Album Review: Homeskin - Integument Crystallization

 
Homeskin is a solo black metal project of audio engineer and heavy sound architect Garry Brents. I'm not sure what the intentions for the project are, of whether he went into it with any other goal than to make wild, raw and depressive black metal. However oblique his motivations, the effects on the receiving end are indisputable- Homeskin is a vigorously compelling nightmare. 

Garry's latest release Integument Crystallization is his first of 2022 and follows two excellent EP in 2021. Like all of his albums, Integument Crystallization was recorded and uploaded to Bandcamp in less than 20 hours, meaning that there is a minimal gestation period between when these songs flow out of the artist's consciousness, through his instruments and throat, captured by a recording device, and then foisted upon your ears. It's almost as raw as a live set but retains the aura and intrigue of an occult recording- one emerging from parts unknown by people of obscure and wicked origins. I'm always impressed when a black metal project is able to maintain this kind of tension. Preserving some essential, diabolical energy and clandestine intrigue, while not being shy about letting you in on the identity of the man behind the curtain. 

Part of what helps Homeskin achieve its essence of intrigue is just how very human it feels and how it leverages that humanity to illicit a sense of terror in the listener. The vocal work on Integument Crystallization is amongst some of the rawest I have ever heard. It is a cliche to say that a black metal singer sounds like they are in literal pain, but Garry literally sounds like he is actually being skinned alive here. He isn't singing as much as he is deliriously shrieking. It's a lot to take in on your first couple of listens and the way that it is embedded in the corrosive production and feedback significantly heightens the desperation on display. The way that the feedback works is also alarming, as it has this wrapped and tarnished quality, like it was the victim of some careless submersion in saltwater, where every bend and moment of strain will make you feel like you've suffered a kind of acute inner ear damage. I actually thought I might have been losing my hearing a bit while listening to the album, only to hit the pause button and feel my sense of spatial awareness return to normal. This has not happened to me while listening to an album before, and as I said, it is extremely disconcerting.

The last element to this horror show I'd like to draw your attention to, and possibly the most key, is the combination of the drum work and guitar melodies that all this murk and peril is tacked to. These aren't your traditional blast-beats and icy guitar combos, even if they are played about as fast. Instead, the rhythms and melodies of these songs are closer to that of alternative rock and post-punk, only mercilessly sped up, to the point of being cruel. These decidedly unmetal grooves have the opposite effect of what you would expect, causing tracks like "Between Paint Drying and the Fear of Broken Pipe Dreams" to sound like someone overdubbed an exorcism over a copy of Loveless, and parts of "Peel Then Sink" give the impression of what Pere Ubu would have produced had they fallen in with a heretical splinter sect of the Church of Satan. Oddly enough, "Crystalline" even has a kind of progressive quality to its structure that is not just reminiscent of '90s shoegaze but '00s J-Rock as well, with a superimposition of Hammer Horror organs shrowding its facade like a death mask. 

All of these awful facets and fearfully expressive motifs align to telecast a vision of a man fighting for his life against paranatural forces, and hardly winning. Integument Crystallization is incredibly fucked up and exhilarating, and brimming with horrible promise. Don't deprive yourself of its dark pleasures. 

Album Review: Mediopicky - No Salgas

Dominican producer Mediopicky is a pretty active dude. He's always got something in the works, whether it be a collab with rappers AcentOh, or a solo piece mining the unexpected pureness of Vin Deisel's personality for a beat, the Latin trap artist is rarely found idle. Even during the lockdown and uncertainty of the pandemic, 2020, was a big year for him, releasing the excellent Caribian-fusion banger Pablito LP, but also the decidedly downtempo No Salgas EP. These two albums could not be more different. 

The former tempts you to move with a hyper-hypnotic swirl of sweat-tested post-trap crunch while the latter settles into a decidedly cooler persuasion and pace of life. I believe both represent an evolution of his sound, even from the very forward-looking place we found him on 2017's Apatheia: La envidia de Beethoven, but it's the latter that seems to represent the more interesting departure in someways. The reason for this is that while No Salgas is still party music, it is a private party that he is attempting to pump up. A very private party in fact. It doesn't feel like he is trying to drive the atmosphere of a club, but rather the far more diminutive and secluded space, such as a kitchen, living room, bedroom, or even a window balcony. Obviously, he's not moving a mass of bodies her. Two, maybe tops- while they make eye contact from the opposite sides of a coffee table or kitchen island. 

Mediopicky stays committed to this intimacy throughout and the exclusivity of the guest list extends to not just to the imagined setting it is projected into, or even just the mixing, but what he is mixing as well. The bassy gargles of "China" could have been sourced from field recordings of the artist himself gulping a soda, and "Cinco g" sees its sparse warm tones wetted with a percolation of tugging whoops and breathy calls that twirl and plie all-around your ears like leaves dancing on the wind. 

The temperature of the beats on No Salgas is so temperate, it feels like you don't need to be wearing anything more to enjoy them than a t-shirt and a pair of boxers, even in the dead of winter. This is especially true of the breezy and beachy "t.e.b" another track where the artist's vocals play an important role, imitating the playful, tickling cadence of the ocean's tide. This all works really well for an album called No Salgas as it allows you to indulge in the pleasures of a getaway while perched on an office chair or in repose in the lap of your couch. 

I'm completely mesmerized by the cozy purr of this album and love to let it roll through my ears, letting the sunshine from my bedroom window brighten and warm my hair and skin, while its softness grounds me in the moment. No Salgas title isn't a direct order, but I'm still happy to take it as a strong suggestion to put on a kettle of tea and keep it copacetic.

Album Review: La Roche - Liye Liye

La Roche's Liye Liye is a compelling statement on life and sense of place from the Congolese DJ and producer, as well as a demonstration of the natural subversion of the interconnectedness of our lives. 

Affiliated with the Fulu Miziki collective, La Roche's debut LP captures the excess and strange tranquility of his home through the patching in of street noise and common domestic ephemera into the aggressive pull of a 909 tempered seam of propulsion. Unzip that seem and you will find a lot that is familiar, such as reflective electro chords and quivering crystalline resonances, elements common to the scènes à faire of deep house. 

But this recognition also extends to sounds of the city and home, artifacts identifiable to anyone living in the modern world- intrusive car horns and chiding alarm clocks, as well as signs of conflict and disorder in the form of a symphony of gunshot.

Sound is always around us, what makes it something else is only a matter of whether or not we accept its potential and imbue it with a special significance. 

The way in which La Roche places all of the elements presented on Liye Liye into harmony with each other- linking their loops and pulling them along together as if by the turn of a bicycle gear- is something outside of the ordinary, but inextricably linked to it as well. The evocative sequencing of beats and interlacing with synthesizer grooves causes the recognizable to become somewhat mystified, both in source and meaning. 

The background rushes to the foreground, and in the resulting reorientation, a new sense of environmental awareness takes precedence. In this new structure, music is not made but felt, and that feeling is everywhere. 

The rhythm of life is often considered separate from the rhythm of the club, but La Roche shows them to be part of one continuum- the sounds of life and work become tributaries to a concrete concerto, and the music pumping from a sound system below street level, becomes the electrical conduction system managing the pulse of a kind of spiritual irrigation. Underground meets overground, life bleeding into play. 

The intrusions of the everyday into a space of imagination would seem to point to the alienation that couches so much of modern living, but in La Roche's hands, it feels like a total synthesis, a metabolization of the ordinary to produce dreams, while forcing dreams to manifest in the realm of the provincial. 

Is Liye Liye the proverbial siren of the detournement? You'll have to plug in to find out. 

Liye Liye is out on Nyege Nyege.

Album Review: Butcher’s Dog - Purists Piss Codes

"Happy like a butcher's dog" is an outmoded phrase. It's why you don't hear it anymore. The idea behind the saying was that a butcher's dog was a particularly well-fed and satisfied animal- a creature who wants for nothing because all their desires have been maximally obtained. The saying was held up as an idealized state for a married man to achieve in the '50s- a plateau of satisfaction he could reach by the efforts of his wife- a functional domestic servant. 

Now the era in which the phrase gained popularity was a tyrannical period of sex relations, full stop. And the forms of domestic relations promoted during the mid 20th Century within the United States have thankfully been defeated by years of activism and cultural conversation. But even in the light of these victories though, things still aren't great for women, for men, for anyone. Life sucks and it doesn't seem like there is much hope of it getting better. It is in this milieu of punishing dissatisfaction though that a group like Butcher's Dog can give provide solace by giving voice to our perpetual state of discontent. You might not be able to stop your suffering, but at least you don't have to suffer in silence. 

The Cincinnati's group's debut Purist Piss Codes takes a bite out of the wasteland of modernity in the form of scathing, polemical, and early '80s styled hardcore punk. The angst on this record pours out like blood-colored, rust-tainted water from an exploded boiler- a spleen that vents enteral. The group rages against a sense of dislocation on the whiplash flagellator "Planned Obsolescence," trips over their failures and lack of internal mechanism of control before pivoting into a drunken roundhouse kick on "Compulsion," and finally mashes their rotten emotions into a poisonous porridge of vinegar, piss, and strychnine and serves it up on "Bad Apple." 

The vocals have this sneering chop to them that overwhelms you like the onslaught of a school of piranhas- a quiver of aggression on its lips as it strips you bare with thousand serrated, knife-like teeth. The drum work is delightfully grotesque as well, with the cymbals resembling the din of dented pot lids rescued from a thrift store dumpster and the thump of the bass kick sounding like someone practicing their boxing on a punching bag full of greying hamburger meat. And then there is the guitar work, which models that signature slice and drag approach that you'd hear from early LA hardcore bands in a manner that is totally defiant of any of semblance good taste or restraint. 

You can't always overcome the source of your rage. Sometimes the best you can do is articulate it in ways that satisfactorily weaponize your alienation against the culture at large. In this respect, Purist Piss Codes is perfect!  I can't say that this record solves anything that is wrong with the world, but it is a sick fucking racket, and that is good enough for now. 

Album Review: Kill Bill: The Rapper - Snowglobe Theory

It would make sense for a rapper from the Southern United States, named after a violent revenge flick, to drop aggressive and blood-drenched bars about a nihilistic lifestyle of organized crime in fulfillment of vicious vendettas. It would make sense, but that's not what Kill Bill: The Rapper is doing. He's not about to take a finger for every kilo you owe him, or katanaing your Dad to satisfy an ancient feud- no, he's not about that life. His existence revolves around binge-watching Steven Universe with friends and ordering Post-Mates- and I fuck with that. That is literally my life too... only, I couldn't rap to save my life, while Bill's raps might just take you back from whatever ledge you've been inching towards. His music might be the thing that gets you out of cold, and into a huge box. 

What's striking about Bill's flow on his latest LP Snowglobe Theory, is its measured sturdiness in the face of life's many disappointments and travails. Wrapped in a deep Southern-drawl that is, ironically, reminiscent of some very un-Southern types, weaving between the bassy growl of Tyler, the Creator and the smooth, teeth-licking, savory pour of a rapper like GZA, Bill is able to imbue his rhymes with a sense of stoney conscious, that makes his message clear and relatable as a communication about the heartbreaks and hard-knocks he survived in his life, even when it appears that he's just talking about anime. 

It's hard to underplay how soft Bill's heart is, and the vulnerability and sensuousness apparent in style is kind of arresting. It is not something I am used to encountering in rap that is so steeped in irony poisoned swamps of internet culture. Rappers have become increasingly comfortable sharing their genuine feelings through their music in recent decades, but the most lauded examples of which tend to fetishize the rapper's pain and mental ailments. Bill feels centered in contrast. He shares some dark thoughts on tracks like "DoNotDisturb" and "A While," but his bars feel more like breakthroughs than breakdowns- which very is cool. Mental health is important and it's genuinely inspiring to hear someone processing their emotions in a positive way, rather than simply being wrecked by their invasive presence. 

Beyond the bars, the beats on Snowglobe Theory are the type that checks a lot of boxes in terms of their ability to produce an atmosphere of effortless cool. The way Bill mashes together funk flare, city pop glimmer and Golden Era breaks is perfectly infectious. The wailing synth loop on "Ring Ring" gives me chills like a drop of frosty ice melt dropping down the back of my shirt and running down my spine, while the plaintive "Pearl" rides a melancholy guitar riff through a constellation of cold starlight towards a resolution of Vulcan like mind-meld, and the street-light like glare reflecting off the dusky slices of synth and Sailor Moon SFX on "What to Say" is absolutely transportive. 

Winter is not over yet and we've still got a haul ahead of us, so why not hunker down and stay warm with so Snowglode Theory? It's what I plan to do until conditions outside improve. 

Snowglobe Theory is out on EXO.

Album Review: Death's Dynamic Shroud.wmv - Faith in Persona

Death's Dynamic Shroud.wmv is a collaboration between three experimental music artists; James Webster, Tech Honors, and Keith Rankin. It's more or less a vaporwave project, or rather, a project that uses the logic of vaporwave to point beyond the limits of perception that bracket present notions of popular music- hurdling over their boundaries, and past a point at which the tastemakers of today experience only a chill of dread and the quake of homesickness. 

Of these three co-conspirators, I'm best acquainted with the work of Keith Rankin, whose 2021 album Mirror Guide blew my mind several times over. However, my recent experience with DDS.wmv has convinced me that I need to leap down the rabbit hole of James and Tech Honor's discographies as well, as the collaboration's latest LP, Faith In Persona, is persuasively threshold puncturing, and has left me wanting to know more about the people who made it- this may be a fruitless effort though, as I will illustrate shortly. When tracing the topography of DDS.wmv's ephemeral output it is easy to discern an abandonment of the traditional cycles and structures of the album format, a trend within which Faith In Persona seems to be a deliberate, and concerted, outlier. 

I have always found that there is something that tethers the album format to the ego of individual musicians in a way that can produce a bit of a paradox. What I mean by this, is that the thing that bears the artist's name, nearly always becomes a stand-in for the person who made it. I've long felt this dichotomy but didn't have the proper context to explain it before listening to Faith in Persona. For, from the album art, to the sequencing, to the choice of samples, DDS.wmv's latest LP appears to be an exploration of the way in which an artist's identity becomes absorbed or fused with their art in a way that anonymizes them- smoothing out and smothering the varieties and disambiguation of their personhood and ultimately reducing them a facade which subsumes them entirely. 

The process of writing, recording, producing, distributing, and promoting a piece of art like an album, in the context of modernity, becomes, due to many forces beyond the artist's control, a kind of cessation and replacement of the maker with the thing that they have made. Through this lens, the making of art is not a creative utterance, but a hollowing out of the speaker. Not a means of achieving immortality, but a kind of reverse sublimation where something that is fluid and dynamic (identity) becomes irreversible calcified and inert (the product of that identity). A self gorgonification, and ultimately, a type and variety of irreversible death. 

Following the trail a teardrop that plummets into the misty pit of the void ("Tear in Abyss") DDS.wmv warps and smears the vocals of various pop stars (but specifically Taylor Swift), layering them over a plundering of pleading percussive motifs, dissociative grooves, and softly confining synths to construct a maze of sound that demands progress, but with no discernable path of egress. After expressing its fear of existence and existential pain, Faith in Persona next mimics a cry for attention ("See Me"), a funky fallout that lands like a chandelier shattering on a ballroom floor. 

Once this recognition of the extension of the artist's ego is attained ("Faith in Persona"), the immediate and superficially facets of the thing which the artist has presented for validation are seen to close in around the artist ("Pop Chin"), flattening them, reducing them to something peripheral ("Someone in the Room"), until finally, they entirely recede from what they are, and become only what they have said or shown ("Last Minutes of the Memory"), swallowed up by their work and vanity, their creation finally serves as no more than a headstone marking spent potential, and nothing more ("RIP"). 

DDS.wmv being recording artists, it is most fitting for them to connect these points of progressive deterioration within an accepted and traditionalist format, that of an LP, and the phenomenon they identify on Faith in Persona is observable at all levels of artistry, from the heights of professional single-churning, pop-dom, to the "name your price" DIY efforts dispersed around Bandcamp's marketplace. What's more, it is easy to see this process of strangulation and, finally, termination transpiring in nearly every artistic endeavor, whether it be a film, a novel, an opinion column, a Twitter feed, or a managed public persona.  I don't know if it is possible to make art in today's world in a way that doesn't to some degree freeze the artist making it in a prison of acidic amber, but I like to think that unpacking it can be, at the very least, a helpful therapeutic step, for both maker and observer, if not one that begins a process capable of prying up the material reality that undergirds it. For someone for whom art and artists mean an awful lot, I think this is at the very least, a worthy goal.

 It's out on Ghost Diamond. 

Album Review: Evil House Party - Grand Theft Audio EP

For a group who call themselves Evil House Party, they're dangerously delicate. Twist them and they will tear. Tear them and they will thank you for committing such a transgression. This is leather-clad EDM (Evil Dance Music) for hard bodies looking to break hearts in the heat of the night, amongst a swarm of lasers, strobes and clouds of glycol-based mist... but even when the band is threatening to steal your soul with a kiss and a hard sidelong glance, it is hard to ignore the longing in their eyes- a driving lust for passion, yes, but maybe also for annihilation. A yearning for an intimacy that will reduce them to cinders. 

This tension between cruelty and receptivity is what keeps the tight-rope of their EP Grand Theft Audio on its feet and in the air. They don't hide this dichotomy from the listener either, exposing the weeping heart at the center of their elegantly austere facade on the opening track. There singer Emma Acs etches a sumptuously sadistic scene where two shadowy figures meet after dusk in a parking lot following a rain. One slips, and while prone, feels the sting of the other's heel in her hand, and hears his voice descending to ear, telling her how he wants to know the cruelty that only she can visit upon him- a request or demand that implies a kind of dark familiarity between them, a relationship that is moored in destruction as much as devotion. 

Next, the uninhibited, rubber-legged, clap and crawl of "Head Held High" extols the listener to abandon their reservations and leap above the fog of their nerves and hesitations to find some great and strange pleasure above and beyond the current limits of their present experience. "Keep Going On" is similarly goading, with Emma channeling a Shirley Manson-like siren as she raises her voice above beat-maestro Jacob Formann's crushing eddy of inky, turbulent percussion and capsizing grooves. 

"Wicked" has a colder feel than the previous tracks from the outset, emphasizing the deep alienation it harbors, amongst a mix that steadily becomes more thermally charged as it progresses, with cuffs of rattling percussion, steady revolutions of brooding synths, and pitch-shifting contortions working to loosen its joints, allowing hot super-charged blood to flow freely to its clenched fist and steal-tow boot sheathed feet. 

