Retail Drugs
Moor Mother/Wooden Elephant/Beethoven Orchestra Bonn/Dirk Kaftan
G Lucas Crane
Die Spitz
Jung An Tagen
Abhorrent Expanse
Eric Wetherell
Authentically Plastic
Patriarchy
The Bug vs Ghost Dubs
Rip Van Winkle
purity olympics
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Retail Drugs Black Tie
‘There’s a particular brand of madness that occurs when an artist gets bored of their own tricks. Jake Brooks didn’t experience some dark night of the soul; he just got sick of guitar and ran out of cassette tapes. Sometimes the most radical artistic shifts have the most mundane origins, and Factory Reset, Retail Drugs’ third full-length record in fifteen months, is what happens when rage gets funnelled through a laptop instead of a four-track: the sound of someone taking an industrial drill to a server room mid-breakdown.’ — Hayley Scott
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Moor Mother, Wooden Elephant, Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, Dirk Kaftan Don’t Die
‘For around a decade, Philadelphia’s Camae Ayewa has been constructing sonically experimental and thematically radical works of art. As Moor Mother, the musician and poet’s art often offers searing takedowns of structures of oppression and on the imperialism, colonialism and brutality that has resulted in generations of Black trauma. She delves deep into this on her 2019 album Analog Fluids Of Sonic Black Holes, the sense of widespread socio-political discontent illustrated by the record’s brutal, auditory chaos. Now, in her latest release, Moor Mother reissues that same album as a brand new orchestrated edition, featuring the string quintet Wooden Elephant and The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, conducted by Dirk Kaftan, once again blurring the boundaries between genre and art to present something viscerally powerful.’ — Arusa Qureshi
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G Lucas Crane Vortex Technique
‘G Lucas warps, mashes, unspools, hacks, grinds and morphs his archive of cassettes and manipulated field recordings into a tapestry of lovecraftian horror-audio, where ghosts speak in machine language, crypto grannies cross state lines, petty jewels are heisted, dogs are licked, tubs are thumped, wizards are thrown from their carts, caves exude their swampy ichor, and a quivering host of live performances and radio remixes are finger-painted together like an adorable sound centipede.’ — Artsy
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Die Spitz I Hate When Girls Die
‘Ava Schrobilgen, Chloe De St. Aubin, Ellie Livingston, and Kate Halter are part of a generation that came of age in the shadows of endless consumption. Their songs gnash their teeth at that reality, the band trading instruments and vocals with abandon and a refusal to be contained in a singular genre box that mirrors the album’s restless themes. What emerges is a somewhat slippery and kaleidoscopic sound, chewing from punk, doom, grunge and shoegaze, but not sitting comfortably inside any of them. Their sound shifts tones, colours, and levels of intensity without losing momentum and it’s underpinned by cohesion as well as the sense that each track is part of a larger, unruly organism.’ — Diana Revell
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Jung An Tagen Revenge of the Speaker People
‘Stefan Juster aka Jung An Tagen is known for conceptual works and has a large back catalogue of intriguing ideas and sounds. Revenge of the Speaker People is another adventurous release, one which takes the Otoacoustic discoveries of David T. Kemp and applies them to a techno framework. OAEs are fragile and can collapse quickly when combined with other elements. Jung An Tagen’s success in combining OAEs with beats is therefore quite an achievement, without precedent.’ — Editions Mego
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Abhorrent Expanse Enter the Misanthropocene
‘Arriving from the Midwest by way of R’lyeh, Abhorrent Expanse‘s journey began with 2022’s Gateways to Resplendence, a stunning hybrid of extreme metal and avant-garde improvised music. The title track opens the album with requisite madness. For a few seconds, dissonant death metal seems the order of the day. It quickly becomes apparent, though, that these guys are operating at a different level of madness than most. Where Imperial Triumphant are twisting their riffs into insane jazz configurations, Abhorrent Expanse are foregoing riffs altogether. Instead, they create horrifying atmospheres with pure improvisation. Blasting drums complement the stream-of-conscious guitar work the way free jazz is supposed to, only this time it’s drenched in metal.’ — Todd Manning
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Eric Wetherell: Sky (1975)
