#think he also has a sentient worm on a string

[skelekins]

bitty doodles - buncha Fumes and Peye - little Bugg propelling himself down

Fumes giving @sans-guy's crumb a lighter to make up

Kelek gib bitty @mothiepixie's Boysen bitty a smoochum

N then some rough doodles of a bitty Stone - i cant remember why we were talking about him being like Ken or being a fan of Ken lmao

Fumes, Peye, Bugg, and Stone belong to me Crumb belongs to Sans-guy Boysen belongs to mothiepixie

[softluci]

talking to myself

[to begin, i wanna give a TW for mentions of m/rder, as well as s/icide and s/icidal jokes and thoughts; i know that i personally make a lot of jokes like these and so do a lot of my friends and people in general, but i also know that this can be really triggering for a lot of people, so if you are one of those people, this is not the post for you. take care of yourselves.] 

i’m, like, 100% sure that this is something associated with younger people, but in case it isn’t, i’ll just talk about myself. so, i talk to myself a lot. like, a lot. even more than i used to now that i’m alone a lot of the time. and the things that i say (and my friends also say), while they have no basis in reality, they are thoroughly unhinged. and i know that. but! i also find it incredibly funny and i wanted to do a set of headcanons for an mc who talks to themselves like that. some examples of things i say, some of which are things i picked up from my friends, include: 

“you’re sick” (/neg) “this is deranged” “the derangement” “i am insane” “i can’t take it anymore” [sobbing] “this is getting annoying, i need a fucking gun.” “i’m gonna kill myself and ruin everyone’s day.” “and it’s like, why, you know?”  “i’m gonna start killing people” “oh my god, i’m totally buggin” “get the FUCK—” “every day, i am provoked to rage” [unprovoked, uncontrollable laughter] “this reality...it wants me to be a murderer.” “i will kill.” “i don’t wanna” “it’s an illness that you have” “i would kill myself in front of you and permanently alter the trajectory of your life.” “it is time for the immense power of violence.” “don’t make me get violent~” “okay so just die then.” “i’m gonna rip you apart with my teeth.” “i’ll just die, that’s fine.”  and so on, and so forth. 

this is kinda long, but whatever, mc is gn, let’s have fun.

lucifer 

lucifer liked to think that he’d gotten used to you and your tendency to speak with little to no thought. he didn’t love this about you, but he certainly learned to expect it as the days went by. what he didn’t know, however, was that you talked to yourself. his guess was that you’d been refraining from doing so around him, as there was literally no other explanation for what had just happened to his state of being.

he was on his way to the kitchen, just to get some coffee before heading back to his office, when he heard something hit the floor. it didn’t sound like anything broke, so he wasn’t too concerned, but, nevertheless, he quickened his pace. 

he was not prepared for what you said, nor the venom you said it with, as he heard—

“this reality...it wants me to be a murderer, an instrument of evil...fine.”

you definitely weren’t expecting him to approach you as quickly as he did and grab your chin the way he did, but he was making sure you weren’t possessed. upon finding out that, no, you weren’t possessed, you’d just dropped a spoon, he took about seventeen points of psychic damage. 

mc, he is old and tired and he’s not used to this new flavor of humans who like to say the most deranged things they can think of whenever they’re slightly inconvenienced. you are shaving decades off of his life. he can’t tell you to refrain from doing that because you have been, so he is going to take it upon himself to try and make your life easier whenever he can. hopefully it’ll work, and you won’t be moved to unhinge yourself from your sanity the next time you make a small mistake. 

mammon

mammon is around you often enough to know that you talk to yourself every now and again. nothing too out of the ordinary, maybe some comments about the homework you were working on or whatever you were doing on your d.d.d. he was also around you often enough to know that the things you said weren’t always well thought-out, or thought-out at all. he wasn’t judging, he had no place to, he knew that, but—you know, he can’t say he was prepared for this. 

he was on his way to your room, as per usual, when, as he got to your doorway, you were overcome by something vile and you said, “i will kill.”

he has never burst into your room faster. he’s in your face, he’s yelling, his hands are on your shoulders, he’s this close to thrashing you around in hopes that whatever evil crawled inside of you while he wasn’t looking will come flying out—

what...did you say? you made a mistake on your homework? you made a mistake on your homework and your next course of action was to make anyone in a 300 foot radius think you’re possessed? you’re more boneheaded than he thought, and you should feel ashamed at this moment because this is the resident bonehead speaking. moving on, though. 

how can he make you into a happier person overall so that this doesn’t happen? if you don’t know, he’ll just attach himself to your hip so he can find out. congratulations, he’s never leaving you alone.

levi

levi is no stranger to saying things he doesn’t mean in moments of stress—this is just what happens when a person spends a lot of time playing games online. he’s said some pretty off-color things during matches, strings of curses, and the like, but he has never said, nor heard anything like what just left your mouth.

“i’m gonna start killing people.”

at first, he didn’t really react, giving you a quick glance and asking, “in the game, right?”

upon being met with silence, he looked to see you gripping your controller too tightly to actually use it, and asked again, “in the game, right?”

you blinked, apparently freed from whatever rage induced trance you slipped into, and turned towards him, “did you say something?”

he blinked at you once, twice, like the gears in his head were turning, and then—hysteria. 

he has you pinned to the floor with your wrists above your head, horns protruding from his scalp, and he is screaming—who are you, what have you done with mc, tell him your name before he summons lotan, leave his friend alone, and so on and so forth. he was interrogating you before you could even process the situation enough to feel fear. 

once he got over the bulk of his panic, he heard you screaming back at him, telling him it was you, you weren’t possessed, just talking to yourself, and let go of your wrists before he breaks them—he understood, kind of. he has no idea why you’d choose a phrase like that for when you’re annoyed, but at least you weren’t possessed! his henry was safe after all ^_^

he was so relieved that it took him a few seconds to realize he was still…pinning you down…and straddling you…so, naturally, more hysteria.

satan 

he’d actually grown fond of you and your tendency to speak with no thought or regard for the consequences of your actions—mainly because it stressed lucifer out, but he was fond of it nonetheless. it made you all the more interesting, more fun to talk to, and it helped him read you better. he liked to pick you apart by way of conversation, and he liked to do it as often as possible. 

presently, he was on his way to the library to meet you. the two of you were set to talk about a series you decided to read together. as he approached the doorway, he heard your voice, but no one else’s. he smiled in place of a laugh. were you talking to yourself? how cute—

“every day...i am provoked to rage unimaginable. why?” 

before you could even finish exhaling, he was above you, holding your face in his hands. from the glow of his eyes, you could tell he was barely keeping it together, but you had no idea what was wrong. did he hear what you said?

he said your name carefully, swiping his thumbs under your eyes. “have we been spending too much time together?” 

he was rubbing off on you, in the worst possible way. how could he have allowed this to happen? what has he done to you? where did this anger of yours come from? it has to be because of him. it would hurt, but he would distance himself from you at once, if that’s what—

“ah, did you hear what i said? i talk to myself like this all the time, satan, i’ve been doing it since before we even met. sorry if i frightened you.” 

he blinked, hands dropping to your shoulders. he was relieved, but so, so confused. 

“well,” he started, “then let’s talk about that instead.” 

asmo 

if you’d been refraining from talking to yourself around lucifer, you definitely did it for asmo too. there was no one in this house who wanted to see you angry less than he did. anger was such an ugly emotion, wasn’t it? he much preferred sadness; it was easier to manage, both in himself and others. 

of course, he could never think about being angry or sad when he was with you! how could he, when he’s with one of his favorite people? presently, he was on his way to your room to pick you up for one of your weekly outings. oh, you left the door open for him and everything! he was about to call out to you, but then he heard you talking to someone—he had no idea who it possibly could’ve been because he had no idea you could even sound like that when speaking to a sentient being. 

“i will rip you apart with my fucking teeth.” 

he had his arms around you before you even knew he was in your room. it seemed like a hug, and in a way, it was! the intent was to keep you in place so you couldn’t run away, rather than to comfort you, but it’s not like you could tell; his arms were around you all the time anyway.

“mc, light of my life, apple of my eye, who are you talking to?”

you twisted in his hold to face him, “i talk to myself all the time, asmo, you can ask anyone.”

he hummed, staring at you for a while before changing his hold on you into an actual hug. 

“you had me worried for a minute, darling~”

he didn’t really believe you, but he figured he would know if you were lying, and he could definitely handle whatever vile thing wormed its way into you while nobody was looking. best case scenario, he really didn’t have anything to worry about, and worst case scenario, you started speaking in tongues in the middle of majolish. if the latter happened to occur, he was strong enough to purge a lower demon from your body. it might hurt a lot a little , but at least you’d be safe!

beel 

for the most part, beel didn’t feel any particular way about your inclination to say words with no thought behind them. it was just something you did, like anything else was; he accepted it the same way he accepted everything else about you because that’s what friends do for each other. however—he would be lying if he said you didn’t upset him at times. 

like today—he was set to do his homework with you, on his way to the living room with an armful of snacks, when he heard something like the tip of a pencil breaking. it didn’t bother him, but it seemed to bother you. a lot. 

“i—i’ve had it, i’m gonna kill myself and ruin everyone’s goddamn day.” 

all of his snacks scattered across the floor when he dropped them to get to you. his hands were on your shoulders, but he wasn’t grabbing you. fortunately (or, unfortunately), belphie did this around him all the time, so he knew what to do, albeit it wasn’t much. 

slowly, he pulled you into a hug. not a crushing one, but enough to keep you from going anywhere. 

you started to explain yourself, telling him you do this all the time, that you didn’t mean it, that you were fine. it did nothing to reassure him because those were all of belphie’s usual phrases, but he appreciated the sentiment. 

“i know,” he started, pulling away from you. “i’m just making sure you don’t go anywhere. i like having you around. that’s all.”

belphie 

alright, this house isn’t big enough for the two of you. he is the vocally unwell person around these parts, he is the one who everyone is concerned about at all times, thank you very much. he was the one who made the jokes about death. he was the one with the concerning one-liners. that was all him. he wasn’t proud of it, he didn’t like the fact that things were this way, but it was what it was. he didn’t want you to be like him, and yet, there you were doing exactly that—even if you didn’t know. 

he was in your room, in your bed, actually— unbeknownst to you—because he was having trouble sleeping. you were somewhere in the house, on your way there, and once you arrived, it seemed like you were stressed. he didn’t know for sure, but he had a hunch that something was just eating away at you because as soon as you came in the door, you threw your bag on the ground and said—

well, you didn’t say anything, at first. the first thing you did was laugh. it was unrestrained, loud, and completely void of joy. and then, you said, “i can’t—i can’t fucking do this, i’ll just die, that’s fine, that’s okay.” 

he sat up faster than he has in the last century, deciding to be merciful and overlook how hard you gasped when you saw he was there. 

“belphie? why are you in my room?” 

he stood up, approaching you at a snail’s pace, “i couldn’t sleep, i was waiting for you, next question—why did you say what you just said?” 

before you could even start your usual explanation—you do this all the time, it’s fine, you’re fine—he was speaking again. 

“and don’t—don’t even try that, ‘it’s fine, ask anyone,’ shit with me, that’s my go-to, so you’re gonna have to come up with something new.” 

he looked at you expectantly, reaching behind you to close the door, locking it soon after. 

“belphie—”

he pulled you to your bed, falling onto it with you and holding you in place. 

“i have been doing this for much longer than you, and i will be doing it for a long time after you. i’d like to postpone the latter for as long as possible, so i would appreciate it if you talked to me.”

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume Five, Number Six

Photo of Anna Tivel by Matt Kennely

This edition of Dust considers twee pop and 1990s influenced electronica, Malawian street music and stenchcore and a wonderfully understated, gorgeous record by folksinger Anna Tivel (pictured above), among other musical finds.  This time, writers included Andrew Forell, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Isaac Olson, Peter Taber and Jonathan Shaw.  Enjoy!

