Slint – Queen City Sounds and Art

Taxidermy’s Post-hardcore Noise Rock Single “Rot” is a Map of the Uncomfortable Journey to Accepting Life’s Uncertainties

Taxidermy’s “Rot” begins with an intricate guitar figure and spare drums but the melodies quickly drift slightly discordant as the song unfolds. From a place of building doubt in the lyrics and the music conveying a sense of unraveling into a passage of sweeping churning distortion and back into unsettling tension. In the music video we see shifting scenes of people contemplating in natural surroundings and then sitting in the dark lit only by candlelight and the moon. Vocals go from tranquil to hysterical as the song leaps into jagged riffs and splayed rhythms that after some headlong momentum seems to break down, dissolving into lingering, fragmented tones that echo into silence. It’s like the song embodies a moment in life when all of the things you thought you believed in and which formed the foundation of your identity and psyche come into question to their very core and you have to come to terms with what you really believe or accept an uncomfortable but possibly more satisfying acceptance of uncertainty and flux and the impermanence of all things. Fans of Slint and Gilla Band will appreciate Taxidermy’s inspired use of asymmetrical structure and raw noise as a compositional element in the context of songcraft. Watch the music video for “Rot” on YouTube and follow Copenhagen, Denmark’s Taxidermy at the links below. Look for more to come from Taxidermy on Pink Cotton Candy Records.

Taxidermy on Facebook

Taxidermy on Instagram

Taxidermy on Bandcamp

A Knife Ballet’s “Scattered Red, Blue & Black” is a Menacing and Melodramatic Amalgam of German Romantic Classical Music and Cinematic Post-rock

A Knife Ballet, photo by Thomas Nightingale

There’s something of the the promise of tragedy ahead in the beginning of “Scattered Red, Blue & Black” by A Knife Ballet. A lonely guitar figure floats in space joined soon by strings and companion guitar work like images in a film conveying movement toward something menacing. Bell tones accent the rhythm and the musical elements shift in expression so that the strings are less melancholic and more anxious and urgent as the song progresses and all sounds but the barest guitar drop off and then return with great, clashing clamor. The second half of the song is an almost martial rhythm haunted by violin commenting on the dire consequences of some great melodrama to which the song seems to be a score. Musically it’s a blend of German Romantic classical and post-rock both the more tender and haunted manner of Slint and its broadly subtle dynamic range and Mogwait’s cinematic intensity. And you certainly want to see the movie that inspired the music or the one it inspires. Listen to “Scattered Red, Blue & Black” on YouTube and follow A Knife Ballet at the links below. The song was taken from the forthcoming For The Blood Of England LP.

A Knife Ballet on Instagram

Chief Broom’s Jazzy Noise Punk Song “hidden in plain sight (walked away)” is the Sound of a Valiant Attempt to Escape the Clutches of Desperation and Despair

“hidden in plain sight (walked away)” is the title track to the debut album hidden in plain sight by Boise, Idaho-based guitar rock band Chief Broom. The album represents well the legacy of the late Tanner “TJ” Tuck, the group’s gifted and imaginative drummer who tragically passed away due to a fentanyl overdose on June 11, 2021 at age 22. This song showcases the broad sweep of Chief Broom’s sound from angular post-punk and post-hardcore to jazz flourishes with a through line of a chiming and deeply melancholic melody around which the song fragments and distorts in a swell of emotion with lyrics that seem to be about struggles with substance abuse and the betrayals that can happen in a social circle that help to keep people strung along and the conflict that often results when people are tangling with these issues especially when someone wants to get away from it all. The song has a sonic complexity that hits with a desperate energy and crushing simplicity and intensity of expression that is reminiscent of early post-rock bands like Slint and later hardcore inflected post-punk artists like Pink Reason. It has that level of deeply imagined and felt songwriting that sticks with you and is impossible to pigeonhole because in the making the music the musicians aren’t limiting themselves to genre tropes. The album was many years in the making due to personal issues dating to before the death of TJ Tuck and exacerbated with his passing and perhaps finding the very idea of mixing and mastering the music and giving it concrete form for the world to hear a painful endeavor but fortunately the legacy of the drummer and his bandmates was honored with the release of the album on September 28, 2023, what would have been TJ Tuck’s twenty-fifth birthday. Listen to “hidden in plain sight (walked away)” on Spotify and follow Chief Broom at the links below. The record is available on digital, cassette and limited vinyl editions via Mishap and Earth Libraries.

