Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0066 (Feb. 7, 2025)

HDD.

Haven’t done this in a while. Here’s a bunch of music that landed on my hard drive from March 11, 2024. Music from another era (last year). Can you focus on much these days? Tails stay long, so every once in a while I like to go back and cover things that a lot of people have forgotten about, because we have no collective memory anymore. Just me, piecing it together.

This one’s free too because maybe people need to hear these five records today.

How about that.

SHIT & SHINE Masters of All This Hell LP (Antibody)

If you’re going to have dozens of releases under your title, and they’re either going to fall into overdriven noise or electronic jumpcuts-n-samples, it would behoove you to do what Craig Clouse accomplishes here, finding that third space in between. Not entirely the humor-bound side of S&S’s beat patrol, but not without a lack of it, here are a bunch of stim bombs for when you’re looking at three screens at once while eating takeout, and you’re off the clock. Getting mighty sharp here as a producer, I yearn for the days when someone would’ve tried to rap over this. Way way leftfield street racer soundtracks.

THE BEVIS FROND Focus on Nature 2xLP (Fire)

On the eve of some rare US tour dates, I sit here in astonishment – here’s a guy I’ve been listening to since I started listening with intent some 30 years ago or more, and Nick Salomon’s voice hasn’t changed, his stance is exactly the same, another set of 20 vital jangly British psych pop songs delivered. Some urgent, some backhangs, the same crack musicianship across all of them. Unreal. When someone gets to this level of accomplishment, truly what do you do? What reason is there to stop if you have it in you?

XMAL DEUTSCHLAND Early Singles 1981-82 LP (Sacred Bones)

Excellent collection of this German group’s pre-4AD output for Zickzack. What a difference a year makes – 1981 finds them a spiky Kleenex/Liliput contemporary, itchy and sharp like a hedgehog covered in fiberglass insulation, but by 1982 they are in the Siouxsie-esque morticia mode we knew them for across their career. This sandbox mode suits them quite well, made in a time when rules around this sort of music were both egalitarian and few, and the spine of post-punk was being designed around sounds few had harnessed before.

TORREY s/t LP (Slumberland)

This didn’t register so hard last year but I keep coming back to it, especially in the car. It’s that artifice side of Slumberland I mentioned last week with the Laughing Chimes. Torrey has a couple of great ideas that others have had (Cocteaus, Blonde Redhead, Pale Saints, the Charlottes, Lush) and spin a whole album out of them that touches on it all, stays true to a specific sound and rips holy hell around the space within. Every few minutes we get a different bend into another fantasy zone of periwinkle thrash and lavender mood. Close to Dummy in terms of where they’re going but for the non-Stereolab side indie/noise pop. Those Trans Champs / The Fucking Am records never hit like they shoulda, why don’t these bands come in and right that wrong?

NAUM GABO F. Lux LP (DFA)

Long-awaited debut from this Glasgow duo featuring lifetime idol Jonnie Wilkes (one-half of Optimo, the best DJs in the world), growing from a remix-production effort into something for the studio, and after 15 odd years we finally get an album of minimal haunt, industrial nightpulse and Coil-esque shadow lurk worthy of the wait. But where are DFA records in stores? Have you seen any? Is the new set like Tiger Lily (box counts of LPs hiding in a New Jersey warehouse somewhere)? Your guess is as good as mine, but when you find it, maybe this record’ll have the chance to scare the shit outta you, too.

Let’s get some sleep - Doug M