Electrical Audio – Queen City Sounds and Art

Kaput’s No Wave Post-punk Single “High Wire” is a Nightmarish Portrait of the Perils of Attention Seeking and Toxic Fandom

Chicago’s Kaput takes on the tensions between fandom and fame and the demands and expectations that exist mutually in the dark, post-punk song “High Wire.” The synths glisten ominously as percussion thuds splays with a seeming finality and the driving bass pairs with the electronic melody while Nadia Garofalo sings with what might be described as tense resignation. The chorus of “Caution is boring/We came for blood/If you tell me no one’s watching/Was it even worth your time” and later in the song with urgency “Give us everything, everything you’ve got” Garofalo swimming in the rhythmic cacophony and clatter at the end of the song captures the perverse and often toxic dependency of a certain way artists are encouraged to seek out attention at all times while their audience is conditioned to expect more and more with greater cost to the artist psychically and personally. It’s a way of things that has really extended to all areas of our lives to varying degrees as the barrier between ourselves and the commodification of our time and identity channeled into social media and the tendrils jobs and other realms of the economy get their grips into more of your time until you feel like you have nothing left because everything given isn’t enough. It is indeed as the song title suggests, a precarious balance with the potential to end badly. Kaput’s song dramatizes something that many of us feel in everyday life to varying degrees in music that’s harrowing, nightmarish and in the end cathartic. Listen to “High Wire” on Spotify and follow Kaput at the links below. Expect the debut album from Garofalo (ex-Ganser) and Brian Fox (Electrical Audio studio) in early 2025.

Kaput on Instagram

Kaput on Bandcamp

Kaput on YouTube

Snailbones’ Caustic and Jagged “Dead Inside” Has the Same Scrappy and Irreverent Spirit of Classic Chicago Noise Rock

Snailbones is from Portland, Oregon but from jump “Dead Inside” sounds like the trio has been steeped in Chicago noise rock and early post-punk hardcore. Think Shellac (and of course Big Black), Articles of Faith, Naked Raygun and more recently Meat Wave. That angular, caustic guitar sound and scrappy spirit that made a lot of the aforementioned so compelling. And yes, the group has had some of its music mastered at Electrical Audio in Chicago with some tracks done by Bob Weston and Snailbones plans to record with Steve Albini in March 2023. So those bonafides check out. But none of that wouldn’t matter if music didn’t measure up. “Dead Inside” is almost accusatory in tone regarding the source of what leads to feeling dead inside and the song dynamics go beyond choppy, cutting, mutant punk aggression. The lyric lines and the music paired with it sound like they’ve been rough cut and stretched out with the jagged places left in place so that the potential danger hangs in every moment. Listen to “Dead Inside” on Spotify and follow Snailbones at the links below.

Snailbones on Instagram

Snailbones on YouTube

snailbones.com

Queen City Sounds Podcast Ep. 35: J. Niimi of Man’s Body

Man’s Body is a band based in both Los Angeles and Chicago. The “soft punk” band recently released its second full-length album A Set Of Steak Knives on NocturnalSol (a division of Heyday Media Group) which was recorded at KooPin in Queens, NY, Kingsize Sound Labs in Chicago, IL and Grandma’s Warehouse in Los Angeles, CA representing perhaps the sensibilities, influences and roots of the music. The music is an eclectic form of what might be called power pop but with the kind of post-punk that has vivid moods and strong atmospheric elements and the loud-quiet dynamics that are often attributed to Pixies but which can be traced to Mission of Burma. Whatever influences the group has absorbed Man’s Body has its own sound born of its members’ various backgrounds. Greg Franco came up in the Hollywood punk and underground rock world of that city having formed The Blasphemous Yellow with his brother at age 16 and played shows with bands like Psi Com (which included a pre-Jane’s Addiction Perry Farrell) and Tex & The Horseheads (which included Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club fame in its early incarnations). J. Niimi has been in and around the Chicago music scene since the late 80s as a multi-instrumentalist, a songwriter, a luthier and as a music journalist. The two met when Niimi’s band Ashtray Boy played one night in Los Angeles and the two hit it off as friends and a year later Franco’s band Rough Church played at Schubas in Chicago where Niimi was invited to fill in on drums. From there the emergent band Man’s Body would go on to record the Found EP at Steve Albini’s studio Electrical Audio and two full length albums. A Set Of Steak Knives and its lush production and evocative and imaginative songwriting is proof that though Niimi and Franco live in different parts of the country that their creative chemistry is yielding a compelling body of work.

Listen to our interview with Niimi on Bandcamp linked below and to listen to A Set Of Steak Knives visit the NocturnalSol Bandcamp page also linked below where you can also order a limited vinyl edition of the record.