Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - "John Carpenter's Halloween"

Trent Reznor x Atticus Ross - "Halloween"

(2017 Sacred Bones)

The weekend before Halloween we'd light the candle inside our gutted and carved pumpkin, sitting it between the rocking chairs on our front porch. In the late evening, its glow would burn a square-toothed grin into the phased-out blue of our vinyl siding. We would creep into the front lawn and throw blankets wrapped around our waists for warmth, leaving my ankles exposed in the Crocs my grade-school self would insist on wearing, staring our gourd down as my dad would cue the opening credits of John Carpenter's Halloween from our DVR. We'd leave our front door propped enough for our TV speakers to just barely ooze their sound into the surrounding neighborhood: wait for it, wait for it...

There it is. 5/4 time signature. Too-trebly piano trepanning your skull. The hi-hat percussion rattling like an old washer-dryer or window unit. It's timbrally in your-face, but compositionally so awkward it can't be anything but unobtrusive. The track's as cornball and lo-fi as the flick it scores, camera panning suburban streets to its funereal organ chords and hurried arpeggios: it's held together by a Snickers-bar buzz and the October chill as dissonant synth pads slowly envelop the song in nighttime.

Lending their talents to the always-spooky Sacred Bones Records, Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross turned in their own version of the classic slasher theme earlier this month, just in time wreak havoc on your Halloween party playlist. 

The pair's eight-minute industrial remix opens with a hollow drone not much louder than one of the ghastly noise tapes put out by Hanson Records back in the day. It's an evil fog that parts to reveal a piano, then an insectoid wash of synths, and finally, a detuned take on the theme's iconic melody that's creepier, but not quite as immediately arresting as its source material. 

What's lost in simplicity, though, is made up for in cinematic storytelling. Beneath the familiar score lurks the skittering presence of what sound like stock effects from a "scary sounds" CD, flitting beneath the walls of sound like mice behind drywall. Reznor and Ross peel back their instrumental layers about three-fourths of the way through the song, leaving this atonal scuttling stripped bare and exposed before introducing a thumping four-on-the-floor kick that drives the revamped theme 6-feet underground. Then fade to black. 

Though not as iconic as John Carpenter's 1978 recording, Nine Inch Nails' take on the Halloween is a faithful successor that revels in growling industrial textures. If you're on DJ duty for this weekend's party, it's worth giving both cuts a well-deserved spin.

Review: Stuck in November - "First Visit to Camp Telepathy"

Stuck in November - First Visit to Camp Telepathy

(2017 Self-Released)

A good majority of Bandcamp records tuck little worlds into shoeboxes, populating their cardboard confines with Easter basket grass and suburban tudors carved from individual-sized cereal boxes. Their songs barely graze the two-minute threshold, wrapping around your neck like a scarf with lo-fi static cling.

Stuck in November aren't satisfied building mere dioramas. They look up and out of the much larger box they've been placed in by giant hands, peeking over the edge into a world beyond theirs: a Felix-the-Cat-shaped clock ticks on the wall across from whatever desk or nightstand the Bangalore-based math-rock trio is trapped atop. Squat, autumnal-colored coffee mugs await their use in a glass cabinet beside it, and there's an ever-present rustle of windchimes that ride in on October drafts, often accompanied by the nimble guitaristry of a tenant practicing in another room.

My extended metaphor aside, Stuck in November's mostly-acoustic sophomore EP really does sound like a topographic or atmospheric view that's too vast to take in. I mean, just look at the cover art: it reminds me of those Dorling-Kindersley reference books filled with overhead maps of Star Wars locales, or maybe the poster tri-folded into a video game strategy guide. You can't help but try to project yourself onto the page, or in this case, into the music. 

Averaging at about 5 minutes each, the four instrumental songs that add up to First Visit to Camp Telepathy are landscapes. as conversely chaotic and ordered as nature itself. Ultra-technical guitar riffs sprout from the thicket, no two alike. Music boxes swell up like lens flares and accordion trills wobble with Wes Anderson's preciosity. Drums crunch like twigs underfoot. You'll spot familiar timbres, but won't hear them played the same way twice--their shading's tweaked by the Sun's angle, presenting Stuck in November's arrangements as blinding reflections in the bursting optimism of opener "PSJS" and sleepy dusk shadows on closer "Monster".

Ambitious as First Visit to Camp Telepathy may be, it's not quite an adventure. It's instead a normal day spent in a magical, very abnormal. universe. No matter how strange the ramshackle harmonies that compose the record are, the EP is inviting from start to finish: it's something to come back to when you're feeling as small as the contents of a shoebox.

Premiere: Jaded Juice Riders - "Deathsurf"

Jaded Juice Riders - "Deathsurf"

(2017 Spirit Goth)

*Chords like the growl of urethane wheels against a concrete bowl. Snares like the steady beat of UV rays against a pale neck.*

Summer's long over, but nobody alerted Irvine, California's Jaded Juice Riders. "Deathsurf," our second preview of the noise-pop quartet's upcoming Bowl Cut LP via Spirit Goth Records, drips with the residual humidity of 2009's endless July. 

Look: there's the walkie-talkie crackle of Wavves' self-titled debut sweating on a glass of Kool-Aid; here's Beach Fossils' tubular melodicism wriggling like hot blacktop in the distance. There's something oddly satisfying about the beach-pop sub-genre that takes me back to a time when I had longer, greasier hair and a greater insecurity about my future: then, it was only the ordered simplicity of a staccato guitar riff over a droning bassline that could make me feel at ease.

Now, the sound hits me in a way that getting a Facebook message from an old high-school friend might. I'm anxious to be confronted by my awkward past, but comforted by the commanding presence of JJR's wildly bendy lead guitars and the slacker-rock groans that echo behind them. 

"Go where you go / yes we know" sing the Juice Riders. Where they know I'm going, even I don't know. For now, I'm surfing on a wave of fuzz-riddled, dreamy ambiguity while bopping my head (one eye suddenly once again covered with murky-blonde hair) to the driving snares. 

Bowl Cut drops October 26. Pre-order a digital, vinyl, or tape copy here.

Review: ruru - "SLEEP"

ruru - SLEEP

(2017 Self-Released)

Here's the sound of the near-future zeitgeist: a year-and-a-half removed from Chance the Rapper's Coloring Book and five years deep into Mac Demarco's pop-cultural ascent, the time is just about ripe for us to appreciate a re-imagining of jazzy R'n'B this solidly inventive, sophisticated, and fun. 

Following up her debut Sounds of the Mundane EP, which reveled in the warmth of Northwestern twee-folk acts like Lois and The Softies, Filipino singer-songwriter ruru drapes her once-sparse arrangements in a musty thrift-store jacket. There's a whiff of jazz-inflected nostalgia in SLEEP's sherpa lining, but what's it nostalgic for? The taut grooves and woozy twang of Al Green's more downbeat cuts? The homey folk that phases into the background as night falls on your Animal Crossing town? Hall and Oates? 

Maybe nostalgia's not even the right word for it: the term entails a sadness and longing for something unrecoverable that I and my fellow post-Millennials aren't used to: we can conjure pictures of an old Happy Meal Toy or an episode of a favorite TV show at a moment's notice, no matter when it may have been released. The historical place of a pop-cultural artifact dissolves into the pool of our close ancestors' existence, leading us to create artistic works that can cull influence from twenty or thirty years of creativity. To us, that amount of time doesn't even seem that long. If it's documented, we can access it.

So SLEEP emerges from that sense of ambiguity. It caulks the little crannies that exist between decades, like the earthy color pallets of the late seventies to early eighties and the Reagan era's new-wavey spillage into George H.W. Bush's presidency. ruru takes their most interesting aesthetic elements, slips them into a glass slide, and then places them beneath the lo-fi lens of a twee-pop microscope. Each of the record's seven tracks is a cute little prokaryote, flagellating to its own funky rhythm.

If SLEEP were a sandwich, its bread would be the best part. Opener "when you're away" and closer "lil lonely" are slices of that expensive sprouted-wheat bread from the supermarket: Tempurpedic-soft, texturally-engaging, and maybe a little sweet/beery from sitting on the kitchen counter for too long. The former is the record's lowest-fi affair, spreading gummy keyboard chords on a cracker-thin drum loop. ruru sets up a lyrical diorama of an overcast day: gloomy cottonball clouds hang from thread tendrils above suburban milk cartons. "I'm a pathetic eclectic," she sings, sounding vaguely similar to Crying's Elaiza Santos. "Tell me what you're up to today." The latter's a jazz-pop dream, rattling off wah-pedaled Rhodes piano melodies that could fit nicely into a Father beat while leaving space for ruru to imagine a "Teletubby October", doused in reverb. 

In between the slices, the quick cut "seventeen" stands out, sliding nimble maj7 chords into a jaunty rhythm like a Belle and Sebastian record played too fast. "sepanx" is also worth a listen, if not just for its fantastically spaced-out guitar noodling.

Smashing just about every sonic concept that's cool (or is about to be cool) into one digestible record, ruru's SLEEP is the sound of the moment but looks beyond it too. It's definitely a year-end list contender for me, and I doubt it's the last project I'll hear from her. Bump this record before ruru's impending cult following convinces you to do so. 

Review: Bayu and Moopie - "I Won't Have To Think About You"

Bayu and Moopie - I Won't Have To Think About You

(2017 A Colourful Storm)

How do you categorize a release like this? Curated by the two DJs--(Bayu and Moopie)-- who run Australia's A Colourful Storm record label, I Won't Have To Think About You is a bashful sidestep away from the imprint's other industrial-techno offerings, trading gurgly synths and four-on-the-floor kicks for jittery guitar chords and invariably guileless female lead vocals. Considering the side gigs for each of the LP's masterminds, it wouldn't be a stretch to call this disc a DJ set: though its 12-track setlist lacks seamless transitioning, there's rock-solid textural cohesion that glues the body of work together. As the loud, thwacking snares of The Ampersands' "Affected" spill into Pearly Gatecrashers' citric post-punk melodies, you'd swear the two bands were composed of the same members. 

I Won't Have To Think About You honestly might be more akin to a compilation than a seamless mix. Though the tunes Bayu and Moopie spin span three decades' worth of twee-pop tradition, they've all blown in on the same coastal breezes of Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. The record's a scrambled family tree, tracing the sugar-rushed dissonance of early 80s acts like Maestros and Dipsos to the Shapiros' heaving sighs and plunging chords, which blurred their brief mid-90s career with the condensation of Young Adult fiction's melodrama: warm breaths into a palm, cupping your chin; a scribbled note, folded into a square passed across the classroom; muffled music seeping through cheap gymnasium speakers; the damp smell of yellowed paper glossing a too-realistic cover illustration. 

There are incestuous branches that span the tree, too. Bart Cummings, founder of Library Records, is credited as a member of four bands on the album. The best of these is The Cat's Miaow, whose opening track "Not Like I Was Doing Anything" pairs frontwoman Kerrie Bolton's wavering vocals with equally anxious arrangements. In this canvas, there are strokes of The Magnetic Fields before Stephen Merritt took over their vocal duties. A closer look also reveals the wrist-wriggling urgency of Johnny Marr's guitaristry and splotches of Belle and Sebastian's heaping cuteness. The song's a solid primer for what's to come: quick, catchy, and casual. Think of the comp as an off-the-cuff conversation--"I don't mind," sings Bolton, sounding as wistfully detached as The Sundays' Harriet Wheeler. "It's not like I was doing anything."

Premiere: Power Animal - "Light Elating Everything"

Power Animal - "Light Elating Everything"

(2017 Human Kindness Overflowing)

Haunted house concept: this year, we can do without the corpse paint and corn syrup blood. I'll flick the lights on and serve the ghoulish tenants warm cider in shallow mugs around the old Tudor's fireplace. The shaggy beast that once lurked in the boiler room sits pretzel-legged and picks at the wall's flaking paper, grinding the wafers of yellowed floral print between his talons. He says his whole life he's felt like a fraud. Like no matter how hard he tries -- however well he hides -- he's never been able to believe that the screams he elicits from trespassing humans are genuine.

"They're only screaming out of pity," he says, taking a sip that leaves the hair on his upper lip wet with McIntosh tartness. "I only got this job because my pop's been in the haunting business for years; he knew a guy who knew the guy that runs the house. But I've never, like, really been scary. This job belongs to someone else, I'm sure of that. But I don't have the courage to quit."

---

Song concept: Power Animal's house is mostly haunted by the lightbulb flash of self-actualization, though it isn't out of the ordinary for a bedsheet ghost to wander though its halls. Supplementing his transparent synthesizers with phantom howls, the Philadelphia-based solo act chops and re-arranges these spooky soundscapes into a ecstatic push forward.

Though Hampson's hip-hop production does dabble in the lo-fi textures and whispery deliveries that populate Bandcamp's vast emo scene, his newest single, "Light Elating Everything" feels more indebted to Empire! Empire! I Was A Lonely Estate than any other project that's operated within the sub-genre: it's an exorcism of self-destructive thoughts, looking back on sad times through wiser lenses.

"The light's gone out in some corners,"  he speaks more than sings, "but the light has been shown some places, too."

The crackling samples; the fluttering hi-hats; the trills of screechy synth-pop melody -- they all add up to leaves on the sidewalk and candy wrappers in your shorts pocket. Bonfires in the backyard.

"I regret every disappointed breath up to 2005...you have always been the light elating everything."

---

Briefing: Good Wind Pt. 1, Power Animal's first record since 2012's Exorcism, comes out on Nov. 10th via Human Kindness Overflowing, a label that donates 50% of its profits to charity. This particular release's proceeds will go to Emergent Fund, an organization formed in response to the 2016 election that supports grassroots movements formed within marginalized groups.

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