Zoh Amba Eyes Full LP (Matador)
Zoh Amba has built up an impressive resumé as an out saxophonist, but Eyes Full is a hard turn down the dirt road of rockin’ Americana. Why not? Their vocals on Jim White’s “I Don’t Do / Grand Central” were a highlight of my 2025, and while Eyes Full is far more straightforward singer-songwriter fare, it showcases Amba’s rambunctious style nicely, passionate bordering on volatile. On the acoustic guitar tracks, Amba channels Bob Dylan in an Appalachian setting, picking and strumming with callus-building abandon; if we needed someone to flip the dreaded stomp-clap whoa-oh into music worth listening to, I’d nominate Amba for the job. It’s not all campfire rollicking, though – they dip into slackerish indie-rock befitting the Matador seal of approval as well, plugging into some road-worn cabs with the boys. “Dead End Street” (which, like many of the songs here, features Jim White on drums) certainly exists within Pavement’s universe, “Odd Jobs” behaves like Sheryl Crow on dollar Coors night and “Thousand Years” could’ve found a comfortable home on any of Mudhoney’s last few albums. I’ll concede that electric/acoustic rock music isn’t the trickiest sound to find one’s way into, but Amba is naturally, immediately comfortable on Eyes Full, their jeans worn down ragged over time, not factory distressed. I’d love it if Matador could finagle this into a full-scale genre exchange program – we might finally get the spiritual jazz album that’s been lurking under Kurt Vile’s MF Doom trucker cap all these years.

Anadol & Marie Klock Manivelles LP (Pingipung)
The connection between Istanbul’s Anadol and Holving, France’s Marie Klock continues to bear fruit. Weird-ass fruit, mind you: think of a pawpaw, something that looks like a pear, tastes like a banana and scratches like a mango on your tongue. Their initial collaborative release from 2024 delighted in its made-up world of oddball retro-pop, and Manivelles moves onward in delirious good nature, as pleasantries have been established and their friendship has solidified. Anadol is still on the control board, swirling together Turkish pop, French chanson and German krautrock with ease, kooky joy and unfiltered cigarettes. I’d love to see all of her keyboards and synths, because the sounds they conjure are uncommonly vintage, recalling anything from the original Nintendo Entertainment System, Switched On Bach, Stereolab and Klaus Schulze, often at the same time. I continue to resent my linguistic failures, as I really wanted to know what Klock is on about here – the title translates in English to “Cranks”, a funny self-dig in line with Klock’s brazen playfulness. Lucky for me, English translations appear on the inner-sleeve (and accompanying Bandcamp page), and I’m not disappointed. “Rentrer à la Maison”, for example, describes familial neurosis from the feminine perspective with a chorus of “whenever you go home / you start off with great intentions / and then shove ’em up your ass / nice and deep, nice and deep”. Now that’s a universal language I’m sure many readers can share: the annoyance in dealing with well-meaning yet clueless parents.

Container & Will Guthrie FERN 10″ (Cave12)
With safety in mind, I put on my coveralls and oversized goggles prior to spinning this new collaborative EP from American noise-techno juggernaut Container and Australian percussive polymath Will Guthrie. Neither of them are known for stepping lightly – while their typical sonic modes differ, the sense of being vigorously shaken by the collar comes part and parcel with their respective bodies of work. Of course, neither are beholden to satisfying preconceived expectations either, as FERN is textural, nuanced and playful, not the full-throttle squash for which I was prepared. Opener “Murky” lives up to its title, with Guthrie running through an array of percussive elements over a notably placid buzz from Container’s box of tricks. “Sifting” is a quick splash of Container’s Fort Thunder influence, replete with intercom-squawk voice and emergency buzzer, whereas the second shortest track, “Maybe”, paints layer upon layer of drum-roll cacophony like a Sissy Spacek seven-inch. “Tablecloth” is the rightful centerpiece, and closest to what I expected from these two: after a purposely slow start, Container builds a restless groove and Guthrie cooks it to a crisp, reminiscent of Mindflayer but also just, well, better. I don’t want to say that the zero-dynamics wall-of-sound is beneath them at this point – routine sonic enemas are good for one’s health – but Container and Guthrie have too many ideas, and too many tools with which to realize them, to take such an easy route.

Crown Flash Crown Flash LP (Union Editions)
Union Editions takes a modern approach towards being an underground, avant-garde record-label. Rather than simply release records, the label exists through a variety mediums: records and tapes, sure, but also apparel, posters, patches, books (both art and written publications), silkscreens, football scarves… I can only assume perfumes and tinned crudité are in the works. It’s a cool approach, building out their own aesthetic community through limited-run physical objects, and one of the label’s latest offerings is the debut album from Crown Flash. The duo of Filippo Brancadoro and Francesco de Figueiredo have pursued the fringes of noise, psych and experimental music separately since the pre-Covid age (remember Heroin In Tahiti?), and as Crown Flash they offer a suite of stylish, gallery-ready electronics, keyed up to troll any narrow-minded audience. Their music is techno-informed but experimental in nature – any chance of a straightforward beat is lovingly tweaked and prodded into forms too antagonistic or abstracted for dance crowds. “Trauma Plot” is a good example: a cool break-beat dominates, though they can’t help but manipulate it into twists and overlay bizarre vocal manipulations. It’s mildly sinister in a way that shows a reverence for the IDM forms they are manipulating and distorting, somewhere between Aphex Twin, Amnesia Scanner and Vanity Productions. In Crown Flash’s hands, no ambient passage is safe from harsh disturbances, no sleek runway groove free from the possibility of being abruptly ripped off-grid.

Devon Rexi Meets John T. Gast Breathstep LP (Accidental Meetings)
John T. Gast has been like three steps ahead for years now, even if those steps often lead to strange, enigmatic places few people will ever aspire to wander. You just never know what the guy is going to do, only that it will be worth hearing, and this new collaborative album with equally inscrutable (though lesser-known) Dutch trio Devon Rexi is case in point. Breathstep combines richly international AutoTune vocals with early dubstep beats – a selection of alternate musical histories aligning towards a hazy future. I’m going to assume Devon Rexi are actually doing the Farsi vocals themselves, though I’m not ready to rule out the possibility that they simply swiped some of them from secret YouTube channels and pirate radio stations on the opposite end of the globe, and it often sounds like Coki remixing early ’00s Damian Marley tracks with the voices and musical signatures of electro-shaabi. Lots of clean dub sounds and dirty effects, with the sense that MIDI sampler keyboards small enough to fit into backpacks are the primary culprits. It reminds me of the adventurousness I’d find on labels like Bokeh Versions and Heat Crimes, cryptic and fascinating music that doesn’t offer an obvious way in – you have to run your fingers across the ornate hardwood door until you find the little notch that clicks open to the secret chamber beyond. “2furious (Liberate Mix)” is a great way to start your search: a dark-sided dub with jammed frequencies and wet-echo vocals wedged in every open gap.

Feeble Little Horse Bitknot LP (Saddle Creek)
When Feeble Little Horse cancelled their big summer tour in support of their 2023 Saddle Creek debut, I felt their pain without bearing direct witness to it. For as long as I’ve been around, there’s never been a harder time to be a cool young band in America than right now (nepo babies and private-school millionaires excluded); Feeble Little Horse’s Bitknot, poppy as it may be, flashes those warning signs of fatigue, frustration and malady. It’s also inventive, charismatic and catchy as hell, and while I need to go back to their first two to make sure, I’m gonna go wild and say that this is their finest yet. As with prior efforts, they continue to scrappily re-imagine poppy emo indie (ie. Horsegirl, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Wednesday, etc.) through a post-100 Gecs, post-Sophie digital frame of reference. They’re a real band, and they take their real guitar hooks, sugary vocals and immaculate drum fills (the drums are so good!) and jam them all into a sticker-covered laptop through a frayed USB cable, digitizing and crunchifying the sound of bedroom-basement live action into something uncanny yet human. I’d probably enjoy their sound as a thrown-together mess, but it’s evident that Feeble Little Horse’s wild choices are deliberate, simply because there’s no way they’d end up with this captivating, smoothed-out-slappy sound by sheer luck. If your head isn’t bobbing and swaying to the tweaky hooks of “Poison” and “Dior”, I’m going to assume you’re wearing a neck brace – let’s hope you heal up in time for their substantial tour schedule this July and October.

God’s Hand Police Lorry / Wind-Up Toys 7″ (Hard Art / Illiterati)
Cover art of the month goes to God’s Hand, delivering some sort of heavy-leather furry police fetish that I didn’t know existed (and I’m not just saying that to misdirect you from the heavy-leather furry police outfits in my closet). The photo is credited to “BULLCOP 54″… do I dare google? On second thought I think I’ll leave them be, and while I wish Sargeant Bulldog Officer was in the band, I’m content to imagine him singing “Police Lorry”, a fine slab of British street-punk from Iowa City (where else?). It’s melodic and un-intimidating in a UK Subs sorta way, perhaps akin to Pork Dukes if they stopped trying to be so crude for two seconds. “Wind-Up Toys” isn’t too far off, sounding like The Dickies or The Ruts or something aspiring to them, first-wave Chuck Berry-inspired punk that makes its way to a fun shout-along chorus, something to rev up the boot-boys in the back of the pub. It’s certainly more straightforwardly punk than God’s Hand’s debut EP (also reviewed in these pages), and while it doesn’t elevate beyond the confines of the well-established form, God’s Hand still has a powerful ace up their sleeve: that damned rubber-fetish cop-dog on the cover. He’s still lurking out there somewhere, I can feel it.

It’s A Setup It’s A Setup 7″ (Two Two One Press)
With their debut EP, Spokane’s It’s A Setup throw it back to the time before things all went wrong for screamo. Their sound hearkens back to the dirty, spastic hardcore offshoot of the late ’90s, one still inherently rooted in DIY ethics, where the term “screamo” itself was a self-deprecating shorthand for hardcore that integrates emo’s quiet / loud dynamics, metal-core’s chaotic patterns and the blast-beats of grind (often with song-intro samples that sound like they were taped off the TV, also found here). Were it 1998, It’s A Setup would’ve had the same shot at making it to No Idea, Sound Pollution or Hydrahead, but most likely would’ve just released their seven-inch themselves, stuffing a manilla envelope sleeve with inserts. I’m hearing Ottawa and MK Ultra in particular in this self-titled EP, where stoner-y intros lead into frantic blasts and voice-cracking screams, all with community college production (and that’s not a diss – this EP was recorded at Spokane Falls Community College). Amazingly for the style, they aren’t old folks reliving their youth, but apparently young enough to write a song like “21+ Punk Show Is An Oxymoron”, bemoaning clubs that deny teenagers at the door. Relish these days, fellas! It’s all downhill from here!

KiMiMi ИМА LP (Calax / Conatala)
One thing that happens when I write all these record reviews is I subject myself to the threat of overexposure: take a thing that I enjoy, overload myself with way too much of it, and then notice as the dislike or resentment starts bubbling up. I feel like that’s happened to me with music in the “random field-recordings” style, either as an embellishment or central motif, but as I sit here now, batting my eyelashes with infatuation at Shinya Ohno’s KiMiMi project, I realize that a great record can cure all negativity in a heartbeat. An AI overview might explain KiMiMi as “experimental folk over a backdrop of construction field-recordings”, and while I required a mere gallon of water to type that myself (I’m a thirsty guy!), ИМА is far more beautiful than that basic description implies. The construction sounds (recorded on site at the “Arimasuton Building”, an improvised(!) building primarily of reinforced concrete) are near and dear to Ohno, having a personal relationship with its inhabitants and creators, and his music, majestically orchestrated, mirrors that gentle intimacy. The instrumentation is dazzlingly vast – melodica, ukelele, gaida, guitar, flutes, organ, xylophone, and more – and almost falls backward into the children’s ball-pit bordered by Phil Elvrum’s early work as The Microphones, the domestic strum of Tori Kudo and the avant-garde experimentation of Robert Ashley. The sounds of chatter and distant drilling help triangulate a physical space, one that KiMiMi fills with tenderness and warmth. I forget whoever originally made that “dancing about architecture” line, but I invite you to look up pictures of the Arimasuton and tell me it’s not architecture that dances to the dulcet sounds of ИМА!

K Wata Give U Space 2xLP (Short Span)
Emptiness never sounded as gorgeous as it does on K Wata’s full-length debut for Short Span, Give U Space. Short Span’s covers are consistently attractive, but I don’t think any of them have fit the music as perfectly as what we see here: an antiseptic 3D rendering of “a room” at its basest level, something I’d imagine the initial 1992 digital sketches of Doom might resemble. K Wata’s music revels in its behind-the-eyelid colorlessness, a dub techno that feels like it was vigorously disinfected before being allowed entry into the open world, yet teeming with cinematic intrigue. The beauty is that the disinfection was incomplete: there are voices, scratches, unexplained motions and swerving tension within these downtempo grooves… imagine a pond’s flat brown surface with an assortment of predators lurking below. I’m reminded in ways of Space Afrika’s murky elegance, Jan Jelinek’s cut-up clicks-in-dub and also those earliest Hyperdub EPs, the immediately pre-dubstep era when artists like Burial, Kode9 and The Space Ape knew they wanted to make melancholy electronic music that spoke to the impending social digitization and were still figuring out how. While like-minded in many ways, K Wata drafted his own template here, soft enough to fall into and disorienting enough to keep you from climbing out.

No You No You LP (VP Texi)
No You is the pairing of Davy Kehoe and Suzanne Kraft, arriving with this fully-realized album right from the jump. Davy Kehoe is responsible for introducing AutoTuned harmonica to the world on his solo debut Short Passing Game (one of 2017’s very best!), whereas Suzanne Kraft (real name Diego Herrera) left his fingerprints on all sorts of cool productions over the last few years, from chill-wave to Balearic to downtempo house and so forth – there’s even a killer Soft Rock For Hard Times single. I can sense a little nervous, first-date energy on No You, resulting in a somewhat conservative display of the duo’s talents. No You falls closer to rock than techno, though it’s certainly not either – think more along the lines of downtempo synth-wave, electronic music that favors rock instrumentation if not its harder-edged stereotypes. Both Kehoe’s penchant for staccato krautrock rhythms and Kraft’s pastel haze are all over the record, but it kind of plays out like a testing of the waters – you can sense that the duo want to jump in with an obnoxious cannonball but decide to calmly use the ladder instead. There’s no shortage of ideas – certain songs have me remembering Blank Dogs (and their penchant for burying the vocals in ten layers of effects), others strut upright with a Pender Street Steppers vibe, and then there’s “Invisible”, a blatant My Bloody Valentine tribute that pretty much nails it, guitars swirling and percussion absent. I’m going to keep spinning it for now, and hope that this is the inception of a long and productive relationship.

Storm On Earth Storm On Earth 2 12″ (Storm On Earth)
In an excellent feature on the First Floor newsletter, René Pawlowitz AKA Shed goes into a few dozen(!) of his various aliases and explains what they signify or aim towards with regard to the music he creates under them. He describes his Storm On Earth project as “peak-time techno tools with no soul … hard drums and repetitive grooves with no bigger ideas behind it”. I was already deeply endeared to the man, but I find this coldly-stoic (and extremely German) admission of Storm On Earth’s “no soul / no bigger ideas” deeply satisfying. I know that he means it, and isn’t self-negging in hopes of praise, but the four tracks found on this new EP are masterful in their hard-charging brainlessness. “Stale II” hits like an anonymous Hard Wax purchase from any of the last three decades (this is a positive thing), and “Fish” is briny house music, ready to dislocate the wrists of any hardcore voguers trying to keep up. It’s absolutely nothing special, but as we now know, “nothing special” is admittedly by design – if you love the discrete elements of pure techno music and want to bear witness to a master building, layering, tweaking and orchestrating them, Pawlowitz takes you straight to the source as Storm On Earth.

Tara Clerkin Trio Somewhere Good LP (World Of Echo)
Like many of today’s interesting new groups, Tara Clerkin Trio don’t invent a brand-new aesthetic so much as offer an exciting combination and refinement of pre-existing styles – a few base familiarities to guides us into the new. “Curation” is kind of an ugly word, but I can’t help but hear that in the music of Tara Clerkin Trio, that this is a group of deep music heads who have the talent and good taste to mix and match a range of stylistic elements until arriving at a distinctive Tara Clerkin Trio Sound. Prior releases had established the trio’s general parameters, and Somewhere Good is now their finest effort to date. Within, you’ll find the post-jazz / math-rock fusion of late ’90s Thrill Jockey; Bristolian trip-hop; the contemporary jazz of downtown NYC; indie-pop; psychedelia; dub. These are all very good things, and Tara Clerkin Trio are so at ease with each other that a sharply-cut guitar loop, twinkling keys and fat techno bass pads flow together into charming pop song with the complementary timelessness of screaming over a blast-beat. I’m reminded of Antena and The Xx, Dido and Astrid Sonne, K Freund and Valentina Magaletti, sometimes at the same time, other times separately, mixed up so vigorously and joyously that it all turns the color of Tara Clerkin Trio. Which, betraying their deeply British origins, is so bright you’ll want to wear shades.

Timmy Vulgar / Jimbo Easter Timmy Vulgar & Jimbo Easter 7″ (Celluloid Lunch)
Detroit is full of real ones, but Timmy Vulgar and Jimbo Easter are two of its realest. (The last time I saw Timmy Vulgar, he was laughing maniacally in a parking lot about my band’s rider as we drove away… a tale for another time.) You’ll surely recognize Vulgar from his work with Human Eye and Timmy’s Organism (among countless others), whereas Easter has done time in The Piranhas and Druid Perfume (among his own wooly assortment of bands, projects and criminal charges). Their paths have naturally intertwined through the years, this most recent check-in taking place on one brain-blasted seven-inch EP. It’s free as free can be, two guys with guitars, synths and at least one functioning drum-machine swinging wildly out of orbit. Trying to make logical sense of it is a fool’s errand (and you’re hearing from one now), but from what I gather, Vulgar composed the three a-side tracks and Easter led the charge on the flip. The a-side is full of acid-soaked guitars and gook of a gobbeldy nature – it sounds like Electric Eels and Dan Melchior licking every last toad in the swamp (which, incidentally, is literally what Vulgar is singing about on one track). The six(!) b-side tracks are even less formalized, zonked-out caveman damage befitting the cover image of Vulgar and Easter as obelisk-gazing primates. They’ve already written enough formal songs to last us a lifetime – Vulgar and Easter delved deep into the primordial source here, and they didn’t even have to shine moonlight into their anuses to get there.

David Watson & Bill Nace On Bats LP (Amish)
For your newest bi-monthly Bill Nace offering, I submit this collaborative album with bagpipe player David Watson, released care of the Amish Records label. I sense that Nace is at his most energized when performing alongside someone who can match his sustained, fiery tones with a prominent level of their own, and that’s certainly the case here. Watson unleashes those familiar, soul-stirring bagpipes into incensed and dazzling new configurations and Nace wields his taishogoto as both sword and shield. With the bagpipes more or less a constant sonic presence in the air, Nace has decisions to make: does he plow straight through, carve out a serpentine detour, or remain in place while hopping on one foot? As a collaborator, Nace is a keen listener – all paths are considered, and they squeeze a whole lot of juice out of their relatively simple setup. “Wishbone” in particular lets it all hang out, with some of Nace’s fastest finger-work yet handily matched by Watson, like two sprinters who set their best times when racing each other. It’s crazy to me that there is some other band calling themselves Geese when the moniker is far more befitting the racket that Watson and Nace have conjured here, a ferocious battalion of honks, squeals and electric sighs.

Appropriately elevated to podium-height were Heavenly Bodies, a trio of friendly locals who I tend to see hanging out at a variety of guitar-centric gigs more than I see assembled as Heavenly Bodies on stage. I knew from prior shows and recordings that they were going to slowly melt a block of psych-rock ice this evening, and that’s precisely what they did. Drummer Shaun Bailey embodied a patient restraint, lightly sprinkling his floor tom as Dustin Burrows looped and layered the delicate meanderings of his guitar. Dustin’s sister Ashley Burrows soon joined the conversation, plucking decisive, resonant notes from her bass, as sedate as the late-night SEPTA schedule. They built up from a sleepy din into a blustery storm, Bailey giving those crash cymbals a pounding as both Burrowses unleashed the full capacity of their instruments. It was a severely incremental process, stretched out so far that any chance of assigning “Point A” and “Point B” to the music became impossible. After the initial deluge, Bailey fell into an upbeat, neo-motorik groove, and the guitarist Burrows stepped up to sing, only for his voice to be effectively inaudible to the audience as well as the rest of his band. He glanced over to the sound-person for a little sonic first-aid, but their head was hunched over, either deeply zoned out from the soothing vibes of Heavenly Bodies or actually asleep. The minor kerfuffle drew a big wide smile out of his sister – even on stage, siblings remain siblings. When a friend casually dismissed their performance as an “anyone can do that” act of amateurish simplicity in the following intermission, I felt myself bristle internally, suddenly aware that I was on Team Heavenly Bodies all along.

Shortly thereafter, TAKAAT unraveled their dual pedal-boards on the floor directly in front of the pulpit, still warm from Heavenly Bodies. With a small container of ear plugs directly in front of their gear, a few attendees sheepishly wandered over and helped themselves in direct refutation of Keiji Haino’s “no one should wear earplugs” dictum (source: The Wire, issue 488). Was it going to be that loud? TAKAAT is essentially Mdou Moctar’s rhythm section, the pared-down duo of Ahmoudou Madassane (guitar) & Mikey Coltun (bass). Drummer Souleymane Ibrahim wasn’t in attendance, though an inconspicuous rhythm-box lurked amidst Coltun’s pedals, ready to fire off a groove.

Coltun opened with some tidal-wave-shaped bass chords, a mighty backdrop for Madassane’s introduction. From the jump, he chose to shred excessively, establishing the dominant mode of unrepentantly glorious guitar. With all the available white wall space, someone should’ve projected an AI-generated remake of that giant battle scene in 300 where the Greeks and Persians are replaced by armies of Jimi Hendrixes and Randy Holdens, if only I had thought to request it sooner. The duo bounced between drum-loop tracks and percussion-free passages of psychedelic Tuareg desert-rock, a style that even NPR has probably told you about by now. They took turns amping up the energy and lulling us back to safety – I think it’s the same general principle behind water-park wave-pool regulations where they have to turn off the wave machine every fifteen minutes. I’m certain that the promoters weren’t properly insured for the occurrence of an entirely dance-oriented setlist.

And speaking of dancing, in an interesting flip of live-music norms, the crowd that gathered beyond the immediate seated area started to dance after a couple of songs, an inverse of the mosh-pit’s typical stage-relative location. The outer-rim dance party continued to grow in strength and number as TAKAAT played on, eventually spilling out directly in front of the band for the final, thrilling number. It was heartwarming and also a little funny, watching this crowd attempt to dance in 3/4 time with any sort of groove; no fewer than two different people pointed out to me the crowd’s likeness to the classic Peanuts dance scene (as a sign of endearment rather than derision, of course). With whatever idiotic “travel ban” is currently in place in this stupid fascist scam country, we shared a collective understanding that there was no straight answer as to when Madassane might be able to return to the US after this tour, or if he’d even feel compelled to do so under the increasingly extenuating circumstances. The preciousness of the moment was not lost on this appreciative crowd, as I weaved past the sizable line to the merch table on my way out.

Carla dal Forno Confession LP (Kallista)
International woman of mystery Carla dal Forno is back, with her first cover photograph that doesn’t look like it was taken by a private investigator – as far as album portraits are concerned, is she this generation’s Jandek? Dal Forno’s hair blowing in the hillside breeze is a fitting image for the music of Confession, which sounds as though an emotional weight has been lifted from her shoulders. The melodies dip out of the shadows and into the light of day… there’s even a song called “Blue Skies”, which I submit as irrefutable evidence of the album’s hopeful slant. As a long-time dal Forno fan, I’m on alert for these subtle differences, as Confession displays the usual similarities to the rest of her discography. She’s been working the dubby bass-line / tiny programmed drums / haunted vocals thing to perfection for years now, but if I’m being honest, I’d love it if she changed up the unwaveringly methodical tempo, verse-chorus song structure and/or instrumentation by a larger increment here or there. That’s not because I don’t enjoy her typical style – I very much do – but because I already have like four or five records of this stuff, and I’m selfishly curious to hear her venture into the unknown. In that regard, Confession might drag a smidge for listeners already intimately familiar with dal Forno’s oeuvre (and, as on previous records, a jerk might describe the instrumental tracks as “filler”), but her charm remains intact. Confession is a great introduction for those unversed in dal Forno’s bewitching post-punk pop, while us established fans (Fornographers?) will enjoy familiarizing ourselves with the new-wave pop nugget “Alone With You” and the acoustic-gaze of “Gave You Up”, two of the album’s highlights.

Del Paxton / Retirement Party Dogeared / Nothing To Hear Without A Sound 12″ (Storm Chasers)
Poppy emo comes from three trustworthy sources: soul-sucking suburbs, quaint college towns and blue-collar cities. Don’t accept it from anywhere else (imagine emo from Los Angeles or Berlin, yuck!), and take comfort in knowing that this handshake-split between Del Paxton and Retirement Party comes from Buffalo and Chicago respectively. Del Paxton won me over with 2023’s Auto Locator, and their three songs here behave similarly, combining the zig-zag guitar parts of Braid with the zhuzh of Glitterer and the boyish charm of The Promise Ring. I just noticed that these songs are all like five minutes long, but they don’t feel long, a testament to their ability to write engagingly. Chicago’s Retirement Party is new to me; these four songs have been called up from the digital Bandcamp minor-leagues to the other side of this vinyl record. Retirement Party have that sort of elder-millennial professional-podcaster vibe that feels unfair of me to say out loud, but I will counter that with the notion that their brand of indie-punk is a whole lot of catchy fun, too. Immediately I’m thinking of Something To Write Home About-era Get Up Kids and the final Jazz June record, but Avery Springer’s got a voice of her own, which has lodged itself in my brain in the form of “Sixth Sense”‘s chorus. I’ll also add that this particular vinyl record is mastered sharp and hot, noticeably louder than most newly-pressed records I pick up these days, even ones on labels with actual budgets for that sort of thing. Multiple lessons on how to do it right await you here.

Disket Running / Vamos A Ganar 7″ (General Speech)
Three members of Disket are sporting impeccable winged eyeliner on the cover and then… the other two failed to complete the assignment. Why not go five for five and achieve maximum punk-rock hotness, dudes? Perhaps they’re working up to it, but either way, this “double A side” single is an excellent start for the new NYC quintet, sporting members of Baby Shakes and fellow General Speech recording-artists Vaxine. Disket play power-pop borne of leather-jacket punk, proving that New York City still imbues some level of urban grit no matter how many Montessori pre-schools and beauty spas for dogs have recently opened. “Running” is ninety seconds of punk ready to make that Rolling Stone “100 Best Punk Albums” list shrivel up like a salted slug. Joan Jett meets Nasty Facts, what else do you need? “Vamos A Ganar” is twice as long, a full three minutes of hip-shaking cheetah-print speed with just enough darkness around its edges, reminiscent of No Hope For The Kids and Gorilla Angreb but spared of any early ’00s feel. The artwork’s soccer (excuse me, football) theme will surely appeal to the elder punks sporting scally caps, sideburns and scarves, though “Running” makes me want to kickflip down a set of stairs with a security guard chasing me as much as score on an in-bound header.

Evil Sword / Miss Pussycat The Skit Split LP (Rhinestone)
On this split between Philadelphia’s Evil Sword and New Orleans’s legendary Miss Pussycat, the hijinks, tomfoolery, whimsy and all-purpose kookiness are maximized. It starts off with Evil Sword, who could misleadingly be described as a bass / drums / vocals duo, as they treat their instruments more like props or noisemakers than the typical elements used to compose rock music. Over stomped-trash percussion, wiggly little bass runs and Looney Tunes sound effects, vocalist Kate Ferencz is a lovable Tasmanian devil, with an elastic, theatrical delivery that reminds me of both Jehnny Beth and Kathy Acker (smushed together under an Acme anvil). Evil Sword’s ten songs follow a script, full of bells, whistles and wacky narration, like one of those mildly hallucinogenic children’s TV shows that young hip parents will insist is actually really good. Miss Pussycat has been putting together her audio plays for decades now: live with puppets, on video with puppets, and on record with the imagination of the listener’s mind’s eye. We get a full eighteen minute audio-play here, “MG Xing Ever Gras”, which follows two kittens through a Mardi Gras costume-shopping adventure, Miss Pussycat’s pitch-shifted vocals as DIY and endearing now as they were twenty years ago. Similar to how Never Mind The Bollocks inspired so many kids to pick up guitars and make wild noise, I can only assume The Skit Split will have a similar effect for slide whistles and papier-mâché.

The Family Men Co/de/termination LP (Welfare Sounds)
If you’re of the same micro-generation as myself, you might’ve discovered major-label alt-rock as a pre-teen by scamming your way through a Columbia House CD haul. It’s with great delight then that I am sharing with you the fact that Co/de/termination, the debut album from Gothenburg’s The Family Men, is wild fun in that sonic tradition. I’m talking Nine Inch Nails, Filter, Ministry, Melvins, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, KMFDM, Orgy, The Jesus Lizard, Skinny Puppy… The Family Men somehow channel all of those freaky legends here, and it’s deeply, infectiously satisfying. That’s what a lot of these modern-day industrial goth-rock acts seem to miss, the sheer excitement of being able to smash keyboards and slam guitars at the same time; The Family Men absolutely go to town, showing everyone how it’s done. Opener “Calamity” is like every ’90s hacker-rave scene jammed together at a dangerous speed, Run Lola Run thrown into a mosh-pit with Go‘s Las Vegas scenes (ie. Fatboy Slim) and Johnny Mnemonic stage-diving. What a rush! It’s not all high-velocity damage though – “AOR” sounds like Tom Morello and Dave Navarro sixty-nineing, whereas “Scanner” is the bowling ball and all these lightweight nu-gaze revivalists are the pins. It’s over the top, unafraid to be cheesy, and just so bold and entertaining that I personally can’t get enough. Why settle for another geriatric reunion tour of ’90s has-beens when the newness and vitality of The Family Men is sitting right here, waiting to be devoured?

Folded Group Folded Group 7″ (Open Mouth)
It happens to the best of us sometimes: Bill Nace is in love. As such, the only reasonable response is to make a record with your beloved, which is how Folded Group came to be. Alongside Nace’s loops, voice and mini-synth, his partner Lena Kolb contributes the sounds of viola, a loom (she’s a weaver / textile artist) and her voice as well (albeit buried far below). The two tracks are abstract and textural – it often feels like I’m listening from the raw thread’s perspective, sharp needles and a rickety machine expertly poking and prodding me into a woven fabric. “Shaft” opens a tiny portal with clicks and warbles, a secret chatroom for crickets to shoot the breeze before Kolb’s voice bubbles up from an underground chamber. “Harness” delves further into clickety-clacks – “shaken bag of seashells” isn’t listed in the credits but they replicate this clatter precisely. Soon enough, Nace’s voice enters through a makeshift flying saucer, Kolb responds even further down in the mix and we’re treated to an intimate conversation rendered unintelligible by effects, like side C of I Am Sitting In A Room, or people moving about behind drawn shades, the blur of shadows only occasionally recognizable as the human form. Although I cannot deny the two nude figures sketched on the cover, or the possible implications of the track titles, I’m not trying to be lascivious here – Folded Group retains its personal privacy nicely, like the locked account of an Onlyfans creator.

Guttersnipe Extinction Burst! LP (Night School)
In 2002, “Oops! The Tour” recalibrated the ears of the American art-punk underground, bringing The Locust, Lightning Bolt and Arab On Radar (and Wolf Eyes and The Flying Luttenbachers and Erase Errata and even The Blood Brothers) to young audiences ready and willing to have their minds blown. That in-your-face noise-punk spirit echoes in the unhinged caterwaul of Guttersnipe’s sophomore album, Extinction Burst!. The Leeds duo play guitar and drums the way a blender plays frozen fruit – after the tentative, sour twinkles that open “Alive On Tuesday”, Guttersnipe jump in feet first without looking, thrashing out lengthy, loosely-structured “songs” not unlike the hot asbestos breath of Air Conditioning and Lambsbread. It’s dense and attention-demanding, with the same predilection for high-note irritants (see “Primordial Invagination”) as Arab On Radar, delivered with the cyclone fury of Lightning Bolt and the room-clearing thrill of Sightings. Much as the class of 2002 had their own perspective and place in the world, Guttersnipe’s is as immediate and unflinching as their prickly, bruising noise-rock: they’re outspoken xenofeminists and happy to explain what that actually means. Like their music, if you’re cool and you get it, it’ll all make perfect sense.

Hand Model & Gloved Hands Chudo Pustih Ruk 7″ (Dumb Edge)
All the essential ingredients for a good minimal-synth project appear in this cover photo: QWERTY keyboard, box-screen monitor, rickety metal table upon which they rest, cheap microphone at waist height and tilt-up garage door to conceal it all from the outside world. It’s the debut EP from Hand Model (the vocals) and Gloved Hands (the music): four sullen gusts of rudimentary synth-pop. While peacefully residing in California, Hand Model (if not also Gloved Hands) is a Russian native, and puts those ESL skills to good use here, dolefully lecturing in his native tongue over Gloved Hands’ routine bleeps, blorps, blops and bloops. “Teflon” might be my favorite, if only because mentions of “Pink Floyd cassette” and “Beach Boys cassette” stick out among the otherwise Russian lyrics – some phrases are simply exclusive to the English language, “Beach Boys cassette” undoubtedly one of them. As is the case with any miniscule-edition lathe-cut record, Chudo Pustih Ruk is more of a curio than a formal release, though in this age of digital supremacy, anyone can type the name and title into their web browser of choice and listen to these songs on Bandcamp within seconds, so there you go. It’s nice to hold it in my hands at least, especially right after pulling it out of the industrial-grade freezer where I keep all my synth-wave singles. Audiophiles take note: they sound best at a crisp 33°F.

Memotone Warm Shadows LP (Accidental Meetings)
Will Yates is one of the most reliable and trustworthy producers of whatever you wanna call today’s post-club avant-garde style: nu-ambient, post-jazz electro, dream-pop, or simply “the list of artists playing Making Time”? One look at Memotone’s discography and you’ll realize you have a lot of catching up to do if not already familiar – Yates has been at it since 2011, and his productivity has risen as of late, with three full-lengths in 2024, two in 2025 and now Warm Shadows to inaugurate 2026. I’d say that Warm Shadows works as a strong overview not just of Memotone, but for the aforementioned (and poorly-designated) genre as a whole, where dub, techno, jazz, ambient, modern composition, post-punk and new-age collide… the sprawling valleys between Laurel Halo, Astrid Sonne and Félicia Atkinson. Opener “Warm Shadow” pairs rain-dappled drums with sweetly seductive horns – file under Sam Gendel / Eli Keszler / Lemon Quartet – and it’s followed by “Laimèti Pavyksta”, which taps into the post-R&B Copenhagen scene care of Ugné Uma’s seductively-aimless vocals. For a change of pace, “Round The Bend” works a rock-band setup (featuring folks from Jabu) for some ’90s-inspired alt-strum you’d expect to hear on the Julia’s War label. It goes on like this: all the niche styles of the cool-kid electronic / indie / experimental section get some shine through these eight tracks, a satisfying Boomkat For Dummies study-guide in one tidy record.

Neptune Play Some Music LP (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia)
There’s just something about a rock band starting off as a “sculpture project” that lends itself to kicking ass. That’s Neptune’s story at least, and it dates back quite a while, somehow to 1994 in fact; the group has maintained a somewhat consistent presence since. The whole sculpture thing is also an active concern, as Neptune perform their post-hardcore on literally-homemade instruments – their brutalist metallic pieces aren’t trying to cosplay as Fender knockoffs. That’s a strong enough gimmick for a mediocre group to comfortably coast on, but Neptune are a cut above. Their music retains an enigmatic edge, with shamanic drumming and guitars that grind like molasses mixed with playground sand. The sonic elements are ready and waiting to slap you unconscious, which is why Play Some Music is particularly infatuating – Neptune never move in for the knockout blow. Instead, these songs creep around the corners of the room like feral animals trapped in a human residence, burrowing under furniture and attacking only if provoked. Think of Crash Worship and Missing Foundation if they made it to middle-age and matured into nuance, smarter, calmer and more self-assured than their violent twenties. The vocals (from both drummer Daniel Boucher and guitarist Jason Sanford) are downright sedative, their soft-spoken voices arriving like nurses during a surgery you somehow retained a slight consciousness through. If they added some synthetic atmosphere, it might be haunting, but Neptune refuse to lean on cheap tricks. These three guys all wear corrective lenses now; they can see right through that nonsense.

Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary Wiretaps For Oral LP (Disciples)
Iranian-Canadian duo Saint Abdullah and American jazz drummer Jason Nazary hit us with a sublime “two different radios playing at the same time” vibe on Wiretaps For Oral. Any two sounds can be mashed together – whether or not it works is an entirely different story – but the mix of Saint Abdullah’s rapid-cut sampling and Nazary’s crisply improvised percussion is choice. For starters, I’m not entirely sure how they did it, which is a positive trait. The radio / television / street / field samples of Saint Abdullah come fast and layered, like one of those Glands Of External Secretion summits with Orchid Spangiafora, and Nazary seems to be interacting with them in real-time (not entirely unlike Jack Bauer), sticking and weaving through the chop of uncredited voices. At times, it can feel like Madlib’s sampling techniques at his most frenzied – maybe it’s the occasional dip into boom-bap trap-kit drumming – but it also feels like something from the insane and unknowable deep-end of the Sublime Frequencies label… the final mysterious transmission from Alan Bishop before he walks into the Sahara, never to return, Chris Corsano sunburnt and searching for his friend. “Strangers At The Gun Range” is a personal favorite, a low-slung drag-and-scrape that splits the difference between an MF Doom instrumental interlude and, I dunno, Esplendor Geométrico? Even if it was all meticulously edited from files without any in-person collaboration (I don’t know either way), Wiretaps For Oral shoots sparks.

Schatterau Wir Gingen Durch Leere Stunden LP (Hands In The Dark)
Wir Gingen Durch Leere Stunden is the third full-length from German duo Schatterau, and it’s another hefty collection (fifteen tracks!) of bespoke sonic cinema. As beguilingly German as pumpernickel bread, Schatterau sketch out multiple variations on the same emotional themes of isolation, sorrow and beauty. I’d also add “confusion” to that list, but that one’s on me, as I remain pitifully non-fluent in German and its various regional dialects. The soft-spoken voices spotlighted here provide me with sentiment if not understanding. The resulting album sounds barrel-aged, “songs” rich with flavorful sediment and minerals that took time to seep in. I feel like you could still vaguely connect Schatterau’s last LP to post-punk, but Wir Gingen Durch Leere Stunden is smooth as a rain-slicked granite slab – imagine if some of those extremely mature ’80s post-punk acts like The Blue Nile, Eyeless In Gaza or Section 25 were stripped bare of rock aesthetics and traded in for soft tape loops, melodious drones, looming bass-lines, delicate synthesizers and a crumpled sketch of Klaus Kinski drawn by Graham Lambkin. In that way, they’re similar to Deux Filles or Brannten Schnüre, but all of these duos have succeeded in crafting their own vivid realms, like neighboring theaters in a particularly exciting art-house district.

Seefeel Sol.Hz LP (Warp)
I love the concept of guitar bands who evolved / dissolved into electronic music over time, real or imagined. Black Dice is a good one; I think legends like Kraftwerk and New Order mostly count too, and Seefeel as well, whose early and sustained Warp Records affiliation confirmed their outsider status. While I understand that the sound of the guitar still exists within Sol.Hz (care of founding member Mark Clifford), it’s as obscured and unrecognizable as any of the sounds he’s drafted up here. Clifford handles mostly everything besides vocals (contributed by longstanding Seefeel member Sarah Peacock), and the artwork and typeface, both redolent of the spaceship interfaces you’d find in Ridley Scott’s last few Alien films, confirm the music’s sense that ancient organic life has given way to futuristic electronic processes. I’ve seen Sol.Hz described as Seefeel’s “dub record”, and I’m not sure I’m totally hearing that – there are a few tracks that manage to keep their feet firmly planted in bass, but the beats are as apprehensive and guarded as you’d expect to find on a Pop Ambient compilation, light palpitations caught in the ambient swirl like the heartbeat of a fetus. The whole record hovers cautiously in the distance, often more typically categorizable as intros, segues and outros than songs. That seems to be the point – even at their most rock-oriented, Seefeel’s music has always revealed an aeriform condition, like one of those surreal gas-giant planets, surfaceless and sprawling.

Who Cares? Who Cares? 7″ (Purely Physical Teeny Tapes)
Alright, so the name of this group makes you think of the thirtieth-best band on some Mystic Records comp from 1983, but those of you willing to look past your unfounded assumptions will be richly rewarded by this fantastic EP. Who Cares? are a trio out of Melbourne, not a city in dire need of more ramshackle indie-pop, though none of it offers the same heady, witchy aura of Who Cares?. An acoustic guitar’s chords are strummed over atmospheres both ominous and tender while Zarnie Morcombe’s vocals shine like a candle carried down a centuries-old hallway. It’s like if Comus were a UK DIY group who only released one seven-inch in 1979, Anika lost at sea in a paddleboat with an acoustic guitar, or a Ouija board that occasionally flirts back. “Discipline” isn’t a Throbbing Gristle cover, but the title couldn’t be a total accident – either way, it’s one singing-saw away from a classic Black Heart Procession tune. These are four pop songs, no doubt, but with an alluring, occult-like pull that reminds me of those incredible Ssabæ and Bassæ records on the Few Crackles label, a nascent magic (or is nü mægik more appropriate) strain of quiet underground guitar music to unite us. Recommended!

World I Hate Total Nuclear Annihilation LP (Convulse)
It’s simple, really: if Infest started in 2020 instead of 1986, they’d be World I Hate. This Milwaukee group simply sounds more pissed-off and brutal than their peers, with songs capable of the most dangerous parkour moves, scaling vertical surfaces and hurdling gaps that risk severe bodily harm. Their music pops every visible vein, a non-stop intensity from dirge-paced pile-ons (“Incentivized”) to grind-core immolation (“Closing In”) and what sounds like Integrity turned up to eleven (“Bullshit Faucet”). Their songs are agile and monstrous, very much in line with Infest’s No Man’s Slave, but there’s also the clear and present influence of today’s beatdown hardcore flavors. I have no doubt these guys enjoy Trapped Under Ice (they named their band after a TUI lyric), Fury Of Five and Bulldoze, and that appreciation finds novel ways to seep into their songwriting. It’s an ingredient but not the dominant one, as World I Hate are at their peak when blasting out pitch-perfect grind – the title track is up there with Terrorizer and Insect Warfare, a statement I don’t make lightly. If World I Hate didn’t have the benefit of forty-five years of the form to draw from, I might even be so bold as to say that Total Nuclear Annihilation bests some of the undisputed legends at this extreme form of hardcore, but I don’t want to get carried away. What I know for sure is that some of World I Hate’s peers are playing ADIDAS cross-fit brand-activation parties, and they should tread lightly: World I Hate could easily grind their bones to make their bread.

YGR: Alright, so I don’t think I would have predicted your choice of “I Let Him Deal” if you gave me a dozen guesses. Why’s this your worst?

DG: Well truth be told it started out as my favorite song on Carnation. In fact, I drove out to Chicago mainly to get my man Jim Elkington’s chilly, serpentine guitar style laid down on top of it. And I thought what he did on this was awesome, to be honest its only redeeming quality. But prior to bringing it to Randall Dunn, the producer of Carnation, the song was quiet, dreadful, dreamy, with percussive elements so teensy that the song felt like malarial delirium. I wasn’t quite done shaping, but I knew that there was room for a more dynamic chorus, and probably only something a studio session could deliver. I wanted the thing to feel like waking up from a gentle nightmare on a raft in a slow moving river into a paralyzing death by orgasm or something.

So our first stop on the recording tour was in LA at Matt Chamberlain’s studio. And again this song was at the forefront of my mind, not as a single really, but something I thought was the most evocative, a centerpiece if you will. Matt is a brilliant drummer, Randall a brilliant producer, what could go wrong? But I have a strong belief that an entire song is shaped by the sonic character of a snare drum. This, unfortunately, is modern music making and the snare is the fulcrum by which all of culture spins. So we tracked drums, I told Matt to go with the guts. And what he played was something so huge, so burly, and so sharp, that I immediately got tricked by its power. Now the song takes a new direction in my mind. Big mistake. I was already off course, but it’s something I’d agreed with.

The problem with a big snare drum in a verse is you leave nothing for a death by orgasm chorus. It was a tense, dreadful verse, with smoky, mutating Lynch guitars, only now with a big ol’ crack every two and four. So we sauntered up to Seattle to finish with other musicians. And because of that snare drum, we had to start adding competitive sonics; beefy guitar strums, gnarled synths, the whole thing. Maybe even a freakin’ horn. Problem is, the chorus was already built with subtle washes, and kind of complicated vocal melodies and harmonies. It’s propulsive, but not something that asked for the musical equivalent of Mankind falling from a sixteen-foot tall cage onto an announcers table. And that was when I knew something was really wrong. Now we’re chasing around bigness in a song that wanted to be creeping and seductive, but way smaller. Like a hot, but evil, fairy.

So the entire time during mixing I’m just wincing. Everything cool is getting washed away in large, stray sonic ideas. I protested but keep getting reassured that it’s fine. I’m telling you the outburst bubbling up in me about this mess would have destroyed the entire session right there, I was feeling very Klaus Kinski about it. But you get second guessing in the presence of maybe more experienced producers who you respect and admire. So I just shut the fuck up.

At the end of it, we added so much horseshit to that damned chorus, just to get it to keep up with a snare drum that was already leaving the song bereft of dynamics in the verses. Chasing around a Sasquatch when I had something menacingly delicate in the first half hour of the song’s life. So yeah, if it were possible to break the “skip” button on your music system of choice I would have done it every time this song was on deck.

YGR: Can you think of any instances where a sort of ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ moment struck gold for you? Or one where perhaps your initial vision was switched up for something you liked more in the end?

DG: I’m usually tyrannical in a studio setting where other musicians are involved. John Baizley came into the Me Moan sessions completely hobbled by a terrible accident Baroness had in England. I mean, he wanted to do the session, but in the moments of tracking, my sympathies seemed to melt away and I worked him extremely hard. Consequently, I too suffered during those sessions from extremely high blood pressure. I went to a doctor in downtown Chicago complaining of dizziness and unusual fatigue and she mentioned being one systolic point away from the ER.

So by the time of the Carnation sessions I made a conscientious effort to tolerate just about everything. The result is a record I don’t listen to very often.

But to your second question, one song I love a lot that turned around completely was called “Won’t You Climb” on Me Moan. I tell you I grinded on that bastard for months trying to unlock what I insanely thought could be Glenn Campbell mixed with something off Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, mixed with “Steal My Sunshine” or some other 90’s Mixolydian slice of heaven. Anyway in this case persistence paid off by one single lift of a bass note going into the chorus. Song unlocked and under my nose the entire time.

Choncy Trademark LP (Feel It)
It was only a matter of time before someone in Choncy decamped to New York City – you can’t play punk this swaggery without feeling compelled to try to make it in the Big Apple. Some of the more conservative members of the group remained in Cincinnati, where one can survive by working twelve hours a week at the Feel It record shop and snacking on buckeye nuts fresh from the tree, and thus Trademark was born (and recorded) in joint custody. Not that you can tell – these jokers sound tighter than ever, weaving their influences (punk, post-punk, egg-punk, garage-punk, hardcore-punk, not ska-punk (yet)) into a tangle you won’t want to escape. Imagine Parquet Courts going twice as fast, Uranium Club if they could grow facial hair, Le Shok if they never tried cocaine or the perfect Mother’s Day gift for the mom who only listens to Sweeping Promises, Plugz and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. These guys are subtly wacky in a modern way (mustaches, glasses, props and other aesthetic choices not entirely dissimilar to Oliver Tree) that can easily lead to solo-laptop hyper-pop projects, so I’m glad the four of them decided to be a band instead, their individual powers boosted in the form of a traditional rock band. If you love Choncy, let them go – if they manage to stay a band after driving across all of Ohio and Pennsylvania and back, it was meant to be.

John Dieterich & Michael Krassner Bullish(ish) LP (Moone)
Beloved American indie-rocker John Dieterich (of Deerhoof, outspoken Spotify hatred and a million other creative and/or noble causes) makes friends everywhere he goes. This includes Phoenix, AZ, where he met fellow guitarist Michael Krassner and subsequently played together back in 2018. Their introduction led to a weekend-long recording sesh in Krassner’s studio, which led to the recordings I am about to describe to you, Bullish(ish). The a-side reveals loose, bantery guitar-improv, full of garbled half-riffs, off-kilter amp tricks and polite conversations in noise. When it teeters towards some scantily-clad form of the blues, I’m reminded of Tetuzi Akiyama’s improvisations, though the overall feel lingers closer to the stringy, sticky mess of Bill Nace’s solo guitar recordings and Max Nordile’s musical negations. The b-side offers an entirely different frame of mind, heavenly harmonic drones that rise, crest and decay with the grace of William Basinski on roller-skates. For a duo who just met, the b-side feels surprisingly vulnerable and personal, like a couple moving in together after only a handful of dates. I guess that’s what Dieterich does to you – you think your heart’s gone cold and then he shows up at your doorstep with a bouquet of tulips tucked under his guitar’s strings.

Ecology: HomeStones The Cruel Quick Reverse LP (no label)
Lots of artists are interested in the idea of building a world around their music, but in the case of Ecology: HomeStones, the music seems to be but one aspect of an already sprawling cosmos. Having garnered a massive online following from an ongoing series of uniquely peculiar video shorts (the kids watch them on the TikTok), I’d like to relate The Cruel Quick Reverse as the sonic extension of Ecology: HomeStones’ dark-web presence, but that might be confusing because I’m not referring to the parts of the internet that avoid Google’s indexing – I’m talking about an actual dark web, a crawlspace overrun with generations of arachnids, poorly lit and crammed with detritus. Many of those Ecology: HomeStones fans who come for the videos might be baffled by The Cruel Quick Reverse, but those of us with a penchant for gnarly home-brewed electronics will immediately connect. Picture Mat Brinkman’s Forcefield project (costumes included) given a modern blade-sharpening ala Vessel’s Punish, Honey. The serrated electro-rhythms unlock novel ways to pulsate madly, strobe with epileptic danger and trudge ahead on dying batteries. “Buddycrusher” is like Queens Of The Stone Age bum-rushing a New Blockaders performance; “Fear Of Objects” is Coil without the weekend-long bout of ketamine constipation. Compared to the more abstract, harsh-noise textures of previous Ecology: HomeStones musical releases, The Cruel Quick Reverse is practically pop, at least for those of us who find Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” as old-time cutesy as “Surfing Bird”. I’m personally too scared to ever watch an Ecology: HomeStones feature-length film if/when it arrives, so The Cruel Quick Reverse is the perfect solution.

Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes Unrelated LP (Sam Gendel)
Few albums touched me like Music For Saxofone & Bass Guitar, 2018’s emergent duo recording from Sams Wilkes and Gendel. It revealed hidden tunnels between conservatory jazz and weirdo new-wave post-punk, delivering the epiphany that not only could you combine elements from both, the results could be quite thrilling (but in a chill way). Since that time, Gendel has released about a metric ton of albums: all sorts of collaborations, traditional ideas, triple LPs, bizarre experiments… he’s been going for it. It’s great to see Gendel and Wilkes back together with a similarly-designed (if you wanna call it that) cover, but the results are decidedly whatever. Whereas that original collab paired curious melodies from bass and “saxofone” (both in composition and texture), Unrelated doesn’t seem to have the same level of big, cool ideas behind it. Loops linger in place, with a focus on synths and pads, and resolve without undue delay. File under chill-wave, if there’s still any room left for new records to be filed there, though the genre’s sense of esoteric wonder is absent. The ECM smoothness isn’t stark enough, the emotion is hard to place, and even the cheese isn’t cheesy enough. Gendel’s discography is full of truly incredible records, as well as records that kinda miss the mark for me; unfortunately, this one’s landing in the latter category.

Gush Splash Of Milk LP (Huntleys + Palmers)
Steven Warwick drafted some of the finest wackadoodle art-pop of the 2010s, first as Heatsick and then under his own name. (He also delivered the reportedly drunkest performance of all time at Philadelphia dive-bar Kungfu Necktie back then, which is neither here nor there.) Show me what you’ve done lately, I say to anyone of this (still ongoing but) post-Covid era, and he’s answered with Splash Of Milk. Gush features Warwick on vocals (and presumably some programming) alongside Iván Brito, whose Vanya project exudes a similarly over-the-top approach to electronic dance (question mark) music. If you told me Slash Of Milk was a new Heatsick record I wouldn’t think twice, as the music continues to gesticulate like an Optimo DJ set with the erudite humor that can only be unleashed by gay men in vibrantly-colored outfits. There’s certainly a “Walter van Beirendonck at Berghain” sensibility at play here, from the alarming cartoon cow on the cover to the commingling of camp, aloofness and hedonism, all with an effortlessly cool soundtrack. Warwick remains an excellent narrator, shouting over the post-punk breakbeats of “Over” like a voguing Sleaford Mods and channelling the kind of synth sleaze that Dark Entries has spent tens of thousands of dollars reissuing on “Naked In Netto”. I’m only smart enough to understand half of what’s happening here, and I’m perfectly satisfied – imagine what it could do for someone like you!

Indikator B S/T II 7″ (General Speech)
Contrary to the plethora of record covers that showcase the violent, outrageous energy of hardcore-punk, I love when bands take a more honest approach. Look at the shadowy figure on the cover of Indikator B’s second self-titled EP… hands in pockets and shoulders hunched, he’s sandwiched between graveyard fence and prison fence, awaiting a bus that will never arrive. It really sets the mood for this Croatian hardcore band – their music rages with a post-war coldness, the scent of societal failure lingering in the air. “Ovdje, Baš Tu” is panicked and guarded, to be played with fingerless wool gloves and a moth-eaten scarf blocking the bottom half of your face, like Kalashnikov’s sole EP and Junior Achievement’s (likewise sole) LP. Unlike much of today’s hardcore-punk (even the really good stuff), these four songs don’t sound like the product of thorough studying, but rather a natural reaction to life’s pressures. The guitar is raw like The Faith, and vocalist Karlo (who also plays the guitar) knows when to throw in a melodic ahh-ahh-ahh (just once, halfway through “Zadnja Stanica”). At three minutes, “Ukopani” walks with a limp as it mourns some sort of tragedy. Indikator B are clawing their way out of the muck, even if muck is all that’s visible for miles around. Recommended!

Intensified Chaos That’s Not Freedom 1982 LP (Nausea)
The 1982 Maximumrocknroll compilation Not So Quiet On The Western Front wasn’t simply a formative record for my personal journey into underground punk, it was the record, played incessantly once I hooked up my parents’ old turntable a good thirteen years after it was released. Intensified Chaos kicked it off with the magic of a song also called “Intensified Chaos”, and while those fifty-five seconds are permanently etched into my memory, I now have five other tunes and a live set to enjoy in the form of That’s Not Freedom 1982. Good news: “Intensified Chaos” is featured not once but thrice here (the Not So Quiet version, mysteriously lacking the original sample, plus two live versions), and while the other songs are on par as far as sound quality and style, like many obscure punk reissues, it’s a release that best serves enthusiasts and completists, not dabblers, poseurs or cops. I personally can’t get enough of vocalist Rob Noxious’s phony British street-punk accent (he’s gotta be what, one of at least a thousand “Rob Noxious”es out there), and it was illuminating to hear his self-described boot-boy status (“Boot Boys”) and religious haranguing of the audience (“Romans I & II (Live)”). Even with a growing number of retrospective collections from this unruly stable of bands (that Maniax Lost Tapes collection remains the pinnacle), so many mysteries from the Not So Quiet roster remain – who will pry open the remaining vaults of Lennonburger, Bent Nails (pre-Mr. T Experience!) and Juvinel Justice?

Jailed Rebirth EP 7″ (Olde Fade / Carnalismo)
From the ashes of West Bay hardcore outfit Healer comes Jailed, committed to holding down the strict gangsta integrity of Plutocracy and No Less. Healer’s nimble, blinked-and-missed approach to post-power-violence hardcore-grind is sanded down to an even sharper point as Jailed; while there are nine different tracks on this EP, I’d be surprised if the entire record breaks three minutes. In true West Bay fashion, song and dialogue samples bridge these microscopic hardcore blasts, almost all thematically linked to heavy drinking here. The songs themselves are two or three parts at best, epitomizing the short, fast and loud aesthetics that a zine dedicated to this particular scene once named itself after. It’s almost as if those Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! comps were the work of one focused band, completely content with writing songs that are shorter than the average professional bull ride. I’m not entirely sure who is in Jailed versus who was in Healer – it’s probable that Tony Molina and Frank Marchi (of Agents Of Satan and Plutocracy!) are/were in both – but this scene has always venerated the tightness of the crew over the popularity of a specific individual. We could learn a lot from them: the power of the tightly-knit collective and danked-out hardcore riffs.

Jump Source Fold 2xLP (NAFF)
Jump Source throw it back to the cusp of the digital era with their full-length debut, when stuffing a compact disc with music was your best bet for getting your name out there. Fold has that turn-of-the-century dance-music feel of albums-as-events, where a single, lengthy release was purposely crafted to navigate all of the evening’s moods, from lightweight warm-ups to ecstatic release to post-rave comedowns. And they nail it! The Montreal duo’s nimble, pop-friendly techniques hit big here, calling to mind all of those indispensable Luomo albums (some of which still somehow haven’t been pressed on vinyl). Cool guests vocalists are all over this one: Helena Deland is a provocative diva on multiple tracks, POiSON GiRL FRiEND offers her uniquely narcoleptic charm on “Close”, and you’ve even got billy woods’s breathless flow on “Empty Bars” in true Galcher Lustwerk fashion. These eleven tracks bridge the gap between short-form pop nuggets and extended dance mixes, ready to engage today’s dopamine-damaged Instagram user-base as much as old-heads who fondly recall digging through bins of well-worn Kompakt, Force Tracks and Perlon twelve-inches (back when hamburgers cost a nickel and rent was pay-what-you-wish). If I blare “Fold” loud enough in the dark, I find myself transported to a pre-9/11 dance-floor… maybe it’s still the year 2000 in Canada?

Landowner Assumption LP (Exploding In Sound)
Assumption is an indie post-punk record vividly, indisputably borne of Trump’s second term. Even the privileged are no longer able to smirk their way through things: the dark comedy of it all has simply turned dark, those hurt before are hurt worse, the rest of us newly hurt, and Landowner are painfully aware of these pitiful circumstances, seamlessly infusing it into their music. With nary a distortion- or fuzz-pedal in sight, the dual-guitared quintet set their fingers ablaze with simple-yet-maddeningly-cyclical patterns as vocalist Dan Shaw reads today’s internet back into our wearied faces. Right now, it’s unpleasant to dwell on, but if we someday come out of this on a happier, greener side, schoolteachers will look to “Expensive Rent”, “Assumption” and “Unboxing” to explain what American life in the 2020s was like to their engaged student body. When the songs are fast, they share the feel of RMFC (like a rollercoaster with the brake lines cut), and when they move a little slower I’m reminded of The Embarrassment and The Feelies. It’s the snark of Shellac with the acumen of Protomartyr that shines through consistently, and Landowner, uh, own it. The world really doesn’t need any more self-assured white guys telling it (hollering it) like it is, but until we somehow manage to learn more productive social skills, Landowner’s Assumption is a positive outcome.

Mai Mai Mai Karakoz LP (Maple Death)
Italian artist Antonio Tricoli has pursued a darkened path through noise, industrial and experimental territories for over a decade now. These travels have been more than just conceptual: in 2024, he underwent a six-week residency in Palestine (care of Radio Alhara), in what must have been a deeply emotional (and undoubtedly dangerous) engagement with traditional musicians from Bethlehem and Ramallah. Palestinian artists such as Ussama Abu Ali and Maya Al Khaldi contribute to Karakoz, an album that is not simply inspired by Palestine and its people – it couldn’t exist without it. Understanding this, Tricoli is more of an assembler than a composer here, blending traditional singing, percussion, the yarghul and the bouzuq (and archival recordings from the Palestinian Sound Archive) among his own understated synth warbles and humming textures. The similarities to works by Muslimgauze and Zoviet: France are overt, though it feels like Mai Mai Mai really has skin in the game, a grateful outsider who lived alongside and learned from this resilient, besieged population. The progenitors of industrial music have alleged that their shock tactics were in hopes of pulling back the curtains of social decorum and revealing the unflinching truths of the world. Some misguidedly interpreted that as infatuations with serial-killers, BDSM or even right-wing theories, but for Mai Mai Mai, it’s the mournful beauty of Karakoz.

The Reds, Pinks & Purples Acknowledge Kindness LP (Fire)
It’s crazy to me how people continue to hem and haw over supporting Morrissey in 2026 when Glenn Donaldson is calmly sitting right over here, absolutely not preaching xenophobia or right-wing nonsense. And removing the personal from the equation, Donaldson’s work as The Reds, Pinks & Purples is culminating into some quiet form of genius regardless of how you stack it, his charming, insightful, whip-smart lyrics central to the experience. The music has always seemed to arrive painlessly for Donaldson, quick sketches of silver-lined indie-pop to carry his words (ala The Cure, Another Sunny Day, Brighter, etc.), but Acknowledge Kindness feels ever so slightly more labored over, as though there might have been someone else in the room during the recording process. There are overdubs and distinctive leads, with various shimmering textures to pad out the sentimental moods while stepping out of the closed-door bedroom and into the fading sunset horizon. “Houses” could be his Goo Goo Dolls “Iris” – it has that same tender, catchy sway – but it never feels like Donaldson is toying with our emotions so much as bloodletting his own. He’s written an incredible number of songs in the last few years, and I’m glad that process took him to “Emo Band”, an appropriately stinging take on the reunion industrial complex: “I saw your emo band / keep it going if you can / another show, can you still pretend / to have feelings inside again”. You can scream and curse all you want in your songs; Donaldson’s droll delivery is responsible for some of the most brutal blows.

Elori Saxl & Henry Solomon Seeing Is Forgetting LP (True Panther Sounds)
Might this be the first True Panther Sounds release that actually sounds like a true panther sound? Keyboardist Elori Saxl and woodwindist Henry Solomon have struck dusky, velvety gold with this collaborative album, comfortably situated within today’s neo-new-age jazz-ambient fallout zone but an exemplary offering at that. Saxl’s keys radiate warmth like the belly of a sleeping cat – just peep the restorative flutter of “Dream” and nestle in close. If Brian Eno was an electric vehicle, you’d want to hook him up to this track when his battery light starts flashing. These nine tracks follow their own paths, be they playful dance choreography, fog-sector levitations or jazz-in-dub, all with the high-gloss shine of modern pop production. Unhurried, outward-facing and opulent, Seeing Is Forgetting often feels like curtains pulled wide open after weeks of rain. Opener “Reverence” reminds me of Earthensea’s recent live performances (a lone saxophone beaming out all the stars of the galaxy); “Raindrops” feels attuned to Laurel Halo’s exotic-virtuoso landscapes. “A Thousand Steps” is the cosmic jazz-trance cousin of Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever” you might not have thought you needed… but I knew. I knew.

Yu Su Foundry LP (Short Span)
I wish there was another way, but really, you just have to send all your money to Short Span. I know, it’s climbing up to like fifty bucks an album now, and it hurts, but in the end it’s only money, and you’ll have a stack of exceptionally-crafted electronic records to enjoy in perpetuity. With every detail smartly considered (right down to the artwork design), Short Span Cares™, so the ongoing partnership with talented and adventurous producer Yu Su makes perfect sense. This relatively succinct album builds off last year’s twelve-inch single – “Foundry” was the a-side of that one, and its encore appears here in the same party-pumping guise, the upbeat centerpiece of a collaboration-friendly album whose gorgeous still-life electronics generally maintain a lowkey demeanor. “Os Cionn” plays with light and texture in a way that almost feels like techno, and “Ripe Fruits” pulses through a number of ornate little rooms, but Foundry on the whole welcomes seated, motionless listening. “Sunless” (featuring Memotone) trips out on some Jon Hassell-esque new-age styles; the Seefeel-assisted “One Place After Another” lounges on the softer side of electronic shoegaze techniques before a dream-like spoken word borrows stage settings from The NeverEnding Story (1984, dir. Wolfgang Petersen). It’s peak-operational Yu Su: graceful, playful electronic music that sways like fields of tulips in colors you’ve never before seen. Remind yourself of this when you overdraft your account for the second time in a month.

Zaliva-D 好奇 Curiosity LP (SVBKVLT)
There are claims that electronic duo Zaliva-D hail from Beijing, but the slimy metallic residue that trails behind their music appears interplanetary in origin. I often seek out techno and industrial music that comes with an otherworldly sheen, but few aspects of Zaliva-D’s music are customary or routine. The pacing is ritualistically slow, their sounds merge the animalistic and the digital, and perhaps their most signature motif is this crazed, vocoder-like effect that simulates some big wet slug baby giving birth to goats, over and over again, the viscera all different neon shades of green and purple. Real body-horror electronics: the dank slurp of “长淫 Long Obscenity” spells it out quickly, whereas “不是歌谣 Inexistent Ballad” is Drexciya at quarter-speed, with some sort of parasitic nest lurking behind the walls. Amazingly, Zaliva-D have developed this sound for over a decade now, 好奇 Curiosity their most purposeful and direct statement yet, substituting some semblance of pop structures in place of the harsher tones of prior releases. That’s ostensibly a repeated verse happening on “蟒头果实 Boa-Head”, even if it sounds like an eel has wriggled down the vocalist’s esophagus prior to singing. For however weird I’m making 好奇 Curiosity out to be, trust me – it’s actually weirder.

Our persistence was rewarded with Cleveland’s Yambag, who played shortly after what ended up being our perfectly-timed arrival. They play what I will accept as my favorite form of hardcore: blasting fast-core with grind and US ’82 influences. The singer’s bucket hat flew off within a couple songs and they absolutely flew through what must’ve been a lengthy selection of tunes, enough song titles to fill one of OFF!’s Dead Sea Scrolls-looking set-lists. Drummer Drew Vaccaro set his crash cymbals at a comical height ala Lucky Lehrer, and as I watched the right wrist of bassist Nick Kroh vibrating in place for twenty minutes straight, my own carpal tunnel symptoms started to flare up in empathy. As my friend pointed out, they were undeniably “tour tight”, and the crowd response was accordingly appreciative, full of unserious sideways speed-walking, fevered fist pumps, a small handful of firecrackers (which continue to follow Cleveland hardcore bands around since Nine Shocks Terror first cursed the city), and some of the weakest approximations of Ray Cappo’s iconic toe-touch jumps I’ve ever seen. It was glorious.

Reek Minds were next, and I want to take a moment to say that I love when bands have such a unified look that they could pass as siblings or cousins (or at least’d make sense crawling out of the same manhole). These shaved-head mooks look like they benchpress cinderblocks and eat collared-shirt wearers like me for breakfast, and they clearly knew they had the tunes we all wanted to hear: ugly thrashing power-violence mixed up in a scrum with Poison Idea and the X-Claim! discography. If the number of beer cans hurled at the performing band were counted as votes, Reek Minds easily won the evening, and they even upped the ante by introducing dirt and gravel as possible projectiles – the vocalist’s only real banter was a strained “give me… dirt!”, and he didn’t have to ask twice. Instead, he screamed so hard that the speakers would frequently overload and cut out, giving his voice the feel of a garbled trumpet – Gutalax, eat your heart out! While the portable PA and outdoor acoustics make for a less-than-desirable sound, Reek Minds sounded surprisingly full as the air turned chilly; even the drummer’s snare, somewhat lost in the wind for Yambag, cut through nice and sharp. When the apocalypse inevitably arrives, I want these guys on my side – after their music blows the windows out of a Cybertruck, the five of them could lift it and toss it in the river.

While listed first on the flyer, Early Grave grabbed the headlining spot, a practical move to keep their local friends in check (and make sure the out-of-towners had their fun, in the case of a bust). For as ramshackle as the show was, they were the first band to suffer any real sort of technical difficulties – at first the faltering microphone, and later the bass amp after two rowdy showgoers piggypack-rode directly into it. Those were only slight hiccups for this great new Philly trio, who harnessed the slimy menace of Crazy Spirit and Dawn Of Humans with their grotesque interpretation of hardcore-punk. The vocalist barked his vocals from under a tight black hoodie (a poise and stature redolent of Poison Ruïn’s Mac Kennedy), and they kept pace with the touring acts nicely. For whatever reason, it took a few songs to warm up what was an already-warmed-up crowd, but once things were in full swing they truly swung, with the widest, dustiest pit actions going off and surprisingly few bodies hitting the floor (mercifully so, as the ground’s craggy cement chunks and sewage run-off could cut your skin and infect it in one fluid motion). They sounded great, though as I watched Jim Shomo (of Dark Thoughts and Delco MFs) absolutely raging along in stationary position (when he wasn’t actively helping to fix the mic or bass), I couldn’t help but think that hardcore bands usually have stand-alone lead vocalists for good time-tested reason. Had Shomo grabbed the mic and took over for a few songs, I would’ve had no choice but to crawl up the bridge’s graffiti-covered pier by my fingernails and backflip down into the shadows. Instead, we made a hasty exit on the smooth side of the Superfund landfill this time, microplastics and silica dust shining our way along the dirt path like magic treasure.

Some thirteen years ago, I interviewed Tony Molina for this very blog, and when I came up with the idea for this new Worst Song series, he was high on my list of hopeful contributors. His discography runs deep, with a list of songwriting credits that must run into three figures, and as his quality has always run high, I was dying to know what he felt worst about. Tony has taken a strict anti-social media, anti-internet, anti-promotion stance for a few years now, and it was only him wanting to “own up to making bad music” (his words, not mine!) that he decided to participate. I do miss his online banter (he once described a Trump vs. Clinton presidential debate as “two fools who have never heard Excruciating Terror”), though I am thankful for his wonderful music and the inspiration to throw my phone in a lake, or at least turn my laptop off once in a while. His worst song can be found here.

YGR: Alright – so why is “No One Told He” your worst song?

TM: Before we get into that, we should start with that I got sober in August of 2022 and am still sober today, no alcohol, no drugs, and I even quit cigs in July of last year. I think this song was written in 2014 when my drinking took an ugly-ass turn, as it did all the time, progressively, until I quit. I was real faded and very sick in all aspects when this song came about. I think at the time in my barely-functioning, cooked-ass brain I thought I was doing some kind of ‘68 Beatles / George Harrison nod with this one. Now in 2026, I have the mental clarity to realize that this song is more of a nightmare early ’70s soft rock AM radio, Crosby Stills & Nash, barefoot-bearded guy, CIA plant, hanging in the Canyon asshole nightmare song from hell. Basically everything gross, swagless and bad is front and center in this song.

There’s a part in the Stooges doc where Iggy is talking about The Stooges being a direct response to the late ’60s hippie-lite, boardroom-created, sellout federal-agent music that “still smells”. This song is totally coming from those things Iggy and co. were railing against.

YGR: As a sober person, are you happier with your songwriting in general? Or is that not a significant influence in the quality of your work either way, and it just happened to take a wrong turn for you here?

TM: No, I made a lot of bad music in my drinking years, I just think this one is number one. One character defect I can tell you about is that when I was drinking, bad music would find its way into my life. There’s a lot of manipulating factors out there, if you go on the internet at any time there’s a million people on there trying to sell you objectively bad music and then trying to manipulate you into believing it is good. And then you got played! I think I just didn’t have the mental clarity or intuition or any real ability to know what was what back then. I quit social-media for good in 2016, so those two things – being offline and sobriety – restored my overall focus, taste, ability, work ethic, and I also got more serious about record collecting and digging deeper and educating myself on music more than making music myself, all those things times ten. It’s like night and day, the difference.

YGR: This feels like sage advice, no joke. Any tips for those who want to kick social media (or drugs) but don’t feel empowered enough to do so?

TM: I think the first thing is understanding that Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, the Spotify slimebag, Jack Dorsey, and any / all of these techie gentrifier colonizer pigs are true scum of the earth that do not have anyone’s best interest in mind. They one-hundred percent are trying to keep you addicted, manipulated and powerless, they will rob you of your dignity and integrity, strip you of your desire for honest and true self-expression, condition you to prioritize capital instead of the spiritual value of art. They will condition you to publicly log your character defects to the world, they will erase and wipe out real culture and replace it with swagless garbage, they will make your band suck ass and you will be spending your days thinking of ways to sell the shitty record you made to the public instead of writing real songs; they will sell you garbage and essentially give you brain disease for the rest of your natural life. Nobody needs it for anything, especially your band. I completely stay away from the internet and I’m doing better than ever – I even started a record label extremely recently (Olde Fade Productionz) with no social media or Bandcamp and the orders haven’t stopped coming in for weeks now. And I’m a cooked middle-aged dude at this point, I’m nothing special, so just like sobriety, if I can do it, anyone can. Only a manipulator who is trying to sway the narrative to get something from you is going to tell you otherwise.

Bitter Fictions Amethyst & Emerald LP (Shaking Box)
Kind of a Polyvinyl-ish emo name for a project, but Bitter Fictions takes a far more conceptual route to your heart. It’s the guise of one Devin Friesen, a Canadian who begins with his guitar and discovers what curious new delights might bloom from it (like one of those mail-order mushroom logs). Opener “Sapphire” wrings a mysterious ringtone out of his guitar as a soft electronic tumble offers some sense of momentum, almost like that Richard Youngs “techno” record, whereas “Garnet” delivers nearly ten minutes of shimmering guitar improvisations. Maybe it is kind of emo, in that if you were able to capture the actual underlying guitar melodies of “Garnet” and “Aquamarine” like fireflies in a jar and hand them to American Football, they could probably construct a suitable living arrangement. Bitter Fictions has been opening for Body/Head and Merzbow, though, so he celebrates those rougher textures as well, like the out-of-nowhere synth zaps on “Aquamarine” and the thick palisade of noise-guitar that sends the side-long title track tumbling from the clear night sky deep into the muck below. The aggression points to Ben Frost, whereas the fragility points to Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, ready to be purchased with currency that points to Canada.

Cancer House The Moth LP (Motion Ward)
You know how there’s that Plantasia album of synth music you’re supposed to play for your plants? I’m recommending that you play Cancer House’s debut album The Moth for all the neglected, dying and dead plants in your home, not in hopes of healing them but as a somber farewell before you toss them in with the weekly trash. This is deeply unwatered music with no sign of natural light: guitars, banjos, violin, drums and bass-guitar are plucked with deep remorse, resulting in an updated version of emo that harnesses the scalding bleakness of black metal without any of its other aesthetic signifiers. It’s like the mysterious sounds of Don Martin Three rendered even more inscrutable by the post-rock innovation of Gastr Del Sol, and as it’s released on a label known more for ultramodern ambient/techno electronics than guitar bands (they might be the only one?), there’s a sense of that experimental abstraction in here, too. As you might expect, The Moth is kind of an uncomfortable place to dwell, but once you get a feel for the pitch-shifted vocals, tape-hissing samples and the way that Cancer House seamlessly tailors it all (see the beautiful “Flowers Over There”, it’s like Moss Icon living inside of Grouper’s haunted attic), you might want to linger long past closing hours. Cancer House’s music is divinely morose and frightened, and appropriately enough, it feels like the near future.

Countach Power EP 12″ (Feel The Four)
No sooner were Ghösh gaining momentum in the digital-hardcore clown-rave scene (look it up) than they vanished in a puff of green smoke, leaving Zachary Fairbrother to reconfigure himself as Countach. Once you feel the pull away from guitar bands and into Detroit-style acid synth arpeggios, it’s a craving that cannot be ignored, and that’s precisely where Fairbrother is at with Countach. These four tracks are DIY dance-floor munitions, teeth bared and ready to jack. “Feel The Power” establishes the parameters – acid-on-acid crunch, diabolical vocal sample – before my favorite of the EP, “Any Other Way”. Featuring the charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent of none other than Morgan Garrett, Garrett’s bloodshot deadpan over Countach’s gated electro-rhythms recalls another Philadelphian original, M Ax Noi Mach. Garrett has been more than ready for his “Jesus Built My Hotrod” moment and this very well could be it. “Gauntlet” goes full-throttle ascending-acid, receding only for a quick Legend Of Zelda breather, just long enough to cast your die before the ogre awakes. “Who Is In Control?” swings from the windows to the wall, classic 303 and 808 sounds that result in involuntary screwface when the sampled guitar solo hits in classic Bomb Squad fashion. Feel The Four should’ve pressed some of these on old-timey shellac discs, so you can shatter it over your own head after listening.

ex_libris ex_libris 003 12″ (ex_libris)
Like a handful of other forward-thinking post-dubstep producers (Guy Brewer AKA Carrier immediately comes to mind), Dave Huismans’s decision to pause old monikers (in his case, 2562 and A Made Up Sound) and rebrand with a fresh new image has succeeded. His self-released series of EPs under the guise of ex_libris are flying off the Bandcamp shelves (and onto Discogs for inflated prices), and it’s not hard to see why: he’s pursuing a more uniquely personal sound and has graced these records with an individualized touch. Continuing with the attractive Pantone color schemes and a dash of hand-stamped abstraction, this third installment is comforting, soft-spoken and begging to be played over and over. “#6-27 (untangled)” opens with a gauzy puff redolent of the Music From Memory label before its gears start to turn. It’s got that sense of sweet European strangeness I’d associate with early ’80s records from Michael Rother and Mœbius & Plank, but the ex_libris screen is filtered to remove all warts and wrinkles – if it was a bed at the group Airbnb, everyone would be trying to claim it. “#7 (cosmic ripples)” moves in more of an outlandish dub-techno direction, like a Pole record comprised of carnival sounds, or Augustus Pablo getting a new high score on Cruis’n Outer Space (an arcade racing game I have just now invented). Across nine minutes, it folds back into open-air bliss, giving way to “#31 (reprise)”, freaked-out effects unmoored from grid-based time and loving it. Huismans is not short on dub/ambient/techno experience, and in this most humble and relaxed mode, we are treated to his brightest side yet.

Hoavi Architectonics LP (Peak Oil)
Peak Oil’s commitment to top-shelf electronic music is unwavering, and the people know it – rarely will one of their releases remain available to purchase on Bandcamp for long. Architectonics is Russian producer Hoavi’s second for the label, and it hits on a sweet spot, blatant catnip for those of us who seek the head-rush that comes from richly detailed electronic rhythms. Wielding the sword and mace of today’s experimental vanguard – his phone and a contact mic – Hoavi built up a formidable library of percussive effects, ran them through enough filters and software systems so as to no longer resemble their source material, and built out impressive webs of Gamelan-inspired rhythms. The tracks are as overactive and dazzling as any Nonesuch collection of Gamelan recordings, and while he could’ve tipped it over into some sort of hyper-real IDM zone clearly beyond human capacity, these eleven tracks feel like they exist within our earthly realm, just a highly stylized version of it… Avatar-ready rave music. It falls between the ruminative pacing of De Leon and the alien-native rhythms of Shackleton, and while the conceptual boundaries are firm, there’s plenty of room to play. “After The Cyclone”, for example, stirs up some unconventional horn sounds, a flock of gulls soaring through a thicket of interlocking percussion that would make Philip Glass blush. Hoavi created a richly detailed world, and we owe it to him to explore.

Ignorantes No Hemos Inventada Nada Ni Nos Interesa Hacerlo LP (General Speech)
“We have invented nothing, nor are we interested in doing so.” The English translation of the title of this new (and final?) Ignorantes album brings a tear to my eye. So eloquent! So righteous! Their Chilean punk rock is mid-tempo (very pogo-friendly) and inherently raw, a timeless tradition that rejects innovation in favor of stinking, pulsating immediacy. No Hemos was recorded in 2021 and left to languish in a digital-only Bandcamp purgatory until now, and I’ll admit that I wouldn’t have noticed had General Speech not stepped up to the plate with this appealing vinyl edition. It’s so difficult to make simplicity sound so thrilling, but the two-note riff that comprises “No Tenemos Propuesta” has me hammering all nearby flat surfaces with my fists like an idiot. “Sapos” manages to mimic note-for-note obscure ’90s crusters Vile Horrendous’s “Dead Nazis Don’t Hate”, a melody that sounds fantastic when either band does it. With seven straightforward attacks and a lengthier, spookier closing song, it’s the perfect length for the perfect form of music. For fans of Peggio Punx, Germ Attak, Crazy Spirit, Kangrena, B.G.K., Confuse, Blazing Eye… (please send SASE for complete 4,526 for-fans-of band list).

Index For Working Musik Bunker Intimations II LP (Tough Love)
News of a new Index For Working Musik album is met with jubilation around my neck of the woods, but not so fast – it turns out Bunker Intimations II was originally released as an enticing enhancement to a deluxe edition of last year’s Which Direction Goes The Beam. My copy of that album was a plain ol’ regular one, so I missed out on the limited cassette that came along with it, that is until Tough Love issued it, standalone and on vinyl, as Bunker Intimations II. Apparently recorded under self-imposed duress – written (actually scratch that, improvised), recorded and mixed in three days – these lengthy instrumentals diverge from the already-divergent style I’ve come to associate with this bold post-punk group. It’s as loose-limbed and unresolved as you might expect from such creative limitations, group-jams without a clear leader, evocative atmospheres if no distinct sense of purpose. As an add-on to Which Direction Goes The Beam, it’s a treat, a little “Director’s Commentary”-style bonus for infatuated fans to dig even deeper, but it’s not leaving much of an impression on me from its own merit, certainly not the way their ‘real’ albums have. With a scant two hundred and fifty copies pressed, I am certain there are enough loving homes to go around – maybe in a few months I’ll stop by for another visit.

Microwaves Temporal Shifter LP (Decoherence)
Nice to see Neil Burke’s day-glo imaginary landscapes all over this new Microwaves album. For decades now, if his art graced the record cover, it offered a seal of weirdo-punk authenticity – it’s uncompromising in a way you have to respect, even if it ends up on something as nonsensical as the Towel eight-inch EP on Vermiform (though Burke only “art directed” that one, to be fair). Microwaves are an underground institution as well, Pittsburgh guys-with-jobs who never really seem to have toured in their twenty-five-year-plus career and don’t seem particularly pressed about it either. Even after all these years, Temporal Shifter stays true to the root cause, one where bass and drums dig Melvins-sized ditches as the guitar dabbles in math-rock and metal of all stripes (even hair-). Guitarist/vocalist David Kuzy often sounds like he’s trying out for Van Halen by playing various Castlevania themes, all while his two compatriots barely notice, so deeply locked into their airtight post-hardcore grooves they must eventually turn blue in the face. Personally, I like it when they go off the deep end a little – I think it’s the hidden track on their debut System 2 where a pitched-up voice keeps giggling out the phrase “he took a picture of blood!”, a musical moment that comes to my mind way more than it should – but Temporal Shifter is a proud display of noise-rock muscle and bone. If they’re suffering from arthritis at this advanced stage, the meds are doing a great job of hiding it.

My Wife’s An Angel Keep Honking I’m About To Fucking Kill Myself LP (Knife Hits / Broken Cycle / Grimgrimgrim)
Local Boys Make Bad: Philly’s My Wife’s An Angel continue to shine a light on the most abhorrent personality types with their second full-length, commonly referred to as KHIATFKM (y’know, like TAGABOW). Their debut album was a clean way to experience a deeply messy band – you could listen at home without fear of vocalist Garrett Stanton Vandemark tying you up with his mic cord and hanging you upside down – and they lean into that filthy underbelly of blue-collar city living here. Their music is ninety-percent Landed and ten-percent TAD – it’s a thrillingly toxic cocktail, like the neon-swamp liquid that collects in the bottom of a dive bar’s trash bin, and for some reason My Wife’s An Angel took a sip without waiting for someone to dare them. Over these inebriated noise-rock riffs (and splattered with infernal sound effects), Stanton Vandemark goes full-method with his character portrayals, a rogue’s gallery of the absolute worst guys at the bar. I can practically smell the coke addict who refuses to pay rent to his parents, the Eagles fan who failed the background check to get the mall security job, the ex-jock hopped up on testosterone cream and ZYNs who refuses to believe all his money is gone… Stanton Vandermark commits like DeNiro in Taxi Driver to his impressions of these heinous men, and I sincerely hope he’s been able to find his way back out. He was recently spotted army-crawling across the city with a GoPro on his head (I’m not joking, it’s floating on the web) – if he turned his limitless energy towards high-definition AI mapping, we’d all be getting around town in driverless hover-pods by now.

Night Of The Hunter Night Of The Hunter LP (Curious Electricity)
With sub-genres splintering into sub-sub-genres as artists hope to claim their own hyper-specific niche, it’s kind of refreshing to be met with an all-purpose goth record like Night Of The Hunter. The group hails from the vampire capital of the USA, Los Angeles, and they even have names that read like the character list of an episode of The Vampire Diaries: (the human) Jeff Browning along with the mononymic (both undead) Ezrah and Thorson (with Aradia (demon prophet) providing guest vocals on “Safe Inside The Storm”). Over eight tracks, Night Of The Hunter cover a lot of stylistic ground, not mixing it up so much as doling it out separately, like a mixtape to satisfy all of their nocturnal denizens. Their sound lurks in the ’90s for sure, with overt similarities to Machines Of Loving Grace, Marilyn Manson and Black Tape For A Blue Girl, especially when the guitars kick in. Other more synth-forward tracks recall Balaclavas, Nine Inch Nails and November Növelet, and not simply because there’s no way I could make it through this entire review without at least one umlaut. It’s over-the-top dramatic in the way that goth should be, a caricature of wicked lust delivered with the self-seriousness you’ve come to expect from people who, if they haven’t purchased their own bespoke dental fangs, have at least given it some thought.

No Nose Party In The Sky LP (No Nose)
Copenhagen’s hottest artist is a contested field, but Copenhagen’s weirdest has gotta be No Nose. They’re friends first, band second, a pointedly guitar-less rock group (bass, drums, keyboard, vocals) who are keen to take a silly idea and run with it, trip over it, get up and run with it some more. They’ll repeat “I lost my credit card” (on “Creditcard”) like they’re trying to seduce you, chant “CIA invented the dentist” like they’re rooting for their favorite football club (“Ciainventedthedentist”), and fill up any empty space with plenty of boldly off-key trumpet. One solid night at the pub spent shouting hilarious and bad ideas at each other could have spawned the entirety of Party In The Sky. Is “The Lowtalker” Carla dal Forno with a Residents infatuation? Party In The Sky is kind of like late ’80s Butthole Surfers in the way that it frequently misses, but then you wonder, was missing the actual point? And further like Butthole Surfers, it never feels as though No Nose are pandering for our acceptance, or even giving us a foot in the door to laugh along with them. We are voyeurs at best, trying to make heads or tails of these sleepy dub-, indie-, space-rock tunes that go on for way too long, provoked only by No Nose’s indifference to provocation.

Scissor Fits It Wasn’t Nothing LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
Another obscure UK DIY group finally gets their roses: this time it’s Twickenham’s Scissor Fits, care of the well-considered Minimum Table Stacks label. The bald femme that graces the cover of both of their 1979 EPs is cover-bound once again, dealing both previously-released EPs along with a comp track and a handful of unreleased tunes. Scissor Fits were clearly a fun band to be around, as they offered both the jouissance of immature knucklehead humor and the well-rehearsed chops of a headlining local band. Scissor Fits were too good to pretend to be bad, so they wrote a bunch of charmingly spunky, mid-tempo rock tunes, clearly aware of NME-favored outcasts like The Magic Band and Ian Dury, though they mostly kept things crowd-pleasingly in the pocket like then-contemporaries Dry Rib and Television Personalities. They didn’t make it easy on everyone, though, happily spoiling their otherwise respectable songs with lyrics and titles like “I Wish I Hadn’t Shaved My Pubic Hair Off”, “D.H. Lawrence Wasn’t A Mexican” and their all-timer, “I Don’t Want To Work For British Airways”. Every small town had its own Frank Zappas and Johnny Rottens in the late ’70s, and Scissor Fits clearly had a ball thumbing their noses at the established decorum of the day, made available again here for the delight of today’s DIY post-punk enthusiasts. The insert comes with a tender little “current whereabouts” update on the band’s members (all impressively still alive!), but I won’t spoil for you which two are currently playing in bands with their sons – you’ll have to pick up a copy for yourself.

Suitor Saw You Out With The Weeds LP (Feel It)
It would seem that Ohio’s punk underground no longer allows for idle spectators – if you haven’t gotten a band going, they simply assign you one, like teams in gym class. I’m not complaining, though, as Cleveland and Cincinnati are hotbeds of punk-related energy, with Suitors being one of the newest to be delivered from Feel It’s soft palms. They already seem to know what they want to go for, and that’s the kind of edgy middlebrow zone of today’s cool non-shoegaze rock sounds. I’m talking Wet Leg, Dry Cleaning, Mannequin Pussy, heterogeneous underground stars that balance melody with discordance, probably adore The Cure, wield deadpan sarcasm like a knife and re-imagine a ’90s post-grunge era that wasn’t just dudes with pointy goatees and frosted tips celebrating misogyny and abuse. At times, I’m hearing Helium if they played like a punk band, and on certain songs (let’s say “Televangelist”) Suitor remind me a whole lot of that last Priests album, if perhaps a bit more technically solid (no offense, Priests, I’m sure you understand). It’s like Chaotic Good “indie”-rock without the unpleasant sense that you’ve been gamified by a wave of algorithm-shifting bots, because we all know that Feel It would never do us dirty like that… at least until Marvel throws them a million dollars to license “I’m An Adult Baby” by Vanilla Poppers. Only a matter of time.

Tapetud Rott See Mees / Lähme Õue 7″ (Porridge Bullet)
Every region of the world has its own signature export: Southern Europe’s red wine, East Africa’s coffee beans, the United States of America’s imperialist violence, and Northern Europe’s black metal. Black metal is like ninety percent of Finland’s GDP the last time I checked (the other ten percent is Angry Birds), and even when you think you’ve found a safe space, like the Estonian left-field dance label Porridge Bullet, this classic corpse-painted aesthetic will sneak up and deliver a jump-scare. Tapetud Rott is a new project from Estonian dub maestro Robert Nikolajev and Mikk Madisson, and while its origins may be digital in nature, the results are as grim and frostbitten as the wolf on the cover of Ulver’s Nattens Madrigal. “See Mees” is grueling and miserable, a theatrically-heightened despair that may appeal to fans of Dom Fernow’s various attempts at black metal. “Lähme Õue” picks up the pace with traditional helicopter-chop black metal drumming (of a digital nature) and guitars as brittle and unpleasant as permafrost’s crispy outer layer. It’s over in a blip, and to what end, I’m not certain, as this EP seems predestined to miss its aesthetically-aligned audience, what being distributed by European dance-hub Rush Hour and all. The cover’s nod towards a homoerotic black-metal fan-fic further muddles Tapetud Rott’s intentions – is it sincere, or a Limp Wrist-ified gag, or simply their civic duty?

Upsammy & Valentina Magaletti Seismo LP (PAN)
The hardest working drummer in improvised showbiz linked up with an unorthodox techno genius and the results are understandably spectacular. Apparently borne of some sort of museum-sponsored collaboration (cool progressive arts funding inconceivable to us Americans), the duo literally wandered the museum recording “improvised percussive sounds”, the seed from which Seismo sprouted. Neither Upsammy nor Valentina Magaletti are ever short on inspiration when it comes to seeking out unexpected rhythmic pathways, and while I would’ve been happy with a live, one-take improvisation from the two, Seismo is clearly an orchestrated affair, in line with Upsammy’s modern refresh of Aphex Twin’s braindance techniques and Drexciya’s thermal hydraulics. Here, we get Magaletti’s nimble and inventive drums in various designs, from spicy-hot trap-kit fills to patterns and sources less easily discerned. It’s a vibrant haul of ingredients for Upsammy to cook up her high-speed twinkle jams, and cook she does – “Superimposed” sounds like Eli Keszler trying out for Mahavishnu Orchestra; “Mementoes” is a postmodern anime dream in the clouds. It’s technically advanced and exquisite yet easy to appreciate, and if you want the true museum experience, you can ask a friend to stand in the corner in a cheap suit and stare at you disapprovingly while you listen.

Taking place at the pestily-named & Space (that band “@” should play there), we strode up past the BDSM burlesque show on the warehouse’s second floor and into the third floor venue, nestled in a quaintly decaying corner of the Chinatown neighborhood. Greeted warmly at the door, the instructions were to remove our shoes and find a spot to sit on the sprung subfloor of what was an avant-garde dance studio by day. I confirmed that we had arrived a little too late to catch the opener JS, one of the evening’s many mysteries… if it turns out I missed a solo performance from John Sharkey, it will be my biggest regret of the season.

After snagging a spot on the floor behind a guy in an unraveling Comme des Garçons sweater (worn inside out so the tag was plain to see), LN Celestine met us at our level, crouched on the floor like a catcher as she powered up her circular arc of small electronics and effects pedals. Through live looping, Celestine built up a lonely battalion of drones, bowing her violin and singing wordless notes into a microphone in sparse iterations. For a crowd dressed almost exclusively in browns and blacks, this sort of Realtree hunting-cap ambient fit right in, summoned to life over the hiss-cracks of freshly-popped seltzers and beers in the audience. The Grouper aesthetic tells us that the end is near, that the technology we so desperately cling to will soon be dumped in the woods next to yesteryear’s tractor, rusted and mossed over, and it clearly resonates with this generation of art-minded young people who have only ever read about prosperity. LN Celestine offered a peaceful space for decay.

As LXV pulled his folding table over to the front of the room with the help of a friend, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Miller Lite company is aware of how many table-top noise sets it has fueled. This Philadelphia-based “sound arranger and independent researcher” had too much intertwined gear to carry piece by piece, and once situated, he began his set softly, can of Lite on hand. The crowd talked over it for at least a good five opening minutes, though as LXV offered no visual or overtly sonic signs of a performance taking place, it was excusable, maybe even desired by this field-recording-friendly artist. As the crowd quieted, he created an amorphous buzz of static and nocturnal thump with slow, unhurried changes. I was reminded of Fennesz’s Black Sea, were the filthy contaminants of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River flushed into those sparkling waters, though mostly LXV’s set captured the restless, inert sensation of when you’re trying to fall asleep on a plane but can’t. The performance probably went on a little too long for my tastes, eventually, slowly wrapping up in what felt like footage of a waterfall played in reverse at quarter-speed.

As I willingly forwent the empty Togo-style chair in the back of the room for a floor spot front-and-center, Chicago’s Cancer House situated themselves among their travel-sized amps and pared-down trap kit, the band only half-honoring the venue’s no-shoes policy. This quintet are copacetic with the not-yet-codified crop of younger artists who are finding novel ways to fuse aspects of emo, drone, noise, folk, electronics and shoegaze into something identifiable as new, a penchant reflected even just locally by groups like They Are Gutting A Body Of Water, Scena, Her New Knife (a personal fave) and Chemical. Cancer House’s songs this evening were elegiac and pointed – the mix of expansively forlorn guitars and in-the-pocket slow-core drumming was decidedly Earth-like (circa Hex and The Bees Made Honey), though the softly vulnerable vocals, risky guitar phrasing, technical flubs and sensitive delivery recalled the more esoteric end of ’90s emo ala I Hate Myself, Still Life and Don Martin Three. I didn’t realize I wanted or needed the concept of an emo Earth, but Cancer House made it irresistible – I even found myself on board for the sole screamo breakdown of the set, multiple vocalists doubled-over screaming (with or without microphone assistance) in the manner of Saetia and Jeromes Dream. Bassist/vocalist Lily Sharratt’s voice added a calming presence, with the same wide-eyed, unintelligible delivery as Bilinda Butcher, like a deer in the headlights who knows something you don’t and centered far more live than on their album The Moth. I’m not sure Butcher ever scrolled through the lyrics on her iPhone with her big toe while playing, though. All in all, a captivating performance, and I hope our discouraging world offers them enough time and resources to see where it might take them.

Bound By Endogamy Steamy Highways Have No End LP (Pinkman)
Go on, I’ll wait while you look up what “endogamy” means… I know I had to! I can’t say it brought me any closer to understanding what this Swiss duo are on about, though their shared language of industrial EBM synth-wave is borderless and universal. Steamy Highways Have No End is a stylish, cosmopolitan affair (I spy lyrics in at least three different languages) but avoids ever feeling passive or hollow as an unoccupied Bottega Veneta boutique might. Full of hostile drum programming and overactive synths, the album is sleek enough that the fog-shrouded ballads (“Krematorium”, “Never Wake Up Again”) are crucial elements within the black PVC tapestry Bound By Endogamy have unfurled. When they really get banging, one can’t help but notice the similarities to ADULT., Dopplereffekt, Marie Davidson and Front Line Assembly (vocalist Kleio Thomaïdes even resorts to screaming on “March To The Drums”), but they feel like a natural extension of those shared properties rather than pastiche. It’s never not serious, but it’s also awfully fun – how else can Thomaïdes get away with a line like “wake up, eat, fuck, oh yeah, if you don’t fuck you’re finished”? The programming is attention-grabbing and hectic, though any half-firing brain on the dance-floor will immediately connect with its primal, body-moving energy. If Dais and Sacred Bones aren’t squabbling over the North American distribution rights for the next Bound By Endogamy album, I’ll choke on my croissant!

Burned Up Bled Dry Next Stop… Dead Stop… LP (Prank)
The rumors are true: Arkansas’ finest hardcore export (at least until Chelsea Clinton’s d-beat band releases a demo) Burned Up Bled Dry are back! Of the many groups ostensibly inspired by His Hero Is Gone in the ’90s (I’m looking at you, My Hero Died Today), Burned Up Bled Dry were a cut above, leaning into shorter song-lengths and the fist-on-brick power of hardcore-punk as opposed to extended harmonic d-beat passages or the oppressive atmospheres that Neurosis taught us (who, well what do you know, are also back). Prank Records is a perfect fit, having been in the anti-commercial hardcore mix both then and now; it’s a crusty class reunion with significantly fewer white-guy dreads (we can only hope). Burned Up Bled Dry arrive as if freshly thawed from 1998: twenty-six(!) tracks, the majority under a minute, blast-beats and thrash beats and moshable dirges all chopped into fragments and re-glued into new configurations of hardcore brutality. I’m hearing touches of Tear It Up, From Ashes Rise, No Man’s Slave and of course the immortal echoes of His Hero Is Gone (who I commend for being one of the few greats to not come back for their victory-lap reunion, box-set promotion and/or giant check), which is to say, the music of Burned Up Bled Dry really hasn’t aged in any discernible fashion. I wonder if they can say the same about how they feel when they get out of bed in the morning.

CIA Debutante Trespass LP (Siltbreeze)
Trespass is CIA Debutante’s fourth full-length LP for Siltbreeze, and I’m already eager for four more. Their particular concoction of chilly post-punk mechanics, fractured, glowing electronics and deadpan spoken vocals is wide open for unexpected possibilities, with plenty of room to grow, and pretty much exactly what I want to spend my free time listening to. The chemistry between Nathan Roche (vocals, guitar) and Paul Bonnet (everything else) really pops here, Roche’s calmly considered voice and flustered guitar comfortably nestled amongst Bonnet’s reliable electro-rhythms, warbled pulses and even a woodwind or two. The similarities to Cabaret Voltaire and The Shadow Ring are evident sonically, but also in the group’s willingness to follow through on any idea no matter how bizarre, with the sense that no convention or dogma could ever constrain them. For example, the menacing beat behind “Flesh Microchip Repair” recalls Suicide, though the repeated rhyme of “Hieronymus Bosch / McIntosh” is without easy explanation – it just works! The same intrigue runs through the halogen-burn of “Cergy Prefecture” and the Matthew Bower-esque guitar squall of “Spill” – it’s enigmatic, it’s infatuating, it’s CIA Debutante.

Avalon Emerson & The Charm Written Into Changes LP (Dead Oceans)
Avalon Emerson’s evolution from peak-time American DJ in Europe to outdoorsy dream-pop sensation has been a fairly straightforward one. For as big-tent as her musical ideas tend to be, she’s always moved with sincerity and thoughtfulness, one of those artists whose interviews I read in full because there’s always some insightful kernel of wisdom to be gleaned. I’m not sure her music with (or perhaps more appropriately, as) The Charm will deliver the same goosebumps as “The Frontier” on a physically-fit sound system, but as for sugary, feel-good pop? This is pretty much where it’s at. Emerson’s voice shares the same uncanny crystalline delivery of james K and ML Buch throughout (new ML Buch album when?), alongside upbeat re-imaginations of baggy trip-hop, ’00s mall pop, the lighter side of MTV alt-rock and so on. It’s kind of where everyone’s heads seem to be these days, this nostalgia for a kindler gentler Y2K that may or may not have actually existed (Len’s sunshine has most certainly been stolen by now), discarding the parts that aged poorly and streamlining it with the studio wisdom of today’s top production teams. I’m reminded of Matthew Dear’s Bunny, Caroline Polachek’s playlist toppers, Madonna’s Ray Of Light and Carly Rae Jepsen’s deep cuts, teeny-bop music not for teenagers but hip city-dwelling young adults who have decided a cute dog beats having kids. I’m not sure if Emerson will reap the same rewards as some of her fellow dance-y indie-pop travelers, but she’s got the record-selling behemoth of Dead Oceans behind her – who better, and when better, to swing for the fences?

Fcukers Ö LP (Ninja Tune)
With a reputation for rebellious party-starting and a purposefully eye-catching name (I hope they’ve got a sponsorship deal going with French Connection UK by now), Fcukers are poised to level-up with Ö, their debut album for electro powerhouse Ninja Tune. The NYC duo (or occasional trio?) have taken the commercially-aspirational steps of enlisting Grammy-winning engineer Tom Norris, wild-card trendsetter Dylan Brady of 100 Gecs and producer du jour Kenneth Blume (don’t you dare call him Kenny Beats anymore) to craft Ö, and I’ll admit, it brings me some speck of happiness to see that big-budget pop upgrades still mostly suck. No part of “the music biz” from twenty years ago resembles whatever is happening now, so it’s a precious small comfort to listen to the phoned-in dance-pap of Fcukers and be reminded that joy can only be sparked naturally, not gamed into existence by the business-vampire simulacrum that ingests and distorts it. Of course, Fcukers were never about sincerity or politics or emotion – vocalist Shanny Wise has always sounded like her mind was elsewhere, a sort of Julia Fox Jr. that can make the worst fits look cool due to the invincible combination of youth, arrogance and New York City. It’s party music for club goons, the soon-to-be-cancelled and friends of friends of Xaviersobased, and while I respect music that speaks to a re-imagined “indie sleaze”, I want it to be slutty, shocking or otherwise unforgettable, rather than the safety-gloves, focus-grouped equivalent I’m hearing here. Ö hits like a Flo Rida x Liquid Death collaboration, when it’s PFFR x Sparks that I’m after.

Foote/Dickow High Cube LP (Geographic North)
The genre of “two electronic musicians jamming in a room together without forethought for a concise period of time” is ripe for collapse (laziness, lack of ideas, lack of coherence, etc.), and yet each time one of these new collabs hits my desk, I find myself enthralled. That Multiples album is great (Speedy J and Surgeon) and now this new one from west coast alt-techno mainstays Brian Foote and Paul Dickow has me wondering why anyone ever bothers rehearsing their downtempo techno in the first place. There’s just something special about the immediate spark of an idea that infuses electronic music’s compassionless hardware with heart and soul – Joey Beltram was recently talking about how he recorded his classic tracks live – and though Foote and Dickow maintain a calm demeanor throughout High Cube, their human presence is squarely felt. I’m reminded a bit of another American experimental dub-techno duo, Protect U, on a track like “A Dragon’s Treasure Is Its Soul”, where rhythms swerve and luxuriate over sparkling thrum and dub-fried effects in a manner that lightly disorients. It’s never overstuffed, and the two years-long friends are clearly listening to each other as much as you and I, volleying patterns and overlaying synths with the loving care a parent shows their sick child. I’m not sure I’d even recommend standing upright when High Cube spins – this is deep couch music, the listener’s inner balance playfully tested as if on a cruise ship voyage.

Glasspack Double For Horse Dancer LP (Gateway Gardenia)
Keep honking – I’m currently trapped in a transcendent inter-dimensional pathway thanks to Glasspack’s Double For Horse Dancer! They’re a relatively new duo comprised of Henry Birdsey (of pastoral New England drone unit Tongue Depressor) and Ian McColm (of CT avant-psych trio Nagual), and though their iteration of that trendy bumper sticker does not yet exist, I continue to succumb to their long-form electronic re-compositions, gladly in fact. Double For Horse Dancer takes organic source material (Birdsey’s bagpipes for sure; what else I’m not exactly certain) and re-chains its base chemical compounds into extravagant double-helixes. Glasspack bridges the gap between the left-field drone experiments found on Bill Nace’s Open Mouth label (Matt Krefting, John Truscinski, Jake Meginsky et al) and the minimalist-drone practitioners of yore like Terry Riley and Steve Reich, though it’s not a large gap, comprised more of institutional funding than anything else really. There’s a rich and worthy conceptual framework no matter how you slice it here, and Glasspack speaks the language fluently – these tracks are full of strobe-light sparkle, richly churned low-end and a sense of vastness as entertainment, like when you’re sitting in a planetarium and the show begins, galaxies whizzing across the dome so as to induce a light flutter of motion sickness. Closer “Fort Lee Double Rainbow” yanks the quantum physics e-brake and throws these celestial drones in reverse, black holes giving birth to white dwarfs. It’s about time someone spiced up the space-time continuum.

Lost Air Cloudmirror LP (Framework)
Something profound seems to have happened to Ryan Taylor, and if I’m to offer a guess, it was either the birth of a child or the death of an elder. You may recall his work in Boston hardcore rippers like Exit Order and Brain Killer, but under his solo Lost Air guise, Taylor pursues a dark-ambient form of post-rock, perfect for contemplating life, death and the horizon where the sea meets the air. (The gloomy cover image offers precisely the latter.) Cloudmirror is at least his first public attempt at longer-form instrumental soundscapes, and while there isn’t much in the way of risk-taking or uncharted territory here by the genre’s established forms, it’s a proper working document of curlicue drones, spacious ambient drift and patient melodic touches. The “haunted attic” quality reminds me a bit of Leland Kirby, whereas some of the elementally-rumbling forms position themselves similar to the ground-level textures of a Godspeed You! Black Emperor track. It’s not as cinematic as other genre practitioners, but I appreciate the home-spun feel, an effective way to communicate dark emotions where words may fail. And if you somehow miss those feelings, titles like “Home Pain”, “Indoor Fog”, “Into Wind” and “A Crawling Mist” nudge you toward their path.

mclusky I Sure Am Getting Sick Of This Bowling Alley 12″ (Ipecac)
Like a bad rash or a successful horror villain, enduring noise-rock jokesters mclusky keep coming back. At this point, modern first-world life has caught up with (and surpassed) the depressing absurdities found in a typical mclusky song, but I can understand why they’d feel compelled to keep their high-wire noise-rock act going: what else is there to do? Following last year’s proper comeback album The World Is Still Here And So Are We, this new six-song EP confirms the blokes are older and thriving, if not in fighting shape then at least capable of shaming their opponent with a well-timed zinger. I’m not sure this is a band that ever felt like they had “something to prove”, but it’s clear that even if those were once their intentions, they’re clearly only here to amuse themselves, which by proxy works well for those of us eager to enjoy antagonistic post-hardcore riffs led by a singer who refuses to fall in line. In “I Know Computer” and onward, it’s not just Andy Falkous’s voice that sneers – his guitar, Jack Egglestone’s drums and Damien Sayell’s bass all seem to be jeering at us, well-deserved schoolyard jabs with a lingering sting. “I Know Computer” has me wishing A Frames would finally come back too, while the rest of the EP navigates a zone from IDLES to The Fall to Cake, with plenty of over-the-top vocal affectations and catchy pop hooks dressed up in an abrasive noise-rock disguise. If you’re not having fun, they’re not having fun… but it sure seems like they’re having fun.

MM/KM Velours 12″ (Kimochi)
Some of you I’ll have on board with as little as “dub techno incoherence”, others will be tempted once I say “pressed in a sparse limited-edition with hand-painted covers in typical Kimochi style”, and the remaining few who still aren’t impressed? I will light a candle for your hardened souls. I’m already starting to reflexively cognize “KM” as Kassem Mosse when I see it, paired up here with Mix Mup for a brief foray beyond our comprehension into fields of baffling dark matter. At first, it makes sense: “Ford Sierra In Dub” (song title of the month) stares bloodshot into the after-hours with a bed of skittering hi-hats and a persistent low-key thump, akin to Kyle Hall’s inscrutable techniques. “Gedanken” follows with startling signs of decay: the track consists solely of some farty little bubbles all by themselves. The title track then captures those bubbles and slaps them onto a vast and empty grid, resembling something Actress would dare to dream. It’s the ten minute “Delphinpanik” that is the greatest cause for concern, however; “ambient” in the sense of an empty supermarket after close, Mosse and Mup test out some gear in the loneliest corner of Guitar Center until they get kicked out. It’s not dance music so much as the alarming lack thereof, a bold piece of art that only gets bolder once you realize they actually sent it to Kimochi, Kimochi actually approved it, and a record pressing plant actually manufactured a couple hundred polyvinyl chloride copies for commercial sale. They all believe in it – do you?

Opal Sunn Liquid – Phases I – III 12″ (Test Pressing)
Remember Red Bull Music Academy? If Sketchy Ketamine Music Academy existed, Alex Kassian and Hiroaki Oba would be tenured chairs for their work as Opal Sunn. “Liquid – Phase 1” is deep, deep Balearic house, a dance cut that confuses the psychic borders separating total exhaustion and insatiable horniness. What’ll it be, sleep or tantric sex for the next forty-eight hours? Might as well dance while you decide! When the godlike voiceover hits, I feel like I’ve joined a polycule based on that picture of Sting and his wife in a candlelit boudoir (please, quickly google if you haven’t already been blessed by this image). “Liquid – Phase II” is a proper dub rinsing, a sensual orbit that affirmatively answers the question of “can humans be seduced in outer space?”. If any of your particles remain untitillated, “Liquid – Phase III” delivers the faintly glimmering embers of its proceeding phases, a reflection pool that reveals your newly nourished, post-Liquid self. You can buy as many expensive serums and organic cleanses as you want, I support that, just understand that nothing will revitalize you quite like a private session in Opal Sunn’s Liquid flotation tank.

Bill Orcutt Last Days LP (Fake Estates)
Many Bill Orcutt fans made the pilgrimage to New York for his recent weekend-long showcase at Roulette, and I regret not being among them. It seems to have been a new career highlight for this American guitarist who, in his sixties, probably still hasn’t peaked just yet, but I find these snarky computer-composition albums, released on his Fake Estates label and never performed live, to be just as thrilling in their own way. I’m not sure he’ll top A Mechanical Joey (a minimalist new-music piece comprised of a counting-off Joey Ramone), but Last Days is immediately up there with it. The concept is equally stupid/brilliant: take the first eight notes from Slash’s iconic “Sweet Child O Mine” intro and flip, layer, rotate and loop it across two fifteen minute chunks. There’s nothing more (and nothing less) to it; Slash’s beautiful harmonics, once in the shape of a three-dimensional prism, are refracted through spools of diamonds, a thrill bordering on madness. Undoubtedly, it’s only a matter of time before whomever you’re with asks you to turn Last Days off – Orcutt loves nothing if not testing one’s patience – but it can be a handy way to measure that person’s tolerance of blinding beauty, their willingness to fully submit to objectionable, crazy art. I’m not sure I’d want to spend time with anyone who can’t tolerate a full side.

Poison Ruïn Hymns From The Hills LP (Relapse)
Sketches of a new world could be gleaned from 2023’s Härvest, but Hymns From The Hills offers a detailed rendering of Poison Ruïn’s alluring realm. It cracks open a Middle Earth filled with punks and skins in place of hobbits and orcs – the hand-drawn map detailed with craggy, mist-shrouded mountain ranges, mysterious caves and circle pits of unknown origin sadly doesn’t exist, but the spirit of Gary Gygax remains. Instrumental passages redolent of Manowar, Blue Öyster Cult, Asunder and the Poison Ruïn dungeon-synth side-project Shadow Knell fill every porous surface with color (or should I say cölör), but no one is gonna want to hang too long if they don’t have the songs worth sticking around for. Poison Ruïn have sharpened their songwriting blades as well, sounding less like anyone else and more like themselves (the New Kings of the Four-Minute Punk Song), which inhabits a fairly wide stylistic range, from blackened, doomy punk ala Raspberry Bulbs to the heathen strum of The Wipers, the bloodstained aggression of Tank and whatever “Lily Of The Valley” is… pub-punk from a pre-Christianity Ireland, before the snakes got chased out? Mac Kennedy’s voice is commandingly large, gruff and weathered in a similarly-different way to Dickie Barrett and Shane McGowan. The group even flexes their black-metal muscles on closer “The Standoff” for a moment, if only to ease into another mid-paced spiked-gauntlet fist-pumper that rallies the righteous. For a shout-along chorus to work, you need the people behind you, and Hymns From The Hills is filled with moments that shatter the passiveness of social etiquette and rouse folded arms up into the air.

Poison Suckers Charmer 7″ (Transistor 66)
One of the distinct signifiers of modern punk is its fluidity between band, solo- and studio-project. It used to be that you had to hang out with three other degenerates, even if you didn’t really like them (or they didn’t like you), for the opportunity to create parent-torturing rock n’ roll, but now all you need is an internet connection (complimentary at Tim Hortons) and you can whip up something worth posting online. I can’t quite tell if Winnipeg’s Poison Suckers qualify as a ‘real band’ or what, as these four songs feature Joe Warkentin handling drums, guitars and vocals with Jo Jo Rodriguez on lead vocals, but at least as a duo, they’ve got the photoshoot charisma and yards of animal-print fabric worthy of a gander. I prefer the trash-rock garage of “Slash Tires” and “I’m A Zero” to the slow-dance ’60s pop of “Charade” and the Canadian rockabilly of “Viper Winds” (I’m still recovering from Orville Peck PTSD), but the whole thing is recorded crispier than tavern-style pizza and satisfies just as simply. I love a snare that sounds like pebbles inside a washing machine, and alongside Poison Suckers’ winged-eyeliner and mustache combo, it’s making me want to order the filthiest cocktail at the tiki bar and drink it in one gulp, dry ice included.

whitepicketfence whitepicketfence 7″ (Exotic Fever)
Don’t let the reissue-fication of emo fool you – it wasn’t always bespoke box-set packaging, clearly delineated recording specs, half a dozen 180-gram vinyl variants, well-written yet rose-tinted essays, collector-squeezing pricing tiers and some deeply implied sense of importance. No, it was kids (and eventually, adults) making something by hand in their basements and garages that looked, sounded and smelled like it was made in their basement and garages by hand. It was entrusted to and distributed through a network of likeminded (and mostly unpaid) people, not a distribution conglomerate, and it looked and sounded quite a bit like whitepicketfence. Their debut EP is barely on Bandcamp – each of the four songs has their own separate release page (why!) and there’s no obvious way to buy the record (double why!) – and I’m delighted that they didn’t seem to know any better when it came to designing the package, too: a sleeveless clear vinyl record (like that Sleepytime Trio one) in one of those plastic picture-disc sleeves that will eventually off-gas a muddy haze onto the grooves. While fully grown adults, the guitar/drums duo of Chris Lauterbach and Katy Otto continue to bash on their respective instruments and sing from deep within their hearts as they’ve done in numerous bands prior. It’s messy like Frail, moody like The Evens and abstract like The Dead C, with amplifier radio-interference for atmosphere and melodic vocals sung in unison over fuzz-pedal guitar. This is unself-conscious, imperfect and DIY music from people who deeply believe in it – in other words, emo.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Worst Song here at Yellow Green Red. I had the dubious idea of a short interview series wherein I ask artists I admire about the worst song they ever wrote (in their personal opinion), with the caveat that it has to have been recorded and released. What’s the fun if we can’t hear it?? Katie Alice Greer is an appropriately bold artist to kick things off, though honestly her song isn’t bad at all, even if I get where she’s coming from. Katie sang (and rotated through other instruments) in the DC punk band Priests before moving to Los Angeles and cutting out on her own, releasing the excellent debut Barbarism on FourFour Records in 2022. Coincidentally, her follow-up, Perfect Woman Sound Machine, Vol. 1, came out last week on her own GAK Records imprint. Her worst song can be found here if you’d like to listen along.

KAG: I think there are lots of bad songs in my overall catalogue; I’m not saying this to be self-deprecating but more because I tend to aim for making stuff that feels (for me) like I’m taking a big swing creatively, ideas where I’m not sure I can pull it off. For instance, Priests covered a song from one of our favorite tour van albums, “Mother” by Danzig. I was listening to a lot of Nile Rodgers projects at the time and wondering, could we make a disco version of “Mother”? Reader, I revisited this track a few months ago and regret to inform you we could not. However! I don’t think this is my worst song. I also don’t think the outtakes from my first solo album that got released a few years ago are my worst songs, even though I’d be so happy to get some of those off the internet. Many are unlistenable! But, I think especially in this day and age of inoffensive, safe, often boring music being made to fill playlists, it’s important to keep being a freak and making weird stuff that might not work. It’s important to record in strange ways and make stuff that makes some people wanna turn it off. There’s nothing wrong with pleasant or forgettable music, but it takes all kinds. To me, maybe my worst song is an old Priests track called “Lillian Hellman”. I just think it’s a little lyrically uninspired. I’d literally read a book about Lillian Hellman (an actual line in the song) and wanted to do her justice and I don’t think I did. It’s not shockingly bad or anything and my bandmates contributed perfectly fine stuff. I just think what I did there was filler, probably the worst creative offense.

YGR: That’s probably one of my biggest fears: not to make bad music, but mediocre music. I can see how learning about Lillian Hellman could inspire a song, though. You’ve always integrated real people, real historical events into your work… how do you approach that?

KAG: I think for me it’s almost a question of how to not do that. Some artists seem most comfortable writing directly about their own experiences and emotions; that’s much harder for me. My own experiences and feelings are fluid, they’re harder to grasp how I permanently feel about them. It’s not that I’m ignoring my feelings or experiences, I’m just not usually creatively excited by them. Whereas a good story, whether current or from the past, that’s riveting stuff! I want to try to hone in on what about it has captured my attention or feelings. Again, that’s just for me. I love stuff other people write about their own life. Joni Mitchell is one of my favorites. You seem really good at that too actually, though I guess I assume a lot of your lyrics are about real life, maybe they aren’t. Maybe everybody is writing about a character, even when they’re writing about themselves — and maybe everybody is writing about themselves even when they’re making up characters or telling stories?

YGR: How much did you contribute to the music with Priests, the stuff that wasn’t lyrics and singing?

KAG: I don’t love breaking down the contributions in that band because we split all the songwriting credits four ways on purpose (or three when it made sense to). Being like “that part was mine, that part was theirs” doesn’t feel like the spirit of the band, which was also the really frustrating part of it sometimes, too. But there were times I was humming a riff or suggesting a rhythm idea. It’d be hard to only ever write lyrics or top lines.

YGR: Was there a clear moment where you felt like, “I am now a musician”? Do you even feel like a musician now?

KAG: I write songs but I don’t consider myself a musician. I just cannot bring myself to get passionate about getting good at instruments. It doesn’t get me excited at all. I always tell people I’m a musician like Irving Berlin, and I’m absolutely trying to be funny when I say it, but as I understand it the guy couldn’t really play piano and he never let that stop him from contributing some of our greatest entries in the great American songbook. Not saying I’ve made anything like that, but I think about how he never let that stop him if I’m feeling bad about my musicianship. My ego is not in the technician aspect of instrument-playing, but I know my rudimentary way around the basics of a few. On this new record it’s mostly me and my producer Meg playing or programming stuff, and then Gleb Wilson on drums (“Unglued”, I think a few others) and “Expo ‘70” bass. Mastering engineer Roberto Schilling added some low-end in a few places like the “I’m Your Man” cover, and then there’s a great guitar cameo from Forest Juziuk on “Unglued”.

YGR: Have you learned anything from “Lillian Hellman”? Or is it simply just your least favorite if you had to pick, which you so kindly did at my request?

KAG: I think so, because even though I’ve written stuff that I later think is bad since then, I don’t think any other song makes me wince in quite the same way as that one. I have songs where listening back, I’m like JFC, what exactly did I think I was doing here, but then I remember what I thought I was doing (“I was being Nile Rodgers”, “I was being aggressively literal in a way that I thought would come off cool and exciting but maybe sounds more like a bellyflop”) and I don’t feel that bad about it. I think you should only feel bad if you’re phoning it in or playing it safe. Everybody should be aiming for the extremes where you’re either going to be fantastic or sucking really bad a little more.

Abyecta Inténtalo O Muere 7″ (Metadona)
Concurrently residing in Chile, Spain and, surely worst of all, now even the United States, Abyecta pack a lot into this seven-inch single. This is music made by punks who take two hours to get dressed for punks who take two hours to get dressed, the charged-hair, boots n’ braces realm of underground punk that I’ve always admired if not personally belonged. At five and a half minutes, “Inténtalo O Muere” barely fits within the confines of a seven-inch record, but the track benefits from its relatively epic length. Imagine Randy Uchida hitching a ride with The Varukers down the highway to Hell, or the Epic Handshake meme (you know the one) where the two muscular arms are “heavy metal” and “punk rock” and the handshake is “spiked gauntlets”. Songs like this are meant to be five minutes long, with extended instrumental guitar-solo breaks, aggro bridges and fist-pumping choruses. “Amo Y Esclavo” welds Judas Priest / Grim Reaper guitar lines to the powerful gallop of hardcore-punk drum patterns, with no qualms about an epic ninety-second instrumental opening passage. It’s larger than life (metal) and street-level urgent (punk), befitting an unsanctioned outdoor punk fest with active volcanos in the distance, preferably full of melting cop cars.

Bill Converse Zone Zone 2×12″ (Fixed Rhythms)
Lace up those Chuck Taylors and let’s roll out, Bill Converse is playing tonight! The Austin-based DJ/producer is known for his atypical triple-turntable setup, though unlike Queensrÿche’s drum kit, there’s a keen purpose to Converse’s excess. The evidence couldn’t be clearer, as the second record in this double twelve-inch set showcases an absolutely mind-melting live set at Jackie O’Body in Denton, TX, sometime in 2024. It’s a thrilling acid rollercoaster, though if I insist on likening the performance to a carnival ride, the bumper cars are a similarly-appropriate attraction. Arpeggiated acid lines are bouncing from all angles, but Converse has a keen sense of order and pacing, whipping up a hero’s feast of analog dance grooves. Don’t let the live aspect scare you, either – the recording is crisp and full-bodied, if lacking the screams and hollers of what must’ve been a frenzied dance crowd. The studio tracks are great in a different way: “770” is like a Satanic mass derived from the Dr. Katz and Seinfeld themes; Converse’s plucky MIDI bass over pitched drums is a highlight. “Lure Me” chops it up with a laser security system fit for the Bellagio, and the title track is a steam-engine running on acid, like when Jamal Moss presses all the buttons at once and it somehow sounds euphoric. I’d say someone should get Converse a fourth table, but until we understand the possible ramifications, certain forms of power are not to be messed with.

Early Grave Sewer Baby Eaten By Worms 7″ (Stupid Bag)
Philly upstarts Early Grave have fun with metal aesthetic signifiers (see: band logo, cemetery-themed art, machetes and scythes brandished in group pic) while clearly worshipping the one and only true god: hardcore punk. They released this nine-song demo late last year, which Stupid Bag has now upgraded to an attractive seven-inch slab. They’ve got a great thing going: the music recalls the frantic speed-runs of Neos and Gang Green with a smidge of Septic Death’s gloriously-confusing songwriting and the occasional fast-core bludgeoning redolent of Slap A Ham’s late ’90s output. Perhaps it’s the vocals where the metal influence seeps in, as they reached into the cauldron for United Mutation’s grizzled mutant intonation and accidentally pulled out a severed larynx with the fiendishness of Glen Benton. As a trio, it’s either the bassist or guitarist responsible for the vocals (no front-person!), which is far less prevalent in hardcore than metal. But I digress: Early Grave named their damn thing Sewer Baby Eaten By Worms and seem to approach their frothy speed-core from the perspective of that sewer baby, writing and contorting among so much unspeakable vermin.

FRKSE Through The Slow Dusk LP (Iron Lung)
There’s a rich allegory to be gleaned from the arresting cover of FRKSE’s Through The Slow Dusk, though it’s unclear to me exactly what the decapitated horse-head’s vomited objects imply. It’s been fun to ruminate on though, particularly while jamming FRKSE’s newest iteration of discomfiting underground electronics. Through The Slow Dusk is the closest FRKSE has ever come to sounding like a “real band”, with recognizable percussive elements (is that a trap-kit in there on some tracks?), synths and vocals, recorded by none other than Martin Bisi. As such, it sounds like Public Image Ltd. had they signed to Broken Flag instead of Virgin, with imposing fields of dub-constructed post-punk given an early industrial walloping – the punishment is in fact the reward. FRKSE aren’t interested in glorifying historical frights, though… the group has always wielded a dark-knowledge, deep-web lexicon rooted in the contemporary, and the lyrics of tracks like “Sort” (“Forbes list of dilettantes: / spreadsheet / populate the cells”), “Coax” (“Online broker / saw me in a magazine”) and “Fled” (“I want to be white / I want to be white like overexposure”) don’t play games. For those intrepid Iron Lung Records fans who listen to more Einstürzende Neubauten than Infest, their misanthropy is once again rewarded.

Giallo Tenebrarum LP (Convulse)
The black leather glove has been enjoying a resurgence in hardcore-punk’s popular imagery. It’s kind of the perfect visual signifier for modern hardcore bands who want to imply some level of dark trangressiveness without actually getting in trouble for it. Mercifully, the days of bands using pictures of scantily-clad, suffering women without getting called out for it have passed, so the black leather glove offers a reasonable solution: perhaps sleazy celluloid violence is implied, perhaps consensual BDSM is implied, or maybe they just want you to think someone in the band knows how to operate a motorcycle, but whatever the case, it’s safely edgy territory for would-be Youth Attack bands who release records they’d never show their parents. The gloves are central to Giallo’s debut full-length (complete with two band members wearing them in the live photos), but their form of contemporary hardcore hits pretty hard, even if they went bare handed. Giallo’s sound is indebted to groups like Civilized and Vile Gash (and with the slasher movie aesthetic, City Hunter’s presence looms especially large); it’s an overtly aggressive approach, shrouded in feedback without any creeping metal influence, and they do well by it. Their songs are faster than typical, even the parts that benefit from being slow, and I appreciate that about Giallo’s approach – “Sleepwalking” is a shock to the system when it kicks into high gear. The two extended songs on the second side show signs of curiosity: a creeping, textural synth-scape from Terror Cell Unit leads into a demonic, sax-laden slam with throat-clearing coughs reminiscent of Pharmakon’s Hoax-album starter. I hope Giallo washed their hands after, but what do you know: another great reason for those gloves.

Annie Hogan Tongues In My Head LP (Downwards)
There are a dwindling few among us who can claim to have worked closely with Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch, Marc Almond and Foetus; of those, there’s an even smaller percentage that continue to make meaningful work. Annie Hogan is that rare character, having shot through the early ’80s industrial/goth milieu and, like a rent-controlled pioneer, lacking any good reason to leave. Tongues In My Head is her latest for Downwards (champions of all darkly-shrouded musics) and it’s a deviant joy to behold. These six songs are slinky, deliberate and cunning… elegiac synth-pop brimming with trippy peculiarities befitting a morbid German folktale. Think of Leslie Winer if her modeling career started in Alice’s Wonderland instead of New York City, or November Növelet if they were estranged from each other, if or if Kate Bush joined Current 93 in 1984 and was promptly never heard from again. These are fun fantasies for me to conjure up, but I want to make clear that Hogan knows how to write songs, not merely moods or atmospheres. If we still made mixtapes and you wanted to seduce a completely inappropriate crush (your professor, your bully, your stalker fan), “Scorpions” would lure them to your doorstep promptly, handcuffed and desperate. Sorry to talk like this, but why don’t you spend some time with Tongues In My Head and try to not act creepy after!

Julian Heresy Julian Heresy LP (No Coast)
Madison, WI has a rich history of stoner metal with ties to the punk scene, care of labels like Bovine and Rhetoric (both of whose proprietors suffered weed-related arrests and incarceration, if I’m not mistaken!). They lived for it out there, and if the recent arrival of Julian Heresy is any indication, that flame continues to burn eternally. This new group features Bobby Hussy on lead guitar, apparently shifting his worship from the altar of one devil (Jay Reatard) to the more traditionally red-tailed, pointy-goatee-with-pitchfork variety. Hussy enlisted some friends, with none other than Mikey Makela of Bongzilla to lend his vocals to these sloth-paced stoner epics. Makela sounds grizzled on opener “Stash Jar”, but by the time his voice hits on “Emerging From The Quantum Extremal Surface”, he’s more like a rotisserie-marinated Gollum, not dead but far from alive. These boilerplate, slow-shifting riffs demand a good fifty to sixty percent of his throat, but he’s giving one hundred and ten percent here, primed to scare the neighbors so long as Julian Heresy is blasting at the appropriate volume. “In Vino Veritas” takes the angst down a notch, almost sounding like Nothing were they a thousand years old; a brief dual-guitar composition leads into the final track, “Illium Township”, a righteous Spirit-Caravan-on-ludes chonker that praises Sabbath with every fiber of its being. Bringing it back to Gollum, riffs like these bear strong similarities to The Ring – when you feel their power in your hands, it consumes you.

Low Jack Market 7″ (Bambe)
As we usher in the backyard-party season, be sure to have some fresh tunes ready to scare off those stragglers who insist on lingering past their welcome. Low Jack is a great producer when it comes to dance tracks with alienating energy, as “Market” reiterates on this all-too-brief seven-inch single. “Market” was originally composed for an “immersive installation” by Australian visual artist Thomas Jeppe, but we receive it in “Radio Edit” form here, a disgruntled array of samples organized in dancehall formation. Pounding low-end meets chattering typewriters (or automatic rifles cocking?) and thrillingly garish siren effects for an energetic sound-clash sure to leave your clothes smelling like some form of smoke. It’s a party ambulance from Sodom, and as the track fades over a bed of rain and reverse-flanged doinks, I’m wishing this track was given an additional five inches of vinyl to explore. Bambe label-head Bambounou snagged the b-side for himself, flipping the original into a vicious electro groove, JJ Fad all dressed up like Mad Max‘s Furiosa. It’s less feral but equally dangerous. Now that I think about it, no one is gonna want to leave if you start blasting either version of “Market” – you’re going to be pulling partygoers out of your futon for weeks.

Jae Matthews Man On The Beat 12″ (Heartworm Press)
Boy Harsher have been on the top of the minimal-synth-pop heap for a while, yet their banger output has all but dried up. Careful is seven years old, “Pain” dates back even further, and while all the soundtracking work has kept them creatively busy (not to mention Gus Muller’s time well spent with Safe Mind), the lack of new club material is glaring. Vocalist Jae Matthews reassures us then that she hasn’t forsaken the dance-floor with this new single for Wes Eisold’s Heartworm Press label, a cover of Buzz Kull’s “Man On The Beat”. Buzz Kull has been lurking around the Heartworm corridors for a while now, their sexy, fashion-forward dark-wave a latex-tight fit, and Matthews takes the opportunity to reassert herself as the most gorgeously bleary dark-wave siren in the game. Over a nimble synth sequence, an unflagging goth-industrial beat and some atmospheric pads to help dim the lights, Matthews’s breathy intonation will have all the bat-kids flapping their wings long into the night. In true new-wave fashion befitting a Kaos Dance Records release, the b-side is an extended version, care of the Los Angeles duo Spike Hellis, splicing in the original Buzz Kull vocals alongside Jae Matthews for a celebration of all things black, leather and lust-scented (I think I may have just described a specific Diptyique candle). It’s not quite Lemmy Kilmister with Wendy O. Williams, but what is?

Minot Walls / People Pleaser 7″ (no label)
Just had a great idea: what if there was a band where the drummer stands, and the bassist, guitarist and singer all sit? It’d be a refreshing change of pace for what is one of the most worn-out and predictable features of rock music. Missoula, MT’s Minot can take my idea for free, as they’ve already got a standing drummer in Noah Mackinnon – all he has to do is tell Flora Holland (guitar) and Alex Molica (also guitar) to take a seat. Thanks in no small part to the Wäntage USA label, I’ve always had fond thoughts of Montana’s underground rock scene, of which Minot reside; on this self-released lathe-cut single, they showcase their rudimentary fuzz-pop leanings. “Walls” locates the urinal in the far corner that still has Cramps and Dead Moon stickers from the ’90s on it and dumps a fresh bucket of ice cubes in there. I prefer this stripped-down and first-attempty style to “People Pleaser”, which looks back to the flower-braided ’60s for inspiration, a sound I personally am content to leave undisturbed in the mold-riddled dollar bin. Not sure I need to harp on such details, though – if I’m going to experience Minot, it’s hopefully blaring from the other end of the bar while I’m doing shots with Mordecai, and then faintly audible across the street once Mordecai have convinced me to steal a horse from the nearby stable and ride it home without a saddle. Welcome to big sky country!

Pura Manía La Banda Es La Ley 12″ (Roachleg)
By the early ’80s, punk rock began to fantasize how it might sound in a post-nuclear fallout situation. It’s no wonder that in our current moment, punks are drawn to similar aesthetics: desolate, flanger- and chorus-effected guitars; primal, tom-heavy drumming; a synth that buzzes like some sort of infrared scanning device used to locate survivors. Vancouver’s Pura Manía are preparing for the wasteland with this new six-song EP, a spikier counterpart to fellow Second Empire Justice-worshipping Canadians Home Front. “Zona De Alto Riesgo” translates to “High Risk Zone” and it ties today’s anxieties to that paranoid, retro sound nicely. It’s almost a comforting nostalgia when those woah-ohs hit two minutes in, at least until you remember the rate at which innocent people are dying. Pura Manía have every right to hammer on the negative endlessly, but they wisely mix up the vibe, going from warning-alarm downer punk to major-chord crowd pleasers like “Planeta Gótico” and “Amor De Coladera (Veneno Y Glam)”, the later of which is a perfect set-ender for when you just want to lock arms with a stranger in a Templars shirt and sing along to keep from crying. The cover lightens the mood as well, a mischievous gang of punxsploitation Madballs ready to swipe all of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s acid for themselves. It might not seem like it at the moment, but the punks are bound to win.

Reek Minds Eternal Reek 7″ (Black Water)
Portland’s Reek Minds share multiple members with Alienator, whose profile is steadily growing if the number of t-shirts and hoodies I see people wearing is any indication. Don’t think of them as twins, though, unless you’re thinking of Basket Case, Reek Minds being the malformed, basket-transported monster. Eternal Reek is their third and newest seven-inch EP, and it remains far too frantic and unsavory to move a lot of merch. While still a tangled mass of hardcore patterns (blast-beats, d-beats, scissor-beats… maybe even a false-start breakdown or two), the recording is ever so slightly cleaner this time around, and their songs showing a willingness to honor the mid-tempo menace of local legends Poison Idea, if only for brief flashes of time. They remain indebted to Siege, but by allowing other hardcore reference-points to enter their pungent brew, Reek Minds avoid writing the same songs over and over. “Desolate” could’ve been an Alienator song, as far as the crawlspace-tight filthy crossover thrash riffing is concerned, but Reek Minds gather a gang of those DRI skankermen and beat it to a pulp. If the increased technical prowess concerns you, fear not: their hearts still went with fresh entrails on the cover.

Sealer Sealer 12″ (The Ghost Is Clear)
Against all conceivable odds, cool music continues to proliferate in the generic-store-brand state known to us as “Ohio”. Cincinnati’s Sealer are fresh as a daisy, though their stylish noise-rock is fixing to trample any nearby bouquets. From the jump, “Seeing/Peeling” hits you with an upper-register monotone vocal delivery and fist-hammered notes redolent of the one and only KARP. I’d be happy to settle into a full album of pure KARP worship, but Sealer doesn’t go easy on us, adding some satisfying bounce to the song before dropping off into a saxophone-aided dirge. It feels like going from sober to wasted in two minutes, and it’s a nice way to kick things off. The five other tracks play around with post-hardcore noise-rock’s conventions like chewing gum on a finger, extending breakdowns into full songs and bending Black Flag riffs into Jesus Lizard angles. It doesn’t feel like this music is particularly dangerous or disturbed, but rather true to the group’s married-guy noise-rock essence, one of mostly-stable men pursuing healthy and creative ways to blow off some of the steam that builds up no matter how seriously they might practice yoga or not. Been there!

Ben Vince Street Druid LP (AD 93)
We were due for a fresh solo full-length from collaborator-about-town Ben Vince, and that time is now. Check any hip London-centered experimental release from the last five years and there’s a good chance that Vince lent a helping hand, or at least is tight with someone who did. He generally contributes his tastefully-processed saxophone (that Joy O collab from 2018 is ace), but on Street Druid it’s all-hands-on-deck for Vince, as he utilizes guitar, bass, voice, synths and drum programming to flesh out these pieces. Anyone familiar with his work might expect a tasteful, warm-ambient melange of horns, synths and electronic rhythms, and I’ll assure you now: that general assessment rings true for the album’s duration. For as pleasant as Vince’s music always is, there’s something about Street Druid that clocks as directionless… all the proper parts are in order, but it can feel as though Vince forgot to bring an itinerary or even a map. “Sentient Kinetics” is one of the more vigorous pieces here, reminiscent of Shackleton in a way that makes me want to put on Shackleton. “Deepbluereflection” is as beautiful as the title implies, but it feels comfortable as a background setting, the atmosphere to support something more interesting (or, God help us, vibes-based social-media content). Street Druid is soothing, artfully-crafted music, but by the lofty bar AD 93 has set for its visionary outlook, it falls a little short.

Winged Wheel Desert So Green LP (12XU)
Winged Wheel’s existence has been defined by transformation. The group started as a long-distance project, a successful series of file swaps turned into a band once they gave it a name, and then in 2024, Winged Wheel actually sat down in the same room, further unfurling their dextrous Americana-psych. I forget what year we’re in now, but Desert So Green is yet another reinvention, and perhaps the most exciting one yet, the sort of thing that will get you to stop calling them Winged Wheel and start calling them Winged Wheel. The band, featuring a variety of underground rock stalwarts (Fred Thomas, Matthew J. Rolin, Steve Mutha F’in Shelley and more), dug their heels into songwriting (rather than vibewriting) this time around and the results are glorious. You can’t pin their sound on any conspicuous set of influences, though their approach isn’t so foreign as to fully bewilder. Oren Ambarchi gone post-rock tropicalia? Stereolab dressed as Sigur Rós for Halloween? Kevin Shields’ missing 1995-2005 songs discovered by Jeff Parker and intercepted by Colin Newman, glam-era Brian Eno sitting shotgun in the getaway car? These are all wrong statements, but I’ve accepted that I’m losing to Winged Wheel this round. If every band was able to bridge the gap between the fresh and the familiar like Desert So Green, I’d stop yapping so much and simply sit back and listen, wrapped up in the sensation of previously-unconnected cerebral neurons firing back and forth for the first time.

Ceremony Live At The Hollywood Palladium 2xLP (Relapse)
I wonder if Ceremony backed themselves into a corner by writing what is surely the greatest hardcore-punk intro of this millennium. How can they open with anything else? Live albums are traditionally the territory of grandiose rock-stars, the bloated playgrounds of Peter Frampton and KISS, but the way that Ceremony builds “Sick” into a buzzing fever pitch, practically demanding the explosiveness of No Justice’s last show? The ostentatious presentation of a lavish gatefold double-LP is well deserved. For this career-pinnacle of a gig, Ceremony ran through their definitive Rohnert Park album in full (followed by an encore of other catalog highlights), reminding us that familiar, simple chord progressions can be spun into hardcore gold with the perfect combination of personality, chutzpah, point of view and vocal expressiveness. I would be hard pressed to name a better hardcore-punk album of 2010 (though by all means, let’s have that conversation), and these songs haven’t lost any of their sing-along compulsivity over time, as evidenced by the roaring crowd. The band appears awed by the audience’s overwhelming response, and vice versa; it was surely a memorable night for all parties. Though vocalist Ross Farrar has far less snarl in his throat here at the Palladium (is it true he’s gotten into, gulp, clean living??), these songs have claimed their spot within the perennial hardcore canon, much as I expect Keith Morris to be belting out “Beverly Hills” and “Deny Everything” when he’s Marshall Allen’s age.

Diagonale Des Yeux Madeleine LP (Knekelhuis)
Among so many bland electro-pop spreads, Diagonale Des Yeux is an ominous chunk of Roquefort. The French duo consists of Panoptique and Eye (aka Laurène Exposito, not the Boredoms bandleader), both of whom got up to plenty of entertaining electronic (or should I say electronique) escapades on their own prior to joining forces. The chemistry is undeniable on Madeleine, an album that plays with post-punk convention like feline with feather teaser. Across twelve tracks, they take us through every cluttered room of the avant-pop no-wave post-punk charity shop. “Baby Buddha” is straight-up guitar and drums indie-pop; “Le Rayon Orchidée” is dazed synth-wave, like Mary Moor’s “Pretty Day” drunk on love letters; the title track allows weird keys(?) to plink and plonk all over a schoolyard vocal melody and insistent synth pattern – it reeks of covert Pierre Bastien involvement. It’s unbridled, infectious fun, open to ideas that more self-serious artists would never consider. “Cherry Ann” feels like Chrisma (and nothing ever really feels like Chrisma), a homespun take on the winking glam of La Düsseldorf with Autobahn vocals… it’s a peculiar glee. If your wardrobe has been all black for years, Madeleine might give you a reason to reconsider the joy of color.

Eternal Music Society Eternal Music Society LP (Knotwilg)
Hard to think of a more fertile environment for guitar-centric experimental music than the cities of Göteborg and Malmö, a connective scene from which countless configurations of like-minded artists have spawned over the past decade or so. Case in point: Eternal Music Society is a recent quartet (drums / drums / guitar / bass) whose members span a wide variety of projects. This includes not only two Andreases (Malm and Johansson) but one Sofie Herner as well, whose group Neutral (and solo-project Leda) are responsible for some of my favorite post-industrial music, this era or any. With both goodwill and high expectations, I have to admit that Eternal Music Society isn’t doing it for me. They purposely take the extended no-change techniques of France and Water Damage (and in the latter’s case, cop a similar multi-drummer presentation) and apply it to four simplistic patterns. I generally love songs with two notes or less, but “Plain” hits like something Earth would’ve left on the cutting room floor for their Pentastar album. It limps along until “Can’t Heat” (excellent title!) shuffles into place, teasing out a Fugazi-esque progression in the manner of Moin, only longer and far less dynamic. Same goes for “Unknown Voltage”, like a worn-out vinyl copy of Unwound’s Fake Train caught in a skip. “23 Is Eternal” goes into hiding for a full fifteen minutes, the twinkle of a Mogwai intro left unresolved. I like the concept here, I can just point to other current artists who make more of a meal of it. I hope they’re securing their bag, though – why pay to fly all of Water Damage over for your avant European music festival when Eternal Music Society can take the train?

King Slender There Is Your Image In Light LP (Immigrant Sun / Dancing Rabbit / Tor Johnson / Far From Home / Oliver Glenn)
It’s 2026 and the emotional-hardcore territory once held by Beatle/Spock haircuts has been supplanted by bald heads with greying beards. The shocking twist: these are some of the same men, only older. King Slender’s music hearkens back to that More Than Music Fest era without trying to fit into those old clothes; it’s a thoughtful and honest form of hardcore that values honesty and thought over much anything else. Not quite screamo but certainly Ebullition-friendly, King Slender use jagged-edge riffs that push, pull and spasm in ways that remind me of Yaphet Kotto, Funeral Diner and Universal Order Of Armageddon. King Slender never fully lose control in a fall-on-the-floor convulsion, nor do they ever give in to the cowardly temptation of pop hooks; the group prefers to tread a brooding middle ground that simmers between melody and aggression, one third Dischord and two thirds Level Plane. As per hardcore’s prevailing ethos, it’s a communal affair, from three of four band members contributing vocals (cat got your tongue, guitarist Justin LaBarge??) to the five different labels that put together this handsome package. If I ever become a ‘colored vinyl guy’ please notify my treating physician, but the vinyl’s opaque black / translucent green swirl echos the cover’s impressionistic swimming hole beautifully.

Bill Nace Plays The 2-String Taishogoto LP (Three Lobed / Open Mouth)
The charm of Bill Nace’s duo album with Evan Parker, Branches, is not unlike holding a lit match until it singes your fingertips, but I knew I wanted a definitive, stand-alone Bill Nace taishogoto record. Unmistakable by its title, here it is! I’ve seen Nace play his taishogoto probably as much as I’ve seen him play a guitar at this point, and this long-player lives up to those thrilling live performances (some of the most exciting improvised music I’ve witnessed from a seated (non-drumming) performer, to be sure). On “Over/Under”, Nace offers an extended improvisation over a bed of warped morse-code (looped from his taishogoto as well). Don’t let the unfamiliar instrument name fool you – Nace shreds like Keiji Haino with his toes caught in a mousetrap for a good seventeen minutes, his fiery tone akin to the liberating torture techniques of acid psych. It never gets boring; I’d liken it to that brief moment of psychedelic transcendence described by people who’ve eaten entire ghost peppers (before the hyperventilating kicks in). “One For Susan Alcorn” takes a more grueling physical path, relying not on a loop but his own repetitive tapping to whip up a divine locomotive. Nace has talked about playing with time as a sonic element, and I can see that factoring into his thought process here, his self-inflicted carpal tunnel syndrome a worthy trade-off for this meditative piece dedicated to the beloved late pedal-steel virtuoso.

Out. Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs LP (Noise Pollution)
When Noise Pollution released Out.’s sole album back in 1997, you could learn more about the label by typing http://www.win.net/noise/pollution.html into your Netscape desktop web browser; we really, truly didn’t know how good we had it back then. Now it’s nearly thirty years later, and though Noise Pollution have since upgraded to their own domain, they’ve decided to re-release Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs for the first time on vinyl. I wasn’t familiar with the Louisville group beforehand, but I can understand how this album might’ve lodged itself in the hearts (and sun-visor CD holders) of those in its immediate orbit for years after. They arrived here mischievous and animated, tearing into their mechanic-shirt punk in the vein of Gas Huffer and New Bomb Turks. Even at this early juncture, Out. were more dynamic than some of their peers, finding a way to work the Danzig-esque “Sing While The World Sinks” into their repertoire with the confidence it demands. While I can picture Out. wandering the train tracks after dark, their sound only ever flirts with the blues, avoiding some of the more cartoonish, poorly-aging aspects you might find on a Devil Dogs or Gotohells release. I was saddened to learn that both vocalist Chad Donnelly and bassist Tony Bailey have passed on since Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Songs first came out, but it’s clear they aren’t forgotten.

Miles J Paralysis Don’t Forget The Ritual 12″ ([Emotional] Especial)
Dr. J Paralysis dropped one of my favorite sing-along downtempo house tracks last year with “Where Do We Come From?”, and this new four-track EP follows that thread for more freaky fun. Slung low and casual, these four tracks coast with nary a foot on the gas, the sharply-fashioned vocal samples burning only the necessary calories. “It’s Only Shadows Talking” is a digi-stepper with echo-drunk vocals straight from the booth; the title track flips a trip-hop break into the spooky fun of a suburban haunted house. The grooves are unfussy and memorable, calling back to the innovative, personality-filled productions of Gene Hunt and Shake Shakir, whereas the atmosphere is unsettling and mildly demented in a way that reminds me of Kool Keith’s run from Sex Style through Spankmaster. “The Delicate Fairytale” isn’t fit for any club I’m aware of, unless there’s an after-hours spot that plays sleazy B-movies with the sound on while a disinterested DJ chain-smokes near the decks in a Jason mask. If such a place does exist, I bet Beau Wanzer is not only the resident DJ, he probably already has “The Delicate Fairytale” all cued up.

Shane Parish Autechre Guitar LP (Palilalia)
To a certain contingent, the title of this record sells itself: Autechre’s inscrutable electronic compositions, as performed on solo guitar. Anyone familiar with the groundbreaking UK duo, and at least a couple people familiar with the guitar, will want to hear what fingerpicking acoustic adventurer Shane Parish has done here, and I can’t imagine many will leave disappointed. The melodic heart at the center of Autechre’s music has long been shrouded in stainless steel, heat-resistant thermoplastics and plastic-coated wires, but Parish, through some painstaking methodology I cannot fathom, transcribed ten of their tracks to be performed on the acoustic guitar, complex compositions re-communicated via six strings and ten fingers. While there isn’t as much top-string drone or as many rollicking patterns as I’m used to hearing from skilled fingerpickers, these tracks are easy on the ears all the same. The melodies might not be as familiar as a collection of Fahey standards, but they don’t buzz or shrill with the digital discordance I’ve come to relish from Autechre’s catalog, either. To be fair, I did not check Parish’s work – he could’ve pulled a fast one on all of us and improvised these pieces over a long holiday weekend and slapped Autechre’s name on it. Who would really know? It’d be an experimental hoodwinking of the highest order, but I’m confident that Parish has not betrayed our trust, and that fellow pioneering guitarist Bill Orcutt, who released this album on his Palilalia label, confirmed the feat’s authenticity. Or has he…

Pedestal Pedestal LP (Concentric Circles)
That grey-area Gee Gee Decorator reissue from 2023 confirmed for me that the well of fully-obscure post-punk gems will never run dry – if that insane thrill-ride can exist undiscovered for decades, who knows what else is still lurking on an unlabeled tape or sleeveless seven-inch? One of the brightest recent offerings comes in the form of Concentric Circles’ reissue of a 1984 cassette from Los Angelean duo Pedestal. Erik and Rachel Mueller (your guess is as good as mine: siblings or spouses?) nailed that sort of nerdy, non-macho no-wave style that I find irresistible. Relying heavily on the tacky sounds of the Clavinet, their songs shake with the art-school energies of Essendon Airport and Stick Men. Rachel Mueller’s voice is distracted and unimpressed in timeless post-punk fashion, and she leaves plenty of open space for the jittery sharp-turns that comprise these delightful songs. The Inflatable Boy Clams EP is already on 45 RPM, but if you can pitch it up as far as your Technics will allow, that might resemble the Systematics-meets-Algebra Suicide sound that Pedestal so deftly conjure here. If it wasn’t for the funky bass-playing (warning: there is occasional slapping), this music would be indistinguishable from the best of its contemporary twenty-something practitioners, but considering certain egg-punks’ race to be the goofiest dorks possible, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pedestal are simply ahead of that upcoming curve.

re:ni & BiggaBush Bass Is The Space 12″ (Ilian Tape)
You’re going to want to google a photo of re:ni and BiggaBush in case you don’t believe me when I tell you they’re the first father/daughter digi-dub production duo to grace these pages. But not the last, hopefully? Do not fear a gimmicky record: you should trust the Zenker brothers enough to know that their Ilian Tape label isn’t in the business of releasing novelties. It only took me one spin of the title track before I was fully on board, as it’s one of the most imaginative takes on dub techno I’ve heard in a minute. The duo amputated a pile of classic dub-reggae drum fills from their original forms in order to deploy them at random intervals, drenched in echo for a wicked-yet-soothing dub hallucination. I tend to rinse “Bass Is The Space” on repeat, but the whole EP is great. “Mae Uprising” slinks with the prowess of a jungle predator and the glistening touch of Hessle Audio’s post-dubstep highlights. Farda P lends his end-rhyming lines to a spry shuffle on “Death By Dubplate”, redolent of Kode9’s collaborations with The Space Ape sans the dark sci-fi leanings, and while I am already completely satiated (and considering running back “Bass Is The Space” one more time), “BigLozTek” wants me to feel its Basic Channel-esque dub pressure, effects colliding like asteroids. I don’t want to suggest that Dennis Rodman should utilize electronic dub music to repair his fractured relationship with soccer-star daughter Trinity Rodman, but… has he tried it?

Rocky & The Sweden Punks Pot Head LP (Relapse)
Congratulations to Rocky & The Sweden for thirty years of speedy hardcore-punk, but more importantly, congrats for thirty years of weed-parody groaners par excellence. After God Save The Green, City Baby Attacked By Buds and Total Hard Core (it’s “THC”, get it?), Punks Pot Head is the pinnacle – there is no topping the deliriously stupid joy once you get the title (and I’ll be honest – it took me half a second). They’ve even got the obligatory skeleton riding a grasshopper through rows of marijuana plants on the cover, because grass-hopper, duh! Maybe weed is different in Japan, because I generally wouldn’t associate it with the high levels of energy that burst from Punks Pot Head. Certain flourishes can lean in the direction of classic ’70s riffmasters ala Thin Lizzy and Deep Purple, but Rocky & The Sweden’s songs are played in a high-speed acrobatic style akin to Lipcream, RKL, Toast and SNFU, staying true to the ’90s era of fast hardcore from which they first arrived. As should be clear, Rocky & The Sweden aren’t taking themselves too seriously, which might explain some aspect of their longevity as a band. If the whole point is to get high and rock out with your friends while brainstorming the next unadvisable weed pun, I fail to see why you’d ever want to stop.

Rump State Psychic Sidekick LP (12XU)
Rump State’s 2023 full-length debut never seemed to make it to the States, or at least that’s my excuse for failing to obtain a copy in spite of my desires. Thankfully the tireless non-union employees of 12XU have brought us the follow-up, Psychic Sidekick. Fair’s fair, seeing as this is a half-American, half-Norwegian duo consisting of Mark Morgan (of Sightings) and Gaute Granli. Rump State successfully merges their talents, a suite of warped guitar tangents, pulsing fragments of loops and subdued vocals. If you’ve been following the videos Mark Morgan posts on Instagram (I say “if”, but of course you have!), you’ll recognize his distinctive tones here, full of reverse-delay effects and further unconventional manners of guitar-processing that elude my understanding. He makes his guitar sound like bees swarming a hive inside the engine of a Ford Focus, and Granli knows just what to do with that sort of sound: add his own demented loops and vocals in the spirit of Ghédalia Tazartès (were he a precocious choir boy). Morgan adds his vocals to the mix as well, his singing voice displaying a working knowledge of Alan Vega and Scott Walker but not to be mistaken for either. It’s noise, but exuberant and easy on the ears, avoiding harsh feedback and greyscale static in favor of the juicier fruits out on the harder to reach branches. Weird, but delicious.

Sleep Paralysis A Visitor’s Soundtrack LP (Feel It)
A foreboding start to Feel It’s 2026, care of Sleep Paralysis’s mysterious side-long improvisations. Try as I might, I can’t figure out who is behind this project – Feel It’s not saying, and the associated Bandcamp page’s only clue comes from Iowa as the project’s stated location. Could be related to Feel It darlings Why Bother? (they recorded at the same studio), or maybe (hopefully) Slipknot, but whatever the case, A Visitor’s Soundtrack is a free-form outlier in Feel It’s punk-centered discography. Regardless of who is responsible, I never expected sleep paralysis to sound like an after-hours trip through ESP Disk’s hallowed halls of improvised percussion and synths. The drums are propulsive yet analytical, and the Moog explores the retro-futurist sounds that have dazzled and horrified audiences since the instrument’s inception into public life. The instruments play off each other to some degree, but more often than not come across as two different streams of thought simultaneously deployed, reliant on the assumption that free-jazz percussion and improv synths pair well together regardless of what is happening. That assumption is a safe one – Sleep Paralysis are far livelier than the name implies, a flying saucer ready to abduct all your Esquivel records and burn them for fuel.

Station Model Violence Station Model Violence LP (Static Shock / Anti Fade)
Great expectations are a curse, but every now and then, even in this precise reality we’re living in, our optimistic hopes are rewarded. Such is certainly the case with Station Model Violence’s debut album! Even at this early juncture, I can say with confidence that it’ll be celebrated by freaks and scholars as one of the best and brightest releases of the year. The group features Dan “DX” Stewart on vocals (singing in the same world-wearied register as he did for Total Control) with Buz Clatworthy handling guitars and the bulk of songwriting duties. I can confirm that the bedrock aesthetic inspiration DX lays out in his illuminating and entertaining write-up for the record rings true (Iggy Pop at the beach describing Neu! as “pastoral psychedelicism” – I won’t spoil it all for you), though this isn’t a band operating in modes of replication so much as constructing their own world from the ground up, each piece carefully considered no matter how small or insignificant. Their formula prioritizes rapid and unbroken drum patterns (not four-on-the-floor… more like eight-no-dead-weight) and a foundational note or chord trained to take a beating, alongside sheets of guitars running through scales with abandon, synths oozing human fluids and even a horn section when necessary. With so much sonic information, one could expect these songs to buckle under their own weight, but there’s a litheness, a drugged-yet-alert energy that cracks through Station Model Violence like stolen fireworks. It also sounds deeply Australian in a way that I don’t think Station Model Violence themselves can even recognize, nor should they. If not already clear – highest recommendation!

Twisted Teens Blame The Clown LP (Chain Smoking)
You might hear the terms “folk-punk”, “oogle”, “old-time rock n’ roll” or even “countrified” used in reference to New Orleans’ Twisted Teens. You might notice one of them wearing clown makeup in the cover. You might question the usefulness, in your adult age, of any new band with “Teens” in their name. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, these are red-flag warning signs worth heeding, but I’m here to tell you that Twisted Teens’ more-or-less debut album Blame The Clown is an absolute must-hear! I hesitate to say that it’ll become a staple punk-rock comfort food, one of those timeless front-to-back albums alongside Rocket To Russia and Blood Visions and Guitar Romantic and GI, but my immediate and sustained feelings are in harmony with Jeff Goldblum when he first saw that brachiosaurus munching in a grassy clearing. (“He did it. That crazy son of a bitch, he did it.”) I’ll throw another ugly word out – “soulful” – but Blame The Clown‘s arrival reminds me of when the Royal Headache debut appeared out of equally thin air, where I didn’t realize I needed a Billy Joel-ified melodic punk band (but I certainly did). Twisted Teens are as charming and as exceptional songwriters as Royal Headache, delivering the perfect synthesis of home-spun egg-punk signifiers (drum machines, ambient noise, weird overdubs, etc.), memorable, forceful hooks, and plenty of joyful rock n’ roll energy. Caspian Hollywell’s vocals are the winning key, his gruff, reaching-for-the-note delivery some sort of hard-earned, Gulf Coast mix of Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen and Tom Smith of To Live And Shave In LA (underrated only by the unfortunate people who’ve yet to hear To Live And Shave In LA). Even if you end up losing some of your closest friends to overall-clad train-hopping because of this record, the collateral damage is worth the reward.

Arbor Labor Union Out To Pasture LP (Sophomore Lounge)
I appreciate that Arbor Labor Union decided to integrate bird-song into the instrumental opening track “Patch Of Violet”, as if the banjo and polite folksy strum weren’t enough on their own to convey the band’s staunchly rural presentation. I would’ve assumed this was one of them city-slicker metropolitan banjo groups otherwise! Right down to their name, Arbor Labor Union offers some unabashed bare-feet rock, and rock it does – more often than not, Arbor Labor Union plug into the big amps and lock-in so effortlessly, I start to feel as though I too could write and perform music like this (I cannot). If Steve Gunn and his band felt a little urgency for once, crafted some particularly nimble riffs in the style of Up On The Sun-era Meat Puppets, and shot it through the wide-eyed weirdo wonder of Will Oldham, the resulting music might resemble Out To Pasture. Or, if you dad was in a progressive folk-rock band who private-pressed a sole LP in 1972 that is now worth one thousand dollars on the collector’s market, that might sound like this too. Regardless, Arbor Labor Union are here with us now, with early-riser energy and so much cool guitar stuff that they sometimes have no choice but to layer it (behold the duel soloing within “Zodiac Man”). Before discovering that the bandleader’s name is Bo Orr, I had no intention of questioning their cred, but that detail sealed the deal. It’s a name fit for a man who pulls radishes out of the soil with his bare hands… how could his band be called anything but Arbor Labor Union?

Bashford Wannabe LP (Big Neck)
A large part of me refuses to believe that Bashford’s Wannabe is a new release. You’re telling me there are new, Covid-era bands partaking in this unadulterated form of small-town Nirvana worship?? When I was thirteen, the goal among my cohort was to possibly, if we were lucky, start a band that might someday sound as good as Bashford. We probably would’ve also been a fan of Wannabe‘s cover art, what with its various sharp-teethed comic-book monsters ready to be doodled on our homework folders. I looked it up and confirmed that Bashford are indeed grown, living men, and while this band might not necessarily be their pre-teen dreams coming true, their music hits me like the first demo tape ever heard from the older kids down the street (they are in high school – we are not quite there yet). At times, Bashford’s moaning and groaning takes on more of a Puddle Of Mudd shape (an inherent risk), and a song like “Lady In Black” (what a teenager-y title!) crumbles under its guest violin spot, but “Daze Of Doubt”, that’s Bleach-era Nirvana on a Pentagram trip, and it rocks. Perhaps those who experienced a different upbringing (and era) than myself might not think twice about local-stage Jack Endino-worship such as Bashford, but this mostly-crappo album has me caught up in some alternate-reality Mandela Effect and I’m not quite ready to leave.

Robert Bergman 9 Lives Of The Cat – Lives 1-5 12″ (Brew)
Upon a possessed computer-chip resides a tiny Robert Bergman, nestled deep inside the Sega Genesis in your attic, its power light glowing red even while not plugged in. Bergman’s been churning out analog, hardware-driven beats for over a decade now, and with tracks this craggy and sinister, you’d think his fingers would have blistered up from tapping and twisting all those plastic buttons and dials. Bergman persists, however, with an angry 16-bit sound that leaves bite marks in shapes redolent of the L.I.E.S. label and Jamal Moss. Like some of Moss’s best work, 9 Lives Of The Cat – Lives 1-5 comes as a hand-stamped white-label, with the same street-level, hand-passed feel as a flyer outside the club. All five tracks are great, chugging with ill intent and lo-fi fury. “Life 3” is a first-person shooter with the difficulty set to hard; a blustery, distorted voice recalls the wicked visage of Beau Wanzer. It’s perfect music for the smallest club possible – no windows, no booth, not even bathroom access. Thyssenkrupp should program “Life 4” to blast on a loop in its elevators whenever they malfunction, as it sonically compliments stressed-out claustrophobia perfectly. Stuck with a drunken stranger and security isn’t answering the emergency phone? Robert Bergman’s perilous dance music will set you free.

Building Instrument Kanskje (Villalobos Remix) 12″ (Sei Es Drum)
Sei Es Drum, the vinyl imprint run by Ricardo Villalobos, has consistently showcased Villalobos at his most uninhibited and fancy-free. This is saying something, considering the notoriously carefree DJ’s lengthy (and legendary) DJ sets (how many flights has he missed because he played for an extra five hours or more?). With Sei Es Drum, the only logical consistency is the Villalobos seal of approval – case in point are these two remixes of Building Instrument’s “Kanskje”. Building Instrument are a Norweigian jazz-improv group, and the original song was released in 2014; if you saw these Villalobos remixes coming, I hope you hit big on Kalshi. On these two sides, Villalobos tweaks the original’s Northern Euro occult-folk vibe to match his restless mind. The a-side is abstracted well beyond the confines of the club, with the enchanting vocals of Mari Kvien Brunvoll chopped, layered and folded like extravagant paper snowflakes; if you told me this was a new Shackleton collaboration I’d have no trouble believing you. The b-side remix delivers more of a typical Villalobos minimal-house pulse as Kvien Brunvoll’s vocals continue to mesmerize, perfect for the Midsommar forest rave scene that was edited out from the final cut. (Okay I’m making that last part up, but can you imagine?)

The Cysts Turn It Up Or Throw It Away / S.I.S.T.S. LP (Gilgongo / Vile Bile)
I sleep well at night with the knowledge that it’s physically impossible to experience the entirety of great hardcore-punk that exists on this planet. There’s simply too much of it, so much that will remain unknowable to even the most dutiful of its devotees, and while it’s unconquerable by any one person, this leaves room for constant surprises for the casual and obsessive alike. For example, I certainly had no idea that The Cysts existed back in the late ’00s, even though their surrounding scene is one I personally enjoyed: Discogs sleuthing reveals band-member connections to Lithics, Alarmist, and even a band that had a split EP with Friends Forever (Zombie Zombie) back in 2003! Two otherwise-unreleased sessions comprise this twelve-inch, and if you’re a fan of Hail Mary, later Born Against and Wrangler Brutes (does a Hail Mary fan who doesn’t also appreciate Sam McPheeters exist?), you’re going to want to seek this out. The Cysts have that same fall-apart, mid-tempo, open hi-hat sound, with the sense that as long as either the bassist or the guitarist is hitting the right notes, the other has no obligation to do the same. It comes across like a hardcore band whose members have solo noise projects (and apparently it is), but that doesn’t explain just how great these songs are. “You Will Die”, for example, sounds like early Black Dice rehearsing early Black Flag material, as catchy as anything off Flex Your Head. An art-damaged, but also just damage-damaged, hardcore band rescued from the sands of time.

Flaccid Mojo Loose Jacks LP (Post Present Medium)
Aaron Warren and Bjorn Copeland aren’t just two weirdo lifers, they’ve been close buds for basically their entire adult lives, too. Playing together in Black Dice for a mind-boggling twenty-six years, these guys have yet to accidentally make normal-sounding music together, their part-time Flaccid Mojo project included. The sticker on the sleeve calls Loose Jacks “combat trance”, and while I’m having fun imagining what that made-up genre might actually sound like, I kinda don’t think it’s this, music that is neither combative nor trancelike. Like those Black Dice records from the past decade that prioritize time-stretched, unquantized synth-splurt and cartoon sound-effects, Flaccid Mojo is overstuffed with neon rot, pushing the cracked electronics and free-trial iPhone apps they utilized past their legal limits. It’s digital with an overtly human quality, the sound of greasy thumbs smashing phone-screens slightly out of time, not the silent formality of a bespoke DAW’s keyboard interface. In that regard, I’m reminded of the zany noise-funk that Leprechaun Catering conjured – Loose Jacks certainly has the aura of rhythmic noise circa the early No Fun Fest era, spastic and silly junk-electronics you’d hope to encounter on a Load Records release or in the basement of Tarantula Hill. Even with contemporary means, Loose Jacks hearkens to that carefree and colorful Obama-era noise, when Paperrad was a physical zine, not a museum exhibition.

Fog Lamp Still Entangled LP (Siltbreeze)
Every upscale bar has one of those outrageous cocktails meant to frighten, allure and signal adventurousness. Aged cognac, raw milk and rosemary? There’s only one way to find out if the unlikely combination is delicious or simply an expensive emetic, and I get the sense that Oakland’s Fog Lamp are likeminded explorers of the post-punk realm. Their particular aesthetic combination is overt and brash: upon a bed of crystalline synths harvested from some of the ’70s rock giants (I’m thinking Pink Floyd, Genesis and Emerson, Lake & Palmer) and some of the less-heralded pop-wavers (let’s say Heaven 17 and Soft Cell), the rhythm section shakes out some morbid (if not downright goth) garage riffs ala The Scientists’ mid-’80s material, with a vocalist who eerily resembles Mark Arm when Mudhoney covers Fang and The Dicks. Perhaps it’s not as off-putting as egg whites over prosecco (with habanero rinse), but Fog Lamp’s combination of pristine space-travel synths and grunge yowling is an uncommon one. Fog Lamp are willing to go there, though, their novelty-seeking spirit perhaps more simpatico with early ’80s deviants like Killing Joke and Gary Numan than today’s underground travelers, where sub-genres are codified like old statues. It’s a Siltbreeze record, after all – a significant portion of polite society will never have any clue what is happening here, and that’s the way we like it.

Institute Institute 7″ (Anti Fade)
In support of an upcoming Australian tour, Institute put together this sharp three-song EP on the reputable Anti Fade label. I could be mistaken, but this feels like their most politically-charged record yet, though I wonder how anyone’s art could reasonably avoid reflecting upon the multitude of empire-driven horrors in this current moment. Whatever the case, it’s some of their most potent work yet – you can tell they really sharpened up the blades to deliver these tunes. “The Shooter” has all the martial snare-rolls and grousing guitar riffs we’ve come to expect from this itchy post-punk unit, and while they’ve never really written sing-alongs, “The Shooter” has all the markings of a true-blue “single”. Same goes for “A Privilege”, actually, with inspired guitar work that sounds like it’s attempting to escape a small fire in the Chiswick Records office. “Why Are These Men Still Alive?” is the question we’re all asking, and vocalist Moses Brown ponders it in his signature unplaceable accent – a forest toad impersonating Ian Dury’s stepson, perhaps? Institute go three-for-three here, sophisticated yet easy to enjoy, strange but universally punk. If they decide to cancel those return flights and seek permanent residence in Australia, I for one won’t hold it against them.

Lydia Lunch And The Art Gray Quintet Permafrost / Mass Production 10″ (In The Red)
Lydia Lunch is most comfortable when flanked by a stable of subservient men, so this new collaboration with Art Gray’z “Noizz Quintet” fits like foot in stiletto heel. Lunch’s voice is blackened and bulletproof, and she speak-snarls through “Permafrost”, each syllable dripping with snake blood. It’s a Magazine cover, and the lyrics are well tailored to Lunch’s strengths; to wit: “I will drug you and fuck you / on the permafrost”. Lunch, Gray and company tackle Iggy Pop’s “Mass Production” on the flip, biting into its lobotomized pulse like rats to CBGB’s drywall. Whereas “Permafrost” has the chapped texture of desert wasteland, “Mass Production” is a sticky bedsheet to writhe around in, Skeleton Boy’s fingers running the full length of his bass like a sick child touching everything at the buffet. Rather than tidy up and bask in the glow of an unmatched underground legacy, Lydia Lunch is lurking in the nearest mud pit, choking out men twice her size and half her age as a means of keeping entertained; a full album of sleazy covers like these would be welcomed, as well as, for some after-hours reading, a book detailing the ways in which she procured her sizable collection of police helmets.

Galcher Lustwerk Vestibule EP 12″ (StrataSonic)
I was recently spinning my other Galcher Lustwerk records (it’s a perennial habit around these parts), and I couldn’t help but notice what a bargain they are. If coolness was a currency, their value would rival Audemars Piguet, but they’re like seven bucks a pop on Discogs right now, with nary a dud in Lustwerk’s discography. (He also made a record under the alias “The Fock” called Shat Pop which is all extremely fun to say out loud.) Anyway, that’s Lustwerk’s past, and his present gives us Vestibule EP, which doesn’t change the formula so much as level it up. It’s the same Lustwerk, he’s just wearing a fine-tailored mohair suit instead of sweats and a tee. “Shorty Out” lays it down on the four-four, the synths nocturnal and plush beyond affordability. “Vestibule” goes hip-house for grown adults, bringing in some tasteful ambient-sax akin to that last Real Lies album, though Lustwerk is always in full control – his emotions will never, ever get the best of him. “Wet Bulb” lets the synths romp about the cabin freely, a fully-grown instrumental in league with the most elegant Detroit house. It’s the two vocal-led cuts that really send me, though – with Lustwerk’s calm narration, I picture myself disembarking from a chartered plane in a foreign city after midnight and considering who will end up in my bespoke hotel bed… while I wash the dishes in my kitchen.

Mx Lonely All Monsters LP (Julia’s War)
Like a snowboarder in a Billabong hoodie coming down the black-diamond slopes, this shoegaze-grunge resurgence is showing no signs of stopping. I feel bad for the generation that was in their teens in the early to mid ’00s and missed out on Keeley Loomer fuzz reverb and baggy jeans with cropped tees, but the style is back on top now, with groups like Brooklyn’s Mx Lonely making it sparkle and crack. All Monsters swings big with double-wide Deftones riffage, Hole’s infectious moodiness and the well-meaning guidance of a PR team to make sure they’re “hitting the socials” appropriately. It’s impossible to miss the similarities to Mannequin Pussy, Narrow Head and They Are Gutting A Body Of Water in these songs, but that’s a feature of this music, not a bug. These days, the full-time going-for-it bands have no choice but to promote seven different shirt designs online (and in Mx Lonely’s case, six trucker hat variants) in hopes of staying afloat for another month because no one buys music anymore, and I appreciate that Mx Lonely’s music thrives in that living desperation. It’s an increasingly ugly landscape for anyone who isn’t already rich, so if you ever wished Weezer and Throwing Muses merged into one emotionally-fragile band in 1993, you should pay for a copy of All Monsters and go see Mx Lonely live. Pro tip: the perfect stage-dive moment comes 48 seconds into “Big Hips”.

OK EG GEKO01 12″ (GEKO)
“Australian techno”… as a concept, it’s a little perverse, isn’t it? I suppose that’s part of the fun, observing the ways in which creative Aussies choose to borrow and tweak imported electronic dance music concepts for their own ends. I can point to some great results: Cousin, Andy Garvey and Jensen Interceptor out of Sydney, and how about Tornado Wallace and OK EG from Melbourne, for starters? I’ve been particularly enjoying OK EG, a duo in step with Montreal’s Priori as they attempt to pry psy-trance away from its corny Burning Man captors and deliver it into the open hearts and minds of a more sophisticated, artfully-minded audience. OK EG’s 2023 album on Kalahari Oyster Cult remains an interplanetary vessel worth boarding, and GEKO01, the first release on their own GEKO imprint, continues to chart a course for the deepest dark matter. Using “hybrid, analog machines connected directly to digital workflows”, the duo leave plenty of room for their pliant synths to flicker back and forth, benefiting from the esoteric gravities that exist within their music. “Spiral” sounds like one black hole gulping down another, or some sort of deep-space behavior that physicists are currently unable to explain. That’s kind of all they do, and it’s really all we need: one gigantic rubbery arpeggio and some skittering patterns to escort it to the great beyond. I keep checking OK EG’s Bandcamp page for promotional blacklight posters, but they still haven’t made any – they must be allergic to money.

Picture Eeeeeeee 2xLP (Short Span)
Picture (AKA Central, AKA Natal Zaks) is responsible for some of my favorite techno/house of the last few years. As Central, his house tracks are suave and deep, whereas Picture tends to lean into the “club tool” techno zone. Eeeeeeee, however, goes further into bleary-eyed, self-replicating grooves, a thrilling bout of macroscopic repetition and microscopic tweaking. While this is merely conjecture on my part, Eeeeeeee certainly feels like music made in the 47th hour of an uninterrupted 48-hour studio session. Just look at the song titles: “Tyyyyyyyyy”, “Keeeeeee”, “Qeeeeeeee”… one can only assume he passed out on his keyboard after pushing these productions to their physical limits. Head-rush rhythmic loops are gated, harmonized and echoed with the same soft touch Zaks gives to all his productions, but this isn’t purely club music, it’s also stay-at-home-and-melt-your-mind music. Let “Heeeeeeee” rip as you stare through Roku City and eventually hallucinate yourself into that cozy purple cityscape. Not since Donato Dozzy have I encountered techno of such intense willpower… it’s a club where your VIP booth is directly across from Marina Abramović and she’s staring a hole in your head.

Slicing Grandpa Gastronomic Warfare 2xLP (String Theory)
After listening to 2025’s Volume Thinker, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Slicing Grandpa was reaching an end-stage mortality. The project, centered around (and frequently only) guitarist/vocalist John Laux, has sounded like it’s been on life support for a few years now, but as is the case of the most evolved vermin, Slicing Grandpa continues to thrive. They certainly pack it in with Gastronomical Warfare, a double LP set with eye-catching, intestine-popping artwork and a total disregard for the typical 2026 attention span. Laux appears alongside Lance Argetsinger here, and the duo play guitar and keyboard over simplistic drum-machines (“rhythm tickers” might be a more appropriate designation), conjuring cranky, arthritic songs that summon the misery of microwaved burritos, the isolation of middle-aged adulthood, the indignity of common life. It’s best summed up in “Small Talk With The Boss” – the title alone should have your skin crawling – but they fill up four full LP sides with this unrepentantly sour music, an anti-social strain of underground “rock” that chains Kilslug to Mojo Nixon, Saw-style. Will one of them be willing to cut off a limb to escape, or will they die together?

Vipers Vipers 7″ (Feral Kid / Undershows / Broken Skull / Swimming Faith)
Not to be confused with Anthony Pasquarosa’s singular Viper metal-punk project of the late ’00s, Vipers plural is a new group from Coke Bust’s Nick Candela, alongside some Buffalo buddies who play(ed) in Brown Sugar and Science Man. From what I gather, Candela was living in Brazil and recently moved back to the States in less than optimal circumstances. To best process these life changes, he did what any reasonable adult would do and started a new hardcore band. Vipers look into hardcore’s distant past for musical inspiration, which is most evident in their frozen-mud guitar tone, instantly recognizable as inspired by SOA’s No Policy EP. Much like SOA, Vipers’ songs take the clumsy stomp of nascent British street-punk and give it an American beating, pushed to hardcore speed and intensity. The sonic template is obvious, but Candela takes the opportunity as a lyricist to offer his own personal point of view. “Escape From Brazil” seems to sum up his recent personal history in detail, whereas “Live In My Car” offers a fantasy homelessness scenario that you can sing along to if by some chance you feel similarly. It’s still mostly a genre exercise, though: you can dissect “Coxinha Motherfuckers” down to its Boston and DC hardcore roots as though it were a roadmap, and even point out the speedy little riff that Beaver also used if you’re that much of a disturbed hardcore enthusiast. I would hope that you are.

Up first was Sam Silbert, though he was far from alone. Seated with his dime-store acoustic guitar, Silbert was surrounded by friends on drums, bass, a second acoustic guitar, and keys. With multiple hoodies and ballcaps in position (the bassist even pulled off an impressive sunglasses-on-hood-over-hat technique), the group strummed along to Silbert’s rootsy indie-folk. Perhaps too weary for his young age, Silbert sang with what I would chalk up as more nerves than pretentiousness, his words obscured by his hesitant, mic-avoidant delivery (though what I could hear revealed a capable voice). The band were having a fine ol’ time together, catching each other’s eyes to hit the chord changes and song endings. I liked the tune where they bopped around a bass-line redolent of Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” in their Realtree outdoor hunting gear, though it remains unconfirmed if any of them have actually split firewood or simply looked the part. MJ Lenderman and Ryan Davis came to mind as somewhat responsible for this particular resurgent strain of knee-slapping rural-rock; there’s plenty of time and opportunity for Sam Silbert to become one of their peers.

Scena were up next, though not in any apparent hurry. As if there wasn’t enough inherent sadism in a four-band Monday night bill! Performing as a duo (or a trio, depending on how you value technology) – bass-guitarist, guitarist/vocalist, iPhone for backing tracks – Scena’s soundcheck bled into meandering, ambient drones that may or may not have been their first “song”. From there, they moved into a suite of morose, hypnotic guitar music that disregarded time in a rewarding way. The second song’s hushed chords over looped trip-hop drums recalled Duster; other pieces reflected the grey tide pools of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and the narcotic swirl of Flying Saucer Attack. More music emanated from the pre-recorded iPhone tracks than the two human players for quite a large portion of the set, but until this becomes a typical trope, I find it to be an odd yet entertaining juxtaposition in a live setting. The crowd noticeably thinned out during Scena’s set, to the point where the temperature in the room dropped; a satisfying effect for music that felt so desperately lonely. I simply put my winter beanie back on and gazed into the pale blue light reflected from the foil-embossed patterns of a copy of Danzig’s Danzig 4P on the wall, drawn in by the mysterious sound of Scena.

With Silbert’s friends smoking outside and Scena having artfully siphoned away the remaining audience’s energy, the blowtorch guitar of Emily Robb arrived in the nick of time. Unaccompanied and unbothered, Robb exuded a confidence found in both master musicians and Mardi Gras drunkards. After a couple shorter pieces, she asked the crowd if it was loud enough, and when someone meekly quipped, “It’s never loud enough”, she hollered back, “You asked for it!”, cranked her amp and left the people next to me no choice but to plug their ears with their pointer fingers for the rest of the set. Huzzah! With so much touring under her belt at this point, Robb was comfortably in command, harnessing the primitive origins of fuzz guitar and doing donuts in the parking lot with it. One song seemed to meld the first part of Television’s “Friction” with Link Wray’s “Rumble”, though it was the extended closer that took us higher, a chugging biker-metal loop that she scattered, smothered and covered like ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres gatefold image.

This leads us back to the original question. Are Gun Outfit a style-over-substance ensemble championed by hip elites since the mid ’00s? It’s kind of an unfair question, or at least an unfair place to start, but their set provided a decisive answer: they’re the real deal! Now based in Los Angeles, and boasting none other than living legend Henry Barnes (of goddamn Amps For Christ and Man Is The Bastard!) on bass, this charming quartet delivered the goods: a polished mix of tender Americana indie and desert-dry garage. Drummer Daniel Swire carried the poise, pizzazz and prescription glasses of ’90s Max Weinberg, raising and lowering his volume with impressive ease. Swire brought a tasteful, sophisticated spark to the patina-rich melodies of Dylan Sharp and Carrie Keith – I’ve been searching for a word to best describe the delicate, complicated emotions their songs conjured, but keep landing dumbly on “beautiful”. Sharp has a friendly speak-sing, a thoughtful and reserved middle child between Stephen Malkmus and Kurt Vile, and Keith’s voice held it like hands, soft and firm. With the aura-cleansing presence of Henry Barnes in the back, the neck of his bass occasionally bobbing dangerously over Swire’s head, I felt foolish for being a suspicious outsider to this nourishing band mere hours earlier. After hearing one song in particular, I knew I wanted to hear it again, so I memorized as many lyrics as I could to look it up when I got home. Turns out it’s “Teardrops (Classic Hell On Earth)”, listed to appear on the group’s sixth formal full-length Process And Reality (set for a May 2026 release). There’s a Mike Stoltz-directed live video of “Teardrops” out there on the web that I’m happy to recommend – it’s been tiding me over as I wait for the studio recording. If you’ve been reading Yellow Green Red for a while, this surely won’t be the first time my folly is your gain.

Chat Pile Masks b/w Sifting 7″ (Sub Pop)
The youth may not understand that it was once a thrilling honor to release a stand-alone seven-inch single on Sub Pop, but Chat Pile has not forgotten this! Most record shops don’t even have a box for new singles these days (a single tear rolls down a bald eagle’s cheek), but Chat Pile are hotter than jalapeños right now, with a hungry audience ready to follow, so if there’s ever a time for them to do this, it’s now. “Masks” behaves how you’d expect a noisy, sardonic, post-hardcore noise-rock band on Sub Pop to behave: a nostalgia rush with thoughts of Tad, The Fluid and Unsane. Unlike much of Chat Pile’s most recent output, it’s upbeat and you can bounce to it, coasting on a busy bass-line, big ugly tom-heavy drumming and a guitar that prefers needling single-notes over power chords. The final moments offer the cathartic breakdown we’ve come to expect from these Oklahomans, consistently imagining a Jonathan Davis without the redemption arc. In a move so obvious as to almost be surprising, they cover Nirvana on the b-side. “Sifting” off Bleach probably isn’t anyone’s favorite Nirvana song, but it’s ripe for Chat Pile’s violent fattening, dropping the tempo a smidge and flooding the zone with sludge. I’m picturing King Buzzo with grey-white dreadlocks down to his ass instead of his signature hairdo as I listen, and hopefully now you will too.

Gil.Barte Claviceps Purpurea LP (Teenage Menopause)
When it comes to menacing, low-BPM techno, Gil.Barte ranks high on my list. I somehow missed that this, his vinyl full-length debut came out last year, but I’ve learned a valuable lesson: pay extremely close attention to any label called Teenage Menopause Records. His EPs were sparse and glorious, and Claviceps Purpurea is a true full-length, offering eight robust tracks and over forty minutes of the French producer’s signature skulk. While the tenor remains subdued and brooding, he manages to avoid repeating himself without discarding what made his earlier work so exciting. The sound palette has widened, bringing in bass-guitars, grisly vocal samples, modular-synth interference and other forms of deliberate sonic shrapnel. It’s downright serpentine, though more in the spirit of a boa constrictor quietly digesting a sloth in the shade, less a cobra poised to strike. “Kobold” invokes the claustrophobic terror of being locked in a trunk, only this sedan isn’t speeding down the freeway, it’s slowly submerging into an unmarked pond. “Martha’s Doll” almost gets the party going, albeit a party on the fresh burial site of some superhuman AI server. Unlike many forms of goth-influenced or industrial techno, the darkness in Gil.Barte’s music is consistently fun, a gloomy delight akin to the silhouettes of Chris and Cosey cryptically gyrating from across the dungeon.

Hatihati Whip It / Head 12″ (Deewee)
Recent trends in electronic music have veered toward quieter, background-safe sounds, where yoga studios and lush waterfalls morph into one holistic piece of Ezekiel bread. Perhaps that’s why I’m feeling so refreshed by the debut single from Hatihati, as these songs are designed to be experienced at a volume that renders conversation impossible. “Whip It” is something I want to experience with friends (and a couple enemies) in a crowded windowless room, unable to make out what we’re saying even when screaming in each others’ ears. It’s got a half-time stomping rhythm that I’d associate with the more ‘roided-up first-wave dubstep sound (think Benga, Kutz, Ed Solo), but it’s delivered through the millions of refracted rainbows that bounce off a smashed iPad screen (who needs a disco ball?). Not a DEVO cover, this track takes PC Music’s extreme digital elasticity and hangs some Truck Nutz from it, a Dragula that runs on cheap champagne, not zombie blood. “Head” remains in that same manic state but looks towards Ed Banger for inspiration, building up and knocking down a red-lining Mr. Oizo arpeggio with multiple voices enunciating “head” like Benny Benassi on the first bad trip of his life. Hedonistic, loud and probably a little stupid, Hatihati won’t inspire me to Jackass levels of self-harm buffoonery, but it might convince me to commingle my alcohol intake like a college freshman. Two white wines and a whiskey, please!

Mall Grab New York 12″ (Fragrance)
There he is on the cover, the young bachelor Mall Grab, dazzled by the neon-light metropolitan bustle of The Big Apple, so very far from home (Australia by way of London). Will the city consume him, or will rise to stardom? By whatever lucky break or concerted achievement, Mall Grab has become one of the rising names of mainstream-via-underground techno; for example, he’s the guy that Turnstile calls when they need a dance remix EP. (Steve Aoki would’ve been interested but he already slabbed all of his Turnstile collector vinyls, sorry.) New York offers another four cuts of extremely obvious main-stage techno, tastefully integrating trance signifiers and vocal Burialisms to songs that echo the ebullient party vibes of Robin S.’s “Show Me Love”. A typical jungle beat is smoothed over in “New York”, shapeshifting into a blissful tranquility worthy of a Kelly Lee Owens set. Mall Grab thrives in this zone, one where unambiguous techno party beats donk you on the head with hooks that are easy enough to sing along with (even if it’s your very first time hearing them). It’s probably one of the easiest forms of electronic dance music to hate, as Mall Grab holds a magnifying glass to techno’s most conspicuous qualities, but depending on your personal persuasion, also one of the easiest forms to love. I, for one, hope he makes it.

Mandy, Indiana Urgh LP (Sacred Bones)
If you trash-compacted the two basic focal points of this blog – ugly guitar music and creative electronic music – the resulting mangled byproduct might resemble something like Manchester’s Mandy, Indiana. Their 2023 full-length debut arrived fully-formed, and Urgh upholds the strategy of absolutely jackhammering the drums, guitars, electronics and vocals wielded by this quartet. Manchester is a dance music town, but forget the typical club etiquette – Mandy, Indiana’s overtly electronic sounds necessitate mosh-pits full of art-damaged weaklings who don’t know how to mosh (always a beautiful sight). Their productions call back to a variety of aggressive, DIY electronic sounds (Nasenbluten, Doormouse, Blawan and Huren, let’s say), anti-social techno that reacted against friendly party people comfortably having fun. The guitar is harder to pick out among all the alarm-siren synths and pummeling beats, but it makes more sense as another chaotic texture than any sort of riff manufacturer anyway. I can’t imagine Mandy, Indiana will ever pursue the upper 250 BPMs of terror-core – they prefer slamming over thrashing – but aggression is key. They’d fit just as comfortably on stage alongside the STD electro of Sextile as one of Orchid’s (or Black Eyes’s) ongoing reunion gigs, which is a cool place to be. Urgh‘s a wild ride right through closer “I’ll Ask Her”, which conjures the street horror of Gazelle Twin’s Unflesh era, raw and sobering.

ÖPNV +4917635713990 7″ (Phantom)
On their second full-length, Berliner punk roboter ÖPNV look towards our modern modes of communication with suspicion and disrespect. They’re pretty modern themselves, a trio that crafts their music using a variety of computer-based manipulations rather than your typical guitars and amps. They opt for real-sounding fake drums, synths on their most irritating settings, bass guitar and a whole ZIP file’s worth of sound-effects and samples. It’s the type of thing that could be as big of a presentation as DEVO at Coachella or as small as one lonely punk with a laptop and USB drive, but their mode of operation seems to fall somewhere in between. I’m reminded a lot of Heavy Metal (the band) in the way that the drums lend a sense of artificiality over shout-along choruses and mid-tempo hooks, and also in the way that samples are deployed as punchlines. A particular example can be found in “Sprechfunk”, which breaks for a pitched-down version of an incredibly familiar digital chime that’s been keeping me up at night until I can figure out where it’s from (AOL? The earliest iPhone? An AT&T busy signal? Help!). The a-side ends in a locked groove of an iPhone vibration, producing whatever panic endorphins that sound has trained in us… even the record cover’s endless field of T-Mobile boxes is some sort of commentary, I’m sure. It’s all in German, I should mention, but the seasick plink-plonk of “Kaputtnik” makes perfect sense to me: picture Abwärts spiraling into reduced service due to excessive data usage.

Simon Peter Souvenir 12″ (Is It Balearic?)
Balearic music isn’t solely a dominion of silk shirts on the beach with all-you-can-eat shrimp cocktail, it’s also cable-knit sweaters on the ski chateau’s fireside bearskin rug. It’s an all-season appropriate vibe I’m picking up from Simon Peter’s buttery-smooth new EP, Souvenir. The title track sounds like a castaway from Universal Cave’s exquisite Soft Rock For Hard Times series, a simmering folksy strum over pristine synth arpeggios sure to unbutton every shirt in the room. Sumptuous! “Mystical Delight” follows with even more guitar, in league with Schoenherz’s “Sultry Nights” in both atmosphere and successful song-title manifestation. “Still Going” sways like a smoke break from Batteaux’s self-titled album, and while that’s more than my money’s worth, we also get two “Souvenir” remixes here, from both Peaking Lights and Coyote. Peaking Lights add some stardust, whereas labelheads Coyote go all Transfer Station Blue on their version… no matter what the weather is outside, the shower glass is fully steamed. You might think you caught a glance of Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone fight-humping through the penthouse window, but it’s only a souvenir…

Ravi Shavi Erase America LP (Almost Ready)
Though Providence’s Ravi Shavi have consistently indulged in rock n’ roll revelry throughout their existence, they can’t help but comment on the shameful state of the nation with their newest full-length for the Almost Ready label, Erase America. The whole record is a righteous anti-American screed, but if you had some people over and weren’t paying close attention to the vocals, that point might evade you. The music remains feel-good, universally-familiar garage-punk in the vein of Ian Svenonius’s various projects (with a touch of Liars’ early dance-y post-punk style), with snappy and effective guitar licks and a peppy rhythm section to keep feet moving. Take a note of the content, however, and you’ll realize that Ravi Shavi is as rage-filled as these times necessitate: song titles like “Killer Whites”, “Fresh Hell”, “Intifada” and “New Brown Neighbors” don’t beat around the bush. Without a lyric sheet, I’m straining (and quite interested) to hear what Ravi Shavi have to say, even if the much-needed general sentiments are crystal clear – the repeated line “the motherland of killing another man” is unmistakable, at least. They take a break from all the black-pointy-shoe dancing with the groaning, decrepit dirge “Miracle Bombs”, whose mood certainly matches the experience of living through Trump’s second administration. It’s a nice breather before “Action” snaps us, James Chance-like, into motion. Even if their social analysis doesn’t go much deeper than the provocative song titles, it’s refreshing and comforting to see more punks kicking back in the face of naked fascism.

Shackleton Euphoria Bound 2xLP (AD 93)
Shaq’s back! The Berlin-based producer is one of the most singular electronic artists of this millennium (or any other, I suppose), and one of the busiest, too. Recent years have seen him focusing on collaborative efforts that run quite a creative range; I honestly forgot he did that album with Six Organs Of Admittance until looking it up again now (and it’s overdue for a spin). I always love Shackleton best when he’s freewheelin’ on his own, though, and Euphoria Bound is a thrilling distillation of the peculiar sonic aesthetic he’s carefully cultivated over the last couple decades. His music brandishes a ritualistic sci-fi slant, and it’s never been more focused than this double LP. These tracks sound like the work of advanced alien civilizations interpreting modern earthly club music. The time signatures and percussive elements are somewhat familiar to our human ears, but it’s the sum of Shackleton’s parts that dazzle. I understand that light speed exists, but I can’t grasp how exactly the Large Hadron Collider works, and the same could be said for Shackleton’s productions, as inventive and striking as body-moving, a full-bodied psychedelic fun. Man On A String Part 1 And 2 / Bastard Spirit and The Drawbar Organ EPs have been my personal faves for a minute, but the further I dip into Euphoria Bound, who knows what might happen…

Yorgos Stavridis Solo Percussion LP (Heat Crimes)
Cleve Pozar set the bar high with his own Solo Percussion album back in 1974, but Yorgos Stavridis is a worthy heir to the throne. It’s a genre I tend to enjoy – I kind of think every human has at least one good Solo Percussion buried within them – though Stavridis has clearly put a lot of thought and technique into the seven pieces here, performed and recorded live. I’d assume he was a traditionally-trained drummer at some point, based on the fluid wrist-action on opener “Pile Of”, but he delves deep into the very nature of sound itself as the album progresses. A wide variety of resonating surfaces are explored, resulting in a kaleidoscope of wicked timbres, unintuitive patterns and a general sense of the otherworldly existing within the quotidian. The simple chime of a bell is the focal point of “Clink”, which evolves into a paranoid, twinkling orchestra of one. “Cymbal Friction” takes the titular instrument and wrings a mesmerizing futurist drone out of it, uncovering unknown sounds buried deep within the copper alloy. Judging from the instruments (or fractured shards of instruments) on the cover, Stavridis relishes the chance to truly investigate sound from these likely and unlikely sources, and his findings are bold and engrossing.

Strange Program Strange Program LP (Bumbo)
“Detroit Psych Mutation” says the sticker on the sleeve, three words almost as satisfying as “peanut butter chocolate”. Strange Program are a rock trio featuring members of Druid Perfume, Red Red Red and Bumbo’s Tinto Brass Band, and their particular mutation is easy on the ears, the work of seasoned rockers who know how to squeeze the sweetest juice out of their sound. There’s plenty of auxiliary weirdness, usually in the form of Looney Tunes-esque percussive elements, and the songs themselves seem easily distracted, prone to veering off course. It’s like one member makes a funny face, let’s say bassist Bumbo Krawczyk, and the other two guys notice and momentarily forget where they’re at, but in a good way. Even if it feels like they may dip into the same pouch of magical substances as Lavender Flu (or even Timmy’s Organism), Strange Program never loses the script, an album whose maturity is evident even amidst brash and kooky behavior. It’s the sort of thing that In The Red Records usually likes to invest its hard-earned dollars in, and perhaps might someday in the future. I could easily imagine the album resonating with the many King Gizzard fans that apparently walk among us, what with the penchant for abusing Van Halen-esque riffs, a sense of wide-eyed rock n’ roll adventure and some good-natured clownery, too. For so many things, Detroit is where it’s at.

Terrine Jazz Band Theory LP (Bruit Direct Disques)
The last time I put on Jazz Band Theory, I was already nursing a raging headache, essentially beating Terrine to the punch. Across four full-lengths for Bruit Direct, the solo project of one Claire Gapenne continues to confound in ways that only the most dedicated of self-punishing experimental music lovers (such as myself, and at least some of you) will savor. Jazz Band Theory is Terrine’s newest excavation into the deepest recesses of her mind, body and hard-drive, with multiple incongruous parts fused into stand-alone “tracks” by a logic inaccessible to this writer. A majority chunk of this record comes across like cinema vérité of an electronics repair shop on the busiest day of their year. Take a broken drum machine, twiddle its knobs a bit, then take that recording and chop it into little digital snippets… then cut-and-paste it wildly across your DAW of choice. Occasionally things will cohere into what one might call a groove (a minute into “Weekly Vlog”, for example), but you’re just as likely to be left stranded in a field of dying consumer electronics without plot or context. Unlike prior outings that offered some obscure thread to be followed, Terrine’s experiments here recall the deep abstractionism of folks like Vertonen, Irr. App. (Ext.) and Joe Colley, but even those artists tend to settle into an idea and carve a safe-space from within it. Just when you think you can relax into a rally of malfunctioning beats, Terrine will whip out an acoustic guitar, or a piano, and remind you that you’re never safe in her world of sound.

The Velvet Underground Sunday’s Clown LP (no label)
There are many forms of musical nerdery of which I’m willing to accept some amount of personal complicity, but in all honesty, “live bootleg enthusiast” isn’t one of them, classic-rock or otherwise. There’s a certain sort of musical-scientist type who savors the ability to deconstruct and evaluate the myriad subtle differences in live renditions by Neil Young or whatever, but I ain’t one of ’em. That said, when a man in a fedora, black sunglasses and a buttoned-up trenchcoat slid me this new Velvet Underground boot tucked surreptitiously into a folded copy of the Provincetown Independent, I wasn’t going to ignore it on account of some self-imposed rule. If there’s one worthy exception to the “no live bootleg” stance, it’s gotta be the Velvets, whose Quine Tapes and Sweet Sister Ray went on to inspire countless underground rockers (many of whom I adore). This newly pressed set, taken from a summer 1966 performance in Provincetown, MA, sticks out to me for two reasons: one, the inclusion of the never-properly-released original “I’m Not A Young Man Anymore”, and two, the performances’ enthusiastic descriptions on the back cover, providing insight into the material from the rabid obsessed-fan perspective (so we don’t have to rabidly obsess ourselves). To some, it might sound like Velvet Underground classics performed through an old drainpipe, which is fine on its own merit; to others, this is another crucial piece of the puzzle, like a crystal urn hunted down by Indiana Jones.

White Cross Fascist 7″ (Beach Impediment)
A faithful reissue of White Cross’s debut EP has been overdue for a while, so let’s thank the good brothers over at Beach Impediment for making it happen. The label has never been short on Virginia hardcore pride, and White Cross may very well be the hardcore-punk band most worthy of that pride (sorry, Avail!). As for this reissue, it’s appealingly faithful to the original design, with that great cover imagery that appears to be piles of hair and a rubber finger puppet on a Xerox machine. Who knows for sure? As for the music, White Cross raged with the best of ’em, a youthful thrash in league with their DC neighbors and, if you sped up 95 North for another five hours, Mutha’s mutant menagerie. I will forever experience a brief moment of disorientation when someone says “hardcore” in reference to stuff like E-Town Concrete or Code Orange, as I’m already too well trained to the textbook formula as rendered by White Cross’s eight songs here. I’m never going to listen to a word Jeff Bale has to say, but he got it right back in his Maximumrocknroll review of Fascist in 1982: “they’ve got that extra intensity which separates great thrash from the increasingly common generic variety.”

Future Left Behind compilation LP (Second Street)
The return of carefully-produced regional compilations would be a welcome corrective to our flattened digital listening experience. What better way to fight back against the contextless deluge of surprise-free content than a record made by a flourishing punk community in celebration of itself? Not every city is lucky enough to have a record shop as culturally nourishing as DC’s Joint Custody, but we can certainly learn from how they’re doing it there: in service of people, not algorithms. Future Left Behind features fourteen tracks by fourteen different hardcore bands, all recorded in Joint Custody after business hours (and where exactly, I don’t know – does their basement space have its own additional basement??). Fans of American hardcore might recognize names like Protester, Laughing Corpse and Brain Tourniquet, but like a true classic hardcore comp, it’s probably a band you’ve never heard of before that’ll end up being your favorite. Whereas DC hardcore might conjure certain adjectives – let’s say emotional, self-serious, thoughtful, chiding – Future Left Behind leans in a crustier, more raging direction. There certainly aren’t any capital-H careerists here, only do-it-together punks who mosh with love because the music inspires it, not hate because the meathead singer ordered you to. I thought the Brain Tourniquet song is pretty ace (written on the drums first in what must’ve been some sort of mean-spirited prank against the other band members); Deliriant Nerve’s gurgle-throat grind was a treat as well, and Grand Scheme continue to make me want to throttle my best friend by his hoodie until the neck is stretched. What’s your scene like?

Ajukaja Sunda School IV 7″ (Porridge Bullet)
Got so into the Porridge Bullet label over the last few years that I recently went to an author event solely because, like the label, the author was Estonian. I asked him if he was aware of Porridge Bullet, hoping for some new nugget of info, to which he responded with gentle confusion. Rather than learn from this incident – maybe not every random person out there is obsessed with the niche electronic labels of their home country? – I’ve decided that the writer in question needs to do a better job representing Estonia, and that I was perfectly in the right to bring it up immediately after saying hello. Ajukaja has been working with the label since day one (2012) and his latest contribution to the Sunda School series is blissfully baked. Both songs were made on a Yamaha organ at an “island sanctuary on Hiiumaa” and if you’re prone to fits of jealousy, I advise against Googling the island. “Sunda School 3” is elevator music for an elevator that takes you to paradise, festooned with the Mediterranean breeze of Domenique Dumont and the cutesy charm of Katamari Damacy. “Sunda School 4” dims the house lights, as it is now the evening and everyone at the private resort has changed into their finest outfits, feeling confident and breezy following the afternoon’s open bar. Ajukaja offers an alternate vision of chill-wave here, one where jazz-funk melodies dance like candle flames, free from the clumsy baggage of blurry reverb or overt nostalgic winks.

Arson Burning Future 7″ (General Speech)
Like the multitudes of letter-swapping hardcore brethren, they could’ve went with Arzon, or Arsyn, but NYC crusters Arson are keeping things spellcheck-safe on their vinyl debut. The four-piece found a comfortable home with the General Speech label, whose Japanese-leaning hardcore-punk tastes align nicely with Arson’s blatantly non-commercial music. In that regard, Arson do come across as a bit of a Japanese noise-core tribute act (presumably on purpose), following the footsteps of Gloom (whose “Disgust” they go so far as to cover here), Abraham Cross, Zyanose and Exit-Hippies’ more straightforward material. The hand-lettering and Anime-inspired band illustration drive this point home, though thankfully Arson doesn’t resort to the worst form of Japanese hardcore worship: fake ESL song titles (though there is no insert to confidently verify the same for their lyrics – I’m giving ’em the benefit of the doubt). On one hand, blatantly lifting and replicating other punks’ original ideas is wack, but on the other hand, if you’re going to copy something, it might as well be some of the most blistering and unhinged hardcore-punk that has ever existed. By that metric, Arson undeniably rip, from the guitar’s scalding treble overload to the vocals, which sound like attack-dogs barking and snarling through a helicopter’s in-flight intercom system.

Shinichi Atobe SynthScale 12″ (Plastic & Sounds)
Shinichi Atobe has a fun backstory: for years following his 2001 debut EP, people had assumed he must’ve been an alias of someone else, as he had only delivered that sole fantastic twelve-inch on the revered Chain Reaction label before quietly disappearing into the techno ether. The Demdike Stare guys made contact some thirteen years later, only to discover that he never stopped making tunes, merely for his own private satisfaction. With a trove of unreleased material and a steady stream of new tracks, Atobe has been back on the scene with a consistent, workmanlike output ever since. SynthScale is his newest EP, released on his new Plastic & Sounds label, and if you ever felt intimidated by the breadth of Atobe’s output, I urge you to shed your worries and step right in: the water’s warm! Atobe works within the well-established confines of dub-techno, but he treats the genre as a playground, not a holding cell. “SynthScale” is clinical and invigorating, like the best and deepest remix of Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” buried on some Euro-only promotional mix CD. “Disappear” twinkles and bleeps like a wine bar on the moon, though “Between Thoughts” is my favorite of the EP, its separate parts sequenced together elegantly, a punchy little up-and-down arpeggio energized under the shimmering pads; ten minutes of pulsating bliss. The entire EP is top-notch, another exquisite missive from this fascinating producer who best communicates through music. (Peep his Tone Glow interview to see what I mean – it was like pulling teeth!)

Bruce The Hand 12″ (Poorly Knit)
Bristol’s Bruce is an electronic outsider among outsiders, having cut his teeth with the exemplary Hessle Audio scene before wandering off to wherever it is he is now. He dropped three different DIY-assembled EPs on his new Poorly Knit label in 2025, and The Hand is the most recent; like the first two, it’s unpredictable and great. “Golden Water Queen” brings his singing voice back to the forefront, but with a freewheeling, improvising-in-the-shower feel, his processed vocals pirouetting over some murky electronics, like Reckonwrong if he possessed a darker side. “The Hand” is tentative, beatless and nervous, as if Andy Stott suddenly developed a case of stage fright in the middle of a performance. Bruce brings lots of different energies to his most recent productions, and this is a new one. He saved his rhythms for “DHam’s Jam”, eight minutes of minimal tech-house chop with plenty of off-the-cuff interference. The track behaves like it’s bobbing and weaving past pedestrians on a crowded street in hopes of catching the bus. Bruce’s mind is everywhere, and considering his Hessle Audio pedigree, I’m surprised that it doesn’t really seem like much of that corner of the music world is noticing. You can still pick up all three vinyl EPs in a discounted Bandcamp bundle, which I recommend – with enough buzz, maybe someday Jeremy Allen White will play this Bruce too.

Cracked Actor Nazi School LP (Last Laugh)
After that 2010 repressing of Negative Approach’s debut EP, I assumed we all learned our lesson to never, ever airbrush, Photoshop or colorize iconic hardcore / punk cover art, but I’m looking at the slightly-enhanced cover of this Cracked Actor reissue, and you know what? It’s tastefully done. Last Laugh has long been a reliable source for archival punk obscurities, and this LP collects the Killed By Death-immortalized Nazi School single along with a handful of other 1981 originals, previously relegated to a Japanese-issue CD from 2010 (punk historian voice: as was the style at the time). I have such a soft-spot for punk like this, where the general reactionary sense of the music was in full-effect but not yet codified, as evidenced by Cracked Actor’s Twisted Sister haircuts (maybe it was a Long Island thing). “Nazi School” remains a classic, and while the rest of these songs probably aren’t quite at that level (a couple even veer in that “Michael J. Fox playing Chuck Berry” direction), I can’t imagine ever being offered the chance to listen to Cracked Actor and refusing. “Epileptic Fit” will appeal to fans of GG Allin’s earliest singles, no doubt! I also love when bands did their own “radio commercials” back then, and there’s a perfectly stupid one here, replete with fake German accent (really leaning into their hit single, it would see). Who’s gonna do a comp of all the radio commercial spots townie punk bands made for themselves? Seems like a job for Last Laugh if there ever was one.

Creative Writing Baby Did This LP (Meritorio)
What’s a more hated college course than creative writing… Econ 101? I’d imagine that this Western Mass quartet suffered through a number of those morning seminars themselves, but they’re having the last laugh with their easy-going, homework-optional band. Featuring folks from Estrogen Highs, Sore Eros, Huevos II and other even-more-unsung indie-rock groups, Creative Writing know what they’re doing on their debut, Baby Did This. It’s indie-rock with power-pop, country-folk and post-punk flourishes in the proud American tradition. I think of Pavement, Teenage Fanclub, Wilco and other ’90s cult classics who looked toward Neil Young, The Velvet Underground and Big Star instead of Metallica or Minor Threat for post-adolescent inspiration. It’s pretty edgeless stuff, by design… the guitars chime and volley, the tempos are insufficient for jogging (or even power-walking), and the vocals are exceedingly polite. There’s probably some sarcasm in there, but Creative Writing play it so straight that any sort of pointed jab or sign of discontent goes right over my head, coasting on a wave of their affable jangle-pop. Of course, that could just be an insecure projection. Maybe they’re nothing but sincere? Maybe they actually enjoyed creative writing?

Forming Division Bring Them Down / Move 7″ (Total Life Society)
How many middle-aged indieheads would trade in their life savings (four hundred dollars) for the chance to be in a band with J Mascis or Mike Watt, let alone both? And yet that’s the dream that Matthew Wascovich is living, fronting these two legends (with John Moloney on drums!) in Forming Division. The band may or may not exist beyond this sole seven-inch single, but wait, Wascovich has also released singles on his Total Life Society label by Vicious Fence (he sings, with the one and only Mark Arm on guitar) and Subterranean Clocks (he sings, Watt’s back on bass and Brendan Canty plays drums!)? What’s next for Wascovich, a band with Jon Wurster, Bob Mould and Josephine Wiggs? I don’t know if Wascovich has some sort of blackmail dossier on these guys, or six-figure checks with which to lure them – or maybe, just maybe, he’s simply a great guy to be around and start bands with – but whatever the case, he’s like the modern-day Hugh Hefner of seminal ’90s underground-rock bunnies. Back to this single: “Bring Them Down” is a simmering shuffle featuring Mascis’s incessant soloing and a cool stop-start beat from Moloney; “Move” crawls by comparison, with Watt showing goodnatured restraint as Mascis continues to have a field day shredding. Wascovich kinda sings like a regular guy they randomly pulled in off the street, and not just in comparison to these indie heavyweights, which brings a level of relatability to the project (if also further confusion as to how he ended up in this covetable position). He has a cool deal going, and I’m not just saying that in hopes of being asked to play bass in a hypothetical new band he’s starting with Kim Thayil (though, if he was interested, I am available…)

Gaute Granli Rosacea LP (Nashazphone)
Still hurts to remember that Ghédalia Tazartès no longer walks among us mortals, but his spirit lives on in many forms. One of them is Norwegian artist Gaute Granli, who, much like Tazartès, forges his own distinctive sonic path, unconcerned with listener comfort or conventional musical methods, even by “experimental” standards. His work was last reviewed in these pages back in 2018, on the Jandek-meets-Severed Heads outer limits of Animalskt, and while Rosacea is clearly the work of the very same Gaute Granli (could there be more than one person on Earth with that name?), it’s by no means a retread. These songs, while still sounding as though they were cobbled together from the bits and pieces other musicians discarded, favor sweeter melodies, softer textures and brighter hopes. It’s full of the spirit of weird, singular artists who never quite got their due – J.D. Emmanuel, John T. Gast, Autre Ne Veut, Richard Youngs, Lewis, most certainly his Rump State bandmate Mark Morgan – with the sense that Granli hasn’t chosen to create these messed-up albums, but was compelled by forces outside his control. Take “This Is Never Ending”, which sounds like a mens’ church choir rehearsing inside Jabba the Hutt’s intestines, or “Carmelade”, which forefronts some Tarzan-like devotional singing over a synthesizer’s three warbling notes and an eventual off-time bass kick. We are peering directly into Granli’s cracked-open skull, and it’s full of writhing, colorful worms.

Gumm Beneath The Wheel LP (Convulse)
So this group is Gumm, from Chattanooga, TN, not GUNN from Orange County, nor are they to be confused with the Berlin punk band Gum. This is the sort of intensive cognitive testing that should keep me nice and dementia-free well into my nineties, so I thank the hardcore-punk scene’s endless similar iterations for keeping my brain on its toes. Beneath The Wheel arrives in a haze of feedback, with a modern-typical stompy riff opening up the horseshoe pit in a manner redolent of the typical three-letter suspects (Gel, Bib, Spy). This particular hardcore style completely exhausts me at this point, but mercifully it’s merely one piece of Gumm’s puzzle. Instead, they lean heavily into an upbeat and polished hardcore style ala Paint It Black and the first few Militarie Gun records, just one Strung Out drum-beat from verging on Strike Anywhere’s territory. By third track “Flavorless”, Gumm’s guitars are fully limber and melodic, a lively antidote to the stale down-picked half-step style I’ve come to dread. Vocalist Drew Waldon really comes across as a younger Dr. Dan Yemin here, full-throttle screaming enunciated so well that you won’t need a lyric sheet to follow along. Gumm are clearly trying to write their own songs rather than reconfigure someone else’s, and it leads to stuff like “Human Web”, a song that eventually builds to its own righteous sing-along chorus. For semi-enlightened hardcore kids looking for a path that doesn’t lead to E-Town Concrete or IDLES, Gumm offer an appealing alternative.

K9 Thrills LP (Who Ya Know)
Nothing wrong with a lil’ tie-dyed punk rock! K9 are a new Richmond group, and while clearly punk in ethos and approach, don’t expect any bondage pants or liberty spikes from their full-length debut. Their ideas seem to spring from a similar well as that of Meat Puppets, or Hüsker Dü, or Chronophage, or even Milk Music / Mystic 100s (had they not wandered off on that endless ayahuasca trip). In other words, their music calls to mind the optimistic promise of independent college-rock in the mid ’80s, where trembling vocals, guitar jangle, jazzy drumming and psychedelic elements could be harvested for novel use. When only the dumbest punks were still punks and everyone else was hoping to find a fresh direction forward (even if it meant thrash-metal), the desire to differentiate oneself was inevitable for the art-minded and curious. Though K9 were probably children when Layne Staley died (let alone when Meat Puppets and Sonic Youth toured together), I sense a trans-generational likemindedness that results in some great tunes here. Thrills balances upbeat rockers (“95x”, “Who Ya Know”) with mid-tempo pop (“A Race”, “Arms Fall Off”) comfortably, an easy-listen that’s just the right amount of dirty: a little ripeness without the stink.

K/S/R Already In Heaven LP (Physical / Gilgongo)
One of the most valuable skills an artist can wield these days is the ability to command the attention of a prospective audience. I’d like to commend free-improv trio K/S/R on doing so with their album cover here: this freaky posse posing in a cave with accordion, chain, violin and Morbid Angel t-shirt are enticing! They look like if Wolf Eyes got to cast a Scooby-Doo remake with a cast of trip-metal enthusiasts, and the hype sticker promises experimental music from an intriguing “New Mexico / Hudson Valley” axis. Do they split they difference and hang out in southern Indiana? There was so much to think about before I even put the record on, and now that I’m spinning it, I am afforded plenty of space to do such thinking. The trio of Justin Clifford Rhody, Abigail Smith and Ben Kujawski leave delicate touches through these five improvised pieces – if they were crime scenes, you’d have trouble pulling a full set of prints. Various forms of strings are lightly rubbed and plucked, keys are tickled with feathers, and it hovers in that mode, incapable of waking any nearby sleeping babies. I kept waiting for a powder keg to explode, for a shriek to pierce the gloomy din – any sort of reaction against the primordial stasis of their sound – but it never arrived. Their cover photo displays three prospective party animals, but Already In Heaven is the most docile form of noise – a forehead passed out on the keys, a light snore reverberating against the lower bout of a nearby violin.

Maraudeur Flaschenträger LP (Feel It)
Feel It continues its stranglehold on the world’s supply of slippy slappy dancey post-punk, now claiming one of the Europe’s finest: Maraudeur. I keep hoping to one day see someone confuse them with NYHC legends Merauder – an accidental swapping of festival bookings, perhaps? – but for now, this group’s various European vowels have kept them safe from any hard pitting. Maraudeur have been at it since the mid ’10s, though I am relieved to report that they do not seem to have honed any new musical skills or impressive chops in that time. In fact, I’d say that the songs of Flaschenträger are more aimless than anything they’ve done – they sound like if Erase Errata or Priests simply stopped writing their songs halfway through, and went and recorded what they’ve got anyway. It’s beautiful in that regard, to hear carefree post-punk like this… pieces of The Raincoats and The Cure just kinda jumbled on the table, songs as likely to dig in their heels as trail off absentmindedly. There’s gotta be a secret method to this madness, though – how else to explain the inclusion of a “secret” final track, or at least that thirty second gap of silence before it? Just when you think you know where they’re headed, whoop! You got meraudeured.

Method Of Doubt Total Soul Ignition 7″ (Scheme)
The “(Noun) Of (Noun)” hardcore band-naming convention continues to wreak havoc on society, but at least Method Of Doubt had the good sense to come up with an EP title cool enough to print on a t-shirt all by itself. This Florida hardcore band clearly worships at the altar of New Age Records, and while that’s far from my favorite era of hardcore, I hold respect for anyone who chooses to wear a XXL band t-shirt with a Krishna bead necklace while getting all emotional about how straight-edge they are. That’s the aura of these four songs, which balance the urban groove of early ’90s NYHC with the sluggish tempos of Outspoken and Chokehold. Method Of Doubt carry the introspection of Bold and the passion of Unbroken, and when vocalist Liam Quinn pleads the line “I will not assist with your genocide”, his frustration reads understandably sincere. For all the chugga-chugga ignorant-beatdown hardcore hypnotizing the youth, my ears are open for “mature” hardcore such as Total Soul Ignition (read: hardcore made by 24 year-olds instead of 18 year-olds). Their earnest presentation and emotional (but not emo) delivery is well suited to this most holy of hardcore formats, the seven-inch EP, not merely alive but thriving on CT’s Scheme Records.

Nohz Slumber Between Rotten Walls LP (Kick Rock / World Gone Mad / Croux)
I love when hardcore and punk bands are clearly a product of their own direct and distinct communities, like how early ’80s DC hardcore only sounds like DC hardcore, or how those NWI punk bands from ten years ago created the egg-punk sound. Nohz are from Toulouse, France, however their brand of blackened hardcore-punk could’ve come from anywhere on the planet in the past ten years. Over aggressive polka-beat drumming and unfriendly down-picked guitars, the vocals arrive on bat-wings, with a daisy chain of effects pedals that render even the most casual scream into a cacophonous echo from the depths of Hades. It’s anti-social black-metal aesthetics grafted onto hardcore flesh, in a manner pretty consistent with Destino Final, Bone Awl and much of Youth Attack’s 2010s: a theatrical nihilism that’s mostly for titillation purposes. Nothing wrong with it, I suppose – there’s no faulting Nohz’s delivery of the goods here – but this internet-propagated sound has reached levels of over-saturation, a stylistic cul-de-sac we continue to circle. Unless your singer is that guy from Lancaster, PA who just got arrested for stealing a hundred skeletons from the graveyard (look it up!), or your songs are absolutely blistering and unmatched, I find myself feeling more placated than inspired by the current (and surely future) bands pursuing this particular style.

No Idols No Idols 7″ (Iron Lung)
After being accidentally exposed to the Hardlore podcast’s “best ’00s hardcore band” competitive bracket, I needed something to quell my nausea, so I quickly threw on this debut seven-inch from Baltimore’s No Idols. These five songs coated my stomach with time-tested American hardcore-punk and I immediately snapped back into shape, ran outside and did a hundred shirtless pushups in the street. They’ve got that early Fucked Up songwriting style (see “Ballad Of A Fool” in particular) mixed with the formative bite of Last Rights and an aesthetic approach similar to some of the finer purveyors of hardcore in the ’00s, such as Waste Management, 86 Mentality and Knife Fight. The drums sound fantastic, especially when drummer Robin Zeijlon gets to tear it up on all those toms, pushing things to a level of intensity in league with Poison Idea at their (literal) heaviest. No Idols aren’t doing anything new here, so much as chasing the platonic ideal of hardcore-punk, one far removed from the pro-core, merch-team, beat-em-up nonsense that is somehow thriving now more than ever. You might not be able to beat ’em, but we certainly don’t have to join ’em, especially knowing that raging hardcore such as No Idols continues to sprout like weeds through the cracks in our increasingly corporate-reliant underground.

Emmett O.C. 9 From The Warped Mind LP (Sweet Time / Low Ambition)
Sorry to disappoint, but this isn’t a tribute to the greatest west-coast teen drama of the early ’00s: this man’s full name is Emmett O’Connor, and he’s played in a variety of underground Cleveland punk bands you probably haven’t heard of (MK Ultras, Archie & The Bunkers, etc.). He’s stepping out here on his own, looking like a dashing ’50s greaser on the cover (or, some could argue, a twink heartthrob of the mid 2020s). I assumed he’d give us some form of punk, and voila: this solo-project follows the common path of vocals over drum machines and synths, the cheaper-sounding the better. An extremely low-fidelity affair, picture if you will an egg-punk John Maus excitedly crooning over chintzy gear on the street outside of Goner Fest to the bemusement of all passersby. The punker / sharper tunes resonate with me the most, whereas I find the doo-wop inspired tracks (proof of his greaser bonafides) least palatable, no matter how many Cindy Lee fans out there want to argue otherwise. It’s not a new thing to holler “one two fuck you” over a peppy drum-machine beat and monotonous synths, but “The Air Conditioning Is Making Me Sick” is up there with Buck Biloxi as far as enraged-yet-futile solo punk-rock is concerned. I like my one-man-band garage-punks like my Negronis: bitter as hell.

Officer John The Return Of Officer John 12″ (Wah Wah Wino)
Wah Wah Wino have been on a prolonged hot-streak, so why not throw their hat into the Trip-Hop Olympics with Officer John? It’s trendy without a doubt, but Wah Wah Wino has broken enough fresh new ground to dispel any initial cynicism. The label continues to reveal Ireland’s underground music scene as diverse and innovative, and while The Return Of Officer John does not break new ground, it’s another winner all the same. The Officer John moniker is allegedly that of one Niall Rogers, but based on Wah Wah Wino’s track record of their artists being something like 75% real people, who can really say? What I do know is that his music is supremely vibes-based, baggy trip-hop and ’00s chill-wave colliding like a warm tongue on a perfect scoop of ice cream. The typical trip-hop beats come from airy, live-sounding drums, over which neo-new age guitars chime soothingly. Rogers’s voice is appropriately tuneful-yet-incomprehensible (a dream-pop requisite), like Thom Yorke trapped in a well (if only that were truly the case!). It’s post-Washed Out indie with a club-music mindset – rather than a band waiting for some DJs to remix their shoegaze tracks into dance hits, Officer John cuts to the chase. Morgan Buckley actually steps up to the plate with a remix of EP-opener “Stay” to close things out, refracting Officer John’s pastel colors into an even wider spectrum of sway-able grooves care of some extra-funky bongos and bells. Mr. Buckley, you’re well on your way to becoming this generation’s Fatboy Slim, and I am here for it.

Probleman Eg Vannæ Plantæ Sjøl Om Di E Død LP (Banditt Media)
One of the Bandcamp tags for Norweigian emo-punk group Probleman’s newest album, the I-don’t-even-wanna-attempt-it Eg Vannæ Plantæ Sjøl Om Di E Død, is “fifth wave emo”. Fifth wave – really?? There’s probably a terrible YouTube video by an even more terrible guy that explains in detail these five alleged emo waves, but I refuse to look it up, or even acknowledge such an unsettling designation. However you care to slice it, Probleman sound a lot like emo as I understood it in the late ’90s – big pop-rock swings from The Get Up Kids, Braid and The Promise Ring that were tempered by the fact that they actually existed within a DIY hardcore-punk underground, blissfully premature for all the package reunion tours, destination nostalgia-fests and prospects of money, however diminishing, that make it all so dreadfully unappealing today. Let’s think instead of the four members of Probleman in Trondheim, Norway, pouring their hearts out over upbeat pop-punk drumming, energetically-chiming guitar leads and vocals that are sensitive (but not too sensitive), having a blast working out their songs in a well-insulated practice space as untold feet of snow accumulate outside. There’s zero chance of me picking up their Northern Norwegian Helgeland dialect, no matter how many times I spin this LP, but c’mon, this is joyous, scruffy-shiny pop-punk – Probleman’s emotions do not require a shared language to resonate.

RHDP Kaskasero LP (Beach Impediment)
Apparently it’s short for “Red Horse Drunk Punks” (or “Red Horse Drugs Pancit”?), but whatever the case, this Filipino trio (by way of Virginia Beach) are aware of their name’s proximity to a certain strain of Chili Pepper. You can call your punk band Crede or Shone Tempo Violence all you want, but you only have yourself to blame if people associate you with similarly-monikered ’90s sleaze-rockers. Thankfully, that’s as far as RHDP’s alt-rock similarities go, as they prefer to rock in an aggressively boozed-up way, unfit for even the worst of Woodstocks. It’s a little too hardcore for the Nashville Pussy / Turbonegro set, but is it really? Especially if everyone is all coked up and playing Twister on the pool table? The indulgent guitar-soloing and high-octane rock moves call to mind the covered roster of Guns N’ Roses’ The Spaghetti Incident?, from Nazareth to Johnny Thunders, played heavier and more belligerently than the old guard. RHDP are way more Filipino, too – all of their songs are sung in Tagalog, though the fist-pumping and whiskey shots are a universally-shared vernacular. It’s fun on record, but I have the suspicion that the songs of Kaskasero are meant to be experienced live and in person. I can think of no better place to experience RHDP than a dive bar in Virginia Beach’s off-season, their speaker-popping hard-rock drowning out the depressingly constant procession of military aircraft above.

Emily Robb Soundtrack To The Space Between Attack And Decay LP (Petty Bunco)
Film and TV soundtracking has become one of the few viable career paths available to creative musicians as of late. If Daniel Lopatin and Bobby Krlic aren’t driving around Los Angeles in Cybertrucks, it’s not because they can’t afford them. Emily Robb has now joined the growing ranks of indie artists with film soundtracks on their resumés, but like all of Robb’s recorded output thus far, this isn’t a bid for fame and fortune, it’s another excuse to make something cool with her friends. I haven’t seen The Space Between Attack And Decay, but I understand it to be a very limited-run indie film made by Philly people, some of whose names I recognize from around town. From spinning the soundtrack, it’s easy to grasp how Robb’s guitar-centric vignettes might converse with the film’s surreal scenes. Her solo work often favors a heads-down repetition, and while that’s not out of the equation, her musical colors have expanded from a strictly universal fuzz to folk, spaghetti westerns, garage-rock and Link Wray-abilly. If I’m reading it right, that’s Robb playing the drums and bass (see “Dance Music”) as necessary, no longer solely tethered to the guitar. As is the case with projects such as these, Robb was surely responding to prompts and requests from the film’s creators, but sometimes that’s how one arrives at their best creative work, taking the director’s inspiration and running with it. I know this much: I wish “Frustrated Wake Up” would softly play in the background whenever I wake up frustrated.

Sa Pa Ambeesh 2xLP (Short Span)
Need to keep a close eye on the Short Span label, as they delivered some of my favorite adventurous electronic music in 2025, and seem poised to continue in 2026. Case in point is the newest full-length from Sa Pa, which extrapolates on the European producer’s penchant for minimalist dub-techno, wandering further off the map. These tracks move past blurry impressionistic techniques and towards the surreal with a consistently refined style. I’m picturing paddle-boats churning forward over colorful pools, cleansing dust storms, one of those fat-ass neon caterpillars nimbly crawling out on a mossy branch… the imagined electronic sounds of environmental and natural processes that approach the uncanny. “EOALH (Pressure Rhythm)” thumps and slurps ardently, but eventually a melodic element seeps in like drops of watercolor on canvas. “With Or Without Wires” reminds me of those nature videos where they somehow stuff a hi-res camera deep into an ant colony (with hundreds of those lil’ freaks marching past), but also you might be able to dance to this, and if delivered with the appropriate sound system (all-encompassing low-end and crystal-clear highs), it might be the most memorable cut of the evening. Though I am certain that electronic wires and computer chips played pivotal roles in the creation of Ambeesh, there’s a rich organic quality to these tunes that lulls me in and holds me in place. “Blue”, in particular, feels like I’m receiving a topographic survey of an alien planet’s biosphere, no oxygen suit required.

SnPLO Infinity Substance 12″ (Pin)
There’s the techno influencer route, where you churn out a steady stream of performative social-media content loosely tied to your musical output, and then there’s the path SnPLO has chosen: self-release intriguingly-hermetic records with barely any info printed on them. This is yet another tightly-knit scene of German techno scrutinizers whose faces I may never see, their esoteric aliases collaborating and, in the case of SnPLO, morphing into something new. I understand SnPLO to be the teaming-up of SnP 500 and PLO Man, though these two cuts are starkly refined enough that they could’ve easily been the work of a solitary mind, neither undercooked nor overstuffed. The a-side (both tracks are cruelly untitled) volleys familiar dub-techno sounds across an endless concourse, with choppy hi-hat / clap simulations working overtime, hypnotizing and red-blooded. I prefer the scratchy, smeary b-side – its groove swells with druggy motion, as if the vinyl was pressed in an egg-like shape instead of a perfect circle. Both tracks prefer subconscious shifts to drops, builds or any sort of overt deviations, though the deeper you peer into them, the more you’ll realize the secretive action at hand. As is the case with many prime examples of unvarnished European techno, there’s a reward to leaning backwards and unfocusing your ears as well, the head-under-a-waterfall pleasure of macroscopic listening.

Spatter Pattern Atomic Dinette 7″ (Mutated Pink Fuzz)
The band name, song title and label name are all phrases that could’ve been conjured up by Glenn Danzig in a Lodi, NJ basement circa 1979, which I presume is no unintentional coincidence. Spatter Pattern are a synth-punk trio from Kalamazoo, MI, and seeing as they decided to tackle Misfits’ classic “TV Casualty” on the b-side, it’s clear to which Fiend Club their allegiances lie. “Atomic Dinette” is conjured through two synth operators and one vocalist – no guitars – so it’s Ben Lyon’s exaggerated sneer and the unmerry, two-finger melodies that position this group in the realm of punk, not ‘wave. I could picture a punk band translating “Atomic Dinette” on guitars and drums quite easily, and with the chorus of “how will you survive in the blue mist”, I can practically feel the devilocks forming on their skull-painted heads. “TV Casualty” sounds pretty good through these B-movie synths and a twitching digital hi-hat, but that’s one of the joys of Misfits songs – they can be translated in any language, played on any instrument, and at the very worst, still sound kinda good. It’s only a quick taste of Atomic Dinette, but this is a punk forty-five, not a Tolstoy novel.

Spiritiste Excommunication Hymns LP (Protagonist Music / Tor Johnson)
With screamo’s undeniable (and stupefying) resurgence, it was only a matter of time before I came across a new band like Baton Rouge’s Spiritiste. Their sound hearkens back to the era when screamo was more closely aligned with crusty hardcore than mall-metal, full of bands from ex-communist eastern European states who treated hardcore with a collective mindset (and if they’re lucky, North American distribution care of Ebullition). Portraits Of Past, One Eyed God Prophesy, Inept and Ananda come to mind, a blast-beat-free emotional hardcore sound full of the jagged drum beats and high-on-the-neck guitar parts that cause audience members to violently tap on the straps of the big backpacks they are inexplicably wearing at the show. Like the wave of screamo I’m describing, Spiritiste do not shy away from the political, directing their understandable rage towards a number of well-deserving targets, most directly expressed in “The Dead Travel Fast”. These songs aren’t as chaotic or thrilling as I generally like this sort of thing to be – I am an original Witching Hour Records Koffin Kids fan-club member, after all – but I am sure their friends are supportive, and that they provide a necessary function in the hardcore ecosystem of Baton Rouge. Real hardcore kids are needed everywhere.

Te/DIS Impending Divulgence LP (Galakthorrö)
Four albums in and I’m starting to think that Te/DIS’s gloomy disposition is permanent. Maybe the sun never shines in Duisburg, Germany? Whatever the basis for Te/DIS’s somber outlook, it fits Galakthorrö like a black-leather opera glove. The label is highly selective with its stamp of approval, and Te/DIS has not strayed from the script since their debut EP a dozen years ago. Impending Divulgence might not be a crucial new work in that respect, but if you want dreary minimal-synth with an eerily-calm Dr. Frankenstein on vocals, look no further. This is music for bat caves (and clubs named The Bat Cave) and hidden libraries from the 1800s, or any concealed location where guano and dust accumulate equally. I appreciate how detached Te/DIS sounds when he sings, real pod-people emotion, which suits the similarly science-fictiony electro-industrial backdrop. Even on a track like “Your Truth My Lie”, where he actually sings a melody, it comes across like HAL 9000 attempting Depeche Mode karaoke. This is precisely what I want to hear from a tertiary Galakthorrö artist: electronic goth music fully committed to its own morbid fantasies.

There There LP (Psychic Static)
One of the interesting things about my micro-generation of hardcore kids – let’s say, those who are currently between the ages of 37 and 47 – never really stopped being in bands. Prior generations of punks took decades off, and some, in rare cases, actually stopped playing music, but there are just scores of any-gendered dudes out there like me who have been doing bands, old and new, since the turn of the century. Therein lies the rub: how do you keep it exciting or meaningful; how do you find a worthwhile path forward into this unavoidably middle-aged underground? Sometimes a new band is the way to go, as is the case with There, featuring ex-personnel from Arab On Radar, Doomsday Student, Athletic Automaton and The Cancer Conspiracy. That’s a Providence post-hardcore pedigree if there ever was one, and There take what they already know how to do and apply it to this slightly new configuration. As you might imagine, the guitars chase you like bees over booming, untraditional drum patterns, as bassist / synth-player Josh Kemp vocalizes in a way as to suggest he might be losing his mind a little. They throw in the occasional blast-beat for good measure, but it’s the side-long closer “The Famous Handsome Actor” that I find most intriguing, which points to the question of “if Klaus Schulze managed Racebannon in the early ’00s, who’s paying the weed dealer?”.

Ugne & Maria Zotasphere LP (Hands In The Dark)
I enjoyed Ugne Uma’s recent EP so much that I vowed to check out any and all musical Ugnes I might come across. So far it’s a move that’s paying off, as this new collab album between Ugne Vyliaudaite and Marija Rasa Kudabaitė is a choice dip into the electro-abyss. Together, these two operate in a melting-pot of downtempo moves I’d associate with the Stroom label. Dub-techno, new-age, trip-hop, ambient, dubstep, experimental… Ugne & Maria throw so many colors in the mix that it becomes something else entirely, beholden to none of its individual parts. This results in mostly-instrumental electronic beats that move at their own pace, with keys, pads, chords and strings connected by the thin layer of syrup they’ve been doused in. I’d take you directly to “Xmas Rec”, a downtempo stepper tilted on its axis, full of intrigue and cushioned by five stubby bass notes, but I’d want you to stay for “I Contain Multitudes” too, which sounds like an inebriated Lolina messing with Porter Ricks tracks in your isolation-tank headphones, cartoon fragments of dance music bubbling up all around. At first listen, it kind of felt like a mess to me, albeit a highly enjoyable one; while the satisfying background-music appeal of Zotasphere hasn’t dissipated after repeated listens, I think I’m starting to grasp Ugne & Maria’s puzzle-logic.

Unidad Ideológica Choque Asimétrico LP (La Vida Es Un Mus)
Essentially a law of nature at this point, Colombian punk and metal simply goes harder than anywhere else. Where else could the Imagen seven-inch, or Parabellum’s Sacrilegio have come from? Nowhere, that’s where. Unidad Ideológica hit the global scene in 2021 care of the ever-prescient La Vida Es Un Mus label, and Choque Asimétrico is their follow-up full-length. Much like its psychedelically horrifying cover art, this album rages with an injurious fury, the sound of what the kids call “crashing out” at breakneck speed. Imagine those self-titled Die Kreuzen songs as performed by The Shitlickers: bass-driven, frenzied progressions captured in a molten-hot recording that jumps out of the speakers. We get a moment of respite with the opening moments of fourth track “Huir”, but it’s short-lived – violent pogoing has kicked up all the dust on the floor and we can no longer see or breathe. “Colapso” is unsafely fast, cramming more notes in its close quarters than your average technical death-metal group, yet delivered with Framtid’s gale force. If these songs were less defined or memorable, the whole thing could blend together in an overwhelming blur, but Unidad Ideológica are too tight and in control to let that happen – they want you to experience every brutal detail with clarity, bearing full witness to your own demise.

Lou Venturini Fuck Composure LP (Accidental Meetings)
Another label I’d like to put on your radar is Accidental Meetings out of the UK. They’re a “label / party / podcast”, to be precise, and the music they release generally hovers in bass / dub / reggae territory, albeit appealingly skewed visions of such. I could happily bask in the humidity of Tokio Ono’s “Onion Soup Dub” until the spring flowers bloom, but before it gets away from me I want call this incredible twelve-inch from Lou Venturini to your attention. It’s a hard one to pinpoint, or even describe, which of course is grounds for excitement over here. Unintentional, digitally-abetted no-wave? Early Animal Collective turned IDM? Neither is quite right, especially when a track like “Stretch His Face” sounds like the best version of Butthole Surfers, or the early Primus demo that only exists in my dreams. There’s a lot of fast-fingered guitar, sometimes in acknowledgement of both dance music and Radiohead (say, “I Persevere”), and often in a manner similar to Glen Schenau’s excellent Nusidm. Venturini never lets the songs breathe, however, always tweaking and withering and spiraling parts in unintuitive ways. “Put Your Ear Near Mine” carries The Fall’s legacy beautifully, replete with electroshock vocal squeals. In earlier centuries, society would’ve quickly concluded that Venturini’s a madman and either exalted or executed him, but in our era he’s able to quietly release a small press-run of vinyl records for those lucky enough to stumble upon them.

Al Wootton Glorias 12″ (Lith Dolina)
Hell of a 2025 for Al Wootton, who has firmly established himself as one of the UK’s finest purveyors of creative rhythmic electronics. He’s as curious as we are, finding fresh ways to utilize the appealing properties of dub, post-punk, techno, cold-wave, what have you, and this new Glorias EP furthers his exceptional run. The premise is such: Wootton utilizes “minute samples of pieces by composers who were exiled from Franco’s Spain after the Spanish Civil War and field recordings of the Spanish countryside”. The resulting torn-edge collages are layered over an understated techno pulse on “Glorias”, the vibrant strings poking like sunlight through a bullethole-riddled canvas tent. It’s enthralling, alluring music that does not require the backstory to satisfy, but there’s no denying that the work is enhanced when you imagine the courageous anti-fascist composers who refused to snuff out their musical beauty in obedience. The b-side offers both a “Drums Version” and a “Drumless Version”, and I heartily recommend both – “Glorias (Drums Version)” lets the party take the wheel, whereas “Glorias (Drumless Version)” is messy-ambient par excellence, a gorgeous portal between the future and the past.

Dead On Your Feet took the stage without much fuss, a Gen Z straight-edge hardcore band whose first gig took place earlier in 2025. Featuring members of Scarab and Gridiron, they’ve got Philly roots, with plenty of mosh-happy friends in the crowd to prove it. It would seem the Muted Chug is a pre-requisite for any form of hardcore band nowadays, and while Dead On Your Feet did not diverge from this, I appreciated the equal presence of fast-core drumming and under-a-minute song lengths. Their sound wasn’t great – for a five piece, one guitar unintentionally dominated the mix – but I liked the way the bassist’s long hair was tucked deep within his hoodie, and the mosh antics from their younger fans kept things lively. Bodies shifted to the front when they fired off a cover of Youth Of Today’s “Positive Outlook”, and then once again when they closed with another cover song that I couldn’t place. I asked around, and my elder quorum decided it must have been a straight-edge hardcore band from the ’00s or later. Fire off in the comments if you were also there and can enlighten me.

The breakdown / setup time between bands was so efficient that I didn’t bother stepping outside before Fightback. Making the dreary drive up from Baltimore (“we passed so many accidents on the way here”), they were the scrappiest band of the afternoon, looking like a bunch of high-school seniors, college-acceptance letters fresh in hand. Their form of hardcore was derivative in the manner of early Revelation Records, and their stage sound was just as uneven as Dead On Your Feet’s, but they bopped around plenty on stage and the crowd followed suit. Technical prowess is never high on my list, particularly with loud energetic guitar music, so I was perfectly content watching them do their thing for fifteen minutes or so. Of note was their fall-apart cover of Judge’s “I’ve Lost” – the drummer didn’t seem to know the song, and yet they soldiered through it, never more than two of their five members playing the same parts at the same time in the way that Judge had originally written it. My one buddy, whose life-long dedication to hardcore is unbreakable, was there as well, and he couldn’t help but storm up front and sing along, unconcerned with the craftsmanship of Fightback’s rendition. It’s been a minute for me, but I eagerly anticipate the moment that I might feel that same magnetic pull into the pit from some unexpected cover song if I keep going to shows like these.

Speaking of eager anticipation, the excitement was high for C4, undoubtedly the main reason the room was wall-to-wall packed. Known for putting a naked guy with an erection on the cover of their 2025 album Payback’s A Bitch, it was clear that no apologies were forthcoming. After all, C4 hail from the pervasively negative city of Boston, these four mooks perfectly embodying the hate-filled hardcore/metal crossover they performed. From the jump, their sound didn’t suffer from the thin mix of their openers – their filthy Power Trip / Overkill-style riffs were towering and mean, and the crowd responded in kind, the pit easily doubling in size. Their meaty, unrepentant hate displayed a dry comedic edge if you watched closely, from the singer’s repeated C4 shoutouts (he worked the band name into most of their songs, not least in “C4 Goes To War”) to their decision to open and close with the same song, “Me And The Boys”, a lyrical tale which I can assure you ends not in heartfelt friendship but in beating someone’s ass. Halfway through the set, I watched a guy get knocked out on his feet, wobbling on sea legs and grasping at random shoulders to keep from collapsing entirely. Others quickly came to his aid, but he brushed them off, stumbling back into the battlefield of backwards flying forearms before the song ended. The back of his shirt read “PRICE OF PAIN”, and if irony shared the chemical properties of carbon monoxide we’d all be dead right now. All in all a pretty masterful set of unrepentant mosh music, the way it was meant to be experienced: in a crowded, dangerous little windowless room, not on colored vinyl in the comfort of your suburban finished basement.

Wrapping the show was the main reason I found myself in attendance: the “only East Coast appearance” from Zurich straight-edge band Monkeyfellow. The twist here is that Monkeyfellow is, in reality, a Euro-edge parody band from someone in leading Floridian vegan-edge unit Ecostrike, piss-taking our well-meaning European hardcore friends whose NYHC straight-edge tributes sometimes miss the mark in delightfully silly ways. To be clear, Monkeyfellow are a joke band, and while the name doesn’t make sense to me from any sort of hardcore perspective, it still got a chuckle or two. The same could be said for their live presentation, with each of the four performers wearing t-shirts over their hoods-up hoodies (Floorpunch, Nike, Youth Of Today, Crank X Call fanzine) along with funny sunglasses(?). It’s a joke that’s here for a good time, not a long time, but they received a rousing reaction from the crowd, who to my amazement knew the words to “Simple Youth” and “Still Has The Spirit”. Everyone in the house could sing along to “Zurich Straight Edge, Go!”, seeing as the lyrics are the title chanted repeatedly (and with the same trick as C4, they performed it twice). One thing that seems to unite all walks of Americans is an eagerness to harmlessly mock Europeans if given the chance (I think it’s a jealousy thing), and Monkeyfellow did a sufficient job of imitating the roadies of a Crucial Response youth-crew band, bantering about trading for “an Ignite shirt, size middle”, offering a moment of silence in memory of Raybeez and denouncing “eating hamburger”. Take that, you people with functioning health-care systems and an obligatory month of paid vacation! The younger straight-edge contingent that fell back for C4’s creatine-ingesting moshers were back up front, proudly sharing the mic with a band whose mockery belied a true love for its source material. After the entire Monkeyfellow songbook was performed (four songs, one twice), the amps were turned off, the house music came up, and I was shuffling past the friendly members of Quarantine (now Damage) out of the venue and onto the street.

By 4:00 pm, we were back home, fully ‘core-satiated and couch-bound, and only a little bummed to miss The Effigies, who were set to headline the same stage later in the evening for an entirely different show. If the hours of the day allowed for a third hardcore show to take place, I’m sure the folks at Nikki Lopez would’ve squeezed it in.

Alpha Maid Is This A Queue LP (AD 93)
Let’s kick this off with a grotesque proportional analogy: Warp Records is to The Uncanny X-Men as AD 93 is to The New Mutants. I say that as a person who hasn’t read a Marvel comic since childhood, yet I know in my heart there’s something to it, seeing as the AD 93 roster is unconventionally skilled in its own unique and unprecedented ways yet beholden to a larger history of avant-garde, electronic, UK-centric artists. Amazingly, the label’s handful of guitar-wielding artists might even be the strangest of the bunch, case in point Alpha Maid. It’s the name that South London guitarist / vocalist / producer Leisha Thomas has chosen for herself, and Is This A Queue is her delightfully baffling full-length debut. It almost sounds like she’s completely unfamiliar with traditional song-form, which I mean as a sincere compliment. How else to explain why someone would open their album with “6-9”, four minutes of a slow industrial post-punk drum-loop and little else? Or lay down the ambivalent guitar stabs and sparse spoken vocals over Valentina Magaletti’s wild percussive trip on “Why We Have To Move”? Or pair the 4AD-meets-emo strum with clashing AutoTuned vocals in “On Smoke”?? None of it makes any commercial sense, or even typical “experimental” sense, which is a rare achievement for anyone putting together an album of songs centered around an instrument as established as the electric guitar. I can’t point to a better song to explain the mood of London’s weird 2025 vanguard than album-closer “Palimpsest”, featuring AD 93 alum Coby Sey’s lyrical flow, Ben Vince’s bizarrely processed saxophone and Thomas’s noisy no-wave guitar. By the time the rest of us catch up, there’s no doubt Alpha Maid will be onto something else.

Cairo Pythian Pressure Treated Cross LP (Industry Standards)
The last few years have done a number on all of us – who doesn’t have a friend that recently went off one of the many deep ends currently available? Case in point is Cairo Pythian. We last heard from him in 2015 with Touched, a devious glam-noir album that arrived ahead of the curve, and now he’s back, cosplaying like a Judgment Night extra on the cover. While my ears remain open for a Cairo Pythian rap/rock hybrid, Pressure Treated Cross doesn’t diverge from his prior formula, though he seems more willing than ever to follow his fascinations down the rabbit hole. Vocally, he still kinda sounds like early Marilyn Manson (a good thing in my book), whereas the music seems to fuse the lost-mind abjection of ’90s Coil with the aesthete synth-pop of Total Control’s final years. It’s music led by an unreliable narrator, which makes for an exciting listen; certain tracks eschew pop-song structures in favor of funhouse mirrors, but Cairo Pythian always grabs the wheel before careening off the cliff entirely. He seems to be writing with the understanding that either no-one or everyone is watching, which leads to song titles like “My Pregnant Girl”, “Bent From The Benzos”, “Trans Human Kiss” and “Diary Of A Pussy Fiend”. I assume he means well, but let’s be real, there’s gotta be some alarming Blu-rays in his personal collection.

Chopping Block Disfigured 7″ (Blood Soaked)
Topping my “records that would’ve made my year-end best-of had I heard them a few days earlier” list is Disfigured by Chopping Block. Yes, that Chopping Block, the one that released a sole seven-inch titled Grizzly Fetish in 1991 alongside other extreme hardcore acts that helped formulate what was later to be understood as power-violence. There are eight songs here, some of which go back as early as 1984, all of which were recently recorded and released by guitarist Dave Keck on the same Blood Soaked Records label that released their first EP thirty-four years ago. Someway somehow, Disfigured is one of the most urgent and ferocious hardcore records I’ve heard all year! Chopping Block haven’t lost a step, and I would argue they’ve tightened their songwriting and upped the brutality – it’s kind of astonishing. These songs are in league with Crossed Out, with breakneck shifts and psychotic breakdowns redolent of No Comment, No Less, Iron Lung and even Crumbsuckers. If this was a brand new band, I’d be stunned by the flawless authenticity on display, but I’m honestly maybe even more stunned that this is a group of guys who were around for the advent of the style and they still manage to completely nail such a thrilling and extreme form of hardcore-punk after a multi-decade hiatus. Highly recommended!

Copiers Drama / Anxiety 12″ (Future Heart Works)
Louisville’s Copiers get conceptual (but not too conceptual) on this fun new two-song twelve-inch single. The premise is thus: throw a single spoken-word into a loop pedal so that the band can cook something up around it. The plainspoken “Drama” is met with a shimmying bass-line / drum rhythm, and the guitar mostly meanders in and around it as four “drama”s descend in perpetuity. “Anxiety” prefers to skitter than to groove, perhaps finding some inspiration in the definition of the word they chose for this extended jam. The repetitive vocal samples calls to mind some of Bill Orcutt’s programmed music of the last few years, as well as Moin’s pensive post-hardcore techniques which have also center sampled spoken-word. Orcutt and Moin both seem a little too artfully-minded compared to what Copiers are doing here though, which feels far looser and less restricted, closer perhaps to Oren Ambarchi’s Stacte Karaoke EPs wherein he sets up karaoke backing tracks and shreds on guitar over top. I’ll have to check my Oblique Strategies deck to see if there’s a “rock-band jam over a vocal sample” card in there, but even if not, I’m sure Brian Eno would approve of the curious musical prompt Copiers developed here.

Distoromance Déjà Si Mort 7″ (Galakthorrö)
A new artist on the Galakthorrö roster is noteworthy and scarce, so why not toss the debut Distoromance single in your black velvet rucksack? I am along for the ride with this label til one of us perishes, with the understanding that whatever they release will be highly discerning in quality, sensuality and morbidity. That’s certainly the case with “Déjà Si Mort”, its gothic drama dripping like black wax around a patient, frightened beat. The vocals (presumably from member “Sandrine”, not the one named “François”) are some of the most enchantingly tuneful that Galakthorrö has ever released, and they elevate the track to a top billing on any respectable “music by and for haunted dolls” playlist. “Ornières” is under the power of its hypnotic synth throb; Sandrine’s vocals are a little more forceful here and, to be fair, perhaps at odds with the music’s video-game-dungeon pulse. It’s charmingly stilted in a way that reminds me of Belgian cold-wavers Bernthöler, though Distoromance are clearly French – these are red-wine synths, no doubt. I’d love to hear more, and if Galakthorrö’s track record means anything, there’s a good chance I’ll be able to when Distoromance return with an LP in two or three well-considered years.

Dopplereffekt Metasymmetry 12″ (Tresor)
Living legends Dopplereffekt have dwelled in the distant future for three decades now, and while one could forgive them for easing into a comfortable stasis, that’s simply not their style. They’re restless techno scientists, finding new usages for time-tested technologies, which includes the kinetic electro-dance and alien-ambient styles that comprise this four-track EP. “Time Modulation-Graviton Pulse” is Kraftwerk subjected to the violence of a Terminator 2 chase scene; “Multiverse Wavefunction” is the beat-less, revitalizing energy-pool that restores those robotic mannequins to full functionality. The pattern follows on the second side, with the rubbery thwock of “Collapse of Simultaneity” waking up all the sleeping clones in their aquatic cells as the THX-quality atmospherics of “Olbers Paradox” survey the damaged battlefield, taking stock of losses through angelic vocal sweeps and glimmering synth pads. As always, the music of Dopplereffekt is clinically precise and body moving, but theoretical and impish too, a poltergeist caught in the mainframe. Who else could release a collection with the academic title of Gesamtkunstwerk and fill it with tracks called “Pornoactress”, “Pornoviewer” and “Plastiphilia”? Dopplereffekt know the truth: robots, as it turns out, need as much sex as the next guy.

Dridge Wind LP (Drin)
“Dridge” could be a great word for the stagnant filth composed of organic and inorganic material that congeals outside of industrial processing facilities, but it’s also well-suited to this West Philly doom-metal trio. They build upon the epic sludge of 2023’s Dying Out with Wind, another spiteful march to the gallows. There are three tracks here (respective track times: 17:02, 4:58, 19:20), which gather the down-tuned tones of Warhorse and Asunder and whip them into disgruntled action. The music is sluggish, the riffs are simplistic and unmemorable, the vocals are a Rolf / Cookie Monster hybrid, and before you know it, Dridge have swallowed up a half hour of your life in their primordial din. Even their phaser pedals are operating on the slowest possible settling! It’s all about the totality of these lengthy tracks and their many peaks and valleys, a foul atmosphere befitting Mark Erskine’s inhospitable landscape painting on the cover. Dridge conjure that ancient desolation in their music, to the point that when the first painfully glorious guitar solo hits in “Inner Sanctum Of The Icy Realm (Wind)” (ten minutes in?), it feels well-earned, a cache of weaponry discovered on a craggy cliff. Those cave fairies that restore your hearts back to full health? Sorry, those went extinct centuries ago.

The Educated Fools Tantric Decapitation: 69 Mins. Of Trichotomy And Liquefaction 2xLP (Total Punk)
No longer satisfied with swapping out wacky new definite articles in front of their name, Retail Simps have donned new costumes entirely as The Educated Fools. I can’t quite follow the plot – whatever Easter Eggs and inside jokes are lodged in their new aliases, the song titles and cover diploma, it’s all lost on me – but as for their debaucherous rock n’ roll, it makes the same profound sense as a chicken that can play Tic Tac Toe. Imagine if John Candy and Black Randy formed a band for the sole purpose of irritating their neighbors, sweating through their suits-and-ties and ruining their roommate’s saxophone by drinking egg nog out of it. There’s at least one “whop-bobba-loo-bop” to be discovered here, though if you could crack Tantric Decapitation open like a fortune cookie, that’s the message I’d expect to find printed within. As they stretch out over two full LPs, the songwriting isn’t as inspired or tight as the last couple Retail Simps albums, but I’d be an uneducated fool if I thought airbrushed songwriting was their intended goal. No, this is a full-scale intestinal clean-out of all their trashy rock mania – now that you’re nice and empty, it’s time to schedule those colonoscopies, gents!

Emer Fog LP (Short Span)
Lots of evil people out there these days trying to convince us that machines can have souls, yet the only time I’ve recently found myself considering this possibility is while listening to Fog. It’s the first full-length from Brussels-based sound artist Marija Rasa under her Emer moniker, and you might also find yourself charmed by the warm and prismatic tones that emanate from these seven tracks. From a layman’s perspective, imagine Autechre and Vladislav Delay given free range to manipulate and remix Jessie Ware and Sade stems, the after-hours melodies plucked apart and smartly reassembled. Much as Pole took a scalpel to classic dub does Emer carve paper dolls from soulful trip-hop elements, similar to something you’d enjoy on the False Aralia label. The sounds are abstracted and dislocated, but Emer materializes her tracks with lopsided rhythms and casually-looping patterns – for as unusual as “Nobody Speaks” is, there’s no denying that it’s a song, not an experimental process. My favorite cut might be “The Evergreen Fog” – its repeating melodic motif is as soft and tear-stained as Prince’s favorite pillow – but the whole album is a joy to behold, a heavy-lidded downtempo trip through a deep sea of blankets (to borrow a phrase from John Mayer’s creepiest hit, “Your Body Is A Wonderland”).

Equipment Pointed Ankh Eggs A Little Late LP (Petty Bunco)
It’s been a banner year for Ryan Davis and friends, and what better way to cap it off than with a new one from the most welcoming and open-minded project he’s a part of: Equipment Pointed Ankh. My understanding is that this is mostly Jim Marlowe’s baby, but we’re not dealing with a crew of self-obsessed egotists – if there’s a glare in any one of the ten(-plus) members’ faces, the others will offer up their sunglasses without a second thought. For the uninitiated, the ‘Ankh sound is omnivorous and free-spirited, an ultra-talented mixed bag of characters (and instrumentation) that will follow any thread of an idea out of their own sheer amusement (and subsequently, ours). That means that a horn section might bubble up over some folksy guitars, or a kraut-rock groove could stumble into some funny sound effects; how about one person reads poetry written by a different band member over hummingbird strings and dub drums? It all happens here, like a big-band Blues Control with unabated studio access, or The Olivia Tremor Control meets The Scientist At Cropped Out Festival, though more often like neither. I still can’t get over the inventiveness of 2023’s From Inside The House, or the hilariously inappropriate cover for 2019’s Live (I think about that guy’s predicament way more than I should), so I look forward to eventually deciphering what they’re on about this time around with Eggs A Little Late.

Frigöra Fullständig Frigörelse LP (General Speech)
As we near total reissue completion of ’80s Japanese hardcore, we can now safely move into the ’90s – no MCR Company release is safe. Frigöra hailed from Kawasaki City in the mid ’90s, and their form of noisy hardcore-crust carries no signs of maturation or evolution from the style’s earliest practitioners (Confuse, Mob 47, LSD, Extreme Noise Terror). Fullständig Frigörelse captures the group’s twelve-inch and seven-inch EPs, the split EP with Diskonto and three unreleased tracks for good measure (including a Mob 47 cover), presented with the class and exquisite graphic design we’ve come to expect from General Speech. That means there’s a big booklet full of lyrics, which illuminate Frigöra’s staunch animal-rights stance, and allow me to now sing along to “Ett Dyurförsök (Stinker)”. The mid ’90s are generally considered a fallow period for molten-hot d-beat crust, even by Japanese standards, but Frigöra are a shining exception, maintaining their convulsive drumming and scalding guitar sound across these four different recording sessions. Those of us with weaker constitutions may need to tap out after one side, but anyone among us who ever accidentally poked themselves by sitting on their own spiked leather jacket will relish Fullständig Frigörelse from start to finish.

Zach Hill & Lucas Abela Bag Of Max Bag Of Cass LP (Warp)
If you’re going to collaborate with the guy who smashes oily glass against his face, you have but one option: go harder than you’ve ever gone before. Phenom drummer Zach Hill clearly lusts for such a challenge, and we all know Lucas Abela (aka Justice Yeldham) has no sonic conscience, so let’s hope whoever greenlit this project at Warp has an airtight employment contract. A populist crowd-pleaser this ain’t! Bag Of Max Bag Of Cass is unrelenting digital noise from start to finish, a tornado of wasps riding a tsunami across an active volcano (inside a giant dishwasher… on fire?). There are occasional moments of coherent drumming (on mostly electronic kits?) buried in the sonic sludge, giving it a Black Pus feel (see “Combat Boxes” and “Bent On 13”), but the album ultimately gushes forward like Hanatarash’s physically violent freakouts had they been delivered via Russell Haswell’s most evil laptop. It’s as thick and imposing as your finest harsh-noise-wall artists, but the constant, dizzying activity is what pushes Bag Of Max Bag Of Cass to unforeseen greatness, the duo operating at thrillingly reckless speeds. No need for Abela to smash the glass on his face for this one – this music has already shattered it.

Idea Fire Company Hot Enough For You? LP (Horn Of Plenty)
There’s a good chance Idea Fire Company are your favorite deeply-underground experimental band’s favorite deeply-underground experimental band. Their debut album came out a year before Nirvana’s Nevermind, and while the global response to these albums differed wildly, Idea Fire Company have always sounded fresh, and if not ahead of time, then wholly outside of it. Consistently releasing music since then, Hot Enough For You? is their 21st or 22nd album depending how you’re keeping score, and it’s as restlessly creative as anything else in their vast archives. The core duo of Scott Foust and Karla Borecky are joined by Robert Beerman on percussion, Matt Krefting on alto sax, Mike Popovich on bass, and Timothy Shortell on clarinet this time, but don’t let that big-band lineup fool you – these songs are full of the same eerie, repetitive, ominously creaky vibes that have permeated the Idea Fire Company oeuvre through their history. Some of these tracks seem downright painful to play; the closing title track is case in point, a disorienting slow-motion lurch that reeks of nausea. It’s like a jazz-bar house band rehearsing the music of Earth and Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society, but substituting the right notes with wrong ones, and refusing to let go. Or more simply, it’s another uncompromising success – in this way (and the water-themed art), kinda like Nirvana’s Nevermind.

Nape Neck The Shallowest End LP (Dot Dash Sounds / OCCII, Amsterdam / Red Wig)
If Dislocation Dance wasn’t already the name of a band, it’d be well-suited for this rambunctious post-punk group. Nape Neck’s EP collection from earlier this year introduced the group to an audience beyond their native Leeds, and The Shallowest End comes in even hotter, a three-way scuffle between bass, drums and guitar. And like a true communist guild, they all share singing duties! Claire Adams’s bass and Bobby Glew’s guitar are at constant odds, and drummer Kathy Gray occasionally picks a side, or sticks it to them both. To be clear though, this isn’t improvised: their off-kilter post-punk is in league with Erase Errata, Huggy Bear and The Pop Group, though they refuse to leave an inch of breathing room in these songs (as if Sleetmute Nightmute met at a jazz conservatory). Even as it falls apart in the middle of “The Rabbit”, someone takes it upon themselves to blow a safety whistle over the deconstructed din, over and over. The trio save The Shallowest End from solidifying into a mass of impenetrable math-rock through the obvious fun they’re having; the performance is tight but not to the point of discomfort. Nape Neck clearly relish their time together and the fact that they can pull off such nonlinear post-punk tunes, both inspired and inspiring.

November Növelet Electrical LP (Galakthorrö)
Kind of ironic that long-standing German gloom-wave duo November Növelet decided to call their new album Electrical, with lighting streaking across a dark sky on the cover, considering how perished it sounds. This record is electrical in the same sense that a dying charger plugged into a faulty socket is electrical, its cord fraying to the point of exposing its wiry guts. As November Növelet, Mr. and Mrs. Arafna have always reveled in the empty space between heartbeats, and Electrical might be their most subdued effort yet, an empty hospital bed of a record. Of course, this is part of what makes them so alluring: the restraint, the below-freezing electronics, the soft touch with which they deliver their doomed prophecies. Their aesthetic really hasn’t changed since they started the group back in the mid ’90s – you could listen to the title track here (or any of them, really) and enjoy many of the same greyscale oscillations and ghostly keyboard settings found on any of their prior releases. There’s a comfort in that for fans such as myself, the Arafnas unwavering dedication to their distinctive artistry, though it wouldn’t be a comfort if their music was mediocre. If you’re the member of your family most likely to linger on the beauty of a dead crow laying in a fallow field, I have good news for you – Galakthorrö has once again resumed shipping to the United States.

Oh Mr James I’m Not Here EP 12″ (Analogical Force)
Rephlex Records coined the term “braindance” back in the ’90s to simultaneously mock and evolve one of the worst genre names of all time, IDM (“intelligent dance music”, woof). It’s that foundational mix of hard electro beats and dazzling synth-play that shines through the new EP from Welsh producer Oh Mr James. Opener “Sometimes” is universally undeniable, a wild filleting of Speak & Spell voices over a punchy beat of Juan Atkins-ian origin. The title track follows suit, electro in Drexciya’s school of thought (which allows for silly playfulness to poke through). The beats cannot be shamed by even the stodgiest of electronic music enthusiasts – in this track’s case, it’s elevated to greatness by the variety of oddball voices reciting the track title. “The Bishop”‘s sprightly, off-kilter melody over propulsive breaks nods to Aphex Twin; “Ground Control Acid” floods the zone with rubbery kicks and processed vocals as thick and wet as paint. And there are two more tracks of equal regard! It’s impossible to imagine Oh Mr James not having the time of his life making these tunes, texting unmastered clips to his mates at 3:00 AM and expecting immediate emoji reactions in validation of his freewheeling braindance style. See if “Sometimes” doesn’t make you feel the same way.

Orange Whip Orange Whip 7″ (100% Breakfast)
My immediate thought is that Orange Whip should do a split with Yellowcake, and then I realize I’m simply describing the ingredients to a classic Hostess cupcake. Remind me to not write these reviews on an empty stomach! Orange Whip are a new punk band outta Cambridge, in kind of the best position any band will ever be in – releasing their first seven-inch EP after a demo debut. Punk is a game of inches, and I like where Orange Whip are positioned: the vocals are shouty-sassy, and the music toes the line between speedy garage and first-wave Cali punk. If you want to look back to the permanent dead-zone of music (which is to say, between fifteen and twenty years prior to the current moment), I’m reminded of Clorox Girls and Brain F≠, two bands who probably also looked back to The Wipers or Angry Samoans or The Gits or Urinals or The Donnas to help develop their sound in the truest manner possible. My favorite of these five tracks is probably “Pepsi Clear”, partially for the title (am I crazy or was it actually called Crystal Pepsi?) and mostly for the way it weaves in threads of poppy grunge, like a DIY-basement-circuit Belly that hangs out with Fucked Up whenever they come to town.

Real Lies We Will Annihilate Our Enemies LP (Tonal Recordings)
While other men my age exacerbate their mental illnesses by befriending AI chatbots, I choose to listen to records like We Will Annihilate Our Enemies by Real Lies, which has me convinced that I’m an Instagram-famous nineteen-year-old club-kid dating two rival drug dealers as I fly back and forth between London and Miami. Of course we can order bottle service – my absentee entertainment-lawyer father just wired me twenty Gs! This is an album that builds rich worlds around it, with the fabricated sheen and sparkle of a strip club from the Grand Theft Auto universe. Real Lies don’t simply mimic the sounds emanating within a London mega-club, they narrate them as well. I also find myself thinking of the characters and settings of HBO’s horniest young-people shows (Euphoria, I Love LA and Industry, obviously), though We Will Annihilate Our Enemies is too on-the-nose for music supervisors to actually work with. Over corporate-sounding house, big-tent UK garage, breakbeat-ambient and modern dance-pop beats, mostly male vocalists wax forlornly about lost love, the exhaustion of aesthetic sexuality, anomie for the terminally online, and cigarettes after sex over the weekend (or perhaps Cigarettes After Sex and The Weeknd). You can stay home if you want – the opening double-shot of “Loverboy” and “Towards Horses” are completely over the top and cheaply cathartic and I relish every second of them, ready to chase the Real Lies tour bus through the never-ending night.

Rigorous Institution Tormentor 12″ (Roachleg)
You can smell great hardcore-crust from a mile away – literally, I mean. If I don’t wash my clothes immediately after listening to Rigorous Institution’s new twelve-inch EP, I’ll probably just have to throw them away – their stench has never been more piquant than on Tormentor, an excellent seven-track EP that pairs a hideous artfulness with plain-old hardcore fury. It’s always fun when traditional-sounding hardcore bands lose their minds a little (and with it, the musical plot), but Rigorous Institution really deliver the best of both worlds here, cooking up their own Tolkien-esque sonic battlefields (darkly atmospheric synths, lengthy instrumental passages) without neglecting the meat-and-potatoes heft. Their songs pound in a manner similar to Amebix at their fastest and His Hero Is Gone at their slowest, with riffs that avoid typical Sabbathian progressions or public-domain d-beat. Flee from “Preach To The Converted”, which appears on the horizon like a modified Mad Max steamroller, or grievously sway to “Hidden Ruler (Kang Sheng)”… there’s no sunlight here, only harmful ultraviolet radiation. The Tormentor calls to mind some heinous gargoyle-faced tyrant on his throne of skulls, barking out war declarations against the feudal domains of King Diamond and Mortiis; the cover’s decrepit orc prisoner could’ve come from either battalion.

ROLROLROL Dinner LP (Ilian Tape)
The Dinner served by German duo ROLROLROL is a wide-ranging electro buffet. Many moods are explored here, though through most of them, you’ll understand that party-rock is undoubtedly, indisputably in the house tonight. “Paper Plane” pulled me in from the jump, a dazzling arpeggio layer-cake that clocks out in under a minute, and I keep sticking around for the rest. There are laser-light-show techno cuts, inventive futurist g-funk grooves and plenty of left-field hip-hop beats, all moving at a brisk downtown pace. Feels very aligned with Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder camp, the exuberant electro of Dorian Concept and a general hyperactivity I’d associate with Adult Swim’s bumper music of the last ten years. Some of it might go too hard, fast or weird for the general population (that squeak toy in “Popcorn” is an attention-grabber that will push some listeners too far), but then there’s “Sliders”, a b-boy chop fest of the highest order that no living human could deny. I don’t spend a lot of time with instrumental hip-hop beats, so I appreciate Ilian Tape’s gentle reminder that there’s a bright, busy world of this stuff happening at the same time as everything else. Not sure what that is on the cover – carpet, skin, the soft crust of a pie? Whatever it is, I suppose it’s Dinner.

Save Our Children / Stunted Youth split LP (Unlawful Assembly)
A split LP between two Texas hardcore-punk bands with names that reflect negatively towards adolescence? I’ll be there just as soon as I lace up the knockoff Doc Martens I skateboard in! Neither band seems to have much of a social-media presence (Vince McMahon smiling meme) and while a good part of the fun of any given hardcore-punk split LP is figuring out which of the two bands “wins”, Save Our Children and Stunted Youth each deserve a trophy. It’s like being beaten up by two people at the same time – how can you determine who left the worst bruises? Save Our Children (AKA S.O.C., proudly upholding the three-letter acronym hardcore band-name format) are magnificently old-school in their sonic approach, fast and down-to-earth in a way that reminds me of Ill Repute, White Cross and Neon Christ. Not even the subtlest trace of metal, just skinned-knee hardcore-punk with songs that average around a minute a piece. Stunted Youth sound exceedingly similar, even by the fine gradients with which I enjoy dissecting this perfect form of music. Maybe there’s a shade more meaty chaos on their side, as if S.O.C. found a weight-bench on the curb and started lifting while listening to Headcleaners MP3s. Stunted Youth also treat us to “Dipshit Secrets Pt. 1” and “Dipshit Secrets Pt. 2”, sounding like they skipped school to listen to Poison Idea all day. What can you learn in social studies that Kings Of Punk doesn’t already explain, anyway?

Scrabbled Plough Through The Rust LP (Wormwood Grasshopper)
There is a small subset of Aussie indie-underground enthusiasts that gets excited by new Wormwood Grasshopper releases, and we all share the common trait of being very, very attractive and cool. The label has mostly been out-of-office for the last decade, so I appreciate that they recently put together this Scrabbled LP, mostly comprised of studio recordings from 2015. (I told you the label takes it nice and slow.) As is often the label’s predilection, Scrabbled are proudly ramshackle, songs held together by a stanked-out guitar or two as a snare drum tries to keep up admirably, and what’s that, someone brought a violin? Cool, they might as well play that too. Scrabbled’s songs land somewhere between Mad Nanna’s patience-testing deconstruction and the lively amateur pop of Alternative TV. There’s a good bit of irritation here as well, which may set Scrabbled apart from some of their cheerier peers – check “N.K.O.T.B.”‘s undiluted fury, replete with a chorus that rhymes “shit for brains” with “video games”. I’m not sure if they call it gobbing in Australia or if that’s just a British thing, but many of these songs are ripe for the members of Scrabbled to angrily spit on the floor whilst playing. A belated sadness hangs over Plough Through The Rust though, as vocalist Bek Moore passed away shortly after the recording… this album’s a worthy, if untimely, final word.

S.K.V. + CazU-23 転 -Marobashi- LP (General Speech)
Upon listening to this album by S.K.V. + CazU-23, I received a phone call informing me that if I did not play it for someone else within seven days, the vengeful spirit of Sakevi would emerge from a reflective surface to kill me. Okay maybe that’s just The Ring‘s central plot device, but I approached this album with wariness and caution – the legendary G.I.S.M. vocalist may no longer walk among us mortals, but I can’t imagine he’s not out there wreaking havoc on some other plane of existence. 転 -Marobashi- documents a 2016 live performance of Sakevi alongside CazU-23 on noise guitar, and like any Sakevi-related material, it’s no half-measure. Sakevi delves deep, rooting out his most primal vocalizations like clogs in ancient pipes as CazU-23 sustains his unsettling timbres, an ambient drone that provides neither ambiance nor solemnity. Genre-abiding punks won’t know what to do with this besides politely nod at yet another piece of evidence that points towards Sakevi’s lunacy, and that’s fine – nothing about this record is “for everyone”. I wish I had attended this performance when it happened, but I’m thankful that none other than Hijokaidan’s Jojo Hiroshige penned the unexpectedly touching liner notes, detailing his musical relationship with Sakevi through this collaboration. I continue to hope to be proven wrong, but they really don’t make ’em like this anymore.

Split Apex Thoughts In 3D LP (Ever/Never)
Ever/Never seems to have reduced its ambitious release schedule in 2025, but whatever they’re lacking in quantity is surely made up for by the quality of Split Apex’s debut LP. They’re a new duo out of Croydon, South London, featuring Peter Blundell (of the late great Mosquitoes) and Jussi Palmusaari. As far as experimental post-punk goes, it’s like they were conjured straight out of my dreams: a part-Sightings, part-Shadow Ring amalgam whose mutant-power crashes the WiFi router each time it yawns. Blundell unleashes some gorgeously weird bass-lines – think Jah Wobble crammed in one of those precocious British phone booths – as he mutters Tim Goss-style over Palmusaari’s beguiling array of effects. I’m reminded of those great C.I.A. Debutante records from a couple years ago, or the more inspired tracks from one of those early-industrial Vinyl On Demand boxsets that span like eight LPs. Not sure I want to go as far as to call these tracks “songs”, but there’s a coherence, or a premeditation, that has me remembering them as easily as I can identify Wolf Eyes’s “Stabbed In The Face” from its first few seconds (a neat party trick). Some people will need more than this – verses and choruses, a tidy resolution, drums – but for my money, Thoughts In 3D is exquisitely reduced, with only the strangest and most potent elements given full reign. Recommended!

Tapes Photos Of My Frog 12″ (Jahtari)
There is no misinterpreting what Jackson Bailey AKA Tapes is referring to with “Photos Of My Frog”: throughout a pleasantly fidgety digital dub, frog-croak and camera-flash sound-effects volley back and forth. That’s a taste of the ludicrous fun to be had on this new EP care of the Jahtari label, an ever-reliable source for overtly digital, mostly instrumental reggae music. “Photos Of My Frog” is the one you’ll want to play for family and friends, but the remaining three songs (two of which are supplemented by “8-bit” versions) are charmingly artificial as well. “Cleat Skank” sounds like a Donkey Kong Country island level, whereas “Cleat Skank 8-bit” cleaves the processing power by a power of three. This irreverently old-school digital style been the Jahtari MO for years now, and while Tapes sometimes strays from the digi-dub reggae script (his “Summer Jam” from 2020 is muzak-cheese of the finest grade), their frequent team-ups are guaranteed crowd-pleasers, even if the crowd is just you, your cat and your Taco Bell mobile order at one in the morning. I’m gonna fire up my Nintendo, mute the TV, throw on “Back Cramp 8-bit” and see if it gives me the confidence to finally beat Hudson’s Adventure Island.

Teengenerate Live At The Empty Bottle LP (HoZac)
Teengenerate deserve a spot in the Japanese punk hall of fame (or any punk hall of fame, for that matter), but you know who wins this one? The Empty Bottle crowd. I’ve been lucky enough to perform at that beloved Chicago-punk institution close to a dozen times now, but I’ve never witnessed an audience like the one caught on tape at this Teengenerate show some thirty(!) years ago. This crowd is absolutely frothing at the mouth, squealing and screaming and losing their minds, a wild reaction somewhere between Showtime At The Apollo and The Beatles’s Live At The Hollywood Bowl, and Teengenerate bounce that energy right back. The recording is already hot (in a punchy, not muddy, way), and while the band’s carefree swagger remains evident on their studio recordings, Live At The Empty Bottle thrills from the two-way connection between band and audience. Originals like “Sex Cow” and “Get Me Back” are fully revved up, as if Teengenerate were flying high on the rest-stop amphetamines available back in the mid ’90s, and while I’m sad to see that they skipped their cover of The Zeros’s “Wild Weekend” this night, an unexpected rendition of The Queers’s all-timer “Kicked Out Of The Webelos” more than compensates. At one point, someone in the audience shouts “I love Japanese punk!” with sincere conviction, surely unaware that they were being recorded for posterity. Nowadays, everyone at every show is aware that they’re probably being filmed one way or another, which is one of the deep shames of our age. The best punk rock happens when no one is watching.

Vehicular Vehicular 12″ (False Aralia)
Mysterious techno imprint False Aralia strikes again, and much like serial killers, they follow a pattern. With abstract black etchings centered on a white cover, the productions are attributed to a lone Izaak “IS” Schlossman, each release given a distinct artist name and title even if they all seem to flow from the same creative well. They’re all mesmerizing swings at abstract ambient/dub/techno, and the fifth release, as Vehicular, might be my favorite of the bunch. On the uniformly titled “Vehicular 01”, we get a guest vocal spot from Lucas Deleon (aka De Leon, remember that pivotal album from 2018?). It’s not fair when an artist is great at more than one thing, so I’m mad at Deleon for having the voice of an angel and keeping it a secret until now. His singing is suited for mainstream Latin pop, but instead he chose to tuck it into this blissful sway, like digital algae in shimmering tide pools. “Vehicular 02” goes instrumental, tethering that same tropical-Alva Noto atmosphere to a sturdy low-end melody, whereas the fifteen minutes of “Vehicular 03” provides only the haziest essence of what preceded it, that cloud of salt and soot that remains when a squid is rousted from its camouflaged hiding place. Like many of this year’s best electronic releases, the vinyl vanished within hours or days, but the digital is freely available to console those of us caught sleeping (or working, or hanging out with friends…).

Visible Light Songs For Eventide LP (Permaculture Media)
If I think of the secret-richest artsy couple I know, and imagine who they would’ve hired to perform a live ambient set during their outdoor wedding reception’s light refreshment and cocktail hour, I keep landing on something like Visible Light. They’re a duo, Amy McNally on cello and Matthew Hiram on flute, synth, bowls, and sure, field recordings too, and as I look upon them dressed in white, peaking through a forest meadow under the sweet dappling rays of sunlight on the cover of Songs For Eventide, I can’t shake that sense of elegant matrimonial ambiance. McNally bows rich, slow tones from her cello, following patterns that sway and shift without the formal rigidness of sheet music, and Hiram’s flute adds a flavor not unlike the instrumental segments of Céline Dion’s immortal “My Heart Will Go On”, though darker, more cryptic melodies are explored as well. The range of ambient music being made right now has never been deeper and wider, from lightly-processed refrigerator hum to the dulcet, classically-informed sounds of Visible Light’s woodwinds and strings, but I encounter more of the former and less of the latter. Maybe it’s because you actually need some time-tested skill to make music like Visible Light, or maybe it’s because the sentimentality of this traditional-instrument style is more likely to accidentally drift into cornier territory. Regardless, Visible Light are a safer bet for your hallowed ceremony – Claire Rousay would probably end up DJing Euro-trance.

Vorhex Angel Heavenly LP (Electric Outlet)
Can’t say I ever checked out JEFF The Brotherhood, what with the unappealing name and all. It’s two brothers, Jake and Jamin Orrall – yet the brotherhood is some other person named JEFF? And it’s an acronym in all caps, like some sort of supercomputer robot from the ’60s? It did not entice me then or now, but the brothers Orrall have recently joined up with guitarist Kunal Prakash for a hard reset as Vorhex Angel. If it turns out JEFF The Brotherhood sounded like this, I’m gonna kick myself, because Vorhex Angel are harsh psychedelic noise-rock in the fine tradition of High Rise, and they destroy. Some of these songs practically hit tribute-band status, but that’s fine by me – High Rise deserve to be tributed every single day, everywhere. The opening title track is a molten jam not unlike Air Conditioning at their peak, but when the rock grooves settle in (and boy do they), I’m reminded of the earliest, speed-addled Comets On Fire recordings and the heaviest Acid Mothers Temple stoner-epics (from Makoto Kawabata’s Degeneration X jersey era). “Spring” delivers Laddio Bolocko-esque thrills before the album-closing “Lemon Tree” offers a soft-swaying come-down from the heightened fury that preceded it. What’s next, are you gonna tell me that Be Your Own Pet actually sounded like Urban Waste and I need to check them out too??

Ian Wellman Particularly Dangerous Situation LP (Elevator Bath)
Less than a year after the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires, Californian sound-artist Ian Wellman releases his first LP for Elevator Bath, a direct sonic document of that devastation. On January 7th, 2025, Wellman drove towards the fires, recorded the winds whipping the crap out of his gear, came home covered in ash and used those recordings as a base for the expansive, harshly soothing drones of Particularly Dangerous Situation. We all process grief and loss differently, but I gotta say… this one is coming a little too soon for my personal tastes. The horrific whistling winds and the crackle of flame are all too real and direct, these circumstances and tragic repercussions still being felt by an untold number of people, some of whom I call friends. Wellman is also processing this grief – I have no doubt that he’s been personally hit harder by the fires than my East Coast-residing self – and while I am glad he’s been able to turn to music to purge these emotions, it’s still too immediate for me to enjoy art inspired by this particular devastation. Maybe for others, such a listen might offer some form of catharsis, but if I’m going to enjoy some avant-garde disaster-porn, it’s going to be a techno album about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs or an industrial soundtrack to Pompeii being buried alive, not a tragedy fresh enough to still have its own outstanding Gofundme campaigns.

In the meantime, let’s look back on twelve months of excellent music. The hurdles seem higher every year, from the artists trying to find a reasonable way to share their work with the people who might enjoy it to the prospective listeners trying to find a way to discover new music that really speaks to them (and hopefully avoid the horrors of “dynamic ticket pricing” if they decide to go to a show). So, thank you all for persisting! If I can offer one piece of advice to those listeners, it’s this: pay closer attention to fewer things. It’s a rich suggestion coming from a guy who talks about thirty new records every month, but bear with me! The oligarchs want to turn art into a fire hydrant spew of contextless noise, an endlessly-scrollable deluge that you can neither process nor enjoy. It’s the worst way to experience culture, so please, actually spend some money on music (maybe even buy some MP3s if you’re feeling saintly), and then spend the same amount of time with it you gave to a compact disc in 2002. Even if you hate it, too – some of my fondest listening experiences are with music I cannot stand. (You should’ve been in the van when we played that first Geordie Greep single over and over, ahahahehehe!) Besides listening to records at home (while surrounded by IKEA Kallaxes at all angles), I got a modern MP3 player earlier this year (the terribly-named FiiO JM21) and I put something like seventy full-lengths on there (roughly 0.000007% of Spotify’s library). It’s been deeply satisfying to blast the same few albums for weeks at a time. The two or three companies that lease most of our digital lives back to us are so desperate to own the remainder, so while we still have this semblance of freedom of choice, I strongly urge you to exercise it.

While we’re looking back, I’m also gonna take this yearly opportunity to toot my own horn, however small it may be. Some quick personal highlights:

– Irish punk band Problem Patterns invited me to sing on their song “Sad Old Woman”, and not as the titular character, believe it or not. It’s on their Boring Songs For Boring People EP. I actually got to perform it live with them in Brighton over the summer, and I bonked my head really bad on a PA speaker during it, just as nature intended

– Pissed Jeans played fifteen shows this year (slightly under our median average of eighteen), and shared our cover of Lou Reed’s “Waves Of Fear”

– I got a new project going called Shirtless with Jonathan Krohn and Alina Pleskova, and we released our debut album Empty Powers on Downwards Records

– I did a fun interview with Gabi Page-Fort of Hex Enduction Records & Books for the shop’s Hex Enduction Quarterly zine, focused mostly on this very music newsletter/blog, which was lots of fun. I believe it’s only available in print form, but they’re extremely generous folks and would love to share with any interested parties I’m sure – you won’t regret reaching out to them!

Thank you for bearing with – we’re almost to the lists! I’d be remiss if I didn’t share my favorite song (and music video) of the year, too. Without question, it’s Jim White’s “I Don’t Do / Grand Central” featuring Zoh Amba. I talked it up earlier this month in my album review, but I need to reiterate it once more. Their pairing of homespun meditative groove with oddball comedic riffing is one of a kind, and you can sing along with it – in fact, you must sing along with it. The friendship displayed between these two artists is moving, probably because it’s just funny and natural and they are in no way trying to move us with it. If I could send holiday cards to my friends in the form of a song, it’d be “I Don’t Do / Grand Central”, make no mistake. See you next year!

Top Singles of 2025
1. Blawan BouQ 12″
2. Jorg Kuning Elvers Pass 12″
3. Alex Kassian Body Singer 12″
4. Gombeen & Doygen Prada / Sequel 12″
5. Rigorous Institution The Tormentor 12″
6. Bruce Belly / Burned Alive 12″
7. Actress Tranzkript 1 12″
8. Kissland Girls Mignon 7″
9. Oh Mr James I’m Not Here EP 12″
10. Chronophage Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship 7″
11. Miles J Paralysis Turf Step EP 12″
12. Vehicular Vehicular 12″
13. Upsammy Open Catalyst 12″
14. Jonathan Kirby This Is Your Song 7″
15. Tornado Wallace Bitter Suite 12″
16. Dwig Beyond Cry And Smile 12″
17. Eddy Current Suppression Ring Shapes And Forms 7″
18. Yu Su Foundry / Bonita 12″
19. Young Eman Popstar In Da Bits MP3
20. Carrier The Fan Dance 7″

Honorable Mention:
The Native Cats Aces Low / Lose Count 7″
Bruce The Price / Mimicry 7″
Dopplereffekt Metasymmetry 12″
Skee Mask Stressmanagement 12″
The Bug Burials / Mud 12″

Top Albums of 2025
1. Blawan SickElixir
2. YHWH Nailgun 45 Pounds
3. Nourished By Time The Passionate Ones
4. Erika de Casier Lifetime
5. Kaleidoscope Cities Of Fear
6. Darkside Nothing
7. Fish Narc Frog Song
8. Marie Davidson City Of Clowns
9. Safe Mind Cutting The Stone
10. Schatterau Übers Jahr
11. Cube Lucky Numbers & True Weight
12. France Destino Scifosi
13. Dark Thoughts Highway To The End
14. Rat Heart Dancin’ In The Streets
15. Unchained Frontalier
16. Headache Thank You For Almost Everything
17. Evan Parker & Bill Nace Branches
18. A Happy Return Hamewith
19. Carnivorous Bells Beacons In Limbo
20. Carrier Rhythm Immortal

Honorable Mention:
Real Lies We Will Annihilate Our Enemies
Index For Working Musik Which Direction Goes The Beam
They Are Gutting A Body Of Water LOTTO
JJulius Vol III
Black Eyes Hostile Design

Blawan BouQ (XL)
Alright, here’s some proof that my year-end best-of lists come straight from the heart: who in their right mind would pick the same artist for best single and best album if any sort of savvy posturing came into play? If my main goal was to strategically generate clicks, I’d be looking outside of my gut for the answers, but seriously – do you want new wave or do you want the truth? BouQ arrived by storm early in the year, subtly smoother and more sensual in comparison to the forthcoming SickElixir album, which of course we didn’t know at the time. These tracks are heavyweight pop caught in a violent windstorm without sufficient shelter, the cyber-femme vocal hooks cutting through waves of hot dust and the occasional shard of wrecked industrial equipment. “Fires” is Rihanna versus Godzilla in the Las Vegas sphere as officiated by Bill Kouligas… motion-sickness-inducing techno years ahead of its time. Since Blawan’s excellent Dismantled Into Juice single (coincidentally my favorite EP in 2023, ehrm), his accompanying artwork has utilized close-range photography of domesticated animals with neon spray-paint accents. The visceral and uncanny sheep’s wool doused with jarringly artificial pigmentation here is a perfect visual complement to the music. I’m so glad Blawan continues to share his unique vision with the world.

Blawan SickElixir (XL)
Real talk, the album category always comes with the stiffest competition. YHWH Nailgun, Nourished By Time, Erika de Casier, Kaleidoscope… they all produced stunning records that enriched my 2025 deeply, and had any of those artists chosen to whittle their albums down into EPs, they could’ve easily topped the singles list. However, there can be only one #1 in the numerical ranking system I stubbornly cling to, and this one’s a no-brainer: SickElixir is the high point of Blawan’s career. I’m not sure how he can ever top this, and I’m scared to think he might try, as I expect to be reckoning with this record for quite a while to come. Aggressive electronic music is a hard fruit to squeeze fresh juice from, and yet Blawan is here dumping it over us like a Gatorade cooler in the final seconds before a championship victory. Squint and you’ll hear Korn and Doja Cat, squint even harder and you’ll hear Napalm Death and Mr. Oizo, and if you squint so hard that your eyes start to bleed, congratulations – you’ve finally achieved the true state of SickElixir. I’ve seen the album appear on a few other best-of-2025 lists – rightfully so, of course – yet I’m more dismayed by those that have heard it and not given it top billing than those that haven’t heard it at all. Imagine tasting freshly-ground Alba Ceylon cinnamon for the first time and then ranking it third behind store-brand dried parsley and onion powder. That’s the trouble with blazing new ground, but I don’t have to wait for the world to catch up with Blawan… not when I can karate-mosh to “Casch” in my living room right this very moment. In fact, wait here a sec – I’ll be right back.