and the discordant, lie the sonorous hard bop crackle and bright effervescence of "Jupiter Moon" and the closer, "Lucid Dream" with its uncertain footing but assured grace. Most surprising of all is the title track, which features subtle Brazilian rhythms in dialogue with gradually more compelling horn melodies and putatively adversarial chords progressions, the latter of which drags the song down into intertidal pools, only to intentionally release it and allow it's tension exfoliate into bounding, brassy spirals. Another great jazz album from one of Chicago's many abundantly talented denizens. Kirchner can't fix all my life problems, but at least he can put me in a better mood and for that, he has my gratitude.

Get a copy of The Shadows and The Light from AstralSpirits here. 

Album Review: Tengger - Nomad

Before it was mandatory (or I guess “recommended” in my country), I felt stuck at home. When I was younger, I very much wanted to see the world. To have my horizons broadened as I escaped to new lands. To see with my own eyes the multiform unity of the human family in all its incongruities and brilliance. But I got old and it never happened. I never had any money to travel and a host of issues at home stacked up in a way to keep me in place, holding what little life I had together. I felt like I was holding up a giant Jenga tower using my own spine and grit of character as a brace. I should have just let it fall in retrospect. Regrets are heavier in recollection than fear is in the moment. So now I live vicariously through TV shows about travel, and yes, also music, from far-flung places. Sounds made by people willing to accept the challenge and adventure of the wind. Who hear the petition of distant shores and consider it a calling. One such cohort of people are itta and Marqido, the couple at the center of the pan-Asian (their descriptor) new age revival project, Tengger.

Now new age music has a bad reputation for a reason. Its cultural purpose in the West, and the United States, in particular, is that it allowed people who fancied themselves cultural elites and/or materially comfortable dilettantes, a mode of cultural escapism that permitted them an unearned sense of spiritual, and by extension, moral superiority to the proles who toiled beneath them. The genre of new age, along with colonialist commodification of third world identities that occurred through the formerly academically inclined category of world music in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, became a greased vector through which capitalist cultural triumphalism declared its ultimate victory over the autonomous struggles of the peoples of the world in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. It was not only the end of history and the end of ideology, but also the end of simple pleasures like being able to listen to pop-music in the waiting room of your dentist’s office while you waited to get your molars capped. At least for a while.

The backlash against this stuff in the late ‘90s hit pretty hard. There are a bunch of reasons for this, chief among them was the fact that new age and world music were so closely aligned with commercialism and a kind of smug, over-culture, browbeating, that people either grew bored with, and then intensely hostile towards, both modes of expression almost immediately. The backlash was swift enough that it felt like a lot of those Pure Mood knock off comps were released directly to bargain bins and second-hand retailers across the mid-west as a kind of layover on their way to a municipal landfills.

Tengger kind of skewers this unfortunate legacy in at least one important way. Instead of being a cultural expression, strained out of its context and standardized for consumption, they problematize the commodification of the Western notion of otherness by, taking the pastiche of appropriated forms and reintegrating them into the fabric of their source. In other words, Tengger returns the otherness to world music, that its ‘90s counterpart carefully extracted to sell soda and shampoo.

Beyond a kind of rehabilitation of psychologically mutilated cultural forms, Tengger’s music is, in fact about travel. The movement from place to place and the interactions with peoples of different backgrounds and origins is what gives their music flight. It is their motivating concept. The breath that causes the pebble to begin rolling down the hill. On their latest album Nomad, the sense of constant motion is conveyed to the listener through rhythmic straits and channels through which a bubbling course of acoustic synths playfully lapping and bantering below a freely flowing mist of vocal vapors. There is a deliberately calibrated motorik momentum to these tracks, an element that is certainly present on all of Tengger's releases, but when found here, has an undeniable naturalistic presence, that makes the direction of these songs feel both swift and inevitable. The specific character of this tranquil thrall is best encapsulated on the closing track “Flow,” the mouth of the album’s river you could say. The track has a light, ambient quality to its tug like a grain of sand in the current of a river. Its refreshing melody carrying you as if you were as light as a long exhale. The songs ceaseless drifting, reminding the listener of the way that water moves through and on top of land, renewing and shaping it, eventually flowing out to sea and then back again after an ion in absentia. The world is actually a connected place after all. It is a place where barriers and borders and other artifices can wrench it apart but temporarily. It is a single, unified whole, divided only by the diseases of the mind. Let Tengger help you pierce the illusions of separability and help you accept the pull that the ever-moving currents of the world have on you and every other living being on Earth.  

Grab a copy of Nomad from Beyond the Beyond is Beyond here. 

Album Review: Dropdead - 2020 S/T

 

The new Dropdead record finds the band moving on from their '90s output and into thrashier, heavier territory. In 2020 Dropdead has definitely embraced their metal side, and when paired with their trademark social critique, the result is as powerful and righteous anything in their discography. 

Check out my review over on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Dropdead's new LP from Armegedon Label here. 

Interview: Grog

 

Image by band

Had the chance to catch up with Pedra of the Portuguese grindcore band Grog about their new live album and split with Agathocles, Smashed Hammer Feast, recoded at last year's Hammer Smash Fest. The two bands really helped to cement the grindcore sound of continental Europe in the '80s and '90s, and despite having released dozens and dozens of splits individually, the two bands have surprisingly never released a record together. That's all changed now! Smashed Hammer Feast is out via Helldrod on September 30 but you can stream the whole album now over at New Noise today! 

Read my interview with Pedra and stream all of Smashed Hammer Feast at New Noise here. 

