I'm going to level with you, CHANNELER is a total shock for me. I discovered the Kansas City, underground pop duo of Jeannie Colleene and Gavin Neves (aka HXXS) pretty early on when their 2018 MKDRONE dropped into my lap through my work with a local radio station (s/o CHIRP!) and I was pretty much sold on their moody but sensibly melodic strand of bedroom R'nB and pop from the jump. I thought they really took things to the next level with their first LP Year Of The Witch the following year, but then my attention slipped a bit as I got interested in other things. Now, I'm listening to CHANNELER, and I'm like, "Fuck, where the hell did this thing come from!" In a good way though. It's not like any other pop record that I've heard. There is still a high emphasis on smooth, abiding melody, especially on tracks like "DEJA VU," but these palatable pop elements co-star with some of the most dastardly effects and noises I've ever had the pleasure/misfortune to encounter, arriving as they do in the forms of completely blown out drum-machines bashs and gutsy, razor-sharp guitar loops. And it's not all centered around the interplay between singing and synth grooves either as there are plenty of parts on CHANNELER that are basically just deranged slam poetry and performance art ("STARVE"), or bracing digital hardcore ("CHEKHOV'S GUN//RUSSIAN ROULETTE"), discordant free-jazz conflagrations ("WORMTONGUE"), or repetitious, psychotic ramblings on par with Gibby Haynes less lucid moments with the Butthole Surfers ("HUM"). The instrumentation materializes like its components were scraped from recorded Big Black rehearsals, where the band straight up excommunicated material from their set list for being too freaky and chaotic, and the overall experience of the album lands somewhere between Sleigh Bells's violent Radio Disney dystopia and the audio vandalism of MIA's MAYA. I'm not always sure what I'm hearing on CHANNELER, but I do like it, and more than that, I find it endlessly intriguing, which is a double recommendation in my book.