‘An eerie, unsettling benchmark for wyrd television in the 1970s, Sky was created by Doctor Who writers Bob Baker and Dave Martin. The series is widely acknowledged as one of several outstanding children’s dramas produced by HTV alongside Children Of The Stones, King Of The Castle and Into The Labyrinth. A brooding atmosphere is sustained across Sky‘s seven episodes, aided by Eric Wetherell’s stark score. Featuring harpsichord, glockenspiel, timpani, cello and primitive electronics, the music is tense and atonal, verging on experimental.’ — Buried Treasure
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Authentically Plastic Baksimba Simulacrum
‘Authentically Plastic’s sophomore album is a dense mass of oozing rhythms and viscous harmonies that surges in all directions at once. Its predecessor, 2022’s critically acclaimed ‘Raw Space’, had prioritized a level of intensity that Authentically Plastic dubbed “sonic flatness”, developed in response to Western art’s obsession with depth of field. ‘Rococo Ruine’ doesn’t go back to the drawing board, but refines and widens the concept even further – without deepening it. The potent, austere rhythms that grounded ‘Raw Space’ have been stabilized and shredded, pasted into more consistent repetitions that act as an anchor for Authentically Plastic’s surprising melodic hallucinations.’ — HAKUNA KULALA
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Patriarchy Good Boy
‘A lifelong Los Angeleno, Actually Huixzenga embodies both the hypersexualised spectacle of Hollywood and its seedy underbelly. Actually’s dad is Dr. Robert Huizenga, the doctor for O.J. Simpson during his murder trial and later Charlie Sheen’s physician. Her grandfather helped build the first atomic bomb, and her mom was a Playboy Playmate. Explains a lot.’ — Effective-Part-9419
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The Bug vs Ghost Dubs Down
‘Structured in a versus format with each artist trading blows, the album has a tension that makes its otherwise stone-faced music thrilling. If Machine was intended to make audiences physically uncomfortable, Martin’s tracks on Implosion use the same sonic devices for more introspective ends. Each of his contributions is named after a venue or nightclub, and these desolate tracks can feel like they’re reverberating through long-abandoned, decaying spaces. The music is lumbering, even by his standards, with basslines so belligerent they might trigger the lunk alarm.’ — Andrew Ryce
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Rip Van Winkle Prose Kaiser
‘Pollard leans harder into indie art territory here, with scratchy textures, jagged guitar lines, and smaller arrangements. The album thrives on spontaneity and grit—each track sounds like it was captured mid-thought, but with a clear melodic backbone. The instrumentation is rough-edged but never lazy, with snappy transitions and that unmistakable Pollard vocal swagger holding it all together.’ — The Fire Note
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purity olympics strange earnest noise music
‘aly eleanor is a minneapolis-based musician, editor, journalist, poet, zinemaker, theatre artist, and writer. her criticism, essays, and interviews have been featured in numerous publications. she makes music as purity olympics.’ — a.e.
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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, At its best, early MTV could be a total gateway to art and video artists and filmmakers. That was a boon. ** Carsten, Hey. I wouldn’t call Hitchcock’s films square or stale. But I do think he did something with Dali. As did Disney. The Disney/Dali stuff, which I don’t think was released officially but is out there on the tubes, is pretty terrific. It would be great to see you. My schedule will be dependent on when I’m traveling with ‘RT’, and I’m not sure about that yet, but chances are I will be around at least once in a while. We can check in about the timing later. Actually, back in the 60s when nudist colonies were a thing in the US, they were actually pretty non-sexual. Not that I ever went to one to verify that. There was one in the hills right behind my junior high school, and sometimes you could hear them chanting and going ‘Ommmm’ and stuff. ** Lucas, She was great. Really under-appreciated when she was alive. I used to go see her work in galleries, and people would say, ‘She’s Robert Longo’s girlfriend’, which I guess she was for a while, like that was the only reason her work was being shown. Even though her work is infinitely more interesting than Longo’s. Everyone, New poem by Lucas here. Cool, I’ll read it later. Indeed about Myles. Congrats on the smokeless day. Hang in there. Right, stress can = canker sores. That makes sense. ** Hugo, Can one be too addicted to the uncanny? What’s the fallout? I do remember about your friend who’d been sex-trafficked. Crazy story. Well, true story. Thick as hell. My coffee is cold now, but it still works. ** HaRpEr //, Most people start with ‘Anti-Oedipus’, and it’s certainly great. As ‘Difference and Repetition’. But, yeah, you could find a topic of his that you’re into and start there. He covered a lot of bases. His writing on film is great, for one. That is complete nonsense that you have to be gay to really get my work. I think that’s total bullshit. If you’re gay, you have a different slant or focus point maybe, that’s all. A lot of the most exciting responses to my work have been from people who don’t identify as gay, whatever that means. Agreed about the term queer. I feel infinitely more comfortable under that rubric. ** kenley, Perfecting the application: I remember that phase not fondly. Only a day or two’s work, amazing. That waiting a week is probably a really good idea. Maybe not too much longer than that so you don’t lose your obsession. I edit in such a weird, complicated way, it’s hard to even describe in my head. For me, concision, tightness, removing anything that doesn’t absolutely need to be there or is beautiful/inventive enough to be important. Kinda like how I describe filmmaking, yes. Sounds very familiar. Interesting about how you located your singing voice. I had a friend who sang in a Screamo band, and he just went for broke and didn’t take any caution, and now he talks like a how old chainsmokers talk in movies. Cool. Your singing voice is more than sufficiently powerful and intense, in that video at least. ** Uday, Excellent timing: snowstorm. You’re in that class that Zac and I are Zoom visiting? Whoa. I won’t ask you to hold up a sign like at an airport that says Uday. Unless that strikes your fancy. Wild! ** jeestun, Very beautifully put. I have a very hard time imagining non-readers’ life trajectories too, even though I do have a fair number of friends who haven’t opened a book since high school. Sauna, nice. I like them, but after about ten minutes in one I get antsy. Relaxing is not one of my specialties. But the nakedness is nice. Or others’ nakedness at least. Blahblah, enjoy what the swirling water occasions to the max. ** Okay. Today I made you one of my gig posts starring some tracks I’ve been finding interesting of late. See if that occasions any mind melds, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
hahaha i think u misunderstood, the poem i linked is by eileen myles. hence my comment about her.
cool gigs. currently i’m just listening to a lot of old german rap from 10-15 yrs ago lol.
the only current artist from that sort is pashanim. i’m really obsessed with his newest ep. a close friend mentioned to me that you can kind of hear the drain gang influence in his tracks which i hadn’t noticed before, this is one of my fav tracks but one of the least bladee like i think https://youtu.be/vFUd7GliPCU?si=f5_5avSvfrQJcWUR
About 20 years ago, myself and a few friends went along to see Kevin Martin aka The Bug perform in Glasgow at Optimo. I remember KM being pretty great back then, just as his new project is right now. This thing with Ghost Dubs seems like the sounds of a venue emptied out but still playing host to the trace of deathly beings.
Hey Dennis,
Had my second shift at the bookshop today; it’s hard to tell if a new job is actually enjoyable or it’s just the newness, but I do think I’m enjoying this, and could be really happy to do this fulltime in London. I’m a fan of sorting, organizing, filing, documenting, making lists, etc. and it feels less like ‘work’ and more like a puzzle or game to me. I am exhausted though, but the type where you feel good to be feeling it.
Funny that I mentioned The Savoy in that post about closed venues a few weeks back, as it’s just been announced that it’s opening up again in February after 10 years of being closed! Might try and go to whatever is happening on opening day.
Going to see Mulholland Drive with my friends tomorrow, and then Inland Empire the following Friday. I’m also thinking of going to a screening + inperson Q&A of the Ben Wheatley movie BULK, as I saw a trailer for it before FWWM and it seemed up my alley.
Been MIA for only a few days but I’m sure with your busy life you have some new updates and events/screenings in the upcoming weeks? Any news?
Will you be returning to the US for future RT screenings?
I’m seeing THE GREAT ROCK’N’ROLL SWINDLE tonight, as part of a program of Malcolm McLaren’s film work.
ENTER THE MISANTHROPOSCENE is really something special, isn’t it? I like Black_Acrylic’s description of Ghost Dubs. No matter how loud I play “Down,” it still sounds as though most of the song is missing. “Revenge of the Speaker People” is fuller, but it has a similar spirit.
I finished editing my next “Radio Not Radio” show today, and it will be posted Saturday.
I’m dreading the storm arriving on Sunday and Monday. We’re supposed to get at least 6″ of snow, and temperatures will be frigid for more than a week.
hi Dennis!
i did take a day off yesterday and suffered throughout! srsly horrid day symptoms-wise, you have no idea. think i told you i’ve started re-reading Guide? since i’ve been reading Try so much lately. it helped! like i totally uglycried yesterday (which is a lot for me to say since no-one’s ever seen me cry other than my parents way back when and then my husband) but it just wasn’t possible to have a superbad time while reading, the book is too delightful. so thanks. <3 i did Frisk not that long ago so i think i’m just going to go through the cycle but like in this order, which means this time it will end w someone making his way to George in the dark, which i def like.
it almost bums me out i’m not a muse! like my father writes, and he’s great, and i feature, but he’s always been v basic about me. you know, stock image of a blue sky w implied birdsong vs all of his stuff insofar as he’s willing to disclose.
loads of new music! ty for sharing. the music i make is only weird in a much subtler way, which probably suits me, but there was a bunch i like here. compare is shit but there’s going to be nothing but compare ahead bc i’m a bit shagged out.
Retail Drugs – Black Tie. intentional shitflute moment, i’m trying to picture ppl dancing to it which is v funny. then, infinity hardass minimal riff thing, i could def dance to that.
Moor Mother – Don’t Die. my Id or whatever reads way faster than the rest of me, so i misread a lot. here i was v sure i was looking at Anal OG fluids so i was like what fluids are even OG we all got the same ones. facepalm. then ok, girl, i won’t die, then omg the lyrics at the end, and the delivery, gorge.
G Lucas Crane – Vortex Technique. this made me think of youtube poops, same stolen narrative thing, same trollage factor, sort of cute, you see it..?
Die Spitz – I Hate When Girls Die. i knew these already, p much love them. the video is great and they make me think Melvins but with that weird lissomness of Japanese metal? also Witch house for no obvious reason. man, Witch house was fun.
Jung An Tagen – Revenge of The Speaker People. i get it that OAEs are a thing but to me that’s a bit like someone made a painting out of pigment that selfcombusts in the light but they stabilised it or whatever. it’s not really what i’m in it for. still this was a bit immersive and fragile beyond its technical conditions, which, cool.
Abhorrent Expanse – Enter The Misanthropocene. Grimes already went there with that quip, these guys are sort of The Mars Volta doing death metal, they sound a bit like freedom which is not nothing in genre, i def can fuck w it.
Eric Wetherell – Sky. already knew the show a bit, this is retrofuture to me, but to him at the time…?
Authentically Plastic – Baksimba Simulacrum. Flatsos!! you know what i mean lol. bc this is sort of relentless sound trying to disappear, it’s also got a Buddhist edge.
Patriarchy – Good Boy. already loved her a bunch, ‘Los Angeleno’ in the text broke my brain. ‘Angeleña’, ffs lol. again, the video is great. she’s sort of Sonic Youth and Madonna and Millenium Sleaze, i had no idea re: her almost too good to be true family background, sick…
The Bug vs Ghost Dubs – Down. this is noir!! also fuckable remote bass. i really don’t like being negged, just by this one bass maybe lol.
Rip Van Winkle – Prose Kaiser. i mean, Rober Pollard, perpetual guy on fire or whatever <3 maaaajor Placebo guitar here but w straight vibes, which, interesting. i’d be a bit surprised if the man turned out to have been straight all along but this specific guitar sure is. the solo a bit less, like a Kinsey 2. ^_^
i can see how Blanchot would be huge for you! you both write w the same squirmy religious impulse. <3 he’s def v big for me, one of the biggest probably. and yes, saying ‘i’m not’ is an affirmation of self. did you get to meet him? he was hot too, wasn’t he? actually your Calhoun looks a lot like young Maurice here in my head.
i like Deleuze too, just not as much bc it’s honestly an unfair comparison. like, as much as i want to be a relatively sober prose writer, no-one can compete w the whole supra-rational thing, which imo made Blanchot so great and which Deleuze couldn’t fully get to bc he was restricted by genre. still, he did say difference=monism or smth like that, which was such a neat trick bc it suddenly inserted him into Spinoza lol. phenomenologically he goes v hard, and his thing with the virtual almost made him neither an empiricist nor a rationalist.
then again i get frustrated w the multidirectional beef amongst those mixed guys à là Kant and the german idealists and the postmodernists when they’re good, like, they don’t want to, but they do end up saying the same thing. which is v comforting to me in and of itself but so much bickering lol. like take Deleuze here, ‘the difference in itself’ is a universal statement which is an identity…the whole univocity of Being thing, the ideal is the real, isolated but not abstracted etc, so, like, ok, guy, you’re almost Schelling and the Godhead and also a you’re lot of Golden Age Islamic tafseer but that’s for another day lol.
do you go on social media? bc if so you must have seen a fuckload of Deleuze hot takes over the past few years on top of my own right here lol. think they’re starting to leave him a bit alone now but for this endless while everything identity politics and online was Deleuze and like none of your mainstream identities were ever real as per him, but all of your marginalised identitities were megareal as per him also. lol.
anyway i’m off to bed w Guide and stuff, Drew is about to make his proper entrance if memory serves. i’ve got a thing or two to say about the dwarf but i should finish first in case this re-read changes smth as re-reads sometimes do.
wish me luck doing this experimental thing which might be called sleeping and hope tonight is super soft to you! <3
OK you’re right, “square & stale” are unduly harsh words for Hitchcock. But he’s also not anywhere near as edgy as his worshippers make him out to be.
Ah yes, nudist colonies, those were indeed pretty close to the FKK spirit.
Thanks for the line-up above. Very unique stuff as always. Lately I’ve been listening to Ogun Afrobeat, Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds, plus going back to Marc Ribot & Chuck E. Weiss
Hey Dennis, great selection with The Bug etc,. I’m a big fan of his take on dub/techno. Are you a fan of Blawan by chance? I love his latest album SickElixir. If you listened to it, what did you think of my latest album by the way?
I’m also going to LA early February by the way, do you have any recommendations for things that way going on? No problem of course if not haha.
Hey there Dennis!
Today has been nice for me. In response to the question you asked a few days ago, there a two modules that I’m doing this semesters. The first focuses on preparation for our dissertation. Essentially we are building towards a proposal for a project we want to achieve. For me that is my first novel. An idea has been lingering my mind in some form or another. Now I feel it’s been grounded into something. I believe I touched on my relationship to my dad when I met you, but the dissonance of it has influenced this piece. The subject of murder and how it relates to this ambiguity of perception allures me. I’m hopeful this will transpire into something, as I feel confident about where I want to go. As it develops, I’ll let you know more about it
The second module focuses on screenwriting. Admittedly the list of works we have to engage with doesn’t appeal to me as it’s all works endorsed by British institutions anyways. I did expect that, though I suppose I’m tired of criterias that aim to endorse the same examples of art rather than what may intersect between it. However, it’s something I still feel optimistic about as it’s free-form to our interests in art. Lately I’ve been reading Notes on the Cinematograph. Bresson’s flourishes in his models fascinates me. There’s been an intrinsic ambiguity that I’ve been trying to capture within my characters, and his insights just really resonate in that regard.
Actually, I started reading your book Try a few days ago, and the opening Bresson quote has remained on my mind. I remember watching Like Cattle Towards Glow a few months ago, and there’s this spectacle of the ambiguous that I see in it translated through how characters present themselves. Are you conscious of Bresson’s approach when you’re directing?
Beyond that, I’ve recorded some voice lines for a friend’s film. She posted a notice looking for a speaker, and I decided to follow up on it. Really, I want to embrace the creative works of my friends either through participation or in general conversations. I recorded my lines today and it was a nice experience to adapt to that work.
Take care! Wishing you a nice rest of the week :3
Hi Dennis,
Die Spitz and Patriarchy are the real real real shit. Thank you for the reminder.
B
Hey Dennis.
Can one be addicted to ambiguity? I wonder if schizophrenia is the result of overdosing on too much ambiguity. It’s either that or becoming a Blanchot narrator. I’m seeing a new therapist in the morning btw. Here’s hoping it