Interview: Ric Wilson

 

Photo thanks to Ric Wilson

Got to talk with rising Chicago hip hop icon Ric Wilson for the CHIRP Radio Podcast this week. This week we discussed his new collaborative EP with Terrance Martin, his participation in the recent mass uprisings in Chicago and elsewhere and why he's done being mad. It was an awesome conversation and I've very excited to be able to share it with you today. 

Check out my conversation with Ric Wilson on CHIRP's site here, or below

CHIRP Radio · Ric Wilson Interview

Album Review: Loud Night - Mindnumbing Pleasure

 

Loud Night is the best hardcore party record and the best dark hardcore record I've heard this year and you can check out my of their debut Mindnumbing Pleasure New Noise and crack one open to the coming armageddon. 

Read review of Mindnumbing Pleasure here. 

Interview: Silvio Novelletto of Nailed Nazarene Industries

 

I got to chat with Silvio Novelletto of the Bandcamp based harsh noise label Nailed Nazarene Industries this week for New Noise. We talked about his inspiration for the label, his journey into the realm of harsh noise and his top picks for where to start when digging into his back catalog of releases.  

You can read the interview over at New Noise here.

Check out Nailed Nazarene Industries here. 

Album Review: niiice - internet friends

 

I got to write a nice little thing on those sweet boys in MN emo band niiice and their new record internet friends for New Noise's website. I don't get to listen to a lot of emo but this one really did it for me and I'm glad that I check it out. 

Read write up of internet friends here. 

Get a copy from Brace Cove Records here. 

Interview: Manikineter

 

Photo thanks to Manikineter

My interview with boundary shattering Philly noise and hip hop monster Manikineter is now up on New Noise. We chatted about the inspirations for his new album Copper Fields and his future plans for 2020. It's short, sweet, and to the poison point. 

Read my interview with Manikineter on New Noise here. 

Album Review: Dead Neanderthals - Blood Rite EP

The free jazz and experimental underground sound sprite Dead Neanderthals is animated through the incantations and codifying intentions of Dutch duo Otto Kokke and René Aquarius, performing the sax and drums respectively. Throughout the years they have hunted the beats of the celestial plain to steal from them the mysteries of the meta-reality that ungirds the plain of illusion that the rest of us lowly humans inhabit. Through countless collaborations and hours of insight mining, Dead Neanderthals have assembled a prodigious catalog of wildly divergent releases that evocatively intertwine elements of noise, drone, and even grindcore into a pantheon of genre breaching scions of dimension piercing consciousness. 

2020 was meant to be the band’s 10th anniversary year, celebrated with a four-set performance at this year’s Roadburn, an occasion that was dashed due to COVID. The only semblance of the circumvented celebration is a new real EP dropped by the band this past July, titled Blood Rite. Now, most of Dead Neanderthals’ albums are notable for their subtlety of form and construction; even when they embrace harsh aesthetics, Blood Rite is not that. 

Switching out the sax for a murderous, cacophonous synth tone, the latest EP from Dead Neanderthals is a single-track, brutalizing doom-death annihilation exhibition. It sounds like this album is flowing out of the front doors of a burning cathedral that is slowly being sucked into the chasms of hell. René’s vocals sound like the cries of a beast unearthing itself from a death-like slumber, clawing its way out from under the weight of dead earth and through a trellis of rotten tree roots. The synths, as previously mentioned, have a teeth-bared snarl to them that rivals the threat made by even the fiercest of death metal guitar feedback. This is not a good place to start if you are new to Dead Neanderthals’s work, but if you are looking for something to smash the dense monotony of your day into a thousand spinning shards, then I suggest you take the collar off this animal and let it run wild in your head chamber.

Get a copy of Blood Rite on cassette from Utech Records here.

Album Review - Wax Wav - Self-Titled EP

 

If you head over to New Noise right now you can check out my write up of the new Wax Wav self-titled EP. They're a Philly based indie rock band with a classic, expertly crafted, and throw back '80s sound. I seriously do not care about 90% of indie rock that gets released, but this one really stuck the landing for me. 

Check out my write up of Wax Wav at New Noise here. 

Pick up a copy of Wax Wav's self-titled EP here. 

Album Review: Roy Ayers - Roy Ayers JID002

 

Roy Ayers turned 80 this month on September 10, 2020. The pioneering jazz musician's career is inextricably tied to the development of jazz in the post-war period, and he has been fairly lauded as the godfather of neo-soul and hip hop as well as the absolute father of acid and fusion jazz. While he worked and recorded consistently throughout the 1960s as a supporting post-bop vibraphonist, it wasn't until his 1976 Polydor release Everybody Loves the Sunshine that fortune truly smiled upon him. Layering soul, R'nB and post-disco funk in an evocative fashion, Sunshine inspired an entire generation of soul and jazz musicians to follow him like Moses through to the fertile crescent of 80s fusion jazz.

As interest in his the sleek, sentimentality jazz style waned in the mainstream, it found a new life in the underground, with crate-pilliaging upstarts like A Tribe Called Quest notably borrowing from Ayers's" Runnin' Away" for their 1989 cut "Description of a Fool" and slicing up bits of "Feel Like Makin' Love" to make "Keep It Rollin'." Ayers continues to be a profound sample source for hip hop artists to this day, with his work propelling the beat and vibe behind artists as diverse of Madlib and Tyler, the Creator.

