Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0125 (September 9, 2025)

Hey folks — putting today’s post in attract mode, since it’s covering five records that you should probably know about. It also might make things more visible to artists looking for coverage (see below). Subscribe anyway; they’re not all free, and I’d hate for you to miss out on more fun.

Fighting a cold / sore throat combo right now, still unemployed and honestly it’s not fun, but I’m gonna get it sorted out soon enough.

Meanwhile you can provide stuff to review at PO Box 25717 Chicago IL 60625 USA or send it to [email protected]. Please find the newsletter and use these proper channels for submissions, and don’t send me download links via DMs or whatever. I’m never gonna remember to listen to them that way.

Let’s return to 1999 …

PROLAPSE I Wonder When They’re Going to Destroy Your Face LP (Tapete)

Prolapse staked a claim on the salted earth of bands doomed to push forth with loud, noisy, aggravated rock music in the dead zone of the late 1990s, and did so under the most difficult path they could manage: a large-format band with a horrifying name (look it up) from a smaller town in England, that managed to put out five killer records on five separate labels (including one major), damning any real chances for consistency in marketing or reissue campaigns of the future. They even handed their domestic fortunes to Jetset, the equivalent of a three-card monte game in an alley, and their distribution strategy thrived wherever promos were re-sold.

But ask the good people of Epsom where the value is in salt. If anything, the obstacles placed in front of Prolapse only strengthened their creative resolve, and they grew heavier and more dissonant over their term, with career highlights matching any bands of the time with crazy ideas and a dogleg to the left-hand path (Long Fin Killie, 18th Dye, Bailter Space, Pitchblende, Sloy, Cha-Cha Cohen, Shellac, and so on). It fits, then, that 25 years after their formal collapse, they return with what might be their most concentrated dose, a grinding blast of organized aggression, repetitive themes that punch through the floor and enrich the groundwater, resolute and sour proclamations against the status quo of indifference that held them down in the best of times, with the gnarliest slapback on the drums, the most righteous grind out of those guitars, and a superb foil of clarity and regional twang between the two vocalists.

The dub kiss divine from their swansong Ghosts of Dead Aeroplanes is replaced by true dirt guitar noise, and it works, maybe their most outright rock effort of them all. Here you get the machinations of The Fall or Stereolab at their most driven, but stylistically well outside that loop, looking at the sort of dissonance and thrash powered solely by ideology, Ron Johnson devotees who put the train on the tracks and throttled it through piles of trash and the screams of the less righteous crushed under the wheels of steel. This line runs on blood and the satisfaction of being able to harness history in their relentless spit puts them in the right, and anyone saying this is better than it has any right to be neglects history itself – Prolapse was never wrong in the first place, but rather the piss-ant world they grew in at full fault. If you want to measure success in the basest terms, make something that finds the people who cared in the first place, show them they didn’t waste their time, and they’ll come back to you, waiting to refill their mills and shakers with all the salt you can throw at them.

JAMES BLACKSHAW Unraveling In Your Hands LP (Amish)

Shot from a cannon, UK guitar impresario James Blackshaw comes barreling out of the gate after nearly ten years in the wilds of loss, misfortune and doubt in his resurgence to sort it all out. The sidelong title piece bolts forth with Blackshaw’s fast picking hand rolling across the lower strings before settling into a repetition that slides into melancholia, and on the flip we get “Dexter,” a duo with Charlotte Glasson providing strings and flute, a four-note theme of quiet resolution as the tones drone on and weave in and out of one another. Some really key moments of beauty unfold here, almost in a shoegaze/avant sort of way (think Sigur Ros, maybe) as dusk grows overhead. Closer “Why Sit Still” is an easy ramble, expertly picked and ending the session with a hopeful lilt. Thematically, though, this return indicates a darker corner for Blackshaw than he’d explored in earlier efforts, giving the sense that a massive work is brewing in the coming years. Given his skills, if it manages to be a full reinvention of folk guitar, I wouldn’t be shocked.

VENUS CLUB Extended EP DL (self-released)

Following a Cocteaus-style cassette from 2023, here’s four newer ones from this occasional Chicago outfit, combining guitars, synths and drum machines that prop up vocalist Emilie Jaeger’s versatile, bell-clear range. These tracks are a bit more earthbound; leadoff “Sour Mix” gives off a Fleetwood/Stevie & Lindsay air, while “Perc Canyon” mixes motorik drums with pirouetting guitar figures and church organ, kind of like if the Cardigans opened up the hermetic Gran Turismo into wider vistas. Truthfully the whole EP benefits from that latter approach, staying dark and mysterious and wuthering without heavy leans into genre, and the songs take their time. It’s a nice step ahead from the debut and offers promise for a lean, evocative sound in this space.

NO PEELING s/t 7” EP (Feel It)

Nottingham safety punks egg it up here, fast and fleet, with some delightfully crashy sections and lead synth melodies. Tracks are about things like the value of knowing first aid, not getting too drunk and wanting to pet a dog, and the femme vocals are sound like they could fall out of a cabaret/ukulele revue, all things that are relatively improved by a revved-up, Rezillos-esque approach.

THE DRAGS Dragsploitation Now! 12” EP (Estrus, 1995; r. Total Punk, 2025)

(reissue due 10/10/25)

Can’t believe it’s been thirty years since the Drags 10” and select singles (like the worldbeater “Well Worth Talking About” on Rat City) entered my collection, and provided some real thrills out of the Southwest to the mid-‘90s garage race, wiry and punked out without resorting to maximalism. You could really sense they were playing at their limits, which were physical and remarkably tight, and if the results were what you expected, then great – that’s likely what they wanted audiences to catch onto. Three decades haven’t diminished the quality of their high octane/dry desert sound, which plays beyond the shit-fi blowouts of Supercharger or The Brentwoods so that you can feel the heat and every detail of the relatively clean guitar. “Allergic Reaction” and “Teenage Invasion” are absolute staples of the time and place and those staples are still holding it together. A great thing to have if you missed it at any point in the intervening years, and a good reminder of what this genre can be when its participants know what they’re doing. Great Art Chantry cover art now blown up to a full-size jacket, the grim visage of the Amazing Colossal Man peekin thru the windows.

Will finish up those Beta-Lactam Ring 10”s later this week! — Doug M