New music – Rad/ATL

May 17, 2026May 23, 2026 RadATL New music

Flea follows his restless instincts into the cosmic drift of ‘Honora’

For more than 40 years, Flea has remained one of the most recognizable and elastic musicians to rise from L.A.’s underground music scene. Even as the Red Hot Chili Peppers moved away from the wiry brilliance of Mother’s Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik into a stretch of increasingly pedestrian albums, Flea remains driven by boundless imagination. It’s a quality that propels his curiosity to extend far beyond the familiar contours of RHCP’s repertoire. With Honora, his first offering under his own name, Flea opens up a liminal space where jazz phrasing, psychedelic haze, and cosmic drift fuse into a vast and unmoored sound.

Released by Nonesuch Records, Honora finds Flea (born Michael Balzary) stepping away from his bass while delving into the mysterious regions of jazz and psychedelia. The trumpet he wielded in such notable early ’90s numbers as RHCP’s “Pretty Little Ditty” (from Mother’s Milk) and Jane’s Addiction’s “Idiot’s Rule” (from Nothing Shocking) rings out here with subtlety and sincerity.

Honora settles into a thick flow of slow and luminous currents, as Flea follows instinct rather than flash, shaping the album’s immersive grooves and meditative reverie.

Not every experiment lands. Flea’s spoken-word and sung passages are occasionally too on the nose, tipping into a kind of earnestness that distracts from the music’s quiet strengths. But those moments are offset by an extraordinary supporting cast. Guitar player Jeff Parker brings the same understated brilliance that defines his instrumental prowess in Tortoise, and with his more recent work leading the ETA IVtet. Here, Parker is joined by two other ETA IVtet members, stand up bass player Anna Butterss and saxophone and keyboard player Josh Johnson—the latter of whom also produced the album.

Parker, Butterss, and Johnson ground Honora with depth and atmosphere, swaying between charged rhythms and billowing ambiance in songs such as “A Plea,” “Traffic Lights” (featuring Thom Yorke of Radiohead), and the album’s most profoundly psychedelic excursion, “Frailed.” Here, Flea plays bass alongside an expanded cast of characters including drummer Deantoni Parks, Warren Ellis playing viola and flute, Nathaniel Walcott on Fender Rhodes, percussionist Mauro Refosco, and fellow RHCP bandmate John Frusciante playing trumpet and providing snare drum treatments.

Nick Cave’s voice on a cover of “Wichita Lineman” settles into the song with a hushed, embered calm, turning Jimmy Webb’s wide-open meditation into something slower and more weathered, delivering the aching gravitas that only Cave can summon.

With Honora, Flea stakes his claim as the architect of his own new world, shedding expectations and following his instincts.

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May 13, 2026May 17, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Setting and Brainwolrds play the Earl on Thursday, May 14

The North Carolina Piedmont-based outfit Setting finds three deeply intuitive musicians—Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, and Joe Westerlund—summoning rhythms and textures from deep within the Appalachian soil.

The group’s collective resume boasts contributions to projects such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Pelt, Sylvan Esso, Black Twig Pickers, Acid Birds, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. In Setting, these disparate histories are distilled into a transportive sound that unfolds like an extrasensory conversation among musicians who know when to push and when to leave space in their music.

The album’s meticulous textures underscore the warmth and flow of a group that moves as a single organic unit, blending synths, banjo, zithers, cassette loops, keyboards, and hand percussion into hypnotic patterns that drift between exploration, minimalism, and ecstatic improvisation. The song “Heard a Bubble” shimmers and expands with a patient glow. “Derring-do” builds on a locomotive pulse that gathers force until it rattles the walls and lifts the roof clean off.

“Gum Bump” swirls like a weather system gathering at the horizon. Its slowly blooming pulse of harmonium, guitar, and percussion draws listeners into a meditative state. Each number builds, illustrating a singular gift for making expansive, transcendent music that blurs the lines between ritual and revelation, culminating in an immersive journey where every rhythmic turn opens onto a new horizon.

Director Morgan Maassen’s video for “What Kind of Fish is a Turtle,” offers a visual accompaniment to the song’s slowly-moving synth waves with striking detail.