Ayers hasn't released a full-length album since 2004's Mahogany Vibe, so it's pretty special to see him step back into the studio almost twenty years later for a collaborative effort with two artists whose music careers the master idiophone player made possible. Adrian Young has earned his salt by making beats reminiscent of the era that Ayers came up in and Ali Shaheed Muhammad was a member of A Tribe Called Quest, so enough said.

While Ayes's influences are most pervasive in the fusion scene, his debut album for the Jazz is Dead imprint focuses more on his pre-Sunshine era, reviving the soul and R'nB melds of the mid-70s just as the quiet storm was gaining steam on FM radio. "Synchronize Vibrations" is an exquisite, soothing funk opener, and along with its follow up "Hey Lover," manifests a moving romance of body and soul that will sweep the shard of the supreme being that sits at your core off the seat of her charkha. There are some uncharacteristic experiments as well, that while they don't fit neatly into Ayers's back catalog, are still resounding successes, such as "Sunflowers" with its distinctly bossa nova flavor, and the hard, hip-hop bonded bop of the cranked-up "Solace."

While stylistic trial runs and '70s era romantic soul anchor this release, but that doesn't mean that the album is totally devoid of fusion jazz. Both "Soulful and Unique" and "African Sounds" feature laughing, tickles of futuristic bass and pure flowing tributaries of refreshing, electro-captured starlight that hint at Ayers indomitable influence over later future seeking jazz artists.

More than a living tribute to a master of his form, Ayers's collaboration with Younge and Muhammad is a celebration of the legacy of 21st Century jazz that he has had a hand in crafting and the lives he has touched through his transcendent sonic medications.

Get a copy of Roy Ayers JID002 from Jazz is Dead here. 

Album Review: The White Swan – Nocturnal Transmission

 

Mercedes Lander of Kittie has a new album out with her porject The White Swan. It's an EP called Nocturnal Transmission, sweeping atmospheric sludge, packed with uplifting melodisim. I dig it, and I hope you will as well. You can read my review over at New Noise now.

Review of Nocturnal Transmission on New Noise here.

Grab a copy of the EP from War Crimes Recordings here.

Album Review: Digital Leather - New Wave Gold

 

Shawnee Foree always seems like he's about to call it quits on Digital Leather. And just when he seems like he's got up his nerve, the words "I quit you" quivering upon his lips- he releases another album. It's a cycle that is as eternal as the equinox.

Let that be a lesson to all you kiddos considering either a career in a garage band or as an accountant. Once you get bit by the band bug, it's hard to recover from its alluring bane. That said, you're unlikely to acquire any genuine life satisfaction from filling out expense reports and emailing people about their audits. You only get one life so you might as well ride the hell out of it in a van with a bunch of other dudes who are putting off making any major life decisions in order to see the country and sleep on stranger's floors in front of TV sets that only ever seem to display the main menu screen of a Family Guy DVD. The show's theme song playing at full volume all night. No one knows what happened to the remote. No one knows how to change the input channel so you can watch regular TV. Such is life on the road. Such is life, period. And at 24 full-length albums in just under 20 years, I'd say this is more or less a permanent arrangement for Foree, this is the life he has chosen. It is great news for fans of weirdo punk rock like you and me.

Foree's latest release is New Wave Gold, a reflective album that looks back on the past two decades or so of American history and cultural and personal development with a look of furrowed brow, pursed-lipped concern. The album starts with the country karaoke twist of "Dark Ages" which is anchored by an acoustic guitar accompaniment. I cannot tell you how much it blows my mind to hear a guitar this forward in the mix on a Digital Leather track. Oh sure, there's that lovely tiger-cub-like purring synth in the bridge, but this electro-accent doesn't serve to claw the track back into Digital Leather orthodoxy as much as it highlights how far this album falls outside of Foree's own established conventions. To be honest, it's a good way to kick things off and sets the stage for later dusty bangers like the southward gazing, Cure capturing, jangle-juke cow-punk of "Acid Rain."

My favorite parts of New Wave Gold, though, are the album's forays into degraded dance-pop and electronic music, such as the lysergic lacquered post-funk of "Smoke Flood" and the viciously sequenced, darkwave detonator "Power Quest." "The King of Idiots" is a clammy blast of icy synth bombast that draws many of Foree's characteristic synth sounds into a pop-melody worthy of Peter Bjorn and John. There is even a groovy electro beat under the laconic "Iconography," which winds down with the intensely relatable refrain: "sucks to be alive."

I'm glad that Foree stuck it out long enough for his style to mature into a record like New Wave Gold. Two decades ago, Digital Leather changed what I thought was possible for punk and lo-fi music, and I'm glad that he's still able to help push these boundaries for me all these years later.

Grab a copy of New Wave Gold from No Coast Records here. 

Album Review: The Archaeas - S/T

 

I've got a review of the gritty and glorious garage rock debut from Kentucky's The Archaeas up on New Noise. It's a fucking great confluence of Guitar Wolf, The Oblivians, Ty Segall, and about half a dozen fuzz oozing rock 'n roll mutants. 

Check out the Review of The Archaeas debut here

Grab a copy of the The Archaeas debut from Goner here. 

Interview: Eternal Struggle

 

Photo thanks to Eternal Struggle

I've been working to talk with more hardcore bands outside of the US for a while and I finally pinned one down. Head over to New Noise to check out my interview with Tel Aviv's Eternal Struggle. We talked about their local scene, their new album Year of the Gun, and the trauma and contradictions inherent in growing up in a country whose society is totally geared towards endless war with its neighbors. It's a really informative conversation and with a killer bunch of musicians. 