Barrie — Happy to Be Here (Winspear)

Brooklyn based multinational twee poppers Barrie’s debut album Happy to Be collects a charming array of sweet, feather-light classic AM radio-influenced songs performed by leader Barrie Lindsay (voice/guitar), Spurge Carter (keyboards), Dominic Apa (drums), Noah Prebish (guitar/synths) and Sabine Holler (bass). Lindsay’s songs subtly and acutely describe life as a newcomer to New York. The production and musicianship on Happy to Be Here is never less than expert, full of detail and space that allows each instrument room to breathe. As a singer Lindsay is polite to the point of being demure, and the band follows her lead. Pretty harmonies, delicate guitars and keys, tasteful drumming, unobtrusive but effective bass. You’ll hear echoes of Laurel Canyon, 1980s white soul and The Style Council at their most languid. Perhaps if Barrie weren’t quite so Happy to Be Here the debut would have more impact but if one is considering punting down the East River to a picnic this would be an ideal soundtrack.

Andrew Forell

 Big Bend — Radish (Self-Release)

Radish by Big Bend

Nathan Phillips works in one of music’s uncanny valleys, a place where experimental electronics and ambient drone converges with semi-narrative pop. These eight songs enlist avant garde collaborators—Susan Alcorn on guitar, Laraji on zither, Shahzad Ismaily on percussion and moog and Phillips’ bad-ass opera-singing mother Pam on vocals — to create music that is warm, human and accessible. Phillips himself sings plaintively on a number of tracks, inserting vulnerability and uncertainty into a glitchy, glossy texture of electronics; he might remind you of Dntel. Elsewhere tracks veer off into untethered, unpredictable zones; “03 12’-15’,” the track with Alcorn pits trebly abstract guitar against the warmth of synth and piano. “Swing Low” centers its dreaming agitation around Pam Phillips’ spectral soprano, which is inviting but also remote. Electronics buzz and twitter around her like mechanical insects and birds. The Laraji track “Four,” lays in the pinging, tremulous tones of electrified zither over fat resonance of acoustic bass. It’s full of magic, or at least sleight of hand, and you expect something wonderful to emerge from its eerie cascades of dream-sequence zither notes. Shahzad Ismaily works his customary wonders, coaxing strange atmospheres out of the most skeletal of notes and rhythms. With these songs, you feel like you’re waking up in a strange country, not exactly unwelcoming, but not what you were expecting either.

Jennifer Kelly

 Com Truise — Persuasion System (Ghostly International)

LA musician Seth Haley, AKA Com Truise, releases nine short tracks of woozy 1980s influenced electronica on Persuasion System. Listening to foregrounded hi-hat driven beats, fretless bass sounds, giant swathes of anthemic synth, you’re almost waiting for Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal to start ruling the world again. Haley is unafraid to reach for the big emotional release. That he doesn’t always hit it is due more to familiarity with those triggers than any lack of compositional skill on his part. When it goes a little darker on the drum & bass driven “Laconism”, the mock doom epic “Privilege Escalation” and the ambient restraint of “Gaussian” Persuasion System shows Com Truise’s aptitude in using stadium synth pop tropes to translate big sounds into big statements.  

Andrew Forell  

 Shana Cleveland—Night of the Worm Moon (Hardly Art)

The La Luz leader turns introspective on this eerie solo album, sketching glowing just-off soundscapes with a squeaky acoustic guitar and voice. Like many of the songs, the single “Face of the Sun” subdues a spaghetti western swagger into just a hint of wide western horizons; there are bits of cello and bowed bass in the interstices of “Night of the Worm Moon,” shading the folk-acoustic-surf tones towards baroque. Cleveland sings in the common space between bewitching beauty and sing-song madness, Ophelia-esque and surrounded with flowers. She takes command, however, with her guitar, which defines and directs and originates this fetching dream state. Gorgeous, floating, spectral and surprisingly empowered.

Jennifer Kelly

 FACS — Lifelike (Trouble in Mind)

FACS constitutes the latest iteration of the ongoing partnership of singer/guitarist Brian Case and drummer Noah Leger, who each discharged those same duties in Disappears. Expressed mathematically, 2/3 FACS = ½ Disappears, but FACS ≠ Disappears. While the old band’s music moved in a quick and linear fashion around Case’ bleak bark, this new ensemble, which is rounded out by bassist Alianna Kalaba, prefers modular construction and choppy flow. Kalaba’s distorted tone, which recalls Graham Lewis’ playing in mid-1980s Wire (especially live), is a looming presence, stomping through Leger’s sequences of chopped-off rhythm patterns like Godzilla playing a kid’s game with the real estate: “I think I’ll stomp every third house on this block. Next block, I’ll kick every tree to the left. Do I step on the lines, or jump on the cracks?” Case’s guitar blows in and out of the grooves’ vast empty spaces like a flock of metal-coated swallows, absorbing the fading light one moment and then banking up to reflect tiny flashes of the distant red sun the next. His singing has also changed, inching incrementally from the monochrome of yore towards a world-weary, side of the mouth croon. Why, you wonder, does this Chicago band sound so bleak? Hey, it snowed twice in April; what more do you need to know?

Bill Meyer

 Forest Management — Passageways (Whited Sepulchre)

Passageways by Forest Management

Electronic musician John Daniel may call himself Forest Management, but don’t be fooled; there’s nothing pastoral about this music. The passageways he had in mind when he composed the music on this LP are remembered from a childhood home in a suburb of Cleveland, and he made the stuff in an apartment in Chicago. Daniel nicely straddles the digital/analog divide by playing a laptop computer but recording some of the music to reel-to-reel tape deck.  This enables him to achieve a blurry patina of nostalgia-inducing atmosphere that’ll sit right with Boards of Canada fans. But where BOC used beats and samples to highlight their emotional messages and keep things moving, Daniel’s willing to let the music throb and drift. While Forest Management is a fully mobile project that is quite capable of occupying stages around town, this stuff is best appreciated under controlled conditions at home, where you can cultivate a mindset and manage the setting without facing any risks that one might face while zoning out in public.  

Bill Meyer

 Madalitso Band — Wasalala (Bongo Joe)

Wasalala by Madalitso Band

The two musicians of The Madalitso Band, who made their name on the sidewalks of Lilongwe (Malawi), play four-string guitar, cow-skin kick drum and homemade, one-string bass. If that sounds like a gimmick, albeit one born of necessity: it is, but all good street bands need one. Like all good street bands, the Madalitso Band’s necessarily formulaic music is inviting and undemanding enough to draw in spare-change-laden passersby all day, if need be. And, like most street musicians and small-time festival favorites, Madalitso Band’s crowd pleasing tricks don’t directly translate into gripping LPs. Wasalala, at 40 minutes, is about double the recommended daily dose (when was the last time you watched even a great busker for more than 15 minutes?), but, play it while you, say, put the dishes away, and this wholly charming, frequently gorgeous record is guaranteed to move the body and brighten the mood of any sentient person within earshot. Its pleasures are as real, necessary, utilitarian, and unvaried as a fan on a hot day.�� 

Isaac Olson  

 Minotaur Shock — MINO (Bytes)

MINO by Minotaur Shock

On MINO, Bristol-based David Edwards turns away from his characteristic blend of orchestral acoustic and synthetic instrumentation to hone his synthesis craft. Edwards’ obvious composition chops have been a double-edged sword on past releases. Approaching his works as songs rather than tracks has lent them undeniable musicality; but since that approach is unidiomatic for beat-smithing, it sometimes has felt like the work of someone whose primary business was in sync for film dipping their toes into electronic music and bringing the resources of an entire soundstage orchestra with them. MINO’s focus on a single instrument results in a more inventive sound, defrays the risk of sounding excessively filmic, and retains Minotaur Shock’s strengths of earworm tunefulness and emotional sweep. The textures and polyrhythms bear a surface similarity to LA beat scene notables, while the album’s overall sunniness recalls Machinedrum, who underwent a similar turn to synthesis in recent years. A very different direction for Minotaur Shock and some of Edwards’ best work.

