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.
William Basinski "Lamentations (TRL)"
William Basinski’s reputation as the foremost producer of profound meditations on death and decay has long been established, but on his new album, Lamentations, he transforms operatic tragedy into abyssal beauty. More than any other work since The Disintegration Loops, there is an ominous grief throughout the album, and that sense of loss lingers like an emotional vapor.
Captured and constructed from tape loops and studies from Basinski’s archives – dating back to 1979 – Lamentations is over forty years of mournful sighs meticulously crafted into songs. They are shaped by the inevitable passage of time and the indisputable collapsing of space – and their collective resonance is infinite and eternal.
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.
Black To Comm "Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens (Thrill Jockey)"
The music of Black To Comm is as powerfully intoxicating as it is subtly unnerving. Shapeshifting producer and sound artist Marc Richter has established himself as one of the most inventive and ambitious voices in contemporary music. Richter’s mastery of sonic manipulation is matched only by his astounding clarity of vision. Working heavily with sampling and electronic processing, each of his phantasmagoric works is meticulously constructed from a truly omnivorous array of smudged samples, found sounds, and other sonic detritus, collected by Richter from across the history of recorded music and altered into beguiling new shapes. Sound sources seem tantalizingly familiar and yet forever just out of reach, flickering at the edges of memory and perception or submerged in a bristling sea of static. A single piece might strafe elements of Eastern European folk, medieval plainsong, sky-clawing metal and shimmering ambient music, all ingested by Richter into his singular sound-world. Oocyte Oil & Stolen Androgens sees Richter’s turn his wild imagination to an exploration of the human voice, compiling some of his most immediate and affecting music to date.