The interview includes a behind the scenes video of the making of Eternal Struggles's new album Year of the Gun by veteran hardcore filmmaker Drew Stone and an interview with producer Brian Mitts of Madball fame. 

Read the interview with Eternal Struggle at New Noise here. 

Album Review: Bloodfeast Ritual - Altars of Sacrifice

 

I've got a write up of the debut EP from Bloodfeast Ritual over on New Noise. Altars of Sacrifice is an incredibly fun homage to all things deranged and death metal. I believe that it is self-released so show these gorey goofballs a little love on Bandcamp. 

Read the write up of Altars of Sacrifice at New Noise. 

Album Review: BbyMutha - Muthaland

Muthaland is the first, and supposedly final, full-length album from Chattanooga rapper, BbyMutha aka Cindyy Kushh aka Brittnee Moore. In her short career, she's generated a healthy amount of buzz and guested on some pretty stellar jams, but with the release of her debut album, she's announced that she's tossing the brass ring back down the sewer grate where she found it. Maybe Pennywise can pawn it for a new pair of shoes or some tanning lotion of something. After giving Muthaland more than half a dozen listens, I honestly find her decision to quit the business understandable. She's too real for all that shit.

If you want to make it in the industry, you kind of have to anticipate that people will lie to you, scam you, and generally attempt to waste your time and money on just about every rung up the ladder your climbing. Not to mention that the time commitments and financial strains make it incredibly difficult to have a family or maintain close friendships. Also, you're pretty unlikely to make a sustainable living from it even if you become a household name. The industry is a place where good folks go to die… etc, etc… and there is apparently a downside as well, if you can believe it. I don't blame her for peacing out. If Muthaland is all we get before Moore says good-night, then we should count ourselves lucky. At 25 tracks, it's a full meal that will leave you debating whether or not you have room for a second serving. And if you're like me, you'll be hitting play three or four times in a row to get another nip off at those Rock Floyd baked beats and Moore's sugary, sassy bravado.

Even though Chattanooga and Memphis aren't exactly neighbors, there is some not insubstantial horrocore influence on Muthaland that is pronounced enough to be noticeable, but not embellished enough to be distracting. An aesthetic that she pairs with raunchy and sexy lyrics go hard enough to make even someone as liberated as Cardi B blush. It's like Tommy Wright III and Cupcakke cut a record. Scary and horny. That's where it's at!

"Roaches Don't Die" has a classic, slasher soundtrack piano riff woven into the beat, which heightens the sense of delicious trepidation thrown off by the growling bassline, and provides some ironic and appreciable distance from the real life horrors and traumas depicted in the lyrics. "Heavy Metal" has a similarly dark tone and beastly bassy snarl, with lyrics that are certifiably explicate and that will make you feel like you're using those dating apps all wrong (when was the last time your prospective paramour sent you a picture of their butt hole? That's what I thought). "Drowning Pool" hinges on a lyrical reference to an early '00s alternative metal song to describe slaying at the club and sending haters crashing to the floor in flames like a strawman dipped in kerosene hit with a lit cigarette, all to a spanning, spidery beat. Lastly, "Demonology" makes the best use of what could potentially be a Mike Oldfield b-side to tell a hilarious story about regrettable hook ups. Also, there is one song were Moore dumps a guy because he "don't fuck with Satan" which is just an amazing line, amongst a rich portfolio of amazing lines, and one that sells the hell out of the spooky, bangin' vibe that the Muthaland has cultivated.

If you only drop the needle on one track though, make it the hustle-forward, Champaign-logged bass solo anchored "Cocaine Catwalk," where Moore leans into some relentless charming smack talk. With every line she drops, you can't anticipate if she's going to lean in for a hug or take a swipe at you. The tension is intoxicating, frankly. It's probably best for everyone else that she's dropping out of the game. If she kept up the energy on Muthaland for another album, she'd just make everyone else look foolish for trying.

Whatever Moore does next with her life, I hope it makes her as happy as this album has made me. Seriously, Moore, if you are reading this, best of luck to you.

Grab a copy of Muthaland here. 

Interview: Ashlynn Barker a.k.a. Fake Gamer Girl

 

Image by the artist

Hey all you comics enthusiast, indie gamers, and lo-fi folkies, my interview with the gracious Ashlynn Barker of Fake Gamer Girl comics is now ready for your perusal in the latest issue of the VGA Zine. We talked about the inspirations for her work, the trans comic community, her adventures in programming and what musical animal she'd most like to befriend. It's a really fun little chat that I hope you'll enjoy. 

Read the interview in the VGA Zine here. 

Check out Fake Gamer Girl Comics here.  

Album Review: Militarie Gun – My Life Is Over EP

 

Did a review of the stupendous new debut EP from Militarie Gun the new project from Ian Shelton of Regional Justice Center. It's a lot more post-punk then you would expect. Well, maybe you would expect it, but I didn't. The review is now up on New Noise. 

Read review of My LIfe is Over on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy from the groups Bandcamp here. 

Album Review: Pan-Amerikan Native Front - Native Amerikan Black Metal Split

 

I have a write up of the Pan-Amerikan Native Front side of the new black metal split LP Native Amerikan Black Metal up over on New Noise. A reclamation of second-wave black metal and a knife in the side of colonialist encroachment. The vinyl is sold out, but you get still get the digital (the A-side at least) on Bandcamp. 

Check out my write up at New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Native Amerikan Black Metal here. 

Album Review: Ohmme - Fantasize Your Ghost

Who are you? I think it's a question that most people try not to ask themselves while brushing their teeth, or catching their reflection in a car window during their commute, or while making eye contact with themselves, starring back from the void of a computer monitor, before the CPU powers up, and the display activates. Most people aren't entirely happy with their lives, and confronting who life has lead you to become can be as severely painful as stepping on an upright nail. It's also not necessarily productive to think about how your life could have been different while you have a deadline you're trying to meet. Other times alternative universes where you are the protagonist can be fun to dive into as a kind of escapist fantasy, where your musing are set free from the fetters of reality. Errant mental detours considering how much better one's life would have been had you married someone else or chosen a different major, maybe the closest things you have to any sense of control over your lives. These flights from reality can be destructive as well. Heightening feelings of entrapment and looking for a culprit to blame and externalize your self-loathing (usually dear old Mom and Dad will do in this regard, but a spouse is just as good). The game is usually up though, once you realize that the person who you are now, literally would not exist had your past self made different decisions. The you that is reading this now would be effectively dead. And then there would be some other you, some other version of you reading a blog post wondering how much better their life would have been had they made different, presumably better life choices. The truth is that there is no other version of you. You are the direct product of a series of choices made by you, your parents, and their parents, acting in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics (or whatever governs the churn of the cosmos), and neither you nor the universe as we know it now would have existed had anything in the past played out in any other way then it did. The other you is a fantasy. A phantasmagorical unreality. A ghost that plagues your conscious mind.

Wrestling with that other you, who does not, and could not exist, is the central struggle that animates Chicago experimental duo Ohmme's third LP, Fantasize Your Ghost. This struggle is most apparent on the lovingly pop-forward track "Ghost," which confronts the claustrophobic rush of being that emerges when examining this other, this fantasy of yourself, that looms over your head like a twisted chandelier. The solution that the band offers for winning your battle with this agonizing apparition is essentially telling it to take a hike. Once free of your own mind-prison and no longer haunted by your mirror image minotaur, you should be free to explore the fertile and lushly reedy guitar pop prattle of "The Limit" as well as the lush, rejuvenating embrace and alternative rock reverb wash of "Some Kind of Calm." At least in theory.

In reality, vanquishing the poltergeist of your false-self doesn't ultimately cure you of the existential sickness acquired through living. A fact made clearly illustrated by the calamity channel haint of the self-immolating Bunnyman-esque "Sturgeon Moon" that appears on the back end of the album. In other words, life doesn't stop coming at you just because you're in a healthier headspace. There are still dishes to be done, both literal and figurative ("Spell It Out"). Obligations to warily wade through, playing our assigned roles society, and keeping its machinery, inexorably winding forward ("Twitch"). You can look back on the person you used to be, but that person was just someone you passed through to become who you are now ("3 2 4 3"). As the remarkably fluid and captivating "Selling Candy," alludes, as it cuts through ribbons of spill-over fuzz with surfy subversion, maybe you'll always be putting your best foot forward, only to have it stepped on. Or, as it's put more starkly, while nestled in the winding coil of a nutritious Nivrvana-esque groove of "Flood Your Gut," "[y]our whole vision's not enough," implying that you'll never have the foresight possible to realize all your goals or even see yourself clear enough to actualize fully. A chilling thought to start an album with.

I'm very glad that Fantasize Your Ghost ends where it does, with a healing acoustic stroll, accompanied by caressing violin strings and a sunny Pacific inspired melody, all of which combine with the lyrics to goad you to enjoy the small things in life, and stop to smell (or rather plant) the roses every once in a while. Honestly, you have to take small victories where you find them and let the rest go. It's necessary to have some ambition to live in this world. But after all, what is the drive to achieve worth, if it only ever leads to you wishing you were someone else. Every once in a while, you need a reminder that the you that is here, not the you who you fantasize about, but the one who inhabits the body that is sitting there reading this, is enough. In this universe, and every other conceivable one. 

Grab a copy of Fantasize Your Ghost from Joyful Noise here. 

Album Review: Manikineter – Copper Fields

 

Carl dropped a new Manikineter LP late last week and you can now check out my review over at New Noise. Copper Fields is a wash of eerie, ear savaging noise rap from a man who sounds like he's at the end of his rope. 

Check out my review of Copper Fields on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Copper Fields here. 

Album Review: Zulu - My People... Hold On

 

Did a quick write up of the Zulu's new EP My People... Hold On for New Noise today. Black power power-violence from the depths of OC, CA. It's a powerfully compelling listen, and accomplishes more in 7 minutes then some badns do in their entire career. 

Check out my review of My People... Hold On on New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of My People... Hold On here. 

Album Review: Brett Naucke - EMS Hallucinations

It may seem incredible now, but there was a time when the synthesizer was a novel sound object worthy of scholarly study. During the ‘80s these magnificent tools became synonymous with plastic consumer culture. Their luster tarnished by appearances on MTV. Eventually relegated to the dustbin of chintz, they were pushed to the back of the mix, padding the gaps between the guitarist and the vocalist instead of allowing it space to breath in the foreground. The collective embarrassment that the industry felt over the synthesizer's spacey, electronic hum could not be satisfied by this demotion to pure functionality, and it was pushed further and further into the background until it disappeared entirely in the wake of Nevermind.  If synths are given center stage at all nowadays, it’s because the singer needs something to do with their hands while performing. In instances where a guitar would be too distracting, you just slide a board under their figures, and voilà(!) all that nervous fidgeting turns into sound. 

