Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0087 (April 22, 2025)

Well, well, well. I’ve been cut off from the ad network here for refusing to run the same AI/SaaS slop over and over to diminishing returns. That’s fine, but it means that content is going to be more regularly paywalled until they can find someone that makes sense to flog here alongside some of the most interesting music made available this week.

Whatever. That’s why I have you. And in these times of diminishing returns, threats of registries being made, people getting disappeared and the like, I’d say we need each other. Heathen Disco replenishes your soul with ideas of what’s out there to listen to, following a thread you’ve probably been holding onto for decades. So please consider a subscription that I may keep bringing it.

Within the column this time are some old heads turning it back, a cautionary tale, and proof of life in the matrix underground of hi-test electronic music.

If you wish to take part in this evaluation, send your music and well-wishes to:

[email protected]

or PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA

I’ve had this box for 10 years, and now I’m moving to another location with a post office within walking distance. So I put it to you: given the grievances everyone has with the USPS, and with Chicago’s take on it, how does the Uptown branch rate against good old Ravenswood?

DEEP ESSENCE “Planetary Hospice” b/w “Where” DL (self-released)

First new group actions in a long time from Tonie Joy (Moss Icon, The Convocation Of), in a new trio with former Great Unraveling bandmate Randy Davis on drums and bassist Steve Strohmeier (who’s played with Beach House, Arbouretum, Dan Deacon and many other Baltimore/tri-state heavies). The reach of Tuareg guitar influence along with a refinement of styles since Joy last released new music is evident, and this group ties it all together at a slower pace but no less tumultuous outcome. Tempos have dropped across the board, with a pronounced dirge (again, no strangers to that here), but in place of the full sheet metal guitar wall and noise threnodies of past projects, there’s a contemplative sadness here that bears out across the martial wander of “Planetary Hospice,” and the small fire lit under “Where,” evoking the side two deep cuts of Richmond post-HC founders Honor Role and Coral. Just being able to acknowledge that a true, unsung force in this music is back at it should be enough, but as always Tonie’s work blows past expectations, with restraint preventing it from hitting the wall. Please give us more.

JERRY DAVID DECICCA Cardiac Country LP (Sophomore Lounge)

I first discovered Jerry (the man and his music) through an introduction from Zachary Cale, and now Jerry’s releasing his records through Ryan Davis, so if there’s a more appropriate real-recognize-real situation in underheard contemporary country/folk singer-songwriters, you can tell me all about it (and I’d bet it triangulates through Animal Piss, It’s Everywhere). His latest was bulk-written and in the can before he discovered a serious heart condition, with the album closer “Old Hat” penned and recorded pensively at home, after the diagnosis and weeks before the surgery to replace a valve. All of the songs foretell the condition (“Long Distance Runner”), the loss (“My Friend”), the decisions made in life from an emotionally ethical standpoint (“Where Does My Empathy Go”), before he even knew there was a problem, and while it’s easy to divine an internal drive to create art about the condition, this nearly could’ve been a posthumous album, and to look at it from that perch, it casts two shadows: one, as the buttery, sweet-tempered humanist making sublime, settled, wonderful, knowing country music in the form which he’s carved out for himself; the other casting a cold warning that the things he's singing about here could’ve made for his final album. That’s a really sharp stone to pass, and Jerry’s still here with us after some dark years recovering in this dismal land (hence the opportunity to tour Europe again with Bill Callahan this year COULD NOT HAVE BETTER TIMING), but the existential pull of the ground lingers in a way that should have all its listeners (and readers of this here news) listening to themselves as well.

Read the rest below: