{"title":"Sub Pop","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSub Pop is an independent record label founded in 1986 by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman. Sub Pop achieved fame in the early 1990s for signing Seattle bands such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney, central players in the grunge movement. \u003cbr\u003eThey are often credited with helping popularize grunge music.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"suki-waterhouse-memoir-of-a-sparklemuffin","title":"Suki Waterhouse 'Memoir Of A Sparklemuffin'","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe new album by Suki Waterhouse is a masterful slab of exuberant, emotionally vulnerable pop with hooks galore. It features her hit songs “OMG” (15 million plays on Spotify), “To Love” (15m plays), “My Fun” (5m plays in the first two months), plus 15 brand new songs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMemoir of a Sparklemuffin comes on the heels of multiple hit songs: “Good Looking” hit #1 on the viral chart in 2023 and recently went platinum, and her songs have thrived on streaming and social-media platforms. Her 2024 touring built a rabid, young fan base who bought massive amounts of merch at every show.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eSuki Waterhouse’s music sounds like a collage of her inspirations, experiences, and emotions stitched together by honeyed vocal delivery, bright-eyed melodies, and evocative storytelling. 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It may not sound like it – it’s made up of strong, purposeful arrangements with a huge host of musicians, filled with cradling space and warm light. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis will also come as a surprise to anyone who has seen Naima perform in the time since the release of her 2022 debut Giant Palm, which was undoubtedly a communal experience. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut there’s power in the solitary, too. Giant Palm was arranged with collaborator Joel Burton, but going this one alone in search of something that was truly hers, Naima found she was capable of more. “After me and Joel stopped working together”, she remembers, “it was an impossibility to even fathom doing arrangements myself but then I started learning violin and it was possible”. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinding that she could go it alone was incredibly powerful for Naima: “I think I needed it, to be able to feel proud of something”. 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After extensive digging, the 2” tape reels appeared in Jim’s ex-wife’s mother’s house, and in the spring of 2023 Archie began working on a remix. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSong by song the new mixes emerged just as the band envisioned them. Soaring vocals from Sarah (who studied opera in college), chiming lead guitar, juicy fuzzed out rhythm guitars and clear pounding drums. The pop songs are much poppier. The sonic blasts are more powerful, and the record hangs together as a cohesive document that flows from song to song. The approach was not to make a 2024 sounding record but rather to go back to the 1992 mindset and create the record the band should have made then. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe result, UltraCopacetic (Copacetic Remixed and Expanded), is an exciting alternate history of Copacetic. 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RIYL: Rammellzee, Cybotron, Mantronix, Egyptian Lover, Ultramagnetic MCs, Public Enemy, rave, trip-hop, acid house, drum \u0026amp; bass, big beat. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFeatures guest work by \u003cstrong\u003eAesop Rock\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eNels Cline\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eCartel Madras\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eTia Nomore\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eBitpanic\u003c\/strong\u003e. Clipping vocalist \u003cstrong\u003eDaveed Diggs\u003c\/strong\u003e is a Grammy and Tony award-winner, known for his work in the original cast of \u003cstrong\u003eHamilton\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eSnowpiercer\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eBlack-ish\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eBlindspotting\u003c\/strong\u003e, \u003cstrong\u003eThe Little Mermaid\u003c\/strong\u003e, and more. He will appear in the upcoming fifth season of the Amazon Prime show The Boys. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eClipping’s Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson are prolific experimental musicians. They scored the acclaimed documentary Room 237, and Snipes made the soundtrack to the horror film Starry Eyes. Both worked with Diggs on the Disney Channel Hanukkah song “Puppy for Hanukkah.” Description: Because of their mix of hellified gangster shit and progressive compositions, I once jokingly called Clipping “Deathrow Tull.” Well, it’s not a joke anymore. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile Clipping’s last few projects have been record-long concepts like classic prog rock, their cyberpunk-infused new album Dead Channel Sky is mixtape-like, a carefully curated collection in which every track is a love letter to a possible present. It sounds crisp and classic at the same time. When something strikes us as retrospective and futuristic at the same time, it’s a reminder of how slipshod our present moment truly is. Juxtaposing high-tech, corporate command-and-control systems (the “cyber”) with the lo-fi, D.I.Y. underground (the “punk”), cyberpunk proper starts in 1982 and ends in 1999, from Blade Runner to The Matrix. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConcurrently, hip-hop matured, went through its Golden Era, then melted into further forms: it went from Fab 5 Freddy to Public Enemy to Missy Elliott. While other genres flirted with it, hip-hop was fickle and fey. Rap and rock birthed mutant offspring maligned by most, and hip-hop’s relations with electronica rarely fared any better. What if someone explicitly merged hip-hop and cyberpunk - those twin suns of the ‘80s and ‘90s - into one set and sound? After all, both movements are the result of hacking the haunted leftovers of a war-torn culture that’s long since moved on. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn Dead Channel Sky, Clipping texture-map the twin histories of hip-hop and cyberpunk onto an alternate present where Rammellzee and Bambaataa are the superheroes of old; where Cybotron and Mantronix are the reigning legends; where Egyptian Lover and Freestyle are debated endlessly, and Ultramag and Public Enemy are the undeniable forefathers; where the lost movements of 1980s and the 1990s are still happening: rave, trip-hop, hip-house, acid house, drum \u0026amp; bass, big beat—the detritus of a different timeline, the survivors of armed audio warfare. Clipping are no strangers to sci-fi: two of their records were nominated for Hugo Awards (one of science fiction’s top literary prizes), and a novella spun-off from their music was nominated for a third. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn Dead Channel Sky, Clipping’s co-conspirators include everyone from the guitarist Nels Cline, to their labelmates Cartel Madras, rapper\/actor Tia Nomore, and wordsmith Aesop Rock. Diggs is known for intricate lyrics and rapid-fire rapping, and the tracks that Snipes and Hutson build in the background are no less complex. All of the above serves to give us a glimpse of an adjacent possible present, where hip-hop and cyberpunk are one culture. Binary stars are often perceived as one object when viewed with the naked eye. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike those twin sun systems, it’ll take some special equipment and some discerning attention to pull the stars apart on this record. 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Anchored by her commanding voice—alternately tender, raw, and defiant—the album traverses the terrain of vulnerability and connection, marking the arrival of an artist boldly coming into her own. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBig Dog is a record of big emotions and big ambitions. Musically, the record takes elements of hypnotic krautrock and shimmery shoegaze, opulent goth and pulsing darkwave, with a smearing of electronic textures for a sophisticated and often uncanny sound. Amidst this vast sonic landscape, Salmena’s potent lyrical imagery and gorgeous vocals stand dead center, perfectly in focus. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor Salmena, it is impossible to unlink the personal journey represented by Big Dog from the collaborative relationships that went into its creation. Salmena worked with producer and multi-instrumentalist Duncan Hay Jennings in both FRIGS and Orville Peck’s band. Jennings, who is not only Salmena’s closest creative collaborator but also her closest friend, wrote Big Dog with Salmena over several years, during which Salmena was based in LA and Jennings in Toronto. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore Big Dog, the two gave classic and modern Americana songs a goth-y dream pop treatment on Salmena’s Cuntry Covers EPs. Graham Walsh (Holy F**k, METZ, Debby Friday, Alvvays) helped the pair further refine their budding mix of rock and electronic music, while Meg Remy (of critically acclaimed experimental pop project U.S. Girls) focused primarily on Salmena’s vocals. Remy helped coax out the unforgettable performances that lie at the center of Big Dog through a series of cathartic meetings, pushing Salmena to dig even more deeply into the meaning of her lyrics and really think about different ways of using her voice. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs Big Dog came together, it became apparent that Salmena’s songwriting had taken a raw and intimate turn, going well beyond her and Jennings’ work on their prior EPs. Big Dog’s sound hovers between two worlds, gritty punk honesty always simmering below gleaming atmospherics, impossible to ignore. There are alternative rock touchstones—you’ll hear Live Through This, The Distillers, Mazzy Star —and one genuine alternative rock icon in Lee Ranaldo, who contributes guitar to \"See'er.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut there’s also a sleekness that’s just as much a callback to ‘80s coldwave as it is to ecstatic forms of dance music. 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Longtime Wrens member Kevin Whelan’s first solo album draws heavily from the perseverance of the soul, resulting in rock music possessing an infectious and inspiring sonic uplift. If you’re familiar with Whelan’s past work, these ten tracks bear a certain and unmistakable familiarity—but they also mark an exciting new chapter in Whelan’s musical career, as he steps out with more vulnerability than ever before.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eObservatory came together carefully for Whelan—over the course of 14 years, specifically, as clusters of demos and sketches were eventually assembled and recorded largely by Whelan himself, with assistance from Wrens bandmate Jerry MacDonald and Greg Whelan as well as Tom Beaujour in his Union City recording space. Additionally, his wife Mary Ann provided backup vocals. “It’s the best I’ve done and may ever do frankly,” Whelan states. “It’s written over such a long period of my life. Music I did in the past was tinged with expectations or presumptions, but this time, it was just for me.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe long gestation of Observatory means that a lot of lived experience went into making this album. As time passed, Whelan got married, started a family, and moved to the Asia Pacific region for a period of time; at 15 months old, his son (now eight) was also diagnosed with autism, and the title of Observatory is inspired by Whelan’s relationship with his son. “The moment you’re told your child is not ‘neurotypical,’ your whole world expands in ways you never imagined,” he explains. “Even though he doesn’t speak much at all, or look at anyone directly, you can see him observing everything around him. 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Above all, this is music not only for dreamers but for those who realize and appreciate the enormity of every moment. “It’s about never letting go about those dreams and your passion,” he states. “The album starts from a place of realizing that everything is temporary, what we love eventually changes or leaves us, and regardless we continue to search and find our way back home.” If you’ve ever caught air in your lungs or felt your heart beating in your chest, there’s no doubt that you’ll find some level of connection with Observatory’s open-hearted, instantly classic-sounding rock.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklisting:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. Hold On\u003cbr\u003e2. Leaves\u003cbr\u003e3. Fade\u003cbr\u003e4. Everything at Once\u003cbr\u003e5. Move\u003cbr\u003e6. Queens\u003cbr\u003e7. Empty Rooms\u003cbr\u003e8. Air\u003cbr\u003e9. Better Love\u003cbr\u003e10. 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This album also marks a change in thematic focus; through samples and lyrics, Damon is much more directly critiquing the way American culture exalts violence, coercion, and groupthink as societal inevitabilities.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo learn the piano, Damon hired the first teacher his local shop recommended, a psychic medium named Jonichi who had studied with Nadia Boulanger, a preeminent French conductor and music teacher who left lasting influences on everyone from Igor Stravinsky to Quincy Jones. Parallel to those tradition-focused lessons, Damon was teaching himself how to use Ableton and program drum machines, a departure for a musician who had long avoided working with “any technology more complex than a screwdriver,” but a homecoming for the kid who’d grown up to a soundtrack of techno and rap music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne day that winter Damon felt a song coming on and recorded a voice memo as he sang along with the piano. The resulting demo eventually became “Round the World,” the nine minute penultimate track on Death Jokes which soon seemed prophetic. What first sounds like a heartbreak ballad— Made up my mind\/ I give up on you— later warps into a ghostly dirge—This world’s on fire\/ Nothing seems true. The haunted refrains of round the world, round the world and let it rattle, let it rattle, sounded quite different a few months later, when the pandemic took over around the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“A lot of my songs come to me in full,” he says, but this one felt more like a channeling, like speaking to ghosts before they were ghosts. To write “Round the World,” a three-year process in total, Damon listened to the original voice memo and “took dictation, word for word, of exactly what the singer had sung.” Many of the tracks on Death Jokes had similar beginnings, a process he recalls with a raw disbelief. These songs almost seem to foresee the pandemic, but they’re more about the lingering effects those years have had on all of us, spiritually and emotionally. Their meaning morphed as the pandemic went on: at first they were reflections on our attachment to form, and to ourselves, and then they shifted into solemn indictments of our culture’s blind spots as we misjudge and attack, our veiled self-centeredness and self-importance masquerading as morality. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe plague’s coming, he sings on “I Don’t Mind,” another song written before covid took over the states. If they take me first, I’ll come back for you. This song “blossomed madly, starting with just the little harpsichords,” before including “drum loops from my R100,” and “wonderfully fucked” midi guitars, “wild double vocals, bass tracks from Sam Wilkes, digital chorus singers, an alarm clock, and a sarangi player coming in and out of the whole thing.” The song sounds like “the world’s on fire” because it was and still is. As he worked, Damon fought intense illness for most of 2020, first with Covid, then with lingering respiratory issues, and thirty lost pounds. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout this depleted state, two years and twenty-one failed collaborations passed. He was unable to find those who understood his unorthodox methods, this “loose, wild, self-propelled approach” that signaled a new direction for Amen Dunes. As he kept working, Damon saw the birth of his first child, moved cross country to Woodstock, NY, and dove repeatedly into the uncertain states of learning and losing. He knew he had to go it mostly alone this time, but not everything from that year was a wash; the collaborations that worked, however small, proved to be profound. The jazz bassist Sam Wilkes appears on a trio of songs, and Christoffer Berg (Fever Ray) and Kwake Bass (Tirzah \u0026amp; Dean Blunt) provided tracks on several others; sessions with Panoram and Money Mark also ended up in the final version of Death Jokes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThough the eerie, modern blend of folk and blues that Amen Dunes is best known for is very much present here, Death Jokes is a major departure, an ambitious electronic album that reveals new artistic abilities and concerns. On most songs Damon incorporated sounds, talking, and music pilfered from Youtube, and the vast collage of samples include Nadia Boulanger giving advice in French, an ancient music scholar’s lyre performance of the oldest written song in human history, protest chants, a grunting powerlifter, and bits of stand-up from Lenny Bruce, and others, included as “thought provocation and irritant.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese fourteen songs function as an essay on the way America’s culture of violence, dominance, and destructive individualism has crescendoed and imploded in recent years. On “Exodus, Damon seems to sing in tongues: You say life is hard \/ Well at least you think it is\/ But it’s a joke\/ Some day we lose it. The imperative that follows— so use it — is garbled and chopped, as if the only way to deliver sincerity into our spiritual malaise is to smuggle it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn “Mary Anne,” a ballad about the ways we fail and harm each other and an ode to the innocence that persists, you can still get the feeling that all our human mess is worth it: In purgatory we both got lost\/ When we meet again we will catch up, love. When a comment Damon made a few years ago about having never collaborated with women was interpreted by a journalist without curiosity, he felt compelled to publicly speak about the sexual abuse two women committed against him in his childhood. “Mary Anne” is a gentle song in a dark album, an attempt to forgive both the abuse and the ignorant retribution.   “Purple Land,” also speaks to the fragility of youth, this time as a time capsule for a child as she grows up in a dark and uncertain world—You’ll be all grown \/ I’ll be long gone  \/You’ll be living on the sun \/ If you ain’t careful, you’re gonna forget it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeen as an essay, Death Jokes reaches a thesis in the last two tracks. These songs mourn “the soul atrophy and separation between us” but they mourn with hope that we might be able to move past the coldness of holding passing convictions above the more complicated truths inherent in this life. These are gospel songs. 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Throughout his work with Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs, Divine Fits, Operators, Atlas Strategic, and more, the iconic Canadian indie rocker recognizes that few feelings are more gratifying—more memorable, more generative, more abundant—than hope. But it takes getting the hell out of your own way. A culmination of that deep library of musical reference, Boeckner is set to release his first album under his own name: Boeckner! “I think in a lot of ways in my mind I’m still playing in a punk band in Vancouver,” Boeckner laughs. “Starting back when I was a teenager, my life in music has been trying to develop my own musical language, and this record is the beginning of presenting that.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo matter where his genre exploration has taken him, there’s something about growing up in punk and DIY spaces that puts collaboration in Boeckner’s blood. Composed of a collection of intimately familiar elements, Boeckner! elicits the same thrill of young passion and discovery. It’s a jet-powered chase through a tech-noir cityscape—fueled by a dream and that special someone in the passenger seat. Boeckner introduces this fused language immediately with the thumping opening track and lead single “Lose.” Buoyed by the scorched space-age synths developed across two records with Operators and the fist-pumping guitar push of Wolf Parade, the song charges headlong into a new world. “Now I’m a walking phantom\/ Night watch at the radar station,” Boeckner sings, as if in a race against time to keep hope alive.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat urgency and passion have always been a trademark of Boeckner’s, and writing on his own pushes those feelings further into the center of the scope. But while Boeckner may be the clear driving force behind the album, he’s not without collaborators for his solo debut. After meeting producer Randall Dunn while contributing to the soundtrack to the Nicolas Cage-starring psychedelic horror film Mandy, Boeckner knew he’d found the perfect counterpart for his solo debut. “I’d been a fan of his forever, especially the Sunn0))) records he produced,” Boeckner says. “Working with Randall really unlocked some suppressed musical urges, things that I enjoy in my private life but don’t normally weave into what I’m releasing—like occult synth, pseudo-metal, krautrock, and heavy psych influences.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlbum highlight “Euphoria” dips into that off-kilter darkness, dashes of vibraphone tossed against woozy waves of synth. “It’s too late\/ Time accelerates\/ From the cradle to the grave,” Boeckner calls like some nuclear fallout Ziggy Stardust, glitching electronics dripping off the mix. The track’s percussive thrum comes courtesy of Matt Chamberlain—whose credits include work with Bowie and Fiona Apple, not to mention a stint as drummer for Pearl Jam—and serves to bolster Boeckner’s potent guitar throughout the record. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat solid base allows Boeckner to thoughtfully weave between emotional imagism and more grounded storytelling. Throughout the record, his imagery delves into science fiction, but it’s charged first and foremost by experience.  “With the exception of early Wolf Parade, I've always tried to put myself into a fictional mindset, but with this record, I was tapping into something raw and personal,” he explains. 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That tense futurism was influenced by Boeckner’s time staying in Dunn’s Circular Ruin studio, a dusky, electronic aura singed into every track...He often found himself falling asleep under the synth rack in a sleeping bag, looking up through a tiny skylight at the Brooklyn lights, the faint thump of Daniel Lopatin recording his latest Oneohtrix Point Never record next door coming through the wall.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn addition to tapping into his own rock roots, Boeckner brought in one of his personal guitar heroes. “As a teenager, I imported cassettes of Medicine’s flawless shoegaze noise records, and I absolutely loved Brad Laner’s sandblasting, Chernobyl guitar,” he says. And while Boeckner first reached out hoping Laner would contribute to one track, the Medicine guitarist wound up adding guitar layers throughout the album, as well as helping arrange vocal harmonies. 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For members of the press, we thoughtfully provide some irresistible story headlines below, for Bret’s sake and your convenience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-Kiwi Flies, and Solo!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-Songs From One Bloke\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-Three (Con)chords (Minus Two Conchords) and the Truth\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-Uh-Oh! Rhymenoceros on the Loose!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e-Bretty or Not, Here He Comes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere. Now doesn’t that feel better? Sometimes it helps just to get it out in the open. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo, yeah, Bret’s a ridiculously funny dude, and you might even call him one of the best comedy songwriters in the biz. He’s had smash hits, he’s won major awards, he’s the better-dressed part of his duo...he’s got a good thing going! 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And so, while in Los Angeles a few years back, recording movie music with a crack assemblage of legendary session musicians, McKenzie started playing around with a tune or two he had written simply as songs—songs without any external direction, songs without plot-pushing concerns, songs without jokes. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“My songwriting had started to open up a little bit,” he says. “We were writing songs all the time in Conchords, but they were always based on a gag. Then the movie stuff often required more story and character, so sometimes what might be a funny song also had to be an emotional moment. I wanted to do some songs that didn’t have to be anything for anyone else, songs that could just exist. It’s kind of bizarre, because 99 percent of songs are like that—there’s only about 10 people who write comedy songs. So mostly this was just me wanting to write songs that didn’t have to do anything apart from be a song.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAdding to his successful track record writing and performing across most genres of pop music, McKenzie is a fan of wry, literate artists like Harry Nilsson, Steely Dan, Randy Newman and Dire Straits. He’s a talented player of multiple instruments and a veteran of several non-comedy bands in New Zealand back in the day, most notably the reggae-based fusion group The Black Seeds. Yet, while songs without jokes are just as much in his blood as those with, he recognizes that most people who know his work will arrive expecting a laugh. Hence, the album’s title. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“When I tell people I’m doing an album, they hit this wall: ‘Is it comedy?’ I’ve been working on it for two years, so I’m well past that, but until people hear it, it’s harder for them to wrap their head around what I’m doing.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten mostly during the quieter moments of 2019, with his life split between work in Los Angeles and his family in Wellington, the songs of Songs focus on themes of escape, the perpetual search for peace, and navigating a life being pulled in multiple directions at once. There are also simple meditations on driving through a city, and the weather. McKenzie was inspired by the path his aforementioned idols like Newman and Nilsson had paved, where a silly or playful number could be sandwiched directly between a song about heartbreak or an earnest redemption and a scathing satire or character commentary. He threw a bit of everything into the mix, recording ideas on his phone at home in New Zealand after the kids had gone to sleep. Upon returning to LA, he would play the sketches for his longtime producer and collaborator, Mickey Petralia, who helped McKenzie identify the best moments, then together they would add parts and shape the songs. From there, longtime film collaborator Chris Caswell created charts for that same ensemble of session players with whom they’d recorded so many pieces for film. The majority of songs were then recorded at United Studio in Los Angeles in just a few takes. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I love working in the studio with those guys, this older generation of LA session musicians, these Wrecking Crew type legends,” McKenzie says. “They’ve played on everything, it’s insane —Dolly Parton, James Taylor, Lionel Richie, everything. It’s quite old-fashioned; the band all get a chart and sit there and play the song two or three times and you’re done. 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Mistress Mary’s “I Don’t Wanna Love Ya Now,” from the 1969 album Housewife, served as the original inspiration. “It was the first song Duncan and I worked on,” Bria notes. “It definitely set the tone for the other tracks we picked.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBria’s voice – described as wavering between “sultry and howitzer” – shines on “Fruits Of My Labour,” written and performed by country great, Lucinda Williams. The Walker Brothers’ “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” is a harmonic (and hypnotic) standout. A musical explorer who moves fluidly between styles, Bria doesn’t consider herself a country artist: “I feel as though I’m a visitor here, paying respect to a style that has informed a part of my musical identity. Country music, as much as any other art form, should be an arena for representation, expression and provocation. 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Led by the brooding vocals of Bria Salmena, Cuntry Covers Vol. 2 is every bit as potent as its predecessor whose noir-inflected alternative country-rock stood in sharp contrast to the singer's commanding delivery as leader of post-punk revivalists FRIGS. Debuting the project in 2021, the languid, reverb-drenched Cuntry Covers Vol. 1 saw her artfully collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Duncan Hay Jennings and reimagining a carefully picked collection of Americana anthems.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVol. 2 pushes the envelope further and harder. Encompassing feverish takes on tracks by Gillian Welch, Paula Cole, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Robert Lester Folsom, Glenn Campbell – by way of Nick Cave – and the late, great Loretta Lynn, Bria’s deliciously dark approach shimmers through these six startling songs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCreated during a break from Salmena and Jennings’ work in Orville Peck’s world-conquering backing band, Vol. 2 was recorded directly after Peck’s second album and Bria’s US tour supporting Wolf Alice. Embracing contrast, the sunny circumstances in which Vol. 1 was made were flipped on their head. Instead of a bucolic barn in the Canadian countryside, they recorded the new tracks in chilly Toronto, huddled together in their tiny makeshift home studio, with Jennings at the controls. “There’s a lot of chaotic energy to it, because it's us cramped in a space where we're all also working and living during the dead of winter,” explains Salmena, who also enlisted the help of local Toronto musicians Lucas Savatti (FRIGS), Simone Baril (US Girls, The Highest Order, Darlene Shrugg, Partner), Andrew Manktelow, and frequent collaborator Jaime Rae McCuaig.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe intention behind the songs was different this time around too. While Vol. 1 was Bria’s attempt at subverting country music’s conservative roots and primarily white and heterosexual agenda, here the emphasis was on experimentation. The duo purposely split the two sides of the EP, with the A-side acting as more of an homage to the tracks covered, and the B-sides interpretations taking on a more traditional route with the source material. “We wanted to mess with things,” she says. And while Vol. 2 might be less personal, it’s just as idiosyncratic, with half of the reversions staying truthful to the originals and others taken to a different universe entirely.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe opening trio of tracks triumphs at the latter. A double dose of nostalgia can be found in a pumping, synth-led 1990s dance version of “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” originally by US songwriter Paula Cole. Bria’s hypnotic vocals then lead a woozy version of Canadian icon Mary Margaret O’Hara’s jazz ballad “When You Know Why You're Happy”. “It's uplifting but there's also a darkness and somberness to it that really resonated with me,” she says. “I wanted to explore that.” Most innovative of all is their take on Loretta Lynn’s groundbreaking “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)”. Recorded before the iconic artist’s recent death, Bria’s punky version drills into the fiery confidence of the song, which topped the country charts in 1967. About marital rape, it was chosen by Bria because of Lynn’s unapologetic approach to such a highly charged subject matter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCo-producers Salmena and Jennings are more faithful on the flipside. Nick Cave’s doomy version of “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” – which featured on The Bad Seeds’ 1986 covers album Kicking Against The Pricks – is rendered in fittingly apocalyptic style. “We liked the history of the song and we were attracted to Cave's dark and brooding version. We felt we could honor that well,” she explains. Gillian Welch’s meditative “I Dream A Highway” is similarly mournful, and “See You Later, I’m Gone”, originally by 1970s folk singer Robert Lester Folsom, sees a moment of hopefulness spring from the gothic gloom that precedes it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBuilding on the tried-and-true\/bold-and-new duality of Cuntry Covers’ first offering, Vol. 2 delivers a deeper dive into the duo’s brilliant alchemy of traditional and contemporary reinterpretations. 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The first episode of his animated feature, Translated Log of Inhabitants, should be released this year, with a fully illustrated D\u0026amp;D-esque compendium of 150 associated characters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShrink Dust, his fifth full-length album under his own name, is partially a score to this film, but it’s also—in Chad’s view—a country record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlways a fan of esoteric instruments, Chad recently acquired an aluminum pedal steel guitar, and began trying to figure out how to play it: “It took me a month to set it up, and a year to be comfortable recording myself playing this thing.”  His experiments with this instrument unify the album, along with themes of death, transformation, fear, benign evil, and the eccentricity of love.  A newfound affection for The Flying Burrito Brothers, and the sci-fi mysticism of the 1980s graphic novel The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Moebius, were also significant in recent years.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSomehow, with all of its disparate influences and components, Shrink Dust might be one of the most accessible moments in CVG’s creative life, simply because it is more apparent than ever how much fun he is having blurring the lines between the vivid worlds of his creation, and the world his audience inhabits.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor those who are open to it, Chad’s adventures in music and art illuminate a path that is more colorful, playful, and sustainable than those commonly available to us.  A path that is, most importantly, always changeable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou can see and hear his alternate reality through the artifacts he offers up.  But as it turns out, the only true access point into Chad VanGaalen’s expanding universe is one’s own will to create.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFind Chad: He’s a monster.