Good Friday to you.

Finding myself absolutely inundated with new music at the moment. So much to cover, so much to cover from the year to now and beyond it as well. Must have gotten hold of about four dozen records in the past day or two. The tap is back on.

Good thing I am built for this and that I’m planning to post two times a week.

Thanks to all 42 of you who’ve signed up. Let’s see that grow. Le ‘em know I’m back and staring down your friends, interested parties, bands I wrote about, labels that put ‘em out, and the like. Sign ups at https://heathendis.co.

Records and tapes and well wishes to Doug Mosurock, PO Box 25717, Chicago IL 60625 USA.

Files and flies to [email protected].

New Heathen D set coming on Mixcloud shortly but feel free to enjoy anything that’s up there now.

Shouts to the inimitable Sami Reiss for the guidance in getting this enterprise started. Please pay him for his insights on furniture and home goods at Snake America. You really can’t put a price on the knowledge he drops, but he does, so pay up.

New Discos

PORCELAIN s/t LP (Portrayal of Guilt)

Austinites Porcelain seem young enough to have parents that could’ve caught Unwound back in the early ‘90s (unless I’m interpreting their band photo incorrectly), and using their locked-in, keening approach to post-hardcore, along with a Shotmaker-esque lead vocal and peppered-in nods to more thoughtful nu-metal outfits like the Deftones circa White Pony they bang out a good bit of worth on this debut. If you’re not just out to buy records that remind you of bands you already like, you’d obviously want more, and hopefully they’ll be breaking more than E strings on further releases.

YEA-MING AND THE RUMOURS I Can’t Have It All LP (Dandy Boy)

At the least, singer-songwriters want to be relatable, to make moments of music that get at a part of you that longs to be gotten. Yea-Ming Chen has been pushing at this scenario for at least three releases now, a refugee of the burning building that was Burger Records who seems to have found placement and purpose within a Bay Area coterie of musicians and labels who push pop with cotton balls and aplomb. Relatability is an easy gamble. The gentle, predictable style changes between country-esque pop and Kinks-lite metaphors on I Can’t Have It All are charming enough, a bit fed up, and winsome, but this one is just a little too pat, too familiar in the lull. Her voice recalls Kendra Smith at points (“I Tried to Hide”) but the music feels held back and formally constrained by need instead of want. What if you didn’t want to accept songcraft you can get anywhere? What if you can have it all?

JESSICA PRATT Here in the Pitch LP (Mexican Summer)

Again — at the least, singer-songwriters want to be relatable, to make moments of music that get at a part of you that longs to be gotten. The most special records serve as transportation; become transformative to your experience. They make you feel changed as a listener (though I’d argue that whoever you know to inhabit your corporeal being makes that change as much of a reality as you can).

Jessica Pratt has been capable of both these tasks since her debut, still a stunning work that explores every shake and quiver in her voice, and fighting through the hissy artifice of its follow-up On Your Own Love Again you still got that same quality, albeit lonelier. Whether 2019’s Quiet Signs dials in that relatability is for someone else to determine, but there’s a twinned patience and restlessness in a track like “Poly Blue” that sets her voice at a relief from the subtle orchestrations and melodic lilts which keep the ground moving under her.

The break between that work and this year’s Here in the Pitch finds more time spent crafting the sound surrounding her, giving her a bit of reprieve from the exacting nature of her earliest work, and support to play in the form to traditions we’ve left behind, from intimations at the Wall of Sound (“Life Is”) to the miracle of minimalist detail in “Nowhere It Was.” This is an estimable set, brief but at peace, resonant in exactly what it needs to be with not an ounce given to anything that would detract from it — absolutely nothing to hide, just like when she started. If you’re getting hits of a life another you is leading, that’s how you know this record worked.

I would be remiss to omit the musical contributions from Pratt’s side by Matthew McDermott, and remind you of this lone EP by his late ‘00s band Harangue, which will remind you of other things (The Walkmen, Roxy Music / Ferry solo, perhaps) but then wreck and erase any of the performative preconceptions of what you recalled. It’s not made for the many, but history is allowing you to grab it for about $5 and shipping at the moment, so make that consideration now.

TH BLISKS Elixa LP (Efficient Space)

Out of Australia (Newcastle and the bush) and Tasmania comes a second album by excellently singed trio Th Blisks, a collaboration between the always-welcome Yuta Matsumura (Orion, Low Life, The Lewers, Oily Boys, among others) and the members of the duo Troth (Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman). No uncharitable opinions here — this is a dream, floating in and out of trip-hop fog like someone putting Zero 7 tapes in Blues Control’s Walkman and taping it to the underside of a melodica. There was an agreeable formlessness to their excellent debut How So? that pushes all the way through to the other side here, either embracing pop songcraft more or floating further away. In either scenario it’s doing what this music’s spine somehow couldn’t (or wouldn’t) in its heyday, lifting a legacy into the overcast dawn.