There are a fair number of woman/man duos performing some variety of synth anchored and '80s cinema-pulp informed dark pop out there, but Evil House Party feels like they are taking the template to its imaginative limits, both in terms of the aesthetic's cooly calculated constitution, but also the atavistic and reified merger of Thanatos and Eros that is its quintessence.  Hand over the keys to your sense of control tonight, because where Let Evil House Party is taking you on Grand Theft Audio, you won't need, nor want it. 

 GTA is out on Third Coming Records. 

Interview: Eris Drew

Photo from Eris Drew

I had the honor of interviewing Chicago-famous DJ Eris Drew for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series. We talked about the mystic philosophy that informers her mixes, the science and magic of electronic dance music, and her thoughts on safety at clubs and festivals. Check out our interview here, or below: 

Her first LP Quivering in Time is out via her own label T4T LUV NRG. 

CHIRP Radio · Eris Drew Interview

Album Review: Desired - Nineteen

Vapor-aesthetic, Sailor Senshi evangelist, and electronic artist Desired dropped a full LP of future funk in 2021, and it is, for lack of a better descriptor, fresh af! It's so fresh that it is literally called Fresh! But even though I've been vibing to that album pretty hard today, I can't say that it's the version of Desired that I prefer. No, my favorite era of their wide discography is the moment in 2017 when they were seemingly inspired by the whole lo-fi hip hop trend to "relax/study/do whatever the fuck to" and conjured up a cloudy, luminous mood ring of sound in the form of Nineteen. 

The emphasis of all of the nearly two dozen tracks on Nineteen is the beat. While the beat is an important aspect of every Desired song, it really takes precedence here. Every bassy plunk and ripple is like a warm and thumping all-too-human pulse that fills up the mix like water poured into a vase of flowers. These rhythms seem to come from everywhere at once, like the sound of a heartbeat in a chest, only in this instance flowing through your speakers and pushing out sound like it was balmy human hemoglobin. 

The superficial experience of listening to Nineteen is to receive it as an extremely chill and exceptional example of background music. I've done quite a bit of reading to the album and I can certainly attest to its effectiveness as a metronomic study aid. However, a closer listen does tend to reveal its existential layers of emphasis. This is immediately observable from the vocal samples, all of which convey some kind of pain or spiritual sickness. An ennui that cuts like a knife. Probably the peak of which is displayed on "broken" where an unidentified woman can be heard lamenting to her child that the offspring can't experience more happiness, even if it seems like such a feeling should be their birthright. It is the substance of an endless experiential paradox- the importance of something seemingly so illusive and yet ingrained in our understanding of ourselves. 

This shaded and brooding pallet of moods extends to the beat choice and timbre of the music as well, feeling like it is all being filtered through a cold shower of a fall rainstorm, or depicted through the stained sepia tones of photographs that have warped and had their colors run due to sitting neglected in a moist space for too long. And this is despite incorporating a contingent of soft and elegant samples befitting a spa engagement, including excerpts of pan flutes ("broken"), vibraphone thrills ("exolution"), and flowy guitar and piano combos ("drops"). 

All of these elements combine to make Nineteen one of Desired's more mature and emotionally multifaceted albums. If you are curious as to what else the artist is capable of other than bombastic, confetti-bomb, French house mashups, check this one out. 

Nineteen was self-released. 

Album Review: Albinotron - Glitchwave Vol. 1

Louisville beatmaker and electronic composer Albinotron, or Matthew Sisk if you prefer, has been releasing enigmatic jams for closer to a decade. His latest work, Glitchwave Vol. 1 may be his most enterprising though. Not simply due to his individual ambition but what the work acknowledges about electronic music and the culture that surrounds it. 

The tracks on Glitchwave consist of mostly crunchy soundcard contortions, defibrillated by chattering drum loops, and swathed with new age-inspired synthesizer hums that shift and billow like the mists of Avalon. The crisp and crinkly, laser-light illuminated nature of these sounds and their reliance on sophisticated electronic tools do not diminish the mystical aspects of the music though. In fact, the digitized nature of these sounds unveils a dialectical relationship of the music with its own sense of transcendence, ensuring that its eminence persists in proportion to the reductive appearance of its productive source. Translation: Glitchwave is as spiritually grounded as it is clearly moored in the processes of cybernetic exchange. 

This tension is consistent with that which exists between the soul of electronic music and the technology required to make it, representing within the album a microcosm of the dynamic as it subsists throughout the culture of rave, dance, and certain varieties of experimental music. The album is illustrative of the fact that sometimes to expand your mind beyond the limits of your surroundings, or to connect with a higher sense of being, you sometimes need to engage an intermediary. The role of the medium has manifested through many forms of human artifice throughout time, with particular forms of dance-oriented music serving as the catalyst of spiritual transformation in the present day.

The aspect of Glitchwave that truly touches on the culture of electronic music as it presently and practically exists is Albinotron's enablement of, and an invitation to, collaboration. In the liner notes of the album, Albinotron states that they have no intention of writing the second volume of Glitchwave, despite bestowing this album with a presumptive sequential indicator, ie Vol. 1. Instead, this second chapter is left to the community of beatheads and electronic innovators who populate the web to write, if they so choose. 

The community surrounding electronic music is not shy about the extent to which they borrow from each other or continue to build upon the progress made by their predecessors. Glitchwave Vol. 1 by virtue of its title and aesthetics, implicitly lays the first paved step in what could easily become a new path to a new micro-genre field. One which attempts to navigate and chart the uncertain terrain of frantic hip hop beats and stressed 8-bit tones, while submerged in a meditative and shamanistic atmosphere. 

It's now up to someone else to determine the life and direction of what Albinotron has started here. Will that person be you? You could be if you desired to be. After all, Glitchwave is for everyone.  

Glitchwave is out via Fish Prints. 

Album Review: Gallo Lester - Mambo Metal La 2da Venida

The Dominican Republic artist Gallo Lester is probably as well known for his persona as a rockin' rooster as for his music- but the music is what is important here. As you may be able to conjecture from the title of his LP (Mambo Metal La 2da Venida) his style unapologetically melds mambo rhythms together with heavy metal riffage. While the resulting sound is unique and a product of Gallo Lester's eccentric vision, it's not entirely without precedence. 

The Congolese band Orchestre Rock-a-Mambo was combining Caribian rhythms with rock and roll as early as the 1950s, and if you haven't checked them out yet, you absolutely should! More recently, the Chicago-based hardcore band La Armada claims to draw from traditions of merengue for their aggressive and hard-hitting grooves. There are, of course, others I could mention, but I think you get the idea. People have been doing this sort of thing for a while. Even when faced with the history of Caribian rock fusions though, Gallo Lestor still stands out. Like these other bands, you can hear in Gallo Lester's music a natural harmony between the boldness of his rhythmic inspirations and the ribald character of his guitar work. Unlike those who came before him, or his contemporaries, Gallo Lester draws from a dark well of power that is untapped by others- his own warped imagination. 

From the outset of a track like "Odiobretch," you get the sense that you've entered an alien plain. The rhythms ripple and swell below your feet as if you were standing on a wood floor that suddenly began to separate its planks, like a giant set of gills, and exhale hot air up your pants legs. Simultaneously, the guitar melodies ricochet in all directions, igniting bright blossoming plumbs of sonic/psychic debris to confound your senses, creating an effect akin to a bird haplessly attempting to navigate a fireworks display that has interpreted the trajectory of its flight. All this is happening while the call and response vocals sway with a wayward pinning lament, drowning your soul in desire and sorrow. Seriously, it's a whole trip. 

The following track is no less strange, seeing Lester rapping over a Hendrix-inspired guitar wail while a frantic rhythm lights up the background and a chorus of backing vocalists appear to perform a religious chant to help channel the spirit of the song. The madness continues on tracks like "Lo 30" which is like a hallucinogenic acid house voyage guided by the astral projection of Devin Townsend, and the punked-out, orchestral slam-balled "Gobernante" which seems to spool together aspects of grunge, power-metal, and post-rock into a single shredding homunculus.

There are more subdued segments as well, like the Peruvian-infused enchantment "Encaramao," and the trip-hop traipse "Ciguapa," but even the less frenetic tracks are brimming with Lester's irrepressible showmanship. And that's kind of what distinguishes his music from almost everything else I've heard in this lane: its brazen theatricality. Mambo Metal La 2da Venida is like being strapped into a roller coaster that shoots you through the fairgrounds of a mile-long, twisted carnival- complete with tightrope walkers dressed like demons, fire-breathing stiltwalkers, chainsaw-wielding clowns, and animals cosplaying as carnies while running the concessions and gorging themselves on popcorn. 

It's pretty astounding how everything that Gallo Lester throws at you hangs together as well as it does, and the fact that every track is as imaginative and layered as the last simply compounds the absurdist charm of the album as a whole. Mambo Metal La 2da Venida is as maddening as it is mesmerizing, as magnetic as it is kinetic, and I wouldn't want it any other way. 

Album Review: The Koreatown Oddity - Little Dominiques Nosebleed

The man behind the mask is Dominique Purdy, alternatively known as, the Koreatown Oddity. He's an LA-based comedian and rapper, and one-man wolf back... maybe not the last one anymore. He's finally pulled off the wolf mask that used to cover his face, to reveal the man who has been behind so much ruckus... and his face is covered in blood. He's alright though. It's just a nosebleed. A persistent condition he developed after hitting his head during a car accident when he was just a little kid. But it is also, so much more... 