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e- Bryan Webb\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklisting:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. 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The jubilant and enthusiastically feminist follow-up, PUNK, raked in accolades from the music press and fellow artists alike. That led to WINK, which CHAI made via remote Zoom sessions, a limitation that became a strength since it allowed MANA (lead vocals and keys), KANA (guitar), YUNA (drums), and YUUKI (bassist-lyricist) to collaborate with artists abroad. On WINK, CHAI looked beyond their immediate surroundings, and the confines of home, to create a work that found catharsis in their international community.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnlike WINK, this self-titled collection of songs finds CHAI returning to their roots, drawing inspiration from their Japanese cultural heritage and the music that raised them. “Everything reflected in the lyrics expresses our experience as Japanese women,” MANA says, explaining why they chose to self-title this album. CHAI’s ethos is one of inclusion, and lead single “We The Female!” – recorded live off the floor to honor the band’s riotous performances – beckons all listeners into the mission. “We are human and were born as female, but we have both female and male aspects in each of our souls, each with our own sense of balance,” CHAI said in an accompanying statement. “We can’t just label ourselves into clear-cut, simple categories anymore! I’m not anyone else but just ‘me,’ and you are no one else but just ‘you.’ This song celebrates that with a roar!”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA nostalgic look backward was, in part, circumstantial. When pandemic restrictions were lifted, CHAI returned to the road, bringing their exuberant live show to new cities, where the experience of performing for enormous crowds in cities like Santiago, Buenos Aires, and São Paulo made them realize they had truly unlocked a global audience. Since the band’s inception in 2011, CHAI have espoused a philosophy they call Neo Kawaii, in reference to the Japanese word for cute, a label typically bestowed upon women who maintain societally prescribed beauty standards. As young women, CHAI felt that any deviation from what culture considered kawaii was discouraged, and so Neo Kawaii emerged as a rallying cry against those oppressive standards. “Neo Kawaii is about reclaiming self-esteem,” MANA says. On the ESG-inspired single “NEO KAWAII, K?” MANA sings: “This is just my body, not a trendy body\/ Gonna be loved, baby!\/ Just as I am.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRealizing that message applied to people outside of Japan, who screamed in delight when MANA shouted “NEO KAWAII!” into the mic, made CHAI consider what other facets of their upbringing might resonate with audiences outside of their home country. Unlike previous albums, CHAI wrote their self-titled record on the road, finding time to record in the days between shows at Stones Throw Studio in LA, Ometusco Sound Machine in Mexico City, and Grand Street in New York. “It was actually a chill and relaxed process, because we were playing shows every day and were really in the music,” MANA says. One song on the album, “Driving22,” directly draws from long days spent navigating the highways of foreign cities until the band arrives at their destination. The YUUKI-penned lyrics distill the excitement of touring over a squelching rhythm section funkier than anything we’ve heard from CHAI before: “All skin colors gathering\/ Imperfect sing-along (That's so nice).”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEach CHAI album borrows aesthetic inspiration from specific musical movements, and on this album, the quartet wanted to make direct comparisons to city pop, a Tokyo-born sound popularized in the ‘70s and ‘80s. City pop was a Japanese take on Western lounge music, borrowing from jazz, boogie, funk, and yacht rock to create a sound that straddled two cultures. Only recently has city pop become a pop culture phenomenon in the U.S. thanks in part to TikTok and YouTube exhuming songs by artists like Tatsuro Yamashita, but for CHAI, city pop was just the music of childhood. They tapped previous collaborator Ryu Takahashi to produce, who shared their love of city pop and eurobeat, as well as the melodies of J-pop artists like Maria Takeuchi, which also contributed to the CHAI moodboard. “They wanted to dig into their Japanese identity, not in a traditional sense, but in this filtered Western way,” Takahashi says. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn writing sessions, the members of CHAI listed words immediately associated with Japan, resulting in songs with titles like “MATCHA” and “KARAOKE.”  Some terms are less immediate, but no less authentic to the country’s cultural heritage. For example, single “LIKE, I NEED” mentions the “selfie,” a now-universal practice popularized by both the Japanese photographer Hiromix in the 1990s and the hugely popular photo booths found in communal places across the country. On “PARA PARA,” CHAI memorialize the bafflingly popular two-step dance trend that overtook Japan that same decade. “There’s not a deep meaning to that song, it’s really just about the dance. We’re saying: ‘as long as you have the two-step dance, you can do anything,’” MANA says. Others, like the aforementioned “MATCHA,” carry metaphorical weight. “The process of making matcha requires a lot of focus and concentration, it’s a very meditative process. 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For example, at Stones Throw Studio, CHAI recorded “GAME” with the sole intention of writing something listeners will recognize as new wave, riding on a house synth line and minimalist production that recalls the eurobeat influences most recently associated with Robyn’s Honey. “GAME” might be the perfect distillation of CHAI’s ethic, as it urges listeners to keep moving through this life with joy and passion. Per MANA: “It’s not about winning or losing as competition, but about what you need to do, personally, to feel you’ve won.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklisting:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. MATCHA\u003cbr\u003e2. From 1992\u003cbr\u003e3. PARA PARA\u003cbr\u003e4. GAME\u003cbr\u003e5. We The Female!\u003cbr\u003e6. NEO KAWAII, K?\u003cbr\u003e7. I Can't Organizeeee\u003cbr\u003e8. Driving22\u003cbr\u003e9. LIKE, I NEED\u003cbr\u003e10. 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I’ve been blessed with that gift that God gave me, and I’ve tried to nurse it the best way I knew how.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile he’s faced plenty of challenges nursing that gift for more than 78 years, none likely rank with last winter’s passing of his brother and last living sibling, Leonard, lost to COVID-19. For the first time ever, Gabriel put down his horn, filling his days and weeks instead with dark reflection, a stubborn despondency broken now and then by regular chess matches in the studio kitchen of Hall leader Ben Jaffe, working overtime to bring his friend some light.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne such afternoon also included Joshua Starkman, sitting off in a corner playing his guitar and half-watching the chess from a distance. When Charlie returned the next day, he brought his saxophone. “I was just inspired to try it, to play again. It had been a long time, and a guitar makes me feel free. 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While he’s also fronted a bebop quintet, played and\/or toured with Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennet, Aretha Franklin and many more, this is the first time his name appears on the front of a record, as a bandleader.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince 2006, Gabriel has been a member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, featuring prominently on That’s It, So It Is, and Tuba to Cuba. 89 was different, and not simply due to a smaller ensemble.  “We had no particular plan, or any particular insight on what we were gonna do. 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Before 2013’s Midcity, the trio of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson did not expect to find an audience for their abrasive brand of rap music. But since the formation of clipping. and the release of their debut album, the field of commercial music enlarged ever so slightly, making room again for noisier, more adventurous elements in electronic production. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExamples of this have been incremental, mere baby steps, so far. And despite clipping.’s insistence that they’re really just making rap— not noise-rap, industrial-rap, or any other mashup genre— their music might be more sonically challenging than that of the punkish rap rockers, lo-fi bedroom producers, and street goth hybridists they’ve been lumped with so far.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSure clipping. sound fucked up, but for them, sounding that way isn’t a criticism of anything. It doesn’t mean they hate, or are out to destroy rap that doesn’t sound like theirs. The band makes its music in a genuine attempt to contribute productively to the form, to offer what they can to the genre they love. clipping. see themselves as respectfully following the path first explored by rap’s pioneering sound designers like The Bomb Squad and Dr. Dre— those producers who were inventing a new language as they worked, and especially those who smuggled industrial soundscapes and musique-concrète techniques into mainstream music and popularized a sound that felt as tough as the stories its lyrics told.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn fact, they don’t see themselves as doing anything too different from the various trajectories of experimentation in recent rap production, and believe the genre is reaching out in many different directions at once. clipping. imagine their work as simply one method among many— no more or less avant-garde than the stark, unrelenting soundscapes coming out of Chicago, the psychedelic blur of contemporary Atlanta rap, the ultra-minimal party clap currently dominating the West Coast, or the off-kilter post-backpack sound of their label mates Shabazz Palaces. Rap music is getting weird again, and clipping. are proud to be around to witness and participate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLyrically, clipping.’s music attempts to reshuffle and repeat accepted rap scenarios, while eliminating a traditional single-point perspective. Diggs’s writing is heavily citational, like a rough-edged collage, gluing together half-glimpsed images and misremembered references, many of which might feel familiar, and some of which assuredly do not. But even while he consumes and regurgitates established styles, his self-erasure is incomplete; Diggs’s dense, often motormouthed flow remains wholly his own.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe band formed in 2009. Initially conceived as a remix project, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson began composing new beats to accompany mainstream and gangster rap acapellas. These early attempts paired noise and power-electronics inspired tracks with existing vocals by commercial rap artists. This was done simply to amuse each other and the duo earned very few fans. clipping. began in earnest in 2010, when rapper Daveed Diggs joined the group. The three members had known each other for many years— Diggs and Hutson since elementary school, and Snipes since college. Despite this, clipping. is their first project as a trio, building on their long relationship and on their shared obsession with rap, and with music’s outer limits.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndividually, the members are known outside of the group for their extra-curricular artistic projects. Diggs is a stage actor, while Snipes composes music for film, and Hutson is an established noise music artist. Snipes and Hutson have collaborated on many projects, including the score to the documentary Room 237, which was released by IFC in 2013.