Peter Taber  

 MotherFather — S-T (Self-Released)

MotherFather by MotherFather

MotherFather, a four-piece band from St. Louis, makes broody, duel-guitar-driven post-rock that builds in a slow inexorable way like rough weather or a tidal surge. They build up layers of deep, shadowy sound, churning up the noise gradually so that when abrasive bass saws up through the bottom of “Burning” late in the album, its cinematic metal upheaval is as surprising as cathartic. Two of MotherFather’s members—guitarist Nelson Jones and bassist Brian Scheffer—run a studio in their spare time, and they surround these chugging, chiming onslaughts with clarity. However, the sound is gloomier and less buoyant than epic instrumentalists like Explosions in the Sky, more like the torpid reveries of vocal-less Mogwai or even post-rock-into-metal outfits like Pelican or Red Sparrowes. Guitars drive the train here—that’s Jones and Eli Hindman—but drummer Tim Hardy puts in a strenuous, battering days work on drums and you can’t move the tectonic plates like MotherFather does without muscular, fundamental bass.

Jennifer Kelly

 Neolithic—S/T (Self-released)

Neolithic by Neolithic

Do genre labels really matter anymore? At various sites around the web, Neolithic’s music has been described as death metal, grindcore, hardcore and, in one especially bewildering formulation, “pitch-black death/crust.” This reviewer’s ears hear a pretty straightforward species of stenchcore all over this record, but that begs the question: What does “stenchcore” mean to you? In any case, the good news is that this is a terrific record. Nasty, brutish and way too short. The Baltimore band has only been making records for a little over a year, but the music exudes confidence and, whatever we want to call it, a song like “Myopia” demands attention. Its riffs are precise, its bottom end is deep, its textures and affect are simultaneously razor-sharp and dripping with miasmatic, fluid yuck. Sort of like a zombie’s mouth. One gets the feeling that’s something like what the band intends. Enjoy!

Jonathan Shaw

  Ivo Perelman / Jason Stein — Spiritual Prayers (Leo Records)

Brazilian tenor saxophonist is never one to settle for half measures. If he has a good idea, he’s liable to make a series of records out of it. Google the words Ivo Perelman Matthew Shipp if you need an illustration. But some ideas are self-limiting, such as the one that generated this record. Perelman decided that he was going to record duos with free improvising bass clarinet specialists. There just aren’t that many of those around, so the total so far stands at two CDs; one with Rudi Mahall, the other with Jason Stein. Stein has deep roots in the New York area that Perelman has called home for years, but the two men had never met before they unpacked horns and improvised this album in a Brooklyn studio. You wouldn’t know it from listening, though; they two men throw themselves into the endeavor with the sort of fearlessness that only deep acquaintance or utter self-possession. The first quality only existed on a metaphysical plane — each man reminded the other of a beloved and long-lost ancestor. The latter, both have in spades, and for the best of reasons. Both are masters of their horns, both are close listeners and responsive partners, and the hitherto empty field of tenor saxophone / bass clarinet duets turns out to be rich earth. The horns can sound quite like each other, or hit pitches as distant as opposite ocean shores, and the musicians traverse such spaces in a split-second.

Bill Meyer

 Sick Gazelle — Odum (War Crime Recordings)

Odum by Sick Gazelle

Releasing improvised music involves risk. Musicians often sacrifice quality control for spontaneity, and some seem unable or unwilling to abandon, edit or control their experiments. However, when it works, the rewards are many. Former Crucifucks and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley joins Chicago saxophonist Bruce Lamont (Yakuza and Bloodiest) and ambient guitarist/bassist Eric Block (aka Veloce) to produce a debut album Odum under the moniker Sick Gazelle. The first three tracks combine slow-core jazz and illbient atmospherics with Lamont’s saxophone ,a powerful yearning voice sympathetically supported by Shelley’s percussion and Block’s layers of guitar and bass. The longer pieces “Atlantic” and “Pacific” work best, as Sick Gazelle builds grand spacious structures with an innate sense of dynamics and a muscular foundation. On the short final track “Laguna” the band lets go as Lamont foregoes the sax for a chant-like invocation over a driving rhythm that sounds closer to Sonic Youth than jazz. Odum is dense swamp of sound, easy to get lost in, harboring beauty and danger in equal measure. Leave the compass and venture in.

