It’s another Bandcamp Friday! If you want to spread a some love, support, and a little cash to some local artists today—or any other day for that matter—here’s a quick list of releases I’ve been blasting throughout this whole global pandemic thing.
Warm Red’s debut album, Decades of Breakfast is out now. Vinyl copies should be arriving any day now via State Laughter Records. In the meantime, catch this bit of Atlanta post-punk’s saving grace on Bandcamp. For fans of the Birthday Party, the Jesus Lizard, early Pere Ubu and the likes.
Lowtown has a self-titled, six-song EP posted up on Bandcamp right now. Guitar player and singer Beaux Neal shows off an impressive vocal range, and the group of musicians on the album—singer and guitarist John Pierce, drummer Russell Rockwell, and bass player Aidan Burns—create a rich and mysterious Southern post-indie rock ambiance.
Thousandaire’s self-titled LP (The Colonel Records) has been making the rounds for a few months now, and you know I’ve been championing it from the beginning. The riffs have only become more potent over time. It’s got that Pavement, Superchunk, Meat Puppets, Dinosaur Jr., mid-’80s SST kind of vibe going on, and we could all use a bit more of that in our lives right about now.
Zano Bathroom has a new full-length out, titled Afrikan Sciences Presents: Zano Bathroom’s Universe From A Different Hip Hop. True to the album’s name, this is hip-hop from the outer limits— culled from the same hallowed Huntsville, Alabama soil that transformed the man Herman Poole Blount into the almighty Sun Ra. Zano has never been afraid to dive headlong into some abstract, avant-garde places while honing killer beats and rhymes. For this offering he joins forces with his old cohort Eric Porter aka Afrikan Sciences, and they take hip-hop to deeper into the cosmos than ever before.
Misanthropic Aggression is back with the Covid-19 Reset EP via Boris Records. The tape features six new songs that find bass player and vocalist Jake Benedict taking over drumming duties—at least for this recording—alongside vocalist and guitar player Chris Hammer. The first song to be released from the EP, titled “The Effect of COVID-19 Isolation on the Mind / Unda Nona” is a twisted maze of scream therapy that goes head-on with quarantine/election season anxiety. The Full EP is available on Bandcamp now, with a handful of bundle packages available. Tapes are out November 17.
Adam McIntyre of the Pinx recently released Black Planet, is a twisted rock excursion that finds McIntyre embracing a mixed bag of musical elements (free jazz, funk, and so)—sounds that he’s been denying himself for years, while keeping the Pinx on course as a modern psychedelic rock band from the South.
Symbiote’s latest five-song, Privilege Of A Daydream, blasts five cuts of no nonsense screaming, riffing, classic hardcore, with no real guitar leads to speak of. It’s a powerful and direct release that’s primed for a year of socio-political turmoil.
In August, death rock and goth-punk trio Tears for the Dying unveiled their second full-length, titled Memories. The album was engineered and produced by Tom Ashton of the March Violets, and recorded at Subvon Studio in Athens. Adria Schlenker, Debra Beat, and Candy Cancer shed the keyboard for most of the album’s tracks in favor of a raw, guitar-driven assault—all three members share guitar and bass duties here. Check out that smoldering cover of Christian Death’s “Spiritual Cramp”!
It’s been a minute since Cave Bat last checked in. Cetacean Creation finds the reconfigured experimental musical trio of Nathan Brown, Priscilla Smith, and Phi (Rob Sepanski) returning with a more song-oriented approach to their sci-fi soundscapes.
Nicol Eltzroth Rosendorf‘s latest LP, Big Other features four musical pieces that are bursting at the seams with droning beauty, anxiety, texture, and ambiance. The album includes contributions from Jarboe (SWANS), James Joyce (Cheifs, Noot ‘d Noot, Car Vs. Driver), Shannon Mulvaney (Maganpop, Anna Kramer, Clobber), Brian Halloran (Smoke, W8ing4UFOs), Billy Fields (Follow For Now, Dionne Farris, W8ing4UFOs), and Xander Cook, with liner notes by author Blake Butler.
Near and dear to my heart, the Cheifs’ four-song 7-inch (Missing Fink Records) stamps in time bass player and vocalist Bob Glassley’s next generation Cheifs lineup—drummer James Joyce, guitarist Scott Hedeen, and vocalist Brad Castlen—expanding beyond the original L.A. hardcore outfits early ‘80s repertoire. It’s an Atlanta punk rock sleeper classic, mixed by Bill Stevenson of the Descendents! I was honored to write the liner notes for this one and final offering from the group.
Duet For Theremin and Lap Steel‘s Scott Burland and Frank Schultz returned this year with a new, eight-song masterpiece of haunting, luminous atmosphere, titled Halocline. Read an interview with Burland and Schultz on RadATL!
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