This is the third year of this blog and another great one as far as I'm concerned. I have no metrics to back this that I care to share, but its simple existence is edifying enough for me. Writing about and sharing music is a real joy and I love having a vehicle for these conversations. I'm also thankful for you, the reader (faithful and otherwise), for checking this blog out and supporting what I do. We will likely never meet in person, but I'm glad that we can still make a connection, however diffuse, through the labyrinth of tubes and info slurry known as the internet. Connection is essential. It's what keeps us grounded in this world.
As is my style, I've put together a year-end list to cap off my musical explorations for the year. In this list, I've collected a bunch of releases that have made an impression on me, but which I didn't get around to covering earlier in the year, or otherwise thought the year would be incomplete without giving them a shout. As always, this is an invitation to you to explore and get acquainted with some releases you might have missed, or might enjoy returning to for a second (or third) listen. Take your time, seriously. This list isn't going anyway, so if it takes you a couple of hours, days, or whatever to get through it, then grant yourself that indulgence. This is an open-ended invitation to dwell on some sounds at a pace that suits you and to resist the algorithm and its hypnotic pull.
Lastly, I'd like to address whether this is a "Best of" list or not. I genuinely hate the idea of ranking music in any form (even if I understand the utility some claim ranked lists have). That said, of course this is a "Best of/AOTY" list. It has to be by default. But only so far as the entirety of my output each year constitutes a "Best of" collection, with the Invitational acting as a capstone. My reviews this year, as every year, are the best of what I've heard. If I took the time to write about an album this year, then it stands to reason that I thought the album was better than another album that I didn't write about. Take that for what it's worth when comparing this list to others you might have read. I've read those other lists too, and I'm familiar with their recommendations...
Superdestroyer - Goon (Lonely Ghost Records)
One of the albums that I hope people look back on as a pivot point for this current wave of emo, as well as the contemporary online underground music world, is Superdestroyer's Goon. As the head of Lonely Ghost Records, he's had an impeccable run of teaming up with and distributing innovative and genre-defying artists, from Hey, Ily, to Discussing the Sun, to Cheem. His solo adventures are no less inspired and his debut LP Goon blends emo-trap, with deathcore, garage punk, synth-wave, and about five other different sub-categories of sound to make a tight and somewhat claustrophobic hybrid he's dubbed "Beach Gaze." I think it's worth pointing out that this term is highly context-dependent and probably will not be applicable to future releases, as the surreal saline of sound he's focusing on with this release is meant to depict a family vacation to the beach devolving into a cross-dimensional nightmare and harrowing hallucination. Illustrating the alienation of the self from the family unit and the fraying of social ties, the album progresses in its intensity before climaxing and crashing into a serene and clarifying pool of dreamy synth-soaked passages. Sort of as if the Griswalds' latest vacation ended up taking them to the ship from Event Horizon, which Clark then managed to emergency land in the clear blue lagoons of Pandora (I like to think the family survives the experience, but with all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, who can say). No one else is trying to do what Superdestroyer is attempting to with his sound right now, and the chaos-to-clarity structure ala Zen Arcade makes it seem all the more momentous. Goon is the smoke test that causes the surface tension of our reality to glitch so that you can see the code behind it. Whether you have the gumption to try and crawl through the fissures it creates and into a new and better sense of self-awareness is up to you.
There is a tendency amongst critics to assign a label to things that they notice and which have a passing similarity to each other and call them a trend. I'm preparing to do that exact thing at the moment. I've become aware that there are a number of acts out there now who are basically playing a strain of psychedelic-punk but would in no way own that term if you bestowed it on them. They're all just doing their own thing, and it just so happens to come out all weird and spacey. Dummy is one such band. Madison's Disq is another. I'd like to call this kind of stuff "Keen Punk," as it's incredibly earnest, extremely cool, and unconcerned with meeting people's expectations- only exceeding them. Disq's second LP Desperately Imagining Someplace Quiet minces and serves pungent melodies with spikes of acidic groove oozing in from 90's techno and arbitraged attempts to interpret Lou Reed's metallurgic nightmares. One part crushed Pixies, with two parts DMT cut with ESG, raised with yeast sourced from Archers of Loaf, baked in a pan forged with Rivers Cuomo-tempered alloys, and served to a rabid Teenage Fanclub. It's indie in the original meaning of the term, as independent of any one contemporary school of sound, a synthesis of all and none of them, and proud of its status in regard to both.
