ARCHEUS Spiral Code LP (An’archives)
New journeys from this Japanese trio, last checked in here with 2023’s menacing Kusōzu : Nine Death Stages, and here diving into brighter but no less chaotic seas. Applying electronic processing to a string-driven bass/hurdy gurdy setup, occasionally brushing past some precariously-balanced percussives (which clatter to the floor), and set off with harrowing, ascendant loop vocalese that’s as unique as any of the instrumentation, it is a form of swirling, confrontational progressive improv, snake tongues flicking the skin. I knocked over a can of Diet Coke next to my copy and this motherfucker repelled it, unscathed and unbothered, not even a drop touching the sacred text of this beautifully silkscreened sleeve. There are cosmic secrets to unwind within that no earthly liquid will touch.
THE YUMMY FUR Everybody Talks About the Weather LP (Upset the Rhythm)
28 years out from recording Sexy World is apparently the length of time required for Scotland’s sassiest postpunk band to pick up where they dropped it. For singer John McKeown, this hasn’t been a path totally lost (witness literally any band he’s been in since, especially 1990s), and maybe it took Paul Thomson’s rescission with Franz Ferdinand to really put the time in on this one, but put they did. The jagged leads, the university-fucked lyrics, the pogoing mod bass, the band that Pulp maybe wanted to be but for their crawl towards the middle when success came to knock ... for now, they’re back. Can you blame ‘em? Their own day doesn’t really seem all that far off, and it’s not like the digital apparatuses allow us to completely forget anything that enough people were crazy about in their time. What’s arthritis to a lot of fun? Something you can sleep off tomorrow! Time and pharmaceuticals conspire to make us invincible, you can still teach lessons without building a Catholic church around it and bumming everyone out (take that, Protomartyr!), and the advantage lies within those of us who were clever enough to enjoy it when it was, so that we can bring it back, no matter what the costs – then or now. Listen, I know there are at least three or four of you hundreds or so who’ve the capacity to read what I put down behind the gates who would be really fucking excited to know this happened, and that it’s as good as it was, as Ron Johnson’d as they’ll have it. Go sign up for a bunch of class action suits and blow your winnings on this import.
LA SCÈNE 不体失創造 (Futaishitsu Souzou) LP (An’archives)
Longer excerpts from a double CD released at the start of this year by this Japanese femme crash alt-pop/slowcore/folk tradition duo, with ties to Boris. Three tracks here but they cover a lot of ground, a bluesy, measured sound that gets increasingly built up as the tracks roll along (credit due to guitarist Hiroshi Kurosawa, who taught Chelsea from Paintbox how to play, and who recently turned up in a Death Side reunion lineup). There’s some sounds that resemble Shizuka out in the evening sunset, a couple things happening on the opening track that wouldn’t be far out of place in the roadhouse, and a massive stunner in the sidelong “Hido no Neiki,” 13 minutes of facepeel riffs threading the French exhale and cigarette tricks on offer throughout. They have the loose strum and thousand yard stare that Mazzy Star couldn’t always get opaque enough to muster, and a really nice sense of arrangements that fills up an initially spare headspace with enough color to really tell ‘n’ sell these stories of sadness. We didn’t get a ton of An’archives this year but the four that did land are all crushers in their own way, with this one maybe the biggest surprise of the lot, leveraging the poppier side of groups like Usurabi with the skull seam opening psychedelia of Maki Miura. Massive, sad rockers crumbling in the desert within, housed in stunning hand-screened art that, even from a label known for its beautifully excessive presentations, is an achievement.
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