Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0021

Hey everyone. Feeling a bit blah tonight but the mail don’t stop, so here’s five more reviews of things you should know about.

Can I ask a favor? If you’re following Heathen D in any form and have music you want me to cover, please reach out directly. I am easy to find online, I have a lot going on, and the thought of having to check my Instagram follower feed to see that someone has a project feels a little disingenuine. If you don’t want me to check out that music, simply do nothing more, but I’m sure we’re both tired of the lack of context and the passive drift of sound in our lives. Throwing this out into the void twice a week to be indirectly acknowledged from somewhere in the void doesn’t inspire. Put it on the line or don’t.

Like me, for instance. I do the Mixcloud show, and I want you to listen to it, so I provide it to you here. See how easy?

• Pulse Emitter — Fairy Tree

• Wren Kitz — The Shroud

• Clinic Stars — She Won’t Be

• Clay Allison — Fell From the Sun (live)

• Help — Run Away

• Stephen Mallinder — Working (You Are)

• Blue Tattoo — Love Can Do

• D Mob — C’mon and Get My Love (Second Coming Mix)

• Roy Ayers — Running Away

• Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 — February

• Love as Laughter — Destination 2000

• Gabor Szabo — Spellbinder

• Thine Retail Simps — O.B. on the Move

• Horace Andy — Skylarking

• Amps for Christ — Bastard Strings

• Tom Rapp — Touch Tripping

• Scythe — Cyclone

• Guests — Terrazzo

• Verlaines — Pyromaniac

• Kelley Stoltz — Reni’s Car

• Moviola — Broken Horses

• Guiding Light — Sterb Doch

• Shudder to Think — Thou Shalt Not Kill

• Bullet Lavolta — Circuits

• The Party of Helicopters — +8 Sack of Fear / The Tundra

• Excess Blood — Secrets to Lie

• Wipers — This Time

• Another Dancer — Slow Sports

• Gary Toms — Hurricane

• Feeling Figures — Social Anatomy

How do you get in touch?

[email protected]

PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA

Unless I’m misunderstanding things, in which case, whatever.

That’s it! Now onto recent music.

AERIAL M The Peel Sessions LP (Drag City)

Never really checked out Aerial M / Papa M / M Is the Thirteenth Letter in any incarnation; no excuses either, I just didn’t feel that first For Carnation EP and decided to draw a line. Coming in now to this, I made a bit of a tactical error – David Pajo pushed a fair amount of Slint-adjacent doctrine towards these instrumentals (backed by Cassie Marrett Berman, and Tim Furnish and the late Tony Bailey from Crain and Parlour), and they come off as functionally correct, mannered, ballasted, patient and able to bring drama where there previously was none. One long instrumental sandwiched between two longer ones, a path in showing Mogwai how to fine-tune their game and make a career out of this. If there was too much of this sort of thing towards the end of the ‘90s, there’s not enough of it now, at least of this caliber.

ANOTHER DANCER I Try To Be Another Dancer LP (Bruit Direct)

Young-seeming/sounding folks from Brussels practice a hallogallo of their own, a malleable, bright pop sound beholden to no one specific scene or sound or technique. Not particularly troubled or worn down by dissent, fetish, scene or apparent hardship, this reminds me of what’s happening here with the productive generation here in Chicago, as subsumed by pop and abundance as uninterested in notoriety or solitude. If there’s any bedroom aspects here, all five of them are in it at the same time, jamming off one another’s ideas and finding freedom in being able to connect among themselves and through as far a reach as this debut album will allow, ostensibly building a cult of themselves, a temple of ideas vast and branching.

REARRANGED FACE Far Green Arcade LP (Tomothy)

Yelping jumpy post-punk miniatures with a James Chance soundalike on vocals and a jaunty, DEVO/Cravats-esque demeanor, sawed down and compact and restless. Lots of pattern work, some in an incorrect Zappa/Forbidden Zone camp zone, others looking inward like Pere Ubu New Picnic Time as fast as makes sense. Fat Atari-style synth and productive rhythm section squeeze a lot out of a little. An improvement over the first one in sound and composition, and worth seeking if any of these concepts tickle your brains.

ADDED DIMENSIONS Time Suck / Hellbent 7” EP (Domestic Departure)

Wasn’t publishing regularly when this came out earlier this year, but here’s a great EP by Richmond resident Sarah Everton with drum support from Bleeding/Reading Rainbow bandmate Rob Garcia, placing a marker on every beat in the measure. Boxy bass riffs, spoke-shouted vocals, drum/guitar lock in, all good. “In the System” seems like an appropriate title for such squared off, fenced-in energy seeping out of each edge of the grid. Final release on Erika Elizabeth’s wonderful Domestic Departure label, of which this, the econo jamming of her band Collate, and that remarkable Flex TMG 12” were the sweetest drops. Still a couple left if you can manage.

VERITY DEN “Household Changes” single (Amish)

Stars of the first Heathen Disco newsletter, North Carolina’s Verity Den come closer to standard songcraft with this Felt/Galaxie-brushed number, finding texture in between the plangent tones of a formally structured pop song. The lost, veering nature of their sound fights its way back in past the second chorus, but this should give those needing reassurance something more to hold onto.

Love ya,

Doug Mosurock