Seattle’s ‘turbowave’ pioneers, DUAL ANALOG just unveiled their new single, ‘Slave’. The song challenges perceptions and takes listeners on a journey through the complexities of desire and intimacy.
At first glance, "Slave" may seem to explore themes of S&M, but as with all things DUAL ANALOG, there’s more than meets the eye. The lyrics, cloaked in provocative imagery, actually delve into the realm of dissatisfaction and disappointment in sexual encounters, turning the traditional narrative on its head.
“We wanted to play with perceptions of sex and challenge our audience to think beyond the surface,” says vocalist Chip Roberts. “The S&M angle is like a lure, drawing listeners in, but once they dive deeper, they’ll discover the true essence of the song.”
With its pulsating beats, hypnotic melodies, and raw, emotive vocals, ‘Slave’ captures the essence of frustration and longing, painting a vivid picture of the complexities of human relationships. As with their previous releases, DUAL ANALOG delivers a sonic experience that transcends genres, blending elements of post-industrial, Neue Deutsche Härte, and aggrotech to create a sound that is uniquely their own.
SUMAC the Northwest-based trio consisting of guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner, bassist Brian Cook, and drummer Nick Yacyshyn have announced their new album The Healer, out on June 21st on 2xLP/CD and DL. Alongside the album’s announcement, the trio have shared the single ‘Yellow Dawn,’ an epic that churns meditative organ by Faith Coloccia into a glacial stomp that the band obliterates into swirls of airtight riffing and untethered, intoxicating improvisations.
On The Healer, recorded and mixed by Scott Evans (Kowloon Walled City, Thrice, Great Falls, Autopsy), SUMAC deepens its multi-faceted exploration into the parallel experiences of creation and destruction. Over the course of 4 tracks in 76 minutes, SUMAC presents a sequence of shifting movements which undergo a constant process of expansion, contraction, corruption and regrowth.
This musical methodology reflects the thematic nature of the record – narratives of experiential wounding as gateways to empowerment and evolution, both individual and collective. The group’s interpolation of melody, drone, improvisation, and complex riffing becomes a transmogrifying act embodying the depth of human experience. In its highest aspiration it mirrors our ability to endure mortal and spiritual challenges, through which we may emerge with an increased capacity for understanding, empathy, love of self and others. Dismal though the subterranean pits of The Healer may at first appear, from them can be felt the unwavering determination to embrace life, acknowledge interdependence, and honour the gift of existence.
Ironically, it’ll take more time to upload this review of the latest single by lo-fi indie / alt act Argonaut than it will take to play it, let alone write about it.
For a band who really pushed themselves in 2023, releasing a track a month to evolve their ‘open ended’ album, Songs from the Black Hat, which wound up featuring thirteen tracks, and who may have been expected to ease the pace a bit while they took stock and began to assimilate the practicalities of a new lineup, they’ve really surpassed themselves so far this year.
The video is pretty slick in relative terms, but the song itself is a classic and quintessentially Argonaut lo-fi cut with big, thick, buzzing bass and guitar, and the dual vocals which really do define the band’s sound – Laura’s hyper-bubbly pop tones contrast with Nathan’s monotone drawl, and here they really do exploit the quiet/loud dynamic form over the course of an explosive and thrilling minute and a half. Yes, a minute and a half: sneeze and you’ll miss it. But in that time, they still pack in a strong, hooky chorus, and I’m assuming the song is a reference to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia rather than the band, Fightmilk – and while they may never be as cool as the former, they’ve got a clear edge over the latter. So that makes them pretty cool, really.
Aggro-punk band, MALICE MACHINE has finally unleashed their long-awaited new single, ‘Hyena’. The track will appear on the forthcoming full-length album, Act Of Self Destruction.
‘Hyena’ is about the forces and the decision makers that create chaos in the world and ultimately burn us all. It’s a message based on imagery and driven by bass and drums that’s expressed in the typical MALICE MACHIKNE fashion of unfiltered angst… At it’s core, ‘Hyena’ is a statement of anger about life, society and its leaders.
