Album Review: 鬱P - Perfect Persona

The following is a vignette inspired by 鬱P's Perfect Persona:

A bride, dressed all in white, inhales deeply before stepping through the doors of a small, steepled church with stained-glass windows as it stands in the foreground against a serene small-town backdrop. Her cheeks pink and pricked with a blush of adrenaline, and her long aqua-blue hair is tied into a twin, waist-length ponytail that drifts behind her as if it were in the grip of a pair of rutty, cheerful cherubs. She is empty-handed except for a flower bouquet of red roses wrapped tightly in expensive paper and tied with a dark red ribbon; a cross of lovely soft sashes intersects over her chest and runs around beneath her arms to then come up again over the back to be secured at the base of her neck.

The church's interior is modestly full; 30 or so people stand in clumps of association, chatting and idling on their phones, ordered in two rows of pews, separated by a carpeted thoroughfare leading to the altar, where a man in a conspicuously expensive-looking tuxedo stands opposite a plump and dowdy priest. In fact, all in attendance are a display of painfully embellished, high-thread-count, gaudily patterned suits and dresses of cuts and concepts that would normally not make their way past a Parisian catwalk, let alone serve as formal attire for an occasion in the rural steppes of this community. The bride's entrance has gone unnoticed by most of the crowd, save the tuxedoed man, who stares down at her smugly, a crooked smile splitting his lips and wrinkling the long, deep scars that part the skin on his left side like partially filled irrigation troughs. He runs his hands through his greasy, product-laced shock of sandy hair, almost self-consciously, almost to give the impression that he's not as nervous as he is, as he turns his head slightly to refocus his gaze on an older woman in a severely cut, broad-shouldered, and heavily tapered purple suit with the same flush of filthy cream-colored locks as his own. She doesn't return his stare; her eyes are turned down at her phone, flicking through graphs and columns of numbers. A younger version of herself hovers beside her in a similarly severe navy suit; a bored look sags the younger woman's features as she silently swipes through noxious bursts of luxurious lifestyle content. The older woman pauses mid-swipe before leaning down to whisper something to the younger woman at her side; a large, mustached man in a grey suit shifts tensely in his soft Italian loafers on the opposite side of the woman in purple, scanning the room as he overhears the brief exchange to his right. "The Senator's tip seems like it was spot on; you need to call your broker as soon as we're done here." "Clocked it, thanks." "You know, I'm not even sharing this with your brother; you could act a little more grateful when I share these kinds of things with you..." "Yeah, well, he's going to be set after today, isn't he?" The young woman glances over her shoulder at the bride still standing in the entryway and discharges a disgruntled huff. "What a freak..." The man in the grey suit follows the young woman's line of sight to the bride and coughs up a startled sound from the depths of his throat. "What the fuck? Where is her god damn escort? Someone find Joey and Enzo. I want them on her ass like cheese on my mother's risotto."

Still blushing, the bride's white teeth gleam like the tail of a shooting star, grinning as she sorts through her sashes with her free hand. Finding what she was searching for, she thrusts her arm out in front of her, straight and purposeful as if holding a saber; in her clenched fingers is a small white remote. Directing pressure through her thumb and onto a button, the music piping through the speakers in the small chamber of the building snaps from lofty opera standards to a blare of frantic stings and stormy electronics; a menacing momentum builds in the air. It is then that the man in the grey suit notices the body slumped in the entryway of the church, fresh blood speckling the concrete leading to the parking lot, the smell of iron slowly creeping into the house of worship—he reaches into the breast of his suit and takes hold of the cold steel within as recognition of the tailored suit on the crumpled form and the set of large ostentatious rings on its hands strike his mind like a lightning bolt. "Shit, god damn it! Doesn't anyone have a leash on this harpy?" Waving his piece for emphasis, the grey-suited man barks at a nearby guest, a clear subordinate. "Sal, grab that bitch! We're putting an end to this circus now!" Before the oily, dark-suited goon can fulfill his boss's request, though, the bride reaches into her bouquet and gives something inside a deliberate backwards tug, emitting a mechanical clicking as if something had shifted inside a small metal cylinder. "Holy mother, hit the deck!" The grey-suited man hollers to the room, raising his sidearm level with the bride's torso before his own chest erupts in a rupturing spurt of gore in synchronization with a roar of blast beats and toothy guitar grooves crashing out of the overtaxed sound system. The flower arrangement in the bride's hands has become a biting haze of smoke and fire, petals and stems breaking and bursting, their remnants falling away to reveal the cold countenance of a submachine gun, chattering in hot fury in the bride's talon-like grip. She fans a hot sheet of lead across the confined quarters of the room, cutting down the guest list by half before the attendees can turn to grasp the gravity of the dire straits they'd slipped into. Pews explode into pockets of splinters; the brick interior becomes marred by impacts like a lunar surface; a round strikes the priest in the throat, lacquering the unblemished side of the tuxedoed man's face with arterial splash as he surveys the carnage in awe and anger. Guests take cover where they can and let loose with reply from their own fiery steel in the direction of the bride, but her fatal command of the room is unchallengeable as she strafes along the perimeter, scouring the center of the room with a blazing shower of perdition. Retaliatory shots only ever strike close enough to graze her and rip her sashes and dress, causing them to fall open and reveal bandoliers packed with extended magazines and rows of holstered, small-capacity, high-caliber pistols; the latter she retrieves to pepper the room with while reloading her full-automatic casket stuffer. As she circles the periphery of her collected quarry, the bride pauses her assault only long enough to kick over baptismal fonts; once overturned, they flood the area with a harshly scented liquid, whose fumes could choke the breath out of anyone unlucky enough to take them into their lungs.

The woman in the purple dress is one such unfortunate soul. While hiding behind a pew that has been partially dismantled in the exchange of fire, she finds herself heaving as the stinking liquid soaks the carpet beneath her. In a scramble to seek fresh air, a slug from the bride's repeating saber pierces her spine and bursts out the front of her pelvis, causing her to slump where she is as her trunk pleats into a backward fold like a broken lawn chair. The last thing she sees is an inverted visage of the bride shoving a flagpole through the brassy, looped handles of a door leading to a side room just as angry voices congregate into a crescendo behind it. The barred door begins to shake as it is struck from its interior; curses and pistol-caliber rounds flow from behind the congested gateway into the main room of the church as the bride continues her fatal procession, now wading into the center aisle. A swarthy man in a white suit seizes a wishful window of grace when he believes he is in the bride's blind spot, springing above the safety of the cap rail with a double-barrel shotgun. He is surprised when his collarbone splits, his ribs become flayed, and his right arm is severed at the elbow before he is even able to level his aim; he collapses with a gurgle, losing his grip on his barreled piece. It slides to a stop at the bride's feet. She stomps the narrow point of her heel into the plate of the shotgun's butt, causing it to rise to her arm level in a pinwheel-like whirr. She catches the deadly implement and opens the breach to check that it is loaded. At that very moment, the door she had barred finally gives way in a rain of splinters. A grey and grizzled man whose girth resembled more bison than bipedal specimen, adorned in fine formal attire, has put his entire weight into the now shattered door, and the momentum of his strength has carried him through. Behind him are four equally well-dressed, stone-faced associates, each gripping their sidearms purposefully, scanning for a target. Unimpressed by this entrance, the bride unleashes both barrels into the small crowd of intruders, knocking them backward into a heap before the entryway they had just vacated. She coolly drops the now-empty armament before retrieving a pistol from her sash and picking off the survivors, of which there are only two. One of the surviving intruders is struggling under the weight and horror of the large grey man, attempting to free her arm and revolver from beneath his sunken and ruptured mass, averting her eyes from the bulk of exposed tubes and shredded glands of his now-exposed interior when a gap opens in her temple and the contents of her head slides out the other side. The other, a younger man with spiky black hair, manages to stagger to his feet and register a shot at his opponent before she pierces his jugular, resulting in his final moments being consumed in a futile fit of compression over his open neck before the icy flows running through his limbs cause him to lose his grip and slump to the floor in an awkward clump of clammy flesh, gushing crimson.

Sensing that the cull is nearing its climax, the bride proceeds towards the altar in a progression of eddying pirouettes, maintaining a constant rate of fire as she twirls, catching stragglers in the spray of her leaden claws as they expose themselves in a last gasp of vain bravado or flee for the open exit at the front of the church, including the young woman in the blue suit. A bullet passes through her abdomen; she doubles over, then claws up the side of a pew to persist in her getaway, only to find that her legs have become tangled in her own entrails. Toppling once more, she squirms in her own tangle of innerds and the spongy slickness of the carpet which has become saturated in the noxious, pinguid substance that had filled the baptismal fonts. The sounds emitted by the few remaining speakers is a cacophony of exalted, falsetto vocals, a vicious churn of razor-lined rhythms and bracing, full-contact grooves that accentuate the staccato of the bride's revolutions and relentless cycle of fire as a chorus of Armageddon, a punctuation to pure brimstone.

