"The Future Is A Valley" is the new release from Michael Slyne and his project Slyne and the Family Stoned (New London, Connecticut). Slyne appears to be a prolific musician who has released a ton of music in the last 6 years under various monikers - this being one of them.
For me, this is fairly hard music to pin down. I definitely hear Sonic Youth throughout - but the sonic change is even more whiplash than Sonic Youth. I mean there are times I feel like I'm listening to quasi metal-like riffs. And while this doesn't necessarily sound a lot like the work of CPN Hollywell (cpnpc, Twisted Teens, and Chardonnay), I feel like Slyne and Hollywell share a rock n' roll sensibility and work ethic.
As with all Slyne and the Family Stoned releases, this is self-released.
Irving Berlin’s “Heat Wave” seems to be the theme song for the summer. As we seek solace from the searing weather, the Dusted crew has sought some solace in their ever-mounting piles of releases, writing about music that runs the gamut from death metal to drone to free improvisation to sunny guitar jams to shoegaze to minimalist improvisation to field recordings from the coastal Namibia desert in South Africa. Contributors include Tim Clarke, Bryon Hayes, Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Justin Clifford Rhody and Jonathan Shaw.
Astriferous — Atavistic Unravelling (Me Saco un Ojo)
Sometimes it seems like death metal bands are just sifting through the language, looking for vaguely esoteric combinations of multisyllabic words to attach to their slimy, slithering compositions. Costa Rican freaks Astriferous could be accused of such a process; tracks on the new LP Atavistic Unravelling (hello) are titled “Mnemonic Phenomena,” “Resonance Cascade” and so on. Whatever the intent of the verbal gestures, the music on the record is unflaggingly entertaining, if you like chunky, malodorous, whirling chaos in the decidedly Old Skool mode of Demilich or Abhorrence. For this reviewer, “Dissolution of Eternity” and “Arcane Demonomania” are the record’s high (low?) points — and behold, those phrases both make a sort of sense, semantically. What they have to do with the meaty, stinky riffage assembled by Astriferous is an open question. Turn the music up and you may be having too much perverse fun to worry about it.
Jonathan Shaw
Bent Light — The Daylight is Ours (Memory Waste)
Connecticut duo Michael Slyne and Russell Linder proffer drones as Bent Light, but they stand apart from other drone-forward duos, such as Barn Owl and Windy & Carl, in that they construct a sort of Lynchian atmosphere, where kernels of the sinister are barely discernable beneath a sheen of beauty. Slyne, the ringleader of a scene known as Slyne and the Family Stoned, conjures surrealist visions from guitar, tapes, and radio chatter, while Linder’s pedal steel reveals bleak imagery aligned with Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s most abstract moments. The duo delivers side-long improvisations that float with desert sky immensity and expose chiaroscuro visions: the fluttering shadow of an ancient leaf-filled tree, grey clouds that hover menacingly, and wind-blown cyclones of dust. Bent Light deal in pure vibe. Cinematic in scope and ambient in design, their music elicits heavy-lidded grins and spine-tingling shivers in equal measure, pleasing whichever way you take your drones.
Bryon Hayes
Alex Cunningham / Matt Smiley / Ron Coulter — BLED (Personal Archives)
The names applied to the space between the Mississippi River and the California coastline might make a person think that there’s no chance of hearing totally improvised music. This trio, which includes violinist Alex Cunninghan (from St. Louis), bassist Matt Smiley and percussionist Ron Coulter (both from Colorado), defies such prejudices. The five spontaneously generated tracks on this CD sound raw, but totally engaged. Despite its mostly acoustic provenance (Coulter does play some electronics), the music bleeds all over the boundary between action-oriented free improvisation and straight-up noise. The trio traverses the terrain between aggressive, arhythmic attacks, which abjure familiar developmental arcs in favor of an unstinting engagement with the present and harsh, grinding layers of bowed sound. Fly over at your peril — you’ll miss out.
Bill Meyer
Art Feynman — Orphans (Western Vinyl)
Luke Temple’s trajectory under his Art Feynman alter-ego seems to be coming full circle. The propulsive art-funk sound of the last Feynman album, 2023’s Be Good the Crazy Boys, is now being explored further by Temple’s new band, The Cascading Moms. Orphans takes things back to the woozy four-track experiments of 2017’s wonderful Blasting Off Through the Wicker, but with lower stakes and less focus on songcraft. If anything, Orphans sounds like it could be Wicker’s underdeveloped predecessor, or a set of worthy outtakes that never saw further evolution. It’s mostly instrumental, each track gently playing around with a handful of instruments until interest wanes. The best tracks, such as “Ice Bath New Beginning” and “Asleep at the Window,” deploy minimal ingredients to maximum effect, casting a subtle spell. With so few elements in the mix, the sounds have to be ear-catching or atmospherically lulling to work effectively. Only the sproinging rhythm of “Always in Need of Something” begins to grate. For the most part, Orphans is a welcome, quirky companion to quiet, reflective moments.
Tim Clarke
Drew Gardner — Rabbit Ears (Eiderdown)
This latest missive from one half of the guitar-centric Elkhorn explores long sunny jams and country-flavored rambles. Gardner’s guitar reverberates in sprawling blues-touched boogies in the title track, rocking out with a band that includes Ryan Jewell on drums, Andy Cush on bass and Tom Malach on additional guitar. These cuts spin out from repetitive motifs, with exploratory guitar licks that curve in unexpected ways. It’s more Grateful Dead than Fahey, mostly, though a jazzy smolder seeps through the closer, “Conch Shell.”
Jennifer Kelly
Julius Hemphill — Dogon A.D. (New World)
A beautifully remastered and remixed reissue of Julius Hemphill’s groundbreaking 1972 free jazz masterwork, made available on compact disc for discerning study and long road trips alike. This new version also includes the 20-minute-long bonus track The Hard Blues, featuring Hamiet Bluiett on baritone sax, which was recorded during the Dogon A.D. sessions but released originally on Hemphill’s 1975 Coon Bid'ness LP. Hemphill unfortunately remains an under-celebrated composer-musician in America, and it’s a reality that feels all the more shocking after hearing how strikingly fresh this music sounds over half a century after it was created. As a co-founder of the pioneering, multidisciplinary cooperative, Black Artists Group (BAG) in St. Louis, Hemphill and his colleague’s commitment to self-determination is ever present throughout the history of their work and remains an inspiration to many of us today. Despite malfunctioning equipment in the studio, AWOL musicians, and the general difficulties experienced on a freezing day in February, Dogon A.D. remains a magnum opus of ecstatic fervor, cultural complexity, and survival.
Justin Clifford Rhody
HIGHSIGH — Once Bend (Joyful Noise)
This debut album from the new trio of John Dieterich (Deerhoof), Matt Mehlan (Skeletons), and Ro Lundberg (JOBS) sounds like the band’s name: an all-caps collision of polarities. The first part of the name (HIGH) is conveyed in the music’s manic, all-channels-open, scattershot rhythmic attack; the latter part (SIGH) is conveyed in the tone of yearning that slants its way through the intensity via plaintive vocals, cello, and questioning chords — a counterbalance to the clangor. Though the opening track is titled with an imperative, “Don’t Crowd the Eye” doesn’t sound like the band are heeding the call, and rather feels like being assaulted on all sides. Indeed, Once Bend supposedly came together from the creators’ abandoned ideas that never previously made their way to fruition in other bands. Here they spark off each other in overloaded conflagration. Thankfully there’s relief along the way in the form of more minimal instrumental interludes, and single “I Love the Room I Live In” is focused around its spacious, bass-driven groove. By the time the listener arrives at droning finale “unrememberable,” it’s with a feeling of both exhilaration and exhaustion.
Tim Clarke
Holy Wave — i’m DADA (Suicide Squeeze)
Holy Wave’s last album, 2023’s Five of Cups, found its closest comparison in the retro-futurist sounds of Broadcast’s Work and Non-Work, but suffered from pandemic-era listlessness. The band’s new album, i’m DADA, steps up the energy levels and songwriting focus, with clearer links to prime Stereolab (“first DAE”) and My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything (“unison”). The band is especially effective on opener “US 54” and single “s33.u.in/HAL,” counterbalancing motorik propulsion with dreamy waves of pitch-bent guitars, the players shifting gears confidently between sections. There’s a lingering sense that the band are still finding their own distinctive voice, with the lyrics coming across a little nondescript, and the drumming often settling into a predictable shuffling snare pattern. That said, as a marriage of sound and song, i’m DADA is definitely a step in the right direction, with its fair share of lysergic earworms.
Tim Clarke
Lockstep — I Know What I Saw (Profound Lore)
Given the gauzy, sad-eyed-boy sensibility too often associated with shoegaze, Lockstep seems like a strangely martial term to choose as a band name. But pull back and consider the genre, and things cohere differently. For years (and years…), most shoegaze bands have assiduously adhered to the music’s prescribed logic of “soft-LOUD-soft” or, heavens to Betsy, “LOUD soft LOUD.” Lyrics have been delivered in breathy, nigh-exhausted extrusions of prettiness, vaguely recognizable as human voices. Lockstep departs from none of those conventions, and the Nashville-based band seems sort of reflective about it. Songs are called “Ash in the Water,” “Solvent Sound” and (wait for it) “Soft Gauze of Time.” But it’s also the case that I Know What I Saw simultaneously delivers by-the-numbers songs and manages moments of real pleasure. “Dog in the House of Plenty” has an affecting melody, and the switches into BIG GUITAR NOISE are beautifully executed. “Return” sounds like an Fm radio standard heard through several layers of soaked terrycloth on a perfectly warm summer morning, until the guitar solo achieves liftoff into blue skies. That may be the aesthetic ideal of shoegaze music, so a tip of the sunhat to Lockstep for recording it.
Jonathan Shaw
Rob Magill & Chris Corsano — Life Size (Weird Cry)
7 track album
Ojai California based multi-instrumentalist, Rob Magill, and the incredibly prolific drummer, Chris Corsano, offer a hefty dose of free music stemming from the jazz tradition by way of high energy scrape and scree with notes spilling out sideways. And it’s good. At this point Corsano is an undeniable and canonized figure within the worlds of jazz and experimental music, having carried out countless collaborations and tours around the world (including a quarter century long running duo with saxophone luminary Paul Flaherty). And anyone who’s ever witnessed Corsano perform live will attest that the percussionist deserves all of the praise he receives, and more. Magill is also an exceptionally active performer by way of collaborations with the likes of Eugene Chadbourne, Patrick Shiroishi, and Tatsuya Nakatani among others. Magill also sits in as a member of SoCal’s “barely there” acoustic ensemble, Sheep Ditch, and he’s produced literal armloads of small-run solo releases. Although the music on Life Size exists firmly within the confines of free jazz, and the results are chockablock with the genre’s famed Fire, the duo’s tactics are brimming over with an originality and innovation that breathes new life into the tried and true. Magill’s wild and wooly guitar is particularly expansive paired alongside Corsano’s propulsive thrashing, with both players deftly hounding the micro to macro in a form that values communication over harmony. This is a no-nonsense discourse and a masterful delivering of the news. A major record.
