US dark/dream-pop duo Magic Wands have released a new digital double single today that couples the brand new song ‘Time To Dream’ with a remix by Metropolis Records labelmates Lost Signal of their ‘Armour’ single issued in October 2024. Video clips of the original version of ‘Armour’ and the remix have also been made available and can be seen here (original)….
…and here (remix):
“‘Time To Dream’ is about entering a dreamlike state where the boundaries between reality and imagination dissolve,” the duo explain. “It was inspired by magic and a sense of stepping through the looking glass.” ‘Time To Dream’ is included on a new Magic Wands album entitled ‘Cascades’, which is out on 24th October via Metropolis Records. It also includes the original single version of ‘Armour’, as well as the previously issued ‘Hide’, ‘Moonshadow’ and ‘Across The Water’ . It will be promoted with an appearance at the Substance festival HERE in Los Angeles on 7th November, with further shows to be arranged.
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Magic Wands is a dark-pop duo originally formed in Nashville by guitarists and vocalists Dexy and Chris Valentine. Now based in Los Angeles, they are known for their shimmering and dreamy sound, which incorporates elements of shoegaze, dream pop, post-punk and goth. They utilise heavily textured guitars, synth drones and ethereal vocals to conjure an otherworldly atmosphere in their songs.
Dedicated to creating music that is both imaginative and emotionally engaging, Magic Wands found success soon after forming in 2008, gaining a loyal fanbase that has grown ever since. They have issued five studio albums to date, the most recent of which is ‘Switch’ (2023). Its songs were also remixed by guest artists and released as ‘Switched’ later that year.
Brooklyn alt rockers CLONE present ‘Care To Try?’, the title track from their Care To Try EP, a blazing three-track offering set for release on October 3 via Portland label Little Cloud Records. The band recently shared the adrenaline-inducing lead single ‘Galvanized’.
Written over the past year with Clone’s original lineup of LG Galleon, Gregg Giufree (Pilot to Gunner), Max Idas and Dominick Turi, this EP was produced by LG Galleon and Bisi at his famed BC Studio (built together with Brian Eno), and mastered by Fred Kevorkian (The White Stripes, Sonic Youth, Juliana Hatfield, Regina Spektor, Lloyd Cole).
"Well ‘Care to Try?’ is a retribution song. A song that cries out for the disenfranchised and undersung people in the world whose voices are never heard above the drowning of the right wing nationalist leaders in this world,” says LG Galleon. “The spoken word bridge signals out to this issue with the line "with all charisma there is scorn, with every swoon another’s heart will stammer slowly in submission. To Glimpse what could have been through the eyes of another.”
The second single from The Lunar Effect’s upcoming third album Fortune’s Always Hiding was released yesterday. “’Settle Down’ is one of the songs we’re most proud of on the new record. Stripped-back and full of raw emotion, it carries a grunge edge that nods to the bands we grew up admiring, while still pushing our sound forward. It stands apart from some of our previous work, but for us, evolving is essential”, the band comments on the new single.
Watch the video for Settle Down here:
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The Lunar Effect were formed in London in 2017 by brothers Jon and Dan Jefford and later completed by vocalist Josh Neuwford, bassist Brett Halsey, and eventually second guitarist Mark Fuller. Since their arrival on the scene, they’ve carved out a reputation for crafting music that feels both familiar and original – a modern echo of grunge-soaked ’70s rock, fuzzed-out blues, and melancholic British soul.
Following the underground success of 2019’s Calm Before the Calm, the band signed with Svart Records and released the critically praised sophomore album Sounds of Green & Blue in 2024. After touring the album across the UK and Europe, they set their sights on album three, their most ambitious work to date. Fortune’s Always Hiding lands in October 2025; a brooding journey through loss, memory, and the weight of time. It marks a new era for the band – deeper, stranger, and more soul-baring than ever.
They don’t imitate the past, they channel its spirit through a warped, modern lens. From thunderous grooves and fuzz-soaked guitar riffs to intimate, fractured vocals, The Lunar Effect channel the unease of the modern world with a sound that refuses to sit still.