For Thursday night’s show, Atlanta guitarist Mason Brown of Maserati makes a rare appearance performing under the name Brainworlds.

With Brainworlds, Brown makes music that feels like a transmission from the outer reaches of the cosmos—propelled by a motorik Krautrock drift. Each song unfolds in hypnotic layers of pulsing rhythms and spiraling synthesizers.

Brown’s immersive soundscapes provide an ideal entry point into the night’s meditative terrain.

$20. 7:30 p.m. (doors). 8 p.m. (show). The Earl. 488 Flat Shoals Ave SE.

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May 9, 2026May 12, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Shane Parish plays Eyedrum’s Monday Night Creative Music Series on May 11

Shane Parish. Photo by Courtney Chappell

On Monday, May 11, Athens-based guitarist, composer, and improviser Shane Parish plays two sets as part of Eyedrum’s Monday Night Creative Music Series.

The first set features Parish performing solo selections from his latest album, Autechre Guitar, a striking collection that recasts the intricate electronic structures of British duo Autechre for acoustic guitar. What seems an unlikely translation becomes, in Parish’s hands, an act of revelation—stripping away circuitry to expose the skeletal beauty of Autechre’s looping, asymmetrical phrasing and shifting repetition, rendering each number with breathtaking precision and warmth.

This kind of imaginative transformation has long defined Parish’s work. Whether fronting Ahleuchatistas or reinterpreting sea shanties on Liverpool, Shane Parish has long balanced Appalachian roots, experimental composition, and a quietly dazzling command of the guitar.

On Repertoire, he turns his attention to a wide-ranging set of compositions—from Alice Coltrane to Kraftwerk—recasting them as intricate solo guitar studies that highlight both his technical virtuosity and instinct for reinvention.

For the second set, Parish reunites with longtime collaborator and multi-instrumentalist Libro (Michael Libramento). Libro joins Parish on drums for an improvisational duo performance, offering another glimpse into the pair’s deeply expressive approach to sound.

Read more about Shane Parish’s latest album in my Flagpole Magazine feature story, “Shane Parish Bridges Wood, Steel and Circuitry with Autechre Guitar.”

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April 17, 2026May 9, 2026 RadATL New music

Album Review: Robert Poss + Edward Clark Cornell’s ‘Kepler’s Choice’

Like a slowly turning constellation coming into focus, Kepler’s Choice unfolds as a celestial dialogue between Robert Poss and Edward Clark Cornell, where time, tone, and texture align with sublime atmosphere.

Poss and Cornell’s pairing on Kepler’s Choice (No Sides Records) balances a stylistic overlap of their respective musical inflections. Poss is known as the guitar player and composer that led Band of Susans through the New York City rock avant-garde of the late ‘80s and mid-’90s. He has also played with Bruce Gilbert of post-punk luminaries Wire, and alongside minimalist composers Rhys Chatham and Phil Niblock. With the eight songs that make up Kepler’s Choice, Poss distills a lifetime of experiences into broad, glacial sheets of sound, where guitars, pianos, and electronic touches stretch into radiant, sustained worlds of sound.

Robert Poss (left) and Edward Clark Cornell.

Cornell is a multimedia artist who co-founded La Ponto Ensemblo with German electronic composer Hans Dieter Schmidt. On Kepler’s Choice, Cornell weaves Poss’ mammoth elements into a more intricate web of tones that flicker to life, bloom, and quietly rearrange themselves from within. This exchange is the central engine that drives Kepler’s Choice, culminating in an album that is as vast and mysterious as the cosmos itself.

It’s tempting to trace a lineage from Poss and Cornell’s work together back to minimalist luminaries Steve Reich, Tony Conrad, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley. However, their bridge reaches a higher plain trodden by composers such as György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Iannis Xenakis. Cornell’s fascination with cluster chords—those dense, slowly shifting tonal masses—gives the music its inner tension. It comes through loud and clear in the album’s title track, where the initial tones accumulate almost imperceptibly. Soon, they grow, forming soft-edged walls of sound that evolve while gaining mass.

Their collaborative sensibilities reframe the album’s use of texture, minimalism and composition. Poss’ playing establishes a horizon line. Within it, Cornell introduces movement—small disruptions, subtle harmonic knots, and tones that hover just beyond the expected scale, creating entire worlds that exist out of time and place.