These dire straits were not always so narrow, though. In the 1970s many academics were interested in unlocking the hidden potential of the synthesizer, with a great number of works being produced following various esoteric interests in the instrument's potential with a disinterested in the reproducibility that pop music demands. Enter the Buchla 200 Series! While Moog and other synthesizer brands were courting commercial application, its creator Don Buchla sought to create an instrument that would harness the echoes of the cosmos. Buchla systems are now highly coveted and generally not available to the public as a result. This is why Chicago sound artist Brett Naucke had to travel to the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), an experimental sound studio in Stockholm, just to have access to one. The result of his journey is EMS Hallucinations, a dream-like aural odyssey that positions Naucke in the cockpit of early sounds pioneers and attempts to retrace the jetstreams they rode, if not literally, then psycho-acoustically. 

Of course, there is no point in replicating the sounds and experiences of previous sound architects. Instead, Naucke was looking to understand how his current sensibilities in dance and electronic music inform his understanding of, and interactions with, the instruments designed without such applications in mind. A kind of archeological study, where the researcher is the subject, attempting to comprehend their present by forcing chain-reactions within their past. This may be the closest humanity ever actually comes to time travel.

 The first track is a studio experiment conducted using only the Buchla 200. The result is an incredibly crisp sounding interstellar time warp, that will give you flashbacks to the soundscapes of sci-fi epics of a by-gone era. The second track is slightly more beat focused, augmenting the studio output of the Buchla with a Serge system giving it a mesmerizingly trancy quality that becomes more pervasive as the track progresses. The final two tracks on the album “Hallucinations IV” and “Hallucinations II” are reimaginings of segments of the first track, with additional beats spliced throughout, an experiment that collapses the histories of studio experimentation and dance music into a singular, unitary whole. Even as a work that is esoteric in conception, I found EMS Hallucinations to be highly accessible and enjoyable as any electronic music I’ve encountered this year. It doesn’t hurt that the air of scholasticism around the project has piqued by music nerd sensibilities and launched them hurdling towards the hyperspace of the mind.

Grab a copy of EMS Hallucinations from American Dreams Records here. 

Album Review: Deli Girls - BOSS

 

Did a write up of the new Deli Girls album BOSS for New Noise today. They're basically the industrial rap antidote to the sense of disempowerment that has overwhelmed you and me and everyone we know since the pandemic hit. Take your life for a few moments today and bask in the righteous anger of Deli Girls's new album BOSS. 

Read write up of BOSS on New Noise here.  

Interview: Joe Wong

 

Photo thanks to Joe Wong

This week for the CHIRP Radio Podcast they're running a delightful conversation that I had with soundtrack artist and songwriter Joe Wong about his work on the Netflix series The Midnight Gospel, his new album Nite Creatures, and his future plans for his podcast The Trap Set. Also, it turns out we're both from Wisconsin! Weird small world we live in. 

Check out my interview with Joe Wong on CHIRP's website here or click the player below:

CHIRP Radio · Joe Wong INTERVIEW

Album Review: Boris - NO

Back in 2017 Boris was contemplating breaking up. A fact that they memorialized with their album, Dear. The break up didn’t take though, and thank god, because what would this pandemic be without a new Boris album? They release materials regularly and it is always a source of comfort to dive into one of their records. They released their latest record in the middle of this past summer too, a time when many people were still reckoning with the reality of the pandemic and how long it will likely last. Having a new Boris album at that time almost made things feel sort of normal. A little moment of indulgence that the universe permitted in a moment when we’ve been collectively swept up in a giant ball of shit, gaining speed as it rolls downhill. The defiantly titled NO, is the Japanese metal maverick’s… *moves pieces around abacus**head scratching sound*…twenty-seventh studio album? That sounds about right. Whatever number you want to pin on this record in their discography, it should be #1 on your list of armaments to pull the pin on when you’re in a bad mood. Believe me when I say that it is impossible not to catch a contact high from the pure, aerosolized energy pulsing off this record.

NO falls on the heavier, more highly motivated end of Boris’s discography. The band is best known, to some, for their rangier, meditative sludge and drone. But when Boris wants to kick out the jams, the ruckus they rally could blow the doors clean off a sedan. Listen to them at max volume and you may even find yourself getting a free facelift and bride-of-Frankenstein style perm. NO hits closer to albums like Heavy Rocks in this regard, which is a welcome pallet cleanser after the sometimes mathey, sometimes ethereal, multi-course buffet of 2018’s LφVE & EVφL and 2019’s dream-pop foray1985. NO kicks into high-performance mode with the first track “Genesis,” a genuinely anguished doom crawl that picks up belligerent momentum as it goes, lining up the kill shot for the demonic speed metal blitz of “Anti-Gone,” which drunkenly boxes its way through a Midnight inspired groove and a solid barrier of Guitar Wolf-esque howling feedback. You’re going to get a satisfyingly large bite out of every variety of red-blood rock and roll on this record, from grunge on the slick and savage “Non Blood Lore,” to hardcore punk on the suicidal head-charge “Temple of Hatred” and the hammer-fisted “Fundamental Error,” to the blackened sludge roar of “Zerkalo.” If you haven’t had a head-banging hangover yet, you’re about to learn what one is.