2026 promises more touring, more evolution, and no interest in standing still. For a band that’s never fit neatly into any box, The Lunar Effect continue building their own universe — one hypnotic, heavy track at a time.
Fortune’s Always Hiding is available on Svart exclusive Cream/Red/Orange marble vinyl, limited Transparent Green vinyl, Black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms on October 24th, 2025.
“I Am The Song Stuck On Repeat… I Am The Fear” warns frontman Adam Houghton, his baritone oozing with its trademark ominousness.
But rest assured listeners, there’s nothing to worry about. Piled high with oscillating synth strokes, meteoric basslines, and stacked guitar tones, ‘I Am The Fear’ is a single from the Manchester band that more than bears repeating.
The track arrives with an artistic official video directed and edited by Black Rock Creative and produced by Tom White & Mat Peters. Captured amidst the crumbling surroundings of a Victorian theatre, it features a captivating performance from actor Oliver Marson, alongside on stage footage of IST IST.
Confident and catchy, ‘I Am The Fear’ arrives as the band’s first new recorded material since 2024’s Light A Bigger Fire. Produced by Joseph Cross and mastered by Robin Schmitt, it marks yet another bold step forward for a band who demand your attention more with everything they put their name to.
With the promise of a new album looming, standby for further news on that front very soon…
Watch ‘I Am The Fear’ here:
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Over the years, IST IST have forged a formidable reputation on word of mouth excitement, amassing a dedicated cult following in the process. Operating with a fierce northern DIY work ethic, the band have an ever-growing back catalogue of successful studio and live releases. Self-releasing their entire repertoire through their own Kind Violence Records label, the band’s output has been championed by BBC Radio 1 and BBC 6Music, Radio X, XS Manchester, KINK FM in the Netherlands, The Times and more.
Their acclaimed fourth record ‘Light A Bigger Fire’ reached 25th in the UK Official Album Charts in 2024, with John Robb praising the record as “glorious yet introspective 21st-century pop music” in a five star review on Louder Than War.
Taking the record out on the road last year, over 8,000 people across thirteen countries turned out in force at iconic venues such as the Paradiso in Amsterdam and New Century Hall in Manchester to support the band in what stands as one of their most successful European tours to date.
Riding this wave into 2025, IST IST returned to Europe for further dates including their SOLD OUT debut Italian shows, and subsequently released two live albums ‘ON FIRE’ and ‘Live In Italy’. The band are book-ending this year with a run of major shows back in the UK – in Leeds, Glasgow, London, and Birmingham across late November and December – as they celebrate their 10th year in business.
And in the last few weeks, IST IST announced their biggest hometown show to date. In 2026, the band will play the salubrious Albert Hall show; a show that presents both an unmissable opportunity to revel in the career high points of their decade long career, while getting a glimpse of their eagerly awaited new album.
Catch IST IST at the following UK shows:
IST IST – 2025/26 TOUR DATES
Friday 28th November – Leeds – Warehouse
Saturday 29th November – Glasgow – Oran Mor
Friday 5th December – London – 229
Saturday 6th December – Birmingham – O2 Academy2
Friday 1st May 2026 – Manchester – Albert Hall
w/ Support from DESPERATE JOURNALIST + THE YOUTH PLAY
Maurice Louca, Alan Bishop, and Sam Shalabi expand on their telekinetic fusion of North African rhythm, heat-haze improvisation, shaabi rawness, free jazz, and psychedelic groove, following acclaimed albums on Sub Rosa, Akuphone, and Nawa Recordings.
Sasquatch Landslide overspills with the Cairo-based trio’s signature trance-inducing explorative energies, anchored by Louca’s hypnotic beats and electronics, with Shalabi and Bishop deploying guitar and alto saxophone in a variety of signal-mashing modes. Comprising seven febrile jams across 42 minutes, this is the most focused and twitchiest album in the DOEA discography to date. Recorded by Emanuele Baratto (King Khan, Elder) and mixed by Jace Lasek (Elephant Stone, Sunset Rubdown, The Besnard Lakes), Sasquatch Landslide will be issued on 180gram vinyl and CD featuring artwork by Mark Sullo.
About ‘Titular’ Shalabi says; “This piece reminds me of the ‘after hours’ music I heard one night in a dark bunker-like jazz nightclub in Dakar many years ago… I’ve never heard that kind of music before or since.”
The forthcoming full-length from Los Angeles–based band Agriculture, The Spiritual Sound, traces a narrative arc through extremes. The album is largely a fusing of the visions of its two principal songwriters: Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson. Though distinct, their voices converge in a singular spiritual grammar—one that defines the totality of The Spiritual Sound, not as separate parts, but as one unified expression.
Dan writes like someone clawing toward the divine through noise, channeling Zen Buddhism, historical collapse, ecstatic grief. Leah’s songs move differently: grounded in queer history and AIDS-era literature, amid the suffocating fog of the present, they carry the weight of survival as daily ritual. Dan takes the lead on their next release, a quieter moment amongst the chaos. About the track, he says;
“This is a love song to a future child. It is so moving to me that even though this child does not exist in the form of a child yet, all of the matter that will one day make up their being is already in the world. And of course this is true of all things that have ever existed. So even though I’m talking about a kid that I want to have one day, I’m really talking about the principle that everything is totally connected.”
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Agriculture’s formation mirrors their duality. What began as a loose collaboration between Kern Haug and Dan Meyer in the Los Angeles noise scene evolved into a shared pursuit of the sublime through heavy music. With the additions of Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, the project solidified into the band’s current form. The ecstatic black metal foundation that was laid on 2022’s The Circle Chant expanded into something more precise and far-reaching on their 2023 self-titled full-length, and deepened further with 2024’s Living Is Easy: a record that embraced devotional intensity and radiant heaviness in equal measure.
Agriculture’s writing process is built on dismantling and revision of self. Dan and Leah bring songs to the band and then allow them to be pulled apart and rebuilt communally: reshaped through conflict, repetition, and deep trust. Richard adds guitar melodies and solos, and Kern constructs rhythms which are sometimes familiar but often unconventional. Finally, with Richard producing, the final form of each song is realised through intense collaborative work in the studio. Although a time consuming and ego-frustrating process, this allows the band to find the spirit of the songs not through inspiration, but through persistence.
Yet, even in its most ambitious moments, The Spiritual Sound remains rooted in the ordinary and in the day-to-day relationships between the people who made it. Gas station snacks. Inside jokes. Sleeping on floors. Playing shows in rooms that smell like mildew. The spirit here isn’t abstract, it’s live. This is spiritual music that starts with imperfect gear and a long-in-the-tooth tour van.
Agriculture doesn’t offer salvation. The Spiritual Sound isn’t a map out of the fire. What it offers instead is presence: a confrontation with the moment, however unbearable, however divine. It insists that meaning is still possible, even in a world hell-bent on reducing everything to content, and where suffering itself can be conducive to recovery. As the Buddhist saying goes: “the only way out is in.”
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Photo credit: Milan Aguire
AGRICULTURE LIVE DATES 2025:
Sep 17 Kortrijk, BE — Wilde Westen Sep 18 Haarlem, NL — Patronaat
Oct 8 Brooklyn, NY — Union Pool (Record Release Show)
Oct 27 San Antonio, TX — Paper Tiger $ Oct 28 Austin, TX — Mohawk $ Oct 30 Atlanta, GA — Masquerade $ Oct 31 Saxapahaw, NC — Haw River Ballroom $ Nov 01 Silver Spring, MD — The Fillmore $ Nov 02 Philadelphia, PA — Union Transfer $
Nov 04 Louisville, KY — Zanzabar Nov 06 Oklahoma City, OK — 89th Street Nov 08 Albuquerque, NM — Launchpad Nov 09 Phoenix, AZ — Valley Bar Nov 11 Denver, CO — Hi-Dive Nov 13 Salt Lake City, UT — The State Room Nov 14 Boise, ID — Neurolux Nov 16 Seattle, WA — Madame Lou’s Nov 18 Vancouver, BC — Fox Cabaret Nov 19 Portland, OR — Mississippi Studios Nov 21 Sacramento, CA — Cafe Colonial Nov 22 San Francisco, CA — The Chapel Dec 04 San Diego, CA — Soda Bar Dec 05 Los Angeles, CA — Lodge Room
Following a record breaking Redux Kickstarter campaign, the first single taken from the forthcoming Magnetic Eye Records Redux Series release The Downward Spiral Redux is ready to be unleashed: Seattle, WA grunge metal trio SANDRIDER present their hard-hitting take on the NINE INCH NAILS classic ‘March of the Pigs’. This highly anticipated new Redux Series instalment is scheduled for release on November 28, 2025.
SANDRIDER comment: “Our choice for a tribute track, ‘March of the Pigs’, is a song that hits so hard”, vocalist and guitarist Jon Weisnewski writes. “It did when it first came out, it still does now, and it’ll be just as brutal in another 30 years. Trying to harness that beast and make sure that it still had the timeless impact, we all expect it to have, was a humbling challenge.”
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Parallel to The Downward Spiral Redux, Magnetic Eye Records will release their customary companion album entitled Best of Nine Inch Nails Redux that contains 13 cover renditions of deep cuts and all-time classics from across NINE INCH NAILS’ catalogue recorded by some of the heavy underground’s most exciting artists.
NYC singer-songwriter Jessie Kilguss presents her latest single ‘Howard Johnson’s’, previewing her sixth album They Have A Howard Johnson’s There, with an era-inspired nostalgic video by Deborah Magocsi. This album was engineered, produced, mixed and mastered by Charlie Nieland (Debbie Harry, Rufus Wainwright, Blondie, Scissor Sisters) at Saturation Point Studios in Brooklyn.
For this single, Kilguss is accompanied by John Kengla (David Byrne, Ben Kweller, Serena Ryder) on guitar, bass and keys, Rob Heath (Madison Square Gardeners, Julia Nunes) on drums and percussion, and Dave Derby (The Dambuilders, Gramercy Arms, Lloyd Cole) and Charlie Nieland on backing vocals. Other tracks on this album features Andrea Longato (Duncan Shiek, Jeremy Jordan, Alphonso Ribeiro), guitarist Kirk Schoenherr (Tegan and Sara, Elle King, Chet Faker), and Rembert Block (Rembert and the Basic Goodness).
“This song originated from some writing I did in a poetry workshop with performance artist Karen Finley. I had seen her read at the fantastic On The Verge Festival, which celebrates women artists of all disciplines at the Wild Project, produced and curated by my friend Heather Litteer. I was drawn to Karen’s writing and saw a post of hers on Instagram advertising an online poetry workshop inspired by the movie Dog Day Afternoon, as well as dogs in general. I had never taken a poetry workshop before but I am a huge dog lover and thought “what the hell”. I like pushing myself out of my comfort zone,” says Jessie Kilguss.
“In the movie, Al Pacino is speaking with his lover about what he’ll do to prove his love and he says something like “I’ll charter a plane to Algeria. They have a Howard Johnson’s there”. It stood out to me because it was so ridiculous and also, my father Howard had passed away a month earlier. So the song is a tribute to my father, Howard Kilguss, and is also inspired by Dog Day Afternoon. My father had a deep connection with dogs, so I thought it was even more appropriate to write this song for him".
Darkwave band, RELIGION OF HEARTBREAK delivers Lunate, a four-track EP blending detached romanticism with pounding EBM rhythms.
Mikal Shapiro and Dedric Moore perfect their dark disco formula across tracks like "Love Tourniquet" and "100 Degrees," creating ideal soundtracks for fog-drenched nightclubs. Desire becomes ritual and heartbreak transforms into dancefloor salvation.
The EP moves from intense desire to late night reflections replicating a night on the town filled with highs and lows and back. It is an honest look at the thrill of our night club experiences that end in reflection of what could have been.
As a taster, they’ve released a visualizer for the title track. Check it here:
Eville have come to be regulars here at Aural Aggravation. We rate them highly, and we rate their latest single, ‘No Pictures Please’, from their forthcoming debut EP Brat Metal, out next month. Check it here:
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