Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0076 (March 14, 2025)

One of the burgeoning regrets from the years I’ve spent writing about music in this fashion was the obligation to get it done. I can’t tell you (though I’m sure I’ve tried) how many beautiful weekends I spent in my tiny Brooklyn bedroom, burning through a pile of 7” singles while everyone I knew was out enjoying beautiful weather, going to the beach, making personal connections, etc. It’s the only regret I hold about the work: it took too much of me.

It’s like 76 degrees and sunny outside, the first warm day in Chicago of 2025. Do I want to tell you about music? Of course, but there’s a foot out the door to escape the nonstop miserablism of the year to date. I’m gonna leave making the wrong choices to elected “officials” today and appreciate this last hour of sun before the derecho, high winds and climate bullshit drag me back down. I suggest you do the same if possible.

JULES REIDY Ghost/Spirit LP (Thrill Jockey)

Have been amiss in keeping up with Reidy’s burgeoning guitar renaissance since the Feeding Tube one, but in this space (Berlin, acoustic balance, heavy processing) they’re conjuring up some real adventure: halting ballad overspill, mildly freak electronic frequencies, crystalline pluck and grand sweep strum. Plays like a story that’s slowly unfolding in real time, creating a space for contemplation. Outside of spa music for sure but this sort of spellcasting would work wonders in a room of one’s own, candles lit, auras glowing.

MIRANDA SPATULA & NOWHERE FLOWER Around and About You CS (PPM)

Cross-country feather-pushin’ contest in the lower rungs of fidelity, and lo does this work. More internal than the Nowhere Flower and Spatulas releases I’ve heard, this is a lovely tape-trade droner as well as a collection, without a note wasted (love the track “Riffs,” which sounds like they dumped out all their unused ideas onto an unsuspecting Guitar Center, and its companion “Under Danger Improv”). The bulk of this hits a supreme loner zone that few wish to tread, like Maxine Funke or playing the Nigel Bunn track on Killing Capitalism with Kindness backwards. Soul-baring nightswim float, plunked out strand by strand. Beauty is still in abundance these days if you’re not afraid to look.

SHIT AND SHINE Mannheim HBF 2xLP (12XU / Riot Season)

Craig Clouse is the king of the 16-way electronic/noise grot project, and it’s to his unlimited credit that he can keep putting out Shit and Shine releases– at least 32 physical full-lengths counting this one – and never miss a step, no matter how high concept or low-brow it gets (the best ones shoot somewhere in between). Back in the technoid zone, here’s four new sides of cyclic, engineered repetition; patience where often stands chaos, train rides perched at the window, landscapes rushing by in meter. Heavy Jaki Liebezeit nods in terms of the balance and syncopation across the enterprise, but carved in the manner of a skilled craftsman. You can dance, you can move, you can sit here and wait, but the lion’s share of Mannheim HBF will remain, rushing past you, eternally. You’ll never be able to guess who else is on board, but you’ll know right away who isn’t.

Enjoy yourself — Doug M