Alt-Reviews: July
No items found.
Words by
I’m Jack, and I’ve been reviewing music for almost a decade - starting with a college radio show, then online radio as Bort on A2B2 Radio, and now short album reviews on TikTok as @mymusic80808. If there can be said to be a throughline across the sounds, it's that they're (mostly) alternative...welcome to Alt-Reviews.
⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ - [Wingdings]
[6.75]
As a Four Tet stan, I was ready to love this. It’s good, not great. I always appreciate how loose he is with his sound on this side project, and it’s awesome to hear a couple of songs that he’s been rinsing in mixes for at least a couple of years. Specifically track 5. However, that looseness sometimes translated as unfinished, and it’s a bummer because there isn’t a bad song in here, just a lot of unrealized potential.
The Garden - Bootleg
[7]
Kind of a variety bag of everything the Garden does best. Weirdo avant- SoCal punk and black pavement biker rock echoing White Zombie’s taste for 70s sleaze. Jesters. Dogs. Motorcycles. It’s all here! Nothing exceptional, but a solid entry in the catalog.
Panda Bear, Sonic Boom - A ? of When
[10]
Physical-only Release (Bandcamp)
Noah Lennox is freshly divorced and pending his mortality! A spectrum of inevitabilities explored through a sound that Brian Wilson would have achieved if he wasn’t Paul Dano in that movie. Vinyl-only release so you’ll have to support physical media or take my word for it.
(Update: since I’ve written this review he is now freshly engaged. He’s a kitty cat. He lands on his feet AGAIN!)
СБД - ПРОТОКОЛ ПЕРВЫЙ
[8]
This behemoth of a compilation features 40 tracks, 2 hours, of 40 different underground Russian producers showcasing that dubstep is alive and well in the motherland. Every track on this has its own character, unique style, and pure tweaker energy that the American scene had in the 2010s heyday of brostep.
Bruno Berle - Sem Fronteiras
[7]
Brazilian bossanova stripped back and injected with elements of expanded Latin influence. Also has a soft experimental edge that you might get from a band like Woo.
piri - girl in stem
[3.5]
The lack of “& Tommy” next to Piri’s name was felt heavily throughout this. Nothing to say lyrically, just really there to harmonize sporadically over the mind numbing house beats. If you told me a 5th grader who has been using GarageBand for 3 months produced this I would believe you.
Muddyoush - Boiling Point
[5.75]
Every loop wears out it’s welcome, but for the 30 seconds where they work, I like probably 50% of the tracks here. I was exhausted and unsatisfied by the end. Will listen to the next release for sure though. Anyone experimenting with jungle has my ear.
Noer the Boy - Precipice
[7.25]
Noer is a dark wizard of sound design who is really good at making bass sound like it’s from a woken beast rising from a century long slumber. Lost a bit of its steam near the end as it abruptly transitions into de-quantized 4x4 beats.
Pearly Drops - The Voices Became Louder
[6.25]
This album can’t make up its mind and I can’t either! It whips between disjointed alt pop to lo-fi psych pop to electro club pop all in the span of 23 minutes and I can’t tell if the chaos is intentional or a lack of identity. All the songs I enjoyed happened to have artists I really like featured.
O'Flynn - Kairos
[9]
This is an incredible dance album that reminded me that I actually like Tech House. My current apathy with the genre is more rooted in a frustration with the bender driven frat POV that most tech house has succumbed to. I want groove. I want rhythm. I want all the percussion. O’Flynn delivers that in spades. And that’s only half the album! The rest is filled out by a variety of other UK dance genres that he absolutely nails.
Helado Tropical - Helado Tropical
[4]
Aimless snooze fest.
Kelela - new avatar
[5.25]
I’m not the audience for this. But that PinkPantheress collab was great enough to get me through the door.
Show Me the Body - Alone Together
[6]
The most standard of standard fare for a punk band who has proven countless times that they have mastered their take on the genre. Would honestly just recommend up to the interlude and then the final track. Everything else was fine.
Liturgy - Harmonium (2008)
[7.25]
Type of record you find hidden in the archive of the occult. End of the world blood red moon blocks out the sun type music. Mom says I have to shower 😡 type music. You will know very quickly if this album is for you. It’s the better of the two Liturgy demo albums this month by a mile.
Liturgy - The Paranoiac Miracle / Eternal Void (2005/2006)
[3.75]
Somewhere deep beneath the layers of distortion on these primordial demos from 05-06, there is a kernel of what Liturgy eventually becomes. It gets points for that, and also what I would say is one of the earliest instances of the Hyper Pop sound on “Angel of Lust”. Beyond that it’s nearly unlistenable at parts, becoming a feedback induced mess.
foodman - HIKARIGASASHIKOMU
[2.5]
The chaotic, post-music, experimental sound design of someone as cutting edge as Little Snake paired with the hair pulling exhaustion of an annoying bird that caws outside your window on an early weekend morning. Truly irritating in such a unique way that I implore you to listen to this purely for the sake of curiosity. Sick cover art though. Shoutout Hyperdub for tricking me into listening to another deconstructed club album.
deBasement - HARDBODY
[7.75]
Watching this duo tear up the side stage at Cobrah’s Halloween G@g Ball last year made me an instant fan, and they’ve only picked up steam since. I’d call this hard sleaze (coining it, credit me) — maximal aggressive club music paired with the horned up bender induced lyricism of indie sleaze. You can still hear them shedding their early DIY roots. This grittier approach isn’t as exciting to me as their sleeker earlier EPs and singles, but it still has great tracks featuring other artists writing the new chapter of club. For a proper introduction, listen to their self-titled EP from April last year.
Nia Archives - Emotional Junglist
[5]
I liked the first 4 songs and then it completely lost the plot. I know I’m in the minority because I broke my rule and read reviews before I wrote mine and I can accept that it’s just not for me. But on so many of the tracks her voice lands clunky and fills every inch of space that jungle needs to create that driving swing that you can bounce around in. I felt suffocated listening to this. And I know I’m not being a hater because I also saw her new live show that she’s touring with for this album and I was equally unimpressed!
Charlie Thall - Telegogue
[5]
When the research chemicals you ordered from the internet have a return address to Toontown. It approaches language as an instrument in the same way someone like Igloo Ghost does. It has a reverence for sampling-induced hypnosis that Replica-era OPN would approve of. It’s filled out with surprisingly danceable digital hardcore and absurdist left-field beats that sound like remnants of an unrealized Death Grips x Crazy Frog collab. It’s the exact kinda weirdo shit I love.