#Ethan Milititsky

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Dusted’s Decade Picks: The Lists

Protomartyr, who appear on at least three of these lists.

Of course, those picks from earlier today didn’t just manifest out of thin air; most (if not necessarily all) of us wound up coming up with some sort of decade-end list in the process of picking an album or two to ruminate upon, and a few that didn’t have specific pieces on singular works still had a little something to say about the decade just now passing away. Below the cut, then, is a more expansive but less wordy account of what various Dusted personnel found most personally essential in the 2010s. Enjoy!

Andrew Forell’s Ten Others of the Tens:

Algiers – Algiers (Matador 2015)

Burial – Rival Dealer (Hyperdub, 2013)

Deerhunter – Halcyon Days (4AD, 2010)

Goon Sax – We’re Not Talking (Chapter Music, 2018)

John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts (Bella Union, 2013)

John Murry – The Graceless Age (Evangeline, 2012)

Low – Double Negative (Sub Pop, 2018)

My Bloody Valentine – m b v (m b v, 2013)

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Skeleton Tree (Bad Seed Ltd, 2016)

Tim Hecker – Rave Death, 1972 (Kranky, 2011)

Ben Donnelly’s A Decade of Albums, Alphabetical

Sina Alam – Cut Pieces (Tekehaye Borideh Shodeh) (Sina Alam, 2011)

Marisa Anderson – Traditional and Public Domain Songs (Grapefruit Records, 2013)

Shana Cleveland & The Sandcastles – Oh Man Cover the Ground (Suicide Squeeze, 2015)

Demdike Stare – Tryptych (Modern Love, 2010)

Esben and the Witch – A New Nature (Nostromo, 2014)

Fire! Orchestra – Exit! (Rune Grammofon, 2013)

A Hawk and a Hacksaw – You Have Already Gone to the Other World (LM Dupli-Cation, 2013)

Heron Oblivion – Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop, 2016)

James Holden & The Animal Spirits – The Animal Spirits (Border Community, 2017)

Kelsey Lu – Blood (Columbia, 2019)

Cate Le Bon – Cyrk, Cyrk II, Mug Museum, Reward (Turnstile, Mexican Summer; 2012, 2013, 2019)

Zabelle Panosian – I Am Servant of Your Voice (Canary, 2017)

Stara Rzeka – Cién Chmury Nad Ukrytym Polem (Instant Classic, 2013)

Ufomammut – Eve, Oro: Opus Primum, Oro: Opus Alter (Supernatural Cat, Neurot; 2010, 2012)

Ulaan Passerine – Moss Cathedral, The Landscape of Memory (Worstward; 2016, 2017)

Various Artists – Sky Girl (Efficient Space, 2016)

Derek Taylor’s Ten for the Decade

Wadada Leo Smith – Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012)

Joe McPhee & Paal Nilssen-Love – Candy (PNL, 2015)

Jaimie Branch – Fly or Die (International Anthem, 2017)

Evan Parker – As the Wind (Psi, 2016)

Sonny Rollins & Don Cherry – Complete Live at the Village Gate (Solar, 2015)

Ellery Eskelin – Trio New York (Prime Source, 2011)

Henry Threadgill – In for a Penny, In for a Pound (Psi, 2015)

Peter Evans – Zebulon (More is More) 2013

Various Artists – FMP In Ruckblick (In Retrospect) (FMP, 2011)

William Parker – Wooden Flute Songs (AUM Fidelity, 2013)

Ethan Milititisky’s 10 Others That Deserve More Attention:

The Whines — Hell to Play (Meds, 2010)

Terry — Terry HQ (Upset the Rhythm, 2016)

Fly Ashtray — The Eponymous Object (Self-Released, 2012)

Metal Mountains — Golden Trees (Amish, 2011)

J. McFarlane’s Reality Guest — Ta Da (Hobbies Galore, 2019)

The Coolies — Kaka (Feeding Tube, 2015)

Hidden Ritual — Zebra Bottle (Monofonus Press, 2015)

Watery Love — Decorative Feeding (In the Red, 2014)

Uranium Orchard — Knife & Urinal (Cold Vomit, 2018)

Rose Mercie — Rose Mercie (Monofonus Press, 2018)

Ian Mathers’ Personal Top 20 of the Decade (Alphabetical)

Chelsea Jade — Personal Best (Create Music Group, 2018)

Clinic — Free Reign II (Domino, 2013)

EMA — The Future’s Void (City Slang, 2014)

Julianna Barwick — Will (Dead Oceans, 2016)

King Woman — Created in the Image of Suffering (Relapse, 2017)

Leverage Models — Leverage Models (Hometapes, 2013)

Los Campesinos! — Sick Scenes (Wichita, 2017)

loscil — Sea Island (Kranky, 2014)

Low — Double Negative (Sub Pop, 2018)

Mansions — Doom Loop (Clifton Motel, 2013)

Mesarthim — The Density Parameter (Avantgarde Music, 2018)

Mogwai — Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. (Rock Action, 2011)

The National — Trouble Will Find Me (4AD, 2013)

Picastro — You (Function, 2014)

Protomartyr — The Agent Intellect (Hardly Art, 2015)

Sleigh Bells — Reign of Terror (Mom + Pop, 2012)

Spoon — They Want My Soul (Loma Vista, 2014)

SubRosa — No Help for the Mighty Ones (Profound Lore, 2011)

Swervedriver — I Wasn’t Born to Lose You (Cherry Red, 2015)

Zeal and Ardor — Stranger Fruit (MVKA, 2018)

Jason Gioncontere’s 10 From the 10s

Recency biases can render exercises such as these moot; fortunately my palate continues to evolve at a glacial pace. Compounding matters is the flash-cube sized attention span the Digital Age is leaving us with in its wake. If it hasn’t honestly hasn’t affected the way you digest and connect with music one iota you are luckier than I. From the opening notes I knew all these albums below were a different beast, each and every time I am left with no choice but to go on the journey in its entirety as intended. Best efforts were made to sequence these in number of rotations:

David Nance - Calling Christine (CDR, 2016)

Helen - The Original Faces (Kranky, 2015)

Dreamdecay - N V N V N V (Iron Lung, 2013)

Uniform - Wake in Fright (Sacred Bones, 2017)

Lou Barlow -  Brace the Wave (Joyful Noise, 2015)

Protomartyr - Under Color of Official Right (Hardly Art, 2014)

Axis:Sova - Weight of a Color (Kill Shaman, 2012)

Beachglass - Clouding (Bandcamp, 2017)

Birds of Maya - Ready to Howl (Richie, 2010)

La Hell Gang - Thru Me Again (Mexican Summer, 2014)

Jennifer Kelly’s 2010s Favorites

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — Push the Sky Away (Bad Seed Ltd., 2013)

Protomartyr — Under Colour of Official Right (Hardly Art, 2014)

Sleaford Mods — Divide and Exit (Harbinger Sound, 2014)

Meg Baird — Don’t Weigh Down the Light (Drag City, 2015)

Heron Oblivion — Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop, 2016)

Amy Rigby — The Old Guys (Southern Domestic, 2018)

Steve Gunn — The Unseen in Between (Matador, 2019)

Patois Counselors — Proper Release (Ever/Never, 2018)

Damien Jurado — Maraqopa (Secretly Canadian, 2012)

Skull Defekts — Peer Amid (Thrill Jockey, 2011)

Jack Rose — Luck in the Valley (Thrill Jockey, 2010)

Rangda — False Flag (Drag City, 2010)

Tim Clarke’s A Baker’s Dozen From the 2010s

In a nod to The Quietus’s regular feature, here are 13 albums that have meant a lot to me in recent years. I’m sure there have been musical trends during the 2010s more worthy of coverage than a personal list of favorites, but if one thing’s clear from this list it’s that, for better or worse, my taste hasn’t changed much in the ensuing years and is rarely swayed by the flavor of the month (or year, or decade). Most of this is expansive guitar-based stuff, and they’re all albums I don’t hesitate to revisit to this day. So, if that sounds like your bag, you can’t go wrong with any of these, presented in alphabetical order:

Big Thief — U.F.O.F. (4AD, 2019)

Chris Cohen — Overgrown Path (Captured Tracks, 2012)

Loma — Loma (Sub Pop, 2018)

Sandro Perri — Impossible Spaces (Constellation, 2011)

Radiohead — A Moon Shaped Pool (XL, 2016)

Roommate — Make Like (Strange Weather, 2015)

Andy Shauf — The Party (Arts & Crafts, 2016)

Shearwater — Animal Joy (Sub Pop, 2012)

Chad VanGaalen — Light Information (Sub Pop, 2017)

Mark Van Hoen — Where is the Truth? (City Centre Offices, 2010)

The Walkmen — Lisbon (Fat Possum, 2010)

Wild Beasts — Smother (Domino, 2011)

Women — Public Strain (Jagjaguwar, 2010)

[dustedmagazine]

Rocket 808 — Rocket 808 (12XU)

Rocket 808 by Rocket 808

Rocket 808’s eponymous full-length debut pairs Link Wray’s guitar with Martin Rev’s drum machine, and the results are about the sum of those parts. Plenty of albums communicate their influences more clearly than anything else. Rocket 808 is one of them, and guitarist, vocalist, and drum machine operator John Schooley (also of Meet Your Death) doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. (There’s a cover of “Ghost Rider” for good measure.) His obvious affection for the source material and dextrous playing make for a listen that’s often fun, if not very memorable.

At its best, Rocket 808 is like happening upon an especially lively, talented street performer. The album is a fine demonstration of Schooley’s proficiency in his chosen style of guitar. Also, there happens to be a drum machine. As a creative choice, it’s a simple anachronism. The programmed beats are simply there, where a live drummer would normally be, as if Schooley picked up a drum machine to accompany his act out of convenience. If he intends to exploit the menacing, mechanical pulse, like Suicide famously did, that doesn’t quite come across. When live drums (from Orville Neely of OBN IIIs) show up halfway through the closing title track, they complement his guitar playing at least as well. 

Schooley’s use of repetition, one of Suicide’s most effective tools, doesn’t always make his compositions more powerful. Some tracks sound languid rather than driving and forceful. The slowest predictably drag. The album peaks whenever Schooley lets go and shreds — often the reward for sitting through a prolonged buildup. Rocket 808 is also an example of how a minimal setup can backfire and just sound thin. When a second guitarist joins Schooley on a few tracks, the results are distinctly fuller. Rather than demonstrating versatility within his self-imposed limitations, Schooley tries out a few approaches for his concept, some of which work better than others. His vocals, which are perfectly competent and appropriate, show up on his covers of “Ghost Rider” and Ersel Hickey’s “Goin’ Down That Road,” as well as the title track. His decision to sing on that original and not the others seems a bit arbitrary. The idea to meld Link Wray and Suicide is a clever one, which suggests that this project has unrealized potential. Wray helped lay the foundation for rock music, and Suicide exaggerated rockabilly tics with sinister results. Both were trailblazers, and while their music may not shock the way it once did, it’s stood the test of time. Rocket 808, however, sounds more dated than what came before it. The album’s fundamental issue might be that it’s a bit tame. The best of the garage revivalists, like the Gories (and the Revelators, of which Schooley was a member), capture the thrill of hearing rock ‘n’ roll for the very first time. Schooley fleetingly pulls that off. However, he also evokes how his influences might sound to a listener who knows they’re historically important but doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. Rocket 808 could be consistently thrilling, if only Schooley tapped into the exciting, dangerous things about Link Wray and Suicide, both then and now. Ethan Milititsky

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 6, Number 1

A new year means new music. At least eventually, it does, though January is notoriously slow for album releases. Meanwhile, there’s plenty we missed from late (and mid and even early) 2019, so let’s dig into that for one last big Dust. Here we cover subcontinental LGBTQ gangsta rap, industrial clangor, string quartets, Welsh agitpunk, electronics, free jazz, blackened death metal and an odd, charming collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Bradford Cox (see photo). Writers include Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Tobias Carroll, Andrew Forell, Ray Garraty, Jason Gioncontere, Ethan Militsky and Jonathan Shaw.

Jeb Bishop / Alex Ward / Weasel Walter — Flayed (Ugexplode)

Flayed by Jeb Bishop / Alex Ward / Weasel Walter

You know a party is good if it carries on even though the organizer can’t show up. Bassist Damon Smith planned this encounter, which involved his long-term partner in intensity and chaos, drummer Weasel Walter; New England improvisational fellow traveler (at least until Smith moved to St. Louis a few months after this March, 2019 session) Jeb Bishop on trombone and electronics; and Alex Ward, a veteran of work with Derek Bailey and This Is Not This Heat, on guitar and clarinet. Since Walter has played with both of the other guys in and outside of the Flying Luttenbachers, when Smith had to drop out for scheduling reasons, he was confident that the trio could make something of both the opportunity to play and the space made available by the absent bass. He was right. Both the title and prevailing assumptions about Walter might set you up to expect a one-dimensional blowout, but there’s loads of listening and thoughtful, instant reacting taking place on each of the album’s eight, mostly pithy tracks. This music plays out like a combination of jujitsu and shuttle diplomacy, with players shifting between support and challenge, density and space, rapidity and reserve from second to second.

