Album Review: 999 Heartake Sabileye - A Boy Named Hexd

Not every bruised and bastardized trap mashup and dance mix transcends its humble origins, but 999 Heartake Sabileye's A Boy Named Hexd comes much closer than most. The album is the experimental hip-hop producer's first full EP of original material. They have released a full deck of singles, live albums, and remix albums prior to this, but A Boy Named Hexd is seemingly their first attempt at applying their talents to a slate of coherent and interlocking songs, and the results are a gripping conveyance to the tattered rim of itinerant sonic perception. On this album, 999 manages to make these seven tracks flow together like the plot of a lucid dream- inscrutable and blurry around the edges, but with a clear narrative thrust that makes perfect sense while you're in it. You might not recall all of the details once you manage to rub the sleep from your eyes, but you'll never rid yourself of the impressions and emotions that the psychic pilgrimage impressed on your interior self. The impact of A Boy Named Hexd seems at least partially attributable to a combination of undermixed melodies with the muscle of toasted, boxer-grade trap beats. The soft distortion of the vocal hook on opener "godspeed" and the way it is pressed into malleable, grey synth tones deceptively lulls you to a state of whimsy only to be periodically shocked back to life by the rough massage of a brutish, Memphis beat and a pushy, bracing trap flow. It's kind of like a daydream you're having in the park interrupted when a shoebill lands on your shoulders and attempts to open the top of your skull like a can of tuna. The other open secret of the album's mix is the extent to which it is bitcrushed to oblivion. At any given time there are three of four tightly sequenced rhythms in the cut, and all of them have been claustrophobically compressed into a mosaic of tonally intricate grooves. You can try to follow any one strand, but you'll get tripped up by another and end up spinning like a top attempting to keep either straight. It's best to just enjoy the strange momentum of it all rather than attempt to unravel its mysteries. At least that's what I tell myself while I'm being rolled over like a speedbump and wound up like a slinky by the breakbeat influenced trap torrent "Online Third Impact: Hype Incarnate." and the downpressing drum and bass of "SoundCloud." In my humble opinion, there are few curses worse than missing out on A Boy Named Hexd.

Album Review: DJ Sacred - Memphis Rap Strikes Back

DJ Sacred pays tribute to the roots of his odd obsessions with Memphis Rap Strikes Back. The Ukrainian producer is one of those gaunt and shadowy figures who comfortably navigates the hauntological realms of hip-hop's forbidden places looking for deeper, colder sonic paydirt in which to drop his shovel. His work can genuinely sound paranormal and unnatural as it emerges from your speakers to spook your psyche. As you'd expect from the title, Memphis Rap Strikes Back possesses a certain eerieness to its construction. But not eerie enough to scare off casual rap fans. In fact, it may be one of his more inviting releases overall. As a genre, Memphis Rap is known as much for its unique cadence as for its fatalistic outlook. This embrace of life's tendance to engender nihilism in those who have a struggle the hardest to cling to it is what has caused the genre to be the aesthetic mother of first horrorcore, and then trap, and then every bloody-toothed bar that trap subsequently inspired. DJ Sacred doesn't reproduce the desperate impressions of the genre, though. Instead, he casts these dopesick and gritty gangster bars in a new mold- one of upbeat, deep house-inspired, light synth-phonk. It sounds kind of crazy and like it shouldn't work, but this approach gives rhymes about death and die-hard living a sort of hopeful caliber. These hooks are no longer just about survival but about life and the dignified perseverance that living requires. Maybe this is because the beats DJ Sacred has selected and sequenced are so persistent themselves, or because the synths he layers in are so clean and airy, or perhaps it's the selection of vocal samples, the majority of which are probably on the more proactive and aspirational side of the Memphis ethos. Or maybe it's all of these elements taken in the aggregate. Whatever it is, Memphis Rap Strikes Back is not just a great homage to one of the most influential traditions in hip-hop, but a transformative and highly engaging new take on it as well. 

It's out on Chicago's Tape House USA. 

Album Review: Racecar Stuntman - Skullface Bonehead

Racecar Stuntman aka Na-Kel Smith is going to give you heartburn with his latest release, Skullface Bonehead. Like the cover, the music is deep-fried to a crisp. This is not the most lofi hip-hop album I've heard, but it is still satisfyingly crunchy. It's also sparsely mixed. The beat and the hooks are often far enough apart that you can get your full forearm between them. The elements of this album are not crowded together at all. Instead of a tightly woven tapestry, Skullface Bonehead is more like a loosely tied, barf-colored crochet blanket- one that you can really get your fingers and pull at the loops. Some people are hard on the album for this reason, but I think it's one of the things that makes it unique. Most harshly textured and roughly produced records, hip-hop or otherwise, try to hide their character behind a blizzard of feedback, but that's not this pro-skateboarder and Odd Future-affiliate's style. Na-Kel wants you to see his scars, his large oily pores, and bubbling, irritated bacne. As a flawed, greasy creature myself, I have to praise his boldness, if no other reason than he is braver than I for brandishing his ignoble gifts. This is not a backhanded compliment either; it is genuinely inspiring to see the ugly side of a performer sometimes. It makes you feel closer to them as well as slightly more at home in your own flabby flesh-box of a body. Further, It's why I have to recommend Skullface Bonehead, not despite its imperfections, but because its imperfections are intentional and part of what makes the album great! 

Album Review: Renderer - Virtual Presence EP

I'm always curious about the person behind a piece of music. What motivates them. Their likes and dislikes. Their greatest failures and grandest triumphs. It's impossible to know everything, even after a full conversation... and even though I do interviews, I rarely ever feel like I've scratched the surface of the ways that someone's art intersects with their life- even after we've been talking for an hour or more. Even though knowledge about a person can improve my appreciation of their art, I still like encountering some works entirely blind. It helps me refocus on my own perception of the work. A necessary recalibration, because ultimately, that's what is going to determine its impact- not who made it, but how it made me feel. 

