FINAL COP/COP FUNERAL “Final Cop/Cop Funeral” (Already Dead)

 

An appropriate split for the times: Final Cop (German Army/Peter Kris) and Cop Funeral (Josh Tabbia) have joined forces via shared moniker noun and shared penchant for sonic destruction to superheat the establishment until it boils and expands like a bubble, bursting outward in a grimy gust of withering stench. Such is the rot at the heart of said establishment! But hey, I’m not here to get too political …
 
Look, you’re not going to listen to Final Cop or Cop Funeral for the nonpolitical aspects of it, so strap in bucko, or else you’re liable to get whiplash, or maybe hurtle through the windshield, as this automobile of sound and fury spins out of control. And there won’t be anyone to protect and serve you either! Final Cop does what you expect, dismantling the concept of industrial/electronic/noise and causing it to collapse around samples and synthesizers. There is an amazing track called “Solving Homeless with a Hammer” that encapsulates the cleansing burn society needs by way of blistering magmic synths walls. Final Cop: the authority every neighborhood needs.
 
Or also maybe Cop Funeral. The Already Dead head Tabbia mixes oily gristle in ProTools and places his laptop strategically atop a lit stove. These are all things that you should not do to oil, or gristle, or ProTools, but the results are fabulous. As Tabbia is known to do as Cop Funeral, he conjures heaving wastelands of utter despair and joylessness and somehow whirls them into a force of formless rage, a cloud of unrequited spirits back to avenge the wrongs done to them. Spotlight track: “I Tried and It Sucked,” a behemoth of disappointment, something we can all relate to these days.
 
True to form, Final Cop and Cop Funeral are donating all proceeds from this release to CHIRLA, the LA-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which works “to advance human and civil rights of immigrants and refugees.” Because shouldn’t we just help people, right? Watch out for each other, pick each other up when we’re down, or maybe ensure that the most vulnerable among us aren’t helplessly ground up in the jaws of the machine?
 
https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/
 
https://copfuneral.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

GRIMÉNY “Die Große Aufgabe” (Already Dead)

 

It is “a big task” to rumble into first place on the all-time great math-rock band list, but Grimény is up to the challenge! Well, I don’t know that there’s really a list of that sort, or if anyone’s really keeping some kind of analytical score, or if the objective and the subjective should intermingle in such a way, or even if the whole enterprise is a good idea, but none of that even matters once Grimény starts blasting away. The Berlin trio punks up whatever early-1990s Chicago trio happens to be on repeat that day and shoots like a rocket into a rhythmic stratosphere of their own devising. It often sounds like Don Cab mistakenly put a quarterstick of dynamite in their mouth instead of a cigar and lit it with a Trans Am match.
 
Kaboom. Face obliterated by math-rocket-y goodness.
 
Die Große Aufgabe means “a big task” or “the big task” (I’m fuzzy on my German articles, but I’ll be happy to be corrected), and let’s now call Die Große Aufgabe a completed task – Grimény are ready to bust through to this side of the Atlantic. The groundwork is laid, the fuses are lit, let’s let these firecrackers (again, uh, quartersticks) pop off in tape decks everywhere. The band interplay is spectacular – this isn’t their first go-round after all – and the inventive songwriting keeps Die Große Aufgabe from getting stuck in a guitar/bass/drums rut. That’s because it’s a synthesizer/guitars/bass/drums setup, so you can imagine the echoes of I Am Spoonbender throughout this thing. Gosh, that’s something I’ve missed.
 
https://grimeny.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

DERE MOANS “A Dereliction” (Already Dead)

 

“This isn’t long enough, Tony!” I scream at absolutely friggin’ nobody, and it’s just as well – nobody would understand what I’m talking about, let alone me in general. I’ll give you a little background: Tony Lien, purveyor of Bad Cake Records, is Dere Moans, and every release he blesses us with is a plunderphonic masterpiece. No, he’s not taking whole Blink-182 songs or whole Spice Girls songs and repurposing them for our referential pleasure. Whatever the heck he’s sampling, it ain’t something that I recognize, and that’s all the better – that means I can enjoy A Dereliction without the intrusion of outside influence.
 
But it’s too short.
 
