by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)

Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, our weekly recap of this week's new music. We're sharing our favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "further listening" section of new and notable releases from around the web. It's generally written in the early hours of the morning and semi-unedited... but full of love and heart. The list is in alphabetical order and we sincerely recommend checking out all the music we've included. There's a lot of great new music being released. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music.

*Disclaimer: We are making a conscious effort not to include any artist in our countdown on back-to-back weeks in order to diversify the feature, so be sure to check the "further listening" as well because it's often of top-notch quality too.

BIG BUSINESS | “Tour EP V”

The fifth installment of Big Business’ Tour EP series has arrived with the factually titled, Tour EP V, a sprawling trio of new songs (two originals and a cover). The two new songs “New Tombs” and “Perfectly Round” (and even the Sam Jayne cover) are quintessential Big Business, with seismic sludge, wailing melodies, and a colossal drum beat courtesy of the one and only Cody Willis. The songs have the incredible ability to both drag and stampede, often at the same time, as the bass drones and the fills quake. Big Business nearly two decades becoming one of the most important heavy bands of our generation and these songs show that whatever comes next is well worth waiting for.

CLAIRE CRONIN | “Feel This”

Some of the best records are the ones that sneak up on you. Claire Cronin’s last album, Big Dread Moon, was a solid record full of thoughtful and haunting folk songs, but Bloodless takes the formula to the next level, creating an essential album in the process. From the production to the sullen terror, it’s a heavy record in the emotional sense and a beautiful record in the compositional sense. “Feel This,” the album’s third single might just be the album’s highlight, a slow pit of despair that imagines life outside oneself and the feeling of exiting your body. Built on Cronin’s closely recorded harmonies, the song’s glacial pace, and viola courtesy of Ezra Buchla, it’s stark and minimal but constructed for unshakeable impact.

J.R.C.G. | “Lowrider”

The past five years or so have found Seattle’s Dreamdecay becoming a fixture among the underground, with records that appeal to fans of shoegaze, punk, post-hardcore, and the most dissonant of art rock. It should then come as no surprise that J.R.C.G., the more experimental solo project of that band’s Justin R. Cruz Gallego, is about to release one of the year’s best records, Ajo Sunshine. Due out in November via Castle Face Records, the album’s third single “Lowrider” is a vibrant fusion of krautrock, Latin rhythms, disorienting psych, and no wave ferocity, and it’s flat out stunning. The song bleeds and drips as it retains clarity and focus, peeling through layers of consciousness somewhere between chaotic and hypnotic.

JENNYLEE | “Clinique” (feat. Warpaint)

Jennylee, the solo project of Warpaint’s Jenny Lee Lindberg first caught our attention last year with a wonderfully stripped and stretched cover of Fugazi’s “I’m So Tired” and it feels like the post-hardcore influence remains vibrant on “Clinique”. The B-Side from the recently released “Newtopia” single finds Jennylee together with the rest of Warpaint, the band leaning into an ominous and blunted density that would make Deftones and Unwound proud in equal measure. The drums shuffle beneath the sinister bass as the guitars skitter around, filling in the cracks wherever they may land. Pulled between pop charm sensibilities and challenging structures, “Clinique” is art punk with an accessible ease.

MALIGNANT ALTAR | “Rite of Krasue”

There are a lot of songs that can be described as brutal and crushing, but there are not many that are quite as brutal and quite as crushing as “Rite of Krasue,” the first single from Malignant Altar’s upcoming album Realms of Exquisite Morbidity (due out December via Dark Descent). This song is fucking mountainous from the relentless and immediate attack of the hammering riffs and pounding drums to the tension inducing sludge and dynamic stampede of the middle… and that’s all before the gong hits reinforce the terror. This is death metal at its most rotten and fetid, which is to say that in another exceptional year for the genre, Malignant Altar might have come to obliterate it all.

THANK | “Good Boy”

If you’ve been paying any attention to Post-Trash over the past few years than you already know that Leeds’ Thank are one of most important noise rock bands in the world. The time has come for the band’s full length debut, Thoughtless Cruelty, out in February via Box Records (and EIS in the US). The album is abrasive and sickly hilarious, as the band take their deranged and sordid blend of mutant synths and buzzing low-end in new directions, all as slurred and brilliantly skewed as we’ve come to expect. “Good Boy,” the album’s lead single starts with a throbbing attack and gloriously harsh vocals courtesy of Freddy Vinehill-Cliffe. The electronic menace is matched with plenty of discordant dynamics, as the lyrics take aim at worthless posturing (“I only pay attention when the causes were convenient”).

Further Listening:

Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (November 1st - November 7th)