I know next to nothing about Renderer, and I get the sense that this may actually improve my experience of their music. It's industrial house music that feels as cold as a closed casket and as hospitable as the interior of a meat locker. It trades in a kind of frozen, prismatic atmosphere that freezes the sweat as it squeezes out of your pores leaving it to drop like diamonds spilled during an aborted heist. It's music that surrounds and scrapes at you like a pack of hungry dogs. It is music that seems to flow from the claws of some maligned apparition, One that is doomed to twist knobs and push shifters until it finds the frequency that will open the gates to the nether realm and deliver it from the pain that accompanies unlife spent amongst the living. 

A narrow escape is what Virtual Presence delivers- an annihilating quest that will drag you through the eye of oblivion by seductively tutoring in the pleasures and ravages of sound. It's like an Italian disco where spinning stage lights burn with a cold fury like dry ice drawn across your skin- searing you with callous excess until your body gives up its ward and allows your spirit to run free through the dead of night. I know nothing beyond what I've experienced, and what I have experienced on Virtual Presence is a most exquisite form of death. 

 Released on Body Musick. 

Album Review: underscores - boneyard aka fearmonger

Emo Night were a '10s thing. And like most things from the '10s they are barely worth remembering. But if you didn't know, or weren't around for it, these were things (events kinda) that would attract millennials who could afford to go out on a weeknight, or who didn't have to work the next morning (or maybe they couldn't or did, but didn't care). These tragic souls would dress in their most revealing indie sleaze and step out to clubs (places that usually played genuinely danceable music) to drown their cares in $1 PBRs... and they mostly succeeded. 

The ramble of Emo Nights were the faithful. Music lovers (and addicts) whose enthusiasm for bands like Cute Is What We Aim For and Forever the Sickest Kids couldn't be scuttled by think pieces on problematic lyrics or unhinged forum screeds by "tru punx" about how "emus" were ruining it for "the rest of us." In retrospect, I admire their persistence and courage. They were unabashed in their love of emo music during a time when it was cool to cop out (hell, even the Get Up Kids did it!). 

But my admiration only extends so far- Emo Nights were sad, dude. I only ever managed to go to a few, and more than a decade later, I'm still impressed at how underwhelming they were. It was like, "Welcome to your life as an alcoholic, brought to you by Fueled by Ramen." I think part of my boredom with these events is that I actually wanted to dance at a lot of the clubs, but that was not the vibe on these nights at all. Emo Nights took themselves (and the music) very seriously. They also lacked the amusing absurdity and coordinated spectacle of, say, Denny's letting Gym Class Heroes design a nested-egg combo- a promotional idea that is laudable in its audacious transparency and bald exploitation of youth culture. Like GCH's "After School Special" or Sum 41's "Sumwitch" Emo Nights, were a product for wasted youth, unlike these Denny's specials though, they were also a wasted opportunity. 

There was some controversy about Emo Nights "selling out" a while back that I didn't pay attention to, and I'm sure somebody still hosts them, somewhere- but I'm way too old, and wise, and very old to be out drinking on a weeknight. Plus, I made my peace with these things not being my bag back during the Obama administration. So why look back now? Well, my renewed interest in emo music in the last two years (thanks to bands like Guitar Fight from Fooly Cooly, Oolong, Camp Trash, and Hey, Ily, amongst others) has got me wondering about the genre's pop (and even mass) potential again and has made me curious about how the genre could, maybe, possibly, make its way back into night clubs- only this time in a way that realizes the potential of introspective lyrics pumped into an exhaustive dance party. I don't know that underscores is the person to reify emo's pop-potentiality, but they certainly seem on the right track on their latest release, boneyard aka fearmonger. 

This will probably surprise you, but I'm not particularly fond of underscore breakout album fishmonger. It definitely lays out the ground rules for what to expect on fearmonger (which, to be clear, I like a lot), but their earlier efforts too closely resemble a lot of other heavily produced diy, singer-songwriter albums for my taste. Not bad, but also not going to hold my attention for very long either. It also felt like underscores was still trying to figure out who they want to sound like on the fishmonger, and I found the noticeable and still visible eraser lines of this process very distracting. That's my only real criticism of it though. It just didn't represent the artist's potential in my opinion. 

fearmonger, in contrast, has its own identity from the outset as well as a developed sense of sound that breaks from the more haphazard qualities of their previous work. It's shorter, more ambitious, more confident as well- all of which work to its advantage. And truly, and I say this with full honesty, and without hyperbole, it totally blows my mind how a lot of these songs are put together. They sound like Fall Out Boy demos produced by Skrillex. There is a highly developed intelligence behind these songs that you rarely get a glimpse of in such emotionally charged pop music. They possess a mathematically constructed architecture of chaotic catharsis- a temple to the fates of heartbreak where the makings of a hero lie embedded in the fissures of each howling disappointment and thunderous triumph. 

There are solid, hook fundamentals present on songs like "Girls and Boys" and "Loansharks," but the way underscores layers in effects to enhance the twists and turns that are already present is both excessive and exceptional. It's like getting hit in the face with a balloon full of cocaine, with that white gold filtering into every orifice in your face and supercharging your senses- it's scratchy and sweaty, and maybe the start of a bad night, but jeeeeeeesssssusss is it intense. 

These songs literally feel addictive. As in, when they finish, I feel an absence that can only be filled by listening to them again. "Tounge In Cheek" in particular, has this alluring, elasticity to it that grabs me with the full force of Earth's gravitational pull- dropping me into its whirl of delightful and friendly electronics like I was plunging 10 feet into ball pit-trampoline-combo while holding hands and locking eyes with Gerard Way. 

"Saltfields" intertwines some Sugar Ray-dusted, sun-kissed pop-punk riffs with an understated hip-hop beat, and then goes full plunderphonic-spree on your brain in the last minute- leaving you with the impression that you just witnessed underscores transcend to its final, Ableton-anarchist, chaos-demon form as they shift their svelte but imposing frame, spread their wings, and lift off to embrace the night. 

fearmonger shows me that underscores is not afraid of change, not even when their transmogrification leads to unprecedented and unpredictable outcomes. The album pierces the veil of what is possible when emo intersects with electronic dance production while capturing the insane blend of contradictory and confusing emotions that inundate you in your youth. It feels innovative- genuinely so. And not in a chintzy, scammy Silicon Valley kind of way either. underscores is really doing something special and I recommend that you learn to love what they have unleashed because it feels like the future, arriving today. 