Fine, so it’s technically an EP or whatever, big deal. And I say these things to completely praise Tony’s abilities, because I haven’t met a Dere Moans release I haven’t immensely liked. There’s really nobody that can rip through source material and come up with wildly inventive concoctions quite like Tony Lien, and here he straddles the line between complete cut-up sonic terrorism and a static-y sound puzzle that’s missing only a few pieces of frequency before it blooms into weird euphony. Listening to A Dereliction makes me wonder how in the living crap there hasn’t been a Dere Moans release on Orange Milk yet. It’s like someone’s taken a literal scissors to music here and reassembled it. That’s sort of the Orange Milk way.
 
But this is on Already Dead. Already Dead is so friggin’ awesome.
 
Look, there’s no way I’m not going to bombard your Twitter feed with “#BuyDereMoans” posts, because I’m halfway in the nuthouse here and A Dereliction is making more sense than most of what I encounter on a daily basis. And that’s fine – it’s a cracked mirror of abstract sound manipulation that has to be heard to be believed, and believed to be understood, and understood to be embraced, and embraced to be beloved, and beloved to be uploaded to Soulseek or whatever is on the internet now. Just kidding, buy a tape – #BuyDereMoans.
 
https://deremoans.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

NESEY GALLONS “Misprisions” (Already Dead)

 

Nesey Gallons has some secrets, and they are wrapped up tight and concealed from everyone’s knowledge. They’re wrapped up so tight and concealed so well that they’ve begun vibrate with a sinister electricity in the hopes that they’ll get noticed and subsequently revealed. But wouldn’t that just be a weight off Nesey Gallons’s chest? Wouldn’t that just be a relief?
 
Gallons, one time Elephant 6 stalwart (Music Tapes, Circulatory System), has relocated to Maine, and I LOVE Maine and New England in general, and I miss living close enough to it. The tape, a lovingly recorded artifact, sounds like purple twilight and cold wind and falling leaves. Gallons tries to choke back his secrets and his fears throughout, his melodies bursting morose and unfettered in their fractured beauty. You can almost see him gulping frigid air after every line, his breath misting against streetlights.
 
He’s surrounded himself with a crack team of players, and Misprisions, the result, is a definite 1990s psych-pop throwback to the E6 heyday. I know it’s unfair to pin a scene on a one-time scenester, but it’s impossible to take Athens out of the elephant even if the elephant’s taken itself out of Athens. Something like that. But the group further solidifies the tightly wound interpersonal dramas and dilemmas that build up inside oneself over the years, and those damaging secrets about oneself and others, those misprisions, can’t stay inside forever. They build up, have to get out.
 
Luckily, they can get out in a beautifully articulate way sometimes. Nesey Gallons has the sublime expression of the release of that pent-up guilt locked down.
 
Songs written between 2011 and 2013.
 
https://neseygallons.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

RODO “Within the Void” (Already Dead)

 

The void is real, and it’s there. Rodo knows it, and Rodo embraces it – Rodo is, wait for it: Within the Void. Maybe that bonelike structure trapped in the black circle upon the white field on the cover is Rodo, content to be engulfed rather than scrabbling for escape. That’s because Rodo embraces it. I’ve mentioned that before.
 
Over six spine-tinglingly gloomy dark ambient pieces, Rodo explores the blankness of the situation. Everything is absence and distance, like “Black Sea of Infinity” or “Amid the Waves.” “Do You Know What Fear Is?” tracks the emotional response to a wasteland, a vast, blistered horizon with nothing living upon it. Then there are “The Void Within” and “After the Void,” troubling reflections on utterly negative space. Like, does the vacuum exist inside of you, and is that why your heart is hurting so bad so often? Absence and regret – the void is of our own making.
 
Or maybe it’s a shadow dimension containing a shadow entity that thrives on nothingness, and Rodo is simply hastening its passage into our own. I wouldn’t be surprised, not with this one! Still, cautiously, thrillingly, hauntingly, Within the Void blooms black against the daylight, taking its place alongside hope as its antithesis. You need the darkness for the light to truly shine, am I right?
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

PAINTED FACES “American Basement” (Already Dead)

 

David Drucker is back in his Painted Faces moniker, this time with some literal painted faces on his j-card – well, at least old werewolf Dad. The Halloween look harkens back to my childhood, when we all dressed up for the season and had parties in basements and everyone thought the peeled grapes they were feeling were eyeballs. Anyway! That’s terrifying in every way.
 
Drucker brings out that unique American dread, where things like Halloween parties in the 1980s occurred even though everyone was headed to hell in a handcart. Or maybe they were already there, in the wood-paneled variety. His lo-fi one-man stoner rock shtick (with a healthy dose of seasick Casio) does an admirable job whisking me away to a nostalgic place that I’m not certain is actually nostalgic – it’s more like a place I left and return to in my mind periodically with discomfort.
 
