Out This Week | Post-Trash Highlights

As we all head into the weekend, we’re happy to share a few of our favorite new releases, out this week (in splendid alphabetical order). The write-ups are all kept brief and bite sized, snippets to catch your interest. There’s a lot of great music out every week and these are just some of the many we think you should check out.

We missed last week (so much music, so little time… life, etc), but there were some real “heavy hitters” so we included them this week for your potential enjoyment.

THIS WEEK:

Featured

7XVETHEGENIUS | "Death of Deuce"

Drumwork Music Group
Spotify | Apple

Death of Deuce has been a long time coming and 7xvethegenius has crafted a modern hip-hop classic. The Buffalo based MC blends elegance and grit, her bars both hard and intricate, her delivery brilliant and blinding, rapping over eclectic beats that play to her many strengths, whether it's soul laced rap or skull cracking loops, 7xve’s truths shine on the mic throughout one of the year’s undeniable best hip-hops records.

BLUE ZERO | "Colder Shade Blue"

Lower Grand Tapes
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Blue Zero, Chris Natividad’s (Marbled Eye, Public Interest) new solo project, eschews the angularity of his other bands, opting instead for fuzzy beauty and muscular density, pop songs with blistering shoegaze strength and slow dripped melodies. His debut album, Colder Shade Blue, is a collection of sure footed songs that rely on earnest songwriting over glitchy aesthetics or pounding rhythms.

ELUCID | "REVELATOR"

Fat Possum Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Never a stranger to hip-hop's more experimental reaches, ELUCID returns with REVELATOR, a clamoring record that's equal parts psychedelic and electronic, free in form, but hard in statement. His lyrics retain an acidic sharpness, direct and taking aim at disproportionate class systems and inequality while drifting in and out of abstract focus and poetic detachment.

GUT HEALTH | "Stiletto"

Highly Contagious / AWAL Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Following a pair of great EPs, Melbourne's Gut Health release Stiletto, their first full length, expanding on the chaos of their danceable post-punk without losing any of their punchy bouncing pop core. Like a mix of B-52s and Television, Gut Health's mesmerizing approach sparks and splinters, providing an unglued energy as they warp disco and art rock into opposing shapes.

RITCHOT TEXTILES | "I"

Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

If the music of Blessed is tightly wound to the point of snapping under pressure, Ritchot Textiles, a new trio featuring the three of the aforementioned band's four members, is elated to explore, locking into dissonant repetition and wandering into fried and hypnotic art rock minimalism. I, the band's debut, is a circular beast, a textural landscape of swirling melodic abrasion, continuously looping into oblivion.

SMOKE BELLOW | "Structurally Sound"

Moon Glyph
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

It seems as though Baltimore’s Smoke Bellow are unfortunately calling it a day, but not before the trio released one more album, Structurally Sound, a new locked-in psych odyssey from the visionary experimental pop band. The band continue to dive deeper in a tangled web of motorik rhythms and resonant art punk, bouncing around in your headphones like celestial ping-pong.

THA GOD FAHIM & CARTUNE BEATZ | "Machine Gun Vocabulary"

Self Released
Bandcamp | Spotify

It's been nearly four months since Tha God Fahim released an album, which is to say he's overdue (by his standards). The Atlanta based MC returns today with Machine Gun Vocabulary, produced in full by Cartune Beatz, a signature mix of Fahim's off-the-cuff bars and the occasional track of authentic sentiment. Either way, it's always great to hear Fahim control the mic.

FURTHER LISTENING:

Black & White Cat / Black & White Cake - Black & White Cat / Black & White Cake
Black Ends - Psychotic Spew
Chat Pile - Cool World
Chimers - Through Today
Envy - Eunoia
Hemlock - 444
Jamison Field Murphy - It Has To End
The Lipschitz - Plinth
Lust Online - Go Outside
Mutant Academy - Keep Holly Alive
Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja
Picture That - Strum

LAST WEEK:

Featured

BLOOD INCANTATION | "Absolute Elsewhere"

Century Media Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Morbid Angel, Pink Floyd, Gorguts, and Tangerine Dream walk into a bar… it's not the set-up of a niche joke, but the touchstones behind Blood Incantation's cosmic death metal prog adventure, Absolute Elsewhere. The band play both galactic 70's psych and grizzled death metal with equal admiration, creating something that feels like a shift in the vacuum of space. It could be your gateway into death metal... or you may find yourself on the strangest acid trip of your life.

CLASS | "A Healthy Alternative"

Feel It Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Hailing from Tuscon, Arizona, Class are a band outside of time and space. Guitar driven and catchy, their music blends classic garage and power pop sounds with a distinctly tongue-in-cheek sneer and infectious hooks. Their sound taps into the earliest inklings of punk, evoking the likes of a Nuggets compilation or a New York Dolls B-side far more than anything ‘hardcore.’ The songs are anchored by catchy, blown-out guitar riffs, be it the marching rhythm of ‘Milkman,’ the British-sounding power chords on ‘Burnout City,’ or the rah-rah energetic drive of ‘Biggest Sale of the Year.’ Group vocals, tame drum fills, and the lo-fi recording quality all serve to build an image of these guys a kind of bizarro-world Ramones, sweating through their leather jackets in the Arizona heat. ‘The Hits Are Here to Stay’ could be their TV-special theme song, while ‘Be-Bop with the Rats,’ with its wailing saxophone, could soundtrack a brawl of rival greaser gangs. It’s all fun and in good taste, but the jocularity betrays a seriousness and intelligence behind the songwriting that makes Class anything but a novelty act. - Matt Watton

THE HARD QUARTET | "The Hard Quartet"

Matador Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

No one likes a dang ol’ supergroup… except when they do. The Hard Quartet is an exceptional pairing of veteran musicians that understand each other. They know when to shine and when to give space to one another. Throughout their self-titled debut each of the members - Jim White (Dirty Three), Stephen Malkmus (Pavement), Emmett Kelly (The Cairo Gang), and Matt Sweeney (Chavez), prove to be pieces of the puzzle, the camaraderie and mutual admiration the glue that seems to hold them together.

MCLUSKY | "The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not On Fire (2024 Remaster)"

Too Pure Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

mclusky's The Difference Between Me and You Is That I'm Not On Fire gets a 20th anniversary reissue together with a welcome remastering from Bob Weston. It sounds phenomenal, bringing new life to a record that really pushes the dynamic range. A classic effort that seemed to have dismantled the band at the time (they're baaaack), it feels vibrant and fresh all over again.

MEMORIALS | "Memorial Waterslides"

Fire Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

The magic of MEMORIALS' early releases is ever apparent throughout Memorial Waterslides, stretching between a reckless but brilliant strain of pop and visionary yet fractured sound collage. There’s a lot going on at the core of Verity Susman and Matthew Simms' music, their songs deconstructing and swirling, layered with mesmerizing rhythms aiding and abetting melodic synth permeation.

ROME STREETZ & DARINGER | "Hatton Garden Holdup"

The Influenyce Enterprise
Spotify | Apple

Rome Streetz is one of underground hip-hop’s coldest MC’s, his lyrics eloquently grimy, dexterous in delivery but always hard. Likewise, Daringer is one of underground hip-hop’s rawest producers, his beats built on no frills ultra-tough loops and neck snapping drums. Hatton Garden Holdup, their collaborative album, is a solid gold pairing that crackles with rewind-worthy bars and boom-bap dirt.

THE SMILE | "Cutouts"

XL Recordings
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

The Smile, comprised of Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead) and Tom Skinner (of Sons of Kemet) really need no introduction at this point. Cutouts is their third album in two years (the second this year), and it might be their best effort yet. The trio lean into explosive motorik boogies and krautrock influences as they squirm and groove with unprecedented urgency.

UNDEATH | "More Insane"

Prosthetic Records
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple

Undeath are sort of the champions of "fun" death metal. Their sound is still brutally heavy, cavernous, and oozing with gore and dread, but there's big hooks, enormous riffs, and well... it sounds joyous (in terms of blistering death metal). More Insane is an amped up beast of thrashing old school death metal with a modern disgust, and it's ready to crush a few skulls.

Further Listening:

A Place To Bury Strangers - Synthesizer
Adam McGrath - Methuen's Lot
All Feels - This Place Is A Message
Assisted Living - Is Coming
The Blood Brothers - Crimes (reissue)
Chubby And The Gang - And Then There Was…
Closetalkers - Path To Peace
Converge - Live in Orlando, FL 03.14.22
Das Nest - The Nest
Disintegration - Shiver in a Weak Light
Fan Club - Another Demonstration 2024
Geordie Greep - The New Sound
Godspeed You! Black Emporer - NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD
Hex Records - Hex 25 Year Comp: Ripped
Hitmen - Rock To Forget
Human Impact - Gone Dark
Joyer - I See Forward and Back
Maul - In the Jaws of Bereavement
Nolan Potter - A Cupboard Full of Noise - Live at Stateside Theatre
Poise - Hell Or High Water
Pressure Pin - Polyurethane
Sharp Pins - Mod Mayday 23
Sleater-Kinney - Little Rope (Deluxe)
Thee Sacred Souls - Got A Story To Tell
Thine Retail Simps - Strike Gold, Strike Back, Strike Out
The Wickies - The Wickies

THIS WEEK:

FURTHER LISTENING:

LAST WEEK:

Further Listening:

by: dan goldin