#The flenser

[bangtanghan]

flenserpostings

[uboatheflesh]

Hi everybody! my new LP "impossible light" is now out digitally on The Flenser. You can also pre-order the vinyl, tapes and shirts.

It has collabs w Otay:Onii, Liturgy, Charlie Looker and Blood of a Pomegranate. It was mastered by Lawrence English and has visual art by Quartzvii and photography by Frankie Pan (including the shot below). It's intended to be listened to with either a big sound system or good headphones at a high volume.

- It's 6 years in the making, the Origin of My Depression (2019) was made *during* making this. It became such a big, complex album that I sidelined it for the Origin, especially since my mental health wasn't ideal at the time. Now its finally out and I can close a chapter of my life and move on.

It's the opposite of The Origin, although it is not a purely 'happy' record by any means. I suggest you listen from beginning to end, as it starts off gloomy, but doesn't end gloomy. Ultimately, its a record about the possibility of a future.

The dolls deserve human instrumentality too. Hope y'all like it. -X

[depravednotdeprived]

Chat Pile tapes

[camogore]

new pins 🦇🩸

[christiandegn]

Cover artwork for the new Scarcity record, The Promise of Rain

[buellerismyfriend]

Have a Nice Life @ Bowery Ballroom (New York, NY)

[vyva-melinkolya]

@planningforburial at Prepare The Ground, Toronto

[womenofnoise]

Leah B Levinson of Agriculture

[cremationisirreversible]

𝐻𝒜𝒱𝐸 𝒜 𝒩𝐼𝒞𝐸 𝐿𝐼𝐹𝐸

[kimkimberhelen]

chat pile has really mastered the art of serial killer noise rock

[doggerell]

HOLY SHIT

[dustedmagazine]

Midwife — No Depression in Heaven (The Flenser)

Photo by Nat Lacuna

The cover of the newest Midwife record is a slightly blurry tintype photo of Madeline Johnston’s hands on her guitar. Between that image and the first song having the title “Rock N Roll Never Forgets,” you might think that No Depression in Heaven sees Johnston take her luminous “heaven metal” sound into freshly aggro territory. Instead, for just over seven minutes the track settles in around you like newly, lazily fallen snow. Angel Diaz (of Vyva Melinkoyla) adds plangent pedal steel lines to set off Johnston’s characteristically ghostly vocals, and somehow the track’s litany of cliche statements about rock not only don’t seem silly but attain a kind of wounded grandeur. In other words, this is a guitar album, but maybe in a different way than some surface signs might indicate.

Those already familiar with Johnston’s work might find No Depression in Heaven even more soothing than 2021’s excellent Luminol. That album built its way towards gradual eruptions given starker relief and greater impact by the haziness of their surroundings. Here, the music’s embrace is even more measured and gentle, to the point where “Vanessa” (an ode to Johnston’s dearly departed touring van) starting with a prominent if not particularly aggressive drum machine rhythm counts as a jarring shift. That drum machine is recorded with a kind of precise fuzz that makes it feel as if the whole thing is clogged with sand that each beat dislodges a bit more of. Johnston is also an audio engineer and, as always, the sound of Midwife is impeccably sculpted. The primary elements are still patient webs of guitar and a voice heard through a disembodied rotary phone receiver (see, kids, before cell phones…); a few friends chime in with additional guitar and once even with synth, but nothing disturbs the stately, beautifully suspended atmosphere.

That’s not a complaint; even more than Luminol, No Depression in Heaven builds up such a heady and consistent ambience that you can relax into it like a warm bath. These are frequently songs of sorrow, like the funereal “Droving” (which turns “every dog has its day… run like hell” into a stirring valediction as it creeps along), or “Killdozer”’s poetic inversion of perspective into a genuine, weird American tragedy. The closing title track has lyrics that consist or just the repeated word “crying” and sung laughter, and yet the impact is somehow reassuring. There’s something communal in the sadness here.

Even when Johnston turns her hand to covers, they don’t cause any undue ripples in the overall tone. Alice Deejay’s immortal Eurodance hit “Better Off Alone” might not seem like the most obvious fit, but underneath the bosh, it’s always had a surprisingly humane lilt to it that Johnston brings out. Rowland S. Howard’s “Autoluminescent” may be the most bombastic set of lyrics here, but she gives it a soft, burnished glow. Like her own songs, these contributions are folded into a kind of endless, floating, gorgeous melancholy. One largely constructed from the same instrument Johnston cradles on that cover.

Ian Mathers

[depravednotdeprived]

Chat Pile shirts

[planningforburial]

[christiandegn]

Back cover artwork for the new Scarcity record, The Promise of Rain