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Next one’s going to be a quarterly overview of the best records and other things to happen in a grim time. You’d be surprised at how well good music and the connections to it and those who enjoy it will sustain you. Some, it embitters, but it seems as anything would. Sometimes I get it, other times I scrape the barnacles off. I can’t help them but I can help you.

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MICROWAVES Temporal Shifter LP (Decoherence)

We’re eight albums in on over a quarter-century’s journey for Pittsburgh’s Microwaves, with guitarist David Kuzy and drummer John Roman, along with a rotating cast of bass players through the years (from Zombi’s Steve Moore to current non-relation Zach Moore, including a Dale Nixon-esque tower of PA wedges and a computer for a while there, which made seeing a gig at The Stone back when it was on Avenue C a one-in, one-out of the bathroom situation). The mission of Microwaves remains remarkably classified, an all-threat ICBM launch scramble of Gen X paranoia and sci-fi motifs staged like the action figure landscapes in Saturday morning cartoon commercials. (Might as well reveal that I co-released their first CD back in 2000, to which any rights have reverted to the band). Kuzy has a significant collection of pro effects and specialist guitars, including at one time a Teuffel Birdfish, and though the band has never been about look-at-me-go special effects, the notion of what’s played and what it’s played through are a seamless integration, buffeted by Roman’s precision accented slugfest on the kit. They’ve bounced around to most labels that have the gloves to hold a sound as spiky as theirs, including one-timers like Crucial Blast and New Atlantis, Weasel Walter’s ugEXPLODE, and most recently two records on Three One G, almost like a systems-based foil to the Locust’s formulary onslaught. Temporal Shifter is at times their most graceful effort to date, even through the metallic patterns and bent realism; this is almost a swing back to the roots, with more than a few moments harking back to thinking-stoner metal like Voivod or Cynic. What seems most impressive is their willingness to stand, feet planted, as the world selectively takes notice. Dave’s doing the press from this record and I’m watching these reviews roll in from all kinds of directions, few of which seem familiar with the band but all somewhat taken aback by the musical directions, as if someone just came up with these notions. I mean, someone did, that’s not the point. If nothing else they are proving out the curiosity that’s still held around certain genres, admirable traits in a world ready to throw itself away. Long live these guys, seriously.

MOSSY PLACE Empty Wall Meadow Green CD (Bruit Direct Love Club)

SUBURBAN PAGANS Venereal Demonstration DL (Neon Taste)

Dare you cut Puppet Wipes in half, for two new bands form in its place (waiting for someone to tell me that no, they didn’t call it quits), and two more lanes of parthenogenic excitement now roll out of Calgary, neither of which hew towards the medieval episode you might’ve anticipated. These are somewhat more traditional sounds.

Suburban Pagans play nasty, rock-enriched radioactive punk, flattening a basement to let the foundation break and the dirt flood in. Oddly reminiscent of two separate ‘90s scenes – namely the Rip Off/Super X sound glued onto San Diego in flames (largely in the room tone and Arielle McCuaig’s through-the-nose vocals), and the venerated Swami John Reis, who acknowledged Crime’s 16th-note rhythmic riffage as an inspiration to the point that he reissued them, then drove non-RFTC vehicles like Hot Snakes and The Sultans into very similar walls. These six songs sound like a psychic weight lifted, tube shooters down into the no-zone, with a Nervous Eaters cover hanging around out front.

Mossy Place is a solo project of Kayla MacNeill, plying guitar, bass, synth, drum machine and vocals in and out of various states of distress, floating in early era “everyone in this room was in Cat Power”-era Cat Power (“Farmers Fields”) alongside Storm Bugs-esque lock-in dirge roar and vague overtures at Madchester baggy grooves placed like rocks in the pockets as it starts to drown. These three modes blend together extraordinarily well, and with twenty-two tracks across the capacity of a CD, we get a good, long leer at what’s going on, leaning towards the arcane magick of the first Puppet Wipes LP but with the haunt that certain individuals carry around with them, and nothing here feels rehashed or same-y, nothing but facets of the spider’s eight eyes glistening in the candlelight. Grab both of these as they sprout legs and run off.

FRKSE Through the Slow Dusk LP (Iron Lung)

Listening to records in sequence can bring about unintentional comparisons that some might contribute to tired ears, but mine don’t get that way, and I’m here to report that the new FRKSE (their best) is a waystation between two of the records written about above. No, you shouldn’t have to listen to one or more unrelated records to understand another, and if you want to get away from serious coverage of Q126’s thematic directions, I suggest you start your own newsletter (ask me how). Rather, it’s easier to think of these similarities as endemic of our times from perspectives more similar than you’d think. Through the Slow Dust decodes Microwaves’ technical thrash to an articulated spine of electronic rumbles and industrial-tinged beats, pulling from the arcana of technical expression into a plain-faced preparation for the collapse of our society in the too-near future, and allows for the musty air and pensive emotions found on that Mossy Place CD to hang ominously around their sturm, drang and pronouncement. A funeral march for dying electronics and burning batteries, it’s welcome to come across a noise-related project that lays its perspectives directly atop their output, not burying them in symbolism or filigree. Humankind has always been fucked, never more so until now. People have been angry for so long about the veil being unlifted, but now that it is (in the dumbest way possible), what’s left to do? Did you want to accept death and chaos and man’s inhumanity to man after all? Couldn’t you think of anything else to do with that time? It seems that rumination on how you got here isn’t possible, or is but reads so unfavorable as it takes time to point the finger anywhere but at yourself while we burn. Preparations are useless, you’re not gonna Johnny Appleseed this irradiated sphere with your discount genes. Might as well get expressive with what you have left. FRKSE did. Why can’t you be more like FRKSE.

FOOTE/DICKOW High Cube LP (Geographic North)

Paul Dickow released a number of efforts as Strategy back when I was covering vinyl releases in the Still Single era, and we managed to exchange some courtesies now and again because it’s nice to take an interest in the people who are making interesting music that you were following from the jump. Dickow performed in Nudge alongside Brian Foote, now enmeshed in the gears over at Kranky, released some of their records on his Community Library imprint as Kranky had at one point picked up Strategy’s releases. There’s a lot more history between them, recognition as producers and performers, and Foote’s Peak Oil and FO labels count among them some fairly sought-after releases by Topdown Dialectic, Purelink, Paperclip Minimiser (covered here recently) and Rest Symbol, among others. Both have enjoyed a sizable degree of recognition from labels the world over, working in and around the vein of electronic music and how their rememberances of it help sculpt the working history of the genre. On their first project as a duo, they kept it simple: select five machines from their outboard arsenals, and see what they could use them for in the span of one hour. High Cube is the result, six pieces which skirt the fourth world in a chromed airship, informed by ‘90s leftfield club sounds, post-rock in the humanoid direction (leave the shambling guitar to someone with a thicker beard), trap drumming and Benetton-colored Euro chic. The utility of these works is remarkable, and all six tracks, different as they sound, work from the corners of the club, the vibes of the shop, the novelty of accidental discoveries that become part of the approach. Though I prefer the bubble-pop lower melody of “Underwater Welder” and the 8-bit graph paper beats of “ofid+wor,” I’d happily take any of these pieces for the entire runtime of the album.

If you want me to write about estate sales I can do that too — DM