#thrill jockey

[dustedmagazine]

Rose City Band — Sol Y Sombra (Thrill Jockey)

Rose City Band albums typically arrive at the onset of summer, the first humid, budding, insect humming weeks of May for instance, where their indolent strumming and wistful melodies overlay the early days of summer with a sonic haze. This one comes in the dead of winter, still sunny, still breezy but with a frisson of chilliness somewhere in the mix.

The band, as always, is led by Ripley Johnson, the main proprietor of trance-drone primitive Wooden Shjips and airy psychedelic Moon Duo. He lays down the 1970s country rock foundation with a steady guitar pulse and drifting cirrus clouds of vocals. The cosmic part comes, in large measure, from pedal steel-ist Barry Walker, whose eerie, note-bending slides arc out over simple melodies, giving them a spiritual edge. John Jeffrey keeps the band grounded with rock steady, but unshowy rhythms, while Paul Hasenberg plays keyboards and Sanae Yamada (also of Moon Duo) sings soft, inviting vocal counterparts.

The band hits an effortless stride early on in “Radio Song,” with its luminous tangles of guitar sound, its billowy unhurried tunefulness, its ease. You could drive for days with a song like this on repeat, windows down and the miles blowing by, in no particular hurry for the destination. So far, prime Rose City Band, a good thing in itself.

Still there’s a ruminative melancholy in the slow, acoustic “Sunlight Days,” a song that aches and yearns and remembers what’s gone by. Walker’s pedal steel solo here is especially effective, winding and uncurling like cream poured into coffee as it swirls into the mix. The instrumental “La Mesa” is more urbane and less down home, grooving in a chilly, subdued funk manner, twinkling electronics scattered over, as in the last Moon Duo album.  

Rose City Band brings a little bit of summer into the year’s shortest days, but you feel it indirectly, through memory and reminiscence and nostalgia for other summers long gone.   Sure, you could put the whole record on and drift off in a hammock, even now, with ice on the ground and a sharp wind blowing, but there’s a shadow falling on this sun.  You might want a blanket.

Jennifer Kelly

[zef-zef]

more eaze & claire rousay - Limelight, Illegally from: more eaze & claire rousay - No Floor (Thrill Jockey, 2024)

Album release: 21 March 2025

[goodbysunball]

Best of 2024

Keeping it trim, for your sanity and mine. Too much good music released this year, again, but nothing topped the swirling, weighted haze of "Everyone Thought You Were Dead.”

While I'm very strongly in favor of buying music and supporting artists, consider also a donation to Gaza Soup Kitchen and The Sameer Project.

Happy New Year, and thanks for reading. On with the show:

LP

VERITY DEN, s/t (Amish)

J.R.C.G., Grim Iconic...(Sadistic Mantra) (Sub Pop)

THE BODY, The Crying Out of Things (Thrill Jockey)

BILDERS, Dustbin of Empathy (Grapefruit/Sophomore Lounge)

SHOP REGULARS, s/t (Merrie Melodies)

SEPTAGE, Septic Worship (Intolerant Spree of Infesting Forms) (Me Saco Un Ojo)

ANADOL & MARIE KLOCK, La Grande Accumulation (Pingipung)

MORDECAI, Seeds From the Furthest Vine (Petty Bunco)

WATER DAMAGE, In E (12XU)

MATT KREFTING, Finer Points (Open Mouth)

12"/7"/CS/CD

ÅTHÄVOR, s/t CS (Satatuhatta)

BALTA, Mindenki Mindig Minden Ellen 7" (La Vida Es Un Mus)

BRAIN TOURNIQUET / DELIRIANT NERVE, split 7" (Iron Lung)

CICADA, Wicked Dream 7" (Unlawful Assembly)

DEAD DOOR UNIT, Abandon CD (Tribe Tapes)

LIGHT METAL AGE, s/t CS (self-released)

JIM MARLOWE, Mirror Green Rotor In Profile CS (Medium Sound)

PHILL NIBLOCK, Looking For Daniel CD (Unsounds)

NORMS, 100% Haza​á​rul​á​s 12" (11PM/Total Peace)

SIN TAX, Abnegation 7" (Miracle Cortex)

SUFFOCATING MADNESS, Unrelenting Forced Psychosis 12" (Toxic State)

Sharp Pins at the Pilot Light, May 23, 2024

FIVE SHOWS

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, February 2, The Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN

Unwound, March 21, The Mill & Mine, Knoxville, TN

Sharp Pins with A Certain Zone, May 23, The Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN

Negativland + Sue-C feat. Zoh Amba for two songs, June 8, Central Cinema, Knoxville, TN

Primitive Man, September 22, Eulogy, Asheville, NC

BONUS: Driving to Nashville to see J.R.C.G. only to find out it was canceled, but getting to eat the best meal of the year at Margot Cafe

FIVE BOOKS

All first-time reads in 2024; highly recommend Fat City and The Wall.

Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling (1966)

Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell, Our Share of Night (2023)

Leonard Gardner, Fat City (1969)

Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside, The Wall (1963)

Aurora Venturini, translated by Kit Maude, Cousins (2023)

[mixtapemag]

CLAIRE ROUSAY AT THE ROTUNDA.

Photos by Christopher Hall

Claire Rousay is playing in her room. Songs from Claire's new album Sentiment wrap the bedroom walls in sound, the amp in the corner vibrating the makeshift nightstand.

It was one of the most intimate and recognizable performances I've seen - shoes at the foot of the bed, a magazine on the lip of the mattress that will fall to floor tonight, memories and premonitions tacked to the walls. The hum of Claire's voice. It's emo, it's pop music. The idea of creating art under your bedsheets is as relatable as the sun rising each morning. I'd like to photograph every Claire Rousay performance until the end of time, just to see the moments pass in that room, the new noise being heard from the street through the open window. A truly monumental live show.

Claire brings her bedroom to Europe starting tomorrow in Amsterdam. Go see her show.

Check out Sentiment and everything else about Claire Rousay over here.

Christopher Hall posts over here. It's running.

[iamlisteningto]

claire rousay’s sentiment

[musicollage]

The Sea And Cake — The Fawn. 1997 : Thrill Jockey.

[ support the artist ★ buy me a coffee ]

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode, I talk to musician and composer Rob Mazurek. Originally from Jersey City, Rob started playing trumpet and cornet in high school after his family moved to Naperville, Illinois. He first learned the foundations of improvised music while studying jazz theory and practice with David Bloom at the Bloom School of Jazz in Chicago, and then became a mainstay of Chicago jazz in the 1980s. In 1994, Rob formed the Chicago Underground Collective with guitarist Jeff Parker and a cast of revolving players, which in turn birthed Isotope 217, both groups releasing albums on the seminal label Thrill Jockey. In the decades since then, Rob founded the Exploding Star Orchestra, has earned numerous commissions and awards, and in general has created more music and art than a short bio can properly elucidate. Earlier this spring, Rob's most recent work for Exploding Star Orchestra, Lightning Dreamers, was released on International Anthem, and like everything else Rob creates, it's wonderful!

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

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[skatemerit]

average junglist

[august-sysex]

colleen - subterranean - movement II (2023)

[buellerismyfriend]

[dustedmagazine]

SUMAC — The Healer (Thrill Jockey)

Photo by Nate Newton

The Healer is an ambitiously heavy sort of moniker to lay on a record — if not a presumptuous one. But if any band can match up to those implied ambitions and that variety of heavy, it’s SUMAC. Certainly it’s the case that SUMAC’s idiosyncratic synthesis of improvisation and metal’s ultimate worship of the riff has unusual power: frequently their playing cracks open new spaces, full of violent suffering and meditative dispassion, those disparate affects sometimes simultaneously present. When a new SUMAC record appears, you sort of know that’s coming. The experience is still unexpectedly transporting when it envelopes you. Is that healing?

Likely that’s up to the listener and the listener’s needs. For sure The Healer feels like a complement — if not an extension — of SUMAC’s previous LP May You Be Held. In my review of that record, I noted the ways in which it seemed invested in the concept of ritual and experience of catharsis. The Healer is even more insistent: note the record title’s indication of purification and rejuvenation; note also that one of the songs is titled “New Rite.” All those signs and symbols accumulate. The band seems to want its audience to go through something profound, and to come out the other side changed for the better.

