Posted in Whathaveyou on May 20th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Six full-lengths deep, Borracho are pretty secure in their awareness of who they are as a band. They’ve known all along — the slogan “heavy repetitive grooves” endures — but it’s refreshing to hear them continue to put together songs in a spirit of camaraderie and expression, whether it’s wondering where they world went wrong or embracing classic tropes like in “Succubus.” They are a riff rocker’s riff rock, and the first word of their bio tells you much of what you need to and probably already know about them: they’ve consistent. A Borracho record — any record, not just the upcoming Ouroboros in question — is going to be made to a standard of sound and songwriting that, as a listener, you’re right to expect from the band. And I’ve heard the record so I’ll tell you right now, they deliver again on exactly what you came for. To do less would not be Borracho.
I’ll hope to have more to come before August — I have a pretty decent history of writing about this band at this point, have done bios, etc., will probably ask to premiere a track if that’s a thing they’re doing — but you can dig into the initial info below, which I admit is pretty preliminary:
Consistency. Quality. Consistent quality. What more can you ask of a Stoner/Doom band these days? In a time when more than one thousand stoner/doom albums are released in a year, it’s hard to stand out, let alone do it with every single release. But that’s just what veteran Washington DC riff-masters BORRACHO have done over more than 15 years of bringing the heavy.
BORRACHO is a heavy rock trio hailing from Washington, D.C. Over more than a decade of consistently strong releases and live appearances they have become a staple of the stoner/doom scene and earned a large international following. With five critically acclaimed LPs, a compilation of non-album releases, and numerous single and split releases, the band has sold thousands of records all over the word, and shared stages with some of the genre’s most popular and influential acts. Their sixth LP Ouroboros will be released on Ripple Music in August 2025.
Tracklisting: 1. Vegas, Baby 2. Succubus 3. Lord of Suffering 4. Vale of Tears 5. Machine is the Master (Human is the Slave) 6. Freakshow 7. Broken Man
BORRACHO: Steve Fisher – Guitar, Vocals Mario Trubiano – Drums, Percussion Tim Martin – Bass, Backing Vocals
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 19th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Don’t let me come in here trying to be all like ‘Oh yeah this is definitely a band I knew existed three months ago,’ because yeah, no. However, I was lucky enough to rend my pitiful physical form such that it was in front of the Koepelhal stage while Pygmy Lush were playing at Roadburn last month (review here), and that was an encouraging enough first impression that here we are. The Virginian grunge-infused Americana/dark-folk troupe will release the recorded-in-2016 Totem album on July 11 through Persistent Vision Records. If preorders are your thing, they exist.
I’m not sure if they played “February Song,” which is the first streaming track from Totem — pick your player below — but the song rules either way in that addled-at-night-someplace-open kind of way. There are at least four different bands I wish had evolved to this kind of sound, among them Nirvana.
From the PR wire:
Persistent Vision Records announces the July 11th release of Pygmy Lush’s TOTEM.
Recorded and mixed by Converge’s Kurt Ballou in 2016, the album has remained unreleased for nearly a decade. Active again now after a long hiatus, the revitalized band has made the decision to unearth this lost masterpiece.
Pygmy Lush was founded in Northern Virginia in the mid-2000s by brothers Chris Taylor and Mike Taylor as an experimental offshoot of their band Pageninetynine. Beginning with the debut album, Bitter River, released on Robotic Empire in 2007, Pygmy Lush’s output ranged from Pageninetynine-caliber screamo, to fragile Americana; from the basement show to the campfire and back again, the songs all hit with equal conviction.
Following the release of 2011’s Old Friends album on Lovitt Records, Pygmy Lush faded from view, reemerging in 2024 to many fans’ surprise and delight. Reentering the limelight by way of an NPR Tiny Desk Concert in August 2024, the newly reignited band was a standout of the inaugural Dark Days Bright Nights festival in September of that year, and went on to wow the crowd at this year’s Roadburn.
With an appearance at Toronto’s Prepare the Ground festival booked for May, and shows in the works with the likes of Young Widows, Pygmy Lush now prepares to reveal the long-buried TOTEM. Mike Taylor explains why this nine-year-old masterpiece has not yet seen the light of day: “Frankly, we lost momentum shortly after recording the album. It was a very transitional time for Pygmy Lush where we were trying hard to figure out what this group wanted to do.”
He describes the upcoming 2025 release of TOTEM as a necessary step in Pygmy Lush’s progression toward its next phase: “I personally have wanted to release TOTEM as a document of this era of the band, in order to continue moving forward.”
While TOTEM’s belated release might give the Taylors a sense of closure on the past, it is more than a snapshot of bygone days. It is a monumental work of art that feels absolutely fresh and vital in 2025. A feast for the ears and the heart, TOTEM is an engrossing display of musical freedom, backed by authentic emotion. There are songs that rage, songs that rock, and songs that cruise hypnotically. From bruising noise rock, teetering on the edge of hardcore, to meditative refrains that roll along like trains through moonlit valleys, it moves in its own ways, unhindered by genre.
“The album became a bridge between the two completely different sounds of the band, the quiet and the loud,” states Mike Taylor. “It was very collaborative. We were all trying out as much stuff as we could. It’s a very eclectic album.” He offers up Born Against, PJ Harvey, and Brian Eno as three reference points. First single “February Song” is a heavy, haunting lullaby that ravages, serenely, evoking the quieter moments of Sonic Youth and Pavement alike.
The common denominator beneath TOTEM’s songs is the urgency, the realness, fueling every note and lyric. Chris Taylor states: “The lyrics desperately look for answers that aren’t there, and deliberately mock themselves. We sing and we write and we play, as the world becomes more and more obviously horrific. We admire, or argue over, the patterns of our battle flags while the fort is burning.”
Furthermore, TOTEM’s rich, warm production unites the disparities into one whole. With longtime collaborator Kurt Ballou overseeing the recording and mixing at his hallowed GodCity Studio, mastering was handled by the great Carl Saff (Bambara, Bonnie Prince Billy).
The cover art, created by Paul Nitsche, consists of hand sculpted organic elements and mixed media collage, photographed using traditional tintype photography and darkroom methods. Nitsche is known widely for his artwork for Dazzling Killmen’s Face of Collapse album.
With TOTEM set to be released to the world on July 11th, the path is cleared for whatever Pygmy Lush chooses to do next. “Yes, we will be writing new music ASAP,” declares Mike Taylor.
Tracklist: 1) House of Blood (Butch’s Monster) 2) It Wasn’t a Compliment (Martial Law Blues) 3) A Little Boy and His Bulldozer 4) Algorithmic Mercy (Prayers Printed Directly into a Shredder) 5) A Famous Jock (The Rest of Us) 6) February Song 7) Band-Aid on a Bullet Wound 8) The Puppeteer 9) Post-Punk in the Wrong Hands 10) Artistic Blood / Blanket Out the Sun (in a world of better things) 11) Nonsensical Whimper
Upcoming shows: May 30 – Toronto, ON @ Prepare the Ground (w/ Baroness, Yob) June 8 – Richmond, VA @ The Warehouse (w/ Young Widows)
TOTEM recording lineup: Chris Taylor – vocals, bass Mike Taylor – guitar Mike Widman – guitar Erin McCarley – bass, vocals Andy Gale – drums
2025 lineup: Chris Taylor – guitar, vocals Mike Taylor – guitar Mike Widman – guitar, bass Johnny Ward – guitar, vocals Andy Gale – drums
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 19th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Toronto’s Lammping are setting forth on a four-album cycle of releases to come in the next, I don’t know, year and a half?, with Never Never, a collaboration with Montreal rockabilly solo artist Bloodshot Bill. It’s not Lammping‘s first outside-genre collaboration and it’s not the last of the cycle. They’ve got a hip-hop record coming too, plus a regular ol’ Lammping record presumably to assuage the listener contingent less down with all that dub, though really, if that’s the case, you probably didn’t get on board with Lammping in the first place.
Dub comes in here too, duh, as well as classic hip-hop, psych guitar and nuanced hypercool, an urbane sound but not placeable to anything other than sound collage or Lammping‘s own expanding vibe. They know (and I know) this isn’t going to be for everyone, but it’s 15 solid minutes of potentially stepping partway out of your comfort zone as a listener, and it’s cool besides. I feel like maybe you can handle it. If you need me to be your dad and tell you it’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.
From the PR wire:
LAMMPING Announces Never Never – First of a Four-Album Sonic Voyage
Toronto’s shape-shifting psych project LAMMPING will release Never Never – the first in a four-part album series – on June 27 via We Are Busy Bodies. Lammping started as a heavy psych band, but things shifted when producer Mikhail Galkin returned to the kind of hip-hop production he was doing in his teens. Remixing records for Badge Époque Ensemble and Uh Huh under the Lammping name cracked the project wide open-what began as a one-off stylistic swerve became a long-term permission to make anything, in any genre. Now, whether it’s boom-bap, fuzzed-out folk, beat tape interludes, or full psych freakouts, it all fits. This upcoming cycle is their most ambitious yet: four LPs released over 12-18 months, each one exploring a different corner of their increasingly unpredictable universe.
The series kicks off with Never Never, a collaborative LP with rockabilly wildman Bloodshot Bill. The record blends psych-rock textures with ‘90s-style boom-bap, turning lo-fi samples and breakbeat drumming into cinematic, genre-dissolving cuts. “Never Never” (the lead single) and the follow-up “Won’t Back Down” showcase Lammping’s ability to reshape a voice like Bill’s into something strange and mesmerizing. Think LL Cool J meets Spacemen 3 – if they were trapped in a twilight zone rerun.
“I always loved Bill’s voice—it’s harsh, elastic, and super expressive,” says Lammping’s Mikhail Galkin. “We just hit the studio one day and one song turned into three. From there, the album built itself around those sessions.”
The second album, currently in production, brings together longtime Toronto collaborators Drew Smith (Dr. Ew, The Bicycles) and Chris Cummings (Marker Starling). The result is something Galkin describes as “CSNY harmonies over early-’90s hip-hop drums, fuzzed-out guitars, and synth textures.” What began as a pretty, melodic record soon took a heavier turn: “It’s like a heavy-psyched out yacht rock album – if the yacht was slowly sinking.”
The third LP will be a return to the full Lammping band-a stylistic microcosm that threads together acoustic folk, beat interludes, blown-out psych riffs, and off-kilter bops. Tracks range from soul-sampled boom-bap in the style of Madlib to poppier moments reminiscent of Real Estate or QOTSA. “I’ve always loved albums like Paul’s Boutique or Prince Paul’s De La stuff-where you throw everything at the wall but it still somehow works.”
The fourth and final album will land as a full hip-hop collaboration with rapper Theo 3, a Toronto underground legend and longtime collaborator of Galkin’s from his DJ Alibi days. It features Lammping flipping their own recordings, alongside obscure Soviet records from Galkin’s production roots. The goal? A surrealist homage to golden era Toronto hip-hop—filtered through Lammping’s psychedelic lens.
Together, the series represents a full-circle moment for Lammping, who began as a heavy psych band before veering boldly into sample-based production and remix culture. Their 2022 and 2023 remix projects (for Badge Époque Ensemble and Uh Huh) confused early fans but in hindsight, those left turns became permission to go anywhere.
“Once people got hip, they stopped being surprised—we could do anything and it still felt like us,” Galkin says. “Now people expect the left turns.”
This project is funded in part by FACTOR, the Government of Canada and Canada’s private radio broadcasters.
Lammping is a Toronto-based psych project led by composer/producer Mikhail Galkin and drummer Jay Anderson. Galkin has a diverse background, having produced for hip-hop legends like J-Live, Boldy James, and People Under The Stairs, as well as releasing a critically acclaimed solo album as DJ Alibi and working as a film/tv composer. Anderson is a seasoned figure in the Toronto indie scene, playing in bands such as Badge Epoque Ensemble, Biblical, ROY and many others.
The two first connected after seeing each other perform in different projects and bonding over their shared love for ’90s New York hip-hop, skate videos, DIY culture, Beach Boy harmonies and everything in between. The project was born from their desire to create music without limitations – driven by a spirit of exploration, embracing all kinds of genres, sounds, and influences under the Lammping umbrella. The result is a uniquely eclectic project where anything goes, as long as it feels true to their creative instincts. The live version of the band is a 5-piece, with Toronto musicians Colm Hinds, Scott Hannigan and Matt Aldred lending their talents on vocals, guitar and bass.
