Alright, y’all. This is where it ends. The Quarterly Review has been an absolute blast, an easy, fun, good time to have, but inevitably it must come to close and that’s where we’re at. Last day. Last 10 releases. Thanks if you’ve kept up. I’ll be back I think in September with another one of these, probably longer.

Hope you’ve found something killer this week. I did.

Quarterly Review #41-50:

Katatonia, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State

Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State is the first long-player in the 34-year history of Katatonia — upwards of their 13th album, depending on what you count — to not feature guitarist Anders Nyström. That leaves frontman Jonas Renkse as the remaining founder of the band, with two new guitarists in Nico Elgstrand and Sebastian Svalland, bassist Niklas Sandin and drummer Daniel Moilanen, steering one of heavy music’s most identifiable sounds in new ways. “Wind of No Change” is duly subversive, and “Departure Trails” basks in texture in a way Katatonia have periodically throughout the last 20 years, but the Opethian severity of they keys in “The Light Which I Bleed” and the declarative chug at the end of opener “Thrice” speak to the band’s awareness of the need to occasionally be very, very heavy, even as “Efter Solen” shifts into dark, emotive electronics ahead of the sweeping finale “In the Event Of…” Renkse has never wanted for expression as a singer. If he’s to be the driving force behind Katatonia, fair enough for how that manifests here.

Katatonia website

Napalm Records website

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Black Moon Circle, A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. I

Trondheim, Norway’s Black Moon Circle recorded the four-song set of A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. 1 at the hometown venue of Moskus, a small bar that, to hear them tell it, mostly hosts jazz. Fair enough for cosmic heavy psychedelic grunge rock to join the fray, I should think. It was late in 2023, so earlier that year’s Leave the Ghost Behind (review here) full-length features readily, with “Snake Oil” following the opener “Drifting Across the Plains” — which is jazzy enough, certainly — ahead of the chunkier-riffed “Serpent” and a 20-minute take on “Psychedelic Spacelord (Lighter Than Air),” which has become a signature piece for the three-piece, suitably expansive. If you know Black Moon Circle‘s studio albums, you know they do as much as they can live. Honestly, A Million Leagues Beyond: Moskus Sessions Vol. I isn’t all that different, but it’s definitely a performance worth enjoying.

Black Moon Circle on Bandcamp

Crispin Glover Records website

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Bloodhorse, A Malign Star

Kudos if you had ‘new Bloodhorse‘ on your 2025 Stoner Rock Bingo card or caught it when they launched an Instagram page last year. I certainly didn’t. The Massachusetts aughts-type prog-leaning riffmakers were last head from with their 2009 debut album, Horizoner (review here), and the six-song/28-minute A Malign Star serves as a vital return, if not one brimming with good vibes as “The Somnambulist” dream-crushes its four-minute course, the band not so much dwelling in atmospheres like the relatively careening “Shallowness,” but getting into a song, making their point, and getting out. This works to their advantage in opener “Saboteur” and the chuggier title-track that follows, but even six-minute closer “Illumination” retains a sense of immediacy amid the dirty fuzz and comparatively laid back roll. This band was once the shape of sludge to come. 16 years later, the future has taken a different course and everybody’s a little more middle-aged, but Bloodhorse still kind of feel like they’re waiting for the world to catch up.

Bloodhorse on Instagram

Iodine Recordings website

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Aawks, On Through the Sky Maze

Should you find yourself thinking you didn’t remember Canadian riffers Aawks — also stylized all-caps: AAWKS — having quite such a nasty streak, you’re not alone. Their 2022 debut, Heavy on the Cosmic (review here), had a take that seems like fuzzy dream-pop in comparison to “Celestial Magick” and the screamy sludge that populates On Through the Sky Maze, their second LP. The nine-song 48-minute full-length is the first to feature bassist/vocalist Ryan “Grime Pup” Mailman alongside guitarist/vocalist Kris Dzierzbicki, guitarist Roberto Paraíso, and drummer Randylin Babic, and songs like “Lost Dwellers” or the mellow-spacier “Drifting Upward,” with no harsh vocals, seem to hit more directly, in addition to arriving in a different context with the “blegh”s of “Wandering Supergiants” and “Caerdoia,” and so on. In the end, Mailman‘s rasp becomes one more tool in Aawks‘ songwriting shed, and the band have more breadth and are less predictable for it. Call that a win, even before you get to the record being good.

Aawks website

Black Throne Productions website

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Moon Destroys, She Walks by Moonlight

The shimmering, floating guitar in “Echoes (The Empress)” tells part of the story in the deep-running The Cure influence, and the somewhat moody vocals of Charlie Suárez echo that emotional foundation, which is coupled in that song and throughout Moon Destroys‘ debut album, She Walks by Moonlight, with a willful progressivism in the songwriting, attention to detail in the arrangements, melodies, even the mix. Comprised of Suárez, guitarist Juan Montoya (ex-Torche), bassist Arnold Nese and drummer/producer Evan Diprima (Royal Thunder), the band are able to set a wash in place that’s not deceptively heavy in “The Nearness of June” (an earlier demo track) because it’s beating you over the head with tone, but still has more to offer than just its own heft. “Only” sounds like heavied-up proto-emo, while the roll of “Set Them Free” is massive in terms of both its riff and its big feelings. If you’re willing to let it grow on you, She Walks by Moonlight can be a space to occupy.

Moon Destroys website

Limited Fanfare website

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Astral Magic, In Space We Trust

In Space We Trust is one of four-so-far full-lengths that Santtu Laakso — multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, composer and producer — has out between Astral Magic and related collaborations and projects. It’s not a pace of releasing one can keep up with, but if you need a check-in from the generation ship that is Astral Magic, chances are Laakso is out there on some voyage or other between classic space rock and clearheaded prog, spanning galaxies. The eight-song/42-minute In Space We Trust pairs him with lead guitarist Jonathan Segel (Øresund Space Collective, etc.), and one should not be surprised at the cosmic nature of the resulting music. The pair get into some sci-fi atmospherics in “Ancient Pilots” and “Alien Emperor,” but the synth and guitar are leading the way across the galaxy and the vibe across the board is more Voyager and less Nostromo, so yes, smooth solar-sailing the whole way through.

Astral Magic on Bandcamp

Astral Magic on Facebook

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Lammping x Bloodshot Bill, Never Never

IMG

The dreamy guitar, semi-rapped vocal, and dub backbeat give the opening title-track of Never Never a decidedly ’90s cast, but it’s not the summary of what Toronto’s Lammping have to offer in their collaboration with weirdo-rockabilly solo artist Bloodshot Bill, bringing together their urbane, grounded psych and studiocraft, samples, etc., with the singer/guitarist’s low, sometimes bluesy delivery across seven songs totaling 15 minutes, peppering the vibe-on-vibes of “Never Never,” “One and Own” and “Won’t Back Down” — the longest inclusion at 3:23 — with ramble and flow alike, with experimental jawns like “Coconut,” “0 and 1” or “Anything is Possible” and the closer “Nitey Nite,” all under two minutes long and each going their own way with the casual cool one has come to expect from Lammping, quietly staking out their own wavelength while still sounding like something from a half-remembered soundtrack to a radder version of your life. This is one of four releases Lammping will reportedly have over the next year or so. Way on board for whatever’s coming next.

Lammping on Instagram

We Are Busy Bodies on Bandcamp

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Fuzz Sagrado, Strange Daze

After the disbanding of Samsara Blues Experiment in 2021, guitarist/vocalist Christian Peters — who had already by then moved from Germany to Brazil — unveiled Fuzz Sagrado with EPs in July and October of that year. Fuzz Sagrado‘s 2021 self-titled (review here) and Vida Pura EPs are included on Strange Daze, a new compilation of tracks unified through a remaster by John McBain, showcasing the early outreach of keyboard and guitar that served as the foundation for the project. As Peters readies a live band for an eventual return to the stage, Strange Daze demonstrates how multifaceted the growth has been in terms of songwriting and still feels exploratory in hindsight as it did when the material was first released. Also included is the jammy “Arapongas,” which wasn’t on either EP but was recorded around the same time. Something of a curio or a fan-piece, but I ain’t arguing.

Fuzz Sagrado website

Electric Magic Records website

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When the Deadbolt Breaks, In the Glow of the Vatican Fire

A couple different modes on When the Deadbolt Breaks‘ In the Glow of the Vatican Fire, which is the long-running Connecticut malevolent doomers’ umpteenth album, running 63 minutes and eight songs. Some of those are longer pieces, like opener “The Scythe Will Come” (12:24), “The Chaos of Water” (14:02), “The Deep Well” (10:42) and “Red Sparrow” (10:57), but interspersed with these are a succession of shorter tracks, and the breakdown between them isn’t just that the short songs are fast and the long songs are slow. Certainly the ripping early portions (and the later, more minimalist spaciousness) of “The Chaos of Water” argue against this, and the dynamic turns out to be correspondingly complex to suit the abiding murk of mood, as founding guitarist/vocalist Aaron Lewis and co-singer Cherilynne provide foreboding croon to suit the lo-fi, creeping, distorted terrors of the music surrounding. This is When the Deadbolt Breaks absolutely in their element; bleak, churn-chaotic, expressive, immersive. They’re able to put you where they want you whether you want to go or not.

When the Deadbolt Breaks on Bandcamp

When the Deadbolt Breaks on Instagram

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A/lpaca, Laughter

It may have sat on the shelf for two years since recording finished in 2023, but don’t worry, it’s still from the future. Laughter is the second-on-Sulatron full-length from Italian experimentalists A/lpaca, and it sees them push deeper into electronic elements and ambiences, keeping some of the krautrock elements of their 2021’s Make it Better, but with songs that are shorter on average and that stand ready to convey a sense of quirk in the keyboard elements or the Devo verses of the title-track, which isn’t without its aspect of shove. Does it get weird? You bet your ass it does. “Bianca’s Videotape,” “Who’s in Love Daddy?,” the post-punk synthery meeting doomed fuzz on “Empty Chairs,” the list goes on. Actually, it’s just the tracklisting and it’s all pretty freaked out, so as long as you know going in that the band are working from their own standard of weirdoism, making the jump into the keyboardy gorge of “Kyrie” or the new wave-y “Don’t Talk” should be no problem. If you heard the last record, yeah, this is different. Seems like the next one will probably be different again too. Not everyone wants to do the same thing all the time.

A/lpaca on Bandcamp

Sulatron Records store

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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

New Album Never Never Releases June 27, 2025

Pre-Order Link: https://lammping.bandcamp.com/album/never-never

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.

Pre-Order Link: https://lammping.bandcamp.com/album/never-never

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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.

https://www.instagram.com/lammping
https://lammping.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ZrzRmbuxvCeFSpEbFpbXZ

Lammping, Never Never (2025)

[Click play above to stream UWUW’s self-titled debut in full. Album is out tomorrow, Oct. 21, on We Are Busy Bodies.]

UWUW — said like “you-you” — operate as the base-trio of drummer/percussionist Jay Anderson (Lammping, ex-Comet Control, etc.), guitarist/vocalist/keyboardist/producer Ian Blurton (Ian Blurton’s Future Now, C’mon, so many others) and bassist/keyboardist Jason Haberman (The Wooden Sky, Yaehsun and others), but by the time you’re three seconds into “Scattered Ashes,” which opens their four-song self-titled debut full-length, they’ve already revealed themselves as more. The record begins in casual-cool motion, drums and bass with a groove out for the first of many walks to be taken in the relatively short half-hour span of the proceedings, and the guitar, bass and drums are almost immediately joined by a horn arrangement specifically geared to capture the feel of psychedelic soul and hard funk as portrayed by James Brown circa Hot Pants, earliest Parliament, The Temptations‘ Psychedelic Shack and any number of other Norman Whitfield productions of the era 1968-’72.

Utilizing two guest singers in Chris Cummings — who bookends on “Scattered Ashes” and the more disco-minded finale “Box Office Poison” — and Drew Smith, who takes on the 13-minute cosmic funk epic “Staircase to the End of the Night” and the subsequent cooler-than-all death blues “Landlord,” as well as sax by Jay Hay (who handled the horn arrangements throughout), trombone by Tom Richards and trumpet by Patric McGroarty, UWUW‘s UWUW is a tapestry of overlapping trippy, progressive and soulful, melodic songcraft.

With a sound further fleshed out by various comings and goings of synthesizer and effects, as the background of “Scattered Ashes” also demonstrates, there’s a world being created here not entirely separate but nonetheless distinct from the homage to nostalgic Toronto that Lammping make their own — Anderson is the right drummer for the job and proves it here on the hi-hat alone, never mind the rest of the kit and hand percussion, etc. — as UWUW draws directly from classic funk and soul music. Even in the midsection guitar space-out of “Scattered Ashes” or the ultra-flowing slow-motion dreamscapery of “Staircase to the End of the Night,” the rhythm holds, and it is there that the band’s process of building upward from initial guitar-bass-drum jams is revealed.

With Blurton doubling as producer for the material, there’s a smoothness to the overarching sound of the album that is very much his, but the effect of layering together these pieces, one thing on top of the other, then mixing them all together to come across as organically as they do, is a masterclass in modernizing retroism. “Staircase to the End of the Night,” with its repetitive guitar line, righteous shifts from verse to chorus, hypnotic repetitions early manipulated by effects, and outward direction takeoff after about six and a half minutes in — you’ll recognize it when the percussion starts in over the drums — horn solo, crash, return, shimmy, drift, and eventual wash of melody before returning to the lyrics, “Holding me up and holding me tight/The staircase will run to the end of the night,” is and should be an obvious focal point. It takes up nearly half the album’s runtime, and feels very much like UWUW claiming territory now to advance future exploration; or maybe that’s just me thinking wishfully.

The sleek delivery of Smith on “Staircase to the End of the Night” underscores another point working in UWUW‘s favor, which is that the abiding fluidity of the production plays a role in uniting the songs as they operate with different moods and players. Yes, the horns appear on each track, and it’s only two singers, both male, and so on, but there’s no question UWUW operates in varied spaces, as the turn from “Staircase to the End of the Night” to “Landlord” and “Box Office Poison” on side B readily shows. The songs simply do different things and go different places — and that’s not to leave out “Scattered Ashes” either, with its surprisingly grim lyrical theme mirrored in “Landlord.”

Starting with the most gradual ascent of a fade-in here-present, the track opens at a markedly languid tempo; fittingly dreamy coming out of “Staircase to the End of the Night” but sweeping suddenly into its verse, with Smith reminding a bit as he did the song before of Sean Lennon in The Claypool-Lennon Delirium, but making a point of its tension in the verse line before the chorus arrives to mellow-strut and unfold its lysergic reach of melody, bringing in ethereal and funky keys before heading back into the verse for another round. They go back again to it to finish, but most of the second half of the track is given to the chorus and a post-chorus jam, which is not at all a complaint. The rhythm holds the underlying movement as the keys, guitar and vocals offer breadth that would in many less-skilled hands be contrasting the structure but here reaffirms it, and so the final turn is masterful instead of clumsy like so much else of UWUW‘s let’s-try-it-and-see-what-happens-hey-we-made-a-song moments.

And the tambourine and keyboard — never mind the bass; oh, the bassline — announce the arrival of “Box Office Poison,” which offers a standout hook even in the face of “Scattered Ashes,” “Landlord” just prior and “Staircase to the End of the Night.” With Cummings stepping back in on lead vocals, there’s a sense of unity with the beginning of the record that comes through even if you don’t know the personnel involved, but an immediately full arrangement is practically beating you over the head to get out to the dance floor. Where is the dance floor? And why are we dancing? Because it’s the end of the world, and that’s what’s happening. The clever engagement with popular culture in the lyrics suits the shimmer of the keyboard, and Anderson and Haberman once again leave no doubt as to where the soul in soul music is modeled.

They cap with a big swell in the horns riding the groove at half-time — prog heads will hear King Crimson there; I’m not sure it’s intentional and I’m not sure it’s not — and finish their debut album with a six-minute track that sounds like it only took three; pretty emblematic of the listening experience as a whole. These are busy players with musical lives outside this outfit, so I will not attempt to predict what they might do from here or when, but Blurton, Haberman and Anderson — with Hay, Cummings, Smith, Richards and McGroarty — find an immediate niche for themselves on ground few others could so successfully tread, and with songwriting at the core of what they do, manifest a work of gorgeous, lush heavy soul.

UWUW on Instagram

UWUW on Bandcamp

We Are Busy Bodies on Facebook

We Are Busy Bodies links

One song and I’m sold. I’m sorry, but how many times a year are you going to get Curtis Mayfield flashbacks from a drum sound, let alone the horns and funky bass and guitar around it? UWUW are Toronto-born and feature none other than Ian Blurton — a mighty pedigree has he, but if you didn’t hear Ian Blurton’s Future Now‘s Second Skin (review here) when it was released last month, go ahead and do that — on guitar, vocals, keys and production alongside drummer Jay Anderson, formerly of Comet Control and currently in Lammping, and bassist Jason Haberman of The Wooden Sky.

Too rich in its underlying layers to be fully pop, the song “Scattered Ashes” nonetheless opens UWUW‘s upcoming four-song self-titled LP and exemplifies the built-on-jams style of what may or may not follow — I don’t know because I haven’t heard the full record. But again, after hearing this one track, I’m in for whatever the rest of the full-length will bring. It’s a thing I want to experience.

You can read a whole bunch about the album below, preorder, listen to the song, all that quietly kind of amazing stuff that we do every day and don’t even think about it anymore. Of course there’s music out there before something is released. Of course you can order it now and get it when it’s actually out, if not sooner. Incredible what gets taken for granted. But whether you’re taken aback by the wonders of our also-has-significant-downsides age or not, dig in:

Toronto Supergroup UWUW Announce Debut LP with Lead Single “Scattered Ashes”

Self Titled Album Releases October 21, 2022

UWUW (pronounced you-you) have just announced the release of their debut, self-titled LP with their lead single Scattered Ashes. With some of Toronto’s most experienced and revered musicians making this project possible, it’s no wonder why the sonic presence of this project demands your attention and doesn’t let you go. The impressive cast of players includes Jason Haberman of Dan Mangan and Yeahsun, Jay Anderson of Badge Epoque Ensemble, Biblical and Lammping, and Ian Blurton of Ian Blurton’s Future Now, Change of Heart, and C’mon. Giving the songs a voice are two of Toronto’s most distinctive songwriters: Chris A. Cummings aka Marker Starling, adding his distinct, easy-glide, story-telling charm to Box Office Poison, and Scattered Ashes, and Drew Smith (Bunny, The Bicycles), providing his trademark, 60s harmony pop and lyrical prowess to Staircase and Landlord. Scattered Ashes is the first offering from their upcoming self-titled album on We Are Busy Bodies, due out October 21st, 2022. Fans of Euroboys, T2, and Manfred Mann Chapter Three will be enamored with these exceptionally crafted and exciting compositions.

The lead single Scattered Ashes breathes soul and rock, while blurring sounds and influences which call to mind James Brown’s horn section and the compositional layers of experimental Beach Boys recordings. In response to the meaning behind his lyrics, singer Marker Starling says, “I attempted to shoehorn every stray apocalyptic thought I had circa Summer of 2021 into the song, including readings from the screenplay of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965). The world is ending, or perhaps, as Sun Ra believed, we’re already past the end of the world. You might end up dying for a cause, or even “just because.” Who knows what tomorrow may bring, and like The Zombies, being forever Hung Up on a Dream—in this case, a lost vision of a kind of hippie or punk utopia—is the only way to live your life, the only way to maintain a healing state of mind”.

Order New Vinyl LP from We Are Busy Bodies
https://uwuw.bandcamp.com/album/s-t

UWUW came into being when Jay Anderson and Ian Blurton came together through a run of shows, backing mutual friend and singer/songwriter, Kate Boothman as her drummer, and guitarist, respectively. Anderson suggested bringing in Jason Haberman, a talented bassist, who Anderson had seen play with Toronto indie-folk band, The Wooden Sky. Realizing they didn’t want an instrumental record, they layered on bright horns and smooth vocals, lifting the songs from instrumental jams, to the undefinable yet distinctive sound that is, UWUW. Saxophonist, Jay Hey, was brought in to provide horn arrangements, along with Tom Richardson on trombone and Patrick McGroarty on trumpet, all three contributing on every song. The result is a blissfully cool album with music that will appeal to all listeners, from record store snobs, garage rock slobs, and even psych-pop heartthrobs!

1. Scattered Ashes
2. Staircase To The End Of The Night
3. Landlord
4. Box Office Poison

Jason Haberman – Bass, Keys
Jay Anderson – Drums, Percussion
Ian Blurton – Guitar, Keys, Vocals, Engineering, Mixing

Chris Cummings – Vocals on ‘Scattered Ashes’ and ‘Box Office Poison’
Drew Smith – Vocals on ‘Staircase To The End Of The Night’ and ‘landlord’
Jay Hay – Horn Arrangements, Saxophone
Tom Richards – Trombone
Patric McGroarty – Trumpet

https://www.instagram.com/uwuw_abh
https://uwuw.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/wearebusybodies
https://linktr.ee/wearebusybodies

UWUW, UWUW (2022)

Toronto freewheeling fuzz purveyors Lammping release their new EP, Stars We Lost, on March 4 through We Are Busy Bodies. And look, I know full well that my say-so holds about as much sway as two or three cotton balls against the barrage of noise in universes both digital and actual, but I’ll tell you again these guys are onto something special. With the songwriting of Mikhail Galkin as their foundational element, backed by the solid push of Jay Anderson‘s drums, they’ve nestled their way into an aesthetic that’s nostalgic in purpose and takes a forward thinking route to get there. Consider Stars We Lost, the title. It’s of the moment — loss is everywhere, all the time, in plague and war and famine and life — but it calls out to the ridiculous notion of popular culture pedestal-making too. “Stars.” They got it from the tabloids. It’s grocery-store pulp. Laughing at the notion of its own triviality on the cosmic scale it implies. Fucking genius.

I’ve been out here for a couple years now talking up their shit — I’ll spare you other links, but last year’s Flashjacks (review here) was rad rad rad and also pretty rad — and Stars We Lost is another sub-20-minute reminder why. “Everlasting Moor,” “Never Phoenix,” “Home of Shadows,” “’21 Interlude” and “Beyond the Veil” bring hooks and remember-good-times vibes from the outset, but there’s so much more happening underneath. In the quote below, Galkin talks about sound-collage as an aspiration, and you can absolutely hear that taking shape in “Never Phoenix,” with the ’90s hip-hop bounce to its rhythm and starbursts of melody, and “’21 Interlude,” which is executed with maybe-purposeful irony in a manner retro enough to have been a lost backing track for Beastie Boys. Meanwhile, in the hall of justice, “Everlasting Moor” runs a thread of fuzz out in its first verse that never seems to disappear, and that’s only to the EP’s great strength, as even the acoustic-led “Home of Shadows” finds space for space through its electric-wah flourish and smooth vocal melody.

The sunny fuzz indie of “Beyond the Veil” wraps some version or other, but the master I got has another track too, in “Golem of Garbage Hill” that’s no less wonderfully catchy than “Everlasting Moor” or “Never Phoenix” or whichever track you want to set it against, even if the mood is a little more severe in the chorus. If it’s not actually on the physical version of Stars We Lost, I’m hoping it gets released as a standalone 7″ with a B-side that sounds completely different but is no less awesome. Lammping make such things sound easily crafted, organic, and righteously humble. I don’t know what the sample is at the end of “Beyond the Veil,” but it clearly means something to someone, probably Galkin, as it’s too purposefully placed to just be random. At this point, I’m willing to trust these guys don’t do anything without good reason, even if occasionally that good reason is just screwing around.

Let me bottom-line Lammping for you: I’ve never been cool. Not one day in my life. When I listen to Lammping, I feel cool. Like I’m in on all the jokes. Like sometimes things are rough but you can just roll over all that and it doesn’t matter anyway because if you’ve got a good song in your head, that’s enough. Bonus points to “Everlasting Moor” for being both an immigrant story and for the Beatles reference in the second half.

If you want the critical appraisal, you can absolutely hear Lammping pushing their sound forward on Stars We Lost, and more important, they know they’re doing it and it still doesn’t sound forced. I would expect and hope that whatever full-length might follow — and it’s worth noting that these songs might indeed show up on a next LP; that’s what happened last time — to continue along this path, because what’s ultimately happening is that, with Galkin‘s craft as the base they’re working from and the experimentalism laid overtop, they’re finding their style in an honest swath of influences. This is life, or some vision of it, and if you can’t get down, it’s your loss. Me, I’m on board with wherever they go next. I’ll probably be begging to stream it just like I was with this. Like I said, never been cool.

But we can pretend:

Mikhail Galkin on Stars We Lost:

Everlasting Moor begins with “See a man, he’s popping and locking in a parkette gazebo”. I saw a dude in an afternoon doing just that, at a small parkette close to my house, where I bring my daughter to play. He brought a boombox and was just breakdancing by himself in this little gazebo, with no one around. For whatever reason, that sparked a stream of consciousness song that was about finding our place in the world, and if unable to, creating a world in your mind you feel at home in. I’ve always wanted to write a song about my own immigrant experience, and after the first line, the words just spilled out.

Our first records were more traditional Psych/Stoner Rock albums, propelled by guitar riffs and solos, but we ultimately always wanted to reach beyond that. We love Sleep and Sabbath and King Gizzard but we also love De La Soul and Madlib, for example. The approach for this record was much closer to 3 feet High and Rising (De La), where we look at all the ideas and sounds we have in our minds almost as samples. Once you approach the recording process in that way, where you’re almost building a sound collage around a song you wrote with just a guitar, the world opens up musically. The end result is still under the psych umbrella, but we hope it translates to something that transcends cliché and categorization.

Jay came up with the idea for the record cover. When people ask us to describe our sound, its kind of difficult to nail down, so an artistic representation speaks louder sometimes. Jay was like “imagine a surfer dude wearing a black hoodie under his outfit – that’s our sound!” It made sense to me right away. The melodic and heavy and pretty and rugged all in one pot. So we played off the early Beach Boys imagery and came up with that. Jay’s pal Kagan McLeod, who does illustration for like GQ and Wall Street Journal and Newsweek was nice enough to help us out and bring our vision to life.

The name “Stars We Lost” comes from the classic tabloid headlines of when celebrities pass. I thought it sounded like a good album title and thematically reflected some of the record and Jay was down.

The foundation of Lammping’s sound is rooted in Jay Anderson’s heavy drumming and Mikhail Galkin’s melodic riffs, but with the addition of samples, drum machines, and a variety of instrumentation, the band’s sonic palate is just as indebted to Stereolab, De La Soul and Kraftwerk as it is to Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Sleep.

Stars We Lost, is a new EP from the band is due to come out on vinyl and digitally on March 4 2022 via We Are Busy Bodies.

Lammping on Instagram

Lammping on Bandcamp

We are Busy Bodies on Facebook

We are Busy Bodies on Instagram

We are Busy Bodies on Bandcamp

We are Busy Bodies website

Funky-fresh off releasing one of 2021’s best full-lengths in Flashjacks (review here), Toronto purveyors of mellow fuzzy groove Lammping will issue the new five-track EP Stars We Lost on March 4.

Like their 2021 EP, New Jaws (review here), it’s entirely possible that the songs of the 18-ish-minute Stars We Lost will be repurposed for the band’s next album, and if that’s the case, fine. I’ll take new Lammping as it comes. Their songs are memorable, unpretentious, engaging, and capture a nostalgic feel that transcends genre fluidly without losing their structural purpose. In short, I dig this band. More from them is only good news as far as I’m concerned.

We Are Busy Bodies has the release this time around — Flashjacks was on Echodelick Records, and 2020’s Bad Boys of Comedy (review here) was on Nasoni — and the opening track “Everlasting Moor” is streaming now, the band bringing vibes from surf and garage to coincide with their ’90s-bent do-anything-they-wantness. I’m on board, let’s go.

From their Bandcamp:

Lammping – Stars We Lost – March 4

Lammping is a psychedelic rock band based out of Toronto, founded by singer/songwriter Mikhail Galkin and drummer Jay Anderson. Meeting at a concert where Jay’s and Mikhail’s previous bands were sharing the bill, they quickly connected over their musical tastes, drawing on their love of everything from mid-90’s boom-bap to Tropicalia and library music.

The band was started as an attempt to bring the various musical influences and ideas together under a psych-rock umbrella, expanding the possibilities of heavy music. The band’s demo led to a vinyl release of the debut LP on Nasoni Records in 2020 and their sophomore album “Flashjacks” in 2021 on Echodelic Records, both albums drawing critical praise.

The foundation of Lammping’s sound is rooted in Jay Anderson’s heavy drumming and Mikhail Galkin’s melodic riffs, but with the addition of samples, drum machines, and a variety of instrumentation, the band’s sonic palate is just as indebted to Stereolab, De La Soul and Kraftwerk as it is to Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Sleep.

Stars We Lost, is a new EP from the band is due to come out on vinyl and digitally on March 4 2022 via We Are Busy Bodies.

Tracklisting:
1. Everlasting Moor
2. Never Phoenix
3. Home of Shadows
4. ’21 Interlude
5. Beyond The Veil

https://www.instagram.com/lammping
https://lammping.bandcamp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/wearebusybodies
http://www.instagram.com/wearebusybodies
https://wearebusybodies.bandcamp.com/
http://www.wearebusybodies.com/

Lammping, Stars We Lost (2022)