Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0118 (August 15, 2025)

Hey there. Not much to report over here (job search begun, house getting in order, Air & Water Show ruining the sanctity of quiet life in Chicago), but I will remind you, if you weren’t already aware, that it is August, and as such there is no time of year in this land in which produce is getting any better. Please eat some tomatoes from a garden or reputable small farm. I am strongly urging you to do so, any way you like them, and maybe in ways you haven’t considered. I had a caprese this week with the freshest basil, on good bread, and it reset me in ways in which I knew it would. I also had some tomato and watermelon salad, lightly touched with vinegar and pickled basil, from Minyoli Taiwanese Noodles, and they are pictured up top for those with eyes to see. Seriously you only have two weeks of tomato season left, much less the best corn you’re gonna find. Please, I insist.

Thanks to the new folks who have picked up over here. I appreciate the exposure.

Going to see FACS tonight way out in Berwyn, maybe I see you there too.

Artists/labels/representatives: music can be sent to Doug Mosurock, PO Box 25717, Chicago IL 60625 USA or to [email protected]

Please read the first two reviews with my compliments, maybe while you’re having that tomato, and consider subscribing to read the rest. At $3 a month you kinda can’t afford not to have this knowledge in front of you. This music can make your life better.

P.G. SIX The Well of Memory 2xLP (Amish)

There was a great day in Brooklyn in the summer of 2003-04 (forgive me, the most exact details have faded), a house show out at Gary Olson’s big rambling Marlborough Farms house in Kensington featuring resident Kevin Barker as Currituck County, Mira Billotte as White Magic, Pat Gubler as P.G. Six and an Animal Collective set from the cusp of the Avey Tare & Panda Bear era. Gorgeous weather, the right crowd, so many friends, and though my strongest memory was rallying with Rich Zerbo to bodegas up on Flatbush to get the makings for sangria once the booze ran out, the P.G. Six set stood out from the pack as the most determined and steeped in the faded yet eternal traditions of the British folk resurgence of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and given the timeline much of it came from what was either to be or had just become The Well of Memory. I do recall “Evening Comes” because hearing something like that doesn’t just go away, and when it came on during this re-eval of this, his second album, it opened a window to the wooden solitude a song like that can bring. Joined selectively by former Tower Recordings bandmate Helen Rush on backing vocals, which somehow haunt the already haunted, frosted-breath crispness of these works, this material – mostly folk songs in as perfect an encapsulation of the human spirit in pensive repose as ever existed, with occasions into wind harp/Bertoia-esque tone (opener title track) and electric Ry Cooder on a circuit bend tear (“Considering the Lateness of the Hour”), and now six additional songs from this era, and a whole side of live activity to boot – touches every nerve I have. It speaks to not just experience, but learning, as the solemn truths around this music, as devilish as they can be performed, come from histories passed down and learned by the next generation, open books picked up by the few. The unreleased tracks on side C, mostly recorded in a church to take advantage of the pipe organ and piano installed there, add a completely different layer to the mood here, similar in approach but differing in attack, proof that the lesson was fully learned. Something happened that day in question, a corner turned for a renewed era of personal music in the city and surrounding states, and if you weren’t there, you can still feel it inside this remarkable album. Find it immediately.

R.F.M.C. “Ecstatic Strife” b/w “Golden Trick” 7” (Anti Fade)

I was visiting Pittsburgh last September, finished up a cool little DJ set with the unbelievably cool Stephanie Tsong, and looked for any of my runnin’ dogs before heading all the way back up Mt. Washington to my AirBnB. I found the Gotobeds guys in the basement of Spirit, and these two Australian bands en route to Gonerfest, the long way. R.M.F.C. was hittin’ it pretty hard, before they swapped out a few folks and played a second set as Gee Tee. The focus on melodies and restless ADHD strumming/tapping had me way in the bag for R.M.F.C. in particular, and having followed along through their last album Club Hits it’s great to see some growth in these two new ones. “Ecstatic Strife” builds off the vectors of the album and introduces a confident ground game, a sweeping excitement recalling American ‘80s farmer tan post-collegiate stomp in the likes of Hib-Tone era R.E.M. (R.E.M.F.C. maybe?) and The Embarrassment, and of course early Go-Betweens. “Golden Trick” slows it down and brings the acoustics up front, loping into dusk all mantra-like. Bands usually have to watch it when they grow, for no other real reasons than becoming too much like someone else’s sounds to stay relevant. But I don’t see that happening here. It is possible to improve and make marks, versioning upwards even when it feels like everything’s been done and all we can do is go back. Buz here wants to march on, forward, and we’ll keep following.

More excitement after the jump. Subscribe to read!