Ohio classic heavy rockers Electric Citizen release their new album, EC4, June 27 through Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s very subtly been seven years since the Cincinnati now-five-piece put out 2018’s Sateen (review here), their third and final offering for RidingEasy Records, and although I’m not sure why, EC4 feels like something of a comeback.
It’s in the energy as “Mire” crashes into its chorus, maybe, or the insistent jab of the riff to “Static Vision” and the organ-laced proto-metal charge of “Smokey” topped with Laura Dolan‘s signature croon, and the way “Traveler’s Moon” taps into a psychedelia of mood before the layer-topped payoff of its build. It’s in the confident, not overly showy way the band go about their business. Being a good band and not sounding like jerks about it — whether through overplaying or competing with each other, neither of which Electric Citizen have ever really done — are not new for them, but there’s a corresponding stylistic realignment on EC4 that puts the band back in touch with its garage-heavy roots, and that does feel different.
Granted it was a while ago now, but Sateen pulled away from the push of a song like “Static Vision” or the later “Lizard Brain,” and it’s not so much that EC4 ignores that in favor of sounding like the band’s earlier work, but that they’ve found ways to incorporate that growth in craft into their thankfully-unpretentious songwriting. But EC4 isn’t just shoving ’70s-via-’10s boogie either. The longest song at 6:22, “Traveler’s Moon” sets up the shift into the acoustic-led centerpiece “Tuning Tree,” departing the rockers-up-front initial impression of the record for the more psychedelic-flavored “Moss,” and reorient with the hooky-riffy ground-touch of “Lizard Brain” before “Other Planets” drifts into solo-topped doom rock majesty and “Flower of Salt” finishes with a blend of acoustic and organ that reminds of Lamp of the Universe. So yes, there’s more than one thing going on.
A varied sound isn’t new for Electric Citizen either, but it’s a question of refinement here. EC4 collects different moods and offers a sense of range, but whether it’s “Smokey” or “Traveler’s Moon” or “Other Planets,” the band aren’t just evoking divergence for its own sake, but adding with each piece to the scope of the whole album. Accordingly, in nine songs and 39 minutes, Electric Citizen hone a deceptively sharp approach, keyed in on what they want their sound to be and unwilling not to explore around those ideas in order to find new places to go. It is perhaps the most Electric Citizen that Electric Citizen have ever sounded.
“Smokey” premieres on the player below, followed by more from the PR wire including just-announced East Coast tour dates (including at Autodidact in my hometown!). Please enjoy:
Electric Citizen, “Smokey”
SAYS THE BAND: “As we slip through time’s grip and chase the meaning in chaos we give this offering from the haze. Light it up, Smokey.”
SMOKEY is the second single taken from ELECTRIC CITIZEN upcoming new album.
The release will see the light June 27th via Heavy Psych Sounds.
Seven years after their last release “Helltown”, Electric Citizen returns with their fourth album “EC4” — a powerful statement of renewal and raw energy. Written by Ross Dolan with contributions from the full band, the album was meticulously crafted over several years and recorded with Mike Montgomery and John Hoffman at Candyland Studio in Dayton, KY. It was mixed by Collin Dupuis (Lana Del Rey, The Black Keys) in Detroit and mastered by JJ Golden (Ty Segall, Calexico) at Golden Mastering in California. The album art was created by Neil Krug (Lana Del Rey, Tame Impala, Weyes Blood), who the band worked with for their first album “Sateen”.