Funnily enough, the lightest track on NO references hardcore twice in its title (“HxCxHxC -Parforation Line-”). Far from being a brutal throw-down this track instead spirals up into a blindingly bright shoegaze exhibition. I mean sure, you could argue that the beat here is very post-hardcore, but the track's emphasis is definitely on the crystalline clouds of feedback they’re putting up and not on the punishing grooves that backs it. Plus, these groves fail to meet the intensity of the guitar and drum interplay that drives cuts like the murky throb “Kikinoue,” or the NYC noise rock homage “Lust.” I could go on, but NO is a record that is better felt then analyzed, and if I’ve done my job writing this review, you’ll have already hunted down their Bandcamp page and smashed that play button.

As an aside, I really find the title of this record inspiring. The world and the people who occupy it are always trying to bend you to their will. But you have a will of your own, and it should not be suppressed if you're going to live a dignified life. Sometimes the best way of expressing your will is by denying an obligation or demand placed on you. So today, I dare you to say “no.”* It doesn’t matter to what. At some point today, when someone asks you to do them a favor or tells you that something or other needs to be done, tell them “no.” Set yourself free. Deny the power that someone else has over you, even if just for a moment. And if it feels good. Keep doing it. You’re your own person, and the world needs to respect this fact.

Grab a copy of NO here.  

 

*This dare applies to any and all social or work obligations, but does not give you permission to not wear a mask in public. You MUST wear a mask in public. It's easy to do and it saves lives. Don't be a monster. Mask up!

Album Review: Crust - .​.​.​and a Dirge Becomes an Anthem

 

Russian blackended sludge band Crust know a thing or two about heroism. They'd have to in order to reach deep enough into the dragon's gullet to pull out the fire that they exhibit on .​.​.​and a Dirge Becomes an Anthem. The album has an arch that feels reminiscent of the monomyth of the ages, the redemption of the soul. Only one steeped in a kettle of blood and desperation, lined with rotting flesh. Grounded, relatable, and therefore terrifying, it is reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising, where the call to adventure is actually an invitation to oblivion. Coaxing, leading, and then dragging you to reunification with the eternal. Only someone made of the sternest meddle could face such a fate. Crust's debut invites you to ride with it into the night, knowing that you will never be seen in the flesh on this plane again.

 

The journey begins as the curtain is drawn on the cyclonic stomp of "Approaching Grave," a portal into a land of decay where the ground is blackened with rot and spoil. We see the image of a king as he sits in decadent repose, awaiting his flesh to become a colony of warms and teeming insects. A vision of death that has no promise of renewal, only a long, anguished decline. The inciting action then strikes, in the form of a wind that throws open the chamber doors of the palace, carrying aloft a nauseatingly sweet siren's call, beckoning you to leave the comforts of the king's living tomb, the acrid din of Lord Mantis in the air, the spell of Skeletonwitch goading you to your mount. You leave the living rot of the kingdom and travel through mountains and valleys, greeted by lush meadows to the bending guitar chords of "Beneath the Cold Clay." Beauty assails your senses, distracting you from the heaps of bones that line the trail and streams you cross, until you reach the roads terminus, a thatch hut that reaches into a nest of roots at the base of a great tree. This is the ego-stripping threshold, and as you enter your are greeted by the slaughterhouse hymn of "Clad in Flesh." As you pass further under the tree mutilating grooves and covetous clawing chords reach up from the floor of the tunnel and strip your bones of the burden of their coverings and replace them with a new flesh, unblemished and resistant to age.

 

Bolstered your sheath of new skin and its imperviousness to the drain of time, you travel for a thousand years until you come to the mouth of a great beast's den. You know that it is your destiny to confront the monster within and so you descend the mountain of treasure and skulls to the creature's resting place and plunge your sword into its side. A sky parting pummel arises from the beats guts as it rouses from its sleep. The vibrations of the grim thunder of its interior traveling through your sword, leaping up your arm bones, through your shoulder and neck, and into your skull, filling the cavities of your head with the whipping trounce and Neurosis-esque chthonic howl of a thousand angry spirits. You turn in a moment of panic to look to the mouth of the den and wager your chances of escape only to be met with the beast's eye as it looms over you. A moment passes and then you are smote by its jaws. 

 

Surprisingly, this is not the end to your journey. A slow, resonate, coil winds through the fabric of your soul made of a waterlogged guitar line and its movements summon you back to life. As you enter "Graveland" you find yourself lifted skywards toward the surface of a frozen pond by the swelling pressure of a tempest trapping groove. You feel the force below you grow more solid to the point where it is like a marble floor. You can see a graveyard on the distant shore and make plans to swim to it, but before you can, the tension below you bursts and becomes a whirlpool, savaging you as you clamber for one more breath of air before you are sept under. Your will and strength are not enough to overcome the force of the funnel that wishes to consume you and you tumble into its cold, spraying maw. 

 

Again you find yourself floating, through a place that is neither light nor dark, nor hot nor cold. You know that this is the "Space Sabbath," a distilled place of magic beyond human perception. In this place, you realize that your body has momentum and you allow it to carry you. Eventually, your feet brush up against something solid below you, and you begin to exercise your limbs in a trot. After an eternity of wandering, the navel of a star opens before you, and you pass through to find the kingdom you had left behind centuries ago. It is now overgrown and reclaimed by nature. Everyone is dead. And now there is only peace. You sit and contemplate the ruins and the passage of the sun and the moon until the sky collapses into the earth and the sands of time grow still. 

Get a copy of .​.​.​and a Dirge Becomes an Anthem here. 

Album Review: Rot - ... As One

 

Rising from the focal point of insurrection in the United States, Minnesota hardcore band Rot are here to cure the gangrene of your soul on their debut LP ... As One. You can check out my review of their new record over on New Noise's website now. 

