Take a listen to “It Won’t Hurt You” off the Triptides’ new album Alter Echoes and you’re sure to feel free as a bird flying eight miles high over the Sunset Strip that is until your strawberry colored alarm clock wakes you from your slumber and you rise from your mushroom-imprinted pillow to face another rainy day.
While I can’t say for sure if that’s a Rickenbacker guitar being played on the track it sure as heck sounds like it (note: now confirmed to be a Ric 360!) and either way these Angelinos have captured a certain classic LA World vibe and sound on the entire album that would no doubt have Russ Meyer salivating all over his ascot to hire these boys as the house band for the Hollywood bungalow party scene in his new movie titled The Immortal Pussycat Beyond the Motorpsycho Valley of the Mudhoney Vixens Kill Kill! were he not a long dead mazophiliac.
So, not to dwell on this one song but it’s also got bongos, or congas at least, and about 25 seconds into the thing a maraca and a guitar countermelody enter simultaneously with some sweet stereo separation and really the album is chock full of these nice arranging and production touches so you can use it to show off your hi-fi system to your honey and everybody wins.
For example you’ll hear the old we trick of feeding a vocal part through a Leslie speaker on “Do You Ever Wonder?” and then a little later the sudden transition to a half-time Floydian blissed out freakout towards the end of “Let It Go” which then reverts back to its original upbeat jingle-jangle by its conclusion and also there’s the day-glo smeared psychedelic coda to “Hand of Time” which is groovy too.
On its back half the album mellows out significantly (but what so you expect from the B-side) before the Triptides decide to end things on an up note with the frug-ready “Now and Then” sending their more dance-inclined patrons home happy. So hey, if any of this sounds appealing the Deli says ch-check it out! (Jason Lee)
The first Earthly arrival of Starchild was mid-wifed from within George Clinton’s Afrofuturist musical universe (which I’ll gladly take over the Marvel Universe any day, just take a look at the “P-Funk Mythology” page on Wikipedia) arriving in this world via the 1975 Parliament single “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” where our titular hero announced to Earthlings that “we have returned to reclaim the Pyramids” before introducing the “Swing down, sweet chariot” hook later sampled on Dr. Dre’s 1993 hit “Let Me Ride” which introduced P-Funk via G-Funk to Generation X.
Well the second coming has come. And Brooklyn is the lucky host to the reincarnated Starchild in the form of Bryndon Cook. Having travelled the universe and beyond before landing permanently in these parts, this Starchild keeps some pretty rarified company having logged time as touring guitarist for Solange and Chairlift and Blood Orange, while also collaborating with the latter as VeilHymn, before venturing out as front-alien for Starchild & The New Romantic—a project that melds Cook’s R&B and hip hop and indie rock ‘n pop leanings into one musical package and very effectively so on the album released last year called Forever.
And more recently Starchild was shot back out into outer space ET-style to perform a couple live-streamed sets on Elsewhere Sound Space, a monthly series broadcast on the über-äwesome nightclub’s Twitch channel, all originating from an undisclosed location aboard a spaceship marooned in a galaxy far, far away. And lucky for us the Starchild episode is still available to stream and you won’t regret the alien encounter because Bryndon Cook’s heartfelt musical vignettes set in the midst of some pretty trippy sci-fi visuals is likely to make your soul leave your body especially on his final number “SilentDisco,” a transcendent ditty during which Starchild’s soul does in fact visibly leave his Earthbound bodysuit behind and enter another dimension.
Based on the first couple of episodes of Elsewhere Sound Space with their eerie eye candy tableaux and occasional space lizard appearances combined with cosmic musical numbers interspersed with broad comedy segments (double entendre not intended) the overall effect is like a surrealist mashup of the movie version of Dune and the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special, except that the campiness found on this mothership is clearly neither unintentional nor apolitical (take that Susan Sontag!) and instead of Bea Arthur serenading the Cantina Bar you get Princess Nokia and Starchild and in the next installment this Tuesday Brooklyn rapper and NYC mayoral candidate Paperboy Prince serenading all of us pod people out here wandering aimlessly in cyberspace.
