Album Review: Maral - Ground Groove

LA producer Maral's third album Ground Groove received a fair amount of critical praise last year. I'm not ashamed to admit that this praise is the root cause of why this review exists. While it's true that I hold my independence in high regard, there is nothing wrong with peering over the hedge once in a while to see what my neighbors have cooking.* But enough about my "peers,"** what's Maral's deal? We'll her deal is that she's taken up residence in my head. More or less literally! She's absolutely filled in the cracks in the foundation of my mind in the strangest kind of way. I know this album is called Ground Groove, but I did not anticipate that its tones and textures would be quite so inceptive. Like the album has rumbled forth from the iron disco ball that churns in the Earth's core, with vibrations issuing vertically into the spinning layers of this sphere's mantle, and then quickening through the soles of my feet, leaping like lightening from my tibias, to my hips, to my spine, and then slithering like a snake up a drainage pipe into my brain. What's more, the mixing makes these sounds feel eerily and completely localized, like I'm the only one who can hear them,*** as if I'm receiving them via microwave transmission in some kind of DARPA-funded direct sound experiment. It's very exciting stuff... even if it's permanently warped my filling. 

Don't go without checking out Leaving Records.  

*To be fair, I haven't actually read other reviews for this album. I'm only admitting that I know that they exist, and the mere knowledge of the existence of these other reviews is the reason that I checked out this album. 

**People on Twitter who I spy on. 

***And NOT just because I'm wearing headphones... although that does help. 

Interview: The Bollweevils

Image by Paul Catani

I got to be a huge punk nerd this week and chat up Daryl from Chicago legends The Bollweevils for CHIRP Radio's Artist Interview Series. The first time I saw the Bollweevils was in Chicago at Riot Fest in 2006(?), and all I knew about them then was that they were a big deal and had just gotten back together for the Fest. Sweaty, dumb little me with footprints on the back of his NOFX shirt from when some dude who had 60 pounds on me steamrolled my ass in the pit during Fear City's set, had no idea that he'd someday get to chat with one of these dudes about their legacy and continuing to love music while striving to do your best regardless of where you find yourself in life... It's a weird feeling looking back. A good feeling, but weird and hard to explain. I'm going to stop writing before I get too mushy here and blow what little punk cred I have left. You can check out my interview with Daryl here, or below:  

CHIRP Radio · The Bollweevils Interview

The Bollweevils latest album, and first in fourteen years, Essential, is out on Red Scare. You can listen to it below: 

Album Review: Mong Tong 夢東 - Mystery 秘神

Taiwanese funk and psychedelic project Mong Tong 夢東 is one of the many musical undertakings of brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi. Their latest album Mystery 秘神 combines their love for vintage transcendental rock sounds with an obsession over local occult mythology in what is a strangely transportive and well-rounded record. I have no means of measuring the distance between the possible points of triangulation of the secret sources of knowledge they employ and the specific sounds I am hearing, but the shifts in mood and overall pacing of the record still manage to craft a compelling narrative; even though there is not a single original word spoken during the entire trip. That's ok; sometimes the mind sees what the eyes can't and hears what the ears ignore. You don't have to gaze into the enigma of the album to appreciate it as it's more than pleasing on a purely aesthetic level as a foggy amalgam of the guitar styles and personality of Takeshi Terauchi and Iron Butterfly. Although, imagining yourself descending the steps of an ancient temple to do battle with disembodied horrors in order to retrieve a magic iron box that can be used to trap a usurper sorcerer who is terrorizing a kingdom can certainly add a layer of intrigue to the experience of the album... if you're open to that sort of thing, that is.

Go deeper with Guruguru Brain.

Album Review: Sepehr - Survivalism

Survivalism is a 2021 album from New York, New York producer Sepehr. It's a mini-LP (his description) that showcases the enterprise of making and moving to music as an act of perseverance. I've never made music, but as a music fan, and I can say from experience that music has given me something to hold on to during dark times when nothing else has. I have to hazard that this is what Sepehr is getting at here with this trim and evocative compilation of subterranean-sounding drum 'n base. That said, the release's tone is on the gothic and foreboding side of the genre, and if you were to hear it emanating through the hall of your apartment building late at night, you might be tempted to call an exorcist. Don't be so hasty! Survivalism is for the living more than the dead, and if you ring up the spirit cops on it, then you might just find yourself with one less refuge from the other, more maligned, things that go bump in the night (like actual cops!).*

Summon more sounds via Shaytoon Records.

*Disclaimer: I can not say for certain if Survivalism is an effective police repellent. However, you are welcome to conduct your own test and report back to me with your results. 

Album Review: R.J.F. - Going Strange

It's difficult to know what to expect from this record from its visuals. That said, the only thing hardcore about it is the cover. I know it will probably not make Ross Farrar particularly happy to read a review of his new album Going Strange that starts out this way, but he's Ceremony's singer, and Ceremony's sound is still 2006's Violence Violence to me, and while it may be a sign of some deeply rooted character flaw, this fact will likely never change. Also, he doesn't have to like what I have to say; no one does. As interesting as Ceremony's evolution has been since their early releases- going from adrenalized hardcore, to semi-abstract post-punk, to... modish post-punk(?)- I've gleaned a slight frustration with the limitations of form on Ross's part throughout these iterations. His mannerisms and the way he projects himself into the performances with his other band Spice feels quite a bit more relaxed in comparison, but his solo project RFJ is like listening to a different guy altogether. Going Strange has all the qualities of a first record, but not just the first for a project, a first record (period). It sounds like it was all captured by a single mic, in a living room while sitting on the stained floral print couch, and compiled from only a hand full of takes in a marathon Garageband session by someone who is discovering through the course of recording and editing a record that they harbor within themselves a fluid aptitude for songwriting. Cautious, but not nervous, trusting, but not blindly certain, the album seems to arise out of a place of self-knowledge that is grounded in something other than the process that is unfolding before your ears. The quality of the recordings makes up a large part of Going Strange's aesthetical appeal as well, as you can hear the way that the notes emanating from the instruments cut through the air, absorbing into fabrics and bodies of their surroundings while springing in the background like a grasshopper off the corners and moldings of the room, atmospheric aspects that energize the entire undertaking as if the setting of the recording was meant to be part of the plot of the record. It also has a certain beatnik quality to it that reminds me of Velvet Underground's bitter stabs at art that is intelligible to the sunken parts of the soul, or even Scott Walker's many plaintive odes to the dispossessed, or really any other musical attempts to make sense of the splintering dissensus of post-modernity from the mid-20th century. While most of the reference points I could pull down for favorable comparison would be of artists who had mastered their craft and were in complete control of their output, I think I've already made clear that such firm proficiencies are not at all what makes Going Strange an absorbing listen. Instead, Going Strange offers the opportunity to witness Ross's process working its way out in real-time, like he's writing the song as you hear them; factory fresh impressions from his mind forge; drizzled on the senses like a vincotto made from a particularly well-aged wine; the product of an uncommon variety of foresight that anticipates mistakes, irregularities, and the unbridled peculiarity of the mind in an almost aleatoric philosophy of outcome. I'm never sure quite where the next track will lead from its prologue, only that the nose and tail of each overlap in one sustained procession of related but divergent contemplative modes, with Ross remaining as the only constant, personified in its steam, sinking out of sight when he needs to, breast stroking and stirring the tempest when it suits him, but always thriving in the drift of the moment. Going Strange is rough, it's messy, and at points difficult and irreverent, but to the extent Ross exerted the force of his conscious intention upon any portion, it is clearly something that he is extremely satisfied with, and for what it's worth, that makes two of us.   

Album Review: aMute - Days of Light & Let Go

As an American, it is a rare treat when you come across a project like aMute; a seamless amalgamation of genre and inspiration that possesses an effortless experimental potential while remaining lavishly contemplative. I feel like Europeans get to enjoy stuff like this all the time. Here in the States, the closest we get to grandiose electronic-folk hybrids is tUnE-yArDs, which, if we're being honest, just feels like the musical equivalent of David's Bridal or cable TV at this point- overly expensive and mid-market Boomer luxuries that most of us can do without. Who aMute reminds me most of though, is THOT; even if they don't share that much in common sonically, they have the same preference for building a dense and brooding atmosphere in which their chimeric music can sprawl out and make the most of its ill-tempered ways. While I think you could spend an awful lot of time breaking down the aMute's specific influences, and if you wrote the project's architect Jérôme Deuson, I'm sure he'd be happy to unpack each song for you at length in terms of what he was attempting to accomplish and why... I feel such efforts are misdirected. The real value of an album like Days of Light & Let Go (the group's eighth) is only intelligible from your subjective experience of it as a secluded sonic antechamber of reverie. It's really not party music. It's something that you have to make sense of on your own and in your own way. Days of Light opens its channels to you with a poem about lost souls trapped in dissonant wondering while reaching for illusory glory, a scene that plays out over exceedingly overdriven waves of feedback and windswept textures, sounding like Randy Warthog of the Residents returning with a message from beyond the grave and confronting you while you're attempting to take shelter from an incoming tornado. The following track, "Let Go," resembles a drum machine programmed by a sentient clump of moss attempting to interpret some ancient text to a deaf animist spirit imprisoned in the side of a cliff that resembles the stoic profile of some long-forgotten chieftain. The resonating orchestral oscillations of "Every Little Sad Moments We Had" pleasantly goss and ostentatiously ordain a series of transitions with an obscure spiritual force like the indigenous music of a band of techno-future scavengers who live in and maintain a server farm out in the Arizona desert centuries after the world outside has gone dark and backslid into a period of medievalist regression. Even though I said that attempting to unpack aMute's influences is likely against the grain of best practices in appreciating the album, I have to say that the half-whispered and lamenting intonations, as well as the volatile architecture and openly hostile hip-hop elements of "These Crazy Crazy Dreams" really come across as the best possible expression of a potential Radiohead and clipping. collaboration, if such a thing were ever possible. While much of the monumental ambient tones and futuristic folk of Days of Light have a distinctly depressive vibe to them, I get the impression from the esteemable calm and sure-sighted approach of the closing acoustic track "Aurevoir L'Orage," that Jérôme believes that, despite whatever dark passageways you might run down while wandering the labyrinth of the mind, it is possible, and even necessary, to find yourself under the spotlight-like gaze of epiphany, a mental miracle luminescent enough to light your way back to a point of clarity. At least that's my reading. Results may vary, but the likelihood of Days of Light & Let Go making some kind of an impact on you is a near certainty. 

Great tunes spring eternal over at Hopedrive Editions.

Metal Monday: Deludium Skies, IER, Mothflesh & Royal Thunder

I don't listen to as much metal as I'd like to. It's a curse of having broad interests and only so many hours in the day. It's one of the reasons why I keep these Metal Monday threads alive. It forces me back into the forge, back into the genre that first helped me come to terms with my critical style and learn to enjoy analyzing and writing about music in the first place. They're a good reminder as to why I try to do this every night, examining the strange and underappreciated and trying to make sense of it the best I can. It continues to be a worthy exercise for me and one I don't see myself giving up any time soon. But you're not here to see me write about myself, right? You're here for the mayhem, the macabre, the mutagenic... you're here to read about some ugly, ass music, and friend, have I got you covered... Welcome to another Metal Monday.  

Deludium Skies - Ichor (Trepanation Recordings)

I've encountered more than a few malevolent combinations of jazz and metal since starting this blog, but Karl Pelzmann's Deludium Skies is the most malefic. The projects (6th?) LP titled Ichor is the spiritual inculcation of the shadow side of folk and jazz, a ritualized janus turning, beseeched from the earth by bewitching, plangent guitar chords that sound like they are echoing up from the chimney-like hallow of a scorched and blackened tree. In some ways, the rhythmic textures of the album have an unassumingness about them, like they are wondering off into the depths of a thorny grove out of curiosity and naivety rather than a lust for mischief, but the combination of wailing flutes and saxes carry too much of a sour air about them, and in peering through the fog of disorder they muster one will be inevitably be met with the red-ringed stare of a maere clinging to the back of these tracks, inciting them forward into the wicked woodland to do its malign bidding. There are no happy endings to be found here, only a twisted fable of folly. Ichor springs to the ear like a fairy tale read to you by the monster slithering beneath your bed.  

