Umberto "Black Bile"
Black Bile compiles some of Umberto’s most resplendent, sanguine music to date. The solo work of LA composer Matt Hill draws heavily from the world of cinema, spinning immersive narratives and rich atmospheres using sound alone. Hill, an active composer for film and television, recently scored the 2022 Jerry Pyle film Loveseat (soundtrack was released in 2023). Other recent scores include the 2020 thriller Archenemy, from the producers of cult classic Mandy.
Inspired by the ancient Greek theory of the “four humors,” an early medical theory linking the inner workings of the human body to the elements. “Black bile” specifically links the feelings of melancholy with autumn. Hill’s celestial compositions are an autumnal soundtrack conveying beauty, yearning, reflection and comfort.
Many of the album’s phrases are constructed from just two notes or sounds, arranged by Hill into complex patterns that undulate with an organic pulse. The spare melodic structure holds a myriad of small and beautiful details. The songs began with Hill improvising on the piano, to find the notes and patterns that created the musical and emotional structure from which he could expand with textural detail. Hill then would often remove the initial structure leaving a sparer and more skeletal one which he could again expand upon to create a full piece. The careful attention to each detail gives his minimal compositions emotional heft. The album masterfully stakes Umberto’s claim among other avant-ambient boundary pushers such as Lawrence English or Laurel Halo.
Endon "Fall of Spring"
Fall of Spring continues the band’s charter for each member to find the boundaries of their potential and push past them. Weaponized synthesizers thrum with fizzling distortion as electronic pulses crash through the mire. Nagura’s voice interlaces with and at times surpasses the oppressive thrall. With the droning bass of “Prelude for the Hollow” and the swooping tones of “Hit Me”, subtle melodicism reveals itself beneath an abrasive surface. That melodicism nearly froths to the surface on album centerpiece “Time Does Not Heal” until it is again buried by noise along with Nagura’s cries, which only increase in desperation as their volume fades. The aptly titled album climax “Escalation” is a masterclass of dynamic noise. Starting at what, for most, would be a distorted zenith only to be pushed far beyond into new sonic architectures by a deluge of gabber-like beats and an all-encompassing spectrum of distortion.
Fall of Spring captures the electricity and unpredictability of ENDON’s live performances in vivid detail. The album harnesses the power of their storied performances through unpredictable movements, deft arrangements and an exhilarating textural palette. By imbuing their sound with raw emotion teetering on the edge of obliteration, the trio are able to create what they call “organic music with inorganic material.” For ENDON, those moments of suspense and surprise are the core of their music. Fall of Spring is a vessel for band and listener to share moments, to suspend time and move through grief and pain, and to bask in catharsis and resilience
Torres & Fruit Bat "A Decoration"
A Decoration is a six-song collaboration between Mackenzie Scott of TORRES and Eric D. Johnson of Fruit Bats. In working together, Scott and Johnson neither changed TORRES or Fruit Bats at their core to suit their collaborator’s ideas, nor did they merely look for places in each other’s music where they could fit themselves in. A Decoration is something else entirely, something new and vibrant and vital to the catalogs of two songwriters whose most recent albums, Fruit Bats’ A River Running to Your Heart and TORRES’ What an enormous room, found them at the peak of their creative powers, at a perfect moment to begin a new conversation through song.
Quivers "Oyster Cuts"
Oyster Cuts, the Merge debut of Quivers, finds the Melbourne, Australia–based outfit awash in the kind of emotions people tend to fear losing themselves in. Finding love after grief, the outsized guitar pop of Quivers gleams like the surface of an ocean, beneath which lies a reef that is at turns beautiful and painful, its features alien and sharp enough to wound. Propelled by melodies that at times recall Galaxie 500 and The Pretenders, Quivers make music that is tender and tough, compelling the listener to dive in again and again, each song a new angle on all of your feelings.
The losses and loves that have informed Quivers’ music since their inception—the sudden loss of a brother in the cracked optimism of We’ll Go Riding on the Hearses (2018) and the life in and after grief of Golden Doubt (2021)—ripple into Oyster Cuts, which is committed to moving forward while accepting that some feelings, like grief, are a cycle. Crucially, Quivers committed to moving forward with each other. Paring away the choir and strings of its predecessor, Oyster Cuts is a showcase for what’s still possible when four people—Sam Nicholson (guitars), Bella Quinlan (bass), Michael Panton (guitars), and Holly Thomas (drums)—make music together.