Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0108 (July 11, 2025)

Wanna send this one out to the late John Whitson, a remarkable figure cut through the poles of intense underground music, as was captured on his essential label Holy Mountain for a good two decades. Only met him once but we were pretty communicative during the Still Single years, and he laced me hard with the kind of releases that kept what I had to present more interesting. There was a time when someone with the gumption and enough business sense to do it right could reach out globally and pull in the kind of music no one else could, and they didn’t rely on a streaming find-it-maybe sort of approach. If you wanted something wild, Holy Mountain had it (was thinking about the Aufgehoben record he did today, and that Pacific Rim band Klangmutationen). The world is a lesser place without people like him. Love and strength to those he left behind.

You may not want to hear this, but all of us are going, and the works we produce are what remain. Think about what you want that to look like. I did.

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Here we go:

REST SYMBOL s/t LP (FO)

Boiled down, rendered off, emphasis-on-trip triphop, the angels’ share for sure. Parts of this debut play like the entire genre was based on that descending bass/synth pedal note at the very beginning of Gene Clark’s “No Other” – deep, unsettled, comatose, sunlight-occluded, the faintest hint of a few genres after hitting the spa and melting off the table. Labradford meets Quiet Storm, a cold front pushing in. This record does a lot of things in a short space that don’t always happen together, and the dark watercolor smear that comes out of those things floats like smoke into velvet. More adjectives aren’t going to help the cause here, as this music is an estimable work all on its own. Please do check it out.

MATT JENCIK & MIDWIFE Never Die LP (Relapse)

Moody synth/guitar riffin’ and dronin’ not from the basement, but the attic, where you might be able to catch a sliver of the world out a window, but it makes more sense to stay in. Like a high school student that dies before graduation, buried in their varsity jacket, and the siblings and unrequited Goth/art class crushes that now must live with this teenage-sized hole in their lives, it doesn’t need to raise the pulse beyond what grief will allow. This is Matt Jencik’s first album in a while, outside of a pile of tapes since the implosion of his last band, Implodes. His old band Hurl (which also featured Noah Leger, now of FACS) was a high school and college staple for me, and the slowcore roots of that project are still kicking around in Codeine-esque downers like “Flower Dragon” and the title track. Madeline Johnston (Midwife) provides lead vocals throughout this somber affair, sounding like they’re coming through the spirit phone from the beyond, an ideal match for the weight of this material, which sees Jencik pulling out of the experimental grid and getting back into songcraft. Melancholy that pushes down really hard, in a way where I hope you don’t have to get up too early the next day after listening. If you’re in this mood, though, nothing else will do.

More below the jump…