by Patrick Pilch (@pratprilch)
Picture this: it’s 2006 and you’re sick, real sick. You fell asleep to Room Raiders after polishing off six ounces of cherry flavored NyQuil and now the early morning MTV2 music block is on. The video for “Texas Instruments” is playing and you’re so tired but you’ve never even heard of ‘shoegaze’ and now you’re wide awake. “Hello, world”. Your eyes adjust to the light and the reds, blues and greens are beautiful and you’ve had dreams like this.
Am I still?
“No.”
Then you remember THUG 2 is still spinning in the GameCube downstairs and now the TV is blaring and you’re scrambling for a pen and paper in the other room but you come in just as the white text in the bottom left fades away and suddenly nothing is the same.
Pause. I’m not saying “Texas Instruments” sounds like something from 2006. It doesn’t at all. I’m just relating an experience is all, one about music that changed me. How? I don’t really know, but I’m just glad Destiny XL didn’t slip through my fingers in 2019.
Destiny XL is brimming with talent - some of Philly’s finest. Check out that lineup on Bandcamp - stacked. I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, I know Andi Jones has been too. It’s truly incredible to hear about musicians you like collaborating with other musicians you like. Plus, check out at that album cover by Richard Philip Smith. Super, love it.
They Are Gutting a Body of Water are an already super solid band but Destiny XL just might be their best. Douglas Dulgarian’s lo-fi tape project has really evolved with this one, so trode the fuck in. Destiny XL is twenty-six minutes of speaker-flooding shoegaze, ICE-cutting vignettes and grippingly dense hooks with enough kick to throw the meanest of console cowboys out of their digital saddles. The album feels like a DXM-induced scroll through the Internet K Hole, a cyberpsych triumph relishing in its own focused atmosphere and dissociative cosmos; an immersive experience and important addition to Philadelphia’s collective pursuit of uncompromising “indie rock.” It’s Swirlies by Body Meat, Duster by Fire-Toolz and more; Destiny XL is a gathering of resounding contradictions that is one of the most refreshing (and best) records in recent memory.