Album Review: Flop Machine - Machine Beat Rock And Roll

Alright, all you panty-sniffers and glue-brained lizards, I've got something that will really spin your little cranks. Norway's Flop Machine are rolling into earshot like a syphilitic carnival entangled in a horrid pile-up while transporting their unregulated attractions across state lines. But it doesn't matter what misfortunes befall Flop Machine on their misadventures; they'll still be keyed up to perform, like sparking, wind-up tin-soldiers with tiny drum machines haphazardly embedded in their chests. They are a punk band in the realist and strangest sense of the term.

The band's first full release, Machine Beat Rock And Roll is a synth forward and sleazy, bopped-up and blood-soaked, bumper car joust to the death. One where the winner goes home with the loser's slutty SO, and the loser gets tossed in a dumper behind a sex shop. It's scratchy, scabby, staticky and prone to sinusitis- because when band's fingers aren't strumming guitar strings, they're likely hunting for goblin gold in the holes in their faces. 

Flop Machine's sound might be ugly as sin and exude a musk that could bleach the freckles off your cheeks, but that doesn't mean that they don't have the tunes. Tracks like "Shamans" are comprised of a daisy chain of Marked Men worthy hooks that link up like tank tread to push the beast forward, while on songs like "Berlin" the band tries their hand at a busted up and wigged out version of charlatan soul. "Jukebox" sounds like a deconstructed interpretation of the blues from a deteriorating dystopia where hallucinations and tourettes like fits are common symptoms of venereal disease. And if that isn't disturbing enough, the appropriately dreary, space-disco crash of "UFO" reflects on the probable genocide of the human race at the hands of invading disintegration-beam-wielding extraterrestrials.*

From first blush to final snuff, Machine Beat Rock And Roll is generally in poor taste, but for those with a discerning palate, Flop Machine's gooey, electri-fried morsels might just be your favorite new illicit treat. 

This tape is out on Painters Tapes (but it might be sold out).

Maybe try LoopyScoopTapes?

* ET may be doing us a favor here. Have you seen how things have been going on this stinking marble of ours? I'm honestly asking. I'm afraid to look myself. If you could just text me about it later I'd consider it a favor. 

Album Review: El Dragon Criollo - Pase lo que pase

You know that I'm a fan of dance music right? Well, there are a lot of different varieties out there. And Paulo Olarte Toro has tried his hand at most of them. Currently residing in Switzerland, the Columbian-born producer has sought to return to the source on his debut album Pase lo que pase by making a traditional Latin dance record that combines champeta, reggaeton, and other popular Caribbean styles.

Ok, maybe it's not "traditional" traditional, but it's traditional as far as the '90s go. And seeing as '95 was nearly 30 yards back according to the rear-view mirror, Paulo might as well be translating from ancient Sanskrit as far as some of these whipper-snapping zoomers are concerned (no offense kids). 

Now, I don't mean to disparage Pase lo que pase at all by referencing the age of its inspirations. In fact, it is this admirable tracing of the past that makes the album so delightful. It's cool to be confronted with versions of reggaeton that had a fresh and tantalizing underground appeal at one time. I appreciate the way that Pase lo que pase demands a reckoning with the origins of many Caribian styles and reminds us that they had a history before becoming just another studio preset. Or even more ignobly, a bald neologism that ambitious, but clueless, producer types drop into conversation to convince you that what they're working on somehow how "exotic." This has unfortunately become reggaeton's fate as of late.*

Paulo's version of these sounds is very natural in contrast. This is because it is coming from a genuine place and the product of genuine love for the music of his youth. This unpretentious approach to making music that is both faithful and fun is extremely easy to embrace. 

"Librame de Todo Mal" is definitely going on my playlist for this summer and the breezy, beachy synth rhythms of "Cumbía Fantasía" will whisk the sweat clean off your brow and replace it with a replenishing kiss of relief. "Mientras Unos Mueren" trades in an undeterred variety of body-propelling, rhythmic vacillation pumped up by a future-beat fascination that harkens back a period when causal space-exploration seemed only a decade or so off. And of course, I am hot for the Brazillian rhythms and highly judicious use of monkey drum on "Hoy No Morire." It's kind of everything I want out of a Latin dance record right now. 

Getting the feel and pace of these tracks right, probably was not an easy task. But Paulo demonstrates a real dedication to the task on Pase lo que pase. And the proof of his dedication, and the fruition of his success, can be found, as well as felt, in the movement the album will inspire in your feet and in your hips, but most importantly, the stirring it will arouse within the well of your soul. 

Pase Lo que pase is out on El Palmas Music

*Granted, this used to be worse 6 years ago, but I have bad enough PTSD from being pummeled by non-native Spanish speakers unnecessarily overemphasizing that rolled "r" that I still harbor some battered resentment. 

Album Review: Aunt Sally - Aunt Sally

I end up snooping on a lot of crosstalk and out-of-context conversations about music while scrolling Twitter. I thankfully manage to purge most of it from my mind almost as quickly as it's absorbed. However, there is one outcropping of the "discourse" that has stuck with me the past few days. A person I follow shared the highlights of a conversation that they had in their DM's which I found interesting about K-Pop, J-Pop, and media exported from East Asian countries generally. In particular, there was one line of the conversation that jammed its way into my brain like a road-spike into a Firestone. It was something along the lines of how Asian artists tend to take sounds from other parts of the world and reproduce them in a way that "decontextualizes" them. Because I was not actually part of this conversation, I have no idea what the larger point being made was (or even if this statement is true, or a widely shared opinion), but it jutted out at me like an accusation. I had never considered what it meant for something "borrowed" from another culture to be out of context. As far as I can gather, most J-Pop going as far back as J-Pop goes was both an attempt to make something fun and contemporary for a domestic audience and an attempt to create a viable cultural export. Similarly, this is in part why, as an American, I encounter so many familiar and popular references in Anime and other cultural products from Japan. It's part artists metabolizing art that comes from abroad through the organs of their own culture and part an attempt to open up space for their own products in a foreign market. After all, America not only produces and exports an outrageous amount of culture, but also consumes an impressive amount as well- including culture from abroad. Even breaking open a small crack through which to distribute your product to an American audience can pay off big in the event you can cultivate a demand from even a niche audience. The context for all of these products is a cultural exchange- or at least the attempt at one. This is all just my understanding, though. I only bring it up because it is an interesting backdrop to contrast with the reissue of the Japanese band Aunt Sally's self-titled debut again. Aunt Sally was a spry and precocious post-punk band whose lead singer is a woman who goes by the name Phew. Later, Phew would become a highly respected performance artist and musical collaborator. But on Aunt Sally, Phew and the band still seem very young and mostly eager to simply make music and be heard. When the album came out in 1979, it was pretty clear that through its writing and recording, Aunt Sally's members had basically been bathing in as much punk and high-concept rock music (especially from the UK) as was humanly possible. And what the band made after straining that stew of influences is in many ways highly familiar to an international audience- but not in a way that feels commercial, or even immediately digestible. You can hear The Raincoats on this album, and you can hear Public Image and Pere Ubu, but you're also going to hear nursery rhymes sung in atonal English, songs built around beginner piano tunes like "Heart and Soul," and a bunch of melodies that seem like they were picked up while on vacation in a French-speaking part of the world. It's very idiosyncratic, restive in its naivete, and simplistically miraculous, as well as unbound by any thread of conventional logic. It feels like something made by a group of people attempting to rationalize their place in the world, in light of their personal histories, and the ebb and flow of world history, and was released as much as a cohesive (and somewhat confounding) artistic statement, as much as an attempt to compare notes with whoever else has been paying attention (no matter where they might call home). I think it's for this reason that none of Aunt Sally's debut feels out of place. Just as it's always true that, where ever you find yourself, there you are! Where ever you find yourself in the world, that is the only place you could ever exist in, and so you have to make sense of it the best you can. This is all to say, that as obtuse and irascible as Aunt Sally's debut can be, it still manages to make a compelling amount of sense the way it all comes together- even forty years on from its inception. At least that's the way I feel about it, whether I totally grasp the nuances of its context or not, that's the impression it leaves me with. Every piece is exactly where it needs to be.

It's reissued (with permission) by MESH-Key. 

Album Review: See More Glass - Roaring Paper Spring

SeeMoreGlass is making some sweet tunes out in Ohio. Their latest album Roaring Paper Spring is a beautifully realized selection of modern pop-punk heat-seekers looking to zero in on the plaintive thump of your broken heart. These songs all feel solidly constructed and the album has a compelling ark to it, with the choruses and emotions becoming more eudaimonic and oddly hopeful as it progresses. Roaring Paper Spring has the feel of a classic Wonder Years record, in that it is both smartly and carefully constructed and powerfully hooky and infectious. Also, like a Wonder Years record, it can be overwhelmingly in its pinning sadness. "Missing You (From Halfway 'Round The World)" especially has a wholesome, tearjerking quality to it that will make you feel like a golden retriever sitting by the kitchen door during a rainstorm wondering when (or if!) you person is going to come home. Songs like the title track do an incredible job of pairing giant, '80s-indebted hooks with expressions of paralyzing and relatable anxieties and shepherding it all along with an appropriate quotient of "wah-ohs. Latter numbers like "Cory, What If We Don't Know Anything?" manage to really rip it up with dyspeptic lyricism and chunky, melocore riffage, capturing some of that oft-lost American peace-punk angst as well as expressing a convincing desire to make a better world possible. Something unexpected that I appreciate about the latter half of Roaring Paper Spring are its country and folk influences. Beginning with the big Americana rock chords of "This Is No Dream, This Is Really Happening" the album exudes a kind of organic, heartland warmth that reaches a sober epoch on the gospel tinted "The Stirring Of A Breeze" only to explode on the country-soul, spur-stomp of "Hope And Time Wait For No One"- a song that sounds like it could have been ghostwritten by Craig Finn and Jakob Dylan and then passed off to The Starting Line who executed it without extracting any of its rural, rust-belt DNA. And did I mention that singer N. Patrick Phile has a set of pipes? Because holy crap does he ever! He is absolutely shouting over the back of the cheap seats and his voice is shamelessly spilling out into the front lobby and beyond. Roaring Paper Spring is an exhilarating listen from cover to credits. 

Interview: Cloakroom

Reverse dashboard cam by Vin Romero

Northwest, Indiana's Cloakroom have another album out on Relapse called Dissolution Wave. It's fucking gorgeous and I got to talk to their bassist Bobby Markos about it for CHIRP Radio. We also talked about American folk music and why space is the only place big enough to contain the band's sound. You can check out the whole album on CHIRP's site here, or below: 

Get Dissolution Wave from Relapse here. 

CHIRP Radio · Cloakroom Interview

Album Review: White Suns - Dead Time

I've been following Brooklyn trio White Suns since stumbling on Anthony Fantano's review of Totem back in 2014 (and now you know what a basic bitch I am- talk about self-owns) but Dead Time is the first album of theirs that I've ever listened to with a critical ear. 

White Suns is definitely a thoughtful band, but their style of noise rock is easy enough to appreciate on a purely aesthetic level that its reflective character can be glossed over in favor of allowing it to satiate your more tumultuous urges. This was certainly my experience of 2021's The Lower Way, which obliterated most thoughts in my mind while I leaned into a heightened state of anticipation for each violent, left-ward verge. 

White Suns resembles a version of Big Black with David Fincher's sense of tension and release- a highly conscious approach to experimentation aimed at provoking perverse and sometimes contradictory responses from an audience. To me, they are master craftsmen of dark, ominous intrigue. 

While the band isn't shy about showing their work, something that I discovered while listening to Dead Time is that it is more willing to disclose the band's intelligent, if diabolical, designs. More so than their previous records for sure. This is mostly because the record feels rawer and less rehearsed- even if when it isn't. But the fact that it feels this way is a testament to the band's skill. 

There has always been a certain spontaneity to the electronic howl that White Suns emits and an unpredictability to the way that this devouring force envelops and partially dissolves the more trad post-hardcore elements of the band. But with Dead Time these facets appear less though a process and more as constituents in a constant state of crisis management. By which I mean, that the album doesn't swallow you whole... Decay and waste have already overcome you and you are only now coming to full horrific awareness of what has transpired. In other words, you begin your journey in medias res: in the belly of this beast. 

For instance, "xenobiotics" sounds like it opens mid-song. Like you've arrived 10 minutes into the band's show and they are already well into their set. It kind of feels like you're missing something, but the sputter and shock of the electronics are instantly compelling, and you get caught up rather quickly. 

"night pours in" similarly makes you feel like you've entered something already in progress. Something clandestine. Something that has put you in danger without your knowledge and now you only have a  few precious seconds of awareness of this looming threat before it becomes inescapable. The song does this with trashcan-sounding snare intro that serves you up to a blast of guitar noise like a deer pushed before screaming pick-up truck- its big brown eyes barely adjusting to the glare of the headlights before the fatal impact. 

There is a rather intense level of immediacy the band is going for on Dead Time, and it really works for me. If there is a thematic sensibility to this album I would have to say that it is one of expectancy- the foretelling of something bad. The hair-raising awareness captured by the bands gives their music the fragile but insistent quality of a live performance. A setting where sound and sensation mingle in the air like the smell of gasoline after a car crash.

It's incredible to me how White Suns can reach through your speakers and rattle your senses the way they do here. Almost like they've snuck into your brain through inception and set up a sonic warfare lab in the cleft between your lobes. It's hard to capture the level and sense of feedback of an in-person gig on a studio recording, but that the ironically named Dead Time's greatest asset- it has the dynamism of a live recording matched with the pristine sound range of a controlled studio environment. Chaos en persona, cultivated for impact. 

Dead Time is out on Orange Milk. 

Album Review: Voiddweller - Null - Void

Null - Void is the first LP from Iowa scumdog and digital hardcore raconteur Voiddweller. Voiddweller is, allegedly, the side project of one DJ Rozwell. I say allegedly, because there is some evidence for this conclusion, but it's mostly based on conjecture. I usually strive for accuracy in my writing, but I probably shouldn't be shy about spreading roamers about this guy or his work. Everything he does to promote the project has the smell of a psy-op... something that has to be is entirely intentional. I might actually be doing him a favor by disseminating information that I just made up. This is literally just an assumption I'm going to make going forward.

In the spirit of relaying the real, hard facts about this project, it demands to be pointed out, that in addition to being DJ Rozwell, Voiddweller is also an alias of JFK Jr. A person who is very much still alive and who is heavily invested in meme culture. So much so that he's become a pioneer of the information economy of Gen Z. You know that stupid, sexy, dancing Shrek the kids are all obsessed with? Well, who do you think did the motion capture for it? Save your guesses. It was Voiddweller. Prove me wrong! 

Now that I've thoroughly confused and/or enraged you, you're in a pretty good mental space to invite Null - Void into your life. Put simply, the album is a filthy, soul-staining search through the rock bottom depths of bad intentions and even worse outcomes. Stylistically, the album blurs the lines between industrial hip-hop and digital hardcore like blood and piss mixing as they are squeezed from an infected bladder. It's impressive and offputting, astonishing and menacing as only sound deployed in an offensive strategy against good taste can be. 

Voiddweller does have some favored modes that he operates in on Null - Void, and it can feel a little redundant at times. I apparently have a high threshold tolerance for hearing someone straining their vocal cords over back-bitting breakbeats and stolen synth samples, because I am with him on every sick and arranged stage of his journey like a dog chasing a greasy boa of sausage links as it's dragged through the dirt. The grimier this album gets the more satisfying it is to my senses. 

Sticking with things that help give this Null - Void the right sort of ambiance, it's very fitting that nearly every sample makes its appearance by liberty rather than permission (Ask for forgiveness, not a signed release). Now I don't want to imply anything, but I can't imagine that the Amy Winehouse sample in the venomous flame-out "Excess" was cleared. I might actually be disappointed to learn that it had been, because the abandonment of proper protocols and due diligence is what this album is all about. Absolutely freedom is its flag hoisting cry. The freedom to love and hate. The freedom to sink into a well of your own alienated torpor. And the freedom to self-destruct into a million bits of ash and broken bone. 

Listen to Voiddweller's Null - Void. Listen long and hard. But don't be surprised to find that the deeper you listen, the deeper it listens back. 

It's out on Solium because they reissued it on cassette. 

Album Review: s4dunicorn - h4ppyunicorn

It's been a day so I'm unwinding with some breakbeat and jungle music, specifically s4dunicorn's h4ppyunicorn. I love this current moment in inground dance music when producers are reviving these sick '90s club sounds. Even if I never experienced them in an actual club, I appreciate them now maybe more than ever. I'm not ashamed to admit that my first exposure to many of the styles showcased on h4ppyunicorn was through the menu screens of Dreamcast and first-generation X-Box games. These bops and breaks really take me back and warm my heart with intensely nostalgic vibes. It helps in this regard that s4dunicorn is ripping up and remixing songs by artists from the early '00s who it was impossible to escape during my youth. There are no complaints on my end when it comes to making Missy Elliot sound even freakier than she usually does. In fact, I prefer it that way. I believe what s4dunicorn when they claim that the inspiration for this album is their steadily improving mental health. I believe it because it is doing the Lord's work for my overloaded brain. It is slapping all the tension out like a meat hammer to a slab of bison steak. I'm basking in these beats and rolling with whatever this album has got to offer. 

This is out via Vapor Scape Records

Album Review: Rookie Card - We Chose To Go To The Moon

I have chosen to love the new record by Billings emo band Rookie Card. Not because it is hard, but because it is easy. Very easy. We Chose To Go To The Moon cuts a clear course for the stars as the band enters the chop of the current wave of emo-core. They are like a barge of brash, buccaneering bards. A motley crew of liberal-arts primed seafarers who have thrown the sextant overboard, electing to navigate by instinct instead.

If you like midwest emo (and a little bit of screamo), then you will find a lot to like here. That doesn't mean that Rookie Card are derivative though. They're not just tossing around the olde American Football for laughs (even if there are an abundance of twinkle chords) or mining a downcast mood for sappy hooks like The Get Up Kids (although, this album has plenty of moods, and hooks, and no shortage of synths). We Chose To Go To The Moon just feels like an album made by a bunch of folks who love emo, but aren't particularly inclined to walk in the shadow of their idols. They've obviously learned a lot from their forbearers, but they're not content with simply shinning from the shadows cast by their influences. 

On We Chose To Go To The Moon, Rookie Card sounds like they got off their retail-drone jobs the day before they were set to go on tour, and instead of packing their suitcases, they spend the evening breaking into Mike Kinsella's house and raiding his wardrobe. These pilfered rags are then stitched together into ransacked, rag stock mosaic dream coats- accented by spraypaint, lengths of protruding LED lights, and jewelry from Claire's. I respect their attitude and approach. For one, It's familiar and intrinsically irreverent- both underrated qualities of great emo in my opinion. But further, their songs beg to be heard live. They have an energy that feels like it would fill up a basement or gallery space like a swoopy-haired boy fills out an Atticus T that is one size too small. 

Tracks like "Ismay" really show off the loose and intuitive way Rookie Card strings their songs together. In the beginning, we see the group throwing themselves into a slick sledge of blinding twinkle grooves, only for them to part the flow to tease you with a Millennial handclap motif and a clip of a countdown sequence. The second of the song! Different from the one that proceeded it, but no less appropriate and amusing.

There are a lot of left turns on We Chose To Go To The Moon, but somehow the record doesn't feel like it is driving in circles. And although the song structures have plenty of slack in their lines, they also have a clear sense of direction. Take the song "Chicago" for instance, a number that demonstrates the group's clarity of vision by showcasing clean, nimble guitar work that builds, ascends, and finally accedes, permitting the groove to transcend into a ray of twilight synth bars. It is an awesome transition, made all the better by the fact that the song loses none of its momentum as it crosses over into the precious whirl of an Italian-disco-esque interlude. 

If you couldn't guess from the title of the album, Rookie Card has a curious affinity for pop-cultural oddities. You may ask, "what emo band doesn't?" But theirs are obscurer than most. By way of example the song "Dog Named Beau" is built around a sound clip of Jimmy Stewart reading a mawkish poem over a roil of cold, shaving guitars. The experience of this number is both ridiculous and sweetly sentimental. The mix of feelings it conjures are enjoyable enough for their contradictions alone, but the song also led me to pulling up a video of Mr. Stewart on the verge of tears while talking about his dog on Johnny Carson's show in 1981... and my life is now strangely enriched because of it. 

It's easy to remix and ridicule the past for a quick laugh. However, the challenge is in making people feel something genuine after the chuckles have died down. It's not just these unconventional and concerted choices (like ending the album with an acid house mashup called "Jinx") that leave me wanting to hurdle the moon while listening to this album, but the parts that you'd expect on an emo record as well. 

Songs like "Wonderment" and "Celadon" are amongst the more orthodox rockers on the album, brimming with punk verve and angling to make an impact- slamming around like they're trying to do home repairs while blindfolded, crowbar in hand while showers of drywall rain down around them in ragged clumps like carcinogenic snow. They serve as loving acts of creative imposition and the triumph of intuition.  

Rookie Card are a band who are not afraid to let their feet leave the ground while they are reaching for the limits of their art and ability. As ever, it is good to meet the acquaintance of a group of people who are not afraid of heights. 

Interview: Woody Goss

Piq by Erin Ayalp

Talked a little bit with local funk/jazz pianist and celebrity bird enthusiast Woody Goss for this week's episode of the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series. We talked about his new solo album Rainbow Beach as well as the local sights, sounds, and rare birds that inspired it. I love all the interviews I do, but this one was really fun. You can check it out on CHIRP's site here, or below:

CHIRP Radio · Woody Goss Interview

Find yourself a copy of Rainbow Beach here. 

Album Review: Single Mothers - Bubble

Single Mothers have always sounded pissed off. I doubt that there was ever a time when lead singer Andrew Thomson didn't see a red door and want to paint it black or look up at a hot air balloon and wonder what it would look like as it was sucked into a jet engines turbine. This vicious energy took the form of frayed and unhinged sounding post-hardcore on their earlier EP and later transitioned into a maladjusted, but functional, melocore that flirted with grunge in a similar manner to Title Fight and Citizen (during roughly the same period, as well). Throughout those years, Andrew grew as a vocalist and songwriter while retaining a youthful fire about him- coming off like Jeremy Bolm's younger, angrier, and federal penitentiary-bound brother. 

Sounds fun right? I agree. When it comes to punk, few things can set the mood better than shouting out your resentments over a few, well-timed power-chords. And Single Mothers became experts at just that. Since 2008 (with a brief hiatus where Andrew took the mountains to prospect for gold [I am not kidding]), the band has been incredibly consistent and accomplished in venting their spleen through some thoroughly indelible and damaged sounding tunes. ... and not you can basically shred every facetof the description I have offered for the band. Wanna know why? Because Bubble is here. And it means trouble for anyone who gets ruffled by change. If you're the type of person who got mad over Black Flag's transition to My War, you might want to check out right now. For everyone else, you are welcome to proceed. 

Bubble was released in 2021 following a month-long "song a day" (sorta, not really) challenge Andrew committed himself to, and his adventure in artistic growth has taken him to a very different place. Promoted by the band under the name SM Worldwide, Bubble is, well, a hip-hop album. It's still very punk, for sure, but only in the way that you can still consider someone like Juiceboxxx punk- they have the attitude, but the vibe is completely turned around. Single Mothers have elected rhymes over riffs, and delivered them with a fresh serving of beats, hold the d-. 

This new incarnation of the band sounds like it came together after a hypothetical, and highly unlikely, turn of events. I don't know what those events were per se, but it had to be something more profound than a song-a-day dare. Bubble sounds like Patrick Kindlon taking over for M. Doughty on Soul Coughings on a cross-country tour. And yes, I am imagining that something of the magnitude of this improbable series of events germinated a record. Don't scoff. I know you'd get tickets for that tour if it came through your town. I know I would! 

The beats that back Andrew's jerky, acidic, and stream-of-conscious vocals, on Bubble are equally radical post-punk skronk and vindictively vaudevillian. It's pretty freaky but it grows on you fast. "Brick Wall" sounds like a sloppy blood transfusion between The Jam and The Clash, with dubby guitars and mutant vocal passages bleeding through the speakers of an old vacuum tube radio. 

Once you get past the shock of what is going on here, you'll discover that a lot of these tracks flat-out slap! Like the groovy, chewy and slightly sour crackle of "Honey Bee." Others like "Washing Up" are terse and understated, simmering at a surprisingly high temperature while appearing calm on the surface. Beck has committed murder (that I know of) but a track like "Delete Voicemail" is what I'd expect to be thumping in his lobes as plotted it- hiding behind a pair of oversized sunglasses, cruising in a convertible down Mulholland Drive, while he incubates some unspecified scheme for revenge. 

The still present punk side of the band rises to the surface like blood pooling under the skin of a bruise on "Crescendo" where Andrew shouts like no-one is listening, "Do you want to be a brick or a window? / Do you want to fade out or crescendo? / How do you like glass all over the floor?" I think we know which path the band has taken. 

Like much of Bubble, "Crescendo" is bitter and sardonic, resentful sounding and born of frustration, impatient and irresponsibly ready to scrape something off its chest and throw it at you- in other words, they sound pretty hardcore. Despite everything, Bubble is perhaps most incredible because it still thoroughly sounds like a Single Mothers record. Even after retooling the machine, it still runs best on the same brand of unleaded anger. Bubble may not be the record you expected, needed, or wanted from the Single Mothers, but it is the record they were ready to give you, which means that it is the one you deserved, and the one you're going to have to learn to live. 

Album Review: Niagara - Parva Naturalia

Niagara pours out music that is suitably amorphous in shape. Although not forceful, their synth-based improvisations are still able to sweep together concepts that are dense and generally lacking in buoyancy. They are practiced at keeping aloft the leaden cognitive bilge of semi-scholastic dispensations in a web of atonal telekinesis that yokes together the three tempests at the bottom of a deceptively tranquil teapot. The Lisbon-based group's latest LP, Parva Naturalia, is named for a collection of essays by Aristotle on the phenomena of the body and soul. The title translates to English as Little Physical Treatises, which I imagine is tongue-in-cheek as the album consists of primarily unreleased material and selections plucked from out-of-print 12"s and nearly, but not quite, lost CD-Rs. All of the songs are spontaneously composed to a greater or less degree and leave the impression of a set of players united in tailing a placid muse. Each track has an odd trajectory of evolution that slowly acquires consciousness of itself as it comes to form the pupa of its more excellent, yet to be realized, self. Parva Naturalia is not simply a conglomeration of attempts to be "Cecil Taylor but with synths" though. It's not as wild and hedonic for starters, but more importantly, it prefers to carefully guide the labor that each track experiences in a way that is not evident in many other improvisational art forms. There appears to be an emphasis on restraint on many of these tracks. An emphasis that produces an air of calmness that permeates the album. The collection represents an assemblage of tracks that patiently cultivates an aggregate understated sense of possibility through damp, rain-scented metallic purrs and the quivering temper of disembodied rave ruts- sounds that often represent power and energy, but here are more indicative of a plateau of inner peace. Despite having been pulled together from different points in Niagara's career, Parva Naturalia demonstrates that the band is remarkably consistent in their ability to make the incidental rational.  

Flowing through Disciples

Interview: Asbestos Lead Asbestos

Image by Asbestos Lead Asbestos

I talked with Chicago-based electro pariahs Asbestos Lead Asbestos for the CHIRP Blog and got their origin story as an incontestable argument as to why the band is bedroom pop. We talked about a lot of other fun stuff too; but nothing we discussed counteracts the reality that they are definitely a bedroom pop band. You're going to have to learn to live with this fact. I have faith in you. 

Interview https://chirpradio.org/blog/the-chirp-radio-interview-asbestos-lead-asbestos

Find their album Nature of the Feline here. 

Album Review: Graham Kartna - TMP2

Ok, so maybe TMP2 isn't how you want to meet producer Graham Kartna. For a "vaporwave" producer, his works is generally quite concise and direct. However, it's the album of his I've been listening to the most last month, and I might aggravate something like a hernia in my abdomen if I don't shout it out. Because Graham is a genius in my opinion and even his lesser works deserve a passing mention if not a full-throated endorsement. To give you some perspective, TMP2 is a bit of an island of misfit toys- a collection of partially finished and incomplete song ideas that lived a prior life of exile in Graham's draft folder. What's striking about this sonic junk drawer is how well all the pieces hang together- like a bunch of bananas. Meaning, they hang together very well and appear to be natural complements to each other... also, I find them delicious. A lot of They Might Be Giant's catalog has a similar kind of spontaneous, notional flexibility and ponderous agility as what Graham has allowed to cohere together on this release- even if TMP2's songs lack some of the structural consistencies that TMBG is known for. So, the edges might not be so clean, but the ideas are definitely all there, and these songs have a pop to them like a fresh can of coke. What I think this release exemplifies is how splendidly Graham can fold unlikely sounds together to make exquisite aural origami. It can feel like I'm listening to a set of plunderous Avalanches demos that raid unreleased archival recordings of Primal Scream and Sparks for sound and inspiration while the ghost of the late, great Maurice White silently serves as a poltergeist producer. And it can also feel like Neil Cicierega trying and failing at making a DJ Shadow album, while succeeding in spawning something akin to a gacked-out but amazing-sounding Knower record. I could come up with other illuminating analogies for this collection, but most importantly, it makes me feel like I rolled myself up in an industrial-sized spool of bubble wrap and then waddled into a ball pit where I was swarmed by puppies, i.e., it feels damn good.  

Find more of Graham Kartna's stuff here. 

Album Review: A7PHA - A7PHA

Abstract hip-hop rising from the dog-breath torpor of Los Angeles, A7PHA is dense, heavy, and experimental in the vein of Subtle and Why?, but with an appetite for the abhorrent that places an incredible emphasis on the bleaker, post-punker and headstrong side of backpack rap. 

A7PHA is a collaboration between Anticon co-founder Doseone (Subtle, Themselves) and underground rapper Mestizo. The tone of their self-titled LP is that of waiting for the sun to rise at midnight on Easter Sunday- an anticipation of rebirth through fire that will reincarnate you in your most elemental form: a carbon-charcoal shadow cast on the concrete facade of a crumbling skyscraper. 

This album, their debut, was released in 2019 on Doseone’s own label, and produced by Alias (member of Sole and Anticon co-founder), and feels like a headstone for the era of indie rap ostentatiously planted at the point in the crossroads where trap penned its damnable deal with the devil. 

The album is both clean-shaven and incredibly ugly; strangely-illuminating and blindingly dark; Memphis-fried after being skinned alive; a phantasmal, saber-toothed regression into a future that is already behind us; a blood dyed yellow-eyed freak. 

The album gives both MCs equal stage time, allowing Doseone’s spastic, extra-terrestrial flow to interact and contrast with Mestizo’s deep-voiced, cryptic, and meditative poetry to produce something that is unnerving, and exciting, but also very unnerving. 

A pretty good place to start is the rapid fire release of "Hater Hate It" which shows off just how slipper and unrestrainable Doseone's flow can be, something he delivers over some temperature regulating euro-beats. It's probably the track with the most commercial potential, and if you can survive it, then you read to roll headfirst into the rest of it. 

Such as the brash and determined flow set to synth-driven 80’s slasher theme on “No Breaks,"  the foggy, ambient rattle and snapped ankle beats that stage set a prayer for inner peace on “Closer," the drippy dirges, burst flow fractures of the pessimistically socially conscious “99 Point Static," and the mechanical, trickling beats, rolling flow, and darkly, campy poetics of “Hand 2 Hand."  Those are my recommendations at least- but really, any where is a good place to start with this heterodox volume of ghastly, grey and otherworldly transmissions.  

You can get A7PHA from Anticon here. 

Album Review: Shormey - Boogie Tape Vol 1.

Boogie Tape Vol 1. is undeniable. That's it. And that's enough. The 2019 tape from the Virginia-based solo, pop singer and producer Shomey is her most concise statement of work as well as her most plainly infectious. This may be hard to believe, but its effect isn't owed to anything that pulls the listener in or that forces a response out of them. The music just kind of leaves you alone. It lets you be. And that's why it feels so gracious and important. It lets you come to it, allowing you to set the pace of your approach. Knowing that once you get a glimpse, it's going to be hard not to want to see more. This softly persuasive formulation to pop music is definitely unique and definitely necessary in a media environment that often feels bullying in its demand for your attention. Shomey's work is not only beautiful but softly powerful. It feels firmly empathic how both independent and complimentary the melodies and grooves of the opening tracks of the Boogie tape are. The wavy soul of "Boogie Island," with its cozy sauna of lofi organs, playfully bats at the vocals like a cat with a silver ball of yarn, feels delightfully permissive and receptive to your mood- portraying a sense of openness that is maintained on the juicy disco fog of "Cruise!" It's all magnificent. I'm a sucker for '70s era sounds, so obviously, I love this tape. But upon reflection, I don't know that Shomey could achieve what she does on this release without pulling from the aforementioned decade. That era just had a kind of "go-your-own-way" vibe to it and its aesthetics seems to lend to her work a philosophy of personal fulfillment and satisfaction that is hard to argue with or turn down. Not that I'm inclined to, mind you. 
 

Citrus City released this one. 

New Noise’s Bandcamp Friday Picks: March 2022

It's Bandcamp Friday again, and again I made a list for New Noise. I tried to cover some newer stuff than I did last time and I think I mostly succeeded. As usual, I had fun putting these recs together, but this may be the last time I do one of these. Bandcamp being acquired by Epic really has me freaked out and I can't predict what kind of impact this development will have on a service I've come to rely on so heavily to discover new artists and purchase music. However, those are future concerns. At the moment though, the platform still seems to be functioning as it essentially has for the past decade and I'm therefore happy to direct people to it... even if I will be keeping a very close eye on the company going forward.

You can check out my list for New Noise here https://thasound.blogspot.com/2022/03/new-noises-bandcamp-friday-picks-march.html

The albums included on the list can be found below: 

Combo Chimbita – IRÉ (Anti-)

Dreamer Isioma – Goodnight Dreamer (Self-Released)

Pure Wrath – Hymn To The Woeful Hearts (Debemur Morti Productions)

Conway the Machine – God Don’t Make Mistakes (Shady Records)

Kill Alters – Armed To The Teeth L​.​M​.​O​.​M​.​M. (Hausu Mountain Records)

Poorly Drawn House – Home Doesn’t Have Four Walls (Candlepin Records)

Vulcan Tyrant – Vulcanocide (Horror Pain Gore Death Productions)

Summer 2000 – John Krasinski (Larry Records)

Fatamorgana – Ahora Aquí, Todavía No (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)

I done good, I guess...

I be running up on ya Chicago! Local scene weekly the Reader just released their "Best of Chicago" issue which lists the results of their reader poll on what people in Chicago liked best in 2021. The podcast I co-run with Jessi D for CHIRP Radio was nominated for the runner-up in the "Best Music Podcast" category. Sound Opinions with Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot took the gold. It is the same result as last year and there is no shame in taking second place. Frankly, I'm just glad someone noticed what I'm doing and cared to vote for it. That's validation enough imho. 

On the same topic, the CHIRP Radio Blog took the top slot for "Best Blog" so congrats to Clarence and Nikki for their work there. I sometimes contribute interviews to the blog, so I guess this is a small victory for me as well. 

None of this changes my thoughts on "Best of" of lists in general. There is a lot of talent out there and it all deserves consideration, whether or not it receives any kind of official recognition.