Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0120 (August 22, 2025)

So many new subscribers to thank. Is this thing taking off? Really? I certainly appreciate it. These bands might as well. Some great stuff shook loose this week, and here it is.

Consider paying for this so you can read it all. It’s a pittance at $3 a month, and at least one of the ten records covered each week is going to stay with you, and I suppose we all need that these days. Reach out and tell me which one did the trick.

Send in stuff for me to write about: PO Box 25717, Chicago IL 60625 USA // [email protected]

Off we go with a pair of winners. Thanks to Chris Berry for the Crounche.

MARV Keyboard Suite II LP (Enmossed/Softer Recordings)

New-to-me duo from a pocket of Research Triangle studies in contemporary minimalism and clean, bright New Ageisms, a corner of music (and crystals) that has gauged serious interest from people with open third eyes who like to feel good, refugees from dungeon synth and battle vest styles as of late. Turns out one of these guys was in Flesh Wounds, a band I definitely covered ten years ago when I had more of an eye on punk/HC from the American south, and it delights me that a community can form that accepts both this and that. It all stems from people who listen to and enjoy records of all kinds, who want to get them in the hands of other people, and who engage in open, inclusive discussions about those discoveries – it never fails to foster creativity. And that’s kinda why this works so well. The considerations here for simple, spare melodies on one synth and toothy textures on the other are ones that many groups have had before, and will have after this, but the methodical unfolding of these pieces as they repeat their mantras about four to six times per track is both a testament to the utility of electronic instruments older musicians gave up on years ago, and the care that comes out of patience; you won’t hear a koto preset sound this open and welcoming, not even at a spa, where the music’s almost never this good. This made me think about driving to Hillsborough after a visit to All Day, and really taking notice of all these roads lined with tall pine trees any time I ventured into or out of a more populated area, and how MARV’s music acts as the bed for figurative giants to trim those timbers like bonsai. There are three MARV albums including this latest one as well as a tape, and I’m now curious to hear all of them; they even found a way to include my least favorite instrument, the singing saw, in a way that felt generative and outside of the folk traditions it’s known for (and on the final album cut, the loosest and most improvisational-seeming in the set, and still it worked). All proceeds from the sales of this record go to the Carolina Abortion Fund as well. Some stores have it; looks like the records are sold out at the source, but you’ll want to hear this any way you can.

SOFT BAIT Life Advice LP (Flying Nun)

Surprising post-punk rail shooter of an album, the second from this Auckland group. Materials would have you think of lesser-quality, better-known acts but there’s a determined, clipped quality to these songs that remind me of no band more than Six Finger Satellite – that strutting guitar, locked-in rhythm section, reverbed hollering, primal synth lines, electrical chop and muted thump of the recording dials up a very clear comparison. 6FS were undoubtedly the more dramatic-sounding band, but on the eve of a 30th anniversary reappraisal of their most significant work (Severe Exposure) it is heartening to hear anyone, even unintentionally, picking up on that intense presence and doing something in that narrow shadow. Don’t read this as a framing of a band in the presence of another, though you’re welcome to; if I know the readership here, a good number of you would be really excited, possibly flattered, to find a new band working in this frame so successfully.

More truths below the drop. Subscribe and you get to see it.