Dominique's latest LP Little Dominiques Nosebleed uses the metaphor of the crimson drainage running out his nostrils as a prism through which to view the rest of his life. It is a symbol of trauma- of the anger, anguish and ecstasy of growing up a black boy and later living as a black man in LA. It is also a constant reminder that he is alive, that his heart still beats red hot blood, and that as long he still has a beat in his chest, he has another chance to make good. It is also a kind of baptism- a sign that Dominique is touched by some divinity that guides his path, like an internal stigma- a beatific prompt illuminating the reality that he is not just a body, striving to survive, but a spirit in a man with a purpose and a calling. 

This last point is made very clear on the track "Chase the Spirit," which follows a skit where Dominque is admonished by an older man for simply being content with the bare necessities (money for rent, food, and sneakers), and oriented towards truth and the pursuit of it. The track is a rubber bassed Aesop Rock-esque statement of purpose, jogging in the light of a guiding star from above, while shedding gold watches, platinum money clips, and Twitter clout like sweat dripping out his pours, leaving all these materials things to evaporate on the asphalt like tainted water from a rusted canteen. 

The idea that there is more to life than simply what one can hold in their two hands, and the reality that you can always dig deeper to unearth a greater truth, is illustrated on the disco-soul dip and swivel of "A Bitch Once Told Me," where Dominque flows like a reed in a stream, bending and slicing through the flow of sax solos and an elastic guitar sample, drinking without fear of drowning, and standing without fear of being uprooted. The "Bitch" in this case, is not a woman, but someone who either lacks the interest in, or has given up on, the imperative to seek truth in one's life and live it through their actions. 

The reflective quality of the album is mirrored by the production, which generally leans into the Adrian Brown style of remixed retro soul and exploitation cinema aesthetics, of course with a hint of hunger, in-line with Dominque's former wolf-like persona, and an obstinate sense of rhythm, that breaks up the usual flow of these classic sounds and imbues them with a funny kind of ferocity. 

What really impresses me about everything about this album is the extent that Domiqnue is able to take aspects of his life and lived experience and derive from them universal paradigms- wisdom which he is then able to impart to demonstrate a unity between all people, regardless of who they are and where they come from. Little Dominiques Nosebleed's is more than just a chronic condition; it is itself a kind of cure, as well as a symptom of a whole way of life. 

Stones Throw released this one. 

Album Review: The Pom-Poms - I Was On The News

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I lost track of singer and dirty pop purveyor Kitty after thoroughly enjoying her D​.​A​.​I​.​S​.​Y. rage EP back in 2013. I'm glad to see that she's doing well though. She is still making music, married to someone who supports her art, and has seemingly become an institution of Adult Swim compilations. She'd kind of living the dream... or as much as anyone can in the present nightmare of our waking reality. At the moment, I'm making the most of lost time by revisiting her back catalog of work from the past decade, and I'm delighted to have discovered that she has a (relatively) new project out. One with her husband Sam Ray, called The Pom-Poms. 

The band's 2019 EP I Was On The News feels particularly well positioned within the present musical landscape. It's an EDM album that draws heavily from the ugly textures and forlorn melodic styles of the singing side Soundcloud-rap, and borrows liberally from the adventurous rhythmic sensibilities of pop acts like MIA, while anticipating some of the trends that have overtaken hyper-pop over the past two years. 

The things the duo really nail about contemporary underground pop music is how delightfully crunchy and aggressive it is. For a lot of up and coming artists, there is no beat that is too blown out or electronic squeal that is two compressed- both are attributes which Pom-Poms have embraced with blithe delight, especially on the soundcard frying title track and the digital debris-strewn and splintering laser-lust-show of "300 Grams." 

The duo is also positively resistant to genre presets, something that is highly prized amongst music lovers at the moment who delight in mystery and ambiguity. Pom-Poms masterfully tantalize the ears, like they were lined with bumpy little taste buds, with sugary outbursts of Indian rhythms and salty, cheer-squad cadenced raps ("Kinetic Energy"), while also overloading the listeners remaining senses with what sounds like rave romping remixes of a 100 Gecs ("Big Yellow Truck (VIP)"). 

All praise aside, and despite the general forward orientation of the music, it does feel like the bar for energy and obtuseness on the record is set a little low. It feels like Pom-Poms are thinking that they need to be topping the dance-rock of Sleigh Bells when they should be aiming for the effortless strangeness and collapse of '90s and '10s callbacks represented by someone like Charlie XCX. Even with this being the case, I Was On The News doesn't feel cheugy or like it's chasing trends- in fact it feels pretty on point and leaves me looking forward to hearing what wild places they take the project next. 

I Was On the News is out via Pretty Wavvy.  

Album Review: Clamor Tera - Clamor Tera Demo

The internet is pretty lousy with noise projects. A discouraging number of them you could do without. There are standouts though. More than I could make the time to write about, but still, not as many as I'd like. So when I come across one that feels really special, I have to stop to shout it out. Clamor Tera's Demo is just such a project. 

The Maryland artist describes themselves alternatively as "skramz-pop" and "industrial jass." These paired with the aluminum quality of their production and the very deep-fried meme visual aesthetics they've adopted, the band appears on the surface to be a vicious troll. But even if everything about this record is meant to raise your heckles, it all still works. It feels like a cohesive and compelling statement, and that is maybe the most trolly aspect about it.

The lofi sensibilities of this Demo allow these songs to discover some beautifully apocalyptic places, and crispy visuals match the crunchy quality of the mix deliciously. Most of these songs, especially openers "DONTBOTHERCHASINGMICE" and "JELLYJELLYSUNSET," are couched more in moody, shoegaze than screamo, but I'd be at a loss to describe the vocals and pensive shudder of the guitar work of "CURBS" and "June" without referring to groups like Saetia or pg.99., and "MYLONGESTYEAHBOIEVER1.0" definitely has a kind of sprawling, high-minded sense of progression and jabbering groove that I generally associate with free jazz. 

There is more to unpack here, but this is definitely one of those albums that you will get more from listening to than reading about. Clamor Tera makes an impressive and challenging first impression. Let their Demo into your life, and let it demolish your senses.  

This demo is self-released (as far as I can tell). 

Interview: THOT

Image courtesy of the artist.

Brussels industrial and post-rock group THOT recently reissues their 2011 album Obscured By The Wind making it available on vinyl for the first time. To celebrate I caught up with band leader Grégoire Fray to talk about the band and why now was the time to revisit one of their decade-old albums.

 Obscured By The Wind can be found here. Check out the interview below: 

I Thought I Heard A Sound · THOT Interview

Album Review: Patricia Brennan - Maquishti

Solitude. It is a word that can plant itself in a sentence like a streetlamp in a sandstorm- steady, singular, and capable of guiding others by its presence. Both the word and the party it is applied to force a reckoning with their settings and the places they appear. These are connotations that can certainly be granted to the encounter with jazz composer and vibraphonist Patricia Brennan present on her debut LP Maquishti. 

This is a challengingly quiet album. One that arrives on the threshold of the ears like a breeze running through thick masses of foliage that have given themselves over to photoperiodism. Patricia's genuinely cerebral mallet work on Maquishti is cautious and deliberate, producing melodies that seem to emerge from a hyperaware state of flow. A higher state of individual inflection is achieved through concerted action and hesitant resonance. 

It is only Patricia's performances, and her performances alone, which you will rendezvous with on this album. It is not an album born of compromise or co-authorship, and every tone has a singular source. Yet, in spite of this, the sounds she siphons from the range of possibilities present before her with each stroke appear to surround you, envelope you, and disappear from your perception only to reemerge through an entry point in your periphery that you had previously assumed to be a blindspot. Forcing a conversation with her and yourself through dimensions of sensation that were formerly obscured.

Patricia's rippling, chiming departures reinvigorate dulled senses and heighten the awareness of one's own eruption into the terrain and the demanding locus and power of their individual gravitational pull. In sum, Maquishti ushers forth a hush that is difficult to ignore, and even harder to fathom. 

Maquishti is out on Valley of Search.

Album Review: Nubiyan Twist - Freedom Fables

Nubiyan Twist manages to capture something thrilling and unequivocally profound on their third album Freedom Fables. The immediacy of the performances surrounds you like the smell of sweat, smoke and liquor at a summer block party- realizing the stunning energy of a live exhibition in the infinitely repeatable format of a locked groove cut into fresh vinyl, with no loss of fidelity due to translation. 

The album is a triumph for the nine-piece, Leeds-based band, organized by Tom Excell- a man who continues to succeed, through collaboration and fellowship, in transposing the spirit of an afro-fusion ensemble through relevant forms of fashionably immediate R'nB and soul. 

Funk orchestras used to be a powerful force in popular music but have since become a relic of the disco era- their legacy only surviving piecemeal through the perennial purchase afforded by the persistence of house music and the rediscovery of afrobeat by successive generations of young audiophiles in search of deeper, hard-hitting grooves to ride. 

Nubiyan Twist has honed their ability to lay down a rhythmic wallop with the same kind of slap that those old funk bands used to, but with an almost mystic grandeur that utilizes the force of their collected energy to forge a path for themselves in London's rightfully touted contemporary jazz scene. 

Even though Tom and company have been at this for a while, Freedom Fables still feels like a grand unveiling and a seizing of hereto unimagined ground. Their vision has solidified and their skills have become more fluid during their short but storied tenure, and the band has become impeccably good at threading together a parable of sound that speaks to their emotive, as well as, experiential disposition. 

The twist of this narrative is telegraphed from the title, as the beats of Freedom Fables's arches lead the listener through the process of unraveling and rebinding all of the ways in which humans express their desire for freedom through the stories they tell about themselves, and how they come to understand their humanity through the plotting of their trajectory and the mapping of their path as it intersects, doubles backs, and overlaps with the paths of others. 

Freedom Fables is a very tactile manifestation and confluence of related traditions of melody, groove and sonorance which combine to illuminate the countless ways in which we live with and through each other- yes, through work and struggle, but also, thankfully, through the gift of each other's presence and celebration of life itself.  

Freedom Fables is out on Strut Records. 

Interview: RP Boo

Photo Credit: Matthew Avignone

I got to have an enlightening chat with Chicago DJ and pioneering footwork producer RP Boo for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series. He's a very cool guy. I'm still coming off the high from this conversation. You can listen to the interview on CHIRP's site here, or below: 

His fourth album Established! is out via Planet Mu. 

CHIRP Radio · RP Boo Interview

2021 Year-End Invitational

Even though we are a full week into 2022, I couldn't let 2021 slip away without pulling a few more worthy recommendations from its vast embarrassment of sonic riches. It was a good year for music. No argument there. It was pretty awful in just about every other conceivable way, but the tunes were good. Consider it consolation for living through another year of social upheaval and an unstoppable, global pandemic. 

Because I don't rank albums and find the concept of Best of/AOTY lists foul, I've elected to send off 2021 with what I am calling an "Invitational." This is a list of solidly enjoyable or intriguing releases that I encountered over the past year but didn't have the chance to write about anywhere else. They are presented in no particular order other than the order that I elected to include them in. 

My hope for this list, as with all of my reviews, is to introduce you to something you haven't heard before but might like... or encourage you to give an album that's been on your radar the chance that it deserves. This is just one music enthusiast to another, talking about stuff they thought was cool- a profound interaction that can be relished with ease. 

Now, without further ado, presented for your consideration... 

Native Soul - Teenage Dream

Native Soul are producers Zakhele Mhlanga and Kgothatso Tshabalala, whose take on a South African style of house music has found a surprising level of purchase in both the US and UK. I can't speculate as to what other writers enjoy about their rendition of amapiano on their latest album Teenage Dream (and frankly, I do not care), but for me, their beautifully articulated collage of sparing percussion and jutting, immediate synth patterns exhibit a kind of spryness and alluring simplicity that is thoroughly democratic in the way that house music was always meant to be. I dig the hell out of it. The duo demonstrates a connatural sense of rhythm, which permits them to thread disparate sounds together in a constellation of interlacing splendor. You don't have to share a language or a country, or have any special training or discrete, fine-tuned understanding of the origins of these sounds in order to receive Native Soul's message and decipher its codas for yourself. All you need is the will to move. And embracing this will- this thing inside you that should not be repressed- you just may find yourself in a state of transnational coordination and communication with others whose hearts have syncopated to the same rhythm and desire.  

Teenage Dream is out via Awesome Tapes from Africa. 

Sara Bug - S/T 

Country music is often treated as a stagnant bastion of traditionalism. I beg to differ. The popular impression of the genre yo-yos between stadium-filling cowboys sponsored by manufacturers of pickup trucks and skinny busker types who perform in urban saloons and pine for the age prior to their own when Hank Williams still topped the charts. Sara Bug is a break from both of these tired cliches on her self-titled debut released earlier this year. The album combines folky flair with bedroom pop and indie rock in a way that reminds of '60s chamber pop and the early '00s, Jenny Lewis-style roots rock in a way that feels wholly fresh and organic. The more entrancing aspect of her music is probably Sara's voice, which is arrestingly soft as it escapes from between her lips as if she were transposing her essence into the form of a small furry animal with a care package in its mouth, a gift addressed from the burrow in her throat to the heart-shaped letterbox in your chest. A truly inspiring debut and introduction to her unique style of songwriting and performance. 

S/T is out via Egghunt Records. 
 

Martha Sky Murphy - Concrete Triptych

Martha Sky Murphy's latest release is a collaboration with producer Ethan P. Flynn, a highly visual, three suite exchange of ideas which she has titled Concrete. The album is named after its lead single, an ostentatious collaboration with NYC duo LEYA and Cocteau Twins's Simon Raymonde. The entire project was meant to be taken in as a part of a choreographed performance, but it works well enough on its own as a kind of eerie meditation on the confining nature of ambiguity and the liberating effects of certainty and, for lack of a better word, concreteness. Flexibility and permeability seem like the watchwords for boundary-pushing art right now, but Martha Sky Murphy reminds us here, that it is sometimes our encounters with the harshness of a clear, unmoving reality that we experience our most intense feelings of freedom and clarity of purpose. 

Concrete EP is out via Practise Music

EL/NeUe - Krank

EL/NeUe is the project of Norwegian musicians and satirists Håkon Johnson and Askild Hagen. They've been working together since at least the mid-'80s and their latest album Krank sounds like it could have been recorded and released in 1987, but I'm glad that it wasn't- it is much more original and evocative sounding in comparison with today's pop and dance music than it would have been thirty years ago. Krank, as you might expect, has a stoic, sharply critical tone to its gothic serenades and stern, mechanical rhythms. It's an album with a lot on its mind, a burden which it begrudgingly unpacks for you. Each and every labored measure moans with existential woe as it shuffles into the dark to make room for its successor, their lamenting orations rattling like an iron clasp containing the receipts of your recorded sins and transgressions. Despite its weight and pretense, Krank is surprisingly easy to listen to, and I find myself turning it on often when I need to clear my head to think. It might not be obvious that something this stark and dower would aid in one's contemplation, but I'm not about to argue with my own direct experience of it either. 

Krank is out on Kulturinstutisjonen Piivv

Cots - Disturbing Body

I feel like there is a tendency now for pop records to overembellish their scores. It's one of the reasons I appreciate Cot's debut LP Disturbing Body- it's clean, uncomplicated, and self-assured. This is an album that is primarily about a girl, her guitar, and a whole lot of feelings, and what works about it is that it has the confidence just to be what it needs to be. Of course, the bossa nova influence on singer and songwriter Steph Yates's guitar playing helps keep things interesting and lends to the project a tranquil and even distribution of energy. The sense of open-space on this release is really heady, drawing out the slow, waltzing quality of Steph's vocals and inviting encounters with the finite furl of each dry and incisive verse. Despite its sparseness, Disturbing Body feels lush and elegant, and listening to it feels like being buried up to your neck in rose petals. 

Disturbing Body is out via Boiled Records.

TDA - Ascète

TDA is the solo project of Quebec percussionist Samuel Gougoux. His latest album Ascète is an attempt to capture the uninterrupted timbre of communication between trees and other plants, and the disorientation one can experience when alone at night amongst them. The inspiration for the album came from Samuel's time spent in the deep woods near his hometown of Bas-St-Laurent, where he attempted to come to terms with his feelings of estrangement from this wild setting and the sense of danger which dense foliage triggers in the primordial recesses of his mind. We're told that time spent communing with nature is good for us as it simulates us with sensory information that is otherwise absent in our modern, urbanized lives. But it also seems true that nature can activate still existent parts of our brains that recall a time when we were not the lords and masters of the Earth. When we were simply another menu item for larger predators, cowering in the dark, digging for shelter and security below the roots of great trees- beings who were demonstrably indifferent to our fate. Guided by a quivering sense of dread- like a rabbit attempting to hastily avoid the detection by a roaming fox- the blunt, smeary post-punk of Ascète rekindles the fear that we thought we left behind when we encased ourselves in high rising burrows of glass and concrete away from the fangs and claws of our natural adversaries. 

Ascète was put out by Michel Records. 

Booker Stardrum - Crater

Producer Booker Stardrum's third LP Crater is a wet and ebullient filtration of thoughts through the funnel of free jazz and electronica, contorting orchestral gestures into non-lexiconical proofs and electronic ephemera into steely fasteners of bold sonic architecture. The album sounds like an impassioned public dispute between a desalination system and the hot-water heater over which has the more essential role in keeping humanity hydrated and hygienic. Of course, the argument can be settled pretty easily by pointing out the essentialness and cooperative nature of each apparatus, a parallel that I would apply to every flowing, rhythmically dense curve and volley of Crater, as essential to keeping the juices in your brain in a productive flow, as well as slacking your thirst for novelty. 

Crater was released by NNA Tapes. 

DAWN - Second Line

Dawn Richard's music has always felt epic, but it's seemed to take a while for the mass of critics to catch on and recognize this fact. Her band Danity Kane hasn't really been active since 2014, but it's somehow taken six solo albums to get people talking again about this powerhouse performer. But they are talking again, and that's a good thing. If Second Line is your introduction to Dawn's work, you're in for a treat. The album combines a number of New Orlean jazz and folk styles into a parade of open-concept interchanges with deep house, '70s soul, and '90s R'nB. Despite pulling inspiration from established traditions and by-gone eras, the album still manages to sound highly futuristic and progressive. Which I think is the point. Your past is just where you came from and the place you needed to be in order to get to the place you're going. What I love about Second Line is that it's not afraid to look back on the lessons it's learned and the roots it's laid down as it effortlessly pushes forward. 

