Throughout their debut album, Queen Serene sound fully realized, dipping between dream pop, post-punk, krautrock, shoegaze, and fuzzy indie rippers, each song offering something new. There’s cohesion in spades, but the self-titled record feels like an unraveling of ideas, expanding as it plays, providing a welcome sense of dynamics.
What is experimental rock, anyways? I’m Into Life Records, the LA/Kingston based label, is hunting for an answer, exploring every -wave and no-wave at the same time, building community along the way. With every artist that stretches their limits, we’re closer to finding out. #1 is the cumulation of East Coast Weird contemporaries.
See Jazz is decidedly not jazz, but reality does feel augmented throughout Is This Anything?, the debut album from Aaron Pfannebecker’s solo project. With a sound rooted in bedroom pop, See Jazz is wandering beyond the walls of confessional and dreary pop to create lo-fi music with a sense of adventure.
Following I Keep My Feet on the Fragile Plane, NYC based singer-songwriter Allegra Krieger returns with Fragile Plane: B-Sides, the extension to an album that was fortified in personal silence and atypical orchestration. Krieger expands on her poetic observations of humanity's shortcomings, told through her formidable presence in a passing world.
Objects Without Pain is a trick mirror in its aural attack on convention, appearing both flawed and flawless. Dissonant chords make songs sound out-of-tune, song structures writhe like trapped reptiles, vocals scream at the unhinged limit of the human larynx. Listening to the album is akin to watching trains collide in slow motion.
With her new record, Katie Von Schleicher's songs take a softer approach, full of luscious keyboards and a renewed comfort in the stripped down arrangements, punctuated with thoughtful strings by frequent collaborator Gabriel Birnbaum. Von Schleicher is in a reflective mood, touching on personal growth and strengths.
These Are Not Fall Colors lets its emotional power do a lot of the heavy lifting. Sam Jayne's songwriting is vague and occasionally impenetrable, but the execution is energizing and intense. He may have had a bit more success with Love as Laughter, but Lync brought together seemingly odd influences, pushing them in unexpected directions.
Age, out January 26th via Moone Records and Anxiety Blanket Records, is an album transfixed on life’s changes, a farewell to the one’s past self and an appraisal of where life’s lemons have left him. While the path of his life is obviously deeply personal, Dailey isn’t alone throughout the record, bringing some stalwart musicians along for the journey..
The hottest, driest place in America is a fitting reference point for prolific LA beatmaker DJ Muggs — whose trademark production is frequently dust-filled and eerie, with little room for frills. That approach is on display throughout Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley, a new installment in his decades-long series of region-hopping rap showcases.
Infinite Hatch is a major statement of a record, the duo of Marance and Urq showing incredible growth while remaining true to their sound and vision. One of the year’s more exciting albums, each song a piece of the greater whole, capturing the band’s acidic knack for unlikely melodies together with their immaculate sense of personality.
Post-Trash is very pleased to present Winded’s music video for "Heaven is Leaking" from last year's breathtaking EP, Schwartz Provides. Winded's track record of mixing a bit of jangly and earnest sentiment with a crushing sense of despair and intense self-reflection always provides quite a wild ride through a gamut of feelings and states of mind.
These reissues demonstrate an implacable sound by a trio deserving of more attention. Icing and Heroin Man have aged well. Though more serious as their erstwhile benefactors, Butthole Surfers, Cherubs point to how the Texas post-hardcore/noise rock scene cannot be reduced to one band, as famous and indispensable as they might be.
Auratone, the debut LP from NY based quartet Raisalka - a band which consists of members of Baked, Anna Altman, Haybaby, and Rats Mouth - is a release full of swirling guitars, as well as haunting and sweet moments. Isabella Ronayne's vocals trill and often soar above the haze, crunching in astonishing fashion.
Less More shouldn’t be confused with the old adage of “less is more,” a saying that rarely applies to Tundrastomper’s nuanced compositions. The theme seems to be more of a contradictory nature, the push and pull between two sides of a spectrum, less vs. more. Whichever way you go, Tundrastomper offer a path.
My America by Insane Urge is a terse, even flying and fleeting, record. The listener can never catch the band. It feels purely intended to be as such. Their commentary through music and lyrics relates to contemporary times and their punk predecessors. All done in a mad-dash pace, the album clocking in at just over ten minutes.