It’s weird, unnatural, and smells of bong rips. (That was the college part, not the kid growing up part. We still had wood-paneled basements in college.) Drucker’s music is weird, unnatural, and is probably made following a handful of bong rips. Is Painted Faces maybe, perhaps, the perfect example of the American way shot into the night, crippled and alone, dirty and subsisting on junk food?
 
Could be.
 
https://paintedfaces.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

MEZZANINE SWIMMERS “Kneelin’ on a Knife” (Already Dead)

 

Ow – frickin’ ow! Nope – don’t listen to what the Mezzanine Swimmers, which in this case is just a guy named Mike Green, not a bunch of high-wire water enthusiasts, have to say. Has to say, I guess. One guy. Anyway, again, ow, because Kneelin’ on a Knife, which is what this new EP is titled, is not a great idea in practice. You put a knife on the ground, regardless of how sharp it is, and actually try to kneel on it, you’re asking for bloody kneecaps. Take it from me, the guy who actually attempted that.
 
But then all … no, most is forgiven, because Kneelin’ on a Knife is a fun five songs of exquisite bedroom composition – meaning Mike Green does this all on his own and doesn’t need, like, a band practice space or whatever. He could do this in his bedroom if he wants (not that he has to). These delectable off-kilter tuneskies are delivered through a haze of homecooked static and fuzz, but not everything’s cloaked so heavily. Melodies abound, and porch-stomping rhythms ground most of Green’s work. The delightfully patchwork and collaged approach mirrors the cover nicely, and you all know how much I appreciate the rough-and-tumble homespun-ness of an experimental pop release. Mezzanine Swimmers is right up that alley.
 
https://mezzanineswimmers.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

SAM GAS CAN “Gone Doing” (Already Dead)

 

Lifer. That’s what Sam Gas Can is, a lifer in the outsider cassette underground. We hear from him periodically, and we rejoice in his release schedule. Listening to Sam Gas Can is like drinking milk: the calcium from the process helps promote strong bones. We feel that health determinant coursing through our bodies. It feels like every day.
 
Every day of our life this is needed. Gone Doing is the delivery system, and just when we thought we’d have Tascam-damaged shoegaze, we got speak-jazz rap. Just when we thought we got folk’d to the marrow, we heard the transmissions, we perceived the satellites. I remember the day I first heard Beck’s Stereopathetic Soulmanure, and Sam Gas Can’s Gone Doing hits a lot of those scattered-yet-cohesive-in-the-scatteredness’s spots. I loved Stereopathetic Soulmanure at first sight. I feel the same way about Gone Doing.
 
When you’ve done this for a while, you get comfortable – no, confident in the vision, the focus. Because even when it’s a bunch of crazy ideas tossed in a pot and stirred beyond recognition or intention (bah! Look at me talking about intention!), the result doesn’t have to curdle. The result can be the weirdly unified and secretly brilliant work of a dusty old treasure just waiting to be unearthed from the Northampton, Massachusetts, soil. Is Sam Gas Can a dusty old treasure?
 
No, we’ve been over this. He’s milk. Music milk for the bones. Life-giving, life-happening.
 
https://samgascan.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

COACH CAMPA “If You’ve Got the Hammer” (Already Dead)

 

I’m a coach as well, just of U10 soccer players. They can get pretty rowdy I guess, but they listen pretty good. They learn, they get better. They play fair. Isn’t that all that matters in the end?
 
Coach (Ethan) Campa is a different kind of coach altogether. I’m not sure he has a patient approach, or even one that appreciates the learning process. It’s “Get it right or get out!” with that guy. He also plays drums, so he’s constantly hitting something, which isn’t something you can do with U10 soccer players. They frown upon that. But Coach Campa is still a leader, somebody who has to wrangle his “team” for a singular vision. And that singular vision is blistering noise-rock-core-punk, four descriptions of music that I smooshed together with bubble gum and hyphens. They’re kind of lazy, but so what. I do understand that I would be kicked out of Coach Campa’s program with that attitude, but here we are.
 
Coach Campa’s team consists of other members of his band, and we get bass, guitar, ukulele (!), and trumpet along with Campa’s battering of the kit. If You’ve Got the Hammer is a heavy ride through a barrage of mathematically precise instrumentation, speakers blown out by heavy distortion, octopus drumming threatening to bring the whole scaffolding down upon everyone’s heads. But enough wild instrumentation peeks through the rhythmic onslaught to anchor the freeform freakout of Campa’s virtuosity. Hey, it’s Campa’s band – Campa can do whatever he wants. And his ship is the tightest-run ship you can imagine. Just like my soccer team!
 
https://coachcampa.bandcamp.com/
 
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

MANURE MOVERS OF AMERICA “Cut the Shit” (Already Dead)

 

I love that we’re just skipping straight to the puns, the humorous one-liners, the cockeyed references. It’s easy to do, especially if you’ve named your outfit “Manure Movers of America,” which Manure Movers of America have done. And true to form, the MMOA are heaving all kinds of refuse in all kinds of directions, sifting through the detritus of this country and commenting on it via noise and frequency. Also true to form, MMOA seem pretty critical of the results.

But let’s not dig in too deep here (PUN INTENDED), because then we’ll miss all the noxious sounds piping through the speakers. Yeah, this is noise, and yeah, there’s a track called “Get in the Van” (help me count the levels of humor there), but you’re going to miss the subtleties if you’re hoping for a Hank Rollins cameo or a wall of harshness obliterating you. MMOA is a careful entity, weaving layers of rumbling turmoil throughout things like “Gift Horse” and pinging odd nodes on other things like “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Shit” (pun/reference alert!). Plus, haven’t you always wanted to scream “Hardly Workin’!” in answer to that ubiquitous question you’ll obviously be asked by some jagoff customer someday? MMOA helps you do just that with knives of feedback.

So do it, Cut the Shit and get over yourself. Get on with your life. Manure Movers of America have certainly done so, and they’re here to help you out.

https://manuremoversofofamerica.bandcamp.com/

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

DARKO THE SUPER (PRODUCED BY STEEL TIPPED DOVE) “The Devil Defeated” (Already Dead)

I’m not gonna lie, I have the last Hell Hole Store album on my jogging playlist. So every once in a while, I hear Darko pumping through my earbuds, and that butter-smooth energetic flow kicks me into another gear. I often find myself chuckling at Darko’s wordplay. So imagine my delight when the latest Already Dead batch included the latest Darko the Super tape. IMAGINE IT!

 

I’m probably gonna upload this one too. Or, uh, wear a big chunky Walkman and play the actual tape, since, you know, this is a cassette site. (Psst: I’m not gonna do that.)

 

The Devil Defeated continues Darko’s Del/Serch storytelling saga, and this time the Philly rapper takes on the greatest enemy ever envisioned – the Devil himself. Fortunately, before we even hit bar one, we know that Devil’s going down, because Darko said so, and at this point we believe Darko. As impressive as that feat is, it’s not as impressive as the wordplay making an absolute mockery of the foibles of everyday life, ripping a new blowhole in every demonic interlude.

 

See, the Bible tells us that the Devil is behind every bad thing, like traffic and indigestion and Twilight. So that just means the battle is real, every day, all the time! That’s exhausting, but Darko can do it, Darko can take it on, always, and here with a cadre of companions led by producer Steel Tipped Dove. (Hell Hole buddy Ialive makes an appearance too!) And not only do Darko and crew take on the most malevolent forces of evil, they do it with style and swagger.

 

Or, you know, you just roll with this great tape and don’t worry about what’s going on behind the scenes. Darko’s got you covered there too.

 

https://darkothesuper.bandcamp.com/

 

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

ANURA “Deluge” (Already Dead)

Oh, this one isn’t black metal? OK, Brendan Landis, you got me. The Anura logo, the black hoodie, the long hair obscuring your face (look man, it’s OK to cut it off if you’re losing it, take it from me), all of that just screamed (bellowed? barked? shrieked?) black metal to me. But with the blurring of lines between shoegaze and slowcore and black metal these days, I guess it’s not super surprising that this is, indeed, more in line with shoegaze and slowcore than black metal. Kindred spirits find kindred atmospheres, and some of the aesthetics – in this case visual ones – cross over as a result.

The surprise was a nice one. Yes, I had braced myself (not too much – I certainly love me some black metal!), but I was totally fine with what resulted. As Anura, Brendan Landis, one-dude band (with some guests!), melancholies his way through a shimmery, dreamy album of wistful melodies and downtrodden tempos, falling somewhere between the American Analog Set and Galaxie 500, but with the twinkling lights of Mazzy Star. The Deluge is feelings, perhaps, an onrushing of acknowledgment that what’s dammed up inside can succinctly and artfully be hinted at, but there’s gotta be a breaking point somewhere. Right? Anura trades in these glimpses and glimmers, slowly building monuments to heartbreak and regret.