And isn’t it about time someone presented a compellingly queer vision of outer space and damn if the team at Elsewhere Sound Space–fronted by the program’s emcee Peter Smith who as "a music deity marooned in space" radiates warmth into the coldest reaches of universe, check out the profile published in the NY Times titled “Five Nonbinary Comics on This Moment”—haven’t done it. Because c’mon even your neighborhood quantum physicist knows that outer space is all about relativity and multi-dimensionality and the bending of timespace which all sounds pretty queer to me. (Jason Lee)
The song is called "BBQ" and it’s a muy fuego scorcher that’ll remind you of Homer Simpson lighting up the grill with an entire can of lighter fluid and sending a fireball careening into the sky, or it does me at least, with its steady driving psych riddims and heavy duty riffage and blunted out vocal spliffage (I had hoped this may be a neologism but Urban Dictionary proved otherwise of course) declaiming "I will be there / I wanna be there in my head / I can take it / I can’t take it for the dead" or something damn close to that.
And then once you’re done with your first listen you may want to check out the song’s "visualizer" on Levitation’s YouDoob page (or witness it above) which’ll give you a sensation something like staring into your dad’s old lava lamp after dropping acid with dear ol’ dad.
And wouldn’t you know it "to accompany the new record, the band spent the last year collaborating with video artist Webb Hunt producing psych and glitch art videos that form a visual counterpart to the dreamy distortions of their sound" so look for lots more LSD-infused lava lamp action coming soon. (Jason Lee)
Don’t let the name fool you. Johnny Dynamite and the Bloodsuckers sounds like it should be the name of a ‘50s tribute act that’d currently be touring the oldies circuit with Sha Na Na if not for deadly pathogens. But while their actual sound may diverge sharply from the Boomer generation, Mr. Dynamite does share a certain ethos with the early rock ‘n’ rollers in terms of emotive authenticity and sonic immediacy. He just happens to go heavier on the drum machines and the synthesizers than an old school piano pounder like Jerry Lee Lewis.
When he’s not busy hanging out with the Bloodsuckers, Johnny can be found pounding the non-digital skins for dynamite local bands like Whiner and Ashjesus or manning the boards on recordings by other artists. If you wanna know more check out this interview with Dynamite from shortly before everything went to sh*t conducted by Tom Gallo of Radio Free Brooklyn and Look At My Records! fame that focuses on the 2020 debut album Heartbroken.
So it’s just my own take of course but when I listen to Johnny Dynamite and the Bloodsuckers I hear traces of OMD’s groundbreaking electro artpop, the indie-defining delicate yet driving sound of Sarah Records, the wobbly synths and modern psychedelia of MGMT, and finally, the chilled out and washed out ambience of, umm, Washed Out—with said chillness represented lyrically in the refrain of “Touch Like This” (one of many highlights on Heartbroken) which asks repeatedly “Why are you lying on the floor?”
But yeah, the whole pop music lineage given above is just a way of saying that J. Dynamite has his own thing going on if it takes this many reference points to describe his sound, and that he simply makes good solid pop music whatever the chosen touchstones.
Like on “Triflin’ Kids” the new single that perfectly synthesizes (pun intended) what Johnny’s got going on—opening with a woozy call-and-response synth hook that slides straight into a breathy seduction-minded verse, and when that doesn’t seem to work, a more direct appeal in the chorus that strips away the gauzy disco rhythms and the narrator’s loverman facade.
And therein lies the twist in which the song’s unabashedly needy narrator takes the “bedroom” in “bedroom pop” pretty literally or tries to anyway—which acts as a musical tribute of sorts (full circle) since triflin’ kids are at the heart and the soul of so much of the most impactful pop music from the past to the present and god bless ‘em for that.
The musical project Patriarchy excels at much of what the patriarchy itself hates and fears most—like when a woman chooses to express herself in a sexually uninhibited manner or insists upon her own agency or mocks the self-serving rules and taboos of the patriarchy through sharp satirical humor or creates music that signifies and demands the power and the privilege inherent in not giving a fuck.
Quoting directly from their song “Hell Was Full,” it’s this writer’s theory that lead singer/songwriter/stylist/director and actress Actually Huizenga—one half of the self-described snuff-pop duo—has taken on the proverbial role of “the apple in the pig’s mouth [that’s] trying hard as fuck to swallow,” bringing about the downfall of the patriarchal pig whom she compels to “choke, choke, choke, choke” on his own lust and greed and “on the words that you never knew the meaning of” where one of those words could be “patriarchy” itself since Patriarchy clearly has a thing or two to teach about domination and authority. But whatever the validity of this interpretation you can and probably should click HERE for Huizenga’s own compellingly clear-eyed view of the patriarchy and of Patriarchy.
