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.

ARMAND HAMMER & THE ALCHEMIST | “Falling Out The Sky” (feat. Earl Sweatshirt)

The combination of Armand Hammer’s Billy Woods and Elucid is one of the best pairings in hip-hop history, up there with Ghostface and Raekwon, Pimp C and Bun B, André and Big Boi, 8ball and MJG (who even get a shoutout in the song). The prolific MCs are great on their own and they’re even better when together. Their chemistry is one that’s seamless, often intersecting ideas from one verse to the next on the excellent Haram, their latest album, produced entirely by The Alchemist. The group recently did a streaming event in celebration of the record, resulting in a new video for one of the album’s many highlights, “Falling Out The Sky.” Joined by Earl Sweatshirt, the trio of MCs spend some time on a beautiful remote island, the perfect location to match ALC’s day-at-the-beach tropical beat. The three trade verses reflecting on vivid memories, times that left impressions delivered to us as though we were there.

CENTRAL HEAT EXCHANGE | “Tulips At My Bedside” (feat. Living Hour)

Based primarily out of the central time zone, but from an array of cities that include Austin, Chicago, and Winnipeg, Central Heat Exchange is more than a great new, it’s a promising new collaborative project. The band, which includes members of Daphne Tunes, Pool Holograph, Living Hour, and guests from both Lala Lala and The Hecks, have shared their debut single “Tulips At My Bedside,” with vocals from Living Hour’s Sam Sarty. On first impression, this project goes beyond the sum of their parts. Their single is dreamy and psychedelic, a swirling bit of art-pop that brings a humble grandeur reminiscent of Broadcast and Stereolab at times, with harmonics that dissolve in sweltering groove. It’s spacey and sleek, but grounded in our reality with a razor sharp focus, especially when you consider the lack of proximity between the band’s members.

CLINIC | “Fine Dining”

With the pandemic, it’s almost like we’re all members of Clinic these days, the band that have been wearing surgical masks long before it was cool (and necessary). For over two decades the band have continuously shifted their sound, comprised of far out synths and warped space-age psych rock. Led by a visionary use of motorik rhythms and sonic layering that can often be described as “patch-work,” the band returned in 2019 with Wheeltappers and Shunters, their first new album in seven years. “Fine Dining” is their first new music since, a great single that finds the band doing what they do best, surging in and out of psychedelic space boogie with a cold precision and the endless cool of Ade Blackburn’s vocals. There’s a disco element that bounces within the synthetic soundscape, and it all sounds pretty alien as the band bring us “all into the void” with them.

DEERHOOF | “Hitch-Hike” (LiLiPUT cover)

Moving forward with Kill Rock Stars’ ongoing cover series Stars Rock Kill (Rock Stars), with bands both current to their roster and alumni, this week the world was given a set within the series, the collection that could only be known as the Deerhoof Sandwich EP. The special release is just that a sandwich of tunes that includes a pair of Deerhoof performed Sleater-Kinney and LiLiPUT covers at the beginning and the end (aka the bread) and other artists covering Deerhoof in the middle. While it’s very hard to cover Deerhoof and capture that same magic (maybe even impossible), Deerhoof’s cover of LiLiPUT’s “Hitch-hike” is a damn good time. They play it pretty close to the original, honoring the post-punk simplicity of it, whistles and everything. Of course, anything performed in Deerhoof’s ever capable hands is spiced up just a bit, and the band pepper in some added heft, fills, and elastic energy.

OHMME | “Girl Loves Me” (David Bowie cover)

It’s been a full year since Ohmme released their great second album, Fantasize Your Ghost, and to celebrate the band shared a new single, their third since the record’s release. This time around they’ve delivered a great cover in the form of David Bowie’s “Girl Loves Me,” taken from his final album, Blackstar. While we already know that Ohmme can crush a cover (their “Give Me Back My Man” cover is exceptionally good), they’ve once again proven why they are among Chicago’s absolute best. With Bowie’s “Girl Loves Me” already flush with experimental flavor, Ohmme expand on it, fitting their art-rock and indie punk tonality right in with a sludgy step and the same off-kilter melodic charm the original is built on. The sprawling cover is big on atmospheric space and haunting tension, a great pocket for Ohmme’s ever expanding minimalist noise-pop meets experimental influenced creations.

