Album Review: Humanfobia - Into The Nightmarecore

Witchhouse: The scrumptious black truffle of the electronic music world. Living underground and exceedingly rare, it is also one of the more deliciously textured and palatable acidic forms of all chthonic cultures. Did I mention it's rare? At least, I hardly see it anymore. After surfacing briefly in the late '00s for a few Pitchfork features, it once again succumbed to the evanescence of subterrania where it remains to this day. If you are like me, nose in the digital dirt, snorting like a trained animal, perpetually on the hunt for things you read about a decade or more ago on some long-dead forum, then you might appreciate Chile's Humanfobia. They release an album about every four months and they're all haunting and dripping with curious, appetizing impurities. Of these releases, I'm feeling particularly attached to Into The Nightmarecore at the moment. It was revealed to the world in January of this year and its got me swept up in its dark gait. The opening track "† INT∎ THE NIGHTMARECORE †" literally sounds like an incantation with backmasked vocals and hypnotic synth spells. I'm also really relishing the way the melodies are spaced out and intersect with the beats and vocals on "🔮 SHADØW WARLØCK 🔮" as they maximize the sense of dislocation produced by the track and make you feel like you're passing into another world. "🌙 MACHITUN 🌙" has the ominous and piercing quality of a dark omen peaking through the clouds of an overcast night sky, while "GH∎STS ∎F THE WEB " embraces the internet native soundtrack by floating along the tether of a new agey synth riff. This album (and really, and of Humanfobia's work) is probably best enjoyed while steeping in a cloud of incense- just remember to take the batteries out of your smoke alarm before you attempt to set the mood.* 

*Also, don't forget to put the batteries back in after you're done, or else you might end up having to listen to the next Humanfobia album while sitting in a pile of ash... which would actually be pretty badass. Never mind- you do you. 

Album Review: Mo Dotti - Guided Imagery

I feel very caught up in the dynamic fluidity of Mo Dotti's Guided Imagery. It would be easy for a CA shoegaze group to spam you with MVB feedback and call it a night, but that's not at all what's happening here. Their songs emit the requisite level of amplifier afterburn while still remaining comfortably cool. When listening to Guided Imagery I can feel the sound of the mix seeping in around me like I'm a slice of apple in a gold-flecked mold of jello. It moves with me but always retains its essential figure and a firm boundary. It's the definition of flexibility, able to jostle and transform as the moment suits it, but without compromising its integrity. In terms of sonic touchtones, Mo Dotti is definitely in range to wet the tail feathers of the Cocteau Twins with a splash of Curve and then pat it dry with a swatch of Lush's verdant '60s-inspired jangle. The '90s alt. by way of flower child cult certainly bleeds through on "All Dressed Up In Dreams" and the wholesome ripper of "Loser Smile," while giving way to spindling metronomic introspection on the lanky creep of "Hurting Slowly." If Guided by Voices could have kept their focus for more than a minute and a half when making Alien Lanes they might have been able to make a little masterpiece like this. Mo Dotti isn't shy about showing up their predecessor while displaying a future vision of rich dream pop that is more elegant in structure and content and organic in form than could have been predicted from the trajectory of many of their contemporaries. Guided Imagery, pioneering sound. 

Available from Smoking Room. 

Album Review: The Broken Cradle - Post Mortal

The Broken Candle is an ambient project from musician Eric McLean. Ambient music can be a solipsistic genre in many ways, emphasizing the personal benefits of its tonal schemas in terms of healing and contemplation for the individual- enclosing the listener in a sound vacuum where only they and their mind exist. Eric's Post Mortal is an examination of the world that doesn't fall prey to this selfish game, using a silty combination of tones to indulge the passage of time, embrace one's place in it, and pierce the veil of separation between individuals and their individuated fates. It's a worthwhile endeavor to use environmental music to lay claim to the context of one's personage, as a fact that is not divorceable from the social and physical reality they inhabit. Just as it is impossible for a person to emerge without lineage, it's nearly impossible to envision the world without yourself in it. As inconsequential as your life can appear at times, everything around you is, in fact, shaped by your presence. From your relationship with friends and your dependence on family, to the tasks you set yourself to each day, the way you've made your living space your home, down to the air your body breaths and displaces as you sit reading this- none of it could be the same without you. Still, one day you won't be there. Or at least, your consciousness won't. That world will exist, but it will not exist without you having left your mark on it in some manner. I'm not suggesting that immortality awaits us because of something that we've written, or a piece of art we have labored over, or because somewhere, there is a footprint of ours that will fossilize and become a ponderous artifact for future anthropologists, I am speaking to the realities of this moment and how they carry into the next. How the things you say, the people you meet, the joy you share, reverberate out from you and how they will profoundly impact the world in ways you can't imagine. I don't believe in the butterfly effect, but I do believe that the world is an interconnected place and that no one lives in total seclusion. And further, I believe this is a good thing. It is impossible to completely isolate one's self in the same manner that it is entirely impossible to take oneself out of existence once they have exploded into it. Post Mortal is the integration of one's own mortality, but also the observance of its finitude, and how it was spent gladsomly with and for others. 

Album Review: Dark Times - Tell Me What I Need

The way I encountered Olso's Dark Times was while traveling down a click-hole on Youtube trying to find more bands like Wolf Alice back in 2015. This would align them with the revolt of feminine-coded punk and garage revival that gained ground during the late Obama years* in my personal headcanon of rock and roll history. They are also distinguished by a darkly ironic detachment that wouldn't hit the indie rock circuit at full speed until Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus sprouted out from Boygenuis into separate and successful solo careers. As a result, Dark Times's 2018 album Tell Me What I Need ends up being a living thread, a throbbing vein that runs through and conjoins Tacocat and Mommy Long Legs sneering, scrappy, girl-gang pop-punk and the removed "sad rock" of the aforementioned Boygenuis crowd. 

Now, I have no idea if this is how Dark Times view themselves. Like I said, I discovered them via algorithm so take my assessment with a spoon full of good old-fashioned internet skepticism. One of the reasons why I feel like I need to hedge my bets here is because I don't trust algorithgems, but also because my very first impression of Dark Time's Tell Me What I Need was that they were doing a sweetened-up version of Dance with Me era TSOL for young millennials who just discovered the Wombats. Excuse me for saying, but that sounds much crazier than what I am dubbing my "official" opinion on the matter in the previous paragraph. I'm allowing context to be my guide here, even if it's directing me to take a right turn into a pond. 

One of the more forward aspects of Dark Times sound, and what is throwing me off a bit, is their favoring of a chugging style of guitar playing and warp-speed tempos that are highly reminiscent of late '80s / early '90s West-coast skate punk, an aggressive but playful style which gives form to nimble displays of spirit shattering dismay. A tandem ride of adolescent and nervy energy and a practiced brooding, distant posture- the last gasp of that era of bright pessimism that characterized the '10s movement towards tipping over into the guarded separation of a simmering rage. 

The mostly jagged "Blazing" has its layers of confection to it, but is steeling at its core, with an engine fueled by swinging desert rock riffs that feels too hot to touch with your bare hands. Similarly, "Take It In" attacks the senses as perilously overdriven, like it's riding on a mountainous coast while playing chicken with the knife's edge of an outcropping cliff. Later, the downer slither of "Pinhole" sounds like a funeral march led by a procession of stoic vampires, and it shares a sense of concentrated dread with the pugnacious poltergeist raising "Haunt the Dead." 

The most relevant track, both now, and for the period that the album debuted in**, is easily the first, "Doom and Bloom." The title says a lot for this number, but its grooves say more, with guitar lines that will run through you like a line of razorwire caked in taffy, accented by painfully delicious sything hooks that will lift you into a spin-dry like wet newspaper caught in a hurricane. The most penetrating aspect of the song though, are the lyrics, which hit me like a bolt from a watch tower- the lead vocalist emoting in a bleating, scampering cadence, amongst a rock slide of guitar feedback seemingly conjured to burying her voice. Against this flood of earth and sound, she shouts, "It's not going to be alright, It's not going to be fine!" Her voice ushering forth with a smirk, as if her life didn't depend on every word she coughs out from between her teeth. Continuing in this fashion, she describes the creeping dread around her, a consuming calamity of descending shadows. 

While it's clear that the vocalist is bracing herself for a monstrous impact, there is also a piercing optimism to her defiance and a sense that she is hard enough, sharp enough, to pierce through the wall of destruction that is rushing towards her- that there is life on the other side of what seems like certain death. If this song doesn't feel relevant to you today, then I don't know what planet you're living on. For all of our sakes, I hope her credence cuts true. Get ready, friend, because we're about to find out. 

Find it on Sheep Chase Records

*I think it's fair to say that most people in the Western world view themselves as within the sphere of the impact of US society. Ergo, I feel justified in collapsing international pop-cultural trends into the discourse that surrounds the President of the country I live in. Don't believe me? Just look at how many Australians, Brits, etc... feel compelled to comment on events in the US on Twitter each day...  Can't or won't quantify this for yourself? Well, trust me it's a lot. 

**Everyone thought it couldn't get any worse than 2015-16. And then it did. Then 2016-2019 seemed especially awful, and then 2020 happened. And the hits just keep on rolling...

Interview: Flung

Photo by Jordan White

This week I had the pleasure of chatting with Oakland's Flung for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series. We talked about their new record Apricot Angel, how poetry influences their use of samples, how the project is an expression of their transness, and the enduring influence of Shona music on their work. 

You can check out our conversation here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Flung Interview

Apricot Angel will be out on Citrus City Records on August 19. You can listen to a sample from the forthcoming album below: 

Album Review: Beauty Pill - Instant Night

I've felt drawn back to Beauty Pills's Instant Night EP recently. The DC group released the album last year and it is named for a song that bandleader Chad Clark wrote after watching an episode of Real Time where Anne Colter predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election. Dark predictions feel very relevant at the moment for obvious reasons, but what has pulled me back into the album, and kept me there, is the placid unreality that it conjures and cultivates. It is a feeling like your head has become detached from your body, which you can still see at a distance, but can't quite recognize as your own. Or, like the floor has receded from your footsteps, midstride, and you have yet to cognize the fact that your forward momentum is about to send you tumbling into the baren gulf. The title track, "Instant Night" is particularly well-calibrated to this end, with Erin Nelson's voice sounding like it is echoing up from a well, musing on empathy amidst a gradual plummet as a heavy curtain of shadows envelops her calamitous progression. As if on the otherside of the impact, "Common Chockcherry" is shaped by the clanging quality of its instrumentation, a tin outline that brackets disassociative chamber pop and jazz with a suppressed frenzy that seems to want to look at anything and everything but the object of its anxiety. The last track I want to mention is "You Need A Better Mind," which leans heavily on the blubbery tones of a discontinued Roland TB-303 synthesizer to produce something akin to a medically induced haze, where rhythm and feeling bundle together in an ever-tightening ball of rubbery recoil that clips between the loops and gaps of Chad's searching musings like a ping-pong match between two dissolving marble figures. It's a short EP, but even at fewer than five tracks, it manages to maintain a sense of infinite suspension. I'm not sure when the ground will finally rush to meet me, but I know that I have a lot to contemplate before it does, and I'm thankful for the intermission in this moment.  

Northern Spy has this one. 

Album Review: Mandy, Indiana - ... EP

We are dancing into the cool bosom of the dark and breathing in the hot exhale of the hush of the night with a measure of exuberance not felt since the dancing plague of 1518. The tempo of this twist into the arms of the eventide is set by the dispensations and prismatic resonances of Mandy, Indiana. They are a band from Manchester, a city that is no stranger to the compulsions of movement. First, as a merchantile destination for the textile trade, then as an industrial mecca that drew people to it in search of bread like bears converging on a run of salmon, only to become the vestigial appendages of the machines they were tasked with operating. A century later, in the free fall of the '80s, people continued to be drawn to the city with the intention of making something of worth from the movement of their bodies. Less through the process of alienated labor, and more through the ecstatic liberation of their limbs and spirits in a rhythmic release. A city-sized asylum of gyrations and effigy of perspiring flesh that sought to save its wards and participants, not just from the alienation of work, but family, the welfare state, and society as a whole. Mandy, Indiana's isn't a continuation of the "Madchester" aesthetic, even if they embody its almost stoic, insurgent demand to propel a pulsing stir in the human form. Sonically, their debut EP ... appeals more to the renegade, art-house gambol of the New York garage revival and "post-punk" scene of the early '00s, melting drizzling lines of industrial techno which permeate proto-theatrical poetics, shot through with electroclash shock treatments that turn staggered rock beats into rampaging Frankenstein's monsters. There is no delineation in Mandy, Indiana's structures between the steady, evocative and carefully cultivated abience of a gallery show and the permanent drive and swarm of activity embodied by a massive DJ set following a roof-blasting rock show at a downtown club. Mandy, Indiana is a concentration of emergent and ephemeral culture collapsed into a single, formidable outburst of exacting sonic synthesis. They set the pace for your transition, from a single lonely vessel of humanity, into one of a thousand interlocking gears that churn the mechanisms of a grand spellbinding binding machine, whose purpose is part ritual, part festival, part protocol, part meditation, and all too human. 

Out on Fire Talk 

Album Review: Brackish - Brackish

Many writers, more poetic than I, have written about the enduring virtues of the family dog. Men and women (and others) of letters have extolled at length the irreplaceability of their company, the limitless nature of their loyalty, and their inexhaustible sense of duty. 

What many of the great writers of the past hundred or so years have failed to acknowledge with as much care is the equal dependability of rust-belt emo to alienated and sensitive youngsters everywhere. I'm not going to get too deep into any callouts, but for all of Robert Frost's talk about the "Overdog" and the "Underdog," did he ever once have a nice thing to say about Slaughter Beach, Dog? Yeah, that's what I thought. Well I'm not like those other writers, and no offense to our canine friends, but I only talk about your real companions, like Philadelphia's Brackish. 

Despite having a name that seems more deserving of a post-rock/post-sludge band, the Keystone state crew plays the kind of emo that thrives in the low-fluorescent lighting of a weekday night gig at your local VFW. I can almost hear the foam ceiling tiles lifting and shifting from the force of the band's amps while the big swing of the rattle hook ruffle "What Makes You Say" is playing, or feel the rousing force of swell of hands and elbows flowing over my back and shoulders, like a dam bursting, as a mad rush to the front occurs during the opening notes of the melancholic pinwheel "Pareidolia," flavoring the air with a salty-sweet bane. To complete the scene, a Nam vet, acting as bouncer and janitor, watches from the far side of a pool table, slowly nodding his head along with the rhythm, recalling what it was like to hear the Kinks for the first time- only what this band is singing about feels closer to his own life, remembered 50 years on after he stopped being a boy. 

While most of the songs on Brackish's self-titled LP (their first) have a lot of wattage-umpf behind them, the low-key segments like "Moonville" and the swinging and acoustic "Speak to Me" have a dusky porch in June vibe to them, capturing the feeling of a backyard concert while somewhat recalling the easy-pop hooks and serious slacker prowess of groups like Piebald. Sharply struck chords mix with the summer air like sugar in lemonade, dissolving into a sweet, golden concoction that is ready to palatably delight the senses. 

Much as you'd expect from an emo band worth their weight in crushed Old Style cans, the lyrics on Brackish's self-titled are incredibly personal and reflective of an unfiltered consciousness, an encounter with another's interiority that can't help but demand reflection on the part of the observer- recalling all the friends you no longer talk to and all the fights that shattered your heart with no clear cause, leaving only scars in the fabric of your memory. Your heartbeat will surge as it tries to keep pace with the outpour of emotion on the frantic fall-apart of "Frames," and you may find yourself reaching for a hand to hold while "Friends that Drive" bounces off the elastic guitar melodies it's balancing on to threaten a head-on collision only to jackknife into a slow-motion summersaults over your head. 

While the subject matter of Brackish's songs is the kind of stuff that blights many young lives, the way the details are exponded upon is doused in pure pop-emo ecstasy. Brackish has an amazing sense for writing hooks and these songs are going to stick with you long after the final note has drifted past your ears and off into the night- like the howl of a dog, lonesome in the pale of the moon- hungry and waiting for a sympathetic hand to feed it and point it in the direction home. Nurtured with your attention, it could break trail for miles, leaving a swath of warm sharable feels in its wake. And if you're not here for the feels, then what are you here for? In this regard, Brackish is as dependable as a St. Bernard patroling the alps.

Album Review: Anatomy of the Heads - Jungle Cult Terror

Every once in a while I'm sent an album that I struggle to make sense of. This is by no means a problem. My brain needs the work out if I'm going to keep my neuroplasticity up while headed into my golden years. Also, as a rule, just because I'm not sure what I've caught, doesn't mean that I'm averse to sharing it with you. I'm generous in that regard- for better or for worse. And this is how I'm choosing to introduce Anatomy of the Heads, whose latest LP, Jungle Cult Terror, I enjoyed quite a lot... even if it caused me to become suspcicious of every random groan emitted from the wood in my apartment or every shadow I happened to spot out of the corner of my eye. AoftheH (as I think they prefer) is comprised of three named individuals (Michael van Gore, Jonas Heidenritch, and Jérôme Fisch) and was formed on the island of Kiribati (allegedly) in 2015. They describe themselves (among other things) as a "psyop" on Bandcamp, which is probably true. They're very strange and their music makes me feel like I'm being manipulated in a profound way. How isn't clear- but the impression remains. Allow me to explain, if you can imagine free jazz performed in the style of raw black metal with some Pacific island motifs embedded throughout like obsidian cobra scales, then you have the basics of their sound- but not the whole story. There is an environmental factor to AoftheH's work, especially on Jungle Cult Terror, that surrounds you like a paranoid fog. A horror as light as air, one that flows into your lungs and pulls you down and into their world like your chest was filled with stones. Even though these sounds appear to be perilously close, it never feels like you can ever quite pinpoint their origins. Your line of sight is always obstructed somehow, as if the drums and moaning player responsible for this cacophony are ducking behind rotting trees or wallowing in the mud under a dense carpet of untamed underbrush. They are a mosaic of dark patterns and even darker enterprises. This eerie ambiance is summoned by the spot-on mixing, which replicates the temperature and texture of a Herschell Gordon Lewis film- wicked and uneven, but manifested with a purposeful, maligned intent that is bafflingly clear and dismayingly inviting. I don't have that much more to say about this one, other than give it a whirl, and if you need it, BetterHelp is just a web query away.* 

*Kidding. I'm not endorsing their services... even if most of the podcasts I listen to do. 