Read review of ... As One at New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of … As One from War Against Records here.

All profits from vinyl sales will be donated to The Orka Project and We Love Lake Street.

Album Review: Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids - Shaman!

The shaman is the bridge between worlds. The person whose soul lives on both this plane and the plane of the gods. Who delivers gifts and messages from one side of the great river to the other distant shore. Who has taken up the burden of knowledge and ritual on behalf of the community so that others can live their lives in peace, undisturbed by the mystery of the universe's twisting cosmic sands, secure in their faith that the world was made to benefit them with its bounty. At times of strife and war, the shaman must beseech the gods for relief, and hope that their prayers will be answered with something other than indifference. At present, the world, as we know it, is in such a period of such magnitudinal dislocation that it is hard to know what reprieve to even pray for. 

The wizard of sound Idris Ackamoor struggled with this question greatly on his 2018 album An Angel Fell, an overtly political work that attempted to make sense of the deepening trauma emerging from climate change and the global reach of late-stage capitalism. His latest record Shaman! however, is more concerned with transcendentalism. While keeping both feet firmly planted on the dirt body of the Earth, he looks to the distant glimmer of paradise and asks how he can bring it closer to where he stands now. 

Shaman! is a more narrowly focused record in a lot of ways. But it is the shrinking of the panoramic to the telescopic that allows it to see farther.  Shaman! takes pains to examine and elucidate the personal journey each of us must take through love and loss, family and isolation, and mortality and what comes after. Taking the threads of each in hand to map the interwoven paths that form the fabric of community. On this record, Ackamore is once again joined by longtime Pyramids member Dr. Margaux Simmons on flute as well as Bobby Cobb on guitar, and collaborator Sandra Poindexter on violin, a caravan of prodigious talent that Ackamoor could not make this journey without. 

 

Throughout the Shaman! you'll get tastes of the last 100 years of jazz, from the willful and angular tribute to Cecil Taylor, titled "Theme For Cecil," to the funk-fusion of "Vigin," and the Brazilian brazed "Tango of Love." "When Will I See You Again?" is a subdued guitar lead traipse of R'nB tinged spiritual jazz that honors the memory of victims of mass violence as well as passed loved ones, and "Salvation" is a swinging tribute to Ackamoor's ancestors. 

 

Trust the shaman to guide you through the depths of the heart, to find that treasure which the gods bestowed to all humankind that will unlock the truth that will catch them in their plumptious descent and teach them to be redeemed in each other's embrace.

Grab a copy from Strut records here. 

Album Review: The Riven - Windbreaker / Moving On 7"

 

I've got a write up of the new greasy, dish of Swedish rock 'n roll from The Riven up over at New Noise. The two singles on The Riven's new 7" are more metal-influenced then their previous efforts and the band sounds all the better for the shift. It's just a good god damned time!

Check out the write up of The Riven's 7" here. 

Grab a copy from The Sign Records here. 

Album Review: Donny Benét - Mr Experience

Sometimes you just want to bask in the warm, womb-like aura of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Wet Lands and enjoy the tranquility of the moment, feeling like you’ve been suspended in motion, in a pool of highly salinized water... and other times you just want to screw someone’s brains out in an small inflatable pool. Australian crooner Donny Benét’s soft and sweaty post-disco balladry is for those times where you’re somewhere in between. A back-breaking drill session in a state of tranquil, primordial bliss. Sign me up, baby! Mr Experience is the fifth album by the bed-room eyed Benét and retains much of the Bryan Ferry flare and pepped up Jan Hammer accompaniments of his previous releases, delivered here with a relaxed, enticing confidence that is welcomingly sensual and deliciously earnest. When I first encountered Benét’s work, I thought, “oh, this is like Har Mar Superstar, but less nervous and a lot less punk.” After giving Mr Experience a through listening though, I can confirm that he is mush less anxious sounding then HMS, but possibly as, or more, punk rock, depending on how you define the term. If punk is living your truth and being who you were meant to be without bowing to ingrained inhibitions than Benét is PUNK AS FUCK! Highlights from this album include the seductive rolling sway of “Reach Out,” and the bouncy biting bass and synth groove of “Moving On,” that cuts through the scrumptious melody like a laser cutter through a sheet of genoise. Also check out, the whistle accented melody and strolling, magnetic purr of “Girl of My Dreams,” the effortless glide of “Negroni Summer,” and the shadowy electro-funk dive of "One Night in Paradise." What lessons can one take from all this abundance of sensuality? Who knows?!? But if you spend the next 10,000 hours of your life listening to Mr Experience then you might just become an expert in loving making in time to hit the dating scene once it opens back up.

Grab a copy of Mr Experience from Dot Dash Records here. 

Album Review: Earthflesh - Carving Paths to Self-Destruction

 

Happy that I got to do a little write up of the new harsh noise release Carving Paths to Self-Destruction from Swiss ear scraper Earthflesh for New Noise today. Extreme, erratic, and existential. What's not to like? 

Check out my write up of Carving Paths to Self-Destruction over at New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Carving Paths to Self-Destruction here. 

Album Review: Megascavenger - Songs in the Key of Madness

 

I've got a write up of the new album Songs in the Key of Madness from Swedish, Lovecraft inspired death metal band Megascavenger. You can read my thoughts over at New Noise now. It's easily their best release since Descent Of Yuggoth. 

Check out my write up of Songs in the Key of Madness at New Noise here. 

Grab a copy of Songs in the Key of Madness from Xtreem Music Records here.