Tracklisting: 1. Mire 2. Static Vision 3. Smokey 4. Traveler’s Moon 5. Tuning Tree 6. Moss 7. Lizard Brain 8. Other Planets 9. Flower Of Salt
ELECTRIC CITIZEN live: July 10 Detroit, MI @ Sanctuary July 11 Columbus, OH @ Ace of Cups July 12 Cincinnati, OH @ Northside Tavern July 13 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop July 15 Philadelphia, PA @ Milkboy July 16 Hamden, CT @ Space Ballroom July 17 Morris Plains, NJ @ Autodidact July 18 Brooklyn, NY @ TV Eye July 19 Easthampton, MA @ Marigold Theater July 20 Baltimore, MD @ Metro July 21 Raleigh, NC @ Pour House July 22 Charleston, SC @ Lo-Fi Brewing July 23 Atlanta, GA @ 529 July 24 Knoxville, TN @ Open Chord July 25 Nashville, TN @ The ’58 July 26 Louisville, KY @ Portal
ELECTRIC CITIZEN is Ross Dolan – Guitar Laura Dolan – Vocals Nick Vogelpohl – Bass Nate Wagner – Drums Owen Lee – Keyboards
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 19th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Note the butt-load of fests included in the upcoming round of European touring for Austin, Texas, heavy rollers High Desert Queen. As their recent-enough-to-call-it-new new video for “Time Waster” demonstrates, that’s par for the course for when they get out, and if you’ve seen them before, you know the good times that ensue from there. Big riffs, communal vibes, the whole nine. You get that in the video plus a bit of behind-the-scenes whathaveyou, light shenanigans and make-your-own-fun waiting around. Tour, in other words. It was shot on tour.
I know we’re just about at a year out from Palm Reader (review here), their second LP and first for Magnetic Eye, but I can’t help but be curious what their third album might tell in terms of their sound. Seems like a band who’ve hit every big ‘moment’ they’ve had to face thus far in their tenure absolutely head-on. So what’s that ‘next step’ like for that band? That’s what I’m wondering, despite the fact that I have no idea when we’ll find out. I wouldn’t expect a third LP in 2025, but they do seem to enjoy a bit of momentum.
As seen on socials, posted by Magnetic Eye:
You can take the Europeans out of Texas, but you can’t keep the Texans out of Europe! (Not our best, but might be a viable joke in there) Our own HIGH DESERT QUEEN will head back across the pond this summer for a massive run of club dates and festival appearances as they continue to spread their addictive 2024 slab of heaviness ‘Palm Reader’ to receptive minds and ears far and wide 🎸👍🔥 Celebrating the occasion, they’ve released a new tour footage video for the album track “Time Waster” which is live now on our YouTube 👀 Go check out the video featuring the legends in Faso Jetson and get your tickets now for High Desert Queen’s upcoming European dates:
HIGH DESERT QUEEN Europe Summer Tour 2025 25 JUL 2025 Karlsruhe (DE) Das Fest 26 JUL 2025 Gent (BE) Gent City Festival 27-31 JUL 2025 TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON 01 AUG 2025 Beelen (DE) Krach am Bach Fest 02 AUG 2025 Porta Westfalica (DE) Festivalkult 03 AUG 2025 Amsterdam (NL) De VerbroederIJ 05 AUG 2025 Bremen (DE) Meisenfrei Blues Club 06 AUG 2025 Recklinghausen (DE) Backyard Club 07 AUG 2025 Hannover (DE) Perle 08 AUG 2025 Sudwalde (DE) MuTaChi Fest 09 AUG 2025 Wedehorn (DE) Eekboom Open Air 10 AUG 2025 Dresden Chemiefabrik 11 AUG 2025 Bamberg (DE) Live Club 13 AUG 2025 Cham (DE) L.A. Club 14 AUG 2025 Kusel (DE) Kinett 15 AUG 2025 Stemwede (DE) Stemweder Open Air 16 AUG 2025 TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON Poster by @72826_
HIGH DESERT QUEEN are: Ryan Garney – vocals Phil Hook – drums Morgan Miller – bass Rusty Miller – guitar
This is out today. It is Clamfight’s fourth full-length and very much a self-titled in the tradition of a band declaring themselves as a group. It’s self-released, and it comes seven years after their last record, III. I reviewed that album. I could probably review this one too, and talk about the tones in Sean McKee’s and Joel Harris’ guitars or the former’s e’er vigilant shred, the punch Louis Koble brings to “Dragonhead,” drummer/vocalist Andy Martin’s duet with Oldest Sea’s Samantha Marandola in “Brodgar,” or the fact that across seven songs and 43 minutes the band manage to turn riffy burl-rock into a platform for a mostly-not-toxic expression of masculine love — that is, their love for each other — with an emotional honesty that resonates even beyond the heartstring-pull of the eponymous “Clamfight”‘s guest vocal spot from Steve Murphy of Kings Destroy.
