Heathen Disco Music Newsletter #0035 (October 22, 2024)

Mid-life purgatorial drudgery being what it is, sometimes the only thing worse than the uncertainty of social instability is the certainty of life itself from one moment to the next, an unpredictable moment of awareness, second by second, that can truly turn a human inside out. As I sit here tonight, having my feelings transformed by a series of recordings that do very different things, it dawned on me that this music has always fixed everything that was knocked down (picked it back up) or otherwise laid on its edge in an attempt to normalize what had shifted. I feel better for having written all you see below, and believe that the combination of these words and this music will at least get you in the position from which I heard it.

Heathen Disco is a shared experience from a fixed point: here in my words, through the records I play. I am thrilled that 288 of you to date have trusted me enough to follow along, and I hope even more of you turn out in the weeks to come, when things get a little more exclusive around here.

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YUASA-EXIDE Information and Culture + Naturally Reoccurring CS (Round Bale)

Hometaper power pop/groan ruckus from Minnesota. The writeup I read on this before putting it on makes it nearly impossible for me to set up the dartboard: the project’s center, Douglas Bussom (can’t ever really hate on a fellow Doug, well most of them), and began Yuasa-Exide while recovering from a spinal injury that left him unable to sit or stand with a guitar, so I’m presuming he wrote these songs laying down. He’s released over 20 albums under this guise, with help from friends on drums and some accompaniment, and does not care what we think about it. Aside from a couple of blurry photos, and of course the evidence on Bussom’s Bandcamp, this is all we have to go on. It seems like a trap to delve into the entire discography, but here are two entries from near the top of the new release stack, issued on a single cassette. It’s a lot to tackle at once, even in this form, and it draws enough attention to both his plight and the genuine quality of his music to rack up a few fans. And at the end of the day, in this choking world, that’s about as good as it’ll get.

Imagining GBV or Honey Radar surviving under the conditions in which Bussom is forced to live: broke, TV-addled, stuck with a single J Mascis-esque vocal octave, given plenty of time to reflect on life, and dependent upon batteries (the band name comes from a battery factory Bussom grew up near, and song titles include “Extra Long Life” and “Fuck You Duracell”) and you’re getting a good idea of what’s in store. Plenty of hooks, plenty of patience, varying degrees of fidelity (only cleans up once or twice), definitely some keepers in here. As a journal of life being lived with the scope pulled way inwards, it’ll give you pause to hit the play button – we are listening to nothing less than artistic survival.

CELL\BORG Smash Blips LP (Dot Dash Sounds)

Bicoastal recording project riding the synth wave to clean, precise lines and the human messiness crawling out from under it. Guitars, bass, drums/machines and electronics cube up all around some frigid vocals, occasional sax, and binary melodies. Too careful by far for what transpires, and not a lot to go on here; if you’re not feeling great, this won’t help – some good ideas maybe in search of a deeper inspiration than post-Neu!/Rother solo pop and the notion of robotics and stage names, but I get it. Dymaxion they are not, but the heart being in the right place gives an awful lot of leeway these days, don’t it. May come back to this once the election stress settles down.

CORKER Hallways of Grey LP (Feel It)

Cincinnati’s Corker made a dent with their debut Falser Truths, but I’m doing an A/B to this new one and I have questions. Why start your second album, just a year apart from its follow-up, in the same chord that the first one does? The title track here sounds like a continuation of “The Cold Air,” the superior leadoff from the previous, minus the dynamic shifts and elliptical rhythm lock. But maybe that’s alright – you do what you want with your own songs. In Corker’s case, they add more synth and pull out the kinks and snarled edges that sped up and slowed down Falser Truths, but leave the jade and static intact, ultimately showing us the difference between basement Killing Joke (“Distant Dawn,” “No Necessities”) and basement Interpol (“Vital Fall”), with some asides for Wipers Jr. (most everything else) and a bit of the math rock that outgassed from before (“Sunken Submarine”). At its best, Hallways of Grey finds something else to react to, be it the drum machine of the closer, or the sampled/pre-taped vocals on “Forever Silent,” which creates a remarkable amount of undertone tension and restraint against the instruments churning beneath. Probably a better band to be experienced live, just to hear this open up and pinned to the ceiling with noise and movement. Hopefully the stars align this winter and I find myself watching them on a super cold night, which only seems fitting.

BROKENCHORD Stone Island Tracks LP (South of North)

Solo groove recordings from one Ernestas Kausylas of Lithuania, correctly finding the grey soul of Soviet concrete and dialing in straight to the core. It’s essentially a beat demo, but laced with enough texture and genuinely lost, debased melt to becomes something else entirely, like those endless Swell Maps instrumentals from Train Out of It or Whatever Happens Next…, or some buried track in a Mo’ Wax comp next to a Money Mark instrumental, or a Blurt 45 played at 33. Hazed, delayed, forever mislaid, this has all the 4:30 A.M. confusion of the after-afters, too worked up to sleep and too tired to make it home. Sink into that weird couch, watch your beer get warm. Still some copies left at https://diskono.com/products/brokenchord-stone-island-tracks-lp.

BLACK PUS Terrestrial Seethings LP (Thrill Jockey)

Had to miss the recent Lightning Bolt experience here in town, and honestly I regret it. There was a time in my life where I had at least one opportunity to see them every month for almost a year, and fairly regularly after that, opportunities that it eventually became too difficult to take advantage of, with a bunch of aggressive men forming a rugby scrum around the duo as they took to the floor. Even without the bro-sweat the communal energy in the room swelled to the same levels as the precise, aggressive, singular noise they were churning out of that bass channel and pingy snare. No one could do it better, unless they were Ruins, and we weren’t seeing them over from Japan much after a while.

Black Pus is Lightning Bolt drummer Brian Chippendale’s other main project active for almost as long as that project, and it goes places Lightning Bolt has and hasn’t, replacing the bass with triggered samples, electronic agony and a crumbling rainbow acid chaos that hasn’t been in the LB zone for quite a while. In between albums there’ve been a number of improvised and archival self-released efforts, building the jagged coral foundation on which Terrestrial Seethings is perched. Getting that extra level of unpredictability around such a signature percussive fuckbomb provides this insane strobing effect that amplifies all the stable sounds around them – you hear every beat clear as bells, and the infinite confusion of process sandwiched between each measure. With all the body horror around lately, maybe it’s fauna horror hiding in plain sight around us which will thin us out, and what better equipment than an album which sounds like it’s specifically made to chase rats out into the open. Pump it up!

Be cool — Doug Mosurock