Patriarchy is the nom de bande of Huizenga alongside co-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Means (3Teeth) and their overall vibe and sound is perfectly summed up in the promotional copy that accompanied their late-2019 debut Asking For It so I’ll just quote from it here (paraphrasing slightly) with the album described as “a work exploring themes of sex, power, subversion & death with what appears to be an intense interest in Ancient Greek Mythology & 80’s slasher films, a heavy dose of Mulholland Drive, and a sound that is equal parts ABBA and NIN but leaning more toward the darker, heavier side of synth-punk/new-wave & industrial music.”
Skipping ahead to the present, earlier this year Patriarchy released Reverse Circumcision which true to its title adds new layers of transplanted “sonic skin” to songs first heard on Asking For It with individual tracks remixed and reimagined by a cavalcade of all-stars from EBM to industrial, darkwave to dream pop, ranging from key members of legends like Nitzer Ebb and Front Line Assembly and This Mortal Coil to fellow Angelinos like Drab Majesty (who adds a death disco sheen to “Burn the Witch”) and Geneva Jacuzzi (who turns “I Don’t Want To Die” into a pulsating electro-funk workout) and plenty of others who all combined will make you wanna “take your dick out and put it on the speaker” as commanded by Ms. Huizenga in the opening lines of “He Took It Out.” And don’t fret if you don’t have that particular appendage because everyone knows the phallus is nothing but a cultural construct so put your cultural construct on the speaker instead should you so choose.
One other neat thing about Reverse Circumcision is getting to hear different interpretations of the same track as we do for two Patriarchy originals. But the single takes are equally compelling, like the version of “Grind Your Bones” by Rhys Fulber (Front Line Assembly, Delerium) wherein he takes one of Patriarchy’s heavier riff-based numbers (“as the vultures tear / at your underwear / I’ll be there”) and surgically removes the riff and cuts up the song’s lyrics, transmutating the whole into a glitchy miasma of sound that’s either incredibly sensuous or cataclysmic or both, depending on your own ears, culminating with doomy ethereal synth chords and a distorted feral howl.
And if this gets your goat you can see and hear Rhys Fulber, along with Bon Harris of Nitzer Ebb, in conversation with Ms. Huizenga on Patriarchy’s recently live-streamed Bottom of the Pops (nice title) that first aired as a Christmas special (!!) featuring performances not available elsewhere plus some seasonally appropriate HSN style shopping segments. Just be forewarned this Xmas special is a long way from Burl Ives and not for the delicate of constitution which in our book makes it the best possible kind of Christmas special.
And speaking of special, the follow up to Bottom of the Pops is on its way, slated to stream on March 20 at 6pm PST/9pm EST so check out Patriarchy’s Youtube channel and mark your calendars and while you’re waiting feast your eyes on some of Patriarchy’s existing music videos (plus Actually’s pre-Patriarchy body of work) because these self-directed clips tend to be visually lavish and gleefully transgressive and slyly amusing and overall something to behold.
Which at last brings us (or maybe just me) full circle since I first learned about Actually Huizenga through the music visual dramatical arts—namely, her inspired performance in the likewise inspired Cody Critcheloe (aka SSION) directed clip for Lower Dens’ “To Die in L.A.” in which Huizenga commands the screen as an aspiring Hollywood screen siren who’s prone to waking dreams relating to bloody tooth trauma and buff pool boys and award acceptance speeches. (Jason Lee)
Much like a certain storied pair of shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather, the music of Bootblacks is highly polished, austere and severe. And when it kicks you in the face you’ll beg for more, much like Severin in thrall to Wanda von Dunajew.
Residing somewhere in a batcave in Brooklyn (perhaps neighbors with Eddie Murphy?) these stalwart somber-hued postpunkers not too long ago released their forth full-length Thin Skies. Check out the music vid above for the full effect, and then give a listen to their Live At Saint Vitusset released in December.
Speaking of all thing Venusian, tonight Bootblacks appear as part of Cherry Bomb: International Women’s Day Charity Livestream originating straight outta Philly starting at 7pm EST with 12 bands & DJs benefiting 12 relevant charities with co-hosting duties shared by Lazy Astronomer and DJ Baby Berlin and streaming live on the latter’s Twitch channel. Click HERE for the full lineup and check out videos by a few of the other featured performers below.
A query: Here in these waning hours of Bandcamp Friday do you find yourself in need of a song that’ll simultaneously make you wanna slow dance with a stranger, drunk dial your ex and tell them you still love them, and smash up your room in a frenzied rage and not leave the apartment for a month?
Then oh boy are you in luck because Sir Chloe’s “Michelle” fits the bill. And be sure to check out the sublimely demented video (see above) released earlier this year or late last year who’s really keeping track.
But one thing that definitely got released last year was the band’s debut LP Party Favors and it’s far from too late to sing its praises. I mean the last year didn’t even happen, right?
Taken as a whole it’s a nicely concise and tightly arranged album that walks much the same line as "Michelle" balanced precariously but deliciously between wistful reveries and take-no-prisoners intensity ("make me behave like an animal / I’m asking nicely give me what I want / I’m asking politely give me what I want / make me behave like an animal") though with songs leaning more toward mid-tempo numbers ideal for swaying and stomping in place more than slow dancing with strangers.
And hey just in case you’re wanting to know more about this shadowy entity called Sir Chloe then by all means allow me to directly quote from their promotional materials because it’s Bandcamp Fried-day after all so let’s sell some records or streams or DAT tapes or whatever and I’m happy to help out when the music is this good…
"Sir Chloe is an American indie rock band from Bennington, Vermont now based in Brooklyn, New York. It’s members are Dana Foote (guitar, vocals) Teddy O’mara (guitar) Palmer Foote (drums) and Austin Holmes (bass). Starting as the solo act of Dana Foote, Sir Chloe first came together in 2017 as an academic project at Bennington College, recording their first four singles in the school’s music building. Their debut single “Animal” was released in February 2019. The band returned to the studio in October 2019 to record six new songs, among them being their latest single titled “July.”" And then came the album release and the rest is history that’s still being written. (Jason Lee)
Red Sun Radio are good at writing drinking songs and thank goodness for that—ranging from boisterous sing alongs that’ll have you hoisting you mug in the air, to music seemingly made for staring pensively into your whisky tumbler and eventually laying your head down on the bar.
For a bunch of professional drinkers these guys are pretty prolific, having released new singles in January and February and debuting a new song on yesterday’s “Save The Scene” fundraising cyber-concert broadcast (see above).
On the first of the two singles, “Isotopes,” the Red Sun Radioers weave a tale of good chemistry gone bad that unspools under a warm blanket of fuzzed out organ, weeping guitar, and a rousing coda.
And on last month’s “Dry Martini” they serve up a gently hungover ballad that follows up its opening riposte (“chasing skirts all night gets tiring / but baby you’re inspiring me to move”) with some gin-soaked metaphysical sweet nothings whispered into the addressee’s ear and damn if I’m not buying it.
And then finally just yesterday RSR debuted a new one called “Sound of Sleep” (see up top) which is a deceptively titled mid-tempo rocker that would be great to hear in person one day in the basement of the Bronx pizzeria where the band got their start playing on a stage made of plywood and cans of tomato paste.
P.S. If you’re not the designated driver tonight, by all means don’t stop there because it’s also worth checking out Red Sun Radio’s 2019 full-length debut For All The Wrong Reasons whether over a bottle of good bourbon or a sixer of cheap domestic beer.
P.P.S. Today is Bandcamp Friday so you know what to do…
Strict Tempo is a weekly Thursday night livestream originating out of Seattle featuring a world-spanning Whitman’s Sampler of live DJs and live electronic music acts in the musical veins of EBM/industrial, acid/electro/techno, minimal wave/darkwave, Italo-disco/hi-NRG and other equally cool sounding slashed and hyphenated genres.
The shows kick off at 7PM PST/10PM EST opening with a DJ set from host and curator Vox Sinistra, followed by 3 or 4 featured performers made up of both live electro-based acts and DJs doing their thing in real time. The show goes out live on Twitch just CLICK HERE.