Second Line is raising the stakes over at Merge Records. 

BRUIT ≤ - The Machine is burning and now everyone knows it could happen again

French post-rock band BRUIT ≤ have made one of the more arresting ambient albums of the year with The Machine is burning and now everyone knows it could happen again- a poetic neoclassical interrogation of natural rhythms juxtaposed with the limits on our experience of freedom as imposed by society. Its long-form compositions and heavy atmosphere challenge our acquiescence to the ways in which we find ourselves superfluous in relation to machines and how our time is devalued by those who own these devices- an insult to our dignity, and therefore, also your personhood. The album is meant to compel the listener to contemplate such injuries and encourage them in their desire to recapture their temporal autonomy. In this way, it's one of the few, genuinely revolutionary albums I've heard this year,  both in terms of sheer intent, and the music the album presents these themes through. A true renaissance of aesthetics in the fruition of form and subtle insurgency. 

This beast was self-released. 

Blu Anxxiety - Plaay Dead 

This is a very fucked up time to be alive and Blu Anxxiety knows it. Led by New York native Chi Orengo, the group released their debut LP Plaay Dead earlier this year, a refreshing blend of hardcore hip hop, bracing jungle, aggressive post-punk and shocking freestyle- enhanced by an attitude anchored in a raging zeal for freedom and an orientation that is against all authority, and whatever else you've got. Their spooky, sardonic, morbid style is about as frenetic as hip-hop gets while still remaining accessible to a partygoing crowd- delivering a wry smirk and a mocking cackle as a defense against the realities of an uncaring society that seems to be slowly degenerating into a psychopath factor- where politics take on the tenor of reality TV, and the spectacle of media and entertainment becomes the confining borders of your lived reality. The only thing that can break the hypnotizing gaze of the black mirrors that surround us is a dose of knuckle-dusting street-culture, and Blu Anxxiety have stepped up to deliver just such a knock-out blow. 

Plaay Dead is alive because of Toxic Shock Records. 

Kurtiss - The Curtis Vodka EP

The Curtis Vodka EP is more or less the debut EP of Alaska-based DJ and producer Kurtis Toivonen as Kurtiss- which is about as straightforward of an attribution as you are likely to see from the illusive beat-smith. So why is it on this list? Well, because it bops like a mother-fucker! This is essentially a tribute to the by-gone era of '80s and '90s acid house, taking the classic strategy of building a track out of a bodacious bassline and proving that this style is still capable of putting anatomies in motion when formulated with true adoration and understanding of the form. No tricks or trifles, and no bells or buffooneries. Just fat, body-busting bass and the shoe-shredding shuffle of star-charting beats. If you're not taking a hit of The Curtis Vodka, you're on the wrong trip. 

This is out via Mutual Intentions.

Apollo Brown & Stalley - Blacklight 

Apollo Brown and Maybach Music Group signee Stalley have teamed up to put the focus back on what matters most in both hip-hop and life, good tunes and the indomitable will to survive. Apollo Brown's production work is, as always, distinguished and classic-sounding. I loved his pulp-cannon work with Ghostface and spent many hours lost in the hard-knock troubadourship of his collaboration with Che' Noir last year, but I'm really glad to see him break it all down and give it to us straight on Blacklight. This is my first introduction to Shalley as a marquee name on an album, and I'm impressed with his consistent ability to willfully bend my ear and fill it with the lessons of his life. This is one of the more no-nonsense and earnest hip-hop releases I've heard this year and I feel like the less I try and sell you on it, the more likely you're going to be able to get something out of it. Why? Because this is hip-hop made for the love of the genre's inherent capacity to deliver timeless truths- raw, real, and without reservations. You won't need a blacklight to see what this album has going for it. It's all right there, waving at the tip of your nose.  All you have to do is turn out the lights and open your eyes. 

Blacklight is out via Mellow Music Group

Fishdoll - Moonsense / 月感

Chinese producer and composer (two increasingly overlapping categories around the world) Yuyu Feng premiered her second orchestral soul album in 2021 with her project Fishdoll. The album was called Moonsense and is a sequel of sorts to her debut Noonsense. Where the former was about the power of artistic expression and the utility of absurdity, her latest effort is an exploration of love and how we share it with others. While soul music often uses orchestral accompaniments or samples to produce a sense of grandeur and uplift, I have never encountered a collection of soul songs that uses an orchestra in quite the way Yuyu does here. The performances are variegated and fully integrated with cool, smooth house beats and textures in a way that makes it impossible to separate the strings and saxes from those sounds which Yuyu produces with the aid of studio magic. There is also a sense of humility, communion, and groundedness that only serves to maintain the balance of Yuyu's personality with the grand, splendor of these compositions. A truly lovely and unique listening experience with few parallels this year. 

Moonsense / 月感 is out on Taihe Music Group. 

Bunny X - Young & In Love 

NYC pop duo Bunny X is Abigail Gordon and Mary Hanley, and on their debut LP Young & In Love, these two ladies are bringing back their love of past hitmakers to the future fans of the same. Literally. The title track of the album features the line, "Fast forward to the past / We just knew it would last / Forever," and the accompanying retro instrumentation successfully perpetuates the '80s as an eternal state of mind. This album will scratch that teenage itch that is still freaking out over Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is A Place On Earth." However, the group is doing more than simply borrowing a few synth tones and aiming high when it comes to the vocal melodies, in a Carly Rae Jepsen sort of way. No, Young & In Love really sounds like it could have been neck and neck with Kim Wilde Select had it had the good fortune of having been released around the same time. Bunny X proves that you're never too old to fall in love, and that you should never stop loving the things that make you feel young. 

Young & In Love is on Aztec Records.

Mega Ran - Live '95

Arizona MC Mega Ran shows us a different side of himself on Live '95. He's an artist who is known for his futuristic, digitized beats and video game tie-ins, but this year he showed us a love for another game entirely, NBA basketball. Mega Ran discovered rap, hoops, and video games all during the '80s and they have been amongst the many constants in his life since. Especially basketball, which served as the cement for many friendships, as well as an anchor point for his relationship with his father. Live '95 (which is named for franchise title developed by Hitman Productions and published by EA) is his most classic-sounding album yet, powered by golden-era-esque samples with a mix of live instrumentation that polishes up its uncut, hard-driving panache. Mega Ran uses the subject of basketball to lay down some powerfully autobiographical and relatable bars, as well as comment on issues of poverty and racial inequality that besiege families in America, as much today as they did nearly thirty years ago. I feel like every song on this album is a low-key heatseeker, but especially "Tractor Beam," a jubilant and spacy soul number, underwritten by the familiar ping of a Game Boy soundcard, and produced by Mega Ran himself. It doesn't seem possible for such a warm, more kind-hearted, and earnest rap album to be possible in today's cynical world, and yet here one is, ready to go one-on-one with the pessimism of our age.

Live '95 is freshly squeezed up thanks to Needle Juice Records. 

Lolina - Fast Fashion

The UK-based DJ Lolina's fifth LP Fast Fashion feels like it is taking a step beyond the realm of normal abstraction to be found in her solo work, and pressing farther into the recesses of how sound and narrative are processed in the human psyche. Her albums have always been confounding to a degree, problematizing certain interpretations of art and the larger meanings that can be extrapolated from them, but Fast Fashion appears poised to deconstruct the assumptions of these modes of analysis entirely.  The album is comprised of mostly intimate voice samples and vertically integrated strata of sound lifted from the commons of public street life, interwoven in a way that intersperses and exchanges the personal for the pedestrian and transforms the confidential into an effluvium of a drainage spiraling embarrassment. One of the reasons that I think this mutilating process is aimed at the enthusiasts for the instrumentality of narrative disruption is the track "Mark Ronson's TED Talk Intro (Using Computer Remix)." Here she takes a stab at the "co-option" of identity that can transpire in post-modernity through self-gratifying sampling methods justified on the basis of disruptions and facile challenges to power. Lolina ruthlessly masticates and intravenously resorts the sequential events of Mark Ronson's 2014 TED Talk on the power of sampling, revealing through the track the incoherent and masturbatory character of the presenter and the ideas that propel his "art." It's a provocative album for sure, but I think Fast Fashion has something to say about the state of art and criticism in the 21st century that needs to be heard. 

Fast Fashion is out via Deathbomb Arc.

Dream Unending - Tide Turns Eternal

Dream Unending is the latest project of contemporary death metal titans Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore of Tomb Mold and Innumerable Forms, respectively. Their first album with the project, Tide Turns Eternal, is definitely one of the more sonically intriguing death-doom albums of the year. Written primarily on a twelve-string guitar, the project takes extravagant cues from the Cocteau Twins and The Cure to compose an incredibly heavy but pristine-sounding form of atmospheric death metal that impregnates every corner and crease of the mix with sifting forms and layered epiphany. Listening to the album is like embarking on a fatalistic vision quest, one where you visit the site of your own grave and find yourself reborn a strange and twisted vessel, filed to the brim with overpowering grief and a yearning to return to the void. A discordant, existential odyssey waits on Tide Turns Eternal. 