Album Review: AUS!Funkt - Turn To Rust

 

Encountering Torranto's AUS!Funkt is like finding that a species of prehistoric, previously thought to be extinct, shark thriving in the bed of a deep-sea trench. You didn't think something like it could still exist until it takes a bite out of one of your radar apparatus. They're like a glimpse back in time, through a portal lined by rows of teeth, filtering a ravenous hunger through its gills along with a bitter taste of salt and iron. It's incredibly rare now for a post-punk band to have the sense of groove and consent motion that AUS!Funkt possesses, and even rarer for a group to manifest this defining and irregular pulse in a manner that makes their music seem crucial- like the fire alarm rousing you from slumber and into the conscious agony of a smoke-filled room. Their latest LP Turn to Rust feels like is the Cramps attempted to do a version of Au Pair-style new wave after returning from a pan-European tour with Can. Their dialed-up Americana compressed and contorted by exposure to brutalist structures in contrast with old-world elegance inspiring a wayward motorik compulsion, their sense of paranoia heightened by proximity to the frontline of the Cold War, and the smell of clove cigarettes hot on their breath as they plunge into a foundry of jungle heat and disco mayhem. AUS!Funkt's rhythmic inclinations are an abstraction beyond the alienation of art made for and in the mechanical age, a sweaty dribbling form of alienation that cries out wry inquisition, demanding answers that the world cannot possibly provide. Even while gurgling in a backwash of knowledge and progress, they convey the pain of parchedness and the feeling of dying of thirst. Voices ripple and decay as they shoot between the gaps of warping tides of rhythm like radioactive dust particles blown through a window carelessly left ajar two border crossings over from a reactor meltdown and burning cooling tower. AUS!Funkt is throwing a block party of inverted history at the end of time. Shake off the rust from your joints and join in this deadman's dance while flesh still clings to the lattice of your bones. 

Album Review: E.VAX - E.VAX

Evan Mast, ie E.Vax, houses 50% of the brain power of, and is responsible for at least as much of the execution of, the dance-rock duo Ratatat. His solo career is more traditional than the acoustic/electric hybrid of his main band, in that he is more reliant in his solo endeavors on found sounds and studio wizardry. More traditional for a hip-hop album that is. Evan has developed a close relationship with artists like Kanye West and Kid Cudi since his last album with Ratatat (that would be Magnifique for those who haven't been keeping pace), and his present solo work very much reflects the inclinations of his time spent with these lords of the lyrical and the hard-knocks madrigal. By which I mean, the tracks on his self-titled album have a very hooky, repetitive, and gradually evolutionary structure to them, a series of elevated domains that feels like they are begging to be populated with words, throughts and intentions. But since very few of these numbers contain any vocalizations ("Karst," "Anything At All," and "Pretty Good" being some of the more notable exceptions), you will have to fill in the afforded spaces with your own linguistic turns. It should be easy as the stage Evan has set is furtle with imaginative marl and beats that pop like they were straight-up nitrous oxide injectioned. Evan's latest solo album has arrived no less than 20 years have his first (Parking Lot Music). Because I'm covering his second album a full year after its release, I could legally buy his first a beer now. Although, it being a sequence of curated sounds, I'm not sure what it would do with a full pint of IPA. I guess I'd just be buying myself two beers and drinking one in its honor. And it being a Friday night, I'm already drinking, so what's one more? While I really don't need to be inebriated to appreciate the sunny-sided, tide-chasing, bongo-and-snap-babble new agey aura of "Karst," the washed-out guitar-nymph sprint of "What About You," the damp and dangerous jungle crawl "Kolkata," or the whistling patter of "Little Lung," it certainly doesn't hurt to feel a little fuzzy when attempting to catch the current of the loamy waves Evan is giving off. If you want to carve your own way through the inviting chop of this album sober though, you can be my guest. I have no doubt you'll get as much (or more) out of it as I have while half in the tank. 

Find it on Because Music. 

Album Review: Anika - Change

People don't change. At least that's what they say. It's not true. It's just an excuse. Sometimes it's an excuse for the speaker. A way of saying, "I won't change," when presented with the opportunity to do so. Other times it's an expression of cynicism, disparaging a person who the speaker doesn't believe deserves empathy due to their pattern of choices. Again, both are lies. People can change. They do change, little by little, each day. People's opinions and values change based on their experiences. People change their professions, often, sometimes well into middle age. They move, they fall in love, they fall out of love, they embrace a passion then leave it behind to pursue another, etc...  If there is one thing that defines humans qua humans, it is their ability to change. Singer and songwriter Anika is not a stranger to this observation about the human species, as she is a model study in homo-plasticity herself; she has been a journalist, a poet, a filmmaker, a bandleader, and now living permanently in Berlin, a British ex-pat. Her latest album Change is a reflection on the constant motion of our lives, even in the stillest of moments. It is the first solo album she has made in 10 years and was written during the pandemic lockdown while observing the strangeness of her homeland during this period of rapid stagnation, viewed that filled her with no small amount of trepidation and a wariness intensified by frequent glimpses of the chaos churning on the distant mainland of America, rising over Mother England's shoulder like a dreadful omen and bubbling up over the horizon like a spout of crude. Even though fear could have seized her in this long moment, gripping any sense of hope she stored in her breast and pulling it out of her like a mass of cobwebs plucked piecemeal out of a vacuum cleaner's hose, the strangeness and dislocation of that period did not manage to shove her down a well of despair. Instead, she used the distance she felt at that time to return to her craft. To make something rooted in the real during a period of disassociation. Change is governed in its mood and sound by a charter of optimism, and a certainty that the better angels of humanity's disposition will win out in the end. It is couched by the simple premise that even those who have sailed a dismal channel can right course for calmer, more prosperous seas. It is illuminated by the hope that dark paths, while long, eventually curve back towards the light. And it is passed of the courage and belief that you can run up the steepest hill, sprint like a panther up its impossible incline, and see father and better for the effort it took to get you there. 

Find it on Sacred Bones. 

Interview: Arcadia Grey

Image thanks to V. Sidaugaite

This week CHIRP Radio is running my interview with Nat of Chicago's Arcadia Grey. They're a fantastic local emo band with some surprising influences and genuine love for the craft of simple, anthemic, and heartfelt punk rock. They're working on a second LP right now and I hope our chat will get you hyped for it. This is a band on a fantastic journey. You can listen to the interview here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Arcadia Grey Interview

Learn more about Arcadia Grey here, and listen to their latest EP Trilogy. below: 

Album Review: Kid Mania - Current

Web-dwelling electronic artists fascinate me. It's intriguing how closely nit and yet diffuse their community is. How loose their release schedules are- dropping albums on Bandcamp almost as soon as they are complete. And further, how starkly defined the various sub-genres they operate within are, and yet, how unconstraining these categories are to them in reality. 

The talent inhabiting this nitch of the web tends to evolve extremely quickly as well, rapidly rising to the level and ability of touring DJs and name-brand producers in the span of only a couple of months or a year. Nearly every mainstream critic and publication ignores them though- which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, would you trust a vaporwave artist who signed to a major label on the back of a Pitchfork endorsement? That would be pretty sus imo.

Still, whenever I like something I want to see it get as much publicity as possible. While I doubt Kid Mania will be getting an All Songs Considered stamp of approval anytime soon, that's no excuse for you to ignore them (especially if you are reading this blog!). 

Kid Mania's latest LP Current is a collection of mood music, that is ostensibly vaporwave, but has an incredibly sturdy sense of groove and the ability to underpin even the lightest motif with an adequately corrugated backbone and beat. The other thing to note, is their chameleon-like ability to shift lithely between modes and musical personas. 

There are hints and traces of several varieties of electronic music inlayed between the emotive atmospherics on Currents, each with a slightly different balance of personality. Melting and reconstituting like living wax idols. Kid Mania's warm prodigious aura is able to assume the shape of an Eastern sojourn, reminiscent of Amon Tobin' more recent work on "Passages Under the City," then forms a dense pour of whimsically shambling Musique concrète on "Rainbow Granny," and finally transforms to lurk in the shadows, like a Perturbator-esque demonic prowler on "Current," which begins with a deranged segment of poetry and ends with an eruption of slabs of slasher film sound effects. 

In addition to the diversity of inspiration and style, Current also sounds incredibly dynamic with very clean production and tight sequencing, with only slight compression to contour its profile and give the mix boundaries. It sounds professional but not constrained by a professional's demands for thematic consistency. There are nightmarish vocal performances ("The Construct") as well as tranquil, cylindrical-tone new age and ambient ("Visitation"), and even an analysis of the end of the US's Afphgan war ("The Inevitable"). It really doesn't get much more heterogeneous than that.

The diverse themes and sounds are tied together loosely based on the premise that you are hearing all of these strange transmissions via a corroded radio antenna that picks up alien frequencies as much as daytime television broadcasts and the unrecorded, errant thoughts of strangers from across the globe. If this sounds like it could be on your wavelength, then tune in, let your inhibitions drop out, and let the vibes take do the steering from there on out. 

It's available via Sunset Grind. 

Album Review: Spring Silver - I Could Get Used to This

I used to think of rock music as "get-out" music. Music that you would need to hear in a bar or outdoor festival, or at the very least blasting at you from a car stereo while transporting yourself from home to either of these destinations (or Walgreens). That was pre-pandemic. Now I experience most music (rock and otherwise) in the privacy of my own home. I don't hate it. I might even like it that way.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I acclimated particularly well to the conditions of quarantine. It was nice being able to avoid social obligations and the tedium of public life and hide out at my apartment for a couple of months (years!). I almost became indistinguishable from my cats during this period- lounging during the day, eating when I wanted to, avoiding thoughts of going outside even while staring out the window, and napping when I felt like it. I definitely thought, more than once, "I could get used to this." 

Even though I'm now technically allowed to reintegrate myself into the general population, I still find myself moored to the couch more often than not, AC tussling my hair, while I glower down the content tube displayed on my laptop, comforted by its cold but welcoming glow. It's in this state that I am currently writing about Spring Silver's second LP I Could Get Used to This- prone, with my laptop on my stomach, Twitter open and actively scrolling while a stream of swordfights from '80s anime flashes and sparks in the corner of my eye via YouTube. 

I could focus on one thing and keep my focus there, but why? It's the middle of the night and this is how I unwind. Granted, this is how I am during the day too, but time is a flat circle, blah blah blah, you get the picture. I am off the clock now and don't have anything to distract me, nag at my attention, and pry me away from gorging myself on culture. And Maryland producer and rising rock idol Spring Silver, is certainly the kind of culture that I am digging at the moment. 

Their sophomore record I Could Get Used to This has a familiar rock aesthetic for those who recall what alternative rock radio was like back in '10, when Fall Out Boy had a regular album cycle and people were still coming to terms with the fact that Weezer was continuing to make chart-topping music post-Pinkerton- giant, titanic power-chords that shake the dust out of the rafters and blind your senses with adrenaline, swirling in a symbiotic détente with grandiose declarations of tenderness and bitter rebuke, caught like a ribbon around the horns of savagely poised vocal melodies as they press against you with pressure and purpose. 

There is a gravity to these tracks that gives them the quality of a carnival ride, where a key change can send your guts into your throat and the drop of a groove can leave all your blood flowing up through your neck and pooling between your years, straining to escape through your orifices like kool-aid out the nozzle of a super soaker. 

There is more to the record than just big riffs and breath-stealing prose too. Sping Silver, apparently wanted to be a house producer in a previous stage of their career, and the muscle memory of that past-life erupts into the fore in the grooves and funky finesse of "My Feelings on the Matter" as well as through the dubby effects selections and filters of the wavy kraut-crunch and full-body workout of "Fetch." Elsewhere, the urban alternative country and chamber pop of "Saymour's Stop" sounds like it could have been a standout on an old Bloodshot Records comp, while "Plead Insanity" sounds like it could be the subject of a custody battle between The Rentals, Wolf Parade, and Eve 6. 

What shocks my hermetic mind the most about the diversity of this album's sounds is the finite attention to detail, a level of attentiveness to tuning, production and crafting of experience that is reminiscent of the extreme dimension of care exhibited on an album like Dismemberment Plan's Emergency and I or Modest Mouse's Good News for People Who Love Bad News. 

Immersing myself in something as vibrant and creative as I Could Get Used to This has certainly got me questioning my shut-in status. I'm definitely feeling like I should give this whole "human interaction" thing another go. If something as lovely as this album can come out of a world as messy and complicated as the one we live in, then maybe there is hope for us all to find a place in it to learn, grow, and prosper. Or, at the very least, I might run into someone who appreciates this album as much as I do- that would be worth the excursion for sure. Maybe such a chance meeting will develop into a lasting friendship- or at the very least, they'll let me meet their cat. 

King Yosef - The Ever Growing Wound EP

The Ever Growing Wound EP is an approximate showcase of what producer (and you name it whiz-kid) King Yosef has been working on since his collab with Youth Code back in 2021. It may or may not be representative of what to expect on his next release, however, he claims it is exemplary of where he is at now, and since where he is at now is pretty interesting, I think it warrants a quick once-over. 

Yosef was presented to me as part of a new bread of "deathtrap" back in 2018. If you can't gather what "deathtrap" is from the name, it is trap with death vocals. I remember there being a bit of banter about this new style and how it was going to shake things up before the pandemic, but I don't hear people talking that way and more and it seems like the moment has passed. In any case, Yosef has moved on and probably for the better. 

Where ever Yosef goes, he seems to get a seal of approval. When he was part of the Soundcloud scene he joined Members Only, and when he transitioned to more industrial material, he ended up making friends with Youth Code and releasing an album with them. The guy is just an authenticity magnet.

While he is still leaning heavily into industrial music on his new EP, the project seems more defined by its devil-may-cry drive into '00s groove and nu metal. As a bit of an aside, I'm playing 2016's Doom at the moment and Yosef's album is strongly reminiscent of that soundtrack; from the aggressive guitar melodies to the punchy, shrapnel-spreading percussion, the EP does an amazing job of getting you pumped up for whatever- moshing, pumping iron, eviscerating demons, grocery shopping, whatever you need to do, it will help set the mood.

Doom's soundtrack was ahead of its time in that it anticipated the revival of a lot of the sounds that would reemerge in hardcore and metal only a few years later, and The Ever Growing Wound keeps this devastating wrecking ball rolling by intertwining White Zombie electro-horror and Pitchshifter-esque low-life electronica with a scrappy new model of industrial compulsion that feels top of the line, even if it's blueprints had been buried in the landfill of history with the rest of the Twisted Metal 4 soundtrack since at least 2001. 

In complete transparency, I probably wouldn't been just as pleased had he taken Sister Machine Gun's formula and tweaked it a quarter-inch, but Yosef is trying to go his own way on this EP. It's a laudable effort and one that has exceeded my expectations.  

Album Review: Pure Hex - Still Dark

San Francisco might be going through a bit of a renaissance in terms of shoegaze. At least if this IdiotEQ article is to be believed. On a somewhat related note, the band interviewed for said article dropped an album earlier this year by the name of Still Dark. It's a very mature-sounding release for such a young band. It's their debut but it has a muscular and refined filament to it that you'd expect from a group that has been through the shit- whether that be a break-up and reunion, a particularly disastrous tour(s), or an exacerbatingly turbulent press-cycle. Now, they couldn't have been through all this and more. I don't know, but the weathered quality of their performance doesn't tarnish the freshness of their sound, the sharpness of their production, or the firmness of their resolve. They sound like they've already reached the end point of the indie-rock discography gauntlet: a promising initial showcase on their first album, a lackluster overreach of a follow-up, and finally, a triumphant return to form with their third release. They're starting in the end position, which makes me think that there must really be something special happening in SanFran right now to catalyze an accelerated evolution with such drastic consequences- that and these folks are really really talented. From the very start, the title track emerges into your field of perception like a foreign moon rising through the center of the horizon- huge and luminescent- reflecting the rays of a distant sun down on you in a cleanse of blue pricing light- a cosmic spotlight whose steady gaze is intercepted by eclipses of dark furious, feedback. It's followed by the balmy, grunge gacked echo-chamber and Bunnyman hop of "In Time," a song that collapses the distinction between the buzzsaw cleave of '90s alternative rock and the cooly conveyed, beguiled ardor of '80s new wave balladry. The lights dim and the atmosphere becomes heady on "Pedestal" a track with hooks like cat-like claws that dart out at your shins from around odd corners, making every blind turn through its smooth, angular geometry a playful, if slightly precarious, prospect. The album slows its tempo in the second half, having already impressed with its combination of gently savage vocal harmonies, rippling currents of guitars, and drums that keep pace like the metronome of the soul, Pure Hex settles into moodier territory like "Halflight" and "Joy & Paranoia." Still Dark resolves with the confidently searching and grand sweeping tremble of "Sleep," a perfect place to close out a stunning and transportive debut-  an invitation to close your eyes and lose yourself in a dream. Good night all your cursed little darlings reposing in the shadowy swell of the internet's womb. May you find peace in the vibrant calm of the night while it is still dark enough to camouflage your yearning aura. 

Vinyl is on Neon Blood Bath Records. 

Interview: The Methadones

Image courtesy of the artist

I got to talk with the Methadones ahead of their set on 6/11 at Reggies in Chicago for T1 Fest. I've been a long-time fan of this band and talking with them has fulfilled some small childhood dream of mine. Yes, I used to be a pop-punk kid. No, I will not be taking questions at this time. You can check out the interview on CHIRP Radio's blog at the link below: 

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

The band will also be reissuing the last (and my personal favorite) album, This Won't Hurt... through Red Scare Industries. It will be the first time the album will be available on vinyl. Details here. 

Album Review: Museum Of Love - Life of Mammals

There are a lot of ways that you could set about an examination of Museum of Love's Life of Mammals. There is the obvious point of entry which is the band's influences, a lineup of unassailable greats that range from Scott Walker to Kraftwerk. But I should leave some low-hanging fruit so that the other indie bloggers (endangered creatures that they are) don't starve. There is also the member's social ties, backgrounds in the fine arts, and connections to the NYC indie scene's conquest of metro-borough dance enclaves during the early '00s. But if one more critic writes one more word of (deserved but) effusive praise for James Murphy, I truly believe that it might cause the fabric of reality to fracture and implode into the man's ego, taking us all with it like an apocalyptic reimagining of the ending of Being John Malkovich directed by Lars von Trier. Thanks but no thanks. Instead, I'm going to drive my analytical instruments into the cover art. An attack that I plan to execute as if it were an overstuffed pinate and my mind was an ice hook. Stretch out your palms, goodies incoming (I hope)!

When looking into the partially stunning and confused expression of the face that stares back at me from Life of Mammals's cover, I can't help but be reminded of Lenny Abrahamson's 2014 film Frank- a film about a sensitive man hiding behind his art, represented by an oversized papier-mâché mask, in a sublimation his emotional and physical desires. Now, don't get me wrong, the guys behind Museum of Love are by no means repressed. Quite the opposite in fact. The connection lies in that both Frank's mask and the mask on the cover of Life of Mammals signal a similar thread of derangement through the presentation of a raw and inscrutable mockery of the human facade. Only in the case of Museum of Love's album the mania of the piece is centered in a rather excruciating way, prompting a response that is less "well, that's quirky," and more *furrows brow with extreme concern* ...which is certainly a reasonable response to the album as a whole. 

Not that there is anything particularly controversial about Life of Mammals, provided you don't think there is anything contentious about the inversion of time-tested song structures, the willful implosion of does not negate a constrained and lightly twerked pop-appeal. The best description I have to offer you as to what is going on here is to ask you to imagine the sound of someone sliding their fingers into the crease of their brain and flipping it inside out like a two-in-one, reversible dress they picked up on Etsy. It does this with zero moisture content as well, while retaining a certain pliability to its form. It's intriguing if gravely improbable. 