Andrew Forell

 Stander—The Slow Bark (Self-Released)

The Slow Bark by Stander

Pensive guitar lines surge up into tsunamis. Liquid, lyrical melodies disintegrate under a firehose spew of distorted sound. Stander shifts dynamics like it’s wielding a weapon, and maybe it is. These long-form instrumental meditations build from pastoral, serene interludes into raging towers of feedback (and vice versa), though you can often glimpse the original plaintive theme shrouded in noise and fury. Stander is a Chicago-based heavy post-rock instrumental trio built around guitarist Mike Boyd (who, full disclosure, we know from his job as Thrill Jockey’s publicist), Derek Shlepr on bass and Stephen Waller on drums.  On The Slow Bark, the band’s first full-length album, Stander masters the slow rolling crescendo in cuts like “Cicada Tree,” where a moody, pondering, unsettled guitar melody unspools so gently that the kick of drums, the onslaught blare of amplification, comes like a defibrillator, which maybe, at that point, you need. “Cold Fingers,” too, alternates the loud and the soft, the rage and the quiescence; it calms enough that you can hear how the interplay works, how Shlepr’s bass underlines and reinforces the melodic line, how a riff gets penciled in once, then returned to for an obliterating refrain. There are no vocals—just a subliminal growl near the end of “Cold Fingers” and some eerie altered voice effects tucked into “Cutting Ants, Conquering Ants”— but this is in no way just an extended instrumental jam. Stander’s tracks are carefully constructed, thoughtfully plotted, even if they all end up blown to bits.

Jennifer Kelly

 Anna Tivel—The Question (Fluff and Gravy)

The Question by Anna Tivel

Over four albums, Anna Tivel has quietly been building a reputation as a formidable folk songwriter, a storyteller whose hushed voice weaves simple words into complex narratives about people on the outskirts of society. The Question is tensely, transparently lovely. Tivel’s voice runs toward the calm and matter of fact and never goes much over a conversational murmur. Her melodies, likewise, are precise and pretty. However, the lives she limns in her songs are unruly—a man transitioning to womanhood, a migrant testing a fence line, a homeless child trying to make it through the night—and the thickets of dense, conflicting instrumental sounds seem to echo these complications and strife. She makes wonderful use of strings—viscous throbs of cello, twitchy pizzicatos of violin—to underline but not sweeten her arrangements, and the guitars, too, have a clarity and sharpness that reinforces the acuity of her verses. “Fenceline”’s insistent piano and keening, tremulous strings underline the tension of the southern border crossing; the instrumental interlude zings with anticipation and fear. “Homeless Child” is more overtly folky, but still unblinking and unsentimental as it tells the story of an abandoned child with her own child coming. The refrain couldn’t be sadder or more beautiful, when Tivel sings, “And Jesus Christ, it don’t take much to go from just enough to nothing in the end, and oh my god, homeless child, the world will leave you hanging by a thread.”

Jennifer Kelly

 Various Artists — Hearts and Livers: Global Recordings from 78rpm Discs, ca. 1928-53 (Canary Records)

Hearts & Livers: Global Recordings from 78rpm Discs, ca. 1928-53 by Canary Records

Ian Nagoski, the proprietor, curator, researcher, and dogs body of Canary Records, has assembled some marvelous collections of music from records that most 78rpm collectors would leave in the bin. But is that what the people want? Even the characters who populate the farthest corners of record nerd-dom are prone to the influences of groupthink and fashion, and they want you to come up with something just like your last hit, only different. One of the crosses on Nagoski’s shoulder is that while passion compels him to investigate shellac sides of woman whistlers and birdcall imitators, people remember him for his genre-spanning marvel, Black Mirror. Hearts and Livers is Nagoski giving people what they think they want and subtly chiding them as he does so. Both album emblem (there’s no cover — this thing is download-only, and thus not really a thing at all) and title can be read as gentle mockery of the enterprise. But once you get past them, Nagoski’s unerring knacks for selection, sequencing and sound restoration deliver the goods. Exiled rembetika singer Rosa Eskenazi’s quivering lament resonates with Horace Britt’s melodramatic cello recital; a sinuous Korean melody and a beseeching Turkish air impart a common stern spirit. Since he hasn’t written any notes to explain the compilation, it’s all just music, each track equally foreign and mysterious.