Tide Turns Eternal was released through 20 Buck Spin

Save Face - Another Kill For The Highlight Reel

New Jersey's Save Face brings us back to the emotionally-charged and hyper-effusive drama of early to mid-'00s pop-punk and post-hardcore with their debut LP Another Kill For The Highlight Reel. The album plays out like an English language and theatrical adaptation of a terebi drama, set at a school that regularly culls its students in a fashion akin to a popularity contest crossover with Battle Royal or The Belko Experiment. Blood and tears flow like wine and you either claw your way to the pinnacle of the social food chain or end up as lunch for someone more ruthless and cunning than yourself. Another Kill For The Highlight Reel is a gory and savage fantasy of teenage lust, power and intrigue, that I thoroughly enjoyed, despite (or maybe even because of) all of the PTSD flashbacks it gave to my own experience as an adolescent. Uncord this battle hymn of angst and let the drama drain out over the top of your head like a nauseating, crimson shower. 

Another Kill For The Highlight Reel is out on Epitaph and you should be thankful for this fact. 

Pink Siifu - GUMBO'!

Pink Siifu's GUMBO'! is a tribute to his heroes in the Dungeon Family, but also kind of a celebration of himself his unflappable take on Southern rap. There is no way that this should be seen as the height of hubris, as it takes the form of a cool hang-out rather than a cloying award ceremony. It's pretty chill and he's hoping everyone has a good time. He's dressed like a marching band conductor on the album's cover after all. He's playing the master of ceremony and you're invited to the block party. If you're down and willing to ease into the frame of mind that this record has, then Pink is going to load you up with party favors, pass you some herb, and introduce you to someone cute, who you are going to be talking to until sunrise. Like I said, it might be his party, but that doesn't mean he's the only one having the time of his life. 

Gumbo'! is out on Field- Left

Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno - KWEChE

Kenyan nyatiti player and folk singer Rapasa Nyatrapasa Otieno moved to England in 2020 in order to seek new opportunities and expand the audience for his music. Unfortunately, he arrived just before the pandemic started, which meant that he ended up spending a lot of time by himself and away from friends, family, and potential supporters. Not to sound derivative, but I can't help but think that his latest album Kweche is a reflection on this period. His brisk playing style is particularly diverting, especially when combined with the stoic, covert sweep of his vocal delivery, prudent and carefully cultivated measures that merge to produce intricately layered grooves that roll with a powerful and assured presence of mind. Kweche translated to taboo in Dholuo, with the album serving as a reflection on how family ties and tradition guide one through narrow passages and aid in avoiding the hazards and snags that populate the river of one's life. Rapasa must have spent a lot of time thinking about the distance between his family and questioning his decisions while writing this record. The uncertainty of the future can often be a source of dread, but hopefully Rapasa's wrestling with the demons of doubt that have taken up board in his own mind will inspire you to tackle the tensions and fears that ceases you as well as you are swept into a New Year. You can't stop time and you can't pause chance, all you can do is decide what you are going to do as you are propelled through them. 

KWEChE can be found here. 

Unreqvited - Beautiful Ghosts

The latest release from 鬼 (a character that basically means "Ghost") and his solo project Unreqvited is an unwavering exploration of love and fealty. Beautiful Ghosts successfully integrates elements of depressive-suicidal black metal into a spectral chamber of post-rock informed sentimentality in a way that is both frightening and undeniably alluring. The guitar tones and atmosphere are generally soft in texture and pliant in form, but tend to solidify quickly into cascades of bone-rattling blast beats and frost-kissed tremolos. It's pretty exciting to see how 鬼 expands on traditional metal and para-natural themes in a way that is complex and inspired, but also inviting and nurturing. Beautiful Ghosts is an ambitious and gorgeous album, without a hint of pretense or insularity. If only all black metal could be so bold. 

Beautiful Ghosts is available via Prophecy Productions

Enji - Ursgal

Mongolian singer and songwriter Enji's second LP Ursgal is also her first comprised of almost all original songs. Accompanied by an acoustic guitar, sax, and double bass, she takes an unconventional approach to the jazz singer idiom, with liberating embellishments and nods to pop standards (including a cover of Jimmy Dorsey and Paul Madeira's "I'm Glad There Is You." I really haven't heard anyone attempt this style of folk and soul in such a captivating way, and her flowing melodies take me back to when I would borrow records by Ella Fitzgerald and Doris Day from older relatives back in high school. It's mostly sung in Mongolian, but the melody is universal, and Enji is very adept at communicating her feelings despite the language barrier. A pristine gem of nostalgia and beauty, focused by the steady sigh of Enji's skillful orations. 

Ursgal is available through Squama Records.

Gilt - In Windows, Through Mirrors

Jacksonville's Gilt feels like they are borrowing inspiration from a lot of the same places as a band like Save Face, but are doing so with the exact opposite intent. The emotional turmoil that they extrapolate on in their music, especially on their latest EP In Windows, Through Mirrors, is in no way revealing in the exaggerated and theatrical drama of interpretations of teen angst- the emotions they grapple with and the pain they express is entirely sincere. They tackle issues of gender, isolation, insecurity, and mental illness in a way that reveals a steadfast resolve to work through these issues, and realize a healthier, more centered version of themselves. It's a worthy goal that motivates them to unleash some enormous sounding and irresistible emo rockers, with their persistence offering payoffs of both the emotional and aesthetic variety. In Windows, Through Mirrors is a short, but very satisfying release. 

It is out via Knifepunch Records. 

Yasmin Williams - Urban Driftwood

As a music writers (and hell, as a fan) you get hit with a lot of rhetoric about how "guitar music" is dead. I never know what people are talking about when they say that sort of thing, but if they truly believe what they are saying, then I have to conclude that they have never given Yasmin Williams's Urban Driftwood a chance. The record is her second LP and a gorgeous reflection on the year that proceeded its release (2020) and her own sense of place in the world, exhibited through incredibly lyrical and melodically complex acoustic fingerpicking. The album is mostly just Yasmin. That is, her and her guitar- and yet she never sounds like she is alone. The spirit of the music is lively and her energy is infectious throughout. One part of her biography that I genuinely appreciate is the fact that she started performing guitar in a lap-tapping style because it allowed her to manipulate the instrument in a way that was familiar to her from playing Guitar Hero ( a game she apparently excelled at). This is not only a charming origin story but helps to explain the spry enthusiasm of her distinctive playing style. Urban Driftwood is an exceptional solo recital, capable of displacing your mind from your daily routine and setting it adrift on a cloud of passion and an inquisitive sojourn of imagination. 

Urban Driftwood can be found through Splinter Records. 

Run's Deep - Evidence Collection

The Chicago-based Run's Deep is a very new enterprise as far as I can tell. The project's oldest release is from April of this year, but I would expect interest in it to ramp up fairly quickly. In short, they just get the vibe right. It is helmed by a person who refers to themself as 2%/2music2, and they perform in a harsh, aleatoric ambient, and industrial electronic style that sounds like it was made by one of the residents of the Blue Creek Apartments in Silent Hill 2 as they attempt to process the compounded psychological trauma of a recent run-in with Pyramid Head. Its music makes you feel justified in fearing every creak in the hall at night or scraping sound that filters down from the roof. It propagates a profile of sound that distorted the familiar with hints of hidden dangers and reveals the predatory nature of the ordinary and every day. Evidence Collection is Run's Deep's most recent EP, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had another on the way as of this writing. Run's Deep is relentless. Relentless as fear itself.

 

R̷̡̹̗̻̦̻͕͙̯̳̳͍̩͊̉̈́͜é̷̗̳̻̖̓̑̚͘͝ͅļ̵̢̨̥̱̥̯͉̬͇͓̙̪̓͗̊̂̉̈́͐̂̒̉̀͑̚͠ͅͅe̶̩̩̞̿̈́̏͋̀̔̿̔͗̓̿͐̅͆̕ͅń̸̡̨̘̠̲̝͓͓̪̹̲̯́͂̓͑́͗̿̈́̚͜ṭ̶͉͈͙͈̬̣̲̦̱̬̜͍̬̓́̓͆̔̇l̵̢̦̯͍̭̖̦̈́̀̾̍́͋̽̚e̷̢̛͇͕͈͚͍̿̿̈́̒̋͆̓̔̎͐̓̂͘͘s̵͎̦̥̥̭̩̹̜̞̣̹̤̓̅̃̽̿͗͆̎̂̋̈́̍̆͗͠s̴͇͍̲̣͕̲̳̺͍̼̳͇̈́͜͝ ̵̧̣̫͗̈̊ͅa̸͖͈̒̆͠s̸̪̮͇̎̓̍͗̕͠ ̵̜̻̆̈́̈́̽̿̀̚͝f̶̦̪̊̄͗̑̓͘͜ͅe̵̻̮̹͖̙̿́̂͊̾͆̈̉̔̓ͅǎ̷̧̱͇̯̭̦̈́̃̾̾̽̆͝r̴̮̫͔͙̰͌̏́͒̐̄͌̂̓́̍̔͝ ̴̛̱̫̿̓̈̾́́̀̕͝i̵̳̼̟͕̯̼̬̹̪̥̦͆̇͜͜͠t̷̳̞͔͙̦͖̺̹͉̑̿̅͗̌̇͗̀̃̕̚͝͝ͅs̵̺̭͙͇̳̦̩̙̙̝̗̗̫̀̎̈̐̐̒̌̀e̶̠͎̤̱̜̋̏̇̅̈́l̵̛̛͔͖͓̗̟̀̈́̒̽̓͜f̵̨̧̢̣͎̱͗̔̈͒̊͒̈́̚͠

