Heathen Disco Music Reviews #0149 (December 5, 2025)

Before I get this one kicked off, I wanted to thank each and every one of you. Gonna roll over on the 150th Heathen D newsletter next week. I can see who is reading this and I appreciate you taking the time. Otherwise, what’s all this worth?

My year-end list is in the works right now. I’m still trying to stay true to the

I also wanted to announce that I’m launching a second newsletter coming very soon under this same tent. Specifics are still under wraps, but it will still primarily feature music reviews (and will be the home for my entire archive of online writing, 2004-present). Expect this to launch in the new year, and expect a subscriber discount if you already pay for Heathen Disco (and thank you if you’re one of these people).

Today’s mostly gonna be about some tapes that came in, including one I found from a few years ago that is one of my favorite tapes of the past 25 years. Today’s work is a low-effort edition all around, so it’s free. Enjoy it and here’s to better days.

SENSORY OVERLORD s/t CS (Anathema Editions)

Doomy synth/Halloween crawlers at zombie-menacing speed is maybe not my speed anymore, if it ever was. I don’t miss horror movies so much that I need to be listening to imaginary soundtracks to them when I’m not near a screen. At this point there’s probably more of this music than movies from the ‘70s and ‘80s that inspired the style, and most of those movies are either not an everyday thing, or would be maybe worse if separated from the music. If something I’m evaluating is so indebted to something else with which I’m aware that it can’t be stylistically separated, then there’s no empirical way it can supersede its influence. Not today, tape lord!

HEAVENWORLD Compelling Evidence Of CS (Industry Standards)

Released in 2022, new to me. Heavy synth/drone environments from Peoria, and if some might find argument over why I prefer this to the Sensory Overlord example, the sounds on this tape make me think of something a little more nuanced than a John Carpenter credit scroll/typeface, and brings in other sound sources (loops, samples, maybe some woodwinds) that create half a fourth-world component to these tracks. Third-and-a-half world? Wherever it’s going, it’s a more evocative and mysterious place than you might assume. Further research into this artists finds a 2025 release by Fart World, a world in which I am both a resident and very disappointed in myself due to said residency.

NEW FAITH Demo CS (Industry Standards)

Also from 2022 (and note, these came in a package from the label with a new Cairo Pythian LP I’ll get to soon; these were within reach at the moment), this is giving “Cold Dave” treatments, like a hardcore guy with girlfriend who had early exposure to Depeche Mode and Enigma (the beat on “The Long Way Down” gives it away). With residency across three cities, one wonders if there’s a duster large enough that they can all hide inside and swish around from such distances. I know what it’s like to be inspired by your local darkwave night, not gonna diss. Here’s a tape that confirms it.

BLONE NOBLE Life’s New Adventure EP CS (Industry Standards)

Four songs making up the A-side of Blone Noble’s debut album, issued here perhaps as a promotional item. Trying on clothes music. Slow ballad electro music with some guitar squiddle in Peter Murphy-esque vocals, NIN karaoke band crawl, and I say that with a decent degree of respect. Here’s to those who keep on trying (Veneer seems long in the rear view), as the title track finally hits on a Thin White Duke lick that suits these sounds a little more comfortably. Some people can just pull off a linen suit!

ROLLER Offed CS (Radical Documents, r. 2022)

Ed. note: still my favorite Radical Document ever, and since the 2022 zone came up more than once in this edition, here’s. Tape is long gone but here’s a Bandcamp link. Hope these guys are OK; to my knowledge they never followed this one up. I found my copy of this one recently. It’s still sealed, and manufactured in a glittery red tape shell, looking kinda like a bowling ball.

Bent, druggy, speedy experimental electronic music for circuits and strings from this Los Angeles-via-Ohio collaboration. The secret sauce here seems to be the use of a bass guitar as a controller, the manifestation of actual acoustic/rubbery tones from the instrument/the audacity of putting EAI/inner ear concepts into shiny zoomer Epi-Pen danse musik and as a means of making already restless, crispy-edged electronic tension music even more unpredictable. Blasts of fried noise lay on top of ambient/ominous tones while a loose drum machine syncopates and swings with purpose or as a suggestion wherever it feels like, and the results are futuristic and severe, like any good time known by eaters of the beans and dosers of the eye. Footworky and sardonic, with occasional moments for big monolithic girders of drone. Nothing but drugs and the sun, the meltiest time of times under the jitteriest dome we’ve known.