I’m also on that track, on “Clamfight,” screaming like a jerk, but even more than that — I was fortunate enough to meet engineer Steve Poponi, who recorded this and helmed everything else Clamfight has released to-date, before he passed away in 2023 — it’s the emotional honesty of the thing I want to highlight. Why on earth, in talking about an album that so much wears its heart on its sleeve, would I pretend that, say, I haven’t known Clamfight for two decades, or pretend that I don’t consider them friends, that I wasn’t honored to be included in not only what’s their best album (and I say that as somebody who helped release one of them) but in what’s so clearly intended as an all-in culmination of their time together, made in the precious knowledge that all is fleeting. It’s been seven real years since their last record and the spirit of Clamfight, the urgency from the sprawl of 11-minute opener “The Oar” onward, comes in part from that. Love, loss, growth, life, death — Clamfight are celebrating as much as they’re mourning here, but the point is they’re doing it all together and realizing how lucky they are to have the chance to do that as part of their lives for so long. They’re right, and it’s a beautiful, if very adult, realization to witness.
It comes with a corresponding sincerity of form. Don’t tell this to “Drinking Tooth” on here, but Clamfight are not a stoner band and they never were, however large their tones may grow or how weighted their grooves can get or how informed they may be by things like fishing and obscure historical lore. Okay, maybe a little. But they’ve never been about chasing fuzz, or about playing to ideas of genre, and part of the honesty throughout Clamfight is in just how much they push against that. It’s ’90s thrash and hardcore gang shouts. It’s the acoustics and string sounds on “FRH.” The unrepentantly epic ground-scorch before “Redtail” is even halfway over (also after), setting up a punch-drunk roll as the band ride their own groove into the sunset, aware that any time could be the last time. It’s not social media content. It’s not trying to get on the cool playlist. It’s its own thing because they made it true to who they are as people and who they’ve grown to be as they’ve come into adulthood together. “Clamfight” itself is very much about that, but it’s all over the rest of the songs as well, and if you’d tell me you can’t understand how outwardly aggressive or loud or harsh music can be used to express love or gratitude, the only reply I really have for you is I’m sorry.
The line is right there in the galloping part of “Clamfight” — “Same four dudes/All this time” — and the song itself asks how long it can last. I don’t have an answer for that, but the band does. The answer is in cherishing what you have, whether that’s a band, a family, your life, a dumpy blog or some other outlet, for the time you have it. That’s what makes Clamfight a mature Clamfight album, and I don’t think I have to say that these aren’t the kinds of self-manifestations one would generally get from dudes in their 20s — not to disparage the songs Clamfight were writing at the time; I still love 2010’s Volume I (review here) and remember nostalgically seeing them on stage before then as well — but accepting being grown up and knowing a little more about who you are is a part of moving into middle age. There’s no attempt to hide that in these songs. No attempt to hide the fun. It’s as open a record as Clamfight could ever have hoped to make, and I love it for that. You can hear each one of them putting everything they have into it. Not every band gets to make an album like that, let alone to realize they’re doing it at the time and value it accordingly.
So they’re lucky to have each other and they know it. In uncertain times and facing an unknowable future ahead where little seems bright, that warmth is a saving grace. If the lesson of the pandemic was to teach the value of being together by keeping us apart, Clamfight embrace this as sweeping personal growth and depth of craft. These songs, this album taken as a whole, is a ready example of why you would be in a band for 20 years without care for ‘making it big’ or financial profit. It’s because you love it and you love the people you do it with. Such a simple answer and in no small part because men are raised to be emotional cripples it’s such a rare thing to see outside of violent and/or misogynist contexts. That is to say, it’s socially acceptable for men to bond so long as they’re hating women or killing somebody. But sounds so heavy with love so clearly at their foundation are rare and special and that’s exactly what Clamfight’s Clamfight is. The declaration it makes is no less than the band bearing their heart in portraying the family they’ve become over the last two decades. It’s brash and gorgeous and special and I’m very, very happy for my friends.
Also, Andy got married last week and Sean’s family recently welcomed a new member, so congrats all around.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
—
Why not bold the proper names above? I don’t know. It didn’t feel right. Too review-y, maybe. I’m still just finishing my coffee at 9AM, so bear with me.
My alarm was set for 6:30 but the kid was pounding on the wall before that. We had a late night. The Patient Mrs. was out and The Pecan and I were on our own for the evening, which was fine. Bedtime started after nine and went until a bit before 10PM, which is already long, and she was out her bedroom door before I was downstairs long enough to take a sip of water. Back up like four more times before I made it to bed, then she came down two more times, finally decided she needed to poop, and did that I guess around an hour after she first came down, making it about 11PM. I took her back upstairs and fell asleep in her bed, where thankfully she also fell asleep at long last, and made it back downstairs sometime shortly after midnight. The Patient Mrs. was home by then, so I got to say goodnight in my barely-conscious ‘you wanna watch a Star Trek?’ state. TOS it is.
The kid had had a rough day at school, missing behavior targets and such, and The Patient Mrs. didn’t want to risk derailing recent forward progress — because this week has been better until yesterday, and three incident-free days, one of them a field trip, isn’t nothing to us at this point — so we’re keeping her home today. I’ll take her to the arcade or something since the weather sucks. I asked for and received the time to write this while they watch videos in the living room, and I am grateful for it.
Getting home from Oslo on Sunday was fine. It was a typical landing in Newark, which means the plane was tossed from side to side like a Micro Machines in a vortex and the line at customs took 40 minutes. My bad was out when I got out, so I didn’t wait there. In Europe, you wait for the bag. In the US, you wait to find out if you’re going to be let in the country.
I could go on about that or the Lord Buffalo thing this week with the drummer being detained and then it comes out he’s got warrants or somesuch. Like that makes it better. People being perfectly happy to miss the point is precisely why I said I was worried the US will learn nothing from the dark moment in history it’s inhabiting. We dismantled education. On purpose. First you need a cultural recommitment, and that also means money. Then you need to raise a generation of teachers. Then you need to raise a generation of educated kids. If you say it’s been since Nixon the right wing has been trying to privatize schooling, then the damage that’s been done to-date will need at least that long to undo, again, if the commitment to undo it was made, which given the track the country is on now there’s about zero chance of happening. I wonder if public schooling will exist by the time my daughter is my age. They want to privatize garbage collection in my town. There’s 50,000 people here. How fucking stupid do you need to be?
As noted, I could go on.
Next week I’ve got premieres for Electric Citizen, The Lotus Matter, and Entheomorphosis, and I’m going to review the new Turtle Skull, which will feel like exorcising a demon as I finally get all the laudatory blah blah blah out of my brain that I’ve been writing there for the last however-many weeks. Like a top-three of the year for me, that one.
I wish you a great and safe weekend. Drink water. Watch your head. Tell someone you love them. Listen to good music. I’m back Monday.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 16th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
If you’ve followed this site for a while or found yourself going down a specific rabbit hole, you might know I’ve covered Montréal’s Vision Eternel a fair amount. The solo drone project of Alexander Julien, mostly through a series of short releases and explorations, honed a specifically evocative, cinematic sound, and consistently stood in ready demonstration of the point that just because something is ethereal, that does not need to preclude it from also being emotional.
Most of the sounds were vague, impressionistic, but it was always fun to see where Julien‘s whims and cinephile noir vibes were taking him. Vision Eternel was never super-hyped as far as bands go, but I enjoyed writing about the music and could hear in it a resounding commitment to growth and human expression. The songs were never overly accessible nor overly harsh, but set themselves more to worldbuilding and immersing the listener in texture, soft melody, and transient frequencies.
Julien‘s farewell is typically vague. There’s no grand explanation of self or reasoning, just a couple namedrops — Brandi Rayne Hoke was an ex-girlfriend who helped inspired the initial Vision Eternel music; Rain Frances has directed videos and shot photos along the way — and references. No mention of future intention, but one doubts Julien will actually stop making music, even if he does stop doing it under this name. Whatever form his next work, musical or not, takes, I wish him luck and thanks for the sounds. Seems like something of an irony to feel nostalgic about it.
From the PR wire:
Vision Eternel has completed its purpose. From Brandi Rayne Hoke to Rain Frances. This is the end.
I always did prefer Rainy afternoons. So thanks for the memories; the wonderful and the miserable. Now good-bye.
Posted in Whathaveyou on May 16th, 2025 by JJ Koczan
Note the cover art with its various iconography culled from the song titles. Whatever you do, don’t miss the Mars rover. Classic ’80s metal vibes there that have me somewhat curious as to how Birmingham heavy rock trio Margarita Witch Cult will have progressed from their well-received 2023 self-titled debut (review here), but there’s no audio yet to begin to get a sense. They’ll get there, I’m just impatient with this stuff.
Whatever the three-piece are up to in pieces like “Conqueror Worm” and “Crawl Home to Your Coffin,” the safer bet is it’ll be over the top, as that’s where the self-titled spent a good portion of its time. There’s still the better part of two weeks before the first single gets posted though, so really what they’re doing is laying the groundwork and getting those who dug the first record to snag the second one on spec, which honestly probably isn’t a bad call to make. I’m sure when one pressing sells out they’ll do another, because why not, but if you don’t look at this cover and want a first pressing, I feel like maybe you need to re-up your appreciation for the absurd.
From Heavy Psych Sounds via the PR wire
MARGARITA WITCH CULT – Strung Out In Hell
– sophomore album for the UK proto metal – doom riffers –
Today we are stoked to start the presale of the MARGARITA WITCH CULT upcoming sophomore album STRUNG OUT IN HELL !!
FIRST SINGLE COMING OUT ON ALL DIGITAL PLATFORMS MAY 28th
RELEASED IN 15 ULTRA LTD TEST PRESS VINYL 100 ULTRA LTD SIDE A – SIDE B YELLOW/ORANGE/RED VINYL 100 ULTRA LTD HALF-HALF TRANSP./RED TRANSP. + SPLATTER BLACK VINYL 400 LTD GOLD NUGGET VINYL BLACK VINYL DIGIPAK DIGITAL
TRACKLIST SIDE A Crawl Home To Your Coffin – 4:07 Scream Bloody Murder – 3:41 Conqueror Worm – 4:21 Witches Candle – 2:38 White Wedding – 4:45 SIDE B Mars Rover – 4:53 Dig Your Way Out – 2:27 The Fool – 3:24 Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm – 6:46
ALBUM DESCRIPTION Margarita Witch Cult captured lightning in a bottle with their 2023 debut- a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it behemoth that saw the band thrash and burn through Europe and the UK, picking up legions of fans and touring with the likes of Cancer Bats, Monster Magnet and Nebula.
Now, the Birmingham trio are set to pick their teeth with the bones of their own past- as their second LP ‘Strung Out In Hell’ takes everything that was so compelling about their debut and turns the knob up to 11; rips off the knob; throws the knob into the fires of hell and cackles maniacally in the wake of its demoniacal glory.
From top-to-tail, ‘Strung Out In Hell’ is a cloven hoof to the chest; a dizzying descent through infernus. It will caress you only to chew you up and spit you out. It is the soundtrack to the afterparty of all life on earth. Succumb to its sordid siren song. Bolder, stranger, and downright more mean, there’s no better time to jump on the Margarita Witch Cult train- and it’s going straight down, fast.
CREDITS Recorded & Mixed by Mark Gittins at Megatone Studio, Birmingham, UK Mastered by Scott Middleton at High Wattage Cottage, Ontario, Canada Producer – @mark_gittins_sound / @megatonerecordingstudio Artwork by Dirt Wizard. All songs Copyright Margarita Witch Cult 2025 except Track 5.
Guest Performers Alicia Gardener-Trejo – Baritone Sax on ‘The Fool’ Sam Wooster – Trumpet on ‘The Fool’
Writing Credits All songs written by Scott Abbott except: Track 3 – Conqueror Worm – James Brown / Scott Abbott Track 5 – White Wedding – Billy Idol Track 7 – Dig Your Way Out – James Brown / Scott Abbott
MARGARITA WITCH CULT is: Scott Abbott – Vocals & Guitars James Brown – Bass, Vocals, Synth, Mellotron, Guitars George Caswell – Drums & Vocals