Grotto Terrazza - Kalte Köstlichkeiten (Maple Death Records)
Kalte Köstlichkeiten is the debut LP from Munich producer Thomas Schamann under the name Grotto Terrazza. It sees him focusing his stark and paranoid style of conspiratorial synthwave in a manner that is still striking but discernably more tempered than anything he's done before. It retains the reviving quality of a winter rain from his earlier EP, enlivening the senses with intrigue while avoiding the risk of frostbite as the temperature of the production never drops below freezing. It also has the character of a spy thriller, set in an abstract painting, comprised of all illusionary angles and tricks of unevenly leavened dimensionality, causing you to trip over your own sense of perception as you waltz to a fabricated Play Mobil funk band in a smokey den of sin. You could traverse other nonlinear aesthetic plains, but few will be as simultaneously chill and captivating as Kalte Köstlichkeiten.
Cool Original - Outtakes from "Bad Summer" (Topshelf Records)
The latest album from Nathan Tucker as Cool Original (or Cool American, if you may), is essentially an acoustic indie rock record. Now, if you've listened to outtakes from "Bad Summer" before reading the previous sentence, then you're probably getting a nosebleed right now from your brain attempting to process this information. But before you fire off an angry reply, take a minute to collect yourself and then go back and listen to the record and try to hear the acoustic parts underpinning literally every section. Now that I've pointed it out, you can't NOT hear it. Even though the record sounds like some kind of Platonist jetski wave or blissed-out yacht rock for disco-dipped imaginary friends, its DNA is undeniable as a guitar-pop-based record, specifically an acoustic pop record. And I think that is cool. I think it is very cool that this is the maximalist version of what a low-key and lo-fi indie rock can become with the right production approach and enough love. It goes from a solo show at a VFW to something like a jello-wrestling match in the belly of a drum machine, or a boom-bap preset run through a submerged distortion peddle to create a subaquatic sound that is soothing to cranky, bedazzled lobsters, or a long-form incantation performed by Evan Dando on some retro production equipment in an attempt to summon the ghost of Adam Schlesinger to bless a necklace he got out of a vending machine in Atlantic City. "Bad Summer" proves that you can build just about anything, no matter how obtuse, if the foundation you're using is sturdy enough.
Nok Cultural Collective released its debut recording this year, Njhyi. The project is the latest endeavor from Atyap percussionist and York local Edward Wakili-Hick, which probes an assemblage of African drumming styles through improvisation and reflection. At its base, this record is a collaboration between Edward and a circumference of percussionists, engaging each other through a congregation of thoughtful exchanges transposed as rhythms enticed out of log drums, tall kpanlogos, cowbells, and broad, pie-shaped ravannes. The core players (Onome Edgeworth, Dwayne Kilvington and Joseph Deenmamode) are joined by other notable collaborators such as fellow Sons of Kemet collaborator Theon Cross, roots rapper Watusi87, and the incomparable clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid, all of whom shepherd meditations on Africa's oldest civilizations through a dark middle passage of post-punk austerity to a weary but flourishing conclusion that sees the percussive styles of the earlier segments of the album blending with hip-hop, dub, and brisk broken-beat house. These are songs about community, best enjoyed with friends.
Methyl Ethel - Are You Haunted? (Future Classic)
Sacco & Vanzetti - No Rocks (Self-Released)
Udumakahle - S'qhuba Izinkomo (Dumakahle Entertainment)
POLIÇA – Madness (Memphis Industries)
Circuit3 - Technology For The Youth (AnalogueTrash)
Coupons - Wasted Intimacy (Counter Intuitive Records)
NNAMDÏ - Please Have A Seat (Secretly Canadian)
Sobs - Air Guitar (Topshelf Records)
Joe Rainey - Niineta (37d03d)
Making Movies - Xopa (Cosmica Artists)
YHWH Nailgun - No Midwife And I Wingflap (Ramp Local)
For Tracy Hyde - Hotel insomnia (P-Vine Records)
Erica Eso - 192 (Hausu Mountain Records)
Cool Original - Outtakes from "Bad Summer" (Topshelf Records)
Nok Cultural Ensemble - Njhyi (SA Recordings)
Methyl Ethel's Jake Webb allows the many spirits of past lives to return to their original body on his latest album with the project, Are You Haunted? It's a humorous title with a serious and sublime undertow. Explored throughout the album are memories and the imprints of past anxieties that live on in the ridges and discolored tissue of old scars and dormant but lingering fears. His reaction to the rising tickle of old wounds and the slow tarnishment of happy reflections by the passage of time is to laugh at the absurd and elastic pace at which he has distanced himself from them and the unpredictable intrusiveness with which these memories resurface. I appreciate his consistent thoughtfulness in examining the ever-longer thread of his own history (or histories) and the differing manifolds of the people who he has been, but what I enjoy the most is the style of Are You Haunted? It feels like a time capsule of late '00s indie rock; breathy blurts for vocal deliveries, handclap percussion, disco pianos, pouty melancholic melodies, baroque gang vocals, aggressive electro-drumlines, swaggering four-on-the-floor grooves... It's all old enough to feel new again and the repurposing of these time-weathered elements has finally allowed him to avoid direct comparisons to Tame Impala, finding himself instead somewhere between Lykki Li, Feist, and 2009 Bat for Lashes. Although now the drab and moody disco detour he's embarked on seems to have put him on a crash course with Haley Fohr's Jackie Lynn persona. Which is fine. Maybe it will cause the two of them to do a joint tour of the USA at some point. I'd be up for that. Heck, I'd put money down for it today if I thought it was a sure thing.
Sacco & Vanzetti - No Rocks (Self-Released)
Named for the infamous and (likely) falsely tried and executed anarchist radicals, Sacco & Vanzetti, the New Jersey duo of the same name gets a fair amount out of mileage from their notorious namesakes. Interspersing various dialogues from cut from pop cultural references and dramatizations of the men's stories with mean and dirty boom-bap beats, the S'nV team brings a rich and original variety of conscious rap to bear upon your waiting ears. Their main target tends to be abuse by police and the institutions that supposedly met out justice in this country, but they also take on issues of racism, social disintegration, and the general state of mounting stress that seems to add more crushing weight to life in America with each passing day. The production, despite feeling streetwise and grimy, simultaneously manages to be polished and lustrous with a deep and dynamic bass range that complements the wet and toothy flow on which these fearless lyrics are delivered. Their bars are heavy, not just because they're rock solid, but because they also contain a high quotient of solid gold wisdom ready to be distributed amongst the masses.
Benny Bock - Vanishing Act (Colorfield Records)
For his debut album Vanishing Act Benny Bock isn't playing any tricks. For this project, the sound designer and session musician is using his considerable skill and awareness of resonating forms to engage with and study a wide range of analog synths in order to make a confident envoy into jazz and techno, paving a meeting point between the two to compose them in contrast and context to each other and the cityscapes they so often reflect and emerge from as the folk songs of the landless cultivators of the concrete Balkan plateaus. Despite conjuring an incredibly diverse web of sound from a dozen plus classic synthesizers over the course of the album, the Vanishing Act never feels hurried or disjointed, as each instrument is given its proper place and the arrangements are consciously structured to allow the strengths of each to emerge to the fore. The result is diverting, colorful, beautiful, and timeless.
Once one of the more popular styles of African popular music, maskandi has fewer and fewer adherents each year as young people flock to more accessible, edgier, and often aggressive styles of electronic music. Despite this, South Africa's Udumakahle perseveres as one of the genre's most archetypal adherents. His latest album S'qhuba Izinkomo continues to highlight his fluttery and earnest playing style as well as his clean and circuitous singing prose. The music is simple, lush, and at times predictable, but only to the extent that it is dependable in its gracious repeating structures. This is rural folk music about doing your best by a young man who is, without hesitation, putting his best foot forward with every measure and every step. You can't buy this kind of sincerity. It has to come from the heart.
Madness is a companion to Minneapolis-based Poliça's fourth album When We Stay Alive, and a capstone on their past decade as a band. The four-piece ensemble still plays best when sticking to the shadows, whispering hints of lingering pain of desire and hurt to come, while recalling overlapping conceptual schemas and diverging platelets where combinations of Chromatics and Portishead shift and mingle like the colors of a kaleidoscope. For this latest pivot, they have added a new member to the cohort, an "anthropomorphic" devise that producer and founding member Ryan Olson calls AllOvers(c). The "new member of the family" allows for the haunting hue of the band's emotive shifts and enticements to feel that much more unreal- affecting an uncanniness and a sense of guardedness that is unnerved by its own presence and lack of presentness. It's a profound transformation of their sound that manages to keep possession of its fundamental essence, almost as if the band were a disembodied spirit who has found a new vessel through which it can continue its journey through purgatory. Madness is a fitting conclusion to this chapter in the band's saga.
Named for a Soviet-era technology magazine, Technology For The Youth is Irish producer and songwriter Circuit3's latest album-length plead for sanity in a world that seems to be running out of it by the day. Fueled by analog synths and his own distant airy vocal transmissions, Technology For The Youth represents a renewed hope for scientific advancement and prosperity through the light of reason with a backdrop of historical instances of USA-Soviet collaboration in space exploration as both its theme and justification for continued hope in the perpetuity of human progress- even when faced with seemingly impassable political and cultural barriers. Foregrounding familiar takes on elevated sounds pioneered by New Order and the Pet Shop Boys, Circuit3 probes the possibility of the future for still surviving signs of intelligent life on Earth. God willing, he finds what he is looking for. God willing, we all do.
Pool Kids - Pool Kids (Skeletal Lightning)
The Pool Kids debut may be one of the most celebrated albums of the year, but I found out about it entirely independent of John Darnielle and others' co-signs, and that's why I think it's worth me talking about it and putting the band on this list. The Chicago-based (former Florida residents) are a pop band at heart. They can write hooks like they're giving you directions to their favorite watering hole and deliver them with the urgency of a Wells Fargo stagecoach attempting to outrun a gang of desperados. Everything they do is great, full stop. But what really makes them interesting to me is how flexible and adaptive their sound is. They might come across as something like a Kevin Shields-produced version of Paramore, or the byproduct of Hop Along on a working vacation with Beach House, or even the end result of Taylor Swift paying Mike Kinsella and co. enough money to reform American Football and tour as her backing band, but none of these attributed descriptions exhaust the core potential of the group. It's clear they're just picking up things they like, smashing them together and making them work, and the results are simply phenomenal. From what I'm hearing on their debut, they could go any number of directions from here, and it's going to be very cool to see what ground they cover next. Keep tabs on Pool Kids, they're truly a band to watch.
Every time I hear something new from Albany's Coupons, I become a little bit more of a fan. Out of all the bands I encounter, there is something indescribably refreshing about them. They play indie rock and punk the way I wish every band did, as an outcropping and extension of, as well as conversation with, the community they arise out of, and the enthusiasm with which they exert themselves in this endeavor is unfailingly inspired. More so than their 2020 release Up & Up, Wasted Intimacy sees the group doing a take on the Hollies as if they were convalescing at Radiator Hospital, fully embracing the Americana meets no bullshit power-pop potential of their sound. It's perfect for getting your heart broken/filled with mirth at a house party and drinking and singing so much you start crying out of joy, anguish, yearning, and dread, all at the same time, plus a bunch of other emotions you can't quite place. Getting to know other indie bands intimately might be a waste of time, but not when it comes to Coupons- they're an investment, my friend.
Typically, when someone tells you to "Please Have A Seat," it's because they have bad news. Chicago-based MC and experimental composer NNAMDÏ's latest release Please Have A Seat is literally all good news, so you could stand, transition into downward dog, or jump up and do some aerobics while it's on. Whatever, you do you. However, he'd obviously prefer if you were sitting down while you listened to his record. Not because he's trying to be controlling, but because he wants you to absorb the record while it's on and come to terms with your own presentness while enjoying it. The record is an invitation to sit and savor the simple pleasure of being alive for a full forty minutes. Coincidentally, that's what this list is all about too. It's not often that my intentions line up with those of talented people I admire, so I'm taking full advantage of the serendipity to reiterate my own mission statement. Something else I'd like to point out is that Please Have A Seat does not feel its length. Even when giving it my full attention, it feels like I'm tumbling into the future while it's on. While I fully endorse all the quirks and animated energies of 2020's Brat, the sense of spontaneity Please Have A Seat captures is on another level as it takes every possible off-ramp and trolls every potential diverting tributary without becoming disharmonious or convoluted. He's letting the full spectrum of his personality interface with you without a filter, and as his orbit looms large, it's nearly impossible not to be drawn in. It's true that we all contain legions, and that is why this album, in all its compounding multiplicities, will be comprehensible to you. But if you and I contain legions, then it's clear that NNAMDÏ contains legions upon legions- a leader of one and one million alike.
Sobs should be an international pop sensation in the making. Glistening, blitzes of bliss and huggable harmonies gush over you in a torrent of self-assured abandon on their debut LP, Air Guitar. Drinking in this release presents the same level of satisfaction as sitting below the dispenser of a giant slurpy machine and allowing a rain of rainbow-sticky goodness to drench your hair and face in an ecstatic coat of pure, gratuitous confection. "Dealbreaker" is a hurricane of ecstasy and supersized silk-lined guitar hooks, and the title track provides a gloss of Shibuya varnish to a blindly overdriven version of Velocity Girl style jangle. "Friday Night" benefits from twin heralds of new wave ripple on the front end and bursts of bubbly breakcore on the back end, a bridging dichotomy that elevates the track above a mere Juliana Hatfield honorific. And then bruised and bass rip-riding "Burn Book" fumes from a smiting swath of teenage passion. Air Guitar is like a ripe peach, garnished with caramelized sugar; every hook is like another sumptuous bite and by the time you're through juice will be running down your cheeks and chin like tears of joy.
I'm glad that I came across this album during my many aimless voyages through the information soup of the internet. Particularly because it is so unique in both style and intention. The debut LP from Minneapolis pow-wow singer Joe Rainey is not aiming to perfectly preserve any traditional definition of native music but instead directs itself towards translating a respect for those traditions into the world of popular forms. Working with producer Andrew Broder of the experimental group Fog, the duo interlace samples of singing recorded by Joe over the course of decades and drafts them into dialog with Joe's own vocal improvisations to provoke a spiritually suggestive and metaphysically rousing encounter- one that is akin to a percussive oriented and cinematic rephrasing of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, but which traverses the legacy of the first peoples of the Americas in a taxonomy of phantoms and a study of enduring probities that pierce the real so finely that it cannot be seen- requiring the extension of our moral and other faculties to be properly perceive them. There are times that Niineta feels edifying, while many other sections are more than aggressive and less than reassuring, but throughout, the album never fails to pique an all-consuming sense of fascination in its directness and fidelity.
Producer and everything girl Eva Shaw's debut LP is an expression of unadulterated, genuine sensation and mood. Solo is an epic, down-and-dirty trap album made for no one in particular, besides herself. It's lengthy and roomy enough to let you get comfortable in her world, but also harsh enough never to let you forget whose world it is. The physical and bold nature of her production choices on this release makes it feel like the hip-hop equivalent of a Dario Argento film; composed of bold outlines, a bias towards the visceral, and unafraid to show you actual violence but chiefly preoccupied with the rough course of calamity swirling around the interior of its creator's subconscious. An entire career separates this album from Eva's start as a songwriter, and now that it's here, I doubt there are any residual questions about the independence of her vision.
Summerbruise - The View Never Changes (Old Press Records)
Eva Shaw - Solo (Mad Fatti)
Wholesome fucking middle-American emo. You can't beat it. Indianapolis's Summerbruise embodies this very specific and unassumingly glorious style better than most on their LP The View Never Changes. Jaunty, piano and guitar duel grooves. Buzzy firecracker riffs. Paul McCartney-core, wobbling melodies set to funny, observational poetry suited to pop structures that can't help but spill their guts as soon as they stop gritting their teeth. A lot of this album reminds me of the torrential pop precociousness of Say Anything, where every riff hits like an epiphany, and every hook pulls you into the spiral of their emotive tempest a little more. These guys could make a thousand albums just like this one, and I'd never get bored of them for even a minute.
Two Meters - Two Meters (Knifepunch Records)
Two Meters is the creation of Floridian Tyler Costolo. Most of his material so far was released before the pandemic, and this year's self-titled LP is his first release since the onset of COVID. It's a bleaker album, less bluesy than prior works, but just as discordant and painfully restrained in its progression. The album has the composure of someone attempting to ward off invasive thoughts while choking on their own marginally constrained hysteria. Subtle folk guitar chords and distressed extended measures of melody are harangued by noisy and boxed-in blastbeats and growls, making the overall impression of the record sound like Sun O))) essentially imploding into a well of auto-cannibalizing annihilation. Tracks like "Rain Down" traverse a grey plain in an apostate crawl across the dark and desiccated lips of a wilting rose, eventually winding its way to an oasis of harmony and syncopated resolution, while "Low" and "Sun" lurch as if trudging over burning coals in a penitent kind of blackened-death, slowcore stooper. Suffice it to say, Two Meters will bring you six feet closer to hell.
Not intending to be dramatic, Making Movies wrote and recorded their album Xopa like it was the last thing they were ever going to make. The Kansas City, MO-based Latin band's approach caused them to throw their entire bushel basket into the furnace and burn it up like parched, sawdust-coated tinder. The result is an exceptionally explosive album that charges up cumbia rhythms with Midwestern rock and roll to create a rolling thunder strike that could reduce a multimillion-dollar stadium to a pile of pebbles. While the exulting salsa shake-up of "Sala De Los Pescadores" with its spearing grooves and swiping, sword-dancing-like interchanges, and the tightrope tapdancing and voltaic whip of "Nos Entenderan" are certainly highlights of this release, the album also manages to shine just as bright during its intimate, sober moments, such as on the tranquil familial ballad "Mama" and the slinky and tropical "Porcelina," featuring incomparable contributions from Denver duo Tennis. There are no punches pulled on Xopa, even if some of them land softer than others.
YHWH Nailgun - No Midwife And I Wingflap (Ramp Local)
Four-man maelstrom YHWH Nailgun are living in their own country, time zone, and frame of mind on their second EP No Midwife And I Wingflap. This brief but impressive release takes on industrial and post-rock as if these were foreign concepts within the underground cannon- revving their reified motifs and signifiers until they backfire and suck themselves inside out. "Too Bright To See" is like an indie-funk revue encoded to a punctured hard drive, from which the echo-copy representations of musicians whose images have been captured vainly attempt to free themselves before they are erased from existence by the deterioration of their prison dwelling. "Back Muscle" sounds like Samuel T. Herring being boiled alive in a vat of Throbbing Gristle, and "Venison Mama" ruptures and wails with fractal percussion as if it were a reflex stress test of a band playing Battles-covers while having their molecular structures creatively rearranged. Lastly, "Look At Me, I'm A Rainer" gives off the impression of a Pere Ubu CD-R album rip being stripped layer by layer by a laser drill while it attempts to rotate and play the compressed mastered recordings it contains while being systematically dismantled. Unfailingly broken until its shards become a powder-fine mosaic, No Midwife And I Wingflap sustains itself through hostility to even the aesthetics of the counter-conventional.
Japenese shoegaze is an extremely strange and diverse arena of music that tenuously connects scattering, rough-hewn punk riffs with profoundly startling and crepuscular sonic imprints and somehow manages to keep them all circling each other and within the same musical universe. In such a peculiar place, it is a small comfort to find something familiar. Tokyo's For Tracy Hyde is one of these bands that is most easy to acquaint oneself with coming from the outside. Approaching the genre from the direction of indie pop, they present a high gloss and perceptibly congenial appeal to propulsive Luminous Orange-esque and UK-infused fuzz-fare on their 5th LP Hotel Insomnia. If jangly chord progressions cause a little bell in your heart to ring and compounding melodic phrases cause your soul to become ascendingly weightless, then you are going to be on cloud 9 while this record is on. You might even want to tie yourself down, less you float away without a care, lifted into the atmosphere by the delight that For Tracy Hyde has poured into the basin of your being.
Erica Eso - 192 (Hausu Mountain Records)
This is an unusual release for the Chicago-based label Hausu Mountain, but it's no less interesting from my perspective. While Hausu generally specializes in left-field but attainably palatable experimental music, Erica Eso's 192 is a straight pop record. Neither this fact nor its relative brevity, keep it from being an absorbing listen-through. The quintet, led by Weston Minissali, performs a melange and arable blend of funky, originative R'nB in the Brainfeeder mold, esteemed and self-consciously lovesick new wave, and minute progressive maneuvers that might earn them a jealous glance from modern-day adherents of Yes. Analog and digital blur on 192 in the collapsing space between industrial output and plangent soul. Primal emotions find fissures through which to spill out and crystalize over spherical synthesizer purls and pulses. Troutface mask-adorned post-rock scales replicated in a cradle of swarthy kisses and knot-tugging bassline. 192 is a musical gem factory operating at peak efficiency.
yesterdayneverhappened - The Demon At Dusk (Loveshock Records x Daybreak)
When attempting to explain Chicago producer yesterdayneverhappened's The Demon At Dusk, it would be more concise to describe what it's not rather than what it is. It doesn't do much good to attempt to conceptualize a negative though, so here goes... The Demon At Dusk is a fractured synthesis of soul, funk, and punk spread through a twisted, convoluted process of folding together breakcore, footwork, and VGM, resulting in a frantic, improbably melodic, and infectious listen that progresses with the fury and kinetic flow of a Tekken tag-team tournament with a club-goth color scheme. It's an awesome and unpredictable rush and a masterfully malicious beat matrix ready for you to jack into as you bask in the afterglow of your last passionate, depleted-uranium kiss good night to the year that was 2022.
