Ex Oh "Ex Oh (Team Love)"
Jerry Adler has been around for a while. Yet despite his extensive, wildly eclectic catalog, his career has flown stubbornly under the radar. Coming out of the same NYC scene that produced The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol in the early 00’s, his band @TheBlam recorded two albums, had hits on national college radio, and toured sin the U.S. and UK. The group dissolved in 2005, but due to prominent placements over the years in hit TV shows such as The Office (US) and Skins (UK) the band has cultivated a small and dedicated cult following.
Adler returned the following year with Flugente (2006-10), captured on two albums but best exemplified in live performances that bordered on performance art. In 2011, he made yet another 90-degree turn with Wave Sleep Wave, an experimental, loop-based, guitar and drums duo with Yuval Lion (Cibo Matto, Suzanne Vega, The Blam). Ever restless, Adler’s guitar experimentation would lead him to join with classical sitar player Mustafa Bhagat (Biryani Boys) to form Arranged Marriage NP, in 2016. The duo relies on the Indian raga canon for its material, but replaces the traditional tabla drum with a whirling, swirling galaxy of sound.
Now Adler delivers EX OH, an album of super-tightly woven, impeccably arranged, songwriterly pop songs packed with myriad sounds and surprises. EX OH is dense, even maximalist. Each part is in full flower. If you’re a fan of albums on which art and pop are not opposing concepts, this one might be for you.
Bipolar "Bipolar (Slovenly)"
Bipolar is the twisted creation of Pouya and Obash, formed in a Brooklyn pisshouse while on a bender in the not too distant past. The duo moved to the USA from “conservative” Tehran, Iran as a cog in a wheel of a true underground scene in pursuit of their passion for cross dressing musical performance based on their love of the circus and all things theatrical. Think SCREAMERS finger-banging THE DICKIES while THE SPITS egg them on – Pouya has already done time on keys with The Spits.
And look at these sick bastards now… Hopefully one day soon you’ll get to see them in the third dimension.
With the addition of Kayla from NYC garage-punk party people THE OTHERMEN on synth, and some other man named Ethan on drums, BIPOLAR mightily spew forth their debut 7incher with timely titles “Depression” and “Virus” among the melee. We’re giving you the worthless Slovenly guarantee that this EP is a cure for at least one of these ailments.
Pódium "Pódium (Slovenly)"
Slovenly Recordings is fully amped to present the debut LP from PÓDIUM de València. Conceived by Nick Trampolino, armed with a drum machine and a guitar, this once personal project quickly evolved into a five-piece platoon with the addition of Salva Frasquet on guitar, Ximo Barceló on bass, Miguel J. Carmona on drums, and África Mansaray on vocals. Pulsating with the epic aggression of hardcore, the impersonal and perverse tone of industrial metal, and fully balanced with the liveliness of the authentic surf scene, we’ll be so bold as to describe them as a curious mixture of Ministry (circa ‘89), Man or Astroman? and the goddamn Go-Go’s ablaze with the pyromaniacal tendencies of Steve Albini’s Shellac. The combination of speed, skill and abrasiveness here converts every track into a 2 minute descent into the kind of hell you’ve been dying to enter.
The creative motor of the band is precisely this mixture of hate, anxiety, and fear that we perceive in the pommeling and obsessive riffs that constantly intertwine the guitars and bass. The drums are simple, linear and robotic, having deliberately taken out the dynamic possibilities to guarantee maximum protagonism and criminal coolness.
Pole "Fading (Mute)"
Pole is the project of ground-breaking electronic musician Stefan Betke. The new album Fading is the first since 2015’s Wald. As with every new Pole record, it’s part of a continued forward trajectory but it also connects to a pre-existing sonic framework. “Every Pole record connects to recordings that I’ve made before,” Betke says, “in order to stay in this kind of vertical development. The ideas from 1, 2, 3 [his groundbreaking first three albums] up to now are connected. I keep the interesting elements, languages and vocabulary that I designed and add new elements.” Fading follows the physical released on Mute of remastered versions of his iconic albums 1, 2, 3 to much acclaim.