And while much of this is done in singular expressive guitar tones, by the time the title track rolls around, Anura’s also affirmed a capability of dabbling in electronic flourishes with success. From here come the big, drawn-out moments, the lengthy tracks you can try to hold your breath to but probably shouldn’t (unless you can hold your breath for a minimum of four minutes and twenty-two seconds – the side B minimum anyway). So even though Deluge doesn’t indulge in the histrionics of a primal scream, the intense whisper will do just as nicely.

https://anura.bandcamp.com/

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

ONE MORE FINAL I NEED YOU “We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful” (Already Dead)

I figured that forthcoming H. Jon Benjamin Sub Pop album was going to splice comedy and jazz together in such a way as to truly redefine each genre, but I was missing the real action. Turns out that improv trio One More Final I Need You’s We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful is where the real laughs are. Well, if we’re talking laughs like everybody’s so pathetic that it’s funny – think early Noah Baumbach, maybe – then we’ve nailed the comedy part of this equation. As I listen to Taylor Campbell, Bob Bucko Jr., and Landon Deaton mope through the title track that opens the album for almost ten minutes, I’m struck at a deep level just how appropriate the words “love” and “awful” go together, and how much that makes me laugh. Am I a sadistic bastard? Have I, a family man, lost touch with reality?

 

“Does Anyone Actually Ever Kill Themselves?” answers that question with another question, or maybe it doesn’t really answer it, only lurches through demonic swing while illustrating the highs and lows of whatever it is that’s actually being illustrated. This is where it goes – We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful is sweetness turned sickening, of rotting feelings and intentions wilting before our eyes and sometimes flung at us at high velocity. But Campbell, Bucko, and Deaton are game, ready to rip our festering hearts out and pepper them with shrapnel from horns and guitars and drums and whatnot. (Basically those three.) We feel good while we feel bad, and vice versa.

 

That’s a good trick for the music to play! Mostly I feel good though, and as I’ve mentioned with my chuckling above, it’s because of the naming conventions. How else are you going to approach “Erectional-Based Disasters” or “To Hell with Their Punishments!”? (To be fair, the second half of the titles aren’t quite as funny, and one is even uninventively called “Interlude.”) Plus, I’m not sure something like “Eggs in an Old Box” is even possible, unless they’re fresh eggs served, for some reason, in the titular box – otherwise they’d stink pretty bad over time. Whatever, I’m overthinking this. One More Final I Need You is always rapturously fascinating, and We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful is no exception. It’s probably even more rapturously fascinating given that title. Nice work, gents!

 

https://omfiny.bandcamp.com/

 

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

HUMAN ADULT BAND “Beyond the Time Barrier Travelers” (Already Dead)

Like a canker sore infesting the lip of society, Human Adult Band spread their unclean noisy destruction to the masses, causing society to poke its tongue around its lip to find the source of its pain and then push it around a little bit. Maybe it’ll burst, sending a plume of painful pus into the vacant space around it. Maybe it’ll resist and shoot sharp jolts into the lip nerves. Whatever the case, Human Adult Band is bound to cause some amount of discomfort to those in their general vicinity at any given time.

 

Imagine unearthing some live recordings from fifteen years ago and deeming them releasable. Imagine then unearthing some recordings from last year and also deeming them releasable. That’s the MO this time around from Human Adult band, who jam pack Beyond the Time Barrier Travelers (and who isn’t super jealous of that designation?!) with a heaving sea of discontent, and upon that sea is a lurching vessel leaking from its every seam, intent on going down and embracing its own destruction. That the sea is time itself and the vessel is Human Adult Band should be obvious. That the destruction is immediate, bracing, and electrifying should also be right in the wheelhouse of any noise rock fan interested in pummeling themselves to unconsciousness.

 

But let’s get back to the pus and the sores, shall we? Human Adult Band subscribe to the more skin-shredding variety of intense buzz, their guitars and bass shrieking maelstroms of metallic debris bound for your vicinity. They continue unrelentingly in this fashion until every part of you is raw and exposed, ever nerve frayed, every pore leaking blood. Go ahead, try to heal after a Human Adult Band show – you’ll just be subjected to it again next time, and the onslaught will begin anew. But it’s the kind of onslaught that you want to happen to you, because it’s, like, a rush or something.

 

Whoa.

