Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0081 (April 1, 2025)

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Hey guys, great to be here.

I should really think of the intro first because after free-ranging five reviews I don’t have much to tell you. Thanks for reading, thanks for listening to that last set I posted.

I do want to address that feeling of wanting to go to a show here in Chicago and it being really underpopulated. I don’t think anyone likes that feeling, and I can’t seem to rouse anyone in this city to actually go and enjoy live music where they don’t know everyone in the room, try to act like an influencer, or only go to the biggest shows / cram it all in during a fest. That shit is played, and it hurts bands like Feeling Figures and Tha Retail Simps, who make their Chicago debut this Thursday with Glyders and yours truly playing records in between sets. Come hear what I kept, and witness two of Montreal’s finest before some dipshit tries to close the border. I hope they’ll adopt me and my people up there. Maybe we’ll sneak over in a canoe like Inepsy.

Also come see my new haircut which I’ll have received less than an hour before doors open.

Details here:

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ALRIGHT HERE’S THE REVIEWS:

DOMMER “Thoughts on Unpacking” b/w “Kev’s Speech” 7” (self-released)

Recorded in the same session as their pretty good debut single, these two songs give an impression that Dommer put a little more skin in the game on these two songs. Is that even possible? The material simply flows a little better here – a spare guitar/drums/synth/vocals scenario that launches forth into a bit of aggression and discordance, but shores up against thin, earnest guitar lines, electronic color and double-tracked vocals that rise from a speak-shout to long, high held notes, and a tension between these elements that sells it well. I’m reminded of more ‘90s-era singles than I’d care to list, but if there was room for a third band on the Pitchblende/Eggs split, it’d be this one; the push-pull of a gentler pop and a more strident indie rock keep this one in the game. Looking forward to hearing how much of themselves Dommer put out there in the coming months/years.

SHADOW RIOT “Quiet, Please!” b/w “Middleman” 7” (Timo)

I can’t really imagine what it feels like to live in the DC metro these days, but I never really could; the proximity to politics obviously had an effect on how music/the arts out of the region was considered, and the self-actualized approach to giving the community around it a presence strong enough and a linear motive to keep it going for decades, seemingly in sharp critique and long opposition to the powers that be. It sounds off in every band from the area I can think of, product of the institutions in and around the great engine of power from go-go to Bad Brains, Minor Threat to the Messthetics – an idea of order, and a reflex against it. Even Velocity Girl (especially through the shockingly cleaned-up reissue of Copacetic) revealed something darker amid the pop expectations. It makes sense that groups like Shadow Riot are still holding the line for rebellion. Dramatic, expressive vocalist Kamyar Arsani and guitarist Jeff Barsky (Insect Factory, Mock Identity) spent time in a band called Time Is Fire; they’ve since shed two members and gained two important cogs in the DC infrastructure in bassist Dug Birdzell and drummer Jerry Busher (long rap sheets for both, but notably of All Scars, a fantastic late ‘90s improv-oriented post-rock outfit that seems all but forgotten now; I will take a moment to call out Birdzell’s presence in Las Mordidas, and Busher’s one-two ‘90s punch of substitute drummer for The Monorchid, which pushed them into a higher gear with little issue, and as Fugazi’s auxiliary drummer, usually brought out in time for “Arpeggiator” to really open up). Foundational thumps from the rhythm section anchor Barsky’s playing, which builds out of taps, shakes and general bridge/nut harassment into a bracing slashes of riff, and Arsani’s vocals do the rest, creating an atmosphere of agitation, the knife in the marathon that keeps everyone moving forward. Mad tight, no room for the Just Kidding boat in this dock.

BLAMMO/RIBOFLAVIN Blammo and Riboflavin LP (State Laughter)

First off – always pleased, even honored, when a new State Laughter release comes my way; gives me hope for real weirdness in the Southeast, and carefully removed from the axis of punishment that smogs Atlanta (which may be the point of reference in side 1 anchor “Coconut Boys”?). Josh had sent along a Blammo release during the pandemic, and I don’t remember it being nearly as settled as the music that happens on this one, though there may not be an active basis of comparison. I’m not entirely sure about how to classify this; initially I thought it was a split LP (which it is), but it’s split unevenly track-by-track, and may have been credited to a supergroup backing band that’s supporting both halves of the artists on here. If you make it this difficult to determine where one band stops and the other begins, maybe the point is there isn’t a line at all – these artists trust and understand one another to helm the supreme position of two bands finding strength as one. And there’s so much confidence pouring off the top of this set, sixteen brave stabs at just about every kind of weird band-based pop that crawled out of the ‘80s, with stops at the Glorious Din/World of Pooh/Thinking Fellers school, the Go Team/International Pop Underground general store, the church Kicking Giant NYC era/Fly Ashtray/Sleepyhead/accompanying See Hear zine store, the Heavy Vegetable/Pinback/Frisbie/Trumans Water zone of San Diego beach burrito clouds, and nods to the many-armed little scene hideaways of yore, from Kent/Donut Friends to Xpressway/NZ. Hearing it shift between these zones on a song-by-song basis, especially the run-togetherness of the side B suite is like some great surprise gift, conversations beginning at one end and coming out the other with even more depth and presence than from where they began. Only 150 of you can have this, for now, but may this configuration bloom digitally like fractal life in the windowsill of your screen.

CIRCUIT DES YEUX Halo on the Inside LP (Matador)

The last Circuit Des Yeux full-length io- featured a dozen musicians playing in an orchestra, and it somehow fits that Halo on the Inside suggests there’s more power and force in the self. It’s not wrong to consider each of Haley Fohr’s previous records (covered in my outlets since like 2008) as a journey – they all are – but the constant push to redefine where that takes us finally touches down on the most desirable location yet, an electric fire of darkwave monolith and giantess footprints, like the twenty-foot-long shadow Fohr casts on the backlit wall has taken over and is making all the choices now. Forceful, yet with room for ornate touches that build up and explode and cast off the energy of why people put gargoyles in front of their houses. Obviously I’ll need to spend more time with this one, but it doesn’t forget where it started, and is like the obvious endpoint to the sets I’ve seen in recent years, particularly opening for Unwound in black t-shirt trio mode, the starts of setting pasts on fire. Great one. No other artists like this around right now.

LEE RANALDO & MICHAEL VALLERA Early New York Silver LP (Amish/Required Wreckers Series)

Two sides of balanced output from two sides of a guitar-improv coin. Vallera’s sodium-vapor fuzz/grain from those remarkable Cleared records finds a buzzing foil in Ranaldo’s heaviest works in some time, esp. at the start of side B, which sounds like an alien 18-wheeler idling in the space parking lot. I could say more but this one does all the talkin’ with no voice whatsoever. Long, loud, low tones that hint at human activity but are more concerned with changing the atmosphere for our new overlords, who’ll topple with a single sneeze. Like a foggy horizon, you’ll never spot the end. Outstanding.

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SEE YA SOON — Doug M