IER - 物​の​怪 (Self-Released)

Argentinian black metal artist IER is known for his complex, ambitious, and impenetrable albums. He made one about Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan a few years back that was nearly half the run time of the film that inspired it (an hour and twenty minutes vs three hours, in case you were wondering). His latest, 物​の​怪 ("Monster"), does not appear to have nearly as precise of a thematic origin as some of its predecessors, but it is certainly as, if not more, daunting in its enterprise. Beginning with the twelve-minute "日本の都市伝説 Vol.1" we are feted with a full course of arresting and confrontational forms, starting with a viciously primal tear of DSMB, which loosens its twisting, noose-like grooves enough to liberate a messenger's arrow of hope from its binding contortions, a shot that hurdles through a dashing thrash solo only to stumble facefirst into the submerged tomb of some swamp lurching death metal, a murk-steeped trudge which is then rinsed clean by a shower of firey feedback and sonorous power chords, a necessary cleanse that frees the track from its decaying manicules so that it can once again break into a sprint, this time accompanied by a skittering peel of progressive-funk riffs. It sounds wild, and it is. And what's more, none of it is out of place. Not when IER starts scatting like Jonathan Davis on later tracks, or when he combines Converge style post-hardcore with Spanish folk guitars, or even when he does his best interpretation of what Incubus might sound like in corpse paint. It all works as a single, wholly realized, thoroughly integrated, and bewildering lusus naturae. Monster is the right title for this album, in more ways than one might think possible. 

Mothflesh - Machine Eater (Self-Released)

If there was a combination of styles that could represent humankind's enduring resistance to being reduced to the level of mere, mechanical instruments and extensions of the machines of their masters, it would be melodic death, old-school metalcore, and groove metal. As it stands, this untrammeled trifecta of muscularly, defiant antagonism to domination all cohere in the sound of Mothflesh and their future shock dispeller Machine Eater. It's pretty much At the Gates driving down the throat of Poison the Well in order to detonate a massive djent-triggered Car Bomb. That last sentence may have been tortured, but this music isn't. The barrage of massive, propellent grooves and the formidable combination of clean singing and guttural death howls are as awe-inspiring as a volcanic eruption and just as likely to shake your world to its foundations. Every riff sounds like another ground-to-air missile shot up the exhaust port of a Skynet satellite. With Mothflesh on our side, the future of humanity is looking brighter than ever. 

Royal Thunder - Wick (Spinefarm Records)

Nothing like a little hard rock out bubbling up from the South. The certifiably fiery and appropriately titled Wick is Royal Thunder’s third full-length LP, and their first since leaving metal mogul Relapse for Finnish label Spinefarm. It's hard to understate the power and charisma of front-woman and bassist Miny Parsonz's vocal performance, or how well her imploring and vengeful cries are complimented by the group's boozy psychedelic and doom metal-infused roots rock. Think Alabama Shakes with some mid-career Mastodon riffs swapped in. Both Miny and lead guitarist Josh Weaver escaped from cults in their youths, which is a fact that you can read into if you want, but I'm inclined to believe Miny when she insists that their songs are actually about building new relationships and forging your own path in life. Their current mantra is, “The Past is Over,” a saying they adopted after finding it scrawled above the entrance to a hotel on a European tour, and I think it's a good coda for us all to meditate on whenever we've felt like we may have lost our way in life. You can't go back, but you can soldier on. If nothing else, its a bit of intellectual cud to chew on while you sway to the swaggering rhythms of the ponderously claustrophobic "We Slipped" whose pounding beat and slapping grooves will help you break out of whatever mental prison you find yourself holding up in these days. Then there is the magnificent Joplin-esc crooning on dark gospel confessional "Plans," the somber piano balladry and elegantly blighted dalliance of "Push", and lastly, the morbid tension building brood of the shadowboxer with razor laced inlines that is "Turnaround." Sadly, this is the last full LP that Royal Thunder has released, but they still tour quite regularly and even released a single earlier this year, which gives me a great deal of hope that their return to the recording studio for another LP will be forthcoming, if not inevitable.

Interview: Gabe Noel

I'm slowly coming to terms with what AI will mean for music. Both its benefits, in making and enjoying music, but also what it will mean to be a music lover in the future. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but it seems possible that the advent of AI will only make the human aspects,  its emotional resonance and communicative impact, all the more important. Because, how ever people come to use AI, it will always just be a tool. One more in a growing array of technical advances that musicians will have at their disposal to try and reach an audience. This is at least my takeaway from my interview with composer and session musician Gabe Noel in talking with him about his latest project, The Randy Paserntes Trio, and AI vocalist-fronted endeavor he has embarked on upon with saxophonist Sam Gendel. During our conversation, we discuss the origin of the project and Gabe's goals for it, as well as the messy reality of co-staring on an album with a machine. Really fascinating stuff. I hope you enjoy. 

The Randy Paserntes Trio's debut Now At Last is available from Colorfield Records. 

Listen to the record below: 

Album Review: Ohma - Between All Things

I am drawn like a hummingbird to the Ohma's "Worlds Within Worlds." It's the second song off their 2022 debut Between All Things, and it presents itself as an entry point into a world meaning that I had not previously known. Liquid in its structure, but stable in its contents, the song is like a crystalline fountain formed by a jet of clean spring water forced through a natural vent in a rock face whose gushing expression inexplicably takes the shape of a rose in a flickering spout of briefly eternal beauty. It is not merely the ephemeral resplendence of the interplay of Mia Garcia's woodwind whisper or Hailey Naiswanger's patient, rippling guitar playing that gifts the track its gravity and magnetism, as solely an adroit blending of aesthetic harmonies, but moreover, the purposeful essence and carnality with which their performances obtains. It's like an alchemical reaction, the product of a conditioned hermeneutic which manifests through its practice a wider gage of perception and a revitalized spectrum of sense and sense objects. This grounded sort of metaphysical connectedness ripens, unwinds, desaturates, and reabsorbs differing variations of its own amplified sense of communion in alternating patterns throughout Between All Things; like with "In Essence," where wind-chime carved percussive-flows and subtonal hip-hop inspired reverberations overlap to forge a gradually advancing and upward swinging carousel of enlightenment and composure, or later, where the sincerely palliative stride of "Everything & Nothing," fosters a comradery of sturdy, binding bass elements and stark vibrations which elevate each other as if pulling one and other up the branches of a tree so tall that the sun appears to rise out of its canopy rather than the horizon, until eventually splitting this endeavor in twine to fashion elegant bits of flotsam on which to embark on blissful excursions in kosmische folk and busking crystallomancy.  All things are connected. All things are distinct. The path you weave between them perpetuates an inescapable oneness and the absorbing adhesion between our separate orbits is that thing which fills the universe with warmth. 

More lovely flowing vestibules available from Colorfield Records.

Album Review: Scree - Jasmine On A Night In July

I heard recently that there was a period in human history where there was no separation between poetry and music. They were indistinguishable and interchangeable in their inception. To some degree, I see Brooklyn trio Scree returning to that tradition- only in reverse. Where poetry is often understood as rhythmic patterns of speech, offering suggestible phrasing for interpretation, the group, led by guitarist Ryan El-Solh, instead renders suggestions of textual phrasing through graciously patient, rhythmic interplays of guitar, percussion, and upright bass- an interlacing of sound which hues towards the grandiloquent in an unpretentious and accessible manner. In particular, Ryan's guitar playing on their latest LP Jasmine On A Night In July, elevates the floor of perception up to the level of the mind's eye, presenting a stable of fable-like portrayals upon the stage of your own cognition, allowing sounds and attentive waves of motion to pluck character sketches, scenes and dialogue from the gallery of the unconscious in prompted participation where there would otherwise be mere spectacle. As a result, it's almost impossible not to feel tangled in the threaded sway of the group's arrangements- a serious degree of engrossment that never presents as confining, only supportive. The warm, vespertine vim of Scree's performances is inviting at its utmost, permitting a projection of one's self into the evening to write one's own stanzaic impressions upon the twinkling tassels of the stars. Held aloft by the enduring poetical trestle of the group's strings and percussive inlays, Scree tenders to you an encounter that is as gentle as falling starlight and revitalizing as a deep inhale of clean, night air. 

Find it on Ruination Record Co.

Album Review: Kata Phore - Virevolte

Virevolte (which I think translates from French to English as "Twirls" [which makes sense when looking at the cover]) is an uplifting and consoling experience. It's the first release from electronic conjurer Kata Phore, who seems to be from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. A sense of placelessness suits Virevolte, though. Its methodical, soliloquy-like progressions pursue a self-referential dialogue with themselves, unraveling like a ball of yarn, and snapping back into geometrical loops like a slinky. Its twists and inversions would seem to be alienating if the direct experience of them was not like losing touch with gravity and but not your orientation in space; like being forced upward to a stable altitude within the unperturbed stream of a vertical wind tunnel and permitted to glide and summersault in ambivalence to the normal rules of terrestrial living. The album is wordless, but as I've alluded, the looping selections of sequences serve as a worthy lyrical substitute, sublating the need for a particular lexicon, while creating space for a distinguishable acoustic colloquy. I feel that if I had a synth in front of me at this very moment, I could carry on a full conversation with the chiming, churning passages of Virevolte, and it would somehow feel like I was having a dialogue with Kata herself. Kind of like me in Chicago, and her in a far-off land, where actually neighbors, gossiping into tin cans connected by a string strung between parallel windowsills facing an alleyway; a live wire binding two souls; our vibrations intelligible to each other, if to no one else. 

Debut release from DDDD. Learn more here. 

Album Review: Party Dozen - The Real Work

Party Dozen make an unbelievable racket. I don't mean that in any pejorative sense, but I do mean it literally. I'm bewildered by what I'm hearing on The Real Work, their third album. All I'm sure of is that it does, in fact, work. My synapses turning into a firework display in response to the arrays of parps, hooles, feeps, grauls, and all manner of exceedingly ominous clangor that they disgorge over the course of the album is proof that whatever they are doing, they have tapped into something both real and uncanny. At its base, Party Dozen is one man (Jonathan Boulet), posed behind a drum kit, which he hammers like a grudge, and one woman (Kirsty Tickle), a solo saxophonist, whose retorts and replies, to the percussive knots that bind these songs together, resemble someone raising the alarm of an impending industrial mishap through a shattered megaphone. A rock, or jazz, or composition recital, featuring only two performers is nothing out of the ordinary, but the sounds Party Dozen muster together are just so devastatingly anomalous, rudimentary in their bludgeoning grandeur, and unaffectedly transcendental that they don't truly feel of this world; despite their unmistakable physicality and weighted material presence. Like no wave, as blood sport. Like Metal Machine Music, but intimidatingly coherent, and maddeningly intelligible. Party Dozen are like if John Zorn parachuted unannounced into a Lightning Bolt set at Taicoclub and started using his sax to spar, gladiator style, with Brian Gibson and his bass.  Such incredible collaborations (confrontations?) are not as challenging to imagine as one might think. In one of The Real Works's early highlights, Nick Cave makes an unobtrusive cameo muttering and then shouting a variation of the title "Macca the Mutt," crooning with full, desperate Grinderman charisma as if he was being dragged away by men in white coats during the song's coda. Soon after, "Fruits Of Labour" presents a low-riding sax groove as if it was the jaundiced sweeping gaze of a clandestine operative on the lookout for a surreptitious drop from one of his underground contacts, then the song gets ugly, and suddenly the g-man realizes that someone must have slipped something into his coffee, and everything is covered in silty dry moss, and he is sinking, sinking, sinking, as if the ocean were flooding through the windows of his convertible, forcing him below the surface of the pavement and into a briny tomb. Mutilated and opaque protests struggle below rising waves of thunderous bass and edifying sax wails, amplifying the form, if not the substance, of the many galvanizing objections that spur and parry within the cage of "The Worker," elsewhere "Major Beef" has all the black majesty of a Coven performance at the band's theatrical height and sounds like it is echoing up from an orchestra pit dug into the frozen shores of Cocytus, while still later, the band returns to their penchant for semi-surf rock abstraction on "Earthly Times" sounding something Dick Dale might have written after an encounter with an Old One. The Real Work, as the product of Party Dozen's brow sweat, leads me to hazard that they are exuding something stronger than lysergic acid from their pores. 

Check into Temporary Residence Ltd. and stay a while. 

Album Review: Ree-Vo - All Welcome On Planet Ree​-​Vo

Ree-Vo have engineered a world that perfectly reflects a certain vision and method towards electronic dance music and hip hop on their latest LP; an all-encompassing, scientifically calibrated, omni-motion-catalyst, that presents an open invitation to anyone willing to join the experiment and find their groove; a proposal evinced by the title, All Welcome On Planet Ree​-​Vo. The duo at the core of the project is a recent collaboration between two established figures in the Bristol underground, that of rapper T.Relly and producer Andy Spaceland. My first impression of the record, and an impression that was cemented upon multiple listens, was that their selection of sparky, percolating and reggae reminiscing beats, as well as T's deft and energetic flow are a purposeful echo of an era of house and rap that was immortalized in the South London club scene of the '90s, as represented in fictionalized documentations like the Junglist, and other such street level recollections of the time. It's a record that is full of hijinks, meticulously plotted schemes, and sharp displays of forethought, that combine with a commitment and judicious approach to fat-back funk and boom-box-busting trip-hop sounds, all of which somehow still come across as effortlessly spontaneous and ephemeral despite the music's clear and qualitative impact. Still, this is only a starting point, as All Welcome... is not a throwback record. Just because much of contemporary hip-hop feels devoid of structure and intention, doesn't automatically convert any record that does consciously embodies these values into boomer boom-bap. The tightness of the sequencing of the beats present here and T's tendency to mock, box, and spare with their grooves is essential to the dynamics of the album. These consequential structures are not just enabled by modern studio tech, but representative of different, unique, and progressive sensibility for how beats combine with rhymes in a way that conveys a message as well as a body moving momentum. All Welcome On Planet Ree​-​Vo might feel at times like it is simply escaping the inertia of the past, but in reality, it is hurdling the passivity and pessimism of the present in a quest to open a lane to the future. 

Out on Dell’Orso Records.

Album Review: Hysterical Love Project - Lashes

Lashes seem like the staging ground for a diseasing act. Only one where the person you think you are dematerialized and the person you actually are emerges from the recesses of the unconscious. A fathomless, centerless whole- a dream with no egress, a cathedral with no floor. It's one of those albums that has enough depth that you can sense yourself sinking into it. Like you've been gazing into your own reflection, and then suddenly, it's no longer your reflection but a ripple of tension running across a small pool that you're just about to breach with your face, like an ice cube splashing into a glass of vodka. The New Zealand duo Hysterical Love Project have synthesized something so strange and beautiful with Lashes that it could cause Narcissus to pry his entranced stare away from his own visage, lured by the distant riveting pluck of its rhythms, and stayed from his mythic fate long enough to be saved from the deadly embrace of his echo. They have cultivated an enigmatic chamber of sonic sense operations that absorbs all light that transgresses its barrier and keeps it suspended like fireflies in a mote of obsidian. Languorous, teary and affected with dispirit, the vocals wind through the evenly spaced, mechanical rotation of beats with the assistance of a lubricating frost of synth codas, as if these yearning harmonies were a delicate strip of silk winding its way through the guts of an automaton, having been inadvertently swallowed during an incident at a haberdashery, it patiently and searchingly slips between synthetic spleens and hissing circulatory valves, leaving curly stray strands of itself dislodged and tangled in its passes, diminishing as it progresses, it dissipates into the open cavity of this model, manufactured man, integrating inseparably with the logic of his interior. Given enough time, you will not just find more places to explore within the ascetic sphere of Lashes, but more hidden places inside of you that its essence has dripped, spread, and accumulated until you find yourself subsumed within the wealth of its weightless anatomy; free to dance upon the wire of a vespertine daydream. 

Perpetual rotation in the Motion Ward. 

Album Review: Nutrients - Different Bridges

The title "House Fire Painting" sums up a lot of what Toronto-based funk-pop group Nutrients are about on their LP Different Bridges.  It's actually a good starting point for the album, even though it's buried deep in the sequencing. A breezy, reedy chord progression weaves on a bongo beat like a stray feather caught in the drooping thread of a spider's web, straining on its teether while flowing on the draft of a semi-Caribbean groove; not in a bind, just trying to unwind. This incredibly chill conflux is, of course, decompressing under a header that both communicates its beauty as well as the terminable nature of such an appealing thing as a painting melting in a house on fire. The course of many aspects of life have this quality. A moment of contemplation, a kind gesture from a friend, a momentary reprieve to watch a bird forage from a window; all spent up like a love letter put to the fire. Fully consumed by the sequential pace of more mundane or agonizing encounters. Yet, it's these small moments, these ampoules of peace and connection, that deliver us from our worries and hurries long enough to make the day worthwhile. Every winter has a spring, and if you wait long enough, also a summer. Nutrients wrote Different Bridges during the heart of the pandemic, in a house that did not belong to any of the members. In isolation, it was easy to imagine that the world was going to be very different once they reemerged back into it. I don't know what their impressions were when they finally reentered the wild, but I want to imagine from the music on this album that they were hopeful, weary maybe, but also enthused. I like to imagine the sun-kissed qualities of their guitar work, the swaddling brush of the bass grooves, and the dear hush of Taylor Teeple's vocals are more than just a vain intercession in the dark, but disclosures to inspire rejuvenating acts of kindness in the face of the blunt glare of day. I hope that the band are living their lives to the fullest after the freeze of their sequester thawed. I know Different Bridges is reminding me to do the same in my own little neck of the woods. 

Dig into more tunes from Earth Libraries.