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Chief Broom on Instagram

Chief Broom on Mishap Records

Bondo’s Slowcore Post-Rock Song “New Brain” is a Contemplative Exploration of a Yearning for a Psychological Reset

Bondo’s contemplative yet uneasy “New Brain” brings us in with a lonely, spare, borderline atonal guitar line with drums like something born out a creative cauldron in which its players dropped Slint, Codeine, Unwound and Sonic Youth to produce a something melancholic and yearning. Toward the last fourth of the song the once tranquil musical elements come together in a clashing passage of heightened emotional intensity before easing back into impressionistic guitar work and rhythms. The minimal vocals are like neo-Beat poetry, the guitar progressions are like a call and response answer to self in an informal structure like a free jazz piece aiming to take on the quality of water with the tones resonating like droplets creating lingering waves creating interference patterns with one another that somehow resolve into evocative intersections. Its an apt dynamic for a song seemingly about wanting to have a new brain and reset one’s life, one’s habits and one’s possible future trajectory and having to come to terms with that not being a realistic outcome even if it would make everything easier. Listen to “New Brain” on Spotify and follow Bondo on Instagram.

Bug Facer Sculpted a Contorted and Agonized Colossus of Loss and Hopeless Desolation in the Seething Noise Rock of “Horsefly”

The white noise in the background certainly helps make Bug Facer’s “Horsefly” sound creepier with minimal guitar line and processional drumming. Like an even more haunted Slint song until a little over a minute in the distorted vocals and noisy guitar escalation crashes in. At that point the caustic desperation is palpable and what once was a fairly chill if unsettling song turns into one that sustains a seething and tortured expression of loss that crosses over into nihilistic passages that are so raw and emotionally fragmented it would be thrilling if it didn’t contain and embody so much psychic anguish. But then in the outro the song waxes back into a weary acceptance, a lull in the waves of agony you feel when you feel like you’ve been left all alone with nothing to live for, a state that seems impossible to overcome but this song seems proof that there are ways to channel that feeling into the kind of art that seems to help in spite of its horrifying power. Listen to “Horsefly” on Spotify and follow Bug Facer at the links below.

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Bug Facer on Instagram

September Stories Presents a Colossal Portrait of Feeling Trapped by in One’s Own Mind on “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DYING TOO MUCH”

September Stories, photo courtesy the artists

September Stories employ a spoken word element for the lyrics to “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DYING TOO MUCH” while the music itself is stark to match the intense and unadorned vocals. The lyrics repeat and in the second iteration the drums come crashing in and the vocals raise in an amplified sense of desperation uttering words of abject alienation and the realization of being doomed by one’s own psychology and feeling trapped by a hopelessness so deep it turns into a self-reinforcing cycle of emotional self-sabotage that feels with great certainty inescapable. Though very different sonically fans of Big Black, Slint and OXBOW will appreciate the bleak imagery and poetic evocation of confronting one’s own worst enemy within one’s own mind. Listen to “I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT DYING TOO MUCH” on YouTube and check out the rest of the new September Stories EP I STAND IN AWE OF THE GREAT UNKNOWN on one of the streaming services below and follow the group at the links provided.

September Stories on Facebook

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September Stories on Instagram

September Stories Big Cartel store

Matt Monsoor’s “Fog” is a Short and Deeply Evocative Tale of Engaging With a Life Worth Living

The rapid cycling drone the introduces us to Matt Monsoor’s “Fog” is an apt introduction to a song and video like a diary entry of from the beginning of a novel about loss, wasted time and the will to find and create meaning in a world of deep uncertainty. The images of spider webs catching the dawn sunlight and of a graveyard in the early morning and a house and a town on a hill in the distance as the day begins serve as the contextual backdrop in the video so that immediately the lonely piano figure that comes in and runs through the majority of the song has a pastoral aspect that when coupled with the simple guitar line toward the end of the song lets us know this isn’t a tale of tragedy ahead but of exploration and perhaps redemption of self and forgiveness of past failings of one’s dreams. With words written by Jeff Skemp and echo plex performance by Casey Virock this song is more like a short movie or a tone poem than simply a song and even without the video it is powerfully evocative in a way resonant with the material Slint wrote for Spiderland. Watch the video for “Fog” on YouTube and follow Matt Monsoor at the links below.