Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0065 (February 4, 2025)

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HELLO and welcome to another bi-weekly installment of Heathen Disco. Use this as a guide, a balm, a path of study to worlds unoccupied by the banal.

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LAVENDER FLU Tracing the Sand By the Pool LP (In the Red)

While listening to their new-ish self-released improvised album Los Pelacaras, I went back and reminded myself of the previous Lavender Flu records, particularly the divide between “main” ones like Barbarian Dust or Mow the Glass and the looser efforts in between (Heavy Air, their debut, supersedes any comparison in this regard; it is singular, no other records are quite like it). It’s all canon, but these “main” records put a premium on songcraft in a way that caps their depths, with stylish monuments to rages of the past. Tracing the Sand By the Pool is in that former camp, but breaks rank by being their brightest effort to date, channeling their dirge up towards assembly-line pop of the ‘60s, in the Glen Campbell / Penn-Oldham / B.J. Thomas / Jimmy Webb vein. There’s still a lot of energy to expend here, in full-on punk motifs like “Patron Eyes (Cocoon 2069)” and in outsize focus on singular elements (the huge sikepop explosion in “New Tongue,” the high morning string synths in the Brill Building pop of “Kayfabe on Arcturus,” and the seismic percussion that starts “Speak to Us in Feathers” which cherishes only one or two bricks in the Wall of Sound). But whatever clouds that had been bringin’ ‘em down over the past ten years appear to have lifted, leaving us with a fully skyward view from the cellar, all the protections afforded in the past brought out for display, for sale on a card table in the noonday sun. It's a defining effort from a band that’s always shied from definition, and honestly the best point to jump in since their all-consuming first album from 10 years ago.

SHINICHI ATOBE Discipline 2xLP (DDS)

Got pretty excited to see each of the tracks on this labeled as dubs (“SA Dub 1” through “SA Dub 8”), like we were gonna get the full minimal wreckitude of Shinichi Atobe’s previous works for DDS and Basic Channel through an even danker interface. Turns out no, but what does surface in these tracks (all mixed, re- or otherwise by label head and Demdike Stare collaborator Miles Whittaker) belies a very Germanic techno/synth pulse, arpeggiated and high-beamed. “SA Dub 5” might as well be the “E3” to Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4, and the opening track points that way as well; when anything gets too basic, like the FM synth closer, a patina of static comes in to remind you where you are.

TORI KUDO Studio Village Hototoguiss 2007-2022 2xLP (Bruit Direct)

There are a few hundred artists of the last 40-50 years who’ve been so prolific and sui generis in their practice, with staggering bodies of work, that it would be a significant undertaking to come to them fairly late in the game and try to assess. There’s also someone who will have spent the time to look down upon you for not having been so advanced as they are (LOL) in the appreciation of these individuals and their works. It’s kind of the most annoying thing about digging in, and some of you do it all the time and never outgrew it. And I would hate for anyone to feel that way, especially about Tori Kudo, whose work doesn’t provide any specific ledge for entry, because all of it is. This recent collection portends his visits to a nearby recording studio, built in a former mental hospital, and engaging with its owner and his stash of instruments by coming in and recording something now and then. Over this collection (surely cherrypicked), that’s 45 pieces, some shorter than a minute, and reflective of how we think about songs until we find ourselves performing them in some way, going deeper within them in order to let them go. The number of interpretations of these songs, from Donovan to Beethoven, speak to this engagement, but his own thoughts fill the rest, phrases and patterns, possibly samples of his own voice (the “chorus” in “Travail des Vacances” made me loop back) in a recursion of creativity that ensnares us. This collection is aking to stumbling on someone else’s notebook and the kind of person you become after poring over a greatness that is totally foreign to your experience. No shame required to gain experience.

OPEN HEAD What Is Success LP (Wharf Cat)

Spindly, flanged, floppy post-punk chank from the other end of a tube. This quartet out of Kingston, NY plays the alienation game from inside out, anchoring sunset heat chords against an intentionally broken songwriting process that crowds crooked, processed guitar lines into discord. They must hear Glenn Branca the same way Polvo did, or maybe Tar, and if their take on the other certainly has precedent, it’s done in a way that’s so artificial and meticulously crafted that it stands out, and they certainly have some heat under their asses, as later songs on the album prove out. Stands out when it’s not standing out.

GEOLOGIST & D.S. A Shaw Deal LP (Drag City)

Sir Doug Doug Shaw in the house! Always a friendly and charming individual to run into at shows back in NYC (we’d yell “Doug!” at each other), before I ever understood what a formidable guitarist and composer he was. I’m sure Gang Gang Dance and Animal Collective had crossed paths at points, and that may be what leads us here, with Shaw on strings and Brian “Geologist” Weitz processing them. We get to hall of mirrors levels of abstraction, reverb and delay building temples out of lines and figures, from a DMT fantasy of crystal gorges (“Route 9 Falls”) to spidery zipper lines creaking in and out of spectral melody (“Ripper Called”) to rhythmic activity (“Petticoat,” like studying ants) and ultimately to a restful, dolorous conclusion. All of these tracks run together and the differences settle in quickly, plus we’re treated to a collage of studies, which may have laid the groundwork for this collab, at the end, in rapid succession, a big thing built atomically in a way that makes deeper sense with further spins.

Thanks a lot – Doug M