Finally, this black swan of white fury ascends the stairs of the altar and arrives at the threshold of the tuxedoed man's now-shattered psyche. As she approaches, his legs lose their constitution and he crumples gracelessly on his back, crabwalking backward to attempt to maintain his distance as her shadow overtakes him. Trembling, he cranes his neck as if to bear witness to the parting of the heavens and meets the bride's gaze, a crucifix looming overhead reflected sardonically back at him in the voids of her pupils. She is smiling at him, the most gruesome vision he has witnessed since the advent of the whole bloody ordeal, a more wretched sight than the swath of slaughter that swamps the chamber she has passed through to meet him at this apex. "Listen, there may have been some misunderstanding between us..." He stammers, drowning in sweat and panic. "Maybe you felt like you were getting a raw deal, but you're a very tough negotiator, and you've made your point. I'm willing to hear you out now; let's talk this through..." He flinches as she leans over him, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as to not see the blow he expects is coming. When none arrives, he reopens his eyes and takes in the bride once again as she towers over him. She has taken a tall lit candle from a candelabrum on the altar and now holds it at the full length of her arm by its white stalk overhead, shining like a beacon; her submachine gun is gripped tightly in the crook of her other arm, pressed into her ribs at a slight outturned angle, cradling it like it were her manifesto, her bible in action. She is still staring down at him, still smiling, but now softly shaking her head. "You... you... fucking bitch! You're fucking crazy!" He writhes out from beneath the pillar of her silhouette, stumbles on all fours, and rolls down the steps and away from the altar. "I'll kill you! You're so dead! I know some very dangerous people. You think you saw killers today! You have no idea the people I know... I... I..." His words drift into silence as a chilling sound accosts his ears. It is the bride; she's laughing now, still standing at the altar, laughter bubbling out of her with the effervescence of a thermal spring. He is sinking into the wet mass of fibers around him now, frozen in fear, sick and swamped with the vapors of spilled blood, the sulfurous tang of cartridge discharge, and the suffocating essence and acrid industrial aroma that has suffused the carpet from the overturned fonts. The bride lowers the candle in her grip; drawing it behind her, she then swings it forth in an underhanded arc, letting it slip from her grip. The lit waxen baton sails through the air and lands between the thighs of the now disheveled and broken tuxedo-clad man. He catches a final glimpse of her beaming, chortling face before an ice-colored inferno consumes his world. His body folds and compresses in the flame like old newspaper as the blue blaze spreads in a withering tear to engulf the entire carnage-soaked room.

Outside the church, emergency responders and police have begun to pull into the parking lot and quell the advance of a swarming, curious crowd of onlookers just as the stained-glass windows of the chapel-turned-tomb explode into violent twinkling rainbows of shattered varicolore reverie, flames belching from the front door and now-open windows as if the building were an open kiln. Firefighters hasten to and fro, attempting to wet the building with their hoses and contain the blaze. Around the rear of the building and away from the amassing crowd, a back door bends and creaks until it finally bursts open. A person in a fire-resistant uniform, different, but just barely distinguishable from those of the public servants attempting to battle the hellfire furnace that has swallowed the church- thick material, gas mask, reflective visor, and wide-brimmed helmet—teeters forward after knocking the door off its hinges with their shoulder. They stagger and then falter to their knees. An EMT rushes to the doubled-over figure and, slipping an arm around them, helps them stumble to his emergency vehicle. "What were you doing in there? That place is a fuckign furnace! I thought your captain told everyone to hold back and not go charging in. You could have been killed!" He hands his rescuee a bottle of water, which they accept politely but don't open. "Listen, it's bad that you were in there. You could get canned for being so reckless... what division are you from anyway?" There is no reply. The EMT's brow furrows and he's about to resume his line of inquiry when his attention is diverted by a coworker. "Hey Larry, we just got an estimate of what the body count might be. It's a god damn massacre. Looks like it could be the whole Conti family in there. I just got a text from my girlfriend in dispatch. Take a look at this." The EMT pauses, torn between his duty and morbid curiosity. "Alright, be right there." He shoots his rescuee a stern look. "Don't go anywhere." The EMT lumbers off in the direction of his coworker, his back turned to the mysterious figure sitting on the bumper of his vehicle. Nary a moment passes before the figure has noiselessly slunk off towards an adjoining field, sifting through the ripening stalks of grain; they slough off their fire-retardant clothing to reveal a familiar face. The bride, or former bride, her visage smeared with ash and blood, eyes pricked with a veiny redness and slightly watery from irritation, has shed her nuptial attire, and now slinks out into the night in a black matching set of polyamide athletic bra and shorts; she is otherwise bare except for a smile and a pack of cigarettes tucked into her waistband. As she weaves through the field, she retrieves the carton and plucks out two darts and a lighter; guarding the flame with her palm, she lights both, inhales with ecstasy, and exhales with relief. Behind her, the church continues to burn. She doesn't look back; she doesn't need to. Everything that matters to her at this point lies straight ahead.

Album Review: MoonDoctoR & Surly - 10 Days in San Antonio

I'll often listen to interviews with DJs for their music recommendations. DJs are essentially professional music appreciators, after all, and will often be more honest, upfront, and concise about their tastes and interests than most recognized critics and cultural commentators. It's a fruitful pastime, and I have no regrets. Although there are times when the subject is somewhat of a blemish on humanity. I remember one guy recently who was being interviewed for a localish metropolitan outlet, and it's hard to believe what the producer was thinking having him on. From his put-on affect to his dated, ill-fitting wardrobe, he did a poor job of concealing that he was one of those failed entrepreneurs and former tech hucksters who fell into disc jockeying as a pivot and alternative model of getting paid for producing nothing of measurable value. Everything he recommended was straight buns, just full-on cheeks. It was astounding to see someone gas for 10 minutes while batting that many strikes in a row. It was like he never actually listens to music for the pure pleasure and simply builds his playlists based on some data-driven hallucination of audience segmentation in an Adderall-induced, algorithmic trance. I suspect that the only thing keeping this guy rolling in ice rather than being laid up on it is his final recommendation, "Scare Em to Death" by Surly. Somewhere along the line, he got clued into the fact that this was a pretty hot track, and it's probably been his saving grace ever since. Regardless of how many bougie bottom feeders attempt to hitch their wagon to it, Surly's 2017 EP Trip to Warsaw is still a rock-solid slice of non-standard juke and footwork, one that seamlessly interlaces Chicago styles of high-energy house and the producer's familiarity with Central European jazz as encountered through his father's career of playing music with experimental musicians hailing from a certain former Soviet republic. While his Polish jazz and Chicago-style jungle bounce fusion is easily his best-known work, he did produce another album's worth of material around the same time that was lost until very recently. Mixed and maestro'd over a little over a week's time in collaboration with his friend MoonDoctoR at the latter's home, the bones of what would become 10 Days in San Antonio solidified after successfully scoring a dance battle in Chicago. According to MoonDoctoR, they were mostly just kicking it down in Texas at his place, and the music just percolated up and out from the ether of the low-key rager they were wading through. Comparatively, 10 Days is a more conventional collection of footwork, infused with a dark intrigue that boldly traces the unquantifiable qualities that separate and blend dance floor and back alley, basement and skydeck, constantly in motion like a shark, inhaling the particulated grit of UK garage, rattling thrums of ravey synths, and hydrophilic diffusions of soul, and exhaling a glowing cloud of syrupy, incandescent composure- a placid romantic melancholy that can't resist coasting in the moonlight on the chromed reflections of low-riding G-funk pump- a fantastic collection culminating in the key collaboration "The Friends," a hypnotically ponderous gyration and intimate looping concord that rings in a finally casting call of the pair's combined potential with its dense layers of dependable vocal brushes, heart-skipping basslines, and brassy blushes of devotion. The session tapes for this record were misplaced somewhere along the way, making it very unlikely to have ever surfaced in any form until some technical solutions were discovered that permitted the dynamic duo to reconstruct it from previously discarded demos. It could have been a real loss, but in salvaging these sessions, we can see that those 10 Days in San Antonio were not spent in vain.

Freshly squeezed moon juice does a body good (Freshmoon).

Album Review: Sistema de Entretenimiento - Arcade Punk

Chongqing, China, one of the largest municipal districts in the world, may rightfully have laid claim to the title of Cyberpunk Capital, earned through its advanced technical sector and neon-future landscapes, but the soundtrack of the nigh-approaching total-techno dominion is transmitting across sea and air, out of the leaky boiler rooms and dank basement dens of Barcelona. It's the future, baby! ...of a distant past. What Spanish FM synthesis and electro-punks Sistema de Entretenimiento are excavating are already decayed and tarnished remnants of tomorrow in the ashes of today. Squaring the freshly freed angst of the post-Franco '80s into a pixelated, soft-tooth buzzsaw of oscillating lo-fi disco puntazos, they construct with sound a virtual vision of the 21st century from the vantage point of far-flung yesteryear that is more advanced and exciting than the one we find ourselves mired in the depths of, but nevertheless, just as desperate and disquieting. A prophetic fever of fortress-like, chrome-gleaming skyscrapers so tall that they literally pierce through to the void of space and are in constant threat of colliding with satellites; widespread commercially available cybernetic anatomical augmentations and back-alley butchers licensed to install them for bottom-barrel prices; rogue killer androids; flying cars; android spouses and electric sheep- their oneiric implications nearer and auspicious promises farther away today than they were when the now-diseased circulars of mass-market paperbacks and VHS OVAs articulated their conceivable emergence- at least on the Western half of the globe. I guess that's why EPs like Arcade Punk seem so prescient; they're paving the night with percolating neon-noise-tinted excess in anticipation of a future that will never arrive, but is somehow already receding in the rear-view mirror.

The United States has the highest carceral rate of any country in the world, and yet Prison Records is based in Spain. Curious...

Album Review: Forever ☆ - Second Gen Dream

Wake up! There is a party raging on a cloud, and it's finally dipped low enough for you to hitch a ride. Kansas City's Forever ☆ have charted a course for a nearby rainbow-paved cumulus kanibaru due North, and they're only making a single pass through your block, so if you want in on the action, you're going to have to pick out the brightest star visible from your vantage point and make a wish so big that they can't help but collide with it as they cruise the air currents overhead. If you can cut past the strong-arming bouncer of your own inhibition, then you might just find yourself in the catbird seat of a souped-up Second Gen Dream, punching the gas and hewing through a gossamer bastion of club-commingled claps of restorative feedback, golden waves of frosty jungle heat, and hot cycling jolts of drum 'n' bass palpitations with enough surging electricity to burst half the street lamps in Manchester and turn them into teeming dispensers of flaming confetti. As of this writing, it is Thursday, August 27 at 02:14 UTC, and Wednesday, August 26, 21:15 local time. Nowhere on Earth is it Friday night yet, except for right here, right now. You, this magnificent Missouri duo, the molten kiss of brassy loops, and the bladey purr of an acid-peeled groove, making the city your personal music box, pummeling the pavement and cruising the small hours into a vaporous spectacle of bluff and beguile, escaping from the day-walking world into the waxen reel of a city painted in moonlight and balmy eros, hinged on an easy-rolling centripetal spindle-fount of starry-eyed felicity. Forever. The night is forever, so long as you're dreaming. 

Why choose when you can have it all, à La Carte (Records)?

Album Review: Paul Coleman - The Weather Man

You don't have to dig much to pry up stories about artists getting screwed sideways in the music industry. The frequency and severity of the repercussions reaped from advances taken and recouped in mythic levels of psychic damage, or the prevalence of general business chicanery, became almost a rite of passage for alternative artists in their dealings with the vampiric patronage of major label syndicates in the '90s- souls were reaved and dreams were decimated, scarring a whole generation of rock star wannabes- but you don't have to hunt down the survivors of the first wave of grunge to fill your ears with the horrors that circle the periphery of the lime light like a school of dagger-toothed piranhas- just buy any DIY musician a Pabst or treat them to a Yerba, and they'll unspool a yarn that will leave you hanging by the collar in despair over their dealings with the industry and the backstabbings, cross-stabbings, and bag-nabbings that define even the dive bar, dreg-scraping levels of the industry. One fine fellow who certainly saw his fill of it was Chicago's Paul Coleman. Originally of the (ironically) fatally fleeting funk ensemble Rasputin's Stash, and the pristine but untimely tarnished soul-pop quartet Crystal Winds, the enterprising keyman was presented with the opportunity to create a soundtrack for the newly launched Weather Channel sometime in the early '90s- a potential windfall that came his way because an executive at the channel was dating fellow Crystal Winds bandmate Corky Brown's (aka M.C. (Morris) Brown) sister. Writing the entire repertoire over a sleepless two-week marathon, the final cuts were accepted by the programming director and played on air, offering a refreshingly buoyant complement to the dry business of local forecasts and barometric reports- none of which ended up benefiting Paul though, as his whimsical climate compositions were tossed out with a sudden change in ownership, and he was never paid. It's always painful to witness talented people crash headfirst into the realities of corporate acquisition and power plays, like moths disappearing into a mass of goo as they intersect with a sedan windshield screaming down the Eisenhower, but as the fates preserve, Paul's recordings have been salvaged and repackaged for modern listeners' vindication under the title The Weather Man. The selection offered by this project presents a lighter side of funk, a crisp and invigorating, lean and balanced portrait of elegant simplicity that invites interpretation and absorbing contemplation, just as passing clouds compel the earthbound to divine galloping signs and symbols in the sky and place perspective on our relative position in a large, interconnected globe. Softly textured and accommodating, The Weather Man teems with a mist of optimism and a belief that all things will find a site of affordance to brace against the tempest and find one's fortunes in the fronts of simmering, silver-lined clouds as they swirl and billow about us. Hopefully these tracks bring you more luck than their maestro, or at least remind you to get everything in writing before you commit your heart and soul to it.

Destination is only excuse for the journey (Athens of the North).

Album Review: Liai - Pastoral Stills From Every Age

A wrinkled evanescence. A chattering gem. Pearling curves which catch the light and curtail them into purple, blue, green, red, and yellow pinions. Frozen in an instant, iterative in plies, cascading in concentric columns, begging to have its rings counted- winnings pooled from serial adaptations and voyages to sunken substrates of voided eons. Echos of decaying echolons and the leer of dimming lights. The pulse of a flower's heartbeat, trapped in living, rippling, dripping resin, splashing outward like a tentative greeting before lapsing with a retreating sigh. Lives lived in the hollow of a windchime, warm breaths whistling between the pores, bodies like flutes, resonating with the vibrations of the atmosphere, finding a rhythm and keeping it a secret in the pocket of their lips. Tears droop and catch clarity, arching upwards towards the clouds, clear streams extending like grape vines, fanning out like peacock feathers, displayed with a humble triumph. A twinkling node collecting on a parched plot of flesh. A calm that blows in like a storm. All in a moment. Enclosed in a space, apeiron.

Album Review: Emma Aibara - u:phobia

Generally, escapism is viewed dimly in society- at least it was for our parents and older siblings. Now they do it too and just avoid conversations that tend to unearth the guilt they harbor while mired in a zombifying pool of blue light ever-present due to a screen addiction, or their mental absence while they cling to the tail of some projected fantasy of success or belonging, or emotional inaccessibility due to overcommitment to a hobby that might as well be a second career (but which doesn't pay the bills), or maybe they just have a good old-fashioned substance abuse conundrum, often, but not always, revolving around the compulsive consumption of some formerly sanctioned narcotic which now can be bought over the counter in exaggerated concentrations evidently cultivated to induce immediate psychological break in those who gulp them down. Everyone is running from something these days- bad economy, bad relationships, worsening prospects- but most of all, they're fleeing themselves, because in every bad situation, there is necessarily an observing subject whose conscious experience of it, and recognition of it, qualifies it as bad. And most people, being one of said people, like nearly everyone around them, can do shit all to make a difference on their own- where there is a fire that you can't put out, the most logical next step is to look for an exit, the nearest escape hatch, pry it open and drop out of sight. I don't know what Japanese, now ported to America, digital-sound artist Emma Aibara is ducking, cutting, and cantering to avoid, but I feel the angst and instinct to evade one's fate on her LP u:phobia like it was a knife pointed at my own throat. The synthesized heroine framed by the album, a projection of Aibara herself, is much like a partially formed butterfly struggling to free itself from the chamber of a cocoon that seems to be getting tighter, and more anaerobic the longer she gestates in its interior, and who runs the risk of being digested by the thieving stagnant ambiance of her crystalline cell- where it should be fortifying her future, it has become a straitjacket, repressing the exigency of her transformation. Flight is the only option, even on stunted and malformed wings, even where the key to one's salvation is tied to a kite of delusion; when the dilemma is survival or suffocation, escape is sine qua non. To that effect, sound serves as saving-grace: digital-hardcore grooves and loops collide in glancing scrapes off of cracked and shard-yielding percussion; long corridors of syncing effects suddenly shorten and invert their referential dimensions, leaving the listener uncertain as to the nadir and the direction in which gravity is compelling them; fae-formulated harmonizations narrowly evade being clipped by flourishes of shrapnel from caustically kaleidoscopic busts of acerbic beats; and overheated sequences scald and liquefy supple human hardware like a flash flow of magma carbonizing and dissolving the superfluous padding of the architecture of the soul's prison and allowing flitting pearls of internal light to squeeze through the open cracks and ascend heavenward. What shadows Emma Aibara is staying a heel and a jump ahead of is not clear from my vantage point, but I can see the crest of dawn illuminating the path before her. I know not where she is absconding, only that wherever she is headed, I want to be there too. I don't know what Japanese, now ported to America, digital-sound artist Emma Aibara is ducking, cutting, and cantering to avoid, but I feel the angst and instinct to evade one's fate on her LP u:phobia like it was a knife pointed at my own throat. The synthesized herione framed by the album, a projection of Aibara herself, is much like a partially formed butterfly struggling to free itself from the chamber of a cocoon that seems to be getting tighter, and more anaerobic the longer she gestates in its interior, and who runs the risk of being digested by the thieving stagnant ambiance of her crystalline cell- where it should be fortifying her future, it has become a straitjacket, repressing the exigency of her transformation. Flight is the only option, even on stunted and malformed wings, even where the key to one's salvation is tied to a kite of delusion; when the dilemma is survival or suffocation, escape is sine qua non. To that effect sound serves as savior, digital-hardcore riffs and loops collide in glancing scrapes off of cracked and shard-yielding percussion; long corridors of syncing effects suddenly shorten and invert their referencial dimentions, leaving the listener uncertain as to the nadir and the direction in which gravity is compelling them; fae-formulated harmonizations narrowly evade being clipped by flourishes of shrapnel from caustically kaleidoscopic busts of acerbic beats; and overheated sequences scald and liquefy supple human hardware like a flash flow of magma carbonizing and dissolving the soft superfluous junk of the architecture of the soul's prison and allowing flitting pearls of internal light to squeeze through the open cracks and ascend heavenward. What shadows Emma Aibara is staying a heel and a jump ahead of is not clear from my vantage point, but I can see the crest of dawn illuminating the path before her. I know not where she is absconding, only that wherever she is headed, I want to be there too.