As reigning queen of dark & danceable and occasionally not so danceable beats, Ms. Sinistra introduces each show with a charmingly low-key informative overview of the acts about to perform backed by green-screened dancing skeletons or infinitely scrolling bondage chains or vintage nightclub footage or surreal film clips and with occasional cameos by her tuxedoed cat. Production values on the show are consistently compelling and sometimes appealing demented eye candy with each DJ/electronic artist bringing their own distinct look and vibe.
Tonight’s installment of Strict Tempo features the return of Xibling, a dynamic synth duo comprised of Moriah West and Julian Thieme. Paraphrasing from Vox Sinistra’s Facebook post for tonight: “I’m hosting the release for Xibling’s Maladjusted EP out tomorrow and if you haven’t listened to Xibling, the Portland ‘post-punk techno fever dream’ wrote/livestreamed new songs every week at the beginning of quarantine last year (!) and are also returning Strict Tempo guests, playing the second show I hosted online last April. Tonight they’re supported by coldwave-y synthesist STACIAN, new PDX dark synth-pop act Pleasure Victim and XOR, the new electronic alias from the bassist/synth player of acclaimed darkwave band Secret Shame.”
And if the lead-off title track single to Xibling’s new EP is any indication, with its stuttering beats and phat electro-bass and ethereal vocals, tonight looks to be a lot of fun. Plus for a further sneak preview you can check out the music vid for “Maladjusted” with its cool Tetsuo-style black-and-white engulfed-by-rampaging-technology visuals in which Julian and Moriah are attacked (or seduced?) by sentient unspooling VHS tapes.
With a stylistic range across an electro-spectrum from the darker reaches of darkwave to the poppier side of New Order-esque electro pop, the upshot is that if Xibling’s electro-oscillations don’t get your body oscillating wildly then you may need to visit your local testing center and make sure your heart is still beating—an effect that’s only heightened when you see Xibling doing their thing live because high energy is too mild a term for their performative posture.
And speaking of high energy you’re also advised to check out two retrospective one-year anniversary broadcasts from Vox Sinistra—one compiling some of the best bits from the various Strict Tempo live acts over the past year, and the other a comp of featured DJ acts coming soon on 3/18. Plus holy Mother of Pearl the live show comp is nearly 10 hours long so settle in for the evening and hit play and I can guarantee you it’ll melt your f’ing face off if taken in one sitting so maybe put on that full plastic face mask before even attempting it.
Not unlike these epically scaled retrospective comps but on a smaller scale each Strict Tempo tends to be an eclectic affair, but overall Vox specializes in a style known as EBM (electronic body music) that’s something like a mutant mashup of industrial, cyberpunk, electropop, and synthwave—different artist highlight different elements of course and throw in their own twists—which is a style of music that’s equally effective whether you’re looking to mosh like a maniac in your bedroom late at night or bop in place equally maniacally like Molly Ringwald on Molly.
Anyways when it comes to the genre of EBM it’s name can be taken pretty literally given that we all inhabit more or less “electronic bodies” by this point living so much of our lives through phones and computers and old BlackBerry Storms (for the iconoclasts among us!) but at least watching a live-streamed set by Xibling or a Thursday night installment of Strict Tempo can make “device life” feel more utopian than dystopian for a few hours. (Jason Lee)
At first I thought Charismatic Megafauna must be the name of a rubber-suited mecha monster featured on an old episode of Super Sentai which would be pretty exciting. But instead it’s the name of the new Psymon Spine album which is nearly, if not equally exciting, depending on your feelings about the hyperkenetic Japanese teen superhero live action TV drama versus the Brooklyn-based band that co-founded the Secret Friend immersive art and music party series alongside POND magazine.
Anyhow the album in question strikes me as sounding just like the cool airport lounge music of the future we were all promised as children. But instead we got phone charging stations and Cinnabon franchises rather than having sleekly-funky space-age psych-pop bands paid to serenade harried travelers and to maybe even make them dance.