Archival Discos

UNIQUE 3 Jus’ Unique 2×12” (Ten, 1990; Chill, 2014)

UNIQUE 3 Weight for the Bass 12” EP (Ten, 1990)

UNIQUE 3 Unique 4 12” EP (Ten, 1990)

UNIQUE 3 Activity 4 12” EP (Ten, 1991)

UNIQUE 3 No More 12” EP (Ten, 1991)

I blindly bought a random grip of electronic 12”s from a known quantity a couple of years back, a mix of early ‘90s club heat, almost-made-it R&B and some abstract/ambient techno comp that gave me pause. This has been a fun mode of collecting and selecting as of late (usually no risk outside of having one more cheap record nobody wants filling the stacks), pushing my Heathen Disco DJ sets into a curious direction where I’m being pulled by the secondary market and forcing me to think about the sounds without any real notion of the scenes around them.

The record in that stack that’s proved the wildest and most inscrutable was by a group called Unique 3, hailing from Bradford, West Yorkshire. These three (maybe four) guys came on in the heat of late ‘80s bleep techno, the tone-hammering, clean room style of electronic music that foregrounded single beeps and bloops repeated into a hook, with crisp drum tracks that made it feel like a future had finally arisen out of our near-term childhood visions of it. Such thinking probably made more sense back then (we’re probably too confused now to make much of a future that isn’t bearing down on us all in its own way with immense pressure), but in 1990 this was having a profound effect on upstart labels like Warp Records (who included an early Unique 3 track on their 10+1 Influences comp of music that paved the way for that first Sweet Exorcist output and everything that came with it).

Unique 3 were ready in the moment, with a short-lived deal on Virgin imprint 10 Records, and a debut album Jus’ Unique that split the diff between happy-to-be-here, conscious sample-based hip-hop and wired late night bleep journeys, occasionally crossing those streams, like on album closer “Weight for the Bass.” The double 12” pressing is worth seeking out, as there are tracks on that thing that could crack the ceiling on the right system with the pristine 45 RPM mastering job they’ve been given. But nothing on the record is as inscrutable as the “Weight for the Bass” EP, one of those records that has few comparisons. The 12” contains three exclusive mixes of the track, all instrumentals and more faithful to the original dubplate version (collected here in an edit) than what made it to the album closer.

Tight, militaristic percussion tracks that give the feel of Scottish highland drums race into fills and step back in minimal formation, with tonal pops bouncing off this manic piano lead (a sample clipped from Bas Noir’s “My Love Is Magic,” glued together in such a rapid, stinging pattern so as to recall staring into a strobe light), and due warning before that bass comes in. The dubplate version gives some warning in the drum patterns for the drop, to where you’ll get itchy with anticipation after a few spins, while the 3 Ton Mix applies a bit more squeak to massage the bassline into being. The Digi House Mix of this track might be the other dark horse fave, layering in even more percussion to where this starts to sound like a predecent for footwork, minimal and all-encompassing at once.

I got the chance to drop it at the end of an open deck session at Chicago’s Podlasie Club a few weeks back, and slotted between a bunch of DJs who’d come down to show us the goods in their USB sets, blasted out of the Klipschorns on a huge PA, this track sounded like nothing else in the mix, like music was still just being invented. Even the scheduler ran over and was taking pics of the sleeve (“this is a dagger!”).

Subsequent Unique 3 12”s from the same period got me a little less hyped. The Unique 4 EP contains two more mixes of “Weight,” a slightly lesser “safe chill” mix (still enjoyable but more club-focused) and some bonus beat action. The Activity EP touches up a few more album tracks and drops in “Fury in Force,” a rhyme track that stands out more than a B-side ought to. “No More” sees the year shift to 1991, with some greater than-less than mixes of what plays like a more conventional house track of the era, and a version that borrows elements of the “Weight for the Bass” stems to kinda stanch the bleeding beyond the innovation that marked their first run. There’s one more single in the mix with two different pressings, highlighting the track “Rhythm Takes Control” that have been more trying to source stateside.

Unique 3 were dropped after “No More,” and didn’t release any music between 1993 and 2007. Comps are available on streaming platforms that tell more of the story, headlining activity in the late ‘00s and mid ‘10s that prove there was something left in the tank. The prize in that collection, of course, is a longer and slower take on the “Weight” dubplate, 8 minutes to submerge and come back through this madness one last time. Out of the releases covered here, you’d want the 10 pressing of “Weight for the Bass” and the album the most, as they’re the easiest to get lost in, but these are the toughest pulls over here. It’s still worth it though, madness you’ll be dwelling on for a good long while.

OK that’s enough for now.

See You Next Tuesday — Doug Mosurock