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn February 2013, clipping. released their debut album, Midcity, on their website. The project was created entirely in-house, with the trio writing, producing, engineering, mixing and mastering all of the material themselves. There was no budget, no outside promotion, no hype-machine, no blog or label interest. In fact, clipping. had no expectation that anyone would bother listening to the album, let alone enjoy it. Nevertheless, reactions were largely positive— despite the uncompromising nature of the production, and its obfuscatory lyrical content— and within five month’s of Midcity’s release, clipping. signed a deal with Sub Pop Records.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCLPPNG, the band’s label debut, was written and recorded between February and October of 2013. 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Clipping was their first project as a trio, building on both their long friendship and their many shared obsessions: rap, experimental music, and genre fiction, among others.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClipping released Midcity on their Bandcamp page in 2013 and signed with Sub Pop three months later. The band described their debut as “party music for the club you wish you hadn’t gone to, the car you don’t remember getting in, and the streets you don’t feel safe on.” In 2014, they released their Sub Pop debut, CLPPNG, omitting “I” in the title and lyrics to vacate rap of its traditional center, revealing instead a collage of recurrent rap themes. 2016’s Wriggle EP, released after Daveed’s Tony award for his role as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the acclaimed Broadway musical Hamilton, included “Shooter,” which used gunshot sounds as the beat for an imagistic narrative of three different violent encounters.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince the release of CLPPNG, things have changed for the band—William finished his Ph.D. in Theater and Performance Studies with a dissertation on experimental music, Jonathan composed scores for the films Starry Eyes, The Nightmare, Excess Flesh, and Contracted: Phase II, and Daveed hit Broadway. Their activities outside Clipping have always influenced their work in the band, but never as much as in the creation of Splendor \u0026amp; Misery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSplendor \u0026amp; Misery is an Afrofuturist, dystopian concept album that follows the sole survivor of a slave uprising on an interstellar cargo ship, and the onboard computer that falls in love with him. Thinking he is alone and lost in space, the character discovers music in the ship’s shuddering hull and chirping instrument panels. William and Jonathan’s tracks draw an imaginary sonic map of the ship’s decks, hallways, and quarters, while Daveed’s lyrics ride the rhythms produced by its engines and machinery. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a reversal of H.P. Lovecraft’s concept of cosmic insignificance, the character finds relief in learning that humanity is of no consequence to the vast, uncaring universe. It turns out, pulling the rug out from under anthropocentrism is only horrifying to those who thought they were the center of everything to begin with. Ultimately, the character decides to pilot his ship into the unknown—and possibly into oblivion—instead of continuing on to worlds whose systems of governance and economy have violently oppressed him.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklisting:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. Long Way Away (Intro)\u003cbr\u003e2. The Breach\u003cbr\u003e3. All Black\u003cbr\u003e4. Interlude 01 (Freestyle)\u003cbr\u003e5. Wake Up\u003cbr\u003e6. Long Way Away\u003cbr\u003e7. Interlude 02 (Numbers)\u003cbr\u003e8. True Believer\u003cbr\u003e9. Long Way Away (Instrumental)\u003cbr\u003e10. Air 'Em Out\u003cbr\u003e11. Interlude 03 (Freestyle)\u003cbr\u003e12. Break the Glass\u003cbr\u003e13. Story 5\u003cbr\u003e14. Baby Don't Sleep\u003cbr\u003e15. 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And number three: never, ever, under any circumstances, assume the killer is dead.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLast Halloween, Los Angeles experimental rap mainstays Clipping ended their three-year silence with the horrorcore-inspired album There Existed an Addiction to Blood. This October, rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson return with an even higher body count, more elaborate kills, and monsters that just won’t stay dead.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVisions of Bodies Being Burned is less a sequel than it is the second half of a planned diptych. It turns out, Clipping took to the thematic material of horrorcore like vampires to grave soil. In the years following Splendor \u0026amp; Misery—the band’s acclaimed dystopian science fiction-rap epic—they simply made too many songs for one album. Before the release of There Existed an Addiction to Blood, Clipping and Sub Pop Records divided the material up into two albums, designed to be released only months apart. However, a global pandemic and multiple canceled tours pushed the release of the project’s “part two” until the following Halloween season. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVisions of Bodies Being Burned contains sixteen more scary stories disguised as rap songs, incorporating as much influence from Ernest Dickerson, Clive Barker, and Shirley Jackson as it does from Three 6 Mafia, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and Brotha Lynch Hung. Clipping are never critical of their cultural references. Their angular, shattered interpretations of existing musical styles are always deferential, driven by fandom for the object of study rather than disdain for it. Clipping reimagine horrorcore—the purposely absurdist hip-hop subgenre that flourished in the 1990s—the way Jordan Peele does horror cinema: by twisting beloved tropes to make explicit their own radical politics of monstrosity, fear, and the uncanny.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere’s a well-worn adage in film scholarship that says: Every era gets the monster it deserves—meaning during each period of history, different monsters come to embody the specific sociopolitical anxieties of the time: Bela Lugosi’s Dracula and antisemitism, Godzilla and the atom bomb, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and McCarthyism, Anne Rice’s vampires and the AIDS crisis. While these figures are largely reactionary, Clipping intentionally recast their figures of monstrosity through the lens of an antiracist, antipatriarchal, anticolonial politics to address the struggles of our current era. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe album’s first single, “Say the Name,” transforms Scarface’s evocative lyric from “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”—“Candlesticks in the dark, visions of bodies being burned”—into a screwed-down Chicago ghetto house loop, mixing together a palette of inspirations from 90s industrial music to a certain mirror-bound, bee-keeping, hook-handed former-slave\/urban legend. The second single, “’96 Neve Campbell” is a tribute to the self-aware “final girl” character of the post-slasher film cycle, featuring Inglewood’s Cam \u0026amp; China, who prove they do more than survive the masked killer—they preemptive-strike his ass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe band also connected with fellow noise-rap pioneers Ho99o9 for the song “Looking Like Meat,” which more closely resembles the full-on sonic assault of Clipping’s first album, Midcity, than any of their music since. Among Clipping’s peers, Ho99o9 reveal themselves to be the perfect collaborators to fit into the album’s thematic world. Eaddy and theOGM deliver the most unhinged, viscerally alarming moment on the entire record.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEach track pairs a different expression of horror with one of Clipping’s signature metamorphic takes on a hip-hop subgenre. “Eaten Alive” pays tribute to the Tobe Hooper film of the same name, aping the swampy drag of No Limit and their ilk over a jagged jazz-rap instrumental featuring Tortoise guitar genius Jeff Parker, and experimental LA drummer Ted Byrnes. “Enlacing” posits Lovecraftian cosmic terror as the result of a psychedelic drift into nothingness, played as a smeary, cloud rap haze. “Pain Everyday” uses real EVP recordings—said to be the voices of restless spirits—atop a cinematic, Venetian Snares-like breakcore collage, as a call-to-arms for the ghosts of lynching victims to haunt the white descendants of their murderers. And “Check the Lock” is a spiritual sequel to Seagram’s classic track “Sleepin in My Nikes,” describing a drug kingpin’s paranoid descent into madness.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile There Existed an Addiction to Blood ended in an all-cleansing fire, Visions of Bodies Being Burned concludes with the break of dawn in a forest, providing the false hope that those who have survived the horror thus far might just be safe for good. The final track, “Secret Piece,” is a performance of a Yoko Ono text score from 1953 that instructs the players to “Decide on one note that you want to play\/Play it with the following accompaniment: the woods from 5am to 8am in summer,” and features nearly all of the musicians who appeared on both albums.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince their last album, Daveed Diggs—the group’s Tony and Grammy Award-winning rapper—has starred in the TNT science fiction series, Snowpiercer, voiced a character in Pixar’s Soul, and portrayed Frederick Douglass in Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird. Writer Rivers Solomon’s novella based on Clipping’s Hugo-nominated song “The Deep” has been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, and won the Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ SF\/Fantasy\/Horror novel. Clipping’s song “Chapter 319”—a tribute to George Floyd (AKA Big Floyd) the former DJ-Screw affiliated rapper who was murdered by police officers in May of 2020—was released on Bandcamp on June 19th and raised over $20,000 for racial justice charities. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA clip of the song also became a popular meme on TikTok, generating over 50,000 videos in which leftist teenagers rapped the song’s lyrics (“Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop…”) directly into the frowning faces of their conservative parents. The band also contributed a Skinny Puppy-esque rework of J-Kwon’s “Tipsy” to Save Stereogum: An ‘00s Covers Comp.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor 2020’s Record Store Day, Clipping released Double Live, a collaboration with sound artist Christopher Fleeger. All the audio was recorded during Clipping’s 2017 tour opening for the Flaming Lips, but the microphones weren’t pointed at the band. Instead, mics were placed in toilets, taped to ceiling pipes, tied to trees, worn by roadies, hidden all over venues. The results were then synchronized and edited over more than a year. Double Live is perhaps more a musique concrète experiment than a traditional live album. On the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon said it sounded “Weird.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn his “Album of the Week” review for Stereogum, Tom Breihan described There Existed an Addiction to Blood as “cold, confrontational music, even when it slaps, which it often does.” Visions of Bodies Being Burned slaps even more often than its predecessor, although perhaps the only club it will do so in will be the burnt-out, radiation-poisoned rave of some science fiction dystopia. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir new album finds Clipping building upon the language of their already-revolutionary music, while still making the trunk rattle on dilapidated hearses and demon-possessed Plymouth Furys. 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Surprising, then, that they should turn in an earthy, more accessible and downright beautiful album as their follow-up. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen again, it is a completely logical progression, but in reverse, sort of. On Avatar their astonishing new album, Comets display development in every direction: as musicians, as songwriters, as arrangers and as singers (?!), without sacrificing one ounce of the intensity that is expected from our heroes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs on Blue Cathedral, the diversity of the material is staggering. Avatar veers from swinging, bluesy explorations to piano-laced, progressive power balladry, to pure tribalism, evoking everyone from the \u003cstrong\u003eAllmans\u003c\/strong\u003e, to \u003cstrong\u003eQuicksilver\u003c\/strong\u003e, to \u003cstrong\u003eProcol Harum\u003c\/strong\u003e, to some insane Fela\/Sun Ra\/Crazy Horse hybrid, yet remains wholly Comets on Fire. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough they play cleaner and clearer, their firepower is evident and abundant. They have shifted gears and opened themselves up completely. You should do the same.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklisting:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. Dogwood Rust\u003cbr\u003e2. Jaybird\u003cbr\u003e3. Lucifer's Memory\u003cbr\u003e4. The Swallow's Eye\u003cbr\u003e5. Holy Teeth\u003cbr\u003e6. Sour Smoke\u003cbr\u003e7. 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With their first two albums, (2001’s self-titled debut\/self-released and 2002’s Field Recordings from the Sun on Ba Da Bing!) they established themselves as flag-bearers of modern psychedelia. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHowever, where their previous efforts are full-tilt psychedelic affairs, Blue Cathedral is harder to pin down (which elusiveness we heartily support). \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTheir trademark sound is here enriched by more structured, keyboard-driven jams, churning Blue Oyster Cult-ish chooglers and slow burners reminiscent of Harvest-era Pink Floyd. 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The follow-up to 2019’s Junior is a huge step forward for the band, as the members themselves have undergone the type of personal changes that accompany the passage of time; even as these eight songs reflect a newfound and contemplative maturity, however, Corridor are branching out more than ever with richly detailed music, resulting in a record that feels like a fresh break for a band that’s already established themselves as forward-thinkers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMimi immediately recalls the best of the best when it comes to indie rock—Deerhunter’s silvery atmospherics immediately come to mind, as well as the spiky effervescence of classic post-punk—but despite these easy comparisons, Corridor remain impossible to pin down from song to song, which makes Mimi all the more thrilling as a listen. The road to this point, as roads to greatness often are, was not without challenge; if the elastic guitar rock of Junior came together quickly—or, as guitarist and vocalist Jonathan Robert describes the process, “in a rush”—then the steady-as-they-go creative pace of Mimi marked a desire to break from the “exhausting” work ethic that previously birthed Junior.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The goal was to work differently, which is the goal we have every time we work on a new album—to build something in a new way,” Robert explains. “This time, we took our time.” And so in the summer of 2020, Corridor’s members—Robert, vocalist\/bassist Dominic Berthiaume, drummer Julien Bakvis, and multi-instrumentalist Samuel Gougoux—holed away in a cottage to engage in the sort of creative experimentation that would lead to Mimi’s ultimate creation. “We went there to write, and a lot of ideas came from that retreat,” Berthiaume explains. “We didn’t end up with songs as much as we did ideas, so the result is a collage of the ideas.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter that productive session together, Corridor continued to tinker with the songs’ raw parts digitally and remotely over the next few years, with co-producer Joojoo Ashworth (Dummy, Automatic) lending their own specific talents in the theoretical booth. The process was a byproduct of not having access to their previous rehearsal space as the COVID-19 pandemic faded from public view, but also a result of the four-piece leaning harder into incorporating electronic textures than on previous records.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“For a long time, we identified as a guitar-oriented band, and the goal of making this whole record was trying to get away from that,” Berthiaume states while admitting that the band encountered their own challenges as a result: “We had to figure out how to make new songs without having the chance to play together. It was complicated sometimes.” Berthiaume also describes Mimi—which, fun fact, is also named after Jonathan’s cat—as a record about “getting older” and “figuring out new parts of life”—but despite any claims of transitional growing pains from the band, Mimi is a record bursting with new energy and life, a vibrance that’s owed in no small part to Gougoux joining the band full-time after pitching in on live performances in the past.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I come more from a background of electronic music, so it was nice to involve that with the band more,” he explains, and Mimi contains a distinct rhythmic pulse reminiscent of classic era-post-punk’s own melding of dance and rock textures. Over bright, chiming guitars and ascending synths, Robert addresses his looming mortality on “Mourir Demain”: “I wrote it when my girlfriend and I were shopping for life insurance,” he laughs. With our little daughter growing up, we also considered making our will. 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CSS’s debut full-length, Cansei de Ser Sexy (“I got tired of being sexy” in Brazilian Portuguese) was released in July of 2006, and the band was nearly immediately, and pretty fairly described by The Guardian (July 21, 2006) with, “…they sound like an unlikely, brilliantly wrong fusion of Tom Tom Club, dance culture and the Fall.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the time since Cansei de Ser Sexy came out, CSS has been very busy. They’ve toured around the world a number of times, with the likes of Gwen Stefani, Ladytron, Klaxons, Diplo, played festivals from Coachella, Pitchfork and Virgin, to Reading, Benicassim, Roskilde, and beyond. Vocalist Lovefoxx showed up at #3 on NME’s 2007 “Cool List” (which is a step in the right direction anyway…). And, their song “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” was used in a worldwide iPod Touch ad in late 2007, driving the song, nearly a year-and-a-half after its release, to become the highest charting single by a Brazilian band in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProduced in Brazil by the band’s own Adriano Cintra and mixed in Los Angeles by Mark “Spike” Stent (whose credits include Madonna, Bjork, Massive Attack, U2, M.I.A., and Arcade Fire), Donkey is tough, street-ready, and recreates the frenetic energy of their live shows. And really, with CSS the live show is the thing. Equal parts dance party, urban circus, and out-and-out chaos, the band’s unaffected, unbridled joy in performance is for real and for you. Ride the Donkey!\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklisting:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. Jager Yoga\u003cbr\u003e2. Rat Is Dead (Rage)\u003cbr\u003e3. Let's Reggae All Night\u003cbr\u003e4. Give Up\u003cbr\u003e5. 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And hang on, there’s more: on September 23rd, 2022 Sub Pop Records reissues Jurado’s debut full-length, 1997’s Waters Ave S. The work of a young artist driven by complex inner visions, the LP offers a fresh chance to examine how far Jurado has come in the 25 years since its release—but also demonstrates how much of his point of view and vivid scenecraft was firmly in place from the very start. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA veteran of the DIY punk and hardcore scenes, Jurado had begun taking steps into the world of lo-fi home recording. But with renowned indie rock producer Steve Fisk acting as producer, Waters Ave S introduced Jurado to the independent music world, presenting a set of 13 songs that encompass odes to remote desert outposts, late night conversations with Elvis, a purple anteater, and the great beyond. Though new to the studio, Jurado’s storytelling lens is well honed; these compositions are filled with characters wandering the psychic wilderness, flawed but nonetheless certain of themselves, or at least certain enough. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose only familiar with Jurado’s ambient-tinged folk or AM gold psychedelia will find the album more punky than expected, replete with post-punk basslines, electric guitars, and a youthful tenor to Jurado’s voice. But what’s most striking about the record is how fully formed his world is, especially on songs like the lilting, drum looped “Angel of May,” the sci-fi “Space Age Mom,” and mournful simplicity of the title track. 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Daughn was a trucker, sure, but he's also packed boxes in an un-air conditioned warehouse, climbed up commercial broadcast towers with untested levels of radiation, worked at an adult bookstore, done sound at dive bars and collected unemployment checks. Daughn's been around.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDaughn Gibson first entered the daydreams of the general public in 2012 with his acclaimed debut, All Hell. Armed with modern technology and a pile of thrift-store records, Daughn shook the ghosts out of scratchy Christian folk records and baptized them as fierce Americana with his booming baritone voice. His songs are as frequently tender as they are prurient, as hopeful as they are brimming with despair. He treats the past with respectful reverence while still being able to appreciate esoteric modern-day electronic music from across the pond. The only real starting point for the music of Daughn Gibson is Daughn Gibson.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt's on Daughn's second album and Sub Pop debut, Me Moan, that he truly reveals himself to the world. If All Hell was a gritty black-and-white movie, Me Moan is a widescreen IMAX 3D extravaganza. While the roots of All Hell’s sample-based music remain, these songs are performed live, lushly detailed and richly orchestrated. Live drums, guitars (by John Baizley of Baroness and Jim Elkington of Brokeback), pedal steel, horns, house strings, bagpipes and organs appear on this record, but never does it feel over-stuffed - every instrument or melody is perfectly in place. 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Some might say the pursuit of rocking out via deafening amplifiers, crusty drums and a beer-battered PA is a spiritual one, an affliction that either strikes or doesn’t. Few groups today embody this sentiment like Melbourne’s aptly-named Deaf Wish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey’re more likely to ask a fellow musician what they do for their “real” job (for one, guitarist Jensen Tjhung works as a builder) than talk shop about publicists, ticket counts and online promotions. They’re a grisly rock group and they’ve already signed to Sub Pop, which is to say they’ve already succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, so anything that comes after (performing in strange new cities, meeting like-minded souls, maybe even selling a t-shirt or two) is a bonus. 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The record opens with “Easy”, a languid rocker in the rich Australian tradition of groups like X and The Scientists. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom there it’s onto “FFS”, a moody downhill rocker sung by guitarist Sarah Hardiman that confirms Deaf Wish’s relation to fellow Sub Pop employees like feedtime and Hot Snakes. “The Rat Is Back” is tense and epic; “Hitachi Jackhammer” pays a brief and noisy tribute to Hitachi’s second most notable device (you’d be forgiven for assuming this song is about vibrators). Lithium Zion is a veritable buffet of garage-punk energy, post-punk pathos, sardonic wit and the fearlessness that comes with Aussie rock, a natural consequence for anyone living on a continent teeming with grapefruit-sized spiders and man-eating mosquito swarms.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs has always been the case, the whole group shares vocal duties, even drummer Daniel Twomey (you know the band is slightly unhinged if they’re letting the drummer sing). 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Contrary to the critics who are looking to suss out cultural trends and movements (but have never actually lifted a greasy bass cab onto a stage in order to entertain a couple dozen people), the decision to play loud, distorted, unabashed guitar-rock isn’t a strategic move but a higher calling (or curse, depending on one’s point of view). Some might say the pursuit of rocking out via deafening amplifiers, crusty drums and a beer-battered PA is a spiritual one, an affliction that either strikes or doesn’t. Few groups today embody this sentiment like Melbourne’s aptly-named Deaf Wish. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThey’re more likely to ask a fellow musician what they do for their “real” job (for one, guitarist Jensen Tjhung works as a builder) than talk shop about publicists, ticket counts and online promotions. 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Now it’s a “studio”!), which of course is a wise aesthetic choice for capturing the hazardous riffing, chemically-stained vocals and fiery rhythms conjured by a group such as this, but this step toward a slightly more professional sound only enhances their power - think of the difference between a tangled pile of firecrackers and a red stick of TNT lodged in a hornets nest. The record opens with “Easy”, a languid rocker in the rich Australian tradition of groups like X and The Scientists. From there it’s onto “FFS”, a moody downhill rocker sung by guitarist Sarah Hardiman (“I feel like a fool \/ out playing pool \/ hitting on you”) that confirms Deaf Wish’s relation to fellow Sub Pop employees like feedtime and Hot Snakes. “The Rat Is Back” is tense and epic; “Hitachi Jackhammer” pays a brief and noisy tribute to Hitachi’s second most notable device (you’d be forgiven for assuming this song is about vibrators). 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Losing illusions, gaining expectations; getting deep into the private, soupy kaleidoscope of what’s possible and what’s futile -- GOOD LUCK, her debut, and supernovic, full-length album, is built on welcoming the journey’s complicated drops and mountain highs with something more like grace. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNigerian-born, then an emigré to bits of Canada - from Montreal to Vancouver to Toronto - DEBBY FRIDAY’s roamings through space and time really began when the sun fell. Nightlife was her emancipation from the toughness of home life, and she fell into it, body and soul, totally seduced. Raves til sunrise; house music in unknown basements and warehouses -- the lure of the party was the perfect escape. “I was like a little club rat,” she laughs. Her adoration of the world that it opened for her came in “almost in a sensual way.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThings that feel good sometimes do fall apart, though. In 2017, after DJing for less than a year, her life just sort of imploded. Parties started getting less functional. Nothing was going the way that she wanted it to go. So she gathered her things and embarked on what would turn out to be the first of a few of her coming-of-age stories -- a wave of bildungsromans. “Personal issues: mental health stuff, substance abuse stuff, stupid love;” she lists, but the way DEBBY says it, it seems as if she’s grateful for the valleys she had to walk through in order to see the version of herself we get today. After making the decision to stop herself in her tracks, she pulverized new paths for herself forward. Late-night YouTube tutorials on music production led to an EP, BITCHPUNK, and BITCHPUNK led to her first public performances, and all that gave way to a second EP, DEATH DRIVE. Her art endowed her with the strength she needed to move on. “This is what I was born to do,” she goes. “It came to me so naturally and instinctively. 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There is a remarkably moving love song. Is there pop? There’s some pop, yes, a wiry bit of Cars-esque neon called “Everynight.” Look around the right corners, and you might see some of the old buildings peeking through, too, but in this context—on a song like “Sub,” say, a song that began life as a slow and dark prog jam but is now an elegantly cresting wave of post-punk—they feel more sophisticated, lit up in the cold, bright glow of Television. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAuto-Pain was released in March 2020, which means Deeper wasn’t able to play their new album live for nearly a year and a half. “It was hard living in the vacuum of depending on Spotify numbers to quantify what your music means to other people,” McBride says. Nature abhors a vacuum, though, and the band rushed to fill not only their empty time but the suddenly empty idea of what, exactly, their identity was. “Isolated by ourselves, we were like, ‘What is Deeper?’” Bhatti says. “We’ve always talked about how we didn’t want to stay in one genre as a band,” Gohl says, and absent any audience expectations, they gave themselves the freedom to tinker. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“One vibe I thought about a lot was Bowie’s most coked-out productions,” Gohl says. 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And so: While Flight of the Conchords hammered out their reputation from behind the relative safety of acoustic guitars, blithely billed as a “folk comedy” act, nowadays their musical style runs rampant, unchecked. Judging from the range displayed here on I Told You I Was Freaky, Flight of the Conchords have yet to unearth a genre which can withstand their artistry. Unflinching in their lyrical stance, sophisticated with their arrangements, crafting melodies which always lodge firmly in the frontal lobe: Flight of the Conchords have created 13 best-selling ringtones, humbly masquerading as songs. Their rhymes are fearless, their thesauruses dog-eared. Only cool, confident specimens of manhood such as these could drop three-dollar vocabulary busters like “dungarees” and “pantaloons” while still mesmerizing the ladies with their undulating “Sugalumps.” Vivid imagery? 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In music, everyone loves a teen sensation, but Kline has never been more fascinating than now, a decade into being one of the most prolific songwriters of her generation. She’s lodged in my mind amongst authors, other observational alchemists like Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti, but she’s funnier, which is a charm endemic to musicians. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMeanwhile Frankie Cosmos, a rare, dwindling democratic entity called a band, had been on pandemic hiatus with no idea if they’d continue. In the openness of that uncertainty they met up, planning to hang out and play music together for the first time in nearly 500 days. There, whittling down the multitude of music to work with, they created Inner World Peace, a collection of Greta’s songs changed and sculpted by their time together. While Kline’s musical taste at the time was leaning toward aughts indie rock she’d loved as a teenager, keyboardist Lauren Martin and drummer Luke Pyenson cite “droning, meditation, repetition, clarity and intentionality,” as well as “‘70s folk and pop” as a reference for how they approached their parts. Bassist\/guitarist Alex Bailey says that at the time he referred to it as their “ambient” or “psych” album. Somewhere between those textural elements and Kline’s penchant for concise pop, Inner World Peace finds its balance. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInstant centerpiece “One Year Stand” is a small snowglobe of intimacy recalling the softest moments of Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. Lifted by Martin’s drones on Hammond organ and synthesizer, it could be played on repeat in a loop. I like to think it’s obvious how Greta’s vocals were recorded: late at night as we all sat by in low light, transfixed as she sings “I’m not worried about the \/ rest of my life \/ because you are here today \/ I go back in time \/ I’m a cast iron.” The voices of Kline and Martin, who have sung together since middle school, blend seamlessly.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first order of business upon setting up camp in Brooklyn’s Figure 8 studios was to project giant colorful slides the band had made for each track. Co-producing with Nate Mendelsohn, my Shitty Hits Recording partner, we aimed for FC’s aesthetic idiosyncrasies to shine.The mood board for “Magnetic Personality” has a neon green and black checkerboard, a screen capture of the game Street Fighter with “K.O.” in fat red letters, and a cover of Mad Magazine that says “Spy Vs. Spy! 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She reflects on past selves in “Abigail” (“that version of myself I don’t want back”) and “Wayne” (“Like in first grade \/ How I went by Wayne \/ I always had \/ another name”). If we’re alone, what becomes of the things we see? As in “Fruit Stand,” Kline asks “If it’s raining and I can’t feel it, is it raining?”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInner World Peace excels in passing on the emotions it holds. When in the towering “Empty Head” Kline sings of wanting to let thoughts slide away, her voice is buoyed on a bed of synths and harmonium as tranquility abounds. When her thoughts become hurried and full of desire, so does the band, and she leaps from word to word as if unable to contain them all. As a group, they carry it all deftly, and with constant regard for Kline’s point of view.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSays Greta, “To me, the album is about perception. It’s about the question of “who am I?” and whether or not the answer matters. 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An off-the-cuff approach to music making and instinctive ability to write unforgettable hooks belied the intensity of Jadagu’s subject matter. In a short run time, What Is Going On? confronts some of the nation’s most urgent struggles all through Jadagu’s compassionate perspective. “I want my songs to be both super intimate and still universally relatable,” Jadagu says. “With the EP, so many people told me that the songs resonated with them on a personal level, and that’s what I’m always hoping for.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eResonate it did; What Is Going On? is Jadagu’s first Sub Pop release, but she’d been putting out music on SoundCloud for years, garnering a small online fanbase as she settled into an aesthetic, and recognition from a broader audience was overdue. “It really took off when I became a percussionist in my middle school’s band,” she says. “Writing songs started as a hobby and quickly became a passion to the point that I spent all my free time recording.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn May 19th, 2023 Jadagu premieres Aperture, her first LP and most ambitious work to date. Written in the years between graduating from high school in Mesquite, TX and her sophomore year of college in New York, Aperture finds Jadagu in a state of transition. “Where I grew up, everyone is Christian; even if you don’t go to church, you’re still practicing in some form,” Jadagu says, laughing. “Moving out of my small hometown has made me reflect on how embedded Christianity is in the culture down there, and though I’ve been questioning my relationship to the church since high school, it’s definitely a theme on this album, but so is family.” \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a kid, Jadagu followed her older sister – a major source of inspiration who she refers to as “the blueprint” – to a local children’s chorus, where she received choral training. “I hated it,” Jadagu admits. “But it taught me how to harmonize, how to discover my tone, how to recognize and write melody.” The aching single “Admit It” is dedicated to Jadagu’s sister, whose  boundless love and impeccable taste has been a constant for Jadagu ever since she was a kid. At home, the siblings were raised on mom’s Young Money mixtapes  and the Black Eyed Peas (to whom she credits her love of vocoder) but it was in the sanctity of her sister’s car that Jadagu discovered indie artists who would go on to inspire her work. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Lose” showcases Jadagu’s love of contemporary indie auteurs as it weaves a spare and unpretentious guitar riff with barebones piano chords all while Jadagu sings about the thrill and underlying fear that comes with beginning a new relationship. It is, in her words, a “classic pop song.” “The things we haven’t done\/ Play out in my mind\/ Would you just give me time?” she sings, nearing the end, as the skittering drumbeat propels the song from a place of contemplative yearning to defiance. “Every track on this album, except for “Admit It”, was written first on guitar, which is an instrumental throughline,” Jadagu says. “But the blanket of synths I use throughout helps me move between sensibilities. There’s rock Hannah, there’s hip-hop Hannah, and so on. I didn’t want any of the songs to sound too alike.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEmblematic of this ethos is the single “Warning Sign,” which starts out as an acoustic, R\u0026amp;B slowburner before a muscular electric guitar enters the mix and the song morphs into something akin to psychedelic. “I knew I could make another album on my phone, but I wanted to make sure that I was leveling up, especially for the debut,” Jadagu says. So she began the difficult process of searching for a co-producer capable of complementing her work without dominating it. Enter Max Robert Baby, a French songwriter and producer who captured Jadagu’s attention with his take on Aperture’s lead single “Say It Now.” The duo worked together remotely, sending stems to one another via email, before eventually meeting in-person for the first time at Greasy Studios on the outskirts of Paris. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“When I recorded my EP, it was all MIDI, but in the studio Max and I worked with a ton of analog instruments,” Jadagu says. “There’s some Glockenspiel on the album, calling back to my percussionist days, and some synth warping that adds texture.” While What Is Going On? was heavy on layered reverb, making Jadagu’s vocals feel “shy,” she took what she calls a more “intimate, up close” approach while recording her voice for the LP. That experimentation is best heard on the rousing “What You Did,” which leverages crushing accusations against the song’s unnamed subject. 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Noel did time afterwards with Sic Alps and Six Organs of Admittance, while Miller settled into a new level of interactions with Howlin' Rain and Feral Ohms. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCharlie Saufley resided at the psychedelic pop fringes with his band Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound (kindred spirits to Comets to be sure.) He was joined in California by Meg Baird of Philadelphia's Espers. The East Coast connection, Baird was an already-established leading light in the modern psych-folk canon both in Espers and as a solo artist (most recently releasing the gorgeous Don't Weigh Down the Light LP on Drag City,) as well as original drummer for Philly's post-hardcore degenerates Watery Love. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEthan and Noel were loosely jamming in an improvisational unit called Wicked Mace at this point. Via osmosis, Charlie and Meg came floating in for weekly hangs that still resided in a somewhat free zone. \"We just did pure improv’ for a few months under no pressure to 'be anything' or 'be a band'\", says Miller, \"I think Noel and I sort of pushed for the idea of Meg on drums, me on bass, and Noel and Charles on guitars just to mix it up a bit, get outside our usual mold a little.\" Though Noel and the newfound rhythm section took roles with instruments they were familiar with—but not particularly known for—ideas bubbled up quickly, and each member contributed to the songwriting process.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"As expected, Charles and Noel had killer guitar chemistry, incredible fuzz sounds, symbiotic interplay,\" Miller recounts. Though a multitude of other parallel musical projects kept the pace slow for the foursome, it moved steadily forward—and down paths much less trodden and familiar for the players involved. 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Let It Come\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":54984894316921,"sku":"SPCD1217","price":8.75,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Music Cassette Tapes","offer_id":54984894349689,"sku":"SPCS1217","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"Vinyl LP","offer_id":54984894382457,"sku":"SP1217","price":21.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0238\/8053\/files\/hotsnakes-automaticmidnight.webp?v=1743007806"},{"product_id":"hot-snakes-jericho-sirens","title":"Hot Snakes 'Jericho Sirens'","description":"\u003cp\u003eSwami John Reis and Rick Froberg have been making noises together since high school. In 1986 it was the post-hardcore chime of Pitchfork. In 1991 it was the sprawling, multi-faceted arrangements of Drive Like Jehu. In 1999 it was the lean, mean swagger of Hot Snakes. Reis and Froberg are responsible for some of the most turbulent rock and roll of their, or any, generation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHot Snakes streamlined Jehu’s complex compositions and emerged as bona fide downstroke warlords. They made 3 studio albums of high-velocity, slash-your-face, piss-punk: 2000’s Automatic Midnight, 2002’s Suicide Invoice and 2004’s Audit in Progress. The band ceased activity in 2005 but reunited for a triumphant world tour in 2011, planting the seeds for what has cum.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, after a 14-year hiatus from the studio, Hot Snakes have kicked down the door back into our lives with their new album, Jericho Sirens, due out March 16 from Sub Pop. Fresh, warm piss, bottled and sold as lube.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I considered stopping playing guitar on a social media poll after I completely mastered the instrument,\" Reis says. “But so many people kept sending me letters and voicemail messages, asking me at the dry cleaners, or the butcher shop to bring back Hot Snakes. They were missing rock and roll music. I’ve always considered Hot Snakes to be more in the vein of the proto-Vog movement of the early ‘70s. But to these people, this is their rock ‘n’ roll. I understand that. I totally understand people's desire to be controlled and humiliated by my guitar. Anyone can play the stupid guitar. What they want is for me to use it as a branding iron.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe new album blasts out of the speakers with the furious “I Need a Doctor,” inspired by Froberg’s experience needing a doctor's note in order to miss an important work function. “Yeah, I had to be quick on my feet,\" says Rick. \"Luckily a friend had a stack of stationary from Planned Parenthood and I used that to forge a note relieving me of my obligation to go to a really lame Christmas party at a karaoke joint.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout Jericho Sirens, Froberg commiserates with the frustration and torrential apathy that seems to be a fixture in our daily lives, while also reminding us that we have no fucking clue. “Songs like ‘Death Camp Fantasy’ and ‘Jericho Sirens’ are about that,” he says. “No matter where you look, there’re always people saying the world’s about to end. Every movie is a disaster movie. I’m super fascinated by it. It is hysterical, and it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It snowballs, like feedback, or my balls on the windshield.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMusically, the album incorporates the most extreme fringes of the Hot Snakes sound (the vein-bulging, 78-second “Why Don’t It Sink In?” the manic, Asian Blues on speed of “Having Another?”), while staying true to longstanding influences such as the Wipers, Dead Moon, Michael Jackson, and Suicide on propulsive tracks such as “Six Wave Hold-Down,” one of the first songs written for the project during a Mummer Parade 2017 session in Philadelphia. Other moments like the choruses of “Jericho Sirens” and “Psychoactive” nod to Status Quo and AC\/DC with Froberg admitting, “I still flip bird and ride my BMX on top of cop cars.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“My muse was love. It sounds like panic and chaos,” Reis says. “Restlessness and unease. That’s a sound that I would ask for. I want that record. The inspiration would be simple, maybe even kind of straightforward. Very early rock ‘n’ roll DNA with lots of rules. I would find some note or rhythm in it that captivated me and I dwelled on it and bent it. That's where I found dissonance. Bending and rubbing against each other uncomfortably. Marinate and refine. A lot of the other Hot Snakes records always had tension and release, but this one is mainly just tension.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJericho Sirens was recorded in short bursts over the past year, mostly in San Diego and Philadelphia with longtime bassist Gar Wood, Jason Kourkounis and Mario Rubalcaba, both of whom drummed on prior Hot Snakes releases but never on the same one. For Reis, reactivating his creative partnership with Froberg was one of the most rewarding aspects of the process: “Our perspectives are similar. Our tastes are similar. He is my family. And what more is there to say? My favorite part of making this record was hearing him find his voice and direction for this record. I came hard.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn tandem with a full back catalog reissue series and the new album, Hot Snakes will return to the road in 2018 to incinerate the villages, and they’re already looking ahead to more music. Says Gar Wood, “There're already 2 more records written and recorded. We wanted to come out with this one using the more mainstream sounding stuff to give people a chance to catch up.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTracklisting:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1. I Need a Doctor\u003cbr\u003e2. Candid Cameras\u003cbr\u003e3. Why Don't It Sink In?\u003cbr\u003e4. Six Wave Hold-Down\u003cbr\u003e5. Jericho Sirens\u003cbr\u003e6. Death Camp Fantasy\u003cbr\u003e7. Having Another?\u003cbr\u003e8. Death Doula\u003cbr\u003e9. Psychoactive\u003cbr\u003e10. Death of a Sportsman\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sub Pop","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":54984894415225,"sku":"SPCD1224","price":8.75,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Vinyl LP","offer_id":54984894447993,"sku":"SP1224","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0238\/8053\/files\/hotsnakes-jerichosirens.webp?v=1743007465"}],"url":"https:\/\/cargorecordsdirect.co.uk\/collections\/sub-pop-1.oembed?page=3","provider":"Cargo Independent Distribution","version":"1.0","type":"link"}