New Music, Emerging from your Local Scene
Routine Fuss has released a new album called I (Never) Want To Be Left Alone. These are the Emo Punk sounds of Avery Black and on his debut album he tackles some of the biggest topics you can face including anxiety, loss, cancer, love, and sobriety.
The album’s lead single was released last month and is called "Canceled Plans". It perfectly capture the way anxiety can twist the joy of relationships into struggles and confusion.
Stephanie Alma has released a new single called "Am I Worthy" which finds her teaming with her real-life partner percussionist Tommy Carroll (Calculated Discomfort).
It was just last month that she dropped her debut album, "Mi Chicago", which was recorded live at Golden Dagger.
In her words, Alma has passion for "the sounds of disability identity and self-awareness through formal and informal vocal expression". Both Alma and Carroll are legally blind but that clearly can not stop creativity, love, and art.
Experimental Jazz and Rock group Maurice recently released a new EP called "At The Piano". This is the first new music from the ensemble since their 2020 album Playtime.
The EP features an array of local musicians but at its core Maurice is the work of James Davis, Tim Edwards, David Grant, Jonathon Kirk, and Corey McCafferty.
You can catch Maurice at Montrose Saloon with Roseloft and Dylan Doyle on Febraury 18th.
Jason Blake has released the second single, "Obscured Clarity”, from his forthcoming album, Imaginary Cages, which is due out on February 25th via Wayfarer Records.
Blake, a member of Aziola Cry, is a masterful Warr Guitar player and this project is an instrumental meditation on many sounds and melodies that it can produce.
Mentalease has released the 3rd and final installment, "Eighth Deadly Sin", in a series of experimental sample-based music.
This is the first new music from the trio of Spencer Harris, Wesley Hunt, and Daniel Martinson since 2019’s "Ghost Town".
Guerilla Toss is a band that specializes in dance-punk-acid-house-party-rock anthems that sound like they’ve been beamed to this planet straight from the Big Red Spot of Jupiter because much like that celestial “beauty mark” (actually a raging centuries-old storm bigger than the entire planet Earth) their music is a swirling sonic vortex that pulls in all manner of sonic space junk from the surrounding atmosphere which gets all mashed up and mutated in the eye of the storm re-emerging as a molten musical liquid metal that gets shot back into space via electromagnetic waves audible through this planet’s primitive stereo receivers and equalizers and discontinued iPods.
Granted, this may sound like a crackpot analogy but it’s supported by the band’s own lyrical exegesis on songs like “Meteorological” (from 2018’s Twisted Crystal), “Can I Get the Real Stuff” (from 2017’s GT Ultra), and “367 Equalizer” (from 2014’s Infinity Cat Series). And you can hear the interplanetary vibes with your own ears just by putting on Guerilla Toss’s latest single “Cannibal Capital” (music video directed by Lisa Schatz) from their upcoming Sub Pop debut full-length Famously Alive due out on 3/25, a song that seems to mix and mutate the various stages of the band’s own musical history—from the noisy experimentalism of their early releases to the mutant funk of their more recent DFA releases—a song that by their own account “makes everything sensory.”
The song opens with a sound-collage intro that appears to incorporate the sounds of a Merzbow cassette being eaten by malfunctioning tape deck, a leaky toilet, an air rifle, and a cat suffering from intestinal distress—all in the first 15 seconds or so. It just goes to show how much Guerilla Toss takes making everything sensory very seriously indeed.
Meanwhile a twitchy-tail-shaking-percolating-mid-tempo groove emerges from the sonic murk and while it seems to vanquish it at first the sonic murk keeps seeping back in around the edges with squelching synths and blasts of power chords and so forth thus setting up a disintegration/reintegration dialectic that fits perfectly with the song’s opening lyric (“you need help / melt in every dimension”) and it’s not the only case of lyrical/musical synchronicity either like later where vocalist Kassie Carlson poses the question “can I escape gracefully?” and the vocals veer out of time on cue escaping the rhythm of the tightly wound groove for a few moments.
Closing arguments: On “Cannibal Capital” Guerilla Toss have proven once again that pop will eat itself and and that there’s a cultural capital to cannibals just as Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade observed back in 1928 when he wrote the Cannibalist Manifesto which advocated the notion that “Brazil’s history of cannibalizing other cultures was its greatest strength and had been the nation’s way of asserting independence over European colonial culture” a notion that went on to inspire the late ‘60s art and music movement movement called Tropicália—whose best-known proponents were Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, and Os Mutantes which literally means The Mutants—likewise frooted in a collage aesthetic where the "sacred enemy" is disgested and transformed, and with all this in mind I’d say it’s fair to say that Guerilla Toss are our modern-day tropicalistas, i.e. modern primitives, likely transplanted from outer space no less, or Boston, one or the other, sent to Earth/NYC to absorb our musical traditions "body snatchers style" and spit ’em back out in capitvatingly mutated form. (Jason Lee)
Warm Human (aka Meredith Johnston) has released a new collection of b-sides, outtakes, and demos called "Hold Music".
In this description for the collection Johnson says these are "voice memos of piano improvisations, demos, ambient tracks, and forgotten or abandoned songs". It is a fun look behind the scenes of her creative process and when pulled together it really does feel like a cohesive piece.
This is the first new music from Johnson since the release of "Gimme A Reason", her 2021 debut single for House of Feelings records.
Metalcore group LUCA has released a new single and video called "And Drown in the Undertow".
You can catch LUCA on March 2nd at Empty Bliss with Mouthbreather, Soulkeeper, and Blind Equation.
Bottom Bracket are preparing to release their latest EP "A Figure In Armor" via Rat King Records on February 18th. The trio recently released a Molly Kinnunen and Adrian Dabu directed video for the EP’s lead single, "Phantom".
This is the Pop Punk of Mario Cannamela (Guitar/Vocals), Tim Recio (Bass/Vocals), and BJ Pearce (Drums/Vocals).
You can catch Bottom Bracket at Downstairs at Subt on February 18th with Boundary Waters, Gosh Diggity, and Pretty Pleased.
Veteran Punk trio Horace Pinker has released their latest EP, "House of Cards". This is the first new music from the group since 2015’s "Recover EP".
Horace Pinker is the work of Scott Eastman (guitar, vocals), Bryan Jones (drums), and Greg Mytych (bass, vocals).
Hausu Mountain and Mike Meegan announced last week that the next RXM Reality album, sick for you, will be released on March 25th.
The album’s first single is called "thank you" and can be streamed below.
You can catch RXM Reality on April 28th at Constellation Chicago with —__–___ (aka More Eaze & Seth Graham).
Ryan Alexander has released a new video for "Southside Love Story" from his 2020 debut album Inspired By You.
The video was directed by Marius Rud and finds Ryan capturing moments of love across the Southside.