As immense and expansive as it all may be, there’s a story here about restraint, too. Cornell follows Poss’ emphasis on the “white keys”—a grounding in tonal simplicity—as a kind of sonic anchor, and a way of letting complexity emerge via chance, serendipity, and silence.

Elsewhere, on pieces such as “Russian Tea Room” and “Codified Betrayal,” the dynamic shifts in miniature. Sounds circulate, forming patterns that appear and dissolve while new strains of sonic texture emerge. Sustained, crystaline tones shape the music’s pacing and movements. But what defines Kepler’s Choice is the blending of Poss and Cornell’s approaches: Poss builds the environment while Cornell maps its internal systems. Together, they arrive at music that is conceptual and cosmic while remaining intensely human. By the time the music fades, Kepler’s Choice leaves behind a sense that its structures are still out there, slowly shifting, lingering in the outer regions of perception.

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April 9, 2026April 27, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis ignite with ‘Deface the Currency’

The Messthetics (from left: Anthony Pirog, Joe Lally, and Brendan Canty) with James Brandon Lewis.
Photo by Pat Graham

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis’ latest album, Deface the Currency (Impulse!), captures an increasingly bold and rebellious sound for the ensemble. Drop a needle on the opening number and the barreling rhythms explode with force. Drummer Brendan Canty and bass player Joe Lally have spent a lifetime honing their shared musical instincts in Fugazi. With the Messthetics, guitarist Anthony Pirog and saxophone player James Brandon Lewis elevate their collective efforts to a higher plane of consciousness, communication, and chemistry, distilling punk, hardcore, free jazz, and the avant-garde into a singularly defiant spirit.

Born from long stretches on the road and captured in a blur of first and second takes, Deface The Currency trades polish for immediacy without sacrificing precision.

Songs such as “30 Years of Knowing,” “Rules of the Game,” and “Serpent Tongue (Slight Return)” lock into grooves that are both grounded and volatile. Each song stretches, collapses, and builds again, veering from tightly coiled funk to an ecstatic squall. Pirog’s guitar fractures and refracts around Lewis’ saxophone, as both move with urgency toward chaos, but always maintain structure.

“Serpent Tongue” is the album’s grand finale, recalling moments from the Messthetics and Lewis’ previous, self-titled album. Here, everything is pushed forward by a brighter fire.

Of course, live and in the moment is when the music truly ignites.

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis play The Earl on Monday, April 27. $20. 7:30 p.m. (doors). 8:30 p.m. (show).

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February 23, 2026February 24, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Anna Jensen’s ‘Let’s Go Dancing’ celebrates the songs of Kevn Kinney and Drivin N Cryin at The Sun ATL April 10-May 23

Artwork for Edwin McCain’s cover of Drivin N Cryin’s ‘Rush Hour.’ By Anna Jensen.

On Friday, April 10, The Sun ATL premieres “Let’s Go Dancing: Artwork celebrating the songs of Kevn Kinney and Drivin N Cryin.” The show features a colorful and deeply personal collection of works by Anna Jensen, who transforms music and songwriting into a visual language.

Cover art for Puddles Pity Party’s single by Anna Jensen.

Running through May 23, the show draws from a sprawling series of six LPs and dozens of online singles featuring artists playing Kinney’s songs from his solo releases and his work as the lyricist and frontman with Drivin N Cryin.

Jensen conceived, curated, and produced “Let’s Go Dancing” via Tasty Good Records. She is also married to Kinney. The show features roughly 75 of her acrylic paintings, each one created as a direct response to the cover songs that appear throughout the series, performed by artists such as Abe Partridge, Amy Ray Band feat. Emily Saliers (of the Indigo Girls), Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish, Fang of Gore (a Gang of Four), Gordon Gano (of the Violent Femmes), Peter Buck and Mike Mills (of R.E.M.), and dozens more.

The cover art for Abe Partridge’s single by Anna Jensen.

Varying in size and mood, the paintings function as emotional translations—snapshots of how a photograph, a story, a lyrical phrase, a chord change, or a simple melody lands in Jensen’s imagination.

The show is a traditional gallery presentation and a map of devotion. Each canvas is tethered to a song, and each song becomes a jumping-off point for color, gesture, and abstraction steeped in Southern punk rock imagery. The cumulative effect mirrors Kinney’s catalog: wide-ranging, deeply felt, and guided by instinct rather than rigid structure.

The six week span of the exhibition will feature live performances by some of the artists who contributed to “Let’s Go Dancing,” giving immediate life to the songs that inspired the paintings. It’s a full-circle moment—music inspiring art, art reframing music, and community binding it all together.

Check back soon for details.

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January 26, 2026January 26, 2026 RadATL Atlanta shows, New music

Club Silencio brought the music of David Lynch to The Garden Club at Wild Heaven on Friday, January 23

Meghan Dowlen of Club Silencio. Photo by Jeff Shipman.

On January 23, The Garden Club at Wild Heaven transformed into a darkened threshold between worlds as Club Silencio paid loving tribute to the music of David Lynch’s films and television series. Billed as a celebration of what would have been Lynch’s 80th birthday, the atmosphere ebbed and flowed with a deep knowledge of just how much this music breathes, trembles, and rumbles.

The night began with a Morphine cover dubbed Cure For Pain, which found saxophone player Ben Davis joined by bass player and vocalist David Railey, and drummer Robbie Nelson paying homage to Cambridge, Mass’ once great low rock trio. The group’s set was a well-balanced counterpart to Club Silencio, crafting an atmosphere that was both fun and foreboding while channeling Morphine’s slow-burning fusion of jazz, blues, and alternative rock in songs such as “You Look Like Rain” (featuring Matt Coleman), “Cure For Pain,” and “Honey White.”

Club Silencio drew from the haunted lullabies and skronking unease of soundtracks from films such as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Inland Empire, and, of course, Twin Peaks. Vocalist Meghan Dowlen brought a commanding presence to the stage, her voice equal parts torch song and apparition, while the band—Jeffrey Bützer on guitar, TT Mahony playing keys, saxophone player Ben Davis, bass player Matt Steadman, guitarist Henry Jack, and drummer Sean Zearfoss—proved deeply fluent in Lynch’s cinematic language of mood, menace, and overdrive. “The Pink Room” and Julie Cruise’s “Rocking Back Inside My Heart” from Twin Peaks laid the ground for the band to show off some of it’s own flare while taking on the Lynchian hits: “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” from Eraserhead, Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” from Blue Velvet, and Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” from “Wild At Heart.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The evening peaked for me when I was unexpectedly invited to sit down on the stage with Bützer, Davis, and Dowlen while they serenaded me with the painfully sincere “Just You” a.k.a. James’ sappy acoustic love song from Twin Peaks. It was just a few days after my birthday, and for as much trash as I talk about James’ character, the situation was hilarious. Davis nailed those exaggerated high notes with a devotion to the bit—trusting the audience to follow his lead, never spelling anything out—pushing past sincerity and into something beautifully, mischievously funny. After all, humor has always been an integral part of Lynch’s films as well.

Lynch once said that “music is a ‘magical’ tool that can convey emotions and moods faster and more directly than film.” Club Silencio understands this instinctively, and honored the notion by trusting atmosphere, feeling, and form above all else.

Check out a gallery of images from the show below. All photos by Jeff Shipman.

The setlist
“Pink Room” / “Ghosts of Love”
“In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)”
“Love Letters”
“Blue Velvet”
“I’m Waiting Here”
“That Magic Moment”
“Just you”
“Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart”
“Wiked Game”
“Into the Night”
“Song to the Siren”
“Sycamore Trees”
“Locomotion”
“In Dreams”
“Falling”

Check out more releases featuring Club Silencio’s players

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January 11, 2026January 11, 2026 RadATL New music

RadATL’s favorite Atlanta albums of 2025

Throughout much of last year, Atlanta’s music scene felt like an S curve, emulating the backstreets, house shows, practice spaces, DIY venues, clubs, and warehouses that punctuated so many late-night excursions. Each turn revealed a different version of all that “Atlanta music” can be. Punk barked and snapped with urgency, hardcore hit with blunt force, indie rock melodies and shoegazing textures ruled, while the city’s secret love affair with drone and experimental sounds churned and hummed in exciting new ways.

What ties these 15 albums together is pure intent. These are records made by artists who are aware of the ground beneath their feet, even while pushing outward. It comes through in their grit, patience, and refusal to sand down the edges. Some of these albums feel like snapshots of specific rooms and nights. Others stretch time, inviting listeners to sit with each note until the music becomes revelatory.

If you don’t see your favorite year-end picks here? Leave a comment with a link for us all to check out.

1. Ultra Lights: Ultra Lights (Chunklet Industries)
Ultra Lights’ self-titled, six-song LP blends wiry guitars, sharp melodies, and a restless beat into a taut, urgent album that demands an instant replay every time the needle comes up. The group features former members of Turf War and Illegal Drugs. As such, songs like “It’s Your Funeral,” “Clockin’ Out,” and “Nostalgia” rank among the finest post-punk and garage-fueled numbers the city has ever produced; each track leaving a lingering echo in the air. There’s a precision to Ultra Lights propulsive sound, a sense that every chord and drum hit is calculated, yet it remains unpredictable, yielding an energy that feels alive and electric.

2. Franks atl: Ode To Lucenay’s Peter
With Ode to Lucenay’s Peter, Franks atl bends Appalachian ghosts and downtown Atlanta drone into something intimate and quietly unhinged, with Brian Frank Halloran’s cello and Frank Schultz’s banjo circling each other like wary old friends. Expanding upon Halloran’s work in Smoke and w8ing4UFOs and Schultz’s past in Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel, the record drifts and gnaws at the edges, lingering in the room like a half-remembered dream.

3. Sword II: Electric Hour (section1 Records)
Sword II’s Electric Hour turns jittery guitars and elastic rhythms into a collection of songs that are both nervy and warm. The album hums with restless momentum, balancing lush atmosphere and sharp musical instincts with a melodic patience that reveals more with each listen.

4. Token Hearts: Token Hearts (Midnight Cruiser Records)
Token Hearts’ self-titled LP hums with lived-in melodies and ragged resolve, stitching together jangly indie rock and bruised Americana in a way that feels both familiar and quietly defiant. With songs such as “Behind These Walls,” “Amateurs,” and “American Lens,” Buffi Aguero (Subsonics) and Patrick O’Conner are the creative nucleus leading a rotating cast of players, finding slow beauty in the fray, turning hard-earned miles and small moments into songs that are warm and resonant.

5. Hubble: 1,000 Heads (Rope Bridge Records)
Hubble’s 1,000 Heads bristles with restless energy and bruised melodies, from the skittering urgency of “Starhead” and the narcotic swirl of “Reviver” to the punk‑tinged skronk of “Chrome,” painting an Atlanta sound that’s both defiant and introspective.

6. Ultisol: Precession of the Equinox
Ultisol’s debut album, Precession of the Equinox was conceived and composed by multi-instrumentalist Daniel Lamb. Each song blends drone and classic guitar sensibilities, as Lamb’s celestial strumming is anchored by a bucolic tangle of acoustic resonance and Southern avant-garde atmosphere. Produced by Dale Eisinger (YVETTE, House of Feelings), Precession expands its reach with contributions from various collaborators weaving together noise, raw textures, and wide-eyed sonic explorations into an immersive abstract wash of sound. Banjo rolls, field recordings, and ambient textures swirl together creating something both grounded and cosmic—an astral Americana for the ages.

7. Blammo / Riboflavin split LP (State Laughter)
Blammo and Riboflavin both called it a day just in time to release a split 12″ that stands as testament to the more adventurous pockets of Atlanta’s post-punk and new wave underground. Here, both bands tangle in jagged minimalism and a shambolic strum. Blammo shines a light on spiky German, Austrian, and Swiss post-punk energy. Riboflavin leans into a loose and hypnotic jangle. Sarah Prewoznik’s voice cuts through with icy shrillness while Graham Tavel sculpts intricate pop melodies. Tyler Roberts Channels the most elusive qualities of new wave’s undefinable inflections. Ian May and Josh Feigert’s guitars revel in a discordant haze. There is tremendous diversity here, as each track veers from smooth to maniacal, humming along with fleeting moments of noisy brilliance, harmony, and anxiety.