But going to airports isn’t too appealing these days so it’s all good. We’re all far better off sitting at home in front of our computers and luckily that’s just where Psymon Spine is playing an album release party to be livestreamed tonight at 8PM EST as the most recent installment of BABY TV alongside openers Dream Chambers and Hypoluxo, the latter of whom were featured not so long ago on this very blog. (Jason Lee)
The release of new music from the Wild Pink is cause for mellowed-out celebration and so today we’re in luck because the band (but not that band) just yesterday released their third full-length LP (yes I realize that’s redundant) and it’s called A Billion Little Lights. From the first bars of "The Wind Was Like A Train" an auditory spell is cast by John Ross & Co. as a warm-hued synth melody is joined by chiming guitars and marching band snare and weeping steel guitar woven together like a comfy quilt and finally Ross himself as he gently intones a Zen koan about what sounds like a game of horseshoes played on a frozen lake and how he’s got your back despite the seeming recklessness of this scenario with the song culminating in a string section flourish all clocking in at an economical 2 minutes and 37 seconds.
Listening to the opening track I can’t help but think of Jason Lytle and Grandaddy during that group’s heyday, or at least their gentler material, but Wild Pink provides an Americana spin on the indie aesthetic that sets them apart, and on the whole, A Billion Little Lights finds many beautiful wrinkles to explore in the veins of blissed out folk and alt-country and roots rock reveries all while contemplating subjects such as the inevitability of time’s passage and the violent settlement of the West and social media oversharing and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Florida retirement homes (Ross grew up in Central Florida before relocating to NYC years ago) with the latter two of these enumerated subjects acting as inspiration for the song below whose video features one of the stars of Schitt’s Creek and also features backing vocals (just like "The Wind" above) from Julia Steiner who fronts the Chicago-based band Ratboys. (Jason Lee)
Quoting a Deli blogger from a few years back, Oceanator is "the Brooklyn-based grunge project of Elise Okusami, one bore in equal parts from the its [sic] crunch-heavy guitars as well as Okusami’s no-holds barred lyricism." I’m opening with this quote since there’s nothing to indicate the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has departed from her no-holds and crunch-heavy ways in the interim (but what do I know she could be working on a pirate-metal chiptune opera as we speak) and when it comes to Brooklyn-based grunge well there’s still some of that around too–despite the best efforts of real estate developers who are attempting to entirely wall off Greenpoint with high-rise condos, clearly a plot to turn the neighborhood into a penal colony inspired by John Carpenter’s Escape From New York so the joke’s on the condo buyers and renters–and did you know Brooklyn actually invented grunge. Not the music. Actual grunge.
Oceanator released her debut full-length LP Things I Never Said last summer and reviewers at the time tended to dwell for understandable reasons on the album’s recurring themes of cataclysm and apocalypse. Even though it was written and recorded well before the actual apocalypse arrived (the opening act of the apocalypse anyway) Okusami managed to channel the upcoming zeitgeist as demonstrated in the opening one-two crunchy-grungy punch of "Goodbye, Goodnight" and "A Crack In The World." But what’s striking in listening to the album now is how little Okusami dwells on disaster itself, and how instead her lyrics so ably depict and dissect all the ways people react to disaster whether interpersonal or societal or both: Hiding away or diving straight into it. Looking to be alone or seeking human contact. Thinking too much or pursuing oblivion. Viewing disaster as an end point or a starting point for renewal. This album lays it all out and it’s cheaper than therapy.
Much the same goes for the music too considering how Oceanator conjures an array of psychological mood state. Sure there’s the aforementioned crunchy grunge but there’s also the poppy bop of "Heartbeat", the new wave sheen of "I Would Find You" (new video alert!) and the classic girl group sway of "Walk With You" (RIP Mary Wilson) which back-to-back make up the middle portion of the album. Things I Never Said climaxes with the penultimate track "The Sky Is Falling" with its dramatic stop-start verses, soaring guitar breaks, and majestic outro that adds layers of additional guitar, keyboard, and ghostly background vocals to the mix before a final breakdown at the end. And finally the closer "Sunrise" is not at all ironically named but instead ends on a ray of hope: "I’m going outside today / I’m feeling like things might be okay." This album takes the listener on an actual journey.
And speaking of journeys if you journey over to Polyvinyl Records they’ve just re-released the album, now available on vinyl for the first time so you can show off your Hi-Fi system to your pet rock. And who wants plain ol’ black vinyl (BOR-ing) so you get a choice between Orange Swirl vs. Funfetti aka "Clown Vomit" which suggests these records may be edible but I’d check with the manufacturer first. (Jason Lee)