Interview: Fire-Toolz

Had my second conversation with Angel Marcloid for CHIRP Radio's Artist Interview Series last week and the episode is now live (this is literally the fastest I have ever edited anything in my life)! We mostly talked about her new album I am upset because I see something that is not there. This may sound like a standard interview, but she started it out by telling me that the title was inspired by a channeled work, and things pretty much proceeded apace from there. I ended up having to cut out quite a few interesting tidbits in order to trim it down to time. Some fun facts about the fundraising campaign and merch decision are now lost to the abyss, in addition to some in-depth info on the cover art. Most interestingly I learned that the holy trinity is represented there. I'm not going to say how, but if you give it a glance you might be able to guess. You might also notice that Angel herself is featured on the cover (possibly a first for the project), adorned with a halo. The reason, as she explained to me, is not to sanctify herself but rather to indicate her connectedness to all things; an acknowledgment, not that she is most sacred, but that all living things, humans included, are sacred. There is more that I'm not going to get into right now, but if you listen to the interview you'll still be able to glean some penetrating insights. Most illuminating of all, is that Fire-Toolz is about having fun. Mostly Angel having fun... but she's not going to deny you a good time if you're open to it. You can listen to the full interview on CHIRP's site or below:

CHIRP Radio · Fire - Toolz Interview

Listen to I am upset because I see something that is not there here: 

Album Review: The Laughing Chimes - Zoo Avenue EP

I was taken by surprise by The Laughing Chime's Zoo Avenue EP. I don't always go for jangly, retro indie rock, but I dig what these guys are doing. The band's members are very young too,  and that's what has stunned me more than anything. I'm not used to listening to music made by literal teens. Usually, bands I encounter who sing about youthful exhibition and the angst of adolescence are in their late '20s, at least. Also, rock bands nowadays are pretty long in the tooth before they are able to pin down a decent record deal with a medium-sized indie label (Slumberland in this case). Kids starting a band in their garage and getting signed before they can legally buy their own beer is more of a '60s thing. The story of The Laughing Chime is almost not even of this century, and reads more like the beginning of a VH1 special where the interview subjects are recounting the band's first big break- getting signed to Sire, or some other seeming stroke of luck; brothers, Evan and Quinn Seurkamp, picked up guitars in a sleepy Midwest town and formed a band with some friends just to prove that they could, they then gain notoriety from playing local gigs, and a Battle of the Bands or two, and then before you knew it, Boom! they've inked a deal and are overnight sensations. That's all she wrote (or I wrote?)! Except for the overnight sensation part. They might still have a ways to go before they fully get their due. A record deal is not worth what they used to be (and I'm sure whatever artistic ambitions it has amplified, they're all still going to need to finish college and weigh their options at other careers), but it's still somewhat heartening to see young guys get to live out this kind of rock 'n roll dream in the midst of our current and profoundly cynical era. It's fitting, too, that The Laughing Chimes are playing in a style perfected in the '80s, that was heavily inspired by the music of the '60s. REM was thoroughly indebted to the Byrds and Velvet Underground, and the Laughing Chimes, are in turn, inspired by REM, The Smiths, and others to make music that continues this grand fashion and legacy of unapologetically delicate, blushingly passionate, and lyrically poetic guitar pop. Zoo Avenue is timeless in that regard, in that it is able to reach back through the decades, grasping the fundamental essence of each period through which it passes, without distorting these vital patterns, or losing its own sense of identity in the process. You can hear the softness and the tenderness of those '60s boy bands whistling through these tracks like a whisper on the wind, getting caught on the contemplatively angular guitar work and subsequently diverted into inward leaning and intimate reflections on the unassuming and quotidian aspects of small town living. While its charming to hear these almost anachronistic portrayals of American life in the heartland depicted through retro-engineered sounds, the album also benefits from a knowing implementation of modern musical modalities; punching these numbers up with peppy rock tempos, bristlingly textured chord progressions that ride the line between pure skill and telegraphed sincerity, and powerpop harmonies that have clearly had time to stew on the impact of grunge before consciously eschewing its edicts. Zoo Avenue is a bountiful menagerie of the familiar and time-honored, faithfully repurposed with a high level of esteem for their source in order to give context to the lives of young men making their way through the world today. 

More sweet, dreamy tunes from Slumberland Records.

Album Review: Generacion Suicida - Regeneracion

It's funny to me that I didn't realize how much I associated the "Killed By Death" style of punk with South and Central American punk groups until I picked up Regeneracion by Generacion Suicida. Funny, of course, becuase, 1) Generacion Suicida is from LA, and 2) Killed By Death comps mostly cataloged English language, or at least, Western European punk bands. That said, I have good reason (I think) for associating this classic and iconic style with groups like Sapu Punk, and others I've stumbled across on Bandcamp. For whatever reason, I was listening to a lot of that kind of stuff five or so years ago, and I remember it reignited my interest in going back and checking out some raw and underproduced punk comps from decades back. As a result, the two will likely remain entwined in my brain like quarreling lovers until the day I kick the bucket. This isn't a bad thing, mind you. Bands from the Southern Hemisphere tend, on the whole, to be a lot less self-conscious about what they play, and don't seem to care how old or well-trodden the turf they're transgressing might be. They don't tend to get into punk for the clout, is what I'm getting at. And that was true for the original KBD comps, as well; some Swedish dude thought bands like Zero Boys, Subhumans, and Violators sounded cool, and therefore he wanted more people to hear them. Any resulting cache was incidental (and mostly acquired by mistake). But when I think about it even more, my real reference point for this style of punk is probably most aligned with Mujeres Podridas, who I always erroneously thought was from Chile for some reason (Fact Check: they're actually from Texas). Anyway, at some point, a lot of people all came to the same correct conclusion that wiry, rare, and lightly crusted punk sounds best when shouted in Spanish with Southwestern-infused chords filling out the grooves. These elements add a crucial layer of intrigue to the whole affair, and, what's more, ground the sound in a more working-class, salt-of-the-earth orientation. It's not the kind of punk you'll hear in a high-end or legacy sneaker ad, but the kind that you might catch spilling out of a busted-up pick-up truck as it kicks up dust and leaves its owner's current worksite in the rearview mirror for another day, or hopping the fence and catching your ear from across a back alley where your neighbor's BBQ is still going hard at 2 am. While a good deal of Generacion Suicida's early material had that kind of knife-edge-playing, get-it-out or die-trying, Wipers demo vibe to it, Regeneracion rightfully revives and revolutionizes their sound by making a deal with a particularly handsome and skilled devil at the crossroads of desert rock and post-punk, and in the process rejuvenating their darkly critical perspective and aesthetic to make it even more piercing and crucial in its urgency. The band really sound like scrubland partisans planning their next daring raid while on horseback when it comes to tracks like the sidewinding venturer "Todo Es Un Sueno" and the iron-hoved dash of "Jaulas." Elsewhere, "Ilusion" emulates a perfect rendezvous point between prairie punk sensibilities and darkly elusive, neo-noir chord progressions, while later, the punchy "Violencia" plunges and parries in a series of subtle offensives while surviving on a sustained drip of spite and adrenaline. Finally, the band's near limitless determination resolves to an all-to-human demand for certainty and resolution on "Dime Donde Esta," before leaving the listener with the final, fatal echo of "Me Estan Buscando." Regeneracion sounds like the start of a new era for Generacion Suicida, a recommitment to form with added inspiration that leaves them inevitably changed, and for the better. 

Get down to with more from Downtown Records.  

Album Review: Narrow Head - Moments of Clarity

We all enjoy moments of clarity, however brief. Instances where solutions present themselves, or a previously obstructed path becomes clear. Our lives are complicated and our perspectives are limited. It's not often that we can obtain a clear line of sight on what to do next, or even what our priorities are from task to task, but when it does happen, it tends to be extraordinary. An uncluttered mind is one that is free from anxiety and dread, allowing the body to maneuver the world with ease and actualize its intent. Texas alternative rock group Narrow Head seems to have reached this point of fluid, uninhibited concurrence between mind and matter on their latest LP, titled (what else) Moments of Clarity. The name of the record is a reference to a series of personal trials and terrible losses experienced by guitarist and vocalist Jacob Duarte in the lead-up to the release of their prior LP, 12th House Rock. Emerging from these hardships, the phrase that now adorns the album, would burst into the purview of Javob's perception like the glow of a neon sign, pointing him forward and through one adversity after another. This perseverance is reflected not only in the very deliberate way that the album was structured and recorded (at two separate studios, no less), but also in the very relationship of Jacob's vocal performance with the rest of the band's. His calm, resolute, and at times resigned, delivery shapes a guiding pathway of lucidity through the murky, driving filaments and actively pulverized structures of a track like "Gearhead," while providing a tempering thread of sanity to the blinding uplift of "Caroline." While it's easy to make comparisons to what Narrow Head has accomplished sonically here to post-hardcore and post-rock pioneers like Hum, Deftones, and Quicksand, it's apparent that the group has arrived at their current sound and level of prowess by following a path that was not precedented by other, but predicated on the belief in the portent of their own ability. They saw the direction this path could lead them, and they forged ahead in actuation of a purposeful and innate drive. Seeing is believing, but it's in doing that we meet our destiny.

Someone's got you covered, that some is Run for Cover.

Album Review: Nicholas Merz - American Classic

 
What other name could you give an album like this other than American Classic? It's an impossible question to answer. Nothing anchors its themes with the same level of depth and accuracy as these two words settling up to one and other like lonely strangers in a dimly lit bar, weighing their options after last call. Nicholas Merz has been all over this country, most recently as one-half of the Seattle-based and soberly romantic duo Darto- but it's with his solo efforts on American Classic that he manages to dig his spurs into the dirt long enough to pause and drink in the great, diminished expectations of the promised land on the other side of manifest destiny. On American Classic, Nicholas still sounds somber and stoic, but there is now a country-western quality to his singing that helps give his lyrical descriptions of the lives of the declassed, no class, godforsaken and god-fearing a sentimental hue and a pulse of warmth. Not to mention a twinge of Twainian irony. There is a little bit of Leonard Cohen in his delivery as well, but unlike the wry crooner, Nicholas is all-American, and all too close to his subjects. The way he describes someone who is cohabitating with a lover as if the two were playing a game of chess is conspicuously human while lending the listener the benefit of a clairvoyant instrument; allowing you to see through the subject's eyes, while Nicholas's words pierce the veil of appearances to show you the drama of contradictions that flounders beneath. One of the more amusing scenarios on the album appears on "Great Spiders" where a flight of self-love diverges from the mundane into an act of narcissistic negligence, and ultimately, man-slaughter, scored by the mocking drone of a swirl and pandemonium of saxophones. Empathy comes to overlap with a carrion-eater's voyeurism on the grudgingly visceral, rag-timey sweep of "Condor," and a drawn-out good-bye implodes into an existential crisis on "A Day in LA," a climax that is bound to a percussion line that sounds like someone beating a throw rug on a clothesline, a nagging, futile racket, presented as if the abuse of some lowly strip of decore could cause an epiphany to emerge that had otherwise eluded the narrator. On American Classic, Nicholas tells it like it is- even when what it is, is an intractable, self-destructive mess. But hey, ain't that America? 

Find it on Aagoo Records. 

Interview: Screaming Females

Image by Krista Schlueter

Screaming Females was probably my favorite band at one time. The first time I saw them at a house show in Wisconsin and they made such a powerful impression on me that I would go out of my way, braving all sorts of conditions, to see them again afterward. Driving on black ice-frosted road conditions in the dead of night, careening around mountain passes, forgoing meals to pay for gas, getting back from a venue hours away at 4 am when I had to be to work a mere three hours later- if they were playing near me, I was going to see them. My interests in music have evolved a lot since I first encountered this band, but I am still in awe of them in many ways, especially their relentless tenacity and willingness to do it themselves, as much as possible, nearly 20 years into their career. It was pretty cool to finally have the chance to talk with vocalist and guitarist Marissa and drummer Jarrett for CHIRP Radio about the band's latest album Desire Pathway, and all the things that came together to make it happen. I might be an irrepressible enthusiast, but I don't think the conversation came off as a "fan" interview by any stretch. I kept it together, is what I'm saying. You can listen to our conversation on CHIRP's site here, or below:  

CHIRP Radio · Screaming Females Interview

Desire Pathway is out on Doni Govani Records. You can listen to it below: 

Album Review: Seasoning - The Condensation

Singer and songwriter Lachlan Buckle gives away the origins of his current project in two ways... that are really just one way (Hint, it's in the name). While fleshing out demos over the years he ended up giving life to something new by chance. Instead of a Frankenstine's monstrosity though, the consequence of his love and labor is something that reflects back the goodness that he has poured into it. Under the name Seasoning, he has released a six-song EP titled The Condensation. These songs have been with him a few seasons and have finally "condensed," with a little TLC, into a breezy, indie-pop record, animated by an amicably aspiring sense of purpose and a confident stride that is easy to get caught up. Looking to a few cherry-picked examples of what I am fond of about this record, we can start with "Next to Me" which is graced with a backpacker's wanderlust that lends a dreamy pace to the song's bendy, strummy powerpop skip, and then there is the country-reverb-rich "Change" which has a frank cadence to its inflections that causes it to resemble a caring but difficult conversation with a friend, and finally, there is the rambling break-beat and sunny disposition of the gleaming, dream-pop chords that lend motion and light to "Loop Song," a track that moves like a film with a recurring, montage like a structure which sees Lachlan whispering lyrics quietly, as if to himself, as he wonders like a stray atom through city streets at a pace that is slightly slower than the rhythms of the people around him, making it appear as if he is being lapped by the spinning world around him. Sometimes the city is too frantic. Sometimes when the world is spinning out of control you need to just bump the breaks. Slow down and stay awhile, and let Lachlan show you what Seasoning has to offer. 

Album Review: Noah - Noire

Noire is a collection of loose songs from Tokyo electronic R'nB artist Noah that have been tucked under her bed, laying pensive under a heap of laundry, or leaning anxiously against the back of her closet for years- waiting to be pulled out, polished, and given a purpose. These nine tracks owe their origins to various points in her recording career, starting with 2015's Sivutie, but truly acquiring their future, potential luster around the release of her Étoile EP back in 2021. Noah has a welcoming and warm quality to her voice, a cleanly defined human presence amongst the passages of electronically enhanced sounds that surround it. Her voice is like a thread around your finger, reminding you of something important from your past; running from your ring finger into the distant horizon, it is a lifeline by which you can pull yourself back to a previous promontory of clarity. The other notable aspect of the album's procession is her distant piano playing. While it is not a feature of every track, it does lend a distinct sense of hope to the wafting din of "shadow" and the expectant yearning of "cheshire," a searching sensibility that confesses its vulnerability through the bravery of its desire. There are many wonderous things one can find in the dark. Most surprisingly amongst them is one's self. 

Find more from Flau.

Metal Monday: Dryad, Hellion, Bones & Witch Vomit

It's another Monday. A simple, terrible, miracle. A Monday. Time to get motivated for another week of grueling, meaningless effort as a shambling human shell. Such drudgery isn't without its benefits, although I'm failing to recall any at the moment. Hmmmm.... Here is an idea. While I work on the quandy of our existence, why don't you check out some brutal metal albums to calm your nerves? No sense in us doubling our efforts. Especially, if all we're going to do is come up empty-handed. 

Dryad - The Abyssal Plain (Prosthetic Records)

The depths of the sea called out to humankind. Pulling us back to its sunless cradle. A familial siren cascades up from the churning chasm of the devouring mother's subaquatic womb. Her culling cry is even heard inland, and some howl back in a zealous, rapturous hiss. Iowa's Dryad makes themselves willing vessels for this ancient madness on their visceral and Poseidonion debut LP, The Abyssal Plain. Beckoning forth a baying tempest of black metal, and armored by a scabbard exoskeleton of crust punk, they delve into a sinking sense of airless dread, caressed by a current of acrid incursions and sinister presages curried by a shrowd finely woven dungeon synths. Dryad wastes no time bailing out their harvest, heaving stygian phantasms onto the wharf of your mind, where these eldritch things sprawl and writhe and wind their tendrils into the quivering clefts of your senses. The catch is good, and now the shore is littered with horrors beyond comprehension. 

Hellion - The Magic Within (Awakening Records)

Columbia's Hellion are endowed with a dark, primitive aura, a vicious primal hunger that rumbles from the very soil of the jungle, blind from anger and driven by an insatiable appetite. Their third full-length, The Magic Within, lunges forth, teeth bared, like the skeleton of a decayed jaguar, whose trapped soul suddenly reacquires its former urge to kill, and swiftly makes a go at your neck. The dark forest rebel band makes their deadly presence known by peppering your carcass with toothy waves of repeating thrash grooves, summoned by the sacrificial throaty trill of a black metal spell pilfered from Impurity, an impromptu and roughshod weapon that shoots up from a cold pool of mud, blood, and liquified carrion; biting and rending your flesh like an ax shaving through the bark of a tree. Theirs is a magic that comes from a dark place indeed. 

Bones - Vomit (Disorder-Recordings)

Brusingly kinetic death metal from the acres-wide meat locker known as Chicago. This gruff and uncompromisingly muscular group disgorges all their angst over the course of nine, stomach emptying tracks on their fourth LP, Vomit. The grooves on this god-forsaking brawler will catch you in the paunch with a boot and then sink its knee into your nose as soon as you're doubled over. And you'll probably ask these bad dudes for another as soon as you swish the blood out of your gums and reset your septum. Bones delivers the kind of punishment that is as addictive as a cold flash of vengeance; and just as satisfying too. 

Witch Vomit - A Scream From The Tomb Below (Memento Mori)

We end with another dark ritual. Another cthonic murmuration, this time rising like a death rattle from the side of a mountain, a stone barrier between our world and sphere of exile used to contain a crooked serpentess and scion of sin. Its mighty, scaled coils shaking the very fabric of reality with its inpatient thrash, causing the air to fill with a sickening rumble that shudders the humors until they dispel into disarray. Witch Vomit's A Scream From The Tomb Below will assemble all the beldams and hex-weavers of the banished and forgotten places to a single rancid pyre, a stewing pit where they may prepare the offerings of their final orgastic, wicked sabbath; presided over by a baneful guttural gurgle that tears open the sky in a torrent of acid rain and underwritten by a ripple of explosive grooves that could strip a cliff face of its graduate and leave nothing but a disfigured monument to bedlam in its place. Witch Vomit's searing death metal smirch harbors a painful echo that will spread through time until the cycle of rejuvenation and apocalyptic resolution can begin again under the cataract gaze of heartless stars.