Album Review: Sweat FM - Every Day Is Valentine's Day

I wish I had known about Sweat FM's mix for "Death to America" off of Every Day Is Valentine's Day this past Fourth. Bumping it would have been the apogee of an unceremonious commemoration of a culture and country in decline, which has remarkably endured 250 years only to capsize as an indecorous kleptocracy- Adieu, salaud. However, I stumbled over it on the 5th while checking out some local line-ups at the Bottle, so I'll have to cue it up for next year's barbecue—provided we all don't get baked to radioactive baklava on account of a global nuclear conflict in the interim. Assuming you're not going to spend the next year hoarding beans and fuel in a fallout shelter (and even if you are, why wouldn't you hook up a Wi-Fi router and/or wireless speaker down there?), you can bask in the discernibly hunky, raw-sync romance of Sweat FM's LP, which crossfades (or rather, gracefully camel-clutches maybe) pop-hit-perfection with deep cuts of nuanced new wave and sleaze-greased indie into a collar-elbow tie-up that affixes these disparate genres to rare, neon euro-splash electronica, finding inspired intersecting reciprocation between the Soft Boys, Rilo Kiley, and Rod Stewart on "Emptied" in one instance, while interjecting new shades of blue into Eiffel 65 with a dose of the Cure and binding them in the slimming anaconda-patterned grip of a Mix-a-Lot-anointed beat on "I Can Only Go Too Far," and using Backstreet-born harmonizations and a smear of swampy Sanford sneer to light up ol' glory on "Death to America." It seems certain that Sweat FM's producer provides some original vocals to these mixes, splicing in SoundCloud-rap-quality chants and croons (non-derogatory, merely descriptive) for emphasis where needed, making this electro-consortium of unlikely bedfellows a spiritual extension of the presently reposing-in-power electro-punk project, Real Dominic. Some of the transitions in these mixes are a little on the clunky side and could use some smoothing out, but as is, the compartmentalized flow gives breathing room for the listener to attempt to retrace the process of inspiration and unravel the meaning and intention behind the interspersed layers, while the blockier nature of these syncs is aesthetically invariant with the visage of the DJ himself, a bronzed human canvass of chiseled contemplation. Whether you're out cruising for a rail to ride or pressing for a clutch of confectious currents to crunch in the curve of your sonic sweet tooth, Every Day Is Valentine's Day will hop you up on what feels like a sugar high with no requisite crash until the needle runs out of groove to tickle.

Album Review: DJ Fantome - Zando Beat ! / Electro Madness from Congo Kinshasa

Bandito bards dropping bars in the bifurcating cleft of commerce and culture, nervous flows of energy and goods, commodities and the condemned, circulating in synergy and thriving in a vivid sanctum of sound. In 2021 Congolese producer DJ Fantôme set up a studio in the heart of Kinshasa's Zando ya Monene, the market mecca, a complex of vendors and hustlers who will sell you everything you need, and plenty you won't, an ecosystem of petty puckish entrepreneurs who toil tirelessly to relieve the witless and careless of the burden of an overstuffed pocketbook, literally and figuratively robbing the rubes as an ROI for loading all their skill points in rhetoric and sleight of hand. In this den of dealers, dips, and dubbers, DJ Fantôme found inspiration for a sound project that combined the bustle and bully of this shopstall sprawl with the after-hours retreat of the club where many of these rapscallions can be located after a long day of profit and plunder. Offering various gang members and other locals the chance to spit shards and barbs over his original beats, Zando Beat ! is an attempt to capture the effervescent energy of this market and mayhem mill and juice it with the pulse it deserves, threading the barking, chiding clip, and frequently commanding prose of amateur vocalists with the enigmatic producer's fresh and freaky strains of ghetto techno and trance. It's a symbiosis worth celebrating, flourishing in the open, and thriving in the narrow trench of the tacit vice that validates the will to survive. It's one of those mixes where you have to watch your back while you boogie to it, but that small trippy dose of malice just adds to the thrill of it all.

Ain't no fortress of solitude, this is an armory of sound (Palenque Records). 

Album Review: Hiro Ama - Booster Pack EP

I chanced upon a book compiling '90s rave posters from Japan the other day, and it was pretty exciting. The use of color, and often lack thereof; the stylized and expressive characters drawn specifically to divert the eye and cause the brain to sizzle with imagined possibilities; the chaotic, trippy, and almost manic layouts and combinations of fonts and graphics—totally anarchic, fierce, and belligerently charismatic. More punk rock than the punk rock flyers I grew up with, which were mostly photocopy stills from films like Taxi Driver and Repo Man with the bands' logos superimposed over the actors' eyes, like we were pretending that Robert De Niro was in witness protection or something. No doubt, if the electronic music scene by me in Anywhere, Wisconsin, had the vibrant energy of these rave flyers while I was in high school, my life would have taken a dramatically different turn (and I'd probably have had to go to rehab for some all-too-abundant party drug too)... maybe it all worked out for the best. My tendency to cultivate a quiet, hermetic life in the sprawl of urbania is a byproduct of having already OD'd on power chords and pogo grooves in wilder years, and this more mature malaise has brought me to the point where I'm able to fully appreciate the densely textural and ruminative ambiance of the kind that producer Hiro Ama is keen on plucking from her daydreams and casting into the wind like a fistful of dandelion pappus. This is, of course, all brought full circle by Ama's latest EP, Booster Pack, which is unmistakably a trance album, but not of the kind that one might find in any of the erstwhile basements, lofts, or warehouses advertised during the high-water mark of Japan's rave era—it's highly tactile, with the grain of polished leather, a palpable kind of body-music that doesn't attempt to escape the confines of personage or personification, but is localized in the pumping circulation of energy through vessels that connect the body with the soul, and propel it to move on command. It's polished, but not barren of imperfections or the pulse of human warmth. Like her other work, it's not a collection of tracks that takes one out of the moment, but rather permits one to sink ever deeper into it, intensifying a sense of lucidity the longer the listener learns to identify with and interpret the imprint of echoes that it traces on the consciousness. The fact that these tracks are so boldly propulsive when compared to her other pieces grants a certain kinetic liveliness to the reflective reverie of the work, causing a kind of extended anthropomorphism to boil up and swirl around the objects in the vicinity, ceding them a lively and conversative plasticity, and enlisting them as rebounding partners in a volley of charades and assorted gambits of memory. If you find yourself in a full-on argument with a potted plant about the explication of a tarot card you pulled from a deck, or discussing with a nearby interior divider whether its current coat of paint possesses the proper undertone of warmth for the present season, you know you're starting to get somewhere with this record.

Girls who say PRAH (Recordings). 

Album Review: Telesonic 9000 - E.C.H.O.

Are you ready for a new technotronic age? An eon of telescoping, infinite horizons that slices through the staid film of the possible like a superheated knife through a partition of aluminum foil, permitting the divine ray of exceptional human promise to extend through the newly opened aperture and rebound past the edge of our present limitations- isn't that the kind of world you want to live in? Doesn't that sound exciting? Well, keep waiting, 'cause it's already passed. Your future is compulsory and predetermined- a mostly sedentary and anxiety-prone test subject in Sam Altman's open-air laboratory, who, if they are lucky, will get converted into a battery once they've been wrung dry as a dataset. Ah, if only we controlled machines instead of being controlled by machines that serve other masters. Electronic rock artist Telesonic 9000 prefers to wallow in the wellspring of potentiality that existed in the pre-internet age, exploring the hinge points of alternative pathfindings on his 2023 EP E.C.H.O., an audaciously warm resonance cascade that ripples into the ether with immaculate clarity of purpose, intercepting the invisible shapes floating in the torrents of oblivion and mapping them with the precision of an oscillating, cyber-brained chiropteran as it glides out of the snares of the digital dragnet and blindly follows a faithful course of deliverance charted by a reflexive sense of contingency and expectant outcomes once considered common place in an advanced, technologically enmeshed society- a compass of sound, navigating by the vibrancy of the terra incognita in which it seeks, a place whose presence we can hear, but which we must still struggle to depart for if we ever hope to arrive... The album also comes in punchcard form... which is about as whimsical as it is impractical.

Album Review: canekzapata - the consensus isn't dead, it just smells jazzy

One of the most irritating things dimwits attempting to sound intelligent will do is reduce some facet of the human subject down to a rudimentary syllogism- one of the more popular, and stupid, being that the brain is little more than a computer- reasoning that because computers make calculations and process information, and human brains do the same, Q.E.D., our brains are simply low-wattage computers. Absolutely idiotic. A weapons-grade brainlet level of casuistic officiation. News flash, genius: You are not a computer! Like a hammer is not your hand, a shoe is not your foot- humanity is defined by our extensive usage of tools, a pattern of behavior that does not replace our bodies and minds, but rather augments them on orders of magnitude that make the unimaginable become real and tenable over the course of a single generation, as of the advent of modernity. Ergo, humanity can never be displaced by its creations, not entirely, rather we are perpetually on the verge of rebirth in a world shaped by our collective ingenuity. What does this have to do with an experimental music album out of Mexico? Well, due to the advancement of available digital instruments, it is now possible for the purest forms of our imagination to gain some form of grounding, to be filled with marrow and held up by raw, bleeding flesh. If desire has wings, then the graceful appendages holding our passions in ambiance have extended to the farthest lengths of measurable latitudes. Case in point, The consensus isn't dead, it just smells jazzy fragments and shuffles the planes of jazz and soul to repurpose their osseous matter and proteins in a novel metabolism that reorients and re-tangles what it ingests into an elucidating pastiche, refracting the resiliences of its sources and the pageantry of stirring poignancy in a mold that is both distinctively unreproducible and indelibly universal, without the disclusion of direct linguistic translation or conceits to the treacherous topography of discrete cultural forms. The worm of the processes that produced this record bores through any barriers to consciousness and alignment with intentions that refuce to give way on their own, eating through the rot of intransigent concurrence, the cold hand of resting stone in a shwabble-dabble-glibba kind of pattern, like a steady drip of water on a mountainside, or a worm inching through mulching, tunneling through a first edition of Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, instructing in its progressive path of transformation that the weight of presupposition is little more than a temporary impediment, and often rather serves as a buffet to replenish its replacement. Every revolution of the globe is a new day, and every innovation produces a dawn that stretches beyond the line of sight, breaking only on the shores of infinity- inching ever closer to the sun, and yet never burning. 

Interview: Cocojoey

Born on a whim and sailing through tragedy, Chicago's experimental sound cub and maximalist melodist Cocojoey hangs off the ledge of infinity's crest while netting the fractured crystals of the universe in outstretched palms on their Hausu Mountain debut, a digi-orchestral odyssey, concisely and informatively titled, simply Stars. They also make some hella wacky music- in a good way, in a fun way, in a sort of serious and enlightening way too. In another place, in another time, it would not be far-fetched to imagine Russell Mael or Dr. Demento leaping over each other to present Joey with pathfinding mentorship and formulative counsel- alas, in our forlorn era Joey may have only the distant spheres of atomic combustion to illuminate and gird their bearings (ok, so there is Doug and Max too, but let's be real, not all viable advice can be boiled down to Phish metaphors). Even in the swirling void of our present-day cultural miasma, these seemingly insignificant pinpricks of burning lights align in a constellation of ebullient steps for Joey, with the cosmos extending like the playfield of a pinball machine, attending to their quicksilver as they parlay impulses into a responsive material reality, simultaneously generating conductive flashes of joy and blissful energy in a tumbling accumulation of ephemeral fortune accelerated by a boundless sense of presence, that seeps into gaps of despair and terraforms them into dens of accentuated recognition. If any of this sounds intriguing to you, and I hope it does, then check out my interview with Cocojoey below, for a glimpse into their inner world:

Note that this interview was done in the fall of 2025, hence Joey's comments about what they planned to do over the winter (2026). I meant to release this interview in December (2025), but due to work, the holidays, travel, health stuff, and a lot of me just being me, its drop date got pushed back. Maybe Joey can write a distrack about my lack of time management. I would welcome the creative feedback. 

Check out Stars below and visit Hausu Mountain for more cool records. 

Album Review: fallingwithscissors - the death and birth of an angel

Young'uns are calling fallingwithscissors's second EP the death and birth of an angel "breakcore"... Now, I'm in the habit of defending the opinions of my juniors, but in this case the kids' brains are shot through, I swear. Does this sound like "Same Old Chiyo Shit"? Come on, get educated... On the flip side, I read a review of this album from someone who is clearly 40, who described it (lovingly?) as an incoherent mess... Are people just not able to hear and appreciate a song with multiple parts anymore? And I thought the yutes had short attention spans. My rebuttal to said reviewer: "Sir, don't you have something more pressing... like planning your retirement? Where is your wife?" I hate to break it to you all, but there isn't some secret code to understanding the death and birth of an angel- Errorzone was only 8 years ago. Atari Teenage Riot launched 34 years ago. Get caught up, or get left behind. fallingwithscissors is a current-day metalcore band. the death and birth of an angel is a current-day hardcore record with nods to dissonant dance music, a digital hardcore record if you will -a very fine hardcore record at that- but let's not get too distracted by the anime visuals and start slapping "break-this" and "break-that" all over everything. Okay? Have a little restraint, folks. Now the death and birth of an angel a cool take on what's come before it, and is very much informed by contemporary production and EDM trends in a way reminiscent of forward-facing artists in the vein of Femtanyl and Machine Girl- with, of course, emo vocals and melodic conceits delivered with the flair of a wounded devil and evocativeof turns taken by Alice Simard with her Coffret de Bijoux project. As far as metalcore and its consequences are concerned, though, I do like the direction that this record is pointing, one that feels fresh but firmly rooted, and one that, sonically and meta-texually, acknowledges the human race's consciousness as it rapidly synthesizes with an augmented digital reality- all while retaining some semblance of the rage exerted by the animal nevertheless impounded in the interior. The way the death and birth of an angel sort of clicks together with such baneful efficiency has me thinking it's the extreme aural equivalent of a Battle Angel style cybernetic being, assembled from components of disparate designs and eras, but repurposed into a sleek and deadly visage of mechanized bionic fury, capable of venting the calvaria of a skull with a single swift blow like it was a can of cranberry sauce. A sweet cybernetic cherub, whom death follows like billous oily perfume.

Album Review: DJ Ramon Sucesso - Sexta dos Crias 2.0

Democratic in origin, flexible but dictatorial in constitution, DJ Ramon Sucesso's second LP is a direct sequel to 2023's Sexta dos Crias, itself a deposition of his infectious virtual "bubble beat" demonstrations. The channeling of his style into the cast of an album is more of an extension of the experiment than a formal climax, though. In comparison and guided by this analysis, the resounding conclusion is that Sexta dos Crias 2.0 is demonstrably mad, cracked, loopy, unwound, and sublated- a contorted hip-hop engine that operates on oxidized hardware and a slime-warping logic board, blithely unfurled in a brambly drugget down a hall of bruised spoils and landing in the pit of an anarchic rubber-room only to shoot back up the silo of its descent to clear a near-perfect dismount before catching the wings of another precocious rhythmic laceration of logical succession. An impish and impractical-seeming chiding of sequential experience and sensory cohesion- a cartoonish illumination of divine dance-floor intervention- a fission of splintering sonic compounds whose scattering particulates pierce and recombine their neighboring resonances, driving them to implode, invert, and reunify upon impact into deranged but adaptive novel configurations. A nourishing primordial soup that replenishes as it is consumed- never expended, ever expanding, like the contents of a cup that runneth over with frothy inspiration. Everyone is working for the weekend, only some are working (and succeeding) at making the liberation we seek on a Friday night into the standard we enjoy every day of the week.

Como acima, assim embaixo (Lugar Alto).

Album Review: Opal Vessel - Flesh Grinder

Subliminally caustic. Understated madness. Incomprehensible forms, with roots veining into the imaginary, as sepsis would leak from a rotten tooth into a pink-sheathed jawbone. Spreading as a wildfire, only as a brain fever of disconnected images, sounds, electric impulses, and tremorous anxieties. Violence in its final, most hushed permutation. Insidious, a poisonous aura with no taste or scent, encircling its prey without judgment or mercy. A finality colder than death. Not ruthless, but implacable all the same. Bubbling up from the pulpy bed of a blood-drunk akasha, inky and tenacious, but sobered from its feast of carnage, reflective in the depraved glow of its excesses—not remorseful, but one could be fooled. What more can be wrought from a mean horizon of esse but the lamentations which a thing such as it can inspire? The whimpering, the braying hatred, the orotund waves of sorrowful cries... a sweet symphony on some planes, but a hollow din on levels much higher. Hunger comes after the first course, of course, but it's a peculiar appetite that scrapes the guts even when the plates are clean, and it comes time for dessert. A silent expectancy and greed for a bounty richer than carnal comestibles can furnish, and yet blacker than the shade offered by six feet of grave dirt. When the Flesh Grinder has concluded its bladed dance, what satiation can the aurlization of a black hole continuum pursue to make whole the fullest deprivations of its sanguinary intentions? Where does the chthonic nadir of desire lie?

Interview: Post-Trash + 2025 Recap

You get through your first full week of 2026? Good! Glad the year hasn't killed you yet (not for a lack of trying, I'm sure). Before you finally kiss 2025 goodbye and drop it in the dustbin of history, take a look back with Dan and Pat of Post-Trash and myself as we chat about some of our favorite albums of the past year. 

If you don't already know, Post-Trash is an incredible resource for underground and alternative music coverage with a flexible coverage philosophy and a genuine openness to fresh critical voices. I used to contribute to Post-Trash back when I was just starting my illustrious music writing career (pause for applause/laughter/rain of rotten vegetables), and I'm forever thankful for Dan being willing to give a hopeless weirdo like me a chance to air out his errant opinions. 

Listen to the conversation here:

Albums covered in this episode (in order of appearance): 

Grace Rogers - Mad Dogs

Nyxy Nyx - Cult Classics Vol. I

Hiver & Jason Koth - Offers

Danny Brown - Stardust

Prewn - System

Wombo - Danger in Fives

Militarie Gun - God Save The Gun

Hedonist - Scapulimancy

2025 Year-End Invitational

Ah, another year, another year older, another year closer to kissing dirt. I should be less glib in my introduction for this year's list because this year was not so bad on my ears. Many artists of note, prestige, and accreditation that I've managed to keep a bead on had releases. Melody's Echo loaded a hot one into the Chamber, and Stereolab made themselves heard again with a fresh sonic assay. Billy Woods dropped an album in the same year that he and Elucid ignited a heater with The Alchemist, and then The Alchemist daisy-chained that dish with a second serving of Alfredo along with Freddie Gibbs. La Dispute crashed back into view with No One Was Driving the Car, White Reaper showed they still have something left in the tank with Only Slightly Empty, and Deftones shared some Private Music with the public. Also, Turnstile released Glow On again for some reason. It's all fantastic, and you won't hear a disparaging word from these lips as far as the quality of any of it, but...  why do I still feel underwhelmed? Am I just spoiled for choice? Spiritually sick? I can't say for sure, but I just can't muster the will to commentate on any of it. 

"Saying thing is your job! You have one job! Why you no do job good?!?" I hear you shrieking at me (hypothetically). Firstly, no, my actual job is much less interesting than writing about music (and incidentally pays much better too [emphasis for exaggeration]), and secondly, none of the "big" releases this year are of the kind that I even entertain for coverage here, normally. They're all either on major labels (or on labels that are large enough that they can run in the same pack as the majors on occasion), and they all have large enough audiences that my throwing 2 cents into the coffee can doesn't do much for either of us (emotionally, commercially, artistically, etc...)  

Then there is the fact that they're all huge la discourse artists, aka music makers that you have to have an opinion on (mandatorily sanguine btw unless you're carving a niche brand as a "discerning" contrarian [ie a fussy little bitch]) in order to build a reputation as a take-haver, taste-contriver, and cultural instigator (read: gatekeeper). None of that interests me. I'm not looking to become a marketable personality, one who imposes a canon on people, enforces a listening regimen, or gives people anxiety about what they are or aren't committing brainpower to enjoying (however low voltage). My goal here is to share what I find interesting/invigorating with you as a supplement to your other habits of listening and engagement, as a personal labor of love and expressive outlet, and hopefully in a way that is enough off the beaten path that you escape the dehumanizing torrent of algorithmic optimization- at least for the one minute to an hour or so it takes to read/listen one of my reviews/interviews (hey, a minute of fresh air in the prison yard a day helps reduce stress and illness in inmates according to leading studies on the subject, so you can think of me as providing a similar benefit). 

The other thing about all these big, crucial names in music (really any flagship standard-bearers in the moment) is that even when what they're doing is good, worthy, and platinum standard (which, in my estimation, it mostly is), emotionally, for me, it just lands like more "content." Like, I like what they do, but keeping up with them kind of feels like being on a treadmill long after the buildup of lactic acid in my system has caused my organs to begin humming with a concerning arrhythmia. As in, "Oh, so-and-so has a drop on the way, I should probably know what that's about," instead of IDK, giving my brain a break, or whatever... Continuing as before, it often feels like running an extra mile after I've already completed a 5k. I have to ask myself, am I doing this for my own health, or am I doing it because other people are going to run that extra mile, so I should too...? It's a paradox I've wrestled with for a while without a clear or satisfying resolution. 

Something that Danny Brown (whose LP, Stardust, was an essential release for me this year) said in an interview recently that resonated with me is that there are "too many artists, and not enough fans." This was in response to a general question about why it's harder than ever to find fresh-sounding music, and it's a sentiment I understand deeply. Everyone is trying to sell you something and no one is happy with what they've got. Too many proclaimers, and not enough people to hear their pronouncements. Too many profits, and not enough disciples. Too much butter and not enough popcorn. Especially as someone who considers themselves both an artist (don't laugh) and an avid listener (ok, fine, laugh), I think I have to get better at being the latter and be more comfortable with modest ambitions towards the former. In other words, I need to focus on listening more deeply and thoughtfully, and being more selective about what I hear, while having fewer expectations as to my status as an indie/DIY/punk/emo/blowhard/etc...etc... blogger. After all, appreciation is the point, and if something doesn't call out to me, it's alright to leave it unexamined, resting, at peace where it lies. I've already started to do just that, filtering more of what I hear and not chasing things down if they don't immediately grab my attention. But as far as content here, I'm definitely looking to make a notable pivot in coverage- after I clean out the current backlog of albums angling for my assessment (said list is about 900 albums long btw). 

It might be a minute, but where I'd like to direct my focus in the future is at more international artists, specifically those coming out of Africa and South and Central America. For various reasons, these parts of the world are on the rise and rapidly more self-sustaining, and these trends are going to result in a cultural output in the coming years that I'm excited to see blossom into maturity. I've already received two emails in the last week of this year from publicists promoting amapiano artists, so the shift might be easier than I realized, as the universe may be pulling me in that direction with or without my conscious assent. 

In sum, my goals for 2026, for this blog and my life, are to be more chill towards myself and music, and to be a better listener, appreciating what I have and looking towards a brighter future (even if the brightest stars are not shining nearest to my home). As for 2025, below is a list of 25 albums I thought were rad as hell and/or touched my soul but didn't get around to writing about in the preceding 12 months. Have at them and have a Happy New Year!

Weatherday - Hornet Disaster (Topshelf Records)

2025 really was off to a good start when Hornet Disaster dropped in March. I had no idea it was on its way until Top Shelf emailed me about it, and it's been at the top of my mind since. There are some top-notch emo elegies here (naturally, again, issued on Top Shelf), and some that will affirm and ensure Weatherday's status as a seminally influential underground artist for decades to come, tracks such as "Hug" with its dreary sense of yearning and crawling, as well as the anguish-sickened passages, biting blizzard-y feedback swells of "Blood Online" and the wired-warp and seething surge of alienated implosion that is "Nostalgia Drive Avatar." Funnily, even though its predecessor Come In was only released in 2019, Hornet Disaster has the feeling of a revival album for the artist, which is understandable, as the impact that Weatherday has had on the modern underground music scene at an international level is almost incalculable, and frankly, that meant that they had a lot to prove with this release. It's not as overtly reclusive or peculiarly scratchy and experimental as what we've come to know Weatherday for, but it's just as daringly sentimental and compelling in its wounded gait, maintaining its shadowy eminence without sacrificing its emotional core. Despite everything, Weatherday is still themself. Forever.

 

MJ Noble - Songs From My Castle Tower (Doom Trip)

The immediate and insistent impression that I was seeded with upon beholding the cover of MJ Nobel's third album, Songs From My Castle Tower, was that it was the vessel of a cybernetic current and celestially radiant flow of ethereal inspiration, cascading over and between the battlements of an Avalonian spire, pouring down on the teeming mass of mortals below like cool, molten starlight... Now, it may be somewhat anticlimactic to acknowledge, but these initial impressions, gleaned from appearances alone, were impeccably precise. An elfin excursion into a vespertine grove of dark illumination is exactly what this album is- emancipation in a fantastical world of blissfully incarnate passion, rendered in arresting fidelity at the nexus of wondering daydreams and fiber-optic fanned eudaimonia. Folk music for a digital dynast with root privileges to your heart.

Citric Dummies - Split With Turnstile (Feel It Records)

My esteem for Feel It Records grows by the day. Sam's work with the label became a gold standard in my personal punk headcanon after splunking into Why Bother?'s catalog; now it's going platinum with this Citric Dummies LP, Split With Turnstile (which, ironically, is more vital than the album that the actual Turnstile released this year). A bio that I read of them alludes to their sound jumbling and interlocking odds and stray crumbs from Barely Legal era Hives, the Dwarves, and the buzz-bomb of contemporaries Dark Thoughts, and while that's all enough to stake your life on when it comes to this record, in essence, it's a vindication of that classic early hardcore style as a means of liberating your crown clean off your dome- fast, irreverent, catchy, and uncontainably hostile- they're like a dog that bites your leg and, via a metastatic psychic mutation, is able to inject a scathing and scandalous rejection of the human condition in its current-year craven state, directly into the mainline of your arteries like snake venom. This record is the good kind of sick!

Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You A Million Dollars (Self-Released)

With one of the most Coen brothers-esque titles I may have bonafided with these tired eyes, Houston "dust-gaze" bowlers Shallowater grant a sip of succor to the people lost in the godless desert of 2025 with their second LP God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars. Much has been made of the "country" side of this record, and while it does have quite a bit of twang tucked in around the trim, it's really only "country" in the way that an old windmill left in a fallow wheatfield to oxidize into an indigestible cereal of sharp, coarse particulates could be considered "country," or an old barn cat caught in a snare laid for a fox outside the henhouse- a dark reflection and a fateful and justly cruel metaphor for the silent, progressive decay and barrenness of spirit and soil that has exhausted the heartland. That kind of "country."

life - we won't say a word until tomorrow (Self-Released)

It's been a banner year for Damián Ojeda. Ok, every year is a big year for Damián, but between his various black metal, shoegaze, emo, and skramz marquees, he's dropped something like 40 separate albums- the majority of which I have not heard because I have a job and a wife—but more than life simply getting in the way of bingeing on his output, I'm frequently stricken with an awe-induced paralysis by his work, wherein I feel compelled to spend long stretches of time simply wallowing in and soaking up the vibe and nuances of each release, incapable of moving on until I've wrung all the serotonin I can out of it. Case in point: I haven't been able to step past his summer release, we won't say a word until tomorrow, under the life honorific, to get a taste of the other three or four other life titles he's dropped since. It's just a beautifully painful listen. Conscious and cathartic, patient and devoted, bleak and blissful. Most bands are lucky to come within spitting distance of something this compelling in their entire career, and yet, this probably just felt like another Friday to Damián when he unveiled it to the world. Now, this is a fantastic record; I've already said as much, and the semi-final track "allusion to summer distance" was literally my song of the summer, but what really wins it a bushel of roses from me is the locket-shaped snippet on the cover of this album which encloses Nana Osaki and Nana Komatsu in an eternal embrace and whirl of intractable kismet. Ai Yazawa is a genius, an inimitable talent, and her manga about tragically fated love and diehard friendship vibes so hard with this album that it almost feels like they were made with each other in mind. It's all the heartbreak you can handle- sealed with a kiss.

Menace4Hire - With All That I Know Now (Self-Released)

On With All That I Know Now, Chicago MC Menace4Hire invokes a nostalgic and contemplative frame of mind, weaving observations and hard-wrung conclusions together like a colorful ribbon that connects the sun-faded images of a life in reflection as they lie static in a heavy photo album. Dust-tripping skips and loops rotate under Menace's studious reels of commentary, and lissome yet graceful flow like the treadmill of his mind, propelling him forward and sparing him from stagnant complacency, as the wheels turn and epiphanies emerge like daylight pouring over the horizon. There will be plenty more for Menace to come to know, as he is still young and the world has yet to put its full weight on his shoulders, but he's already got sure footing, clear eyes, and wisdom to bank, and that counts for a lot.

Flora Hibberd - Swirl (22Twenty)

Lucky you that you get to share a planet with Flora Hibberd. And what good fortune that she has an album out this year, called Swirl. And while we're counting our blessings, there is a song on that album titled "Lucky You," a peppy and sardonic twist on Americana and a tender take on garage-pop that sizzles with impulsive fluorescence- kind of like the record on the whole. Swirl was recorded by the London-born, Paris-palisaded guitarist/singer/songwriter in the Northwestern city of Eau Claire, which since at least For Emma, Forever Ago has garnered a reputation for sublating the traditions and trappings of standard American playing styles- in other words, Flora Hibberd, who on this LP exhibits intersecting qualities of Haley Fohr and Cat Power, happens to find herself at ease and in good company in her circuitous yet delicate evasion and amendment of orthodoxy

Superdestroyer / Leave (Nelson) B - NCTV Vol. 2: Negative thoughts about myself and people I love dearly (Lonely Ghost Records)

Superdestroyer and LNB are moots irl. That's pretty much it. That's why this album happened. You can learn more about its precursor in this interview I did with the guys last year. Ok, bye! *shoving noises, muffled commotion* Alright, fine! So my editor (ie my conscience) is telling me that I need to say more about this record, because it's made by good people, who happen to be two of my favorite emo/DIY personalities, and it's a very fun and edifying listen... which is exactly why it's hard to come up with things to say about it... Like, have you ever looked at that panel of Dr.Manhattan sitting ponderously on the surface of Mars, gazing longingly starward, and thought to yourself, "yeah, same." Alright, now imagine there are two Dr. Ms, and they both just lost someone irreplaceable to them. That's the vibe of this LP, only less forlorn and crowned with a finish of stardust and cosmic dynamism.

they are gutting a body of water - LOTTO (ATO Records)

They Are Gutting a Body of Water... what, do they live near a data center or something? You think I'm just being funny, but there is something somewhat prophetic about this Philly group (who everyone insists are shoegaze, though to my ears they're doing a grunged-up version of Sunny Day Real Estate, but WHAT DO I KNOW? I'm only an expert when it comes to these sorts of things) and their album LOTTO, a distorted, weathered tome and sonic manuscript, depicting a world drained of vitality and its sense-making structures, where people filter in and out like flames in the dark, choked to a snuff by a high wind. Apparitions glide around the periphery of a séance circle, a distant zone blighted by a spiritual fugue of amnesia. It's bleak enough of a setting that it could almost be mistaken for our own broken system of sinking pirate-ocracy. Don't you feel fortunate to have lived long enough to witness a fanatical state of parasitism, once only imaginable in fiction, become grounded reality? Maybe fortunate isn't the right word. But only the depths of irony can do justice to the inheritance of such a wretched windfall.

Cola Boyy - Quit to Play Chess (Record Makers)

Look at this photo of Matthew Urango, aka Cola Boyy. Look at this little pimp! Bro looks like he's got the world at the end of a yo-yo string- give it a flick and let it ride like a platinum disco record at a late-night house party. Quit to Play Chess is the gold-hearted, neo-disco-funk auteur's final record, unfortunately, as he passed away earlier this year, but it contains his best realized efforts to date. "Abundant" is a term I would use liberally to describe the passionate and distinctive confluences of crunchy Caribbean rhythms, surfy chop chords, drum and bass rattle, equitable yacht rock, and big hairy disco grooves that generously extend over the whole of this album and breathe a technicolor authenticity into its plentiful vision of the world's potential. You'd have to have a piece missing from your heart not to vibe with the pure mood manifest on this record. RIP Matthew. Thank you for this solid gold send-off.

Lealani - Beep Bop Boop (Self-Released)

It's a tale as old as... well, AOL chat rooms. Girl goes online. Girl falls in love... with a machine. What, you think she was going to get a boyfriend? Well, sure, ok, but what can a man do for you that an optimized hard drive and fiber optics connection can't? Ok... I'm hearing something about... jars? Jar opening can be automated. What can't be automated is girls (well, a girl in this case) leveraging their love of technology to approximate sonic encounters with extraterrestrial travelers party-crashing from digital destinations unknown. Beep Bop Boop is Lealani's second solo LP, a neon-aura glam bath of leisurely gratifying and marginally disquieting, petite pop-epigrams and escapist codas that function like little trap doors in the floor of a stuffed animal factory, which drop into recesses of dayglo laughter and pots of harmonizing amphibians. AI could never match what Beep Bop Boop is rolling out, and if it tried, Lealani would likely glitch-prompt it into oblivion with the chaos seed of her psyche.

Faetooth - Labyrinthine (The Flenser)

Personally, I'm psyched that bands are starting to describe their music as distinct and definite genres of their own making more and more often. It shows a real clarity of vision and a desire to control one's own narrative. Take Faetooth: they're calling their style "Fairy Doom." There are a number of ways that you could interpret said designation, but it gets the point of their sound- a combination of the earthen whimsy of Chelsea Wolfe, the witchy desperation of Ragana, the avant-chaos of Thou, and the ambient fury of Show Me the Body- across to you like a flaming bolt to the breastplate. The cold majesty of their latest LP, Labyrinthine, feels best appreciated in the absolute, most dismal spans of winter, the periods during which it genuinely seems sane to ponder whether a thaw will ever grace the land again. We haven't hit that point quite yet in the Midwest as of this writing, but when we do, I'll be thankful to have the frigid solace of this album to keep me company.

Johnny Football Hero - Contingency Plan (Lonely Ghost Records)

Johnny Football Hero sounds completely pissed off on their LP, Contingency Plan. Their outrage and the outpour of grievance is at such an extraordinary, heated degree of fervency that it's transformed them into an entirely different band. The thing that makes them somewhat recognizable on this release, when compared to their '21 EP, Complacency, is the subject matter of their songs, which remains a reflection of the near-ubiquitous batter-thick spread of suffering that blankets the swelter of our modern hell world. It's all post-hardcore, incoming like a cloud of Nerf-footballs strapped with c4- whistling, blazing, and hot with intent, striking with precision and spreading the fever of their indignant fervor like a plague of premeditated epiphany and motivated malcontent. Emergencies call for action, and action is what Johnny Football Hero aims to inspire.  

84 Tigers - Nothing Ends (Spartan Records)

I'm presuming that the Reed brothers zeroed in on the name for their band because '85 Bears would have been too traitorous and '83 Lions would have been too obvious for the proud Motor City denizens, and for a project birthed to examine themes of nostalgia, loss, and maturation, you don't want a nom de plume that distracts too much from the subject matter, or the music for that matter. 84 Tigers’s second LP, the affirmatively titled Nothing Ends, offers a tightfisted, sober strain of melocore that raises the gut-plunging introspection of Chuck Ragan's repertoire, with a deservedly grungy afterburn to its headstrong chord crunch, and possesses a bitter acidity in the absorbing plateaus of its marrow that stings in nettling distinction with the pragmatic yet replenishing assurances of its lyrical content. A tyrant and a confidant, folded into one.

Samba Touré - Baarakelaw (Glitterbeat Records)

Literally the last time I wrote about a blues artist was when I interviewed Deludium Skies back in February. So, for this next pick I'm going to be discussing a tribute to the Rolling Stones' Sticky Finge—NAHHHHHH, psych! Screw that Boomer-slop impostor Americana- listen to Samba Touré's Baarakelaw. It's better for you, it's more soulful, it's got more heart, it's real; it's about the sweat and scratch required to dust up the dough to make a loaf of bread, and the blood and clay that build the foundations of communities. Transcendent, rhythmic guitars woven in poetic patterns, pulling threads and mosaic imprints into a tapestry of contemporary life in conversation with the traditions upon which it is founded. It's not technically the blues, but it's how you can best translate what Samba is up to if you're not Malian.

Liaam - Dancing With My Clothes On (Self-Released)

There is something about Liaam that makes me think he'd thrive in a standard-cable package slot where he's allowed to make surrealist skits with sock puppets... but maybe that's entirely because he reminds me of another twiggy, wiggly man with a similar-sounding name. It has nothing to do with his music, which sounds like he's afflicted with an itchy case of Half Japanese, with a far more terminal secondary diagnosis of Swell Maps... I'm afraid it's inoperable, ma'am. The best thing we can do for him is let him dance with his favorite collegiate blazer and tapered slacks until the friction starts to spark and he goes out in a puff of pyrrhic glory. I think it's what he would want, ma'am... that and his own TV show...

Sallow Moth - Mossbane Lantern (Lilang Isla)

The Sallow Moth saga continues with Mossbane Lantern, named for a vegetated artifact of either profoundly magical or obscure technical origins that rests discreetly hidden in an icy inlet and grants its possessor the ability to teleport long distances, or even interdimensionally... It would probably be helpful if I mentioned that Sallow Moth is a conceptual sci-fi sound project by super-industrious metal master Garry Brents, in which he explores a universe set into chaos by mutant celestial moths who have degenerated from their positions as cosmic gardeners and naturalist stewards into a force that threatens the fabric of reality itself. Mossbane Lantern is Garry's only LP with this project in 2025 (the other releases under the Sallow Moth banner being a demo and a pair of EPs) and is technically a continuation of the Vial EP from 2024. This all might sound crazy, but it really pales in comparison to the actual music on this beast, which sounds like Cynic performing some manner of manic, fungus-flavored jungle-jazz to appease a disturbed Quetzalcoatl-like apparition. It's the farthest thing you can imagine from normal and restrained, and that's why it rules!

Bones Shredder - Morbid Little Thing (Sunken Teeth)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What the actual fuck?!? This record makes me feel like it’s 2002 again! Dark, bruisingly catchy and beguilingly haunting pop-punk is not something I ever thought I'd hear with fresh ears posterior to the Bush-era implosion of everything charmingly irreverent about punk in the daunting umbra of perpetual imperialism and economic disarray. I guess things just had to get bad enough for people to stop worrying and embrace the terminal glissade enough to welcome morbid make-out anthems like the sanguinely pining "Let Me In" and tuneful tug of "Pulling Teeth" into the crypt of their heart chamber. It helps that there is as much Pinkerton as From Here to Infirmary in this venomous brew, helping to balance out the persistent allusions to tragedy with an obliging antivenin of hope.

YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds (AD 93)

The last time I encountered NYC quartet YHWH Nailgun was when I stumbled across their 2022 EP while killing time in an Airbnb in Louisville. I have such a vivid memory of that place, as well as the way YHWH's ricochet and recoil contrasted with its pseudo-Victorian decor, dark-shrouded interior, and sturdy but ancient furniture, shattering the idle calm of that place as if it were a radiation-laden satellite tumbling back in time to Deep Impact the house Wuthering Heights was based on. Their LP 45 Pounds eternalizes the freak energy that captivated me initially, while continuing to be just as incongruously alien within the modern setting of my home as they appeared to me while I was hibernating between the folds of an Emily Brontë novel. On this album, YHWH articulates something sonically akin to a lobotomized David Byrne, whose frontal lobe has been partially replaced with an outdated TV antenna that only picks up scrambled broadcasts of West African variety shows and rejected episodes of Later... with Jools Holland from an alternative dimension where Xiu Xiu had pivoted to become a particularly bizarre and brazen, hemp and barbed-wire necklace-hawking jam band. It's called 45 Pounds, but to me it's as dense and massive as a black hole caving in God's forehead.

Summer 2000 - Blue Meringue (Self-Released)

What is a Blue Meringue? According to Summer 2000, it's something along the lines of a wake pool filled with tar- an undulating state of paralysis where you're somehow always propelled forward while simultaneously sinking deeper into place- like trying to use a bungee cord to escape a whirlpool, or a Toyota pinned in place by a block of cement gouging into its undercarriage while it spins its wheels. It's a good metaphor for the necessity of growing through one's experiences while still feeling inadequate with the results. In the end, you can't really ever escape yourself due to the inertia of your flaws; you can only ever learn to live with and accept yourself and make the best of the consequences, even if you're perpetually aggrieved by how far you have fallen short of expectations. You're only human after all, and even when you've run over the median barrier and bent up your axle, as long as you're alive, you can always call a tow and get back on the road... eventually. Your insurance agent and/or SO might not be too happy with you, but as long as you're trying your best, you run a good chance of being forgiven for your roadside mishaps... probably. That's what I'm getting from Summer 2K's Blue Meringue, at least. A simple reminder of your inescapable humanness from a deeply thoughtful album.

Bug Moment - The Lazer Collection (Self-Released)

The first (and actually only) time I've seen Milwaukee's Bug Moment was when I caught them opening at a show at the Cactus Club where Blind Equation, Hey, ily, and Heccra were also playing... It was one of the most stacked lineups I can recall seeing outside of Chicago this year, and it's still one of my 2025 highlights. Being in that kind of company should give you a good idea of what to expect on their EP, The Lazer Collection, but then again, they're their own breed of shimmering, polychromatic anomaly, separate from their peers. Bug Moment certainly favors twinkly guitar antics, extreme metal vocals, and micromusic-esque infusions of electronics, but they also have this huge, whirlwind quality to their music, as well as perfectly calibrated pop-punk and alternative songwriting instincts that make comparisons to Paramore and Flyleaf unforced and positively apt. I like this album a lot. You could even say I've got the Bug Moment bug! ...at least for the time being.

La Rat - La Rat (South of North)

Sometimes to find the good stuff you have to dig deep... or look in the gutter. That's where I presume La Rat spends most of their time (although I found them via my Bandcamp feed, which, seeing as it mainly consists of solo noise and ambient projects at the moment, could be considered part of the internet's sanitation drainage system and digital superfund site, and might require government intervention to regulate accordingly). The Amsterdam-based duo's self-titled LP is a strange and vibey hip-hop volume detailing accounts of urban scavengery, that pack-rats together sooty soul samples and rough-cut R'n'B grooves into clumpy tangles of dirty delights, which vocalist Goya van der Heijden burrows into and gnaws to pulp with the scissors-like incisors of her squeaky but breathy, hushed but boldly furtive flow. This one is all cheddar, hold the cheese.

El Michels Affair - 24 Hr Sports (Big Crown Records)

I don't have to shout it out every time Leon Michels releases an album, but then again, it feels like I do, as I find them so compelling. To me, Leon is re-engineering the soul album one effort at a time, understanding the influence that soul had on hip-hop, and then working backward from hip-hop back to soul while conserving the marrow of each: the cool swelter and richness of sentiment from soul, and the scrappy, pioneering drive of hip-hop, and forging something unique and unpredictable in their fusion. For his 24 Hr Sports LP, Leon drops the Ghanaian hand-painted movie poster shtick in favor of '80s-uncle's-parlor nostalgia, with a soft-focus photo of a giant trophy adorning the cover. He certainly earned the reward pictured here for past efforts as much as for present ones. We should really give the man a medal every year in an Olympic-style ceremony. Maybe if we start saving our change in a coffee can, we'll have enough to put on that kind of production in time for his next LP in '27-'28 or so.

Mildred - Pt. 1 (Dead Mothers Collective)

Does the apocalypse need a prequel? I guess every disaster has its stages. LA's Milred jumped right to the conclusion of their conceptual drama in a hymn to a tragedy of errors and eras with Pt. 2, and now follows up with this year's Pt. 1, a significantly more involved piece of work spanning more than two hours in run time and incorporating the talents of more than 23 musicians. Still, even at the length of a Golden-Age Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic, this noisy eruption of Birthday Party-esque provocation and Kakotheos-oriented post-hardcore will likely feel shorter and less dyspepsia-inducing than your average Sunday sermon- especially if you have the misfortune of being dragged to one of those houses of "worship" that have incorporated bespoke addresses from a Kirkified-AI prompt into their liturgy- an accepted state of affairs in this country, despite it being outwardly more blasphemous (and unintentionally surreal) than the band Liturgy's entire catalog- not for lack of trying, of course.

Dikembe - King (Skeletal Lightning)

If there was any doubt that I'd save the best for last, fear not, for "best" is a subjective concept, but actually, the King EP from Dikembe is an unexpected delight this year. Not because Dikembe isn't in the habit of delivering catchy, heartfelt, and momentously urgent melodic hardcore, but because it's so effortlessly straightforward and on-point. They really do make it look easy, and that's really what you need after a long year: something that can throw the emergency brake on during the spin-out and give you about 20 minutes or so of breathing room. If that doesn't earn them the right to unilaterally appoint themselves "king" for the moment, then they should stop handing out crowns because they're passing them out to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Long live the squatchy sonic sovereign!

That's it! You made it to the end. Congratulations! Now get out and seize the night! Good luck out there bud. Onward to 2026!

Pictured: Me trying to enjoy my evening.