Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0127 (September 16, 2025)

Forgoing coverage of other stuff until Friday; got caught up here, as I had the time to burn.

SIX FINGER SATELLITE Severe Exposure (Deluxe Edition) 2xLP+DL (Sub Pop, 1995, r. 2025)

Sub Pop’s release roster for 1995 reads like a reliable roadmap for mid-decade indie. Sebadoh’s big accessible breakthrough record Bakesale. The pink Sunny Day Real Estate album. A thick stack of Canadian content from Zumpano, Eric’s Trip and The Hardship Post. Lifestyle records by Friends of Dean Martinez, Five Style and problematic pop auteur Eric Matthews. Regional content from Chicago bridesmaids Red Red Meat and connected Portland bands Hazel and Pond. The vinyl license of the debut by Seattle’s unluckiest band Truly (victims of an 11th-hour switcheroo on the Singles soundtrack, only to get to Capitol in time for regime change, and to be summarily dropped) didn’t get too far. On the singles side we saw the label’s brief infatuation with Britpop (Supergrass, Gene) come to a close amid frillier fronds (Tindersticks, the Spiritualized 7” with their Troggs cover “Any Way That You Want Me”), that Bruce Gilbert single in the silver Mylar sleeve, a great co-released  single with Flying Nun from Dimmer (Shayne Carter of NZ legends Straitjacket Fits), some more standard in-bag noise rock randos, leadoff discs for artists who were releasing full-lengths, and so on.

These are all sturdy signs of a label trying to compete head-on through the waves of sea change in the musical landscape they carved out, with WEA money flooding in as a seed investment and label co-owner Bruce Pavitt walking off the job site. But there are two poles not mentioned here, music that has little to do with the rest of the slate, music that had no competition in any market.

One is the third Earth album, Thrones and Dominions, a lurch towards the expectations of doom metal but still in the mire of heavy low-end guitar drone, and a precursor to Sunn O))) and all who revel in the thrill of the brown note. That record is heavy and slow (to say the least; I’m trying to prove a point here), but there are traditions that surround it – maybe ones that weren’t always viable in 1995, but we knew of the Melvins, some even had figured out Randy Holden’s Population II, and Sleep was signed to a dying major, making a record deemed unreleasable in 1996 (Jerusalem, which many would come to know as Dopesmoker) and using their advance to drill holes in coconuts so they could bong through the milk. We were still on shaky footing with lifestyle weed advocacy. Major label cash didn’t have time for this, and the folkloric ties to Nirvana’s demise and a troubled recording kept Earth at arms’ length for years to follow.

On the other pole was Six Finger Satellite, a Rhode Island band that led Sub Pop with a promise of East Coast alternative/grunge operations and quickly curdled into something far more wired. Their first EP Weapon is largely forgotten, except over here, where I’d taped “Shimkus Yell” off a college radio show and had to guess my way into who’d make something that frantic.