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  • Heathen Disco Music Newsletter #0057 (January 7, 2025 – Hard Drive Dump March 2024 Pt. 1)

Heathen Disco Music Newsletter #0057 (January 7, 2025 – Hard Drive Dump March 2024 Pt. 1)

FREE one: Coffin Pricks, Uranium Club and a bunch of stuff from 10 months ago

In partnership with

Hey gang, welcome back to the survey of my hard drive’s contents (musically) from last year.

Appreciate being able to deliver this one to you gratis courtesy of a company that actually has a good idea. From someone who’s struggled to pull the thousands of reviews I’ve written together from sites that aren’t always up and running or just crapped out altogether, it’s high time someone helped out on that front, and if you wanna find out about it, far be it from me to stop you from clicking below:

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I was going to review something that arrived in my inbox, but I couldn’t download it. Maybe next time, fellas?

Submissions and well-wishes to Doug Mosurock, PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA (who doesn’t love mail?) or emailed to [email protected]

Remember, you can subscribe to get it all. Only $3 a month to keep it going.

COFFIN PRICKS Semi-Perfect Crimes LP (Council, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024

Happy to have people in my life who made certain I knew about this. They were in the band, sure. Coffin Pricks might’ve come to NYC once while I was still there, a new father, on Halloween weekend, the very recipe that would have had me stay home, so I never got to see the final Chris Thomson band. All I had to go on was the 7”, which was as excellent as I’d hoped, and MP3s of the Saki session. This release combines both, tacks on four more of the seven songs recorded in a studio, and a bunch more from an early streaming effort in the former Carrot Top facilities (dried up the year I moved to Chicago, and this band was long gone by then as well, with half the band decamping to the West Coast, which as I’ve notice has yet to be sunk). Ryan Weinstein wrote the music, Chris T. did his thing on the mic, Chay Lawrence played bass (replacing Tim Kinsella, whew) and Jeff Rice (who I should remind everyone was the vocalist in Ottawa) played drums. Musically it sounds like someone overjoyed to be playing the music to go under Thomson’s screeds (the best in DC, Chicago, Madison and wherever else), and who made the smart decision to under-compose, giving this band a somewhat off-the-cuff stance that suits them. Sits on the same shelf as Skull Kontrol and, well, you probably don’t. Total ass beater of a comp, a necessary grip for the sweatiest of palms.

 

EN ATTENDANT ANA Magical Lies 7” EP (Sub Pop, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024

Sub Pop plays the Trouble in Mind hits once again in this Singles Club outing from Parisians EAA. Leaning on a more muted approach that would suit Stereolab, we have a nice breezer in the A-side, a brief demo of a reverb/tremelo unit (“Interlude”) and a spacy shoreline closer (“Teeny Tiny Tyche”) that wouldn’t have been far off on the most recent Klaus Johann Grobe LP. Nice aperitif until the next glug.

 

FLOWERTOWN Tourist Language (Paisley Shirt, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024

I hardly ever want to listen to Cindy, and April Magazine is sometimes so gauzy it sounds like a breeze or a car driving past playing sad music. Out of this whole scene, it’s Flowertown – Karina Gill of Cindy, and Michael Ramos, I guess now also of Cindy, as well as Tony Jay and The Cherries – that does the most for me. As a duo, there’s not a lot they can hide behind, so the melodies are there, the vocals to compliment and frame them and counterbalance, and the mere suggestion of rhythm. Maybe the toughest cotton pop the Bay Area has to offer. The best parts of Beat Happening (Heather and Bret) with the nonchalantness of prime Galaxie 500 in Macioce’s lens. Check ‘em out and see if you agree.

 

RAT FILTH BD & Enlightenment (Burgum Triangle Tapes, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024

Outlandishly awesome noise chug pomp from elsewhere, sounding like someone hired the orchestra that played the 20th Century-Fox fanfare and trained them on Test Dept., “Bad Politics,” and overmodulated, defective tape. Lots of organ in there too, like early Quintron pounders. Need more.

 

THE MINNEAPOLIS URANIUM CLUB Infants Under the Bulb (Static Shock, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024 

Cool, my second least-favorite personality-punk band turning 2% into skim. This band started somewhere not-the-worst but found ways to dial it down and ended up here. They sound like a Dilbert calendar come to life. A friend says “that big hypnowheel they spin behind them live is tricking you into thinking you’re having a good time at their show.” You have Devo at home? Well your home must suck! Real “worried about parking” hours spent here, fretting.

 

VARIOUS ARTISTS Groucho Marxist Record Co:Operative (G.R.M.C., 1979-1981; r. Sealed, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024

Compilation of bands from a short-lived DIY label out of Paisley, Scotland, where every second counted, every band ushered forth their very best across two comps and two standalone singles by XS Discharge (great, took all the best lessons from the Sex Pistols and early PiL, left the rest) and Defiant Pose (same, except The Clash, maybe a little early Subway Sect too, to rub it in). Recorded debut of siblings Drew and Rose McDowall here, as The Poems, pouting in a bedroom … too good. Those who didn’t grab this last year still have a chance; I really want to read that book that comes with it. Does everything right from an archival perspective that such a release should accomplish: capture a finite amount of material from a hyper-specific scene/stance, and leave you wondering how you’d gotten this far without it.

 

TONGUE DEPRESSOR Wonder How It Left (Chocolate Monk, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024

New Haven’s most stifling duo comes back to it with two long pieces for contrabass, organ and bagpipes, offering up a very specific, ectopic topography of low-end with texture and teeth that slowly rises to hybrid catechisms of plangent chordal drone. And wait’ll you hear the other one!

 

IKE YARD 1982 (c. 1982, r. Dark Entries, 2023)

Date: 3/1/2024

Reviewed in Heathen Disco Music Newsletter #0017 and a good reminder that the first 36 editions of this thing are still free, so go read and make an informed decision about reading the ones that aren’t.

 

VAGUE PLOT Crying in 9 (Island House, 2024)

Date: 3/1/2024

Cool cassette that brings back a micro-scene I’ve missed from the Still Single era: the small industry around Brooklyn guitarist Zachary Cale and the bands he found for his old label All Hands Electric (this one features Cale with some guys from a little group on that imprint called Woodsy Pride). Six lengthy instrumentals with synth, sax, guitars and bass that sounds like it got stranded in traffic on the way to a pool party. Mannered and yet singed at a few edges, it has the easy confidence of skilled players having a musical conversation, taking their time as the shadows loom. Nice stuff.

 

MJ GUIDER Youth and Beauty (Modemain, 2024)

Date: 3/2/2024

Wondering at some point how long I’d be waiting until another full-length from NOLA’s Melissa Guion to complement the two MJ Guider releases on kranky, research revealed this EP, centered around woodwinds – flute, to be precise – and a less directed spray of energy, synths and bass floating in the amines with an alien, breath-soft quality that pulled me closer and down. Please check out their work right now so you can understand the contrast.

MORE SOON – Doug M