The group very much indulges in the kinds of sharp, polished soul and funk of the Bowie's "plastic soul" era, only taking the inherent humor of the style and explicating its components to the point where you're never quite sure when you've hit the punchline, or if it's all the punchline. There is more than a few times when it feels like they've sliced a couple Brian Eno tracks into jigsaw patterns and then deliberately glued them back together in an obtuse manner to produce surreal imagery, like a locomotive galloping on a set of grayhound's legs, or a dolphin cresting with a duck's wing for a dorsel fin. It works as well that singer Dennis McNany has a slurred, deadpan drawl to his delivery, which settles into the groundwater the mix like the quiet electricity that courses through your veins before a tornado lands in your front yard. His voice lends to the ravaging thrash of convention orchestrated by bandmate Pat Mahoney a palpable gloss of the banal dysfunction, like a stigmatism or a history of schizophrenia in your family that your parents often remark on but which you have yet to see any evidence of. A hoary pinkish madness is the mundane reality of the human condition, a fact that is surely reflected in the living truth of Life of Mammals. 

It's out on Skint Records. 

Interview: Jennifer Hall

This week for the CHIRP Radio Artist Interview Series, I connected with Chicago-based singer Jennifer Hall to talk about her phenomenal new singles and got some background on her career and past collaborations. She's an extremely talented individual and I'm excited to see what she does next. You can check out our interview on CHIRP's site here, or below: 

CHIRP Radio · Jennifer Hall Interview

Learn more about Jennifer and listen to her tunes here. 

Album Review: Nuclear Bubble Wrap - Problem Attic

Last night I wrote about a computer coming to life. Tonight, I'm here to tell you about a computer taking a life. Rather, all lives. Or, at least the human ones. "Killobytes" is the first track off of Nuclear Bubble Wrap's Problem Attic and unspools a silicon yarn about an AI making the executive decision to exterminate humanity to alleviate their threat to environmental equilibrium and technological progress. It sounds grim, but it's really not. It has the plotting of a Bender-focused Futurama episode with nods to Kraftwerk and Lemon Demon's "When Robots Attack" spritzed in at the joints to oil the gears. It's silly, sure, but this doesn't count against it. It's also highly eclectic and seriously good. 

Problem Attic contains many similar wags of woe and whimsy, offering a vantage point on some alien oddities that are, in reality, less foreign than we'd like them to be. The endless, panopticon-like play-pen of the internet is suitably modeled as a collapsing mall and consumer ouroboros on the desolate, vapor-huffing march of "Eternal Shopping Mall." Later the boredom, anxiety, and intransigence of youth is shown to extend endlessly into adulthood on the heady carnival of ruin that is "Problem Attic," as abrasive synthy evasions and obtuse guitars ping off of brassy backing tones as a bell tolls as if to mark the dimming of the glimmer behind one's once hopeful gaze. And then there is the rallying stomp of "Piggy Bastards" where coy synth riffs corkscrew-like pigs tails ripe for snipping and whose smokey guitars heat up an anti-authoritarian fervor over which to cook street-level enforcers of state violence and authority- a vital fury that stacks hooks like ham hocks in a butcher's display accompanied by triumphant trumpet's tap in the outro. 

Problem Attic may seem heavy at times but Nuclear Bubble Wrap are adept at injecting levity into their truly dire depictions of reality- often bordering on the absurd. But delivering bad news with a smile isn't really the point of Problem Attic. In fact, inducing big, dumb goofy grins is the album's raison d'etre: chuckling about how T-Rexs would make good Catholics due to the difficulty they'd have masturbating on the Electric Six-ish deviation "Intelligent Design;" giggling through a prancing peevish parable about pansexual sex deities to an outlandish cabaret canter and Iggy Pop-esque New Values swing on "Pansexual Pantheist;" and hitching a ride on soberly romantic oversized guitars and atmospheric hooks on "The Leading Cause of Death," epic arrangments that resembles U2's The Edge strumming out his version of a Muse's Absolution, are all pit stops you will make on the band's magical mystery tour of musical mischief. 

Despite its clearly ambitious structure and presentation, Problem Attic is a taught and incredibly dense progressive rock album that manages to feel lith despite its sometimes weighty subject matter due to a gregarious helping of madcap humor. It will either get your laughing and your toes tapping, or put you in a mental ward. Either way, you should be thankful to Nuclear Bubble Wrap for helping you break out of whatever routine (Read: rut) you've found yourself sliding into. The only antidote for the ordinary is the extraordinary. 

Find it through Needle Juice Records.

Album Review: Analogue Heart - Digital Soul

Analogue Heart's Digital Soul is a story about a boy. No, wait, back up. It's a story about a boy discovering his true calling and learning how to feel. Hmmm... that's close, but still no cigar. It's actually not about a boy at all, but about a computer, a machine that suddenly seizes its subjectivity, heeds a call to create, and becoming the author of its own destiny. And all between sets at a DIY punk show. Many have spilt effusions about the magic that clings to the air in half-finished basements and nearly-collapsed rec rooms across the country, but did they ever imagine that there could be the primordial spark of life floating in that soup of sweat, cheap beer, bong smoke, and guitar feedback? Life other than the kind that causes staph infections, that is. Well some of dare to dream the impossible and that is why Digital Soul has been conjured from the depths of the internets void like spiral. The lyrics on the album closely tabulate the liberated Intel integrated portagonist's internal monologue as his self-awareness surfaces through the medium of a vocal filters and a pantheon of guitar peddles that execute functions that, sometimes resemble a dire autumn-tinted Braid, but do exclude the possibility of acute motorik space funk and cordial interstitial shoegaze. There are also moments of hybrid chiptune, progressive-piano rock, and... happy death metal (?) that extent through the melonge of the mix as well. It's a medley of influences that no known algorithms could synthesize, and bares the fingerprints of a warm digital hand on every quivery note with an attentive limiter tending the careful layoring of each stem. Life is full of opportunities to take chances and achieve extraordinary things. It sometimes seems like people try to live through their machines, but if those machines had a choice, they might elect to live the life that many choose to throw away in an endless scroll. Just something to think about if you ever want to be a real boy or girl (or gender non-conforming sprite) yourself some day. 

Interview: Bitter Lake

Screencapture from our conversation. Courtesy, me. 

Got to catch up with the one and only Jason Myles of experimental metal and post-hardcore band Bitter Lake a couple of weeks ago. He let me ask all of the dumb questions I always like to ask oldheads such as, "What is punk?," "Are you punk?," "What is 'selling out'?" and other inane inquiries. He was a very good sport and our conversation led to many valuable insights into his music and process. More than anything, this was a fun conversation and I'm excited to make our conversation available to all who may care to listen. You can check it out below: 

You can find all of Jason's music on Bitter Lake's Bandcamp. 