Bill Meyer

 Various Artists — New American Standards Volume  2 (Sound American) 

New American Songbooks Vol.2 by Kris Davis, Matt Mitchell, Aruán Ortiz, Matthew Shipp

To some, the Great American Songbook (which isn’t really a book, but a body of popular songs that captured the hearts of both general audiences and jazz musicians in the pre-rock and roll era) represents the acme of American musical creativity. But while some great and flexible material came out of that era, do we really want to concede that the middle of the 20th century was the best we could do? Careful, such thinking paves the way to donning an unflattering red ball cap. Sound American Publishing initiated the New American Standards series to investigate notions of Americanism and standards. Volume 2 taps four pianists not known for their frequent dips into the Songbook to propose material that speaks for communities didn’t quite make it into the original metaphorical volumes. Matthew Shipp proffers brooding extemporizations upon Protestant hymns composed by individuals you’ve probably never heard of. Matt Mitchell invests two tunes sourced from Bandcamp-era singer songwriters with solemn romanticism. Kris Davis’ prepared piano recasts Carla Bley’s “Identity Picks” as a quasi-gamelan reverie that invites the listener to consider which quirks of identify might lock you out, then and now, and what you might do with (or to) a piece of ubiquitous cultural equipment in order to make your voice heard. And Aruán Ortiz offers a luminous exposition of a piece by cultural critic and polymath Ed Bland. All four musicians played the same piano, which serves to make clearer the individual differences of the four players.

Bill Meyer  

 Various Artists — Tombstone Trance Vol. 1 (StabUdown)

Tombstone Trance Vol. 1 by Piezo

Fuzzy technoise is the game being played here with varying degrees of earnestness, as suggested by the goofball album art. Listeners may come for marquee names like Kerridge and Powell, though they’re easily outshone by some nicely varied lesser-known acts. Koehler’s “Below Andromeda” is rhythmically inventive but straight-ahead techno. “Mourning Etiquette” from Grey People isn’t far from the crunchy atmospherics of Modern Love artists. Entries from Bad Tracking and The Rancor Index take things to a considerably grittier, Wolf Eyes-esque level. Vanity Productions’ “No Peep Show Here” could be melodic drone from Yellow Swans, while Organic Dial’s “Absolute Other” is an unexpectedly delicate slice of dub-inflected ambient. Piezo offers a dramatic highlight in “Sponge Effect,” which morphs from a melodic arpeggio into an odd-time paroxysmic blob and back again. Hopefully a taste of more great things to come from all concerned.

Peter Taber

 Woe —A Violent Dread (Vendetta)

A Violent Dread EP by Woe

This two-song EP is a welcome reminder of how good Woe can be (insert snarky pun here). The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Philly quartet seems to have found a stable line-up, with Lev Weinstein providing drums and Matt Mewton’s second guitar rounding out the band, as they did on 2017’s Hope Attrition. Weinstein’s drumming is less acrobatic than the whacko stuff he pulls off for Krallice — but Woe’s sound is more firmly anchored in black metal’s traditions. Woe’s cover of Dawn’s “The Knell and the World,” recorded by the Swedish band back in 1998, celebrates the continuity of that tradition. That doesn’t mean Woe’s music is derivative or pedestrian. The nine minutes of “A Violent Dread” flash past with a sustained intensity that makes the song feel half that long. Chris Grigg’s singing, playing and songwriting are sleek and tough, feral and rigorous. It’s peak USBM. 

Jonathan Shaw