Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0017

Welcome to it, then.

A plea for support: Rebecca Burchette of the band Multicult is dealing with treatment for a very sudden and aggressive diagnosis of breast cancer and could use your help. I am decidedly not a fan of most noise rock group that rolls up over the last 10-15 years because a lot of it has been done and the new jacks aren’t upping the game. Multicult is a rare exception. I find myself listening to them a lot, years after the fact, and I look forward to whatever they have going (especially with the rumor of who would be drumming for them), and most importantly a future where Rebecca is healthy and free to keep at it. Please donate what you can: https://gofund.me/66c0360b

Multicult aren’t fools and just giving the music away, but if you’re unfamiliar entirely you can listen here.

Seventeen is a threshold in a lot of ways, and writing this for the past few months has netted me over my first goal of 200 subscribers. It’s also given me a little time to think about the kind of criticism I want to levy against music from here on out. Reviews are something I read, because I like context along with my consumption with maybe a little bit of understanding that I’m not fully alone in this pursuit (what good is this work if not to share it). In doing so I tend to come across a lot of what I was always afraid I was headed for – the first-person solipsism, the “this is how IIIIIII would’ve done it” that tends to show up in some bearded, card-holding filmcrit circles, rather than celebrating the good and acknowledging what needs work from some valid formal perch other than a scale. I don’t think discussion is what I’m here to provide (though the work certainly should), but it would be really great to be able to continue this line of inquiry without inserting more of myself into it. I know I’m not the artist, nor do I want to be. But I want you to take this work for what it is: me, telling you why (mostly) you should be listening to these records I write about, or note if a show I went to is coming to your town or something you should look out for.

Still pushing these twice a week, hopefully you don’t vanish when most of this is up behind a gate. Can’t do it without ya.

Music and dialogue go to PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA // [email protected] – working on getting a CD player in the mix soon that won’t destroy the media at hand.

Tell your people about this person (me).

Here we go… 

THE DARK Sinking Into Madness LP (Toxic State)

Never been a metal or thrash expert, never will be, but I know from what’s performative against what sounds and feels right in this domain (both are needed to a degree), and this LA group has definitely got it solved on all the counts that matter. I’m also a bit skeptical when bands, particularly genre-adjacent ones, use the same name, but I’d put this The Dark proudly next to the teenage death rock group from early ‘80s Cleveland in terms of the impact of these releases. Back from a long hiatus with a different vocalist (so I’m told), The Dark (of now) make some really significant choices across Sinking Into Madness. It has clean, workmanlike studio dynamics that separate each instrumental track into a consistent part of the whole – none of this piss raw punx OK bullshit, as these people clearly know what they have and how to make it come across effectively, and anything less that what they got wouldn’t do. It sounds realistically like an ‘80s thrash record without much in the way of overdriven instruments or tinny, gated drums. It has enough depth for the authenticity and the faithfulness they exhibit to make any turns away from it stand out harder. The vocal performance on this, though … that is the deciding factor. This person sounds dangerous to themself, really angry and evil, capable of a throat gargle growl that smears into inchoate hell, but also comes together in this crooning, despondent, worn down, almost louche sorta way when things slow down that builds mood in a really effective and necessary way. Side 2’s “Face in the Mirror” and “Cursed” really stand out, putting this into a doom channel I wasn’t expecting and pacing the album’s flow in a remarkable way. Everything just clicks here: guitar that does absolutely what is needed, a focused rhythm section, a band working as a complete, maniacal system. 

DEAD AND GONE The Beautician LP (GSL, 2002, re. Iron Lung, 2024)

This Bay Area group’s swan song was $5 or under fodder for a great many years, and their three-albums-across-three-labels M.O. and largely turn-of-the-oughts timeline ensured, sadly, that their career would be trickier to evaluate as the years went on. Iron Lung has removed the guesswork here and given back to us their best work, unadorned, simply available again. Dead and Gone hammered away effectively in thrash, hardcore and sick-headed downer doom and skirted some guitar virtuosity and gothic pout in there, kept it both heavy and non-ponderous, like a malevolence that could fuck you up really fast and get outta there, leaving you to think about what just happened and how you’d ever recover. Bouncing between Prank and Alternative Tentacles to end up in the hair dye aisle as an amuse bouche between The Locust and The Mars Volta isn’t a fate I’d hope on too many, but also … imagine being Dead and Gone in putting this out there and then walking away. Time passes, enough is enough sometimes, life takes over, but it’s a crime that music being what it was didn’t leave enough of an opening for these guys. One of the most generous things I take away from them, then and now, and in some of the other projects like Creeps on Candy, is that they were very capable of picking up what Steel Pole Bath Tub was putting down. Highest praise I can really hand out to a band that wants to work the corner and the dark alley with such flawless flare. An outstanding thing to step to now that the prophecies have mostly come true.

CLOSET MIX 04 CD (Old 3C)

Two releases in, this rock band out of Columbus, Ohio has maybe never stood a better chance of memorializing themselves out of little more than what a great band can do given the time and resources. Speed’s got little to do with this; it doesn’t really pain me to make the observation that most Ohio bands at this level don’t get seen or heard much with viable stakes outside of Ohio, and so long as they’re able to live with that without much sour grapes, it is a noble, necessary pursuit, and probably makes a grudge-free existence there worthwhile. They picked a great name early on, referencing the preferred version of the third VU record, and are past the point of requiring adherence to whatever that aesthetic might provide. Whatever distance the years between this album and their EP may have caused in terms of tenor or purpose is showing up in the end product These are strong, warm, tough, impeccably-arranged, moody rock songs that cling to the roots and show real passion in their approach and level of comfort with their instruments and with one another. I hear big stacks of dusty records, regarded and revered, and some really great woodshedded guitar playing, lifting up weary voices as they are wont to do, the ghosts of American Music Club before they headed west. Very fine effort here.

IKE YARD 1982 LP (Dark Entries)

NY electro-isolationists Ike Yard released their debut album on Factory in 1982, but signs point to their year of highest activity being 1981. Before whatever instance pulled the plug on their efforts, more material was recorded, some posthumously released, all collected here for the first time on what could have plausibly been their second full-length. Unstoppably dosed urban anxiety, churning efficiently in stealth through an endless night, the black glove on Factrix’s skeletal hand; synths capable of getting the creep on without sicking you out. That twitch you had is coming back in style, but only in your mind. If you need more out of me to sell you on this, I don’t have it. Do it or don’t. I did!

KLAUS JOHANN GROBE Io Tu Il Loro LP (Trouble in Mind)

Euro smooth electronic pop duo Klaus Johann Grobe sat out the pandemic and returned with this new one earlier this year, to the notice of nearly no one. Plenty of records are worth ignoring – hell, you’re ignoring more than a million of them RIGHT NOW –  and while this latest installment won’t blow anyone’s hair back/off, it is a pleasantly mature escape into a place where you’re probably not right now, a land of well-fitting comfortable clothes and dark mahogany. All nine songs maintain the same laidback mix of airy analog synths, groovy rhythms, electric piano, and light, moody hedonism, hitting much the same way as the samba tracks on Richard Schneider Jr.’s collabs with Jaki Liebezeit from way back when.

Grobe on,

Doug Mosurock