RAKTA | “Patch Notes” Session

São Paulo’s RAKTA are among post-punk’s most adventurous and experimental bands, if you can even conform them to the genre. They don’t tend to play by anyones rules, putting out their own mutant strain of psych, noise, punk, ambient, and electronic music that’s often hypnotic, heavy, and wildly disorienting. I was only introduced to their music a few months ago (ed note: our favorite reminder that it’s never too late to get into something, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise), but I’ve grown rather obsessed with their boundary shattering catalog that envelopes your senses like a flesh eating fog. The trio recently played a live in-studio “Patch Notes” session for the folks over at FACT Magazine capturing a great deal of the magic that makes the band so special, from the mesmerizing rhythmic pulse to the manipulated synth haze and the drift of vocals that sit somewhere in the cosmic pull of the mix.

SEPUTUS | “Phantom Indigo” LP

I made damn sure that the new Seputus album was the first I listened to at midnight as Thursday turned to Friday, and holy mole it did not disappoint. The savagely experimental sophomore album is the masterwork of Pyrrhon drummer Steve Schwegler, who plays both guitar and drums for the band, in addition to composing their menacing chaos, while his Pyrrhon bandmates Doug Moore and Erik Malave handle the vocals and bass, respectively. Give the drummer some, damnit. Phantom Indigo is dense and brutal, an album with death metal at its core, but the rules of genre have been dismantled and disintegrated in the name of colossally heavy extreme metal. It’s technical and psychedelic, a ruthlessly crushing record that twists and twists and twists until you have no idea which way is forward and what was happening in the first place. It’s decisively brilliant and jaw-dropping more often than not (see “Tautology”).

SMIRK | “Staring at Screens”

It’s been about two months since Smirk released their full length album, LP, and just one month since the release of Smirk & Friends Spring Mixxxtape arrived. Which is to say… I guess it’s about time for another release from Nick Vicario (Crisis Man, Public Eye), and sure enough, there’s one on the way. EP is seven new songs that find Smirk doing what they do best, making agitated punk that feels both jittery and anxious. Lead single “Starting at Screens” is a story we all know too well, the absurd dependency on computer, phone, and television screens that have gripped the most of us. The song packs a tight rhythm that moves in time with the detached guitars, setting a pace for Vicario to wander around into electronic twirls and one-note riffs that tear over the motorik rhythm. Its punk in the vein of Uranium Club or Silicone Prairie, awash into a tin reverb that gives the vocals an alien quality as he laments the “divine comedy.”

SPRINGTIME | “Penumbra (Live in Melbourne)“

Melbourne’s Tropical Fuck Storm topped our favorite albums of both 2018 and 2019 with their first two full lengths, and I like the believe they would have done it again in 2020 had it not been for the pandemic setting them back. The band’s Gareth Liddiard has spent much of that time digging through his archives with The Drones and various collaborators and now in the midst of a new project together with Jim White (Dirty Three) and Chris Abrahams (The Necks). The seasoned trio, known collectively as Springtime, bring much of their oeuvre together on a live recording of “Penumbra,” our first glimpse into their gorgeous sound. Combining a gentle blend of piano and drum led minimalism, the band allow the composition to breath, expanding in due time as they ramp their way into the carnage that’s become a staple of Liddiard and his caterwauling guitars, eventually sputtering into a full on collapse of noisy bliss.

STUCK | “Audiotree Live”

The grace of Audiotree Live is that it captures a band at a moment in time, with performances as they are, warts and all. For some bands, it doesn’t always capture them at their best… but for others it can really be an essential addition to their studio output (see: Yautja, Girl Ray, Horse Jumper, Melkbelly to name a few). For Chicago’s Stuck, one of the best new bands in the country, they absolutely nail their performance, using their recent session to show the world how tight and explosive they can be in a live setting. Playing songs from Change Is Bad, their full length debut (as well as early single “People Pleaser”), the band flex their discordant muscle to perfection, capturing both the tension and brilliant nerve at the core of each song. The rhythm section is impeccably tight and the twin guitars take every opportunity to tangle and detach, pushing and pulling the songs off their axis, swerving into the ominous madness head-on.

Further Listening:

MAY 24 - MAY 30:

MAY 31 - JUNE 06: