Press (or click, as it were) play on Tunic‘s debut album, Complexion, and the assault is immediate. The Winnipeg three-piece of guitarist/vocalist David Schellenberg, bassist Rory Ellis and drummer Sam Neal (since replaced by Dan Unger) open the 11-track Self Sabotage Records offering with “Nothing Nothing,” and the will to pummel is right there, right up front, and no less visceral than the shouts that top the tense and angular riffs. Shades of post-hardcore and noise rock come together in the spirit of cooperative aggression, and the clenched-fist, gritted-teeth riotousness only abates after the initial salvo of “Nothing Nothing,” “Envious,” “Getting Sick” and “Evan” leads to “Sand,” which even though it’s 56 seconds of feedback, still feels like a respite by the time it arrives. Punch punch punch, kick kick kick, ouch ouch ouch.

“Dry Heave,” for which the band has a new video premiering below, is the centerpiece of this quick-moving monument to disaffection, and at 3:06, it’s also the longest song on Complexion. They use that “extra” time relative to most of the other tracks in order to open up the proceedings of the verse a bit and let the drums hold the tension along with the bass as the guitar comes and goes. II don’t know if the vocals there have extra bite or not, but the fact that they’re not coinciding with a rush of guitar certainly makes it seem that way, and the finish — especially with the striking image of the three of them ducking under water — feels particularly troubled, whether or not it may have been meant to convey the sensation of dry heaving. Side B picks up with “Blessed,” which kicks the guitar into emergency-mode quickly, and resumes the cacophonous spirit into the sharp corners of “Empty Hands” (second longest at 3:02), which slows down somewhat but builds to a violent wash of crash at its finish. After the interlude “Paper,” the closing duo of “Pores” — which, of course, includes some guest sax — and “Frontal Lobe” round out with a reaffirmation of the prior intensity and the skillful control with which it’s been wielded all along.

While Neal double-times the hi-hat, Schellenberg spaces out the guitar a bit at the end, but of course by then Complexion‘s foremost impression is set in the scathe elicited earlier. There’s method behind it, though, and wherever it might reside in terms of genre, the passionate underpinning in the record makes Tunic‘s intention toward catharsis plain to hear. You might get out of breath, and it might be because you’re trying to keep up, but even if they run circles around you, understand that there’s a reason they’re doing so.

European tour dates have been announced and can be see in the poster under video player below, as well as a couple Midwestern US shows listed. Album is out Feb. 8, and you can read more about it in the PR wire info that follows.

Enjoy “Dry Heave”:

Tunic, “Dry Heave” official video premiere

Tunic is born of spite. After years of touring someone else’s bass lines across the globe, David Schellenberg was told he wasn’t good enough. So he did the only logical thing: buy a guitar, quit your long-time band, and abandon everything you think you know about music. Armed with no skill and a blissfully ignorant embrace of discordant noise, Schellenberg started crafting songs, quickly enlisting childhood acquaintance Sam Neal on drums and roommate Rory Ellis on bass.

Over the past 4 years and half a dozen d.i.y. releases, tunic has managed to unleash and tame their unique blend of noise rock and hardcore. Relentless touring has taken them across Canada, Europe and the States, filling clubs, basements, and abandoned prisons with noise. The band released the single “Teeth Showing” on Toronto’s Buzz Records in 2018, which they toured with new drummer Dan Unger.

Tunic’s debut album “Complexion” was recorded in six days in their hometown of Winnipeg, Manitoba with Montreal-based engineer and producer Jace Lasek (Suuns, Land of Talk, Wolf Parade). Complexion picks up where previous releases left off; 11 songs of feedback-laden filth laid over churning blows of drum and bass. Harsh verses about hurting those you never meant to hurt; choruses that sever ties where you never thought you had to. This is unconventional hardcore. This is broken indie rock. This is naïve art.

Tunic live:
Feb 1, 2019 – The Handsome Daughter, Winnipeg, MB, CAN
Feb 11, 2019 – Magasin 4, Brussels BE
Feb 13, 2019 – Le Cirque Electrique, Paris FR
Feb 14, 2019 – Raymond Bar, Clermont Ferrand, FR
Feb 15, 2019 – Le Farmer, Lyon, FR
Feb 16, 2019 – Joe Koala, Bergamo, ITA
Feb 18, 2019 – Freakout, Bologna, ITA
Feb 19, 2019 – Osteria Al Castello, Chiuppano, ITA
Feb 20, 2019 – Magazzino Paralello, Cesena, ITA
Feb 21, 2019 – Eterotopia, San Giuliano Milanese, ITA
Feb 22, 2019 – G.O.B., Viareggio, ITA
Feb 24, 2019 – 100-as Klub, Budapest, HU
Feb 25, 2019 – Dvorana Gustaf, Maribor, SLO
Feb 26, 2019 – Fluc, Vienna, AU
Feb 27, 2019 – Eternia, Prague, CZ
Feb 28, 2019 – Bajkazyl Brno, Brno, CZ
Mar 01, 2019 – Ann and Pet, Linz, AU
Mar 02, 2019 – Alte Hyovereinsbank, Oettingen, DE
Mar 03, 2019 – Secret show, Sulzbach-Rosenberg, DE
Mar 04, 2019 – Dynamo, Zurich, CH
Mar 07, 2019 – Capri Bar, Breman, DE
Mar 09, 2019 – Le Petit Bitu, Namur, BE
Mar 13, 2019 – SXSW, Austin, TX
Mar 14, 2019 – SXSW, Austin, TX
Mar 15, 2019 – SXSW, Austin, TX
Mar 16, 2019 – SXSW, Austin, TX
April 16, 2019 – 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN*
April 17, 2019 – Vaudeville Mews, Des Moines, IA*
April 18, 2019 – Gabe’s, Iowa City, IA*
April 19, 2019 – Art-in, Madison, WI*
April 20, 2019 – X-Ray Arcade, Milwaukee, WI*
* w/ Blessed

tunic on this record is:
Rory Ellis
Sam Neal
David Schellenberg

Tunic on Thee Facebooks

Tunic on Instagram

Tunic website

Self Sabotage Records on Bandcamp

Self Sabotage Records website

Manitoba instrumental bass/drum duo Sphagnum take their name from a slow-growing underwater moss, so despite their pornogrind logo, one doesn’t necessarily come into their debut Lodge 318 tape expecting blastbeats. The four-track self-release toes the line between an EP and a demo by being the first outing from the band — bassist Doreen Girard and drummer Cameron Johnson — and keeping to an under-25-minute runtime, but the fact they believe in their material enough to do a professional physical pressing at all (imagine such a thing!) makes me inclined to lean more toward EP, and ultimately it matters little either way. Girard and Johnson keep a minimal, vibe through parts alternately sparse or overwhelmed by distortion, depending which pedal is kicked on, and Lodge 318 has a live, in-the-room feel while still coming across clearer than a simple rehearsal recording.

There are a lot of bands out there calling themselves “doom jazz,” and to their credit, Sphagnum don’t take it that far — they call it the more charming “dad rock,” among other things — but their open, feel-it-out-along-the-way approach winds up with a jazzy feel anyway during parts of “Winter Clover” as the time signatures seem to go out the window in favor of lurching spasms of low end and crash. Johnson brings some order via a steady kick later in the track, but both he and Girard seem to revel in the freakout side of things. The shorter “How Can the Wind with its Arms,” which opens side one, gets on a bit more of a steady roll, though with just the bass and drums for the duration, a strange or absurdist sensibility remains in the near distance, the two players managing well a rare feat in being a heavy bass/drum two-piece in this day and age without immediately sounding like Om.

Part of that has to be tone. You can hear a bit of Cisneros on side two’s “Summerfallow” if you force your ears to do it, but Girard‘s tone seems less bent toward peaceful aims, and if Sphagnum are looking for enlightenment, they’ve got a funny way of showing it. Johnson winds his way along the toms and “Summerfallow” kicks into full-tone assault before dipping back down to the open atmospheres and slow crawl from whence it came, and a silence precedes the foreboding cymbal hits and rumble of 7:49 “Remain in Light.” If there’s anywhere on Lodge 318 where one can imagine vocals topping the proceedings, it’s on the relatively straightforward first couple minutes of the closer, though by the time they’re halfway through, Johnson and Girard are bounding along angular tom runs and bass punctuation which in turn lands them in a quiet couple seconds before the final distorted explosion — a tone dripping in mud met by steady cymbal work to create a tension that’s nigh on excruciating.

And that’s how they leave it. Even Lodge 318‘s payoff retains its course feel, and rather than bring the song to quiet, as on the preceding “Summerfallow,” they end “Remain in Light” cold on the march. Flipping the tape back over, it’s easy to get the feeling that, in the longer run, Sphagnum will branch their sound out more, experiment with different instrumentation, arrangements, and that various elements and influences will show up alongside what they present here. In that sense, Lodge 318 comes across like the beginning point of a progression about to be undertaken and all the more warrants the physical presence. If these songs are any indication, Girard and Johnson have the potential to get plenty weird, and that suits me just fine.

Sphagnum, Lodge 318 (2014)

Sphagnum on Thee Facebooks

Sphagnum on Bandcamp

Why tapes? They’re cheap, for one. And they’re analog. And they’re awkward. The flat platter of an LP has grace to it, and a CD too, on a smaller scale. A tape is clunky and weird and boxy and as ill-fitting as your 15-year-old self and did I mention cheap? The first albums I ever bought were on tape, and in a way, I feel as in-between generations as a tape must, having been sandwiched in format succession by records and compact discs.

Plus, with some (as with records), you don’t even know where one song is supposed to end and another to begin. So yeah, tapes. And if you’ve ever read anything Chris “Woody” MacDermott has written for this site, or had any interaction with him of any kind, the name “Duuude, Tapes!” for this new feature should make perfect sense.

We start with a couple sent over by Prairie Fire Tapes, an imprint based in Winnipeg that specializes in obscure-type limited whathaveyou from a variety of styles. The sister label to Dub Ditch Picnic, they recently shot over two tapes for me to check out. Oak‘s Silent Spring, which is released on the label, and the 2012 self-titled debut from local sludge devils, Scab Smoker.

Scab Smoker, Scab Smoker

It’s a rough, blown-out, cave-echoing morass of noisy sludge. At times, Scab Smoker‘s Scab Smoker rages with punk animosity — a glued-on and peeling label on the plain cassette itself only enhances that atmosphere — and then the Winnipeg-local three-piece slam on the breaks and effect a huge, fucked-up lurch. The six-song outing — it moves quickly and I’d call it an EP — was self-produced and self-released, and here and there are moments of discernible bass, drums and guitar, particularly in their more Sabbathian moments, and maybe even some burgeoning melodies, but for the most part it’s a rough, demo-sounding barrage of noise, buzzsaw guitar, heavy-reverb vocals and compressed-cymbal lumber. I dig it, but it’s not an easy listen. Still, the sense of worship runs strong throughout and the tones are flat-out mean. “Death by Natural Causes” and “Call of the First Aethyr” make for a sound closing duo, and I’d wager their attack is no less deranged-sounding in a moldy basement than it is coming through the speakers of my tape player. They’re all but absent on the interwebs — no word on whether that’s ideology or they just haven’t gotten around to it — but there’s an old Scab Smoker MySpace page with a demo of “Black Queen” you can check out.

Oak, Silent Spring

An official Prarie Fire release with a pro-printed liner and the label logo screened onto the orange translucent tape itself, Oak‘s Silent Spring harkens to ethereal Sleep worship in its rhythms and vocals and finds the Swedish four-piece with a well-conceived execution of post-stoner ideologies. The riffs that begin opener “The Obligation to Endure” are thick and seem set to climb a holy mountain, but Oak are also relatively quick to play off those ideas by shifting into meandering post-rock jams, making Silent Spring atmospheric in its less brash moments and enhancing the overall listen. The sound is clear and not blown-out, but still rough enough to give the six-track full-length a natural vibe to go with its strong track-to-track flow, and while its groove isn’t built solely on massiveness of tone, Silent Spring satisfies on that level as well, thick reverberations sustaining from hard-hit guitars even as post-metallic flourishes of effects play out alongside. “Tribal”-type percussion feels overly familiar, and they take their time getting where they’re headed, but Oak do a lot to distinguish themselves throughout these tracks, and their efforts aren’t wasted. Hit them up on Thee Facebooks or the Prairie Fire Tapes website for more info, or listen to the 13-minute “The Obligation to Endure” at the Oak Bandcamp.

This is the second interview I’ve done with Ryan Settee, who is the sole driving force behind everything High Watt Electrocutions writes and records. Last time, the occasion was the self-released sophomore full-length, Desert Opuses, which wholeheartedly took on the sandy aesthetic with which lovers of heavy atmospherics should be well familiar by now. As the Winnipeg native was no less brave in tackling instrumental studio experimentalism and hypnotic droning on his third album, The Bermuda Triangle, a follow-up conversation seemed the least I could do.

Though I think there are ideas on The Bermuda Triangle that could have been fleshed out further, there’s something about the solitary nature of the album I really like. High Watt Electrocutions is just Settee. There’s no filter of other opinions and nothing for him to fall back on. The entire mission of the band rests on his creative will, and on The Bermuda Triangle, just as on the moody debut, Night Songs, he proves that will can lead him anywhere at any time.

The album is comprised of smaller instrumental pieces — blips, some of them — that bleed and fade together and gradually emerge as an engulfing and hypnotic whole. It’s not an album you can skip through (literally or figuratively), but Settee‘s indulgences are the gain of those who would be as adventurous in their listening as he would in his writing. High Watt Electrocutions challenges drone and conventional definitions of “heavy” while also developing an identity all its own as a project. It winds up being as admirable in its mission as in its execution.

We covered generalities last time, so for this discussion, I wanted to get deeper into Settee‘s process as regards The Bermuda Triangle and see what in particular inspired him musically and conceptually for the album. He was forthcoming to say the least. If you consider yourself passionate about music on either end, just take a look at how much what Settee does obviously means to him. It bleeds into his every answer.

Full Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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By all accounts, Winnipeg native Ryan Settee, aka High Watt Electrocutions, is a man who writes albums based on a concept. High Watt Electrocutions’ first record, Night Songs (2007) was a collection of precisely that, and the follow-up, Desert Opuses (2009), also delivered on its titular premise. Now with a third full-length (released as the first two were on Settee’s own Introspection Records imprint), The Bermuda Triangle, Settee leaves behind both the desert and the night and works within a different sonic context entirely. If there’s a mission, a concept or a theme to The Bermuda Triangle, it’s daytime, sunshine, wandering, and maybe even getting lost on the way.

The album is available in a limited CD pressing of 500 with hand-painted covers. The songs — or parts, anyway — are presented as one long track topping out at just under 39 minutes. I listened through the album several times, ripped it to see the wav form, and came up with a list of 14 different parts. Settee, as I’d later see on the High Watt Electrocutions website, notes 16, and if you look at the file names for the audio samples there-listed, you can see he gives the parts titles such as “Optimism,” “Inevitability,” and “Washed Out to Sea.” The progression of titles and their occasional interrelation makes it seem likely Settee is forming some narrative that plays out musically on The Bermuda Triangle, but as the track is instrumental save for a small section of non-verbal vocalizing and there’s nothing about it anywhere either on the packaging or the website, that’s merely an assumption on my part. If you want to put a story to it, certainly the music Settee provides on acoustic and electric guitar, synths and swirls is plenty open to interpretation.

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As the follow-up EP to their Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep debut Relapse full-length, Culted’s four-track excursion Of Death and Ritual is nothing if not aptly named. In the three originals – the closer is a cover of Swans’ “Whore” – the word “dead” or some variation thereof makes no fewer than 11 appearances. Interestingly, “ritual” only shows up once. I wonder if that’s why they ordered them thusly in the title. Otherwise, Of Ritual and Death would have worked just as well.

Much like they did on the full-length, on Of Death and Ritual Culted dwell in the bleak, dreary realms of blackened doom, like Khanate with a noise fetish. With the instrumental portion of the band located in Winnipeg, Canada, and vocalist Daniel Jansson in Gothenburg, Sweden, you might think there’d be some discrepancy or lack of cohesion in the execution of the material, but really it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. I don’t think “Spirituosa,” “Black Cough, Black Coffin” and “Dissent” would be any better off had Jansson been in the room while guitarists/bassists Michael Klassen and Matthew Friesen and percussionist Kevin Stevenson were developing the instrumental basis for the songs and adding sundry noises and percussions. The trio, who also operate as the black metal band Of Human Bondage, seem to have a pretty good handle on what they’re doing, and I doubt the files had to do much back and forth before the songs were finished.

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Written last night under the guidance of wine and early-morning swelter.

It’s August in the valley, and aside from the haze that blocks out the blueness of the daytime sky, the unbearable heat and the moths seeking refuge in my office/den, I can tell because the wood of my bedroom door has swollen to the point that I need to throw my shoulder into it to force it open. The air conditioner is a constant electric hum — I can’t sleep without it by now. I sweat for no reason. This is my least favorite time of the year, and thus far, where July was over before I could realize how miserable it was, August seems to be lagging like stale desert air. Living in it is a confrontation I keep losing, and there’s only so far one can retreat.

My usual methods for maintaining livable temperatures — chewing ice, going pantsless, fans, spray cans of water, immobility, etc. — have all abandoned me. I idle my car against the advice of the back of the inspection sticker that says, “Breathe easy, no idling.” I survive on iced tea and contempt. It’s summer. And even though I know better logically and would rather spend my time in nihilistic freon ecstasy, occasionally I need to leave the house.

Such was the instance the other night; a drive out and a drive back a few hours later by myself. I made the trip with the handy typewriter case in which I keep CDs I may need on the go and, on the return journey, the inspiration struck to break out the copy of High Watt Electrocutions‘ Night Songs that band founder/lone member Ryan Settee was kind enough to send me following our interview. I was speeding along Rt. 80 leaning forward toward the windshield to see in a sudden downpour, and it was just the right combination of circumstances to make for what I supposed to be the ideal listen to the record, which I hadn’t yet heard.

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By way of a confession, I?ll admit that before I listened to Culted?s Relapse Records debut, Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep, I first checked out the self-titled three-song EP from Howl in a kind of, ?Who?s that doom band on Relapse again?? brain fart. After hearing the two side by side, there?s pretty much no question. Howl complement their Ginsbergian name with Lamb of God-style riffing and Culted viciously bite off pieces of Khanate atmospherics while popping pills of half-speed Nachtmystium psychedelia. No real question which is the doom band.

But if there was one to start with, it?s only because Culted — a four-piece with three members in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and only vocalist Daniel Jansson in the correspondingly northern climes of Sweden — are so frickin? new. Below the Thunders of the Upper Deep is Culted?s debut, as in, no EPs, nothing. Just one self-released demo and this. Information apart from a narrative of mutual appreciation leading to collaboration on the part of Jansson and multi-instrumentalist Michael Klassen (credited with guitar, bass, percussion and noise) is sparse as to when they actually got together and made the record happen, and for the most part, the six mostly extended tracks are left to speak for themselves.

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