Bill Meyer  

 Cartel Madras — Age of the Goonda (Sub Pop)

Cartel Madras turns gangsta rap’s hyper-male, African-American-oriented bravado on its side, filtering the guns and blunts ethos through a female, queer, multicultural lens without diluting its violence in the least. Sisters Priya and Bhagya Ramesh, known as Contra and Eboshi, have lived in Calgary since childhood, but they immigrated from Chennai, India, once part of Madras, hence the name, hence the tricky scales and intricate, not-quite-Western rhythms of their rhymes. Age of the Goonda works in a spare, menacing way, dense, referential wordplay atop an undulating threat of sub-bass and the occasional spray of bullets.

“Goonda Gold,” celebrates cartoonish dominance, though with a South Asian twist. Little bits of Hindi harmonics decorate the bare architecture of synth bass sounds and cracking, stabbing percussion (augmented here by gunfire); the Cartel’s chant of “Gold on my neck I’m a Goonda/got guns in the air like a junta” puts a subcontinental spin on ghetto law. The clever-est word sprays come in “The Legend of Jalopeno Boiz,” where the duo references everything from Frost/Nixon to incel stereotypes, but the single “Lil Pump Type Beat,” is all hedonism, devious syncopation and sexual predation. Though wildly intersectional, these tracks make no concessions to soft, liberal ideas about how women/minorities/LGBTQ people wield power; they do it just like the men do, with guns. “Take off your top boy/somebody bring me my gun/that bag in the back of the jeep/you just a bitch on the run,” asserts one or the other sister in “Jumpscare.” What was that you were saying about women and nurture?

Jennifer Kelly

 CIA Debutante — The Landlord (Siltbreeze)

CIA Debutante-The Landlord by CIA Debutante

A new Siltbreeze record is a rare blessing nowadays. The label’s first release since 2018 comes from Paris duo CIA Debutante. The Landlord fits in nicely with the label’s storied '90s output, particularly the Shadow Ring. The electronics aren’t quite glitchy—they sound more like the batteries in a cheap toy dying. Still, CIA Debutante are savvy enough to avoid getting too clever with their sputtering, plodding, and whizzing, and they don’t go the easy route when layering incongruous sounds. There’s never the fatiguing sense that they rely on the same few tricks. It helps that their murky, paranoid vignettes are fully engrossing. CIA Debutante tap into something truly nightmarish on The Landlord, which is a rare accomplishment. Sure, plenty of music shoots for tense and creepy, but CIA Debutante have an exceptional gift for the uncanny, the kind of stuff that haunts you long after you’ve woken up and can no longer hope to grasp it. Ethan Milititsky

Decoherence — Ekpyrosis (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Ekpyrosis by Decoherence

Decoherence is a pretty good name for a band that locates itself in the liminal space between industrial music’s stomp and clangor and black metal’s astringent tumult. The band’s new LP (and first full length release) Ekpyrosis is at its best when its waves of distorted hiss, dissonant riffing and distant shrieks and growls threaten to rend the record to shreds. One imagines that if you found yourself in an aluminum ladder factory, amid the massive drills and extruding machines and metal presses and then removed your ear protectors, you’d hear something akin to this — especially if the place was possessed by demons of ill intent. It’s a well-crafted, ritualized chaos. The band is so insistent on a specific set of sounds and forms that the record’s long tracks tend to blur into one another. Which may be the point. Decoherence, indeed.

Jonathan Shaw

 Bertrand Denzler / CoÔ — Arc (Potlatch)

Arc is a two-part, album-length work by Bertrand Denzler, a Swiss-born, Paris-based saxophonist and composer. It is performed by CoÔ, a string septet led by double bassist Félicie Bazelaire. The ensemble’s composition is a sort of funhouse reflection of a string quartet, distorted towards breadth; it comprises one violin, two violas, one cello and three double basses. But there’s nothing comic about this music, which is quite beautiful in the same way as a slow winter sunset. Denzler’s method here involves the use of continuous sounds, but don’t call it drone. The players use both conventional and extended techniques to create a continually changing sequence of striated sounds. Naked scrapes and cavernous groans arc in formation, changing fairly frequently over the course of each piece. The result is immersive enough to let you get lost, but keep your ears and eyes open; you wouldn’t want to miss one moment of gradual transition. A note about circumstances — Potlatch, the label that released this CD, has slowed its production in recent years, and this is the only record it released in 2018. Apparently, the label isn’t wasting its time with unnecessary effort; Arc clears the necessity bar.

Bill Meyer

 Fujiya & Miyagi — Flashback (Impossible Objects of Desire)

One of the interesting things about Fujiya & Miyagi’s songwriting is that as the UK post-motorik outfit’s music becomes ever more focused and sleekly propulsive, frontman David Best has zeroed in on any number of little aspects of life disturb and upset the kind of cool pulse the band specializes in. Here it’s everything from violations of your “Personal Space,” the “Fear of Missing Out,” and nagging thoughts in the title track to the more political concerns of the closing lengthy workout of “Gammon��� (which eventually, in one of the little touches that makes F&M’s music so addictive, settles on the “pure evil vibrating” of a dial-up modem). That doesn’t mean the band can no longer bust a groove just for the pure joy of it, as “Dying Swan Act” proves, but it’s the combination of those chops and the perceptive if increasingly jaundiced eye they turn on life that makes them such a unique and compelling act.

Ian Mathers

 Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox — Myths 400 (Mexican Summer)

Myths 004 by Cate Le Bon & Bradford Cox

Intricate fancies turn just out of true in this pop-up collaboration between Cate Le Bon and Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox, the fourth in a series of joint EPs recorded under the auspices of Mexican Summer’s annual Marfa Myths festival (hence Myths 400). The two artists work in a skewed, peripheral vision take on artful pop, building interlocking boxes of percussion and whimsey in which fleeting glimpses of loveliness flit by. The song-i-est bit of Myths 400 is undoubtedly “Secretary,” a Weimar-decadent bit of mournful song hedged in clanks and clicks, strings and clarinets, and the odd combination of Le Bon’s pure art-song shiver and Cox’s less pristine, more grounded voice. Yet the rhythm-centered oddities are just as rewarding; resist the slap-bang fanciful-ness of growly-voiced, Cox-led “Fireman,” with Le Bon trilling off center arias in the margins at your own peril. “What Is She Wearing” bangs out disconsonant guitar tones in slightly off center patterns and tunings; it’s a wind-up toy’s existential crisis. Le Bon chants in a Middle European cadence, as the cut falls somewhere between early Michachu and a Kurt Weil song. It’s about the last thing you’d expect to emerge from the desert, eccentric, abstracted, playful and utterly urbane.

Jennifer Kelly

  Urs Leimgruber / Andreas Willers / Alvin Curran / Fabrizio Sperra—Rome-ing (Leo)

Urs Leimgruber has covered a lot of musical ground in a performing and recording career that spans over 45 years. The three musicians who join the Swiss saxophonist on this freely improvised encounter, which was recorded in Rome late in 2018, are well chosen to access aspects of that history and shape it into sound configurations that are quite present-focused. Quick, light-fingered, and restless, drummer Fabrizio Sperra keeps things in constant motion. Swiss guitarist Andreas Willers stirs chunks of almost rock-ish noise and sprinkles stinging, pure-toned notes into the mix that give the music heft without slowing it down. Alvin Curran, an American keyboardist and composer (and member of MEV), draws on classical more than jazz elements in his piano playing; there are moments where he stubbornly erects a structure that the other musicians must either inhabit or work around. But his sampler also enables him to inject the sounds of other places. Shifting between tenor and saxophones, Leimgruber drives quickly spiraling phrases through the open spaces and uses astringent, distressed tone-shards to suggest where there needs to be more space.

Bill Meyer

 The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor — Music for the National Health Service (Amgueddfa Llwch)

Music for the National Health Service by The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor

When I was a younger punk, I would sometimes take in the phenomenon of bands’ whose lyrical explanations would take longer to deliver than the playing of the actual songs. And while I haven’t seen this crop up much recently, I feel like that aesthetic is alive and well when I visit the Bandcamp page of The Master Musicians of Dyffryn Moor, which includes a terse essay about the dangers facing the NHS under the current British government. This new EP follows two excellent full-lengths, Cerddoriaeth Ddefodol Gogledd Sir Benfro (Ritual Music of North Pembrokeshire) and Contemporary Protest Music, which blend the “instrumental music can be politically charged” feel of Godspeed You! Black Emperor with the intricacy of Steve Reich’s Drumming. These two songs continue in that tradition — furiously played percussion with a heated political subtext — but add a few tweaks to the sound the group has already established. Specifically, there’s a stronger electronic element here: you could probably get a dancefloor moving if you cued up “A spell to protect the NHS from those who seek to destroy it.” Its opposite number, “A hex on those who seek to destroy the NHS,” is built around a steady pulse. You probably can’t dance as well to that, but given the potential psychic damage incurred by dancing to a hex, would you actually want to?

Tobias Carroll 

 Overground Collective — Super Mario (Babel Label)

SUPER MARIO by OverGround Collective

The Overground Collective is a pan-European big band that is based in London and led by Paulo Duarte, a Portuguese guitarist/composer currently based in Scandinavia. If that sounds like a bit to get your head around, you probably need only wait a while to see what Boris’s Britain does to the freedoms of movement and thought necessary for such an endeavor to get off the ground. For the rest of us, it’s a nice illustration of why such fluidity is part of a better way. Duarte spent some time in England studying the ways of various improvisers, and recruited 17 to join him in realizing a set of compositions designed expressly for them. Certain of the participants come from free jazz (Julie Kjaer, Rachel Musson) or cross-genre experimentation (Yazz Ahmed), and you can hear the influence of such approaches in a few moments of freefall and adventurously conceived solos. But these elements fit into a structure that fits squarely in the tradition. Duarte sets tunes you could hum on grooves that’ll make you tap your feet, albeit quickly enough to annoy your neighbor if the floorboards happen to transmit your amateur approximation of his beats, and dresses them up in arrangements that could speak to a person who thinks that jazz’s lineage is a straight line from Duke Ellington to Maria Schneider. Music like this is a reproach to those who think that differences can’t be complimentary parts of a whole.

Bill Meyer

  Pictish Trail — Thumb World (Fire)

Thumb World by Pictish Trail

Folktronica from the tiny island of Eigg in the Hebrides, this latest album by Pictish Trail (Johnny Lynch) demonstrates the aesthetic value of both isolation and connection. Per isolation: Lynch lives on a windblown island with fewer than 100 other people. But as for connection, he is intimately involved in a northerly folk scene through King Creosote’s Fence Records and surrounded by local musicians. There aren’t that many folks on Eigg, but almost everybody plays an instrument. That kind of environment allows space for eccentricity and practice, which shows up on these expansive, dance-inflected, folk-shadowed cuts. Pictish Trail enlarges his subtle, personal songs with enveloping arrangements of rock sounds and club electronics; Kim Moore contributes some string arrangements and Alex Thomas of Squarepusher sits in on drums. “Double Sided” has the lilt and ramble of Three EPs Beta Band (Lynch has been out touring with Steve Mason lately), while gorgeous, glistening “Slow Memories” has the glitch, glow and aura of early Tunng. Thumb World demonstrates that music can be solitary without being lonely, introspective without self-absorbation. “You’re my solitude/I’m never so alone by myself,” sings Lynch, on the surprisingly rock-guitared “Bad Algebra,” underlining the fact that too many people (or the wrong people) can be isolating, and a few can provide the space for originality and experiment.

Jennifer Kelly

Pinkish Black — Concept Unification (Relapse)

Texas psych sludge prog metal duo Pinkish Black has been quiet for a little while; their last record, 2015’s Bottom of the Morning, was such a compact and potent summation of the miasmic bad vibes that Daron Beck (synthesizers, voice) and Jon Teague (drums) can summon up seemingly at will. No more than a minute into the opening title track of their fourth record you get a strong reminder of just that atmosphere; you might as well be in a haunted castle during the full moon. The closing, lengthy “Next Solution” also offers a reminder of what you might call classic Pinkish Black, but it’s the four songs in between that show Beck and Teague working to make sure there is always room to expand their dark palette. Whether it’s the relatively straightforward, thrashy “Until” or the prettily drifting “Inanimatronic” the results are always interesting. Bottom of the Morning remains the best introduction for now to this duo’s indelible sound, but once you’re a fan Concept Unification makes for a strong and promising follow-up.  

Ian Mathers

  Alexa Rose—Medicine for Living (Big Legal Mess)

“How I wish I were kinder, how I wish I were patient, I could learn all the songs on the gospel station,” trills Alexa Rose in a water pure soprano touched with shivery vibrato as she navigates the twists and corners of the title track from her lovely debut album. The Virginia-born, Memphis-based songwriter has a native’s familiarity with gospel, country and folk blues, but a fresh, sparkling delivery that makes these well-worn forms sound like she just thought of them. A lilting, effortless voice elicits spare melancholy sparked with hope and a crack band of Americana pros in tow – Will Sexton on guitar, George Sluppick playing drums and Mark Edgard Stuart on bass — fill out the songs without a bit of bloat. “Tried and True” enlists a cajun squeeze box and skittering banjo into Rose’s smart, unsentimental songcraft; country teems with strong women disappointed by love, but Alexa Rose is clear-eyed and strong enough to kick its ass without breaking meter. Gorgeous and empowered stuff.

Jennifer Kelly

Sartegos — O Sangue da Noite (I, Voidhanger)

O Sangue da Noite by SARTEGOS

This new release by Sartegos isn’t so much blackened death metal as it is a death metal record that morphs its shape and sound into black metal. The buzzy crunch and acrobatic soloing of opener “Sangue e Noite” gradually give way to leaner, meaner riffs, and by the midpoint of fourth track “Solpor dos Mistérios,” the record has fully taken on the properties of merciless, muscular continental black metal. The record may engage with various metal subgenres, but O Sangue da Noite is held together by Sartegos’s focus on Galician nationalist themes and celebrations of its landscape. The band is named for a miniscule rural hamlet in Galicia, and we are told that all lyrics are delivered in the region’s native dialect. Black metal and ardent nationalism don’t always make for the happiest of combinations. For those of us lacking fluency in the language, it’s tough to know what ideological charge the lyrics carry. And Galician regional politics feature a panoply of leftist and right wing factions, all with their own fiery arguments for the region’s autonomy. What sort of blood? Who sings in the night? Hard to say. But the music’s pretty good.

Jonathan Shaw

 Seablite – Grass Stains and Novocaine (Emotional Response)

Bay Area quartet Seablite’s debut album navigates the fuzzy end of indie pop with aplomb. Vocalists Lauren Matsui (guitar) and Galine Tumasyan (bass) are joined by drummer Andy Pastalaniec and ex-Wax Idol Jen Mundy on lead guitar for 11 tracks of chipper, summery shoegaze that sit easily alongside their most obvious influences Lush, Curve and Stereolab. Seablite’s songs are elevated by the interplay of twin vocals, clean guitar lines and bouncy bass lines supported by cymbal heavy motorik drums. There’s steel beneath the gauze as Mundy brings a little of the Idols’ shade to proceedings and Pastalaniec drives songs like “Pillbox” and “Polygraph” hard and fast down a euphoric freeway of top-down thrumming thrills. Yes, it sounds like a lot of bands you’ve heard and maybe loved but Grass Stains and Novocaine is so well put together and convincingly played it’s hard to resist.

Andrew Forell

 Seiðr — Intethedens Afsky (Nattetale)

Seiðr is a one-man band from Denmark. For just one man, he was awfully busy in the past year, having put out three records. Intethedens Afsky can boast of 10 tracks of dirty, primitive sound with bursts of melody buried immediately under a wall of noise. The inspiration for Seiðr’s music can be found in early 1990s Norwegian black metal, and Claus H. (that’s his name) cannot be blamed for being too much of a good student. Why shouldn’t he have learnt from his elders? The first two tracks here have samples from “nature,” and this gives us a hint to how Seiðr’s music can be interpreted: it’s ruptures in Nature’s hellish landscape. No one will be saved.

Ray Garraty   

 Spider Bags — A Celebration of Hunger (Sophomore Lounge)

SPIDER BAGS "A Celebration of Hunger" by Spider Bags

Spider Bags are still around, making a record every three or four years for Merge. But listening to this debut, it’s hard to imagine how they did it. If subject matter reflects life style, then the motto of these guys back in 2008 was, “We do the hard stuff so there won’t be any left for you. Say, can you loan me a couple of twenties?” But there’s a self-observing intelligence at work in these songs that suggests that self-awareness wasn’t totally obliterated, and a loose, rumbling energy to these roots-tinged garage-rock songs that confirms that the Bags spent at least part of everyday upright. Add to that engineer Brian Paulson’s knack for getting sound under challenging circumstances, which renders the live-sounding performances with sufficient but not distracting clarity, and you have a good soundtrack for the next time you want to drink yourself off the barstool in the privacy of your own home.

Bill Meyer

 Luke Spook — Small Town (Third Eye Stimuli)

Australian multi-instrumentalist Luke Spook steps away from the garage-punk of his Pinheads to conjure up lysergic specters from bygone times on Small Town. There are a fair number of freaked out boil-overs in the offing but the general tone is one of reserved simplicity. Whether sipping tea with the subject of “The Owl” or gathering around the fire with some fellow townsfolk on the title track, Luke channels Syd Barrett to the point of becoming nearly indistinguishable. But what makes Small Town more than just a covers album is Luke’s ability to vary the intimacy of his arrangements when needed. “All the King’s Horses” features a harmonica solo backed up with an (accidental?) chorus of distant, wailing hounds. Those types of moments lurk beneath the surface and inject a pastoral quality that feels authentic. More quirky utopian village than small town, the world Spook creates is a place to live rather than to pass through.

Jason Gioncontere  

 Nick Storring — Qualms (Never Anything)

Qualms by Nick Storring

Nick Storring’s latest recording started life as the score for a dance performance, and it is easy to imagine how it might function in that role. The composition, which spans both sides of a cassette, is episodic. Each moment feels unique unto itself, creating an environment in which things — maybe movements, or maybe something in your own imagination — have the space to happen. If you caught him onstage with the group Picastro, you would probably see Storring play cello, but for Qualms he plays a couple dozen keyboard, stringed, percussive and woodwind instruments. This allows similar themes and actions to appear and reappear in different garb. One stalking theme, for example, manifests once as a psychedelically dense string melody, and again played by gamelan percussion. Elsewhere passages of meter-less sound temporarily halt the progress. Moments of Steve Reich-like repetition surface, but instead of locking in like they might in a Reich piece, they quickly morph into something else. The same pattern of change that probably made this a handy program for a dance performance makes it an engaging pure listening experience.

Bill Meyer

 Sun City Girls — Dawn of the Devi (Abduction)

Dawn of the Devi by Sun City Girls

Dawn of the Devi holds an important place in the Sun City Girls’ discography. Released in 1991, it was the follow up to the much-celebrated Torch of the Mystics, which remains one of the more tuneful and easily-relatable records that Charles Gocher and brothers Alan and Richard Bishop ever did. As such, it had a job to do, and it did it well. That was to throw the followers who sandals instead of sturdy shows off the track. They did this by serving up a song-free album of jagged, totally improvised jams. While it did the job at the time, and in doing so established a pattern of giving the people something other than what they want, in retrospect, you can appreciate it for another reason. Dawn of the Devi makes a pretty strong case for the trio as a rock-derived improvisational ensemble. They sound like they’re listening and responding to each other, and their transitions from acidic splatter to swooning hesitation or heavy ambush make intuitive sense. It wasn’t always that way.

Bill Meyer

 These New Puritans — Inside the Rose (BMG)

Essex experimentalists These New Puritans return with a lush yet disquieting take on English pastoralism. On Inside the Rose multi-instrumentalist twin brothers Jack and George Barnett create an often lovely, occasionally portentous, romantic paean to nature and love. As the Barnetts move further beyond the fractured post-punk of their debut Beat Pyramid, this, their fourth album, elaborates the use of contemporary classical and choral orchestration into arrangements that channel Talk Talk. Jack Barnett’s voice is high in the mix and evokes David Sylvian at his most emotive. Beneath the sheen and swooning strings George’s drumming shifts and slides between Reichian repetition and fierce Taiko inspired rhythms. Inside the Rose is a meticulously produced but never fussy collection, welcoming the listener but refusing either to compromise or patronize. A serious but accessible work full of carefully considered details, some gorgeous melodies and an almost Pre-Raphaelite sensibility expressed in a thoroughly contemporary manner.

Andrew Forell

 Various Artists — No Other Love (Tompkins Square)

No Other Love : Midwest Gospel (1965-1978) by Various Artists

No Other Love is, like the several albums that Mike McGonigal has compiled for different labels, a sequence of gospel records drawn from one collection. In this case it is the collection of Ramona Stout. She culled the 45s that make up this set from her husband Kevin’s trawls of records that had spent years in Chicagoan basements. A graduate student who had spent much of her life outside the USA, she saw with clear eyes the grime of American urban poverty, and found herself deeply compelled by the discovery that hopeful music could grow in such decay. There are no big stars amongst these recordings. Even at the time they were recorded they would have sounded rough and behind the times production-wise — just electric guitars, drum kits, whatever piano or organ was sitting in the church where they were recorded, and congregants’ voices. But the fervor of yearning and the joy of release makes every track a transporting listen.

Bill Meyer

 WOW — Come La Notte (Maple Death Records)

Come La Notte by wow

Underground Roman duo China Now (vocals, drums) and Leo Non (guitars) recent album as WOW, Come La Notte (Like the Night), is seven tracks of 1960s influenced Italian noir cabaret high on atmosphere and drama. Now’s almost operatic vocals are at the forefront over skeletal brushed drums, minimal bass and restrained guitar. The band lulls then surprises with a spectral sax and bursts of crashing cymbals and feedback on “Niente Di Speciale” (“Nothing Special”), a keening gypsy violin on “Vieni Un Po’ Qui” (“Come Over Here”), middle eastern organ on “Occhi Di Serpente” (“Snake Eyes”). Fatalism drips from every note bringing to mind a low ceilinged club in the catacombs where refugees from the sun fill the air with smoke and their guts with grappa and cheap vino rosso as Pasolini scouts for rough trade and fingers grip switchblades concealed in socks. Come La Notte is a slow grower that draws you in even while it picks your pocket. Put it on and live a little vicarious danger in your own private La Dolce Vita.  

Andrew Forell