It’s pure late 80s technoindustrial, KMFDM, Ministry circa Twitch, Skrew,Wax Trax!
On the eve of their album release, CNTS, the Los Angeles-band featuring members of Dead Cross, Retox and Qui, have shared a video for the title track from their new album, Thoughts & Prayers (out tomorrow, 29th March).
"’Thoughts & Prayers’ was inspired by a bad day I was having during recuperation after my accident and subsequent surgeries. I was angry and in a lot of pain, struggling to get through the day while not exacerbating my injuries. In the US, "thoughts and prayers," is a common banal response to tragedies. Whenever someone shoots up a school or an airplane crashes into a shopping mall or an entire city overdoses on fentanyl, pundits and politicians flock to the cameras and social media with, "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families… It’s stupid and insulting." – Matt Cronk
Queercore punk band Shooting Daggers released their debut album Love and Rage last month on New Heavy Sounds. This week they head out on a tour with U.S hardcore band Spaced. Before then though they have shared the new video for ‘Wipe Out’ which features a whole host of contributions from the queer skateboarding scene.
Check the vid here:
Sal, Bea and Raquel aka Shooting Daggers, are without a doubt burning it up at the moment. Since releasing their EP ‘Athames’ in 2022, a split single with Ukrainian punk band Death Pill on late 2023 and their debut album ‘Love & Rage in February this year, the whispers are getting much louder.
New single ‘Wipe Out’ is about the queer skateboarding scene. Sal from the band comments:
"We wanted to show how fun, powerful and epic skating is. Even if it means eating shit and “wipe out” more than actually staying on the board.
With this video we wanted to show the collective sense of freedom and highlight queer skate communities from everywhere,that’s why we gathered footage online from all over the world and put it together.
I got into skateboarding during the whole”Skate kitchen” (all girl skateboarding film), “glue skateboarding” and “there” (queer punk skate crews) era. It influenced a lot of people in the UK back in 2018. There were girl skate sessions for free at House of vans, bay66 and hopkingdom every month in London.
It felt like all the girls started skateboarding around 2018, skateboarding was huge back then (all ages and all genders too). I remember seeing Beatrice Domond skating at HOV and she blew my mind.
We were all learning beginners tricks together, lifting each other up and evolving together at our own pace.
Many queer skateboarding collectives emerged and are still running like queerskatebristol, clumsy (toulouse France), siblings (london), transkaters (london), bronxgirlsskate who participated in this video, among many many others. Glad to see Trans and queer night in bay66 btw
My way of consuming skateboarding is primarily through instagram so Instagram skaters inspired the most like briana king, the girls from brixton baddest Stefani nurding, amy gillingwater, Marbie princess, Arin, Kien Caples too, atalimendes, palice (represent Birmingham), the girls from skate kitchen.
There are so many, I’m sure I will miss some. A lot of regular skaters girls and queers making sick edits and posting on IG inspire me to keep going everyday.
If I had to chose 3 from the top of my head I would say that my heroes are:
Cher Strauberry for the punk attirude
Savannah Stacey Keenan for the steeze
Vitoria Bortolo for the lines”
The band will also support U.S hardcore outfit Spaced as part of their ‘Trippin Thru the UK Tour 2024’:
Ahead of the release of their new album A Chaos Of Flowers, out April 19th, BIG|BRAVE have released the striking new single ‘canon : in canon,’ featuring one of the album’s featured performances by acclaimed guitarist and label-mate Marisa Anderson. Vocalist/guitarist Robin Wattie leads the ensemble with a deeply affecting melodic turns and subtly ecstatic vocal effects, while Anderson and guitarist Mathieu Ball billow in plumes of distortion and slow arpeggio beneath drummer Tasy Hudson’s delicate cymbal work.
About the track Robin Wattie comments, "I took a risk and went full R&B and to my great surprise everyone was super down. I took another risk by trying to convey the slow and heavy nature of witnessing yet another sunrise in the throes of deep sadness, grief or depression… and the sense of failure when you’re unable to navigate the outside world that seems to carry on and disregard the severity of these emotional and mental states. Marisa Anderson amplifies the track to a beauty I couldn’t have imagined."
Listen to ‘canon : in canon’ here:
BIG|BRAVE tour dates
May 3 – Duisburg, DE – Stapeltor May 4 – Brussels, BE – Les Nuits Botanique May 5 – Paris, FR – Pointe Ephemere May 6 – Bern, CH – Dachstock May 7 – Schorndorf, DE – Club Manufaktur May 8 – Graz, AT – Orpheum Extra May 9 – Budapest, HU – Durer Kert May 10 – Wien, AT – Chelsea May 11 – Krakow, PL – Kamienna12 May 12 – Warsaw, PL – Hydrozagadka May 14 – Prague Bike, CZ – Jesus May 15 – Berlin, DE – Kantine am Berghain May 16 – Aarhus, DK – VoxHall May 17 – Sonderborg, DK – Mejeriet May 18 – Copenhagen DK – A Colossal Weekend May 20 – Den Haag, NL – Paard May 21 – Antwerp, BE – Bouckenborgh May 22 – Ramsgate, UK – Ramsgate Music Hall May 23 – Brighton, UK – The Green Door Store May 24 – Bristol, UK – Dareshack May 25 – Leeds, UK – The Lending Room May 25 – London, UK – Portals Festival
According to their bio on Bandcamp, the London trio’s sound is ‘inspired by the punch and grit of 90s alternative rock and eerie creatures of the mind’. But equally, they draw on 70s heavy rock to conjure dark and moody music that’s heavily concentrated on the power of the riff. They’ve been going a while now, emerging with a single release way back in 2015 and launching their debut EP some three years later.
‘Dame Paz’ is their first new material since their debut album, Completely Fine, in 2021 and continues the style of cover art depicting states of anguish, panic, turmoil – which is in keeping with the musical content, and in particular the lyrics.
‘Dame Paz’ is a six-and-a-half minute exploration of psychological anguish, and a collision of heavy rock, goth, and grunge. The dark mood and looming-on-a-precipice tension of the verses – primarily bass and vocal – bring shades of Solar Race, but when things build in volume, so does the sense of drama and theatricality, and they go big, and properly epic, even scaling up to operatic metal at times.
On paper, you might be inclined to think they’re a bit Evanescence or something, but Aliceissleeping do way more, demonstrating an eye-popping ambition and approach to scale which fully embraces the prog aesthetic. It’s bold, beefy, dynamic.
Frustratingly, it’s only been released on Spotify at the moment, which is a bummer if, like me, you’re a Spotify refusenick, or if you’re a band wanting to get paid for your work.
Well, this is succinct, and a release most definitely well-suited to the format. I was reminded following a recent post that vinyl is not a friend of the environment. It’s a hard fact to take. I grew up with vinyl, I love vinyl. But then, petrolheads make the same defence of fast cars, and people who love overseas travel and cruises likewise. Well, maybe. Although I doubt many grew up with cruises, the most environmentally-damaging of all tourism, being primarily the domain of affluent retirees, and they don’t give a fuck about the environment because they’re not going to be here to see it burn.
Only today, I read a news item about how younger people suffer more mental health issues, suffer from greater anxiety over the future, while boomers sleep pretty well at night. The findings included that ‘Nearly 60% of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried… More than 45% of those questioned said feelings about the climate affected their daily lives… Three-quarters of them said they thought the future was frightening. Over half (56%) say they think humanity is doomed.’
So I have every reason to feel conflicted here, and I can’t pretend that everything’s ok. But then the same people who are worried are also getting into buying showcase vinyl. I have no conclusion to this diversion: it’s simply something that’s rubbing as I approach this release, and we learn that ‘Ulrich Troyer’s MOMENTS transforms classical & acoustic guitar recordings through tape machine treatment, guitar effect pedals, analog & digital effects into a shimmering soundscape. The combination of textures and effects generates excitement and invites to listen repeatedly, surprising each time with new details’, and offers ‘Fractured tones, beautifully rooted and held together by the tune underneath.’
Troyer’s own words resonate on a personal level I had not expected. He explains that “The inspiration for the composition MOMENTS is based on personal experiences of the last years. I strived to achieve a beautiful and pleasant life for myself and my family through diligent and consistent work. In the hope that at some point “everything would be beautiful”, I lost sight of the moment – the here & now. Two serious cases of illness in my family made me realize that it will never be “nice and pleasant at some point”, but that there are just always beautiful moments in between, that cannot be captured and that need to be consciously enjoyed and experienced.”
His words articulate – albeit in vague terms -the difficulty of coming to terms with the fact that life is not what you expect, that it’s not viable to pin hope on a perfect future moment. The moments of enjoyment, or joy, of pleasure, emerge through the cracks in the face of bleak news.
On learning that my wife had – optimistically – years to live (it proved to be only months), we packed in as much as was physically possible. Making memories, as they say. They weren’t all good. Sometimes she was too ill to enjoy anything; some trips got cut short because she simply wasn’t up to it. She would rather we didn’t remember trips being marred by her being red-hot angry or through-the-floor down, and so we move on, and focus on what we did achieve and the better times.
In times of darkness, music so often provides comfort, and more, and this is clearly true for Ulrich Troyer. He writes, ‘I feel the most intense moments of happiness when I have the opportunity to completely immerse myself in a piece of music for a certain amount of time while composing, playing or listening… Music as such has always accompanied me since childhood and has been there for me in both beautiful and difficult moments. I started learning classical guitar when I was ten. I discovered electronic music in Vienna in the 90s and have been addicted to it ever since. With MOMENTS I wanted to interweave my musical beginnings with my current musical language and expression.’
The two compositions are both under five minutes long, and as such perfectly suited to a 7” release, and across the two pieces, Troyer presents jolting ruptures and blasts of glitch, occasional churns and crackles, and, flickering and out of the mix, amidst bulbous bass and busy ambience and a conglomeration of noise, some tuneage. Some of it’s quite pleasant: some of it is more discordant, difficult noise.
Troyer certainly packs a lot into these moments, and this is an interesting release, which places patience at the fore.
Yesterday, I discovered that the company I work for by way of a dayjob not only has a nut-free floor in its primary office on account of allergies – I get it, the potential for anaphylactic shock and death is something that requires precaution – but it also has two floors where strawberries are prohibited, and another which is a banana-free zone.
I began to consider the practicalities. How do these people get to their designated floors safely? How do they even get to the office? What do they do about supermarket shopping? After all, strawberries and bananas are out there. In fact, they’re on the street in front of various greengrocers’ near me. While I was considering this, the new Melvins single landed in my inbox. It’s as if they had planned to provide the soundtrack to my contemplations.
Yes, Melvins have shared a second song from their forthcoming album, Tarantula Heart (April 19, Ipecac Recordings), with today’s release of ‘Allergic to Food’.
Check it here:
“The way we approached Tarantula Heart was different than any other Melvins’ album,” explains Buzz Osborne. “I had Dale and Roy Mayorga come in and play along with Steven and I to some riffs, then I took those sessions and figured out what parts would work and wrote new music to fit. This isn’t a studio approach we’ve ever taken. Usually we have the songs written BEFORE we start recording!”
“The majority of Tarantula Heart has dual drum parts,” adds long-time Melvins drummer Dale Crover. “Roy is an amazing drummer. We would discuss what we would do pattern wise, then we’d just go for it. Improvising riffs and trading off on drum fills.”
Recorded, mixed and co-produced by longtime Melvins’ collaborator Toshi Kasai, the album also features We Are The Asteroid guitar player Gary Chester. Gary and the Melvins’ history goes back to their days on Boner Records, with the guitar player formerly having been a part of the legendary band, Ed Hall.
Aural Aggravation 