8. Insomniac: Om Moksha Ritam (Blues Funeral Recordings)
Insomniac’s debut album, Om Moksha Ritam, comes on quietly at first, like billowing storm clouds scraping across a foreboding sky. The album’s opening number, “Meditation,” bursts with droning rhythms. “Mountain,” “Forest,” “Desert,” and “Sea” invoke the cinematic imagery of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western film scores, steeped in late-night ambiance. Each song sways between delicate intimacy and glacial crescendos of rhythm, distortion, and trance-like vocal mantras that peak in the “Awakening,” gliding with intensity through the subconscious. If the end is nigh, Om Moksha Ritam is an immersive hymn calling down the mystical and forbidden forces that separate a dreaming mind from the waking world. R.I.P. Mike Morris.

9. Archeology: Gains In Perspective
Archeology’s Gains In Perspective thrives on the quiet tension between momentum and reflection, sounding like a band taking stock of where they’ve been without losing the nerve to push forward. It’s a record that rewards close listening, revealing its emotional weight not in grand gestures but in the accumulated force of carefully chosen moments.

10. Dillon & Paten Locke: Rations (Full Plate)
With Rations, Dillon & Paten Locke strip things down to their bare essentials, letting restraint, texture, and booming negative space do the heavy lifting. It’s a glowing and smooth record that commands the listener to lean in, finding power in what it withholds as much as what it reveals.

11. Upchuck: I’m Nice Now (Domino Recording Company)
I’m Nice Now sharpens Upchuck’s already feral brand of punk and indie rock into something leaner, louder, and more self-aware, pairing bile-spitting hooks with a street-level sense of humor that never dulls the blade. It’s an album that sounds like growing up without growing tame—still reckless, communal, and bristling with purpose.

12. CDSM: Convertible Hearse (Mothland & Exag’ Records).
Convertible Hearse barrels forward with CDSM’s serrated blend of noise, industrial-grade beats, and punk belligerence, sounding less like a collection of songs than a sustained act of controlled demolition. It’s confrontational and unpretty by design, but there’s a grim clarity beneath the chaos for those willing to stand close to the blasting zone.

13. Gringo Star: Sweethearts (Dizzybird Records)
Gringo Star’s Sweethearts trades indie-rock grit for a 1950’s pop shimmer, weaving together soft-focus textures that imbue their signature blend of garage rock and psychedelia with a new and introspective depth. The album’s first two singles, “Blood Moon” and “I Sleep to Dream,” highlight a musical evolution in progress, each one floating in reverb, harmonies, and instantly familiar melodies wrapped around love stories. The songs shape shift with dreamlike grace, expanding upon elements of both nostalgia and innovation, carrying the band into new terrain.

14. Jacob Chisenhall: Be Steel, My Heart
With Be Steel, My Heart, Jacob Chisenhall crafts a love letter to the pedal steel guitar. Songs such as “Flowers For Inez,” “Beachfront Bossa” (ft. Rose Hotel), and “One for Mr. Byrd” (ft. Paul Guy Stevens) turn quiet resolve into a weighty pop excursion, stitching heavenly rural melodies to the kinds sparkling atmosphere that would make Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson smile.

15. Various Artists: Friends of G.G. (Scavenger of Death)
Friends of G.G. is a dispatch from the underbelly of Atlanta’s post-punk continuum—noisy, melodic, and creatively off-center. This compilation shines a light on a dozen side players who have passed through G.G. King’s orbit over the last 18 years, paying homage to the city’s kaleidoscopic lo-fi, post-punk, and hardcore roots. Tracks by Wymyns Prysyn, Whiphouse, and Gentleman Jesse blend with cuts from bands that never made it out of the basement. La Serra’s “Horses” reveals some charming indie pop intricacies hiding in G.G.’s avant-garde tapestry of sound. It’s a fever dream of blown-out demos brought together in a pastiche of outsider anthems and flashes of brilliance from Atlanta’s post-punk family tree—less a retrospective more an atlas of living breathing friction and resilience.

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December 15, 2025December 15, 2025 RadATL New music

Revisiting Pylon Reenactment Society’s ‘Christmas Daze’

Pylon Reenactment Society’s “Christmas Daze” captures that peculiar mix of frantic motion and quiet clarity that settles in around the holidays. The song was born on instinct during a late-2021 rehearsal: bass player Kay Stanton dropped a riff that snapped the room into sharp focus. Within minutes the group had a new song on their hands. They carried that momentum straight into Chase Park Transduction, tracking the tune on December 29, 2021, while the season’s energy still hung in the air. The song was initially released via Bandcamp on December 1, 2023.

“Christmas Daze” follows a lone traveler who runs out of gas on the way to and from a family gathering. But the breakdown serves as a reset. Instead of leaning into frustration, the song’s narrator reconnects with the small charms that make the holidays worthwhile. Tiny flashes of warmth are found in roadside stillness, the glow of passing decorations, and the quiet pause between obligations.

Pylon Reenactment Society. Photo by Christy Bush

PRS delivers it all with their signature taut and wiry pulse. Vanessa Briscoe Hay’s voice cuts through like a cold wind, carrying equal parts wry humor and wonder. Jason NeSmith’s guitar sparks and coils around Gregory Sanders’ crisp drumming, and Stanton’s riffs propel the music forward. ‘Christmas Daze’ hums with the notion that life moves better when you stay present enough to catch the beauty flickering in every passing second.

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November 16, 2025November 16, 2025 RadATL New music

Record Review: The Tear Garden, ‘Astral Elevator’

Since Edward Ka-Spel and cEvin Key first merged their creative worlds in the late 1980s—bridging the surreal poetics of the Legendary Pink Dots with the dystopian electronics of Skinny Puppy—their collaboration has always thrived on the outer limits of both realms. Astral Elevator reinforces their hold on that liminal space where mysticism and melody blur into something strange and beautiful.

“Lady Fate” with its spacious and droning melodies rekindles the psychedelic beauty, melancholy, and paranoia of the Tear Garden’s defining masterpiece, 1992’s The Last Man To Fly. Later, “Square Root” emerges like a spectral echo from 1987’s Tired Eyes Slowly Burning, subtly recalling the supreme weirdness of “My Thorny Thorny Crown.” Its interplay of a high, brittle vocal winding around a low, counting voice vaguely personifies a ritualistic dialogue between innocence and gravity—an auditory tether to the project’s origins, rendered here with the clarity that comes from decades of stylish evolution.

Astral Elevator, eschews the impenetrable darkness of 1996’s To Be An Angel Blind, The Crippled Soul Divide and 2000’s Crystal Mass. Here, the group—rounded out by Randall Frazier and Dre Robinson—reaches for a shimmering new plane where memory and revelation become one, and the music drifts like a transmission from some unknown realm that lies just beyond the edge of consciousness.

“War Crier” unravels around a skeletal rhythm, layered with shimmering synths that pulse like a dim heartbeat. Ka-Spel’s voice hovers in the mix like a transmission from a lost frequency—detached yet intimate. “Toten Tanz” channels the darker undertones of Key’s industrial roots, twisting through metallic percussion and vaporous drones, while “Exorcism” leans into rhythmic dissonance; its tension underscored by cascading synths that crackle like static in the ether.

“Swallow the Leader” balances that darkness with warped melodies, unfolding like a carnival waltz in zero gravity. “Chow Mein” delivers the record’s sharpest dose of surrealism, pairing grotesque humor with a hypnotic, playful groove. “Unreal” lands as one of the album’s most striking statements—a reflective confrontation with modern disconnection, holding a mirror to the hollowing effects of AI on human intuition, creativity, and trust in perception. It’s both prophetic and deeply personal, as its synthetic textures frame a lament for authenticity in an increasingly artificial world.

“It Just Ain’t So” and “Always Take the Highway” tap into a lighter strain of the chaotic pulse that propelled “Inquisition” from Skinny Puppy’s Last Rights.

By the time “Undiluted Bliss” fades into focus, the record resolves its internal tension—weightless yet grounded, alien yet profoundly human. Ka-Spel, Key, and Co. refine their own musical vocabulary. The result is a work of hallucinatory grace, and an ascent that is entirely of this moment, yielding a worthy successor to the Tear Garden’s most luminous works.

Press play below to watch Randall Frazier’s video for “In The Name Of” and Cory Gorski’s “A Return.”

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