Heathen Disco Music, Etc. Reviews #0151 – Year-Ends Pt. 2 (December 12, 2025)

One archival thing I covered this year that is absolutely mandatory is also something I couldn’t find in my lists, but was painfully reminded of today. Brent MacLachlan, drummer from two of my all-time faves Bailter Space and The Gordons, has left our realm. Bailter Space completed this insane collection of mobile unit club recordings from 1991-92 in Germany; it came out over the summer and it’s called Fused, and I won’t let you leave 2025 until you listen to the whole thing. Super-extended/distended versions of the songs from a fertile mid-period, like Chrome with a purpose. Absolutely gutted. Glad I got to lose some hearing with them once (during the Wammo tour, when MacLachlan was playing with drum pads that blasted out samples of more guitar feedback when needed), and was very hopeful that they’d come back around in this spate of activity. I’d left NYC before they started playing again, so 1995 was all we had, but what a night.

A lot of shoegaze-leaning bands defined themselves by the noise they could make and how it bolstered the pop music underneath it, but how many of them could do all that, still sound like some new heavy element from outer space that blotted out the sun and roared like a cement mixer in 5th gear going down a mountain? Pretty much just Bailterspace, largely because they were not a pop band trying to dress up their sound. I’d stack them against My Bloody Valentine as the two bands in that time that actually moved the needle.

SQUIGGLY, DOWN UNDER

Ten more Antipodean discoveries from 2025, as follows:

ED KUEPPER & JIM WHITE After the Flood LP (12XU)

EYE Black Ships LP / Prophecy LP (Grapefruit/Carbon)

DELIVERY Force Majeure LP (Heavenly)

DUMBELLS Up Late With Dumbells LP (Total Punk)

SCRABBLED Plough Through the Rust LP (Wormwood Grasshopper)

POSSIBLE HUMANS Standing Around Alive LP (Hobbies Galore)

VAGUE RITUALS s/t LP (Solar/Sonar)

208L CONTAINERS Soft Monstrous Masses! LP (Rough Skies)

DRUNK ELK Clear Skies in Effect CD (Repressed)

BELOW: ten more older movies that I enjoyed, and you might as well. I’m here to share.