Album Review: Macie Stewart - Mouth Full of Glass

I wrote about the amazing and lovely new solo record from Ohmme's Macie Stewart for New Noise today. Links below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-macie-stewart/

Buy https://maciestewart.bandcamp.com/album/mouth-full-of-glass

Album Review: Yellow Pills - The Strange Casino, Space Age Inferno & Machines That Go Beep

Chicago has its fair share of diamonds hidden in the closet studios and barely rehabbed, former-manufacturing, now budget practice spaces that litter the city. Some of the artists who immerge from these pocket dimensions are people you know. Others you will recognize on some distant day in the future, when their passion and prowess can no longer be denied. Still, others would rather that they never be found, preferring the freedom allotted them by obscurity. I'm not sure which Ryan Miera and Yellow Pills was aiming to be, but I somehow managed to find him. His secret is out now, like it or not! 

Yellow Pills is Ryan's solo project. Something that he uses to vent musical digressions that would be too difficult to follow with his other band, local indie surf rockers, The Limbos. Born with the name Yellow Candy almost a decade ago, the project has been on hiatus for most of that time, and was only picked up again to help Ryan ward off the onset of madness that could have overtaken him during the COVID-19 shut down last year. And to signal its new direction, the project was rechristened Yellow Pills (also, someone else had started using Yellow Candy, and being a gentleman, Ryan decided to let them have it). 

Since reviving the project Ryan has managed to release three separate LPs, listed here in order of appearance: The Strange Casino, Space Age Inferno, and Machines That Go Beep. While there is significant overlap between Yellow Pills's aesthetic and Ryan's work with The Limbos, the real heart of the project lies in its zeal for experimentation- diving into the fresh and welcoming waters of jazz, funk and hip-hop. These spin drifting bursts of creativity are beautifully realized, coherent and self-contained- presented with a winking sense of absurdist pessimism and troublesome levity that invitingly reminds the listener of Stephin Merritt's wry resistance to creative constraints and Kevin Barnes's seeming capacity to reproduce and irreverently warp any and every sound in the Western pop cannon. 

Taken on the whole, Yellow Pills's catalog already represents something unique within Chicago's underground- a blending of familiar pop elements in a way that is both comforting and unpredictable.  And because I am nothing if not a complete simp for incorrigible underground music, I'm going to take a look at each of these releases and let you know what I think. Someone has to document Yellow Pill's evolution, might as well be someone with my insights, devilish good looks, and obsessive personality... but that's enough about me, let's get to the reviews... 

The Strange Casino

This is the starting point of Yellow Pill's revival. As the cover image implies, this first release is very fitting for some spiritual convalescence in a garden-level rumpus room. It's atmospheric, relaxing, and indulgent. Most of the tracks revolve around a single melodic motif, written and performed for either guitar and piano, and very seldomly, accompanied by vocals. The first couple of tracks start out as mody '60s reverb-soaked surf and R'nB. But before you know, it the lights have dimmed and the mood will have shifted to one of more active lounging- sinking fast into the smokey bebopping grooves of "Salami" and the drowsy waltz of "Sleeping Rosiland." The Strange Casino is music for spaces where you're not expected to get anything of value accomplished and where a drink and a padded barstool are all the company you need for the evening. If you're doing anything more than letting yourself unwind while softly nodding your head and tapping your toes to this record, I'm going to have to pour you a glass of something a little stronger than what you're currently sipping. This is not an album that asks a whole lot of you. Take it up on its offer to coalesce within its unobtrusive vibes. The Strange Casino album is a humble beginning to the project's second phase, and I suspect it is that way by design. 

Space Age Inferno

Space Age Inferno feels like Ryan really hitting his stride with Yellow Pills. This is clearly a production-focused album, with Ryan testing his skills through the mixing process, and making some wonderfully calming dance music in the process. "Midnight Secrets" sounds like it originated from a late-night live DJ set during a college radio broadcast somewhere in early '00s Detriot, while "J's Little Jam" has an upscale kind of elegance to the swagger of its bright and strutting glide. The throwback electronic dance music might form the highlights, but that doesn't mean it's all Space Age Inferno has to offer. The album forays back into jazz for the tranquil typhoon of trumpet and guitar melodies, locked in a wordless duet on "The Short Walk," while wondering into new territory with the obtuse piano-rock of "Olo Como Esta," and the bastardized jellied blues and sharp-toothed jazz that congeal together on "The Preacher." This album is not just more ambitious than its predecessor; it is a marked improvement over it in every way. With the release of Space Age Inferno, Yellow Pills has become a group to watch. An unknown quantity of rolling, elastic potential. 

Machines That Go Beep

Machines That Go Beep isn't a bad album by any means, but it's hard not to see it as a step backward from Space Age Inferno. At least when it comes to the beginning. While on the previous album it felt like Ryan had found a unique voice for the project, blending electronic music with jazz and soul, while taking frequent left turns down blind allies of intent and exploration, Machines seems to blunt the momentum of that previous release, almost on purpose. Machines That Go Beep begins with two south of the border, surf 'n rollers straight of a Los Striaghtjackets or Red Elvises b-side. It's very primo stuff, but it's not as inspired as what we know Ryan's capable of. After these first couple of tracks, Machines recovers with "Operation Human Kills Clone" which picks up the cold, cosmic simmer left echoing in the air from Inferno, and does so with impeccable confidence and flare. And it really only gets better from there. "I don't really like you anymore. Like as a person" is a crisp dub infused jam with a fresh breakbeat and star-spinning synth melody, while "This is what we call a Texas" rides the whiplash of a groovy Latin rhythm, and "Making Out Or Whatever" feels like it could be the backing track to some rare soul and jazz fusion that could have been a regional radio hit in Southern California circa 1971. Then there is a down-and-out acoustic punk track ("Just One More Time") and even stabs at contemporary, small ensemble chamber-folk ("The Lantern").  Machines That Go Beep starts out a little rough, but still manages to provide ample reminders of why Yellow Pills is one of the more versatile and unpredictable solo projects in Chicago's underground. 

Album Review: Pachyman - The Return of...

I wrote about an awesome new dub record from the one and only Pachyman for New Noise today. Check out my words and the album at the links below: 

Review https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-pachyman/

Buy https://pachyman.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of

Album Review: Samara Lubelski - Flicker at the Station

I'm taking a step back to revisit an album from 2018 tonight: Samara Lubelski's Flicker at the Station. Samara is a multi-instrumentalist hailing from Soho who started her career as a violinist, but who quickly transitioned to guitar, bass, and cello- and in the process became a go-to studio musician for the likes of Thurston Moore, the Fiery Furnaces, and Body/Head’s Bill Nace, among others. Since her 1997 solo debut, In the Valley, Lubelski has become known for her prolific output as much as her skills as a musician. Flicker at the Station is her ninth LP, seeing her stick mostly to guitar and vocals to craft intricately layered, jangly, and somewhat avant-garde baroque pop with a whimsically nostalgic feel. The album was recorded in the German countryside, backed by her folk-pop pals and frequent collaborators, the Metabolismus. Flicker at the Station feels like Stephen Steinbrink without the distended melodies, Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society but with more exaggerated grooves, a softer breathing and more patiently indulgent transfiguration of Hall of Fame, and a more cautiously constrained, but still captivating, reconstitution of Stereolab. Whatever other comparisons I could strain from the font of my mind, the bare facts will remain the same, Flicker at the Station is simply lovely. 

Buy Flicker at the Station from Drawing Room Records. 

Album Review: Ninjas Mutantes Adolescentes - Emocion Explosiva

I don't cover a lot of melodic hardcore for the simple reason that it tends to sound to me like a lazier version of hardcore or a try-hard version of skate-punk. Chile's Ninjas Mutantes Adolescentes avoid both these allegations on their Emocion Explosiva EP, and other bands should take note- if you're going to give your hardcore some melody, you better give it all your heart as well. Ninjas Mutantes Adolescentes have that kind of classic punk brashness about them, that kind of headstrong rush of rebellious angst that can't be quelled by cynicism any more than you can put out a house fire with a damp pillowcase and a supper-soaker full of Kool-Aid. On Emocion Explosiva they're able to match DOA's nerve, Minor Threat's galling confidence, Gang Green's gut-punch of anxious and too-few-fucks-to-give thrash, and of course, the Adolescent's pop-inverting punk pounce. The messy and tinnie, slap-dash, and compressed recording quality definitely lends itself to the urgency of the record as well, and makes it all the easier to shout along with the "Oh-ho" gang-vocals of "Fuerza Patinante 5" and temps me to declare pogoing to "Puño Solitario" is damn near mandatory. All that said, the track that really hooks me, is the skittering, unruly clack and welt-faced bruiser Oi of "No Te Rindas." This whole album makes me want to take up skateboarding, which mind you, I have never done before, and is not recommended at my age. Still, Emocion Explosiva has got me feeling full of youthful vigor and I need to do something reckless with it! Maybe I'll just quit my job and roadie for a friend's band for a couple of weeks instead- that's at least less likely to do any long-term damage- physically, that is. I wonder if Ninjas Mutantes Adolescentes would approve. They're to blame, after all. 

Buy Emocion Explosiva here. 

Album Review: In Love With A Ghost - Healing

It being spooky season and all I decided to check in on an artist who has kind of slipped under the radar for me in the past few years; French producer In Love With A Ghost. I was delighted to see that the witchy, synth-hop artist had a new release as of 2020, and listening to Playful Spirits definitely served as a jumping-off point for rediscovering the once anonymous Tumblr denizen's catalog- specifically the album that first introduced me to the ILWAG, their 2017 release Healing. 

While Playful Spirits consisted of mostly unfinished songs and sketches, the majority running between thirty seconds and a minute, most of the songs on Healing don't stick around for much longer but still manage to make a lasting impact. The length of ILWAG's actually forms an important aspect of their aesthetic and their appeal. While they draw from 8-bit NES scores and drum and bass music, their compositions are resistant to becoming the kind of background radiation that bedroom-beats style hip hop tends to. You really can't zone out to these tracks and get much out of them. Instead, each on of ILWAG's songs is best enjoyed with your full attention, as each is calculatingly composed to establish a mood or develop a musical idea to its potential and then elegantly transition to the next. 

What's amazing to me is that ILWAG is able to create so many self-contained little worlds with their music, each with a unique theme and purpose and logically linked to the next. Healing is particularly good at this and stands, in my opinion, as ILWAG's loadstone release. The album tells the story of a burgeoning friendship between a gender-fluid witch a human as they embark on an adventure with some fellow witches in enchanted woods. It's a simple premise and would make for an excellent short animated film- one that captures the whimsy and subtle grandeur of Miyazaki with the absurdist and lightly existential and absurdist hijinks of Adventure Time. Hey, I'd watch it! 

Beginning with a soundcard chirping ditty for an introduction, the album quickly moves to set the scene and introduce our protagonists on "i was feeling down then i found a nice witch and now we're best friends," where the sounds of crinkling leaves and snapping branches are transformed into a crackling hip-hop beat, accompanied by the calming whisper of a ghostly synth melody. The tempo and pace of the antics are stepped up quite a bit on the busy funk jingle "welcome at azerty and qwerty's home," whose frantic, gummy grooves the album will return to on "qwerty enchanted the house and now it's attacking us." While the bustle of the aforementioned tracks adds a sense of rye mischief to the affair, it's the more unobtrusive moments that make Healing a memorable listen. Songs like the tranquility contemplative mosey "let's walk across this forest, i can feel that everything is real again" and the fluid ripple of the meditative melodies and chilled-out synths on "chilling at nemu's place" manage to transfix you in a spell of impenetrable calm and make the album feel truly transportive and rejuvenating. 

Even though Healing is only from 2017, it feels like a message from a saner, more peaceful realm- one that I'm happy to return to often.  

Buy Healing here. 

Hardcore Hangout: Drill Sergeant, Worn, Ideation, SQK Fromme, Desintegración Violenta, Spaced, Mantlet

There are so many hardcore albums. So many I want to listen to and write about. Too many really. They all deserve my time, yet with life, I have too little to spare. It's gotten bad recently and the sheer weight of all the albums I've been ignoring has finally manifest into something like a mental handicap. So I'm clearing the deck! I've scooped up some of the hardcore albums that I've had on the back burner and I'm writing a couple of words about each. No pretense. No backgrounds research. No bullshit. I'm just grabbing them, shoving them in my ear, and seeing what gets spews out the other end and onto the blog. These reviews are super casual. We're hanging out. We're having a good time with some bad vibes. It's happening here. Now. 

Drill Sergeant - Vile Ebb (Convulse Records)

I really like how Drill Sargeant just hits you over the head with the opening riffs of this LP. I feel like I've just had a brick dropped on my skull from three stories up and now the person who is responsible for my injury is also driving me to the hospital- in the rain, in a hatchback with four bald tires... and they are on some shit! Vile Ebb is a rough ride and it lives up to its title. There is a weird kind of psychedelic (psycho-delic?!?) edge to these tracks too. A wiggly kind of jangle that heightens the altered state of mind the band seems to be going for and it pushes the manic vocals to sound even more deranged than they otherwise might. Drill Sargeant might be a lot of things, but they certainly aren't a bore.

Vile Ebb is out via Convulse Records.   

Worn - Human Work (From Within Records)

Solid grooves. That's my first thought when spinning up Worn's Human Work. They've obviously been doing their homework and studying up on what made late '80s New York hardcore, the most kick-ass variety of body music of its day. I like how there is a build-up to the point where they introduce the vocals on "Harm You." There is a lot of tension that gets spun up leading up to that point, and when the vocals come in, they are very scary. The guy is doing a kind of James Pligge style of death vocals. Terse, direct, and deadly. Every line feels like it's taking a bite out of you, and they match the chewy quality of the grooves really well. Especially on "Public Execution" and "Thrown to Dogs." Human Work is the sound of someone's humanity imploding. Good luck putting yourself back together after this one.  

Get Human Work via From Within Records 

Ideation - Blunt Instrument Demo (Dynastic Yellow Star Label)

God, the guy on this cover, is intimidating. I'm pretty sure the band just photoshopped a hood and an assault rifle onto a picture of a knight, but it's still scary as hell. I like it! Sonically, this is one of those records where the band just throws themselves at you. Like they can't tell the difference between a musical performance and a rugby scrum. It mainly consists of slippery, '80s style SS Decontrol riffs and grooves with a dose of d-beat crust in the tank. They've also got that classic kind of irreverence about them that only hardcore bands of a ceratin stripe can pull off. I'm thinking specifically of songs titled "Mỹ Lai Amusement Park" and "Columbine Star Factory." It's tasteless, but art doesn't, and shouldn't, always be entirely pleasant to encounter. The world can be a pretty rotten place to live in. It would be an even worse place though, if art couldn't reflect this rottenness honestly, with all its painful ambiguity and ambivalence.

Get the Blunt Instrument Demo from Dynastic Yellow Star Label here.

SQK Fromme - Self-Titled Tape (Dream House)

Japenese style hardcore that sounds like it was recorded in a haunted house. SQK Fromme achieves some weird effects with guitar distortion on their self-titled tape, a lot of which I'm honestly not sure if I've heard anywhere else. Sometimes the effects just cling to the guitar chords, like loose, flabby skin, that is being sluffed off in some kind of horrible metamorphosis, and other times it sounds like a vengeful spirit is attempting to shriek a curse at you through their amps. Which is fitting because the music would sound completely hostile even without this thick fog of feedback. Half the time, it just sounds like the band are beating each other with their instruments. A lot of bad vibes flowing around on this one... and that's the way I like it. 

Get the Self-Titled Tape from Dream House. 

DESINTEGRACIÓN VIOLENTA - DESINTEGRACIÓN VIOLENTA (Unlawful Assembly)

Vicious blackened and noisy hardcore from cross-continental punks, Desintegración Violenta. Total collapse! Indiscriminate audio violence! The band have built an absolute zone of terror from which there is not safe exit. I'm completely hooked on the Japanese hardcore by way of Latin crust-punk they are playing on their self-titled. It sounds completely hopeless, and like the band doesn't care if they live or die, so long as they can spit blood in your face before the reaper takes them. For whatever reason, bands with a connection to South America are really able to fully realize the potential for defiant, annihilation of form and convention that hardcore music represents, and do it in a way that always feels vibrant and vital. Desintegración Violenta definetly has that much going for them.

Buy Desintegración Violenta's self-titled from Milwaukee's Unlawful Assmebly. 

Spaced - Demo (Self-Released)

Spaced describe their sound as "Far Out Hardcore" and that description is without parallel in my mind. A little bit of Turnstile, a dash of '90s alt-rock, maybe some Scowl and Militarie Gun thrown in- Spaced's demo is a swirling, beam of radiation and lightly lysergic punk, that slams its way into your headspace and unloads the contents of its fevered brain into the tiny cup of your skull until its overflowing and dribbling down your cheeks. Spaced seem to want to be different and plant a flag in the unclaimed margins of today's hardcore scene. And for all intents and purposes, they are doing just that. Good work! A+. No notes.

Get the demo here. 

Mantlet - Concrete Crucifixion (Self-Released)

I can't lie. I really like it when a hardcore band sounds like they just a bunch of dudes beating the shit out of each other in an alley. And that's definitely what I'm hearing on Mantlet's Concrete Crucifixion. This is what I'd expect to be playing in the background while guys break 2-by-4s and empty bottles over each other's heads and thoracic regions. This is especially true on the final track where everything devolves into unrestrained screaming. It's a good place for the album to end btw, because if this was actually a street fight, the point where someone is just rolling around on the ground screaming is right around the time when the cops are likely to pull up and join in the fray. Thankfully, you can get the same kind of adrenaline rush without risking a bloody nose or rupture a disc by listening to Concrete Crucifixion at home with your bros while you play Xbox and give each other noogies. It's your choice. Though, I'm probably going to go with the latter option, and continue to enjoy my health while I imagining the vicarious thrill of the former- with Mantlet's help of course. RIYL: brawling, beatdown, rough housin' with the boys.

Buy Concrete Crucifixion here. 

Interview: Militarie Gun

Image courtesy of the band

Got to talk with Militarie Gun for New Noise and you can read the full conversation I had with Ian Shelton at the link below. Guy's work ethic is absolutely inspiring. 

Interview: https://newnoisemagazine.com/interview-militarie-gun/

Buy one of the TWO Militarie Gun EPs they have out called All Roads Lead To The Gun: https://militariegun.bandcamp.com/

Album Review: Delta - Argentina

Delta is a Berlin-based synth-rock project and one-man-band orchestrated by Giuseppe D'Addurno, who has charted am adventure through mean streets, perilous peaks, and corroded space cruisers on his debut EP, Argentina. Solo synth project can end up sounding a little cold, but that is not a problem for Delta, his three-track release is as warm as freshly drawn bathwater and just as inviting. The balmy tones are reminiscent of John Medeski's own solo work, an artist who is always able to lend a human touch to even the most avant-garde movements. While there are definitely some spacy, progy, and Medeski-esque moments on Argentina (especially in the latter half of "Piedras"), Delta's album is focused squarely on capturing the fluidity of melody. Argentina is pure, liquid sound. It doesn't so much pulse from your speakers as pour. What I think helps achieve this fluidity, is definitely the highly lyrical key work, but also the percussion. And yes, there is acoustic percussion on this record and it does an incredible job of keeping things directed and momentous. Even the cymbal work on "Alien Abductionism" gives the track an extra splashy feel, one that will hijack your brain and transport it directly into a test tube filled with a lysergic seltzer. If it feels right, dive in! Take a couple of laps in the tonal melt of Delta's electro-pond this evening.  

Get Argentina here. 

Album Review: Lexagon - Feminine Care

 
San Fransico-based experimental artist Lexagon's latest conjuring Feminine Care, doesn't feel so much like an album as a book of spells. A musical sphere of protection, wherein she finds a place to shelter in a reprieve from the volleys of indignities that would otherwise piece and wound her heart, and cover it in rotting soars. Feminine Care acts as a covenstead where she can extract the pain and puss from her throat and reclaim her voice. 

The name for Lexagon's index of incantations is one that calls to mind products that are designed to capture the discharge of the menstrual cycle, and otherwise hide such bodily tides from the perception of others. However useful some women find these products, they are not made and sold for woman's benefit, but rather for-profit and to ease society's discomfort with this common facet of many people's experience of womanhood. As the phrase is molded and recast through Lexagon's work though, Feminine Care takes on a different meaning, and in doing so, poses a question  - what does it mean to care for yourself, and others, as a woman? The answer she proposes is elegantly simple: to care is to listen and make heard. 

 reverent, torchy vocal performances, stygian ambient R'nB grooves and strikingly rhythmic accompaniments, Lexagon acts as an empathic beldame of sound, whose spell craft uncovers the hidden songs and plaintiff moans of the world, and gives them audience as exalted guests in her house. Whether it be the high cost of life and resilience depicted along with a dreamlike ripple on "Values," or the quietly rattling storms of emotions captured within the windy prayer bowl-shaped curves of "Hurrican," or the bone-deep, white blighted fear of extinguishment described in the bitter vignette "Sugawatta," Lexagon is lifting to the surface those voices who have found themselves submerged like a stone in the bed of a lake- cast off and out of sight, subject to the laws of force and order, as described by men of notoriety, as having a natural place in the hierarchy of the universe, and whose suffering has not dignity. 

The people from whom these sounds escape find themselves in a relationship to the world where their mere existence justifies their suffering- a suffering that gives meaning to others, but spare none for the sufferer. Lexagon details for us a world that deprives women, black women, and many others, of knowledge of themselves and their own power. As a modern-day witch, it is her sacred duty to blasphemy such an order. And in finding herself in a world that only takes, she is charged with taking it back. 

Feminine Care is out via Ratskin Records. 

Album Review: Defacement - Defacement

I wrote a review of this brutal and blasphemous beauty for New Noise today. Defacement's self-titled lives up to the gruesome image on its cover. Link to my review is below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-defacement/

Buy: https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/defacement

Album Review: Information_Age - Information_Age

Information_Age is a forlorn and misty darkwave project from Joseph D. Rowland of the gloomy doom troop Pallbearer and Daron Beck of the moody progressive rock project Pinkish Black. Their debut EP is self-titled and, sonically, very straightforward- synth-rock with an Italian disco feel. They're like a depressive version of Soft Cell with a touch of grand guignol gleened from the work of Dario Argento- a style that they establish from the first track with "Innerspace," a bleak but danceable number that feels as cold as the walls of slaughterhouse's freezer, and on through to the hope shunning, softly seething internment and cobwebby dirge "We Were Alive." The lyrics are as dark as the tone of the sonics, often betraying a grieving lament for the soon-to-be fate of humanity. Despite its apocalyptic outlook, you may be caught off guard by how catchy some of these numbers can be, especially when encountering the warm, rolling curves of the title track's melody, or the charismatic and dynamic transitions of rock operetta "Borrowed Time." Survive this brush with Information_Age and you might just live to dance another day.  

Get the album here. 

Album Review: haircuts for men - 大理石のファンタジー

I was drawn into Haircuts for Men for purely aesthetic reasons. The greek marble, the Japanese translations, techno-luxury splendor and the cleanly compressed samples immediately brought to mind vaporwave motifs from the turn of the past decade. But Haircuts for Men clearly holds such visuals and sound at a distance. There is a place for Haircuts for Men in the catalog of digital decay and late-capitalist mall-rot, and discussions that involve the themes and significance of Floral Shoppe and Lindsheaven Virtual Plaza- but it's also undeniable that this is a project that is attempting to have a different conversational all together. One about affection and solitude- versions of which that do not recognize the silent resignation of a life lived vicariously through the internet. 

I take for this as evidence Haircut for Men's early work, especially 大理石のファンタジー. This is an album that I believe crystalized the potential of the project, and is, not surprisingly, one of the producer's more popular releases. The compositions on this album are smooth, almost to the point where they glide off the senses- like individual drops of rain that together form a storm that batters your bedroom window while you sleep. There are no diverting glitches or pranks involving pitched vocals on this album; there are only melody, a beat, and atmosphere. 

Haircuts for Men's conceit at this stage of their output seemed to be the use of instruments and tools most commonly found in electronic dance music (synths, drum machines, and vocal samples) but used to weave together a kind of moody futurist jazz. Inviting and relaxed, but undeniably illusive- the music is struck by a perceptible tremble of anxiety. Like there is something that it wants to say, but can't quite find the lexicon for it. Or rather, wishes to forget the words it wants to speak, and wait until the moment when they could be said passes. The expression of this conflict on 大理石のファンタジー finds its way to our ears through synth lines that stumble over each other, awkwardly but charmingly on "現実に戻っ長い旅," and a breakbeat that pushes back against a light funk bass and purring pianos on "私はビバップを見てきました," in a way that doesn't seem rude, but does manage to firmly resistant the enticements of the sounds that surround it. 

This tension, I think, is paralleled in the manifestations of idealized masculinity, male sexuality, and bondage that appear on the covers of Haircuts for Men's later albums. Our society has an uneasy relationship with men. They are viewed as threatening and predatory, filled with society's projected fears, like they were empty vessels. I sense a desire to be seen as more in Haircut for Men's work. To break through the walls of silence that men experience between each other, as well as the hollow, wring of panic that grips others in their presence. But most of all, in 大理石のファンタジー, I hear a desire for to be seen, as a source of comradery and love- as fraternal and sensual; as intimate and extravagant.

Buy 大理石のファンタジー here. 

 

Album Review: Private Hell - Private Hell

Wrote about a brutal and fiendish new hardcore band out of Virginia for New Noise today. I really love their lead singer's other band Ghouli and Private Hell is just as tight. Check out what I had to say about their S/T demo below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-private-hell/

Buy: https://privatehellrva.bandcamp.com/album/private-hell

Album Review: Nnavy - Blue

There are a couple of artists making versions of R'nB right now using some version of the word "navy" as their nom de plume; I will be talking about the one from Switzerland tonight- the one who goes by Nnavy. It also bears mentioning, that of all the "Navy(s)" in the world at the moment, there is another with an EP with practically the same title as Nnavy's. The subject of this review though, spells the name of her EP "Blue"- standard English, just like the way you were taught in school. What isn't standard though, is Nnavy's talent- and it's not something you can pick up in a classroom, either. I think Nnavy's kind of patient, soulful harmonic vocabulary and smooth terpsichorean embellishments are things you learn by living and trying to learn from love. They come from self-instruction, rather than the kind you encounter in a lecture hall... unless your reason for being in that oratory hall is to pass a note to someone you'd like to meet for coffee later. Are you getting the picture? The Burundi born artist, describes Nina Simone as an inspiration, and while I can definitely see that in spirit, but the sonics of her elegant arrangments, as well as the pop-gospel quality of her melodies, seems more reminiscent of major studio releases by R'nB artists in the early '00s - artists who attempted to appeal to a more serious-minded audience then fickle teens who would lounge in front of MTV while lazily completing their afterschool assignments after school. There isn't any hint of a put-on with Blue though, and it feels as genuine as they come. Blue is as sincerely seductive and disarmingly earnest- a companion cherished confessions that will capture you in its rich eminence.

Buy Blue from here. 

Album Review: mndsgn. - Rare Pleasure

I wrote about this rare gem of an album from mndsgn. for New Noise today. Take a trip back to the '70s with Rare Pleasure. Link below: 

Review: https://newnoisemagazine.com/bandcamp-of-the-day-mndsgn/

Buy: https://www.stonesthrow.com/

Interview: Jaimie Branch

Photo by Abdesslam Mirdass

I had the chance to talk with the effortlessly cool jazz composer and trumpet player Jaimie Branch for CHIRP Radio's Artist Interview Series. We talked about her love of birds, connections to Chicago, and balancing her horn playing with her singing on the track "Prayer for Amerikkka pt 1 & 2." I had a blast doing this interview and I hope you'll enjoy checking it out. 

Listen to my interview with Jaimie Branch on CHIRP Radio's site here. 

Buy Fly Or Die Live from International Anthem here.

CHIRP Radio · Jaimie Branch Interview

Album Review: Aero Gross M - Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles

 

If there is one thing you can count on the internet for, it is to make possible things that are so confounding they'll leave you spiraling down a well of information so deep you will literally pass out from exhaustion before you hit bottom. If you are a hungry music lover such as myself, this is a wonderful feature of the internet. If you are a mature adult with adult ass obligations (also like me) this is a terrible thing if I want to be able to get up for work and maintain healthy relationships. I've spent way more time than I meant to while reading up on Aero Gros M's Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles- not because there is that much information about the artist available online (there isn't)- but because it is apparently representative of a divergent path in a web-born genre called HexD. Which, when I explain it, will definitely make you feel ready for retirement if you're over 25. And if you thought 100 Gecs was too much... This isn't for you. Nothing will be for you again. The world has changed and left you behind my friend. This isn't to say that I don't like what Aero Gros M and others are doing; it just is the byproduct of an internet culture that is very Gen Z. Take that how you will. 

Anyway, HexD is the adopted manicure for a heavily distorted style of rap music that takes its cues from mid-'10s Soundcloud trap, and which has been produced to sound incredibly compressed and damaged, with high pitched and inaudible vocals, and many many many references to mid to late '00s internet and teen culture. Think sparkly gifs, Myspace profiles, and visual references to Puffy AmiyYmi's animated Cartoon Network sitcom. Yup, 2005 is back, and it has not been taking the medication its doctor has prescribed to it! 

HexD as a style was born incidentally when a SoundCloud user going by Tomoe_theundying uploaded to the platform a remix of songs by the very memable rap collective Reptilian Club BOyz, titling the mix "Rare RCB hexD.mp3." The mix slapped very hard, primarily due to the innovation of running the RCB originals through bitcrusher, a process that increases distortion by reducing the resolution of digital audio data. It's supposed to make songs sound warmer, but in this case, just makes them sound unrecognizably fried. After that initial upload, the aesthetic pretty much took on a life of its own, eventually resulting in the creation of albums that were specifically recorded to sound bitcrushed into digital charcoal briskets.  

Aero Gros M's Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles is one such album. It doesn't sound anything like the HexD RCB mix, or even one of the more respected artists in the genre right now, Fax Gang. That said, Aero Gros M do have a very familiar sound for those who have been paying attention to noisy underground internet phenoms like Black Dresses. In fact, I would venture as far as to say that Aero Gros M style is a bitcrushed version of noise pop, with fewer nods to the previous decade's SoundCloud stars, and more of an infatuation with 100 Gecs. I would argue this is true, even, despite the presence of Fax Gang's PK Shellboy guest verse on the track "snowangels," where the young MC is dropping bars like he should be riding shotgun in a hummer in a rap video that's landed in the #4 slot on TRL.

Overall, Aero Gros M feels unpredictable and sensational, exemplified by when they butcher and blend a Cardigan's cover for their track "&," which is otherwise one of the more caustic mixes on the entire album. They don't always sound like they are trying to blow out your speakers and melt your hard drive, though. Representative of the pop preoccupations of the group are the intro track "In Between a Mansion's Gates," which combines bubblegum funk with some particularly spacey pop R'nB bars, and the toasted and hyperactive j-pop condenser (amusingly titled) "FL€€T FOXES." The closest the album comes to straight-up trap is "KNOBB BO$$ RESCUE_NeT," which still has an easily discernable, pop melody, although one that is paired with ominous background effects, to give it a kind of neon-red, syrupy horrorcore feel.  

As far as watchwords for Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles I'm going to have to toss up frantic, dramatic, deep-fried, and internety, as single word descriptions that each individually characterize the album as a whole, while hinting at the strange recess flows that babble just below the surface. The last of these descriptors is particularly applicable given the bizarre dialog samples that Aero Gros M inserts into their mixes, obviously culled from lo-fidelity anime dubs, and thereafter hopelessly mutilated during the production process. This album is peculiar even by the standards of present-day internet culture, but I can't deny its effect on me. Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles is a straight bop! 

Buy Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles here. 

Column: New Noise’s Bandcamp Friday Picks: October 2021

As is my constant want, I wrote a list of short reviews to celebrate Bandcamp Friday. This list is all heavy stuff in celebration of Halloween. If that is your thing, you can check it out at the link below: 

Bandcamp Friday Recommendation List: https://newnoisemagazine.com/new-noises-bandcamp-friday-picks-october-2021/

Just so you know, the list includes: 

Annihilus – Follow a Song From the Sky (Federal Prisoner)
Witch Vomit – Abhorrent Rapture (20 Buck Spin)
Lamp Of Murmuur – Submission And Slavery (Self-Released)
Wraith – Undo the Chains (Redefining Darkness Records)
CARTHEIFSCHOOL – kenjimiyazawa (Transduction Records)
Ritual Blade – Hate Overflow (Patient Zero Records)
Inhuman Condition – Rat°God (Listenable Insanity)
Ozzuario – Mental Hell (Distort Discos)