R̶̢̟̻̪̘̻̮̲̮̳͉̪͇̜͖͓̰̬̣̞͍̭̂͑̃̀̀͋̓̃̋͂̊͋͂̓̄̌͊̆̏̈́̕͜͠͝͠ͅę̸̨̺͔̻̝̹͚̙̙̭̠̌̀͆̒́͋͠ĺ̵̛̹̫́͂̏̑̏͝é̷͉̲̪͔̟̳͓͖͔̦̼͉̈́̄̊̆͂̃͂́͌͒̆̑̽͗̈́̽̍̎͒̔̓̎͜͝͝͠n̸̢̮̗̯͈̺̰̬̆̈̀̉̊̄̉̎̏̋t̷̖̗̺̼̂͐̇̊̃̑̑̋̓̈́̒̎̊̈́̋͑̿͋͊̀́̔̎̆̚̕̕͜l̵̨͕͔̫͂̔́̏ě̷̡̡̧̹͔̗̦̜͖̲͎̦̯̻̣̰̥̘̟̭̞͓͇͍̆̂͛̐̄̃̓͊͌̾̏͂̍̓̍̇͌̚͝͝ͅͅs̴̨̨̢̘͕̻̘̯̼͔͕͇̰̪̟̱͑̒͆̓̋͑̈́͋̉͘͘̕̕͠͝ş̴̥͓̞͚̳̣̟̤͔̟̠̰̰̮̹̯̻̻̾͗̉́͒͛͌͜͝͠ ̴̡̦̦̣̉͝ą̶̧̨̞̝͍̻̝͎̱̥͇͍͇̮̭̪̘̝̖̱̖͌̔̈́̈́̀͗͋̔̈̈̀̇̂̎͐͗͆̆͆͗̽͘͝͠͝͠s̸̛̼̳̥̪̣̻̠̝̫̬̮̈́̓̏́̑̋̆̚ͅ ̶̡͉͙̖͉̜͍̹̺̲͉̬͈̬̙̘̈͌͗̄͛̍̐͜f̵̛̯͕̳̮͉͔̳̭̰͍̠̰̹̤͇̯̹̓̑͂̍̓͑̅̾̇͋͑̾̀̒̃͐̾̔̔̚͝͝͝e̷̖͙̝͔̻͉͔̞̣̱̱͛̄͗̓́̒̈́̀̇̌͆̓̾̆͒͋͑͘͝ă̶̘͖̌̚r̵̨̡̰̭͈̩͎̦̞̤̗̠̞͔͓̍͗̃̿̈́͂͛̽̋̀͂͒́͆̀̈̕͝͠ ̷̛̺͓̯̤̺͓̞̹̦̻̭̼̹̥̞̑͌͋̿̒̌̊̒̔͊̒́͛͒̑̌̕͜͝͝͠ͅï̵̛̫̟̹̮͊̀̎̅͋̑͛̀͛̏̈̄̀̉͋̾̉̿́͂̏̕̕͠t̴͖͇̠̝̫̦̝̽̓̀͗̀͊͋͊̾͗̔̇̚̕͘̚͝͠ͅs̵̢͙̳̯͙̜͖̤̦̬̳̳̮̥̤̙̀̀̊͒͗̒̓̉̎̆̓͛̓̚͠ͅę̷̡͚͇̗͇̣͖̘̼͍̰̩̪̮̀̈́̈́͐̒̓̒̑̑̃ļ̶̪̥̺̗̮̖͍͈͓̲͎̩̲̮̤̎̏̂̔̚̕͝f̵̡̘̯̖͍̘̠̫͇̂̏̊̌̌̃̍̎̅̏̇̂̄̑̊̈́̑́̓̃̕

Ṟ̵̢̢̧̢̨̢̢̖̤͔̱̝͙̠̩̤͙̞͚̖̖̦̟̼̘̩̮̘͔̤͈̟̻̩̭̫̼̻͋͌͊̊̾̈̔͋͒̈́̈́̆̀̚͜ͅȅ̴̜̺̫̜͔͉̹̭̹̫̪̣̬̻͚̻̪̂̓̈́̏̆͐̅̃̍̑̎̓̓͆̉̾̆̃̒̈́̉̓̕͜l̸̨͉͚̙͇̠̺͎͍̣͍͓̠͚̈̉̈́́̈̽̈̊͛̾͐͒͋̃̍͑͂̉̒̅̌̋͋̀͊̑͗̐́́̃̓̊͒͑͘̕̕̚͠͠è̸̡̡̧̛̖̼̦̱͉͓͉̮͔̳̘̈́̇̓̓̀̒͗͋̅̂̈̈́̇̋̎̄̇̂̍̏̈͆̓͑̐͂̌̐́́̓́̎̚͜͠͠ͅn̶̡̐̿͒̄͋͑͌͑̐̂̈́́̃͛̏̇̑͗t̷̡̡̛̬̤̭͖̰̤͓̠̣̲̳͔̜͇̭͙̮͓̥̺͉̭̩͉͓̘̳̰̫̋̇̅̏̿̾̈́͛̇̄̾̀̏̍̂͛̓͑́̅͘̚̕͘̕͜͜͠͝ͅͅl̵̡̡̢̜̦͈̘̙̠̰̪͖̰͔̮͍̜̠̠͈̤̠̖̗̭̜̩͕̯̳̭͍̯̺̞̓̑͛̑̐̎́̒̅̇̈̉̿̍̐̚͜͝͝ͅę̴̡͚̯̹̼͎̼͙̣͖͈̤̘̱̳̜̪͇̘̠̙̼̞̹̞̘͙̳̳̗̠̥̗̯͕̣̼̹̞͖̘̔̽̇̆͑̒̂͐͊̎̊̈́̒͐̇̈̓͊̀̎̀̿̐̑̏̀͘͘͝͝͝͝ͅs̷̨̡̢͍̱̖͕̰͙̳̘̩̤̤͖̝͇̹̗̻̞͎̣̰̖̆͗̇͆̆̚ş̵̭̥̘̣̫̥̪̄̍͂̏͊͂̿̀͌͆̈́́͛͒̽͒͗̑͒̌̆́̿̌̌̂̒͘̚̚͠͝͠͝ ̴̧͔̜̤̍́̇͒̈͋̌̋̎̈̄͊̉̓͗͊̋̈́̑̌̚̚̚ą̷̛̺̼̹͉̱̰͍͇̲̟͚͎͕̬̲̮̣̪͙̰͚̀̒̏̃̌̊͊͛͆͂̑̔͛͐͆̽͗̿̋̾̒̓̈́̌͊̄͋̒͂̀͠͠s̴̢̧͇͔͓̼͇̤̳̝̭̦͎̘̗̜͕̻̟͖̗̗̰̣̻͙̺͍͚̗̩̗͇͇̉͌̇̊̽́̒̍̐͊͌͌̓̋̔̔͋͌̓̚͜͠͝͠ ̶̛̦̩̗͕͕̘̘̈́̀͌̈́̿̃̏̓̾͒̎̐̏͌̿͐͛̐͊̋͛̉̀͛̋͒͗͌̚͘̕̚͘͠ͅf̸̧̧̛̻̥̰̔͛́̃̾̄͂̈́̃̎̊̀͌͋̽̍̔̑̀̿̋͋̂̅͝͝ͅȩ̸̨̨̨̢̧̭̘̰̲̖̪̹̟͍͕̲͕̭̘̫̜͎̜̝̪̩̯͎͐̇̆̄͑̋̆͊̀̈̐̽̇͐̓̈́́́̽͑̚̕͜a̴̛̝̦̯̺̣͓͈̔̽̀͂̈́̀̉̏́̌͋͊̂̋̾̾̓̒̅͆͆͑̏̋̎̐̀́̎̄̚͘͜͝͝r̸̛̦̝̪̘̣͇͕̲̲̖̗͇̤͕̦͊̈́͊̆̽̍̿͗́̇̔͒̏̉̍̐̌͋͆̅̾̎́̓̑̚̚̚͘͝͠͝͝ ̵̡̢̨̳͙̤̝͓̺̳̹̼̫͇̱̖̫̯̺̦̲̝̥̩͉̻̏͂͗̈́̂͌̎͆̐̏͂̋̋̿̓͘̕͜͝i̵̧̼̻̼̱̰̲̪͈͉̥̯̮͖̙͍͕̮̩̤͔̪͈̼̠̟̯͋̉͘͜ẗ̴̢̨̡̨̮̩͍͓͖̝̥̫̮̩̯͇̮̻͈̪̹̣̰͇̣̺͑́̑͐̔̀̓͑͘̕͜ͅș̶̡̨̨̛̣̦̗̗̣͔͎̩̤̞͎̞̳͉͎͉͍͈͍̦̟̹̼͖̤̝̩̅̎̇̀̒̈́̇͛̋̎͑̐͒́̊͋̋͛̔̂̑̕̕̚͜ͅẹ̸̡̨̢̗͕͈̮̝̰̞͖̺͔͔̜̙̖͈̫̰͇̖͙̹̥̟̯̹̳̖̣͚̜̩͙̌̾̂͂͜ͅͅͅͅḻ̴̨̡̨̲̦̫̠͇̹̖͚͇͓͖̠̯̪̞̝̝̞̣̲͇̲̳̙̞͈́͐̀̍͛f̵̧̧̛͉̜͖͚̹̤̟͍̳̝͚̤̫̭̫͚̻͆́́̽

Evidence Collection was self-released (I believe). 

Turnstile - Glow On

Slaps. 

Glow On is out on Roadrunner. 

Good luck in 2022!