Despite the strong thematic ties between the records, The Healer operates according to a differing formal logic. May You Be Held was blisteringly volatile: songs slowly fought their ways towards conventional structures; held themselves together, sometimes briefly; then exploded and disarticulated, into sheets of emotionally charged noise. On The Healer, players Aaron Turner, Brian Cook and Nick Yacyshyn pursue what feels like an opposing set of tactics: the songs want to cohere, to assume those conventional forms from the jump, and SUMAC holds that off as long as possible, stubbornly following intuitions until the riffs and rhythms can no longer be denied.

Listeners wanting a somewhat more traditional metal record experience may find those tactics more comfortable to engage. Listeners wanting a SUMAC record will be happy to know that the band’s tendencies toward intuitive sonic conflagration are not entirely domesticated: see the incendiary second half of “Yellow Dawn” or the driving middle section of “New Rite.” Some lyrics from that latter song capture the record’s general effects: “In tumult, mind carried / Thought obscured / Inlets to flowering expanse.”

That may be too rosy a picture. Not all ears will find a “flowering expanse” in these moody, doomy performances. Album closer “The Stone’s Turn” explores especially forbidding sonic terrain through its opening passages, an evocation of the “tumult” invoked just above. But around the sixth minute, a melodic element begins to shape the thunderous noise, and while the storm moves in and out of the song’s unstable center, the shaping impulse never completely cedes to the chaos. At one point, Turner howls, “Now hands may rest / On gentle skin / Held.” The implied reference to the earlier record’s title feels purposeful, and soon Turner sings, “Licked by golden flame / We are remade.” That seems a fitting metaphorical account of SUMAC’s ideas of healing, ritual and music. Harsh, but beautiful. Bruising, but full of care. It’s a really good record.

Jonathan Shaw

[zef-zef]

Endon - Hit Me from: Endon - Fall Of Spring (Thrill Jockey, 2024)

Fall of Spring is a vessel for band and listener to share moments, to suspend time and move through grief and pain, and to bask in catharsis and resilience. (bandcamp)

Koki Miyabe: Electronics Taichi Nagura: Vocals Taro Aiko: Electronics

[goodbysunball]

The hard blues

Perfect timing, right in the midst of list season. There's a lot waiting in the queue, though these records seem to have made the most impact. More in the line soon, a bunch of 7"s and cassettes and maybe a few more LPs, and eventually the obligatory look back. Mounds of plastic await:::

Anadol & Marie Klock, La Grande Accumulation LP (Pingipung)

Debut collaboration between Turkey's Anadol and France's Marie Klock, and it's an inspired one. I was familiar with Anadol's work from two prior LPs, but Marie Klock's intentionally absurd, voluble electronic music I've only recently discovered. On La Grande Accumulation, Anadol's kosmische-jazz comfortably sidles alongside Marie Klock's mostly spoken, sometimes sung stream of consciousness vocals, and the effect is deliciously intoxicating. Sometimes MK swims against the current of the music, as on the opening title track, and sometimes the pattering drums and synths pull her in, resulting in the bangin' disco-lite of "Sirop Amer (La Goule)" or the chanson-meets-giallo soundtrack on "Sonate Au Jambon." The first five tracks glide almost frictionlessly despite the sometimes frantic sing-speaking, but the final track throws a wrench into the proceedings, something that happens on every Anadol album (check out "Adieu" on Uzun Havalar, for example) and almost undoubtedly welcomed by Marie Klock. "La Reine Des Bordels" begins innocently enough in washes of synthesizer, but shifts into a double-timed square dance, then blaring ominous church organ music, and finally a demented waltz, Marie Klock breathlessly covering the proceedings throughout. It's sort of a fitting end to the record, something jarring to tie together a record which at points can feel like an ASMR exercise and even meditative. Gotten a whole lot of mileage out of La Grande Accumulation, a record greater than the sum of its parts, immediately satisfying without sacrificing the avantgarde leanings of its makers.

Bilders, Dustbin of Empathy LP (Grapefruit/Sophomore Lounge)

Patois Counselors, Limited Sphere LP (ever/never)

Rarely bundle reviews together but these two seem of a piece. Both are loquacious, expansive, lyrics-first records, and both artists have graduated from biting, angular post-punk to a more relaxed sound. 

Bill Direen's long-running Bilders dropped an LP and cassette this year, and he seems to have found the sweet spot between the songs and the poetry presented in recent live performances. The band backing up Bill on Dustbin of Empathy mirrors, catches and gets out of the way of his vocals, their music consisting mostly of brushed drums, softly strummed guitars and the occasional keyboard or organ. At first blush it's almost definitely too slight to appeal to a broader crowd, but Bill Direen is nothing if not a captivating showman and engrossing storyteller. His lyrics cast a wide net, spanning the globe and touching on war, age and morality with the light, deft touch enabled by his 60-some odd years of life experience. His delivery is usually muted, but he occasionally breaks out a caricature or odd pronunciation, as on "Scaribus" or "Caprice and Nemesis," and "Obedience" is as worked up as he allows himself to get. Direen's lyrics feel wise and matter-of-fact, and are unobtrusively slipped in, like the lines "Some voices I will never hear again/Did not live, as long as I do" leading off "Comrades." As a good documentarian, the facts are presented but the margins are, inevitably, colored in with his own feelings. Repeat listens turn up more lyrical gems, and in the end Dustbin emerges as a quiet triumph against the attention economy.

Patois Counselors' Bo White possesses a similarly keen, sharp eye for detail, and if anything Limited Sphere seems to partially claw back any notion of "skewering" detected on previous PC records. There's a sense that White is equally charmed, intrigued and bewitched by the ecosystem of any given local underground arts scene, including the outsized forces restricting and suffocating them. The band plays things with a softer touch and wider palette, ending up somewhere like The Art of Walking-era Pere Ubu crossed with the National's quieter moments across Alligator and Boxer (see: "Fountains of UHF" or "Wrong Department"). The drumming across Limited Sphere is the engine, crisp and busy, deftly navigating and directing sheets of guitar, synths, woodwinds and piano throughout. White's low, nasally delivery make the lyrics tough to make out at first, but the utterance of "Is this what we like?" on "Accoutrement" feels apropos to a world ever more excited by Spotify Wrapped. More natural and less tense than The Optimal Seat, Limited Sphere feels like a collection of short stories, the complex-yet-smooth music a Trojan horse for Bo White's lyrics to be fed inside your skull, lingering and rattling for weeks. Sounds like homework to some, but I'll happily be revisiting, untangling and piecing together Limited Sphere for months.

The Body, The Crying Out of Things LP (Thrill Jockey)

A new LP by the Body, sans official collaborators, is generally a shoo-in for mention as one of the best records of the year around these parts. But, to be fair, the last few "solo" records on Thrill Jockey feel somewhat uneven with age. The most recent, the torrential grey-out of I've Seen All I Need to See, felt like the serpent eating its own tail, a powerful but defeatingly cynical record that seemed to serve as an endpoint. After a number of collaborations, the band returns and sounds refreshed, even bright amidst its shockwave-emitting cymbal crashes and tortured howls. There is a clarity across The Crying Out of Things not heard since I Shall Die Here, resulting in a lean 36 minutes that flies by, dexterously shifting between hard, distorted beats, mantle-cracking chords and samples caked in static. While it's hard to improve upon a track like "End of Line," the Body's contributors more than leave their mark: Ben Eberle's searing vocal contributions feel especially caustic on "Removal," and the back half of "The Building" bursts through Felicia Chen's quietly powerful turn in a way the trio didn't really allow themselves on Orchards of a Futile Heaven. Things still feel dark and cavernous, at times even bleak, but the overall effect is that of the band blasting down walls and letting some light slip in. As usual, the duo turns in one of the best records of the year, but this time it feels invigorating, a call to arms or at the very least a shot in one. If you're unfamiliar, here's your entry point.

Dead Door Unit, Abandon CD (Tribe Tapes)

I last checked in with Philly's Dead Door Unit (one K. Geiger) back in 2022 with Laugh at the Devil, a more than compelling suite of creaking, looping noise in the vein of Modern Jester as I recall, but this year's Abandon is on a whole 'nother level. On Abandon, Geiger's not necessarily shedding the influence of Dilloway, Hanson Records and any number of Midwestern noiseniks, but using it instead as a jumping off point to create these lingering, unsettling long-form tracks. Some in-track transitions, especially on "Clutter (Until the Flies Gather)," can unintentionally jar the listener from a trance, and the relative dearth of blistering noise across most of the CD may leave some looking elsewhere. But if you strap in for the duration, the album becomes increasingly engaging from start to finish. Somewhere between the last few minutes of "Christmas Alley" and the beginning of “Windmill Hypnosis” is where the immersion begins, and the looping, chattering, scratching noise begins to induce either a fight-or-flight response or a sort of fever dream, the listener wrapped up in isolation by sweltering noise. Occasionally the music startles and sears, like the first third of "She Knows How to Reach Us," but Geiger uses the remainder of the track to masterfully pull apart that noxious cloud of static and slowly put it back together again. The one-two of "She Knows" followed by the lonesome piano loops on "Melrose (Street of Dreams)" is one of the high points for my listening this year, a real trip within 26 minutes that's surprisingly affecting by its end. Abandon is a towering, lengthy statement, but one that signals Dead Door Unit's arrival as a potentially generational talent.

Die Verlierer, Notausgang LP (Bretford/Mangel)

Leather jacket garage rock is usually something that I avoid, unless, apparently, it's delivered in a different language. Those Pierre & Bastien LPs still hold up, and now Germany's Die Verlierer deliver another strong take on their second LP, Notausgang. The record, completely sung-shouted in German, also sports a perfect crunchy-warm vintage production, yet still raw enough to generate friction. Tracks like "Das Gift," "Attentat" and "Adrenalin" capably rip, but the production makes the songs feel like some recently unearthed singles from the late '70s/early '80s. Better yet is when the band keeps the intensity but practices restraint with the guitars: the motor-mouthed vocals carry "Allesfresser," which already sounds like a future classic, and the raw "Made / D.M.A.IP" oughta kill live. Notausgang delves even further, slowing things down and drawing in the listener on the tense title track, and even throwing a day-dreamy guitar line into the languid "Stacheldraht," one of the best songs here. The track sequencing is a bit jarring, especially across the first three tracks, but that's a criticism that doesn't hold a lot of water for music best experienced in person. Works in the recorded setting, too, and I'm still a little surprised how much Notausgang was and continues to be played this year. Die Verlierer's open-ended approach to scuzzy rock 'n roll very much transcends the notion of a Crime cosplay act, resulting in a more restrained, durable record that appears primed to reward for years to come. Killer cover art, too.

Septage, Septic Worship (Intolerant Spree of Infesting Forms) LP (Me Saco Un Ojo)

Denmark's gore-obsessed death metal trio Septage returns after two solid EPs to drop a full-length, one that's completely mowed down expectations. A lot of death metal fixated on gore, or merging with goregrind, can safely be dismissed. Too often the bands are trying too hard to be the sonic equivalent of a shocking B-movie horror film, or often even worse. Septic Worship nimbly sidesteps that trap, and delivers 20 minutes of blistering and crushing takes on goregrind without taking itself too seriously. The respective barrages that open up each side of the record are hair-raising, teeth-clenching moments, and from there the record's sides glide from full-on grind to lumbering death metal drops with ease. "Emetic Rites," which opens up the second side, packs everything Septage does so well in just over two minutes, though almost 2/3 of the tracks are left smoldering within 90 seconds, which makes differentiating songs a real challenge. It's not like you put on something like Septage to analyze the nine seconds of "Septic Septic," though; it's there to blast the cobwebs out, chip a tooth or two, and help you come out on the other side reinvigorated, if a bit raw. This is easily my favorite metal or metal-adjacent record of the year, an uncompromising yet ridiculously fun record. Clearly the lyrics out this as something not necessarily apropos to the moment, but Septic Worship is powerful enough to drown out the constant buzzing, grandstanding and distracting faux-outrage that makes up 90% of modern existence. Consider it a bit of self-preservation in an absolutely mad world, or just strap in and let it knock you around - either way, it's a strong antidote to endless doom scrolling and pointless anger.

[theusiafm]

Systemisch

group: Oval;

and artwork: Frank Metzger; and Wiebke Grösch.

format: studio LP;

released: 1994 / 1996;

label: Mille Plateaux / Thrill Jockey;

and available: physical • streaming.

primary genre: glitch;

and secondary genres: ambient; and micromontage.

listened: january 17, 2025;

score: 8.1;

and ☆: Textuell.

[lesdeuxmuses]

Rhyton - Rython (Thrill Jockey, 2012)

[mymelodic-chapel]

Wooden Shjips- Vol. 2 [Compilation] (Psychedelic Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Space Rock Revival) Released: March 30, 2010 [Holy Mountain Records/ Thrill Jockey/ Sick Thirst Records] Producer(s): Wooden Shjips