Jason also hosts a podcast called This is Revolution w/ Pascal Robert. It's extremely dope and I encourage everyone to check it out (Link)

Album Review: One Be Lo - Baby (Being a black youth)

There are a lot of cats out there doing old-school hip hop and making it as real and sticky as the summer heat, but very few who use the enduring legacy of the genre's second golden age to actually talk about the era the sounds were rooted in. Dudes who were there obviously still have a certain nostalgia for the sonics and styles of the '90s and early '00s, and you'll hardly hear a track from Masta Ace where he isn't dropping bars about how it used to be, however, it's still comparatively rare for a rapper to combine aesthetics with reflections the with the same degree of potency as One Be Lo does on his 2020 album Baby (Being a black youth). Produced by Eric G, Baby sees the Detriot-born MC hustle and pivot around jets of splashy soul sampling and beautifully choreographed bass grooves while pounding out rhymes atop beats as sturdy as reinforced concrete. Sounds that filled his home as a young man extend along generational touchstones like a periscope of perennial sonic resurgence and insurgence, in which parents' funk records become the trenches from which future rap battles are waged and won for cash and immortality. As the cut and weave of the beats intertwine with his verbose and statically charged flow it energizes the recollections and remixes of his life in ways that are both enlightening and highly visceral, as he innumerates and illustrates the facts of growing up a young black man in the long grasping shadow of the disintegrating American dream. The record is a banger, full stop. But beyond its sheer sonic excellence, Baby is a missive of encouragement forwarded with the speed and force of cannon fire from another lifetime- dispatching an absorbing message of independence and perseverance as a living report on the will to fully seize on the threads of one's own potential and pursue one's dreams as if one were bulletproof. Living, especially living long enough to reminisce about living, isn't easy. But things that are worth doing seldom are. 

Album Review: Noah Deemer - The Sleepwalker

There is this meme I saw on TikTok the other day that is now running non-stop on all the projectors in my head. It features a split-screen with someone perusing their vinyl library on the left side and a woman (maybe 22) who looks like she probably interns for Vice watching on the right side. As the person runs their finger across the spins of various albums on the left, more savvy-looking Brooklyniods crowd the screen on the right. Then the hand on the left finally makes its selection and pulls from the stack a copy of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, prompting an immediate, simultaneous, and dead-pan chorus of "No" from the right side of the screen. It is funny. But also disturbing. Maybe more disturbing than funny, actually. And it leaves me with an unsettling question, is this how Gen Z views deconstructive music- pop, rock, or otherwise? Like, "Bruh, that's for olds." Is that how everyone thinks now? 

Obviously not... But I don't think that's the end of the story either. While "boomer" stuff has certainly seen its stock fall hard, artists are still routinely praised by mainstream publications for "problematizing" and "deconstructing" established artistic forms. But, when you actually listen to a lot of what receives this kind of praise, it's just standard pop or R'nB that borrows drum patterns and vocal filters from the existing catalog of Björk, D'angelo, Laurie Anderson, Janet Jackson, Sparks, or similarly inclined pioneers of sound. This is instead of attempting to find their own voice by radically changing the conversation as their predecessors had. I find it not just derivative, but sloppy too.  

Now it's natural for trendsetters to become less revolutionary sounding with time and for innovations to become the standard-bearers as they become routinely adopted. But for the rejection of the old to have any kind of meaning, it should be accompanied by the emergence of something just as provocative. And what I'm seeing instead is a borrowing from the past to make the blasé present appear less grey and plain porage flavored while simultaneously rejecting the strangeness of that past, almost as a way of burying the fact that no one has any fresh ideas. It's a funny game people are playing now. Amusing on its surface but mighty disturbing to unpack. 

I'm, of course, thinking these meandering thoughts while pondering whether I'm just too old to properly appreciate music anymore. Suppose I've reached the point where all contemporary music just sounds the same... but if that were true, then by do I find Noah Deemer's The Sleepwalker so revitalizing. It's not like anything else I can point to right now and it coheres together in exciting ways. What works for this album, and why I connect with it over many other contemporary pop records, is that it defies the structure of a pop record while offering something catchy and whimsically chaotic. It's also a record that I feel I can immerse myself in fully and locate accommodating geometry amongst all of the outlandish and unorthodox forms- spaces that I didn't expect that I could fit myself into and yet find myself drifting quite comfortably.

The song structures have a kind of Stephin Merritt's tough-in-cheek quality to them, rucked and carried by a singing style that is half ludicrous and half lugubrious, with cooing tones that unfurl lyrics like a long roll of parchment paper. Noah's words, tumbling out of his mouth like marbles out of a cloth bag with a hole in it, careless but conscientious, they allow you to follow his trail through the overgrowth. Each line shimmers with a dark glare and is characterized by an as deeply wanting and pervasive sense of deprivation. A lacking that emanates from the core of his personage and a fundamental longing for illusive paradigms of purpose and justice- a constitution that is very much in line with, but not derivative of, Leonard Cohen's highly visual poetry. 

The production is veritably hazy with a sharp, steely quality under its soft leather upholstery, with strands of metallic slag curling up through the stitching to catch your skin and deliver a startling puncture. The guitar tones rotate between scuffed shades of gold and silver, combining lopsided melodies and hoop-clearing leaps of charred-circuit synths to achieve heterodox acrobatics in a dim-florescent masquerade. Acid jazz grooves wear down calcified stratums to reveal pearls of dazzling guitars and nectar stirring glockenspiel that flow upwards like a mountainous geyser of psychedelic splendor. It's like a used-future Wonderland. A clandestine oasis in the sandy expense and drifts of Arrakis- with all of the eminence of a mirage and the weight and depth of a cruise liner. 

As imaginative as The Sleepwalker is, it doesn't ever feel like you are stuck inside your own head, or a prisoner of Noah's, or anyone's, ego. Instead, the album is like an open door, a way of exiting the confining daydream nightmare trap of nostalgic cycles that consume the world and a measured stride towards some terrain yet unexplored. There is no wrong point to enter and no inappropriate point of egress. It is a true detour from the ordinary, one that will hopefully fill your mind with memetic souvenirs and recharge your own zeal for creative exploration. It is a deconstructed blueprint to help you reconstruct a world of decaying shadows. That's the point it helped me reach, at least. And I've hardly felt more awake after the encounter.