Lotus : Synthbuljong

The European jazz/psych quartet Lotus’ debut release Synthbuljong is a force to be reckoned with. The band – which consists of percussionist Olaf Olsen (Fra Det Onde, Needlepoint), Chris Holm (Orions Belte, Sondre Lerches band), alto saxophonist Signe Emmeluth, and experimental electric guitarist Karl Bjorå – are not making your grandpa’s jazz music(unless grandpa was […]

Uniform : American Standard

Uniform is not for the weak of heart. Their music is a mixture of power drill guitars, industrial drums, and pained, shrieking vocals. Imagine bands like Godflesh, Ministry, and early NIN injected with Bane’s “Venom” and they roided out into an ominous extreme metal rage. That might be the tip of the iceberg for the […]

Juicer : Retire The Fences

Once in a while I come across an album that hits me hard with a quiet, melancholy simplicity. It locks into gorgeous pop sensibilities while never being too sweet and sunny for its own good. Bands like Wild Nothing, DIIV, Shy Boys, and Beach Fossils to name a few lock into sounds of old and […]

Get Lost In Creativity

I know I’ve posted about this kind of thing many, many, times over the past couple years, so bear with me. I think it’s an important part of living a life that feels fulfilled, which in turn makes us better, grounded people. Losing yourself in the process of making things is, in my opinion, what […]

Dream Division Returns Larger Than Life With ‘A Rose in the Garden of Winter’, Out 8/23; Listen To The Giallo Funk Of “Midnight Visions”

Tom Mcdowell has been making music as Dream Division for quite some time now. Starting out as a solo heavy synth project he’s allowed the project to evolve and mutate into something far more than its humble beginnings. From sci-fi synth dread to imagined soundtracks to classic horror literature to baroque ghost tales to 60s/70s […]

Marc Moulin’s ‘Sam’ Suffy’

I first came across Belgian musician and journalist Marc Moulin back in 2014. I was visiting Neat Neat Neat Records in late April 2014 with my wife. We were there to pick up the LCD Soundsystem box set The Long Goodbye(a RSD 2014 release.) He still had a copy from the big day a week […]

Lower Your Expectations : Pledge Night, Anthrax, and the Dangers of College Hazing

I was a horror and metal dork in the mid-to-late 80s. If I wasn’t filling my head with speed metal(or any metal for that matter) I was filling it with absolutely inappropriate horror. I watched plenty as a little kid in ‘Edited For Television’ form, like The Fog, Halloween, Scanners, The Howling, The Exorcist, and […]

“Rock Me” : R.I.P. Jack Russell

Full disclosure, I wasn’t much of a Great White fan. Coming up in the 80s I was exposed to them and I did dig their first three albums. After …Twice Shy I tapped out because, well, I got burnt out on the whole “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” thing. MTV and rock radio ruined that song […]

The Smashing Pumpkins : Aghori Mhori Mei

There was a time when The Smashing Pumpkins were a revered, loved, slightly misunderstood but ultimately great band. Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness were all monumental albums. Gish was the psychedelic little brother to the giants Siamese and Mellon Collie. Siamese laid the groundwork for Big Muff guitar fuzz that […]

Osees : SORCS 80

John Dwyer is a guy seemingly never at rest. His band Osees(or Oh Sees, Thee Oh Sees, The Oh Sees, The Ohsees, or OCS depending on which way the wind blows) are a revolving door of garage, noise, psych, electro rock and occasionally whiffs of prog and metal that never stays in just one lane(hence […]

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