 

https://humanadultband.bandcamp.com/

 

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan

SIR BOBBY JUKEBOX “Friendship Gift” (Already Dead)

Somebody once called Sir Bobby Jukebox “the mad scientist of indie pop,” and, with the exception of Sir Benjamin Gibbard, I’m inclined to agree. Given that we’re talking about royalty here (that’s what you are when you’re knighted, right?), we have to tread carefully with our formalism. You don’t want to tick off the people whose land you can’t hunt on (if I recall my European history correctly).

Just kidding about the knighting stuff, but Sir Bobby is an actual knight, having gone into battle with various troupes (No Monster Club, Ginnels, Paddy Hanna and Grand Pocket Orchestra) and slaying the dragons and marauding invaders of boredom and ennui. Wielding catchy songs like a magical sword plucked from a lake, Sir Bobby mows down everything and anything that comes at him with swift and true strokes – as long as whatever it is is worthy of a caustic barb or two.

Sir Bobby ranges through a kaleidoscopic pop countryside trod by such fun-loving luminaries as Larry Wish and Attic Ted and, dare I say, David Byrne, jigging and jagging along melodies and shuffling under psychedelic moods. Are the tracks whimsical? Almost always. Are they delightfully cheeky? You bet. There’s not much to turn up your nose at, even if you’re some kind of stuck-up royal knight or something. Oh wait, the knighthood! Eeesh … (does the Johnny Carson collar tug). Let’s just say, they only thing we’re going to get around to dubbing anytime soon is this tape.

… And by “we” and “dubbing,” I mean Already Dead and their official duplication team. I’m not making bootlegs, honest!

https://sirbobbyjukebox.bandcamp.com/

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

FUTURESLUM “Pretty Flowers in the Garden” C28 (Already Dead)

Pretty Flowers in the Garden my ASS!

Let me back up a second.

What comes to mind when you think of “pretty flowers in the garden”? Bucolic scenes of freshness and life, right? Color and sunlight, cultivated beauty? Yeah, me too – I think about that and I’m shot full of whatever the relaxation equivalent of endorphins is. Nothing like sitting out on the porch in the shade of a late spring afternoon, listening to the bees buzz and watching the clouds drift.

But that’s not what I’m getting here with Pretty Flowers in the Garden by Futureslum.

Maybe I should have seen it coming – something called “Futureslum” almost certainly wouldn’t have a sunny disposition if you think about it. Probably leans more toward the urban decay end of the spectrum (and “urban decay” is an almost exact synonym in this case). OK, I definitely should have seen it coming. Futureslum plays the beat tape thing into the ground, like literally crushing the genre with all Futureslum’s weight until the whole thing sounds like it was discovered by a forensics team sifting through the wreckage of a blown-up bank vault. Insert “CSI” joke here (I can’t think of a good one).

Even the beats get sandblasted away after a while, and the tone is just thick and strewn with rubble. The two sides track the pace of weathering and neglect, until all we’re left with is a stretch of cracked asphalt studded with new shoots growing out of it. This is going to keep going folks – it’ll keep happening until the plants have reclaimed the city. And then there’ll be pretty flowers in a brand new garden.

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

COP FUNERAL “Hot Lonely Singles” (Already Dead Tapes)

It was only a matter of time before Josh Tabbia dropped a b-side Cop Funeral collection, right? I mean, dude’s all over the place, releasing tape after tape, also curating Already Dead. Constantly in motion, a perpetual whirlwind. And so here we have it, the Tinder-group-from-hell-titled Hot Lonely Singles, a molten metallic lava trail drooled from the lip of a bubbling volcano. Released on Valentine’s Day 2020, it plays like the lead-up to our current coronavirus-dominated lives: a psychic venereal affliction that also serves to score unlucky façades till they’re devoid of features. Those metaphorical façades are our metaphorical faces.

And so we also grind our ears to dust with Tabbia’s textured noise treatments, pulled from the vaults of time stretching all the way back to 2012, yet some appearing fresh-faced as of the dawn of the new decade. Some are demos, some are cast-offs, some are b-sides. Some were intended for life in iterations other than the one they appear in. Some were never intended for life at all. But what they all have in common is that they were yanked from Tabbia’s hard drive and organized and released into the world, meaning that they were loved, just enough, to warrant public attention. They were even given a physical manifestation and a catalog number (AD327). They were real, they were alive, and they were glorious.

They can also be yours.

https://copfuneral.bandcamp.com/

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan