Songs Vol. 1/15 - 1/19 — VR Sex, Trash Fiasco, Lime Garden, Tomato Flower, The Body & Dis Fig
I believe we’ve reached the B-side of this January-era mixtape I’ve been curating over the past couple of weeks.
We’re going to start with VR Sex…
Drab Majesty fans! DM’s Andrew Clinco goes by Noel Skum for VR Sex, his post-punk project that he’s expanded into a quintet. “Real Doll Time” is the first single from VR Sex’s upcoming new album, Hard Copy. And, yes, it’s about the pros of loving a sex doll: “And suddenly the perfect date / Never have to hear you’re running late / That kiss is so consistent / Manufactured, trouble fractured in an instant…”
You do you, buddy.
Dais Records is issuing this potentially rollicking good time of an LP on 3/22.
Links:
VR Sex — Bandcamp
Dais Records — Pre-order link
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Stereo Sanctity:
Following 2022’s Rough Dimension LP, Noel Skum – aka Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty – made the radical leap of expanding his psychedelic post-punk vehicle VR SEX into a fully collaborative five-piece band. Hard Copy is the result – 10 tracks of sneering psychedelic punk streaked with Chrome-damaged freak-outs and snotty power pop harmonies chronicling sex doll love affairs and glue-sniffing fatales and is due out March 22nd via Dais Records. To mark the announcement, the band are sharing the first single from the record "Real Doll Time".
To christen the new group’s camaraderie of becoming a five-piece band, they booked a block of studio time in Glassell Park, swapped skeletal iPhone demos, and “did that classic thing of a band making the exact record they want without any interference.” Working 12-hour days, they banged out the basics in a week, then tracked the rest over a month, fine-tuning it with flourishes, FX, and amplifier experiments.
Mixed by guitarist Mike Kriebel – an accomplished engineer with dozens of credits across the punk, goth, and garage underground – the album is dense, rich, and spatial, spurred by Clinco’s muse of “reckless abandon.” Shadows of Chrome, Stickmen With Rayguns, Japanese psych, and loud-quiet-loud grunge anthems flicker here and there, but ultimately VR SEX’s mode is more sardonic and saturated, oscillating between ripped leather riffing and space echo meltdowns. Banning plug-ins was a mission statement, with most instruments tracked direct into the board, then guitars added via a daisy chain of amplifiers, panned and mixed and matched for maximum intoxication: “My goal is always to load up every take with as much sound as possible in one pass.”
Lyrically, the record revisits the project’s perennial fascinations: twisted lust, cheap thrills, dirty money, doomed delinquents, and ruined romance amid the creeps and cracked dreamers of gritty city voids. The title refers to the uncanny valley between “facsimile and the real thing, and the illusion that one is better than the other – when both come with their own menu of delights and demonic pleasures.” Hard Copy embraces extremes and outliers, delusion and perversion, the conflicted dimensional depths lurking in every exploded heart: “I can be ugly / I can be strong / I can be proper / I can be wrong / I can be lovely / or I can be gone / the thing that will haunt you is still hanging on.”
Another representation of Chicago’s proud legacy of producing loud bands, Trash Fiasco released the single “Ma.lin.ger” from their upcoming new LP, Exist as Instructed. The single premiered at V13.
A sharp and buzz-worthy 2-minutes, “Ma.lin.ger” has the frantic disposition of a tent revivalist’s confession, AmRep-styled zizz raked across conversely clean, albeit loud, snare sounds evocative of (insert lazy noise-rock comparison here).
Exist as Instructed is scheduled to release 3/20/24.
Links:
Trash Fiasco — Official website / Bandcamp / YouTube / Facebook / Instagram
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Tell All Your Friends PR:
Based in Chicago, IL, Trash Fiasco is a punk fueled garage rock trio littered with loud tendencies. Born out of pandemic-driven fury, Trash Fiasco released their debut album Stay Miserable in 2021, producing reviews such as Redacted Magazine’s: “At their best, Trash Fiasco sounds like a mob of Neanderthals pillaging a music store, having never seen an instrument but making loud sounds nonetheless…”
Since then, the band has released a series of singles, including “Bastard From a Basket” described by Glide Magazine as a track that, “combines elements of the Misfits and MC5 to create a track that’s 100% midwest fury”
Trash Fiasco now focuses on the March 2024 release of their sophomore album, Exist as Instructed. The 8-track album will be preceded by a series of singles, providing fans with the same energy and chaos they’ve grown accustom to, but with a renewed spirit and attack. Trash Fiasco is comprised of Lucas Fuechsl (drums), Tyler Sanders (bass), and Frank Bruno (guitar/vocals).
Lime Garden’s “Mother” initially evokes Factory-era funk worship, a vibrant bass riff featuring rather prominently until the melodies are turned up. The hook is affecting; lovely even. In fact, it was the hook that sold me.
“Mother” premiered at Alternative Press. The band’s debut, One More Thing, releases 2/16/24 via So Young Records.
Links:
Lime Garden — Instagram / Twitter / Facebook / YouTube / Bandcamp
So Young Records — Bandcamp
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Tell All Your Friends PR:
In anticipation of their forthcoming debut album — One More Thing, out February 16 via So Young Records — fast-rising Brighton ones to watch Lime Garden have now shared a brand new single entitled "Mother."
Speaking about their newest track, Lime Garden’s Chloe Howard said: "This song is about the relationship with my mother evolving in tandem with my personal growth coming into adulthood. Coming to the understanding that my mother is just like me, someone trying their best to figure out life and not knowing 100% of the answers was a scary but beautiful realisation which bonded us. It’s cool how relationships shift and transform to match each phase of life. The song is the culmination of those feelings during adolescence and the realisation as an adult to appreciate our mothers."
Last year, Lime Garden shared three additional singles off their upcoming record: "I Want To Be You," "Love Song," and "Nepotism (baby)." Currently, "I Want To Be You" is in B-List rotation at BBC Radio 6 Music.
As a fan of Tomato Flower’s Gold Arc and Construction EPs, (I bought the EP comp cassette), news of a single and upcoming full-length release caught my attention. “Saint” features the band’s signature econo-length, indie-prog’isms, which are met with some Stereolab-level vocal tonality.
The album, which is simply titled No, is coming out on 3/8/24 via Ramp Local.
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Ramp Local:
Today Baltimore-based band Tomato Flower announced their debut album No on Ramp Local alongside a new single "Saint." Out March 8th, 2024 No follows Tomato Flower's two critically acclaimed 2022 EPs Gold Arc and Construction. Their earlier EPs found them honing formal and technical aspects of their approachable, art-damaged sound in a cool, detached manner. No, however, takes those strides and adds a raw, personal, and emotionally immediate energy previously only glimpsed in their gripping live sets. It's in part a breakup album between their two singers Austyn Wohlers and Jamison Murphy, who broke up while in the band together and wrote songs about it.
“Saint,” the second single from Tomato Flower’s debut full-length No following last year’s “Destroyer,” explores the aphasia and resentment that corresponds to a tumultuous love affair, intense feelings on every end of every spectrum. The bassline stumbles and falls into the earth, almost unable to pick itself back up again. Vocalist/guitarist Austyn Wohlers’ voice sounds like it is being caught in her throat before asserting, “In time/I found that you/started it.” The song is paired with a video depicting Tomato Flower vocalist Austyn Wohlers in domestic and garden settings. The band appears interspersed in colorful psychedelic shots.
About the song, Tomato Flower says: "Frenetic guitars and drums reflect a racing mind, while a slower guitar, cold vocal delivery, and a bass that crashes into the ground reflect the speaker’s failure to articulate herself in time. The outro can be read as rhapsodic, ironic, or remorseful—a remembrance or acknowledgment of overwhelming emotion."
For years, The Body (members Lee Buford and Chip King) have been ruining ears throughout their musical journey within the metal idiom while they’ve corrupted and imposed upon any genre seen fit to manipulate, reframe, tarnish, or augment. This new fuzz-bred electro-laden mood piece titled “Dissent, Shame,” which was composed in collaboration with electronic musician and The Bug vocalist Dis Fig, (a.k.a. Felicia Chen), has the duo interestingly in the background sans vocal intervention.
As introduction to this partnership’s upcoming LP, Orchards of a Futile Heaven, “Dissent, Shame” introduces a choral range to The Body I’ve not really heard since their work with the Assembly Of Light Choir, who were featured on the group’s 2010 release, All The Waters Of The Earth Turn To Blood. It’s appropriately unsettling, dark, and carries the fractured pulsations of digital hardcore.
The Body & Dis Fig’s Orchards of a Futile Heaven is releasing 2/23/24 via Thrill Jockey.
Links:
The Body — Bandcamp / Instagram
Dig Fig — Official / Bandcamp / Instagram / Facebook / Twitter
Thrill Jockey — Pre-order link
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Rarely Unable:
Ahead of the release of their debut collaborative album Orchards of a Futile Heaven, out February 23rd, The Body & Dis Fig share potent, affecting new single "Dissent, Shame."
The track's devastating force lies beyond pure noise or abrasive textures, evoking weighty emotions with a minimalist drone dirge that gradually builds into an enchanting choral passage. Suffused with a raw vulnerability and a longing for catharsis, Dis Fig's voice searches for escape in the midst of oppressive atmospheres as if determined to find relief from guilt. She elaborates on the track: “It’s about the act of abandonment, and the guilt and shame that comes with it. Running away from something, seemingly towards your own safety, but as your conscience picks you apart the entire way.”
Orchards of a Futile Heaven affirms The Body & Dis Fig as skilled sound sculptors who have an exceptional ability to make deeply affecting music, bracing as it is touching, harrowing as it is awe-inspiring. While sampling has long been essential to each, The Body & Dis Fig deftly meld their differing approaches to sampling and creating extreme sounds until the boundaries are entirely blurred. The group transmute weighty emotions into bristling sonic atmospheres, buoyed by Dis Fig's ethereal vocals. She elaborates: “I love the balance. You could never connect to just a machine as well as you could a human. Which is why the combination is so potent for me. I don’t want to hide. I think nothing connects you more empathetically than another human's voice.”
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
