#kitchen's floor

[goodbysunball]

Best of 2022

Here it is: my yearly summation of the small labels working through rising costs and punishing manufacturing delays, the artists making music unafraid of chance, and the freaks supporting all of it in spite of the daily consequences of a ruling class increasingly detached from reality. Lots more that deserve accolades from more prestigious publications, and I'm sure they'll get 'em, but these are records that were inseparable from certain points of my year, including now. Yeah, they were all kinda my favorite at one point, and could be again tomorrow, but Kilynn Lunsford is #1 for a reason. Glad to be back at shows, however sparingly, experiencing all the awkward camaraderie and room-silencing/room-flattening performances that come with them. It all feels more necessary than ever. Up and up in a world of lava. Happy New Year, everyone.

LP

Kilynn Lunsford, Custodians of Human Succession (ever/never)

Joe Colley, Deformation of Tone (Total Black)

Kitchen's Floor, None of That (Petty Bunco)

Thomas Bush, Preludes (Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox)

Hissing, Hypervirulence Architecture (Profound Lore)

Tim Goss, Afterfly (Penultimate Press)

Carla dal Forno, Come Around (Kallista)

Rose Mercie, ¿Kieres Agua? (Celluloid Lunch/Jelodanti)

Incipientium, Belastning (Förlag För Fri Musik)

Siobhan, Body Double (Nostilevo)

7"/12"/Cassette/CD

The Body & OAA, Enemy of Love CS (Thrill Jockey)

Brain Tourniquet, s/t 7" (Iron Lung)

CIA Debutante, "The Punch" b/w "The Garden" 7" (Digital Regress)

Cube, Proof of Bells CD (H&S Ranch)

Darksmith, Imposter CD (Throne Heap)

Gaoled, Bestial Hardcore 7" flexi (Iron Lung)

Greymouth, Twilight Furl 7" (Kashual Plastik)

Horrendous 3D, s/t 7" (Black Water)

Incipientium, Inhuman CS (Kashual Plastik)

Primitive Man, Insurmountable 12" (Closed Casket Activities)

RRR Band, s/t CS (Petty Bunco)

Sprite, Epic Sundry CS (Tropical Cancer Rort)

Stomachache, Hiss Noise Whir CD (Lagniappe Exposure)

R.I.P. Young Slo-Be

Rap

42 Dugg & EST Gee, “Thump Shit”

BandGang Lonnie Bands, Scorpion Eyes (Anti Media/TF Entertainment)

Denzel Curry feat. Key Glock, “Walkin (Remix)”

Earl Sweatshirt, SICK! (Tan Cressida)

Lil Durk & Gucci Mane, “Rumors”

Maz G x GuttaFoe, “Win Some, Lose Some” - what is going on in Milwaukee

Starlito & Troy Money, Cheap Phones & Turkey Bags (Grind Hard)

Billy Woods, Aethiopes (Backwoodz Studioz)

Young Slo-Be, Southeast (KoldGreedy / Thizzler on the Roof)

Z Money, Back 2 the Blender (self-released) - thx @raygarraty

Pictured: Angels of Mons

Live shows

The Body at 529, Atlanta, GA (May 17)

Primitive Man, Mortiferum, Jarhead Fertilizer, Body Void & Elizabeth Color Wheel at The EARL, Atlanta, GA (May 20)

Brain Tourniquet, Excavate & Thirdface at DRKMTTR, Nashville, TN (July 16)

Reeking Aura at the Brickyard, Knoxville, TN (November 11)

Bitchin Bajas, Maspeth & Angels of Mons at the Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN (December 11)

Five songs that made my daughter dance every time they hit the deck

Bitchin Bajas, "Quakenbrück" from Bajascillators

Can, "Halleluhwah" from Tago Mago

Rose Mercie, "Cats and Dogs" from ¿Kieres Agua?

Träden, "När lingonen mognar (Lingonberries Forever)" from Träden

YL Hooi, "W/O Love" from Untitled

[dustedmagazine]

Kitchen’s Floor — None of That (Petty Bunco)

Photo by Alex Gerrans

None Of That by Kitchen's Floor

Brisbane’s Kitchen’s Floor has been churning over-saturated sludge punk since the late aughts, releasing material on Australian labels like R.I.P. Society and Bedroom Suck, but also internationally on Bruit Direct Disques, Siltbreeze and now Petty Bunco. None of That is dense and dark and lumbering. It brims with inchoate rage. There’s a song called “Blood,” which, amid that clanging guitar thunder and clumping brute force drums, Matt Kennedy can be heard squalling “Blood, blood, everywhere,” repeatedly. If you’re looking something light and inconsequential to while away an afternoon, keep looking. If you like punk rock that hits hard and hits again, well, here’s your jam.

These songs are like Leviathan’s view of human life: nasty, brutish and short. A couple make a lasting impact in just over a minute; a bunch of other hover around the two-minute mark. The relatively epic “Northern Fort,” seeps in like sweet, unhealthy vapors, its nodding, dreaming melody pounded down by reverberating drums and thick over-tone haunted guitars. And yet though these cuts are mostly bludgeoningly heavy, they are never dull. “Yamsi” lets the bass do the driving, freeing guitars up for frenetic trebly upbeats. “Drink”’s guitar riff whirls like a cyclone, tossing wreckage out centripetally from the eddy’s center. “Before Dawn” is a denatured campfire song, with Kennedy singing blankly in unison with a female vocalist, tambourine dragging listlessly behind acoustic strumming. An unhinged keyboard solo erupts from its woozy jangle. “Xans” is even odder, clearing the fug for an offkilter keyboard melody that sounds like 1960s French film soundtrack tipped over on its side.

The point is they’re all songs—whether they last 60 seconds or 200. They all have their interior logic. They all have their distinct melodies, though sometimes they’re shrouded by an onslaught of dissonace, They’re all different and they all land with tremendous force. Look this band up on Google, and you’ll get all kinds of tips about how to keep your Kitchen’s Floor spotless, but when crud and noise sounds this good, why bother?

Jennifer Kelly

[acoustic-eel]

would you still love me if i was rendered in increasingly abstract ways to imply my progressing sense of disconnection from humanity

[skydoescrime]

im straight up “against it” and by it haha well. lets justr say. the kitchen floor

[garbagewith-a-cherryontop]

5 Things Nobody Tells you About Owning a Cat

Inter-dimensional travel

Tidied the background up a bit cause it was kinda messy and our Lord and Saviour Alfred Pennyworth would never.

[1spooky2me]

SOMEONE ON TWITTER HAD A BANGER NAME FOR THE AU THAT I GUESS THIS IS NOW….

I will now tag everything Gravity Falls I make as the Fixer-UpperAU

Cool name thought of by @acinomthecat Thank you my ass was struggling to come up with a name

It’s kinda a mix of the HandymanAU and the Uncle Bill AU with a dash of Bill actually listening in therapy (shocking I know)

Sneak peek of the Halloween themed storyboard I’m doing (no I’m not coloring it that’s too much work)

Also the theme song of the AU is Against the Kitchen Floor by Will Wood. SO FITTING if you listen to the lyrics.

[cozycottagelife]

[vintagehomecollection]

House Beautiful Color, 1993

[smooshednetwork]

Angsttttyyyyyyyy

[myoonmii]

Someone on twt said you can see how red Merlin’s eyes are and that he’s probably been crying all night.

And I’m thinking how he obviously never left Arthur’s side after the magic reveal, so he probably would’ve been a few feet away and Arthur definitely would’ve heard him sobbing quietly through the night but he felt too betrayed to even look at him, let alone comfort him.

[mentally-unstable-avocado]

being a Will Wood fan is really weird because one minute you're jamming to a cowboy song about a drug trip and the next your ugly crying because this man's pet rat died. oh, and Jon Arbuckle is there too!

[eden-has-rotted]

My dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called "Against the Kitchen Floor" 😳 you'll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

Me: yeah whatever. I don't feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude I swear I'm really trying

My buddy Will Wood pacing: I don't owe you my heart

[dustedmagazine]

Chris Liberato's 2022 favorites

Photo of Courtney Marie Andrews by Chris Liberato

2022 got off to an unusually slow start for me, as far as connecting with new music. Fortunato Durutti Marinetti’s Memory’s Fool, released in March, was both the first record that grabbed me and the one that I returned to most often. To give you an idea of what it sounds like, imagine if Robert Forster grew up listening to Bill Callahan/Smog, and made a record with Robert Wyatt producing, and you’ll be pretty close. Right up there at the top of my most-played pile, next to Fortunato, is Courtney Marie Andrews’ Loose Future, which didn’t come as much of a surprise to me given how hard I fell for her last one, the stunning Old Flowers. Although, getting the chance to see her and her band perform the Loose Future material live last fall (more on that below) definitely helped seal the deal.

A couple of records that did surprise me, in terms of how much time I ended up spending with them, were the latest Jeanines, Don’t Wait For A Sign: a pure comfort listen whenever I needed it this year, which was often. And Free Time’s Jangle Jargon, which barely made a blip in the indie world but seems like it would appeal to Destroyer fans — the way it evokes that project’s Thief and Streethawk eras — and definitely fans of Twerps, whom they uncannily resemble on standout track “That’s Rare,” and whose former frontman Marty Frawley guest stars on the album. It’s an addicting one. I also want to give a special nod to the Morteza Mahjubi compilation, Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. I, even if it might not fully qualify as a 2022 release (it was released digitally and on cassette in 2021, with the vinyl ultimately landing this year). I discovered it via a Steve Gunn tweet in November and it’s since become my go-to morning record — equal parts ghostly and jaunty, improvised piano pieces from 1950s/60s Iranian national radio broadcasts that are sure to get your bones rattling. 

I also saw more live music in 2022 than I have in years, both for obvious Covid-related reasons and because I decided I needed a break from school, and therefore had more time and energy than usual to make it happen. Of the shows I caught, my favorites were Quivers, who made it over from Australia in support of last year’s glorious Golden Doubt, and Courtney Marie Andrews, who played to an adoring, capacity crowd at Cambridge’s Middle East in early November. Something these two acts had in common was an obvious love of playing music with their respective bandmates, which translated into an infectious onstage energy, in both cases, that left me feeling a lot lighter at the end of the night. Picking a favorite single moment is easy: it was the absolutely devastating centerpiece of Andrews’ set, “Near You,” a song I wasn’t familiar with prior to the show but which left a raw, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach that I can still viscerally recall (you know, in a good way). In a very different way, catching Kraftwerk and their synchronized screen show at The Wang Theater ruled, too. As did seeing Berlin resident Ned Collette, not once but twice, after catching Collette fever last Spring when I picked up the reissue of his debut, Jokes & Trials, and subsequently deep diving into his back catalog. 

But that’s enough out of me. So, without further adieu, here are the records I enjoyed the most this year. If we reviewed the record here at Dusted, or I covered it in a different context elsewhere, I made sure to link to it. 

Courtney Marie Andrews — Loose Future (Fat Possum) 

Michael Beach — 2022 EP (Goner) 

Blue Ocean — s/t (Dandy Boy) 

Jackson Reid Briggs — Out Of Line EP (Self-released) 

Thomas Bush — Preludes (Mamma’s Mysterious Jukebox) 

Laura Cannell — Antiphony Of The Trees (Brawl) 

Sarah Mary Chadwick — Flipped It (Kill Rock Stars) 

Chronophage — s/t (PPM) 

Ned Collette — Jokes & Trials (Feeding Tube/Sophomore Lounge) REISSUE 

Loren Connors — Airs (Recital) REISSUE 

Exek — Advertise Here (Castle Face) 

Field School — When Summer Comes (Bobo Integral) 

Fortunato Durutti Marinetti — Memory’s Fool (Soft Abuse/Bobo Integral) 

Free Time — Jangle Jargon (Bedroom Suck) 

The Glass Picture — s/t (Chapter) 

​​Lande Hekt — Romantic / Octopussy (Emotional Response) 

Jeanines — Don’t Wait for a Sign (Slumberland)

 Jeanines — Latest Light / After All (Market Square) 

Alicia Jeanine — Demos (Self-released) 

Kitchen’s Floor — None Of That (Petty Bunco) 

Morteza Mahjubi — Selected Improvisations from Golha, Pt. I (Death Is Not The End) 

The Orchids — Dreaming Kind (Skep Wax) 

The Reds, Pinks and Purples — Summer at Land’s End (Slumberland) 

The Reds, Pinks and Purples — They Only Wanted Your Soul (Slumberland) 

The Stroppies — Levity (Tough Love) 

Ben Woods — Dispeller (Shrimper/Melted Ice Cream/Meritorio)

Chris Liberato

[plagued-by-visions]

[proventobeaj3lover]

ONE WORD

SMASH

(read tags)

[walterfartzroy]

your boyfriend is catatonic in my arms. yeah. yeah he's crying about causing so much harm, or something. he's pounding his head against the kitchen floor. he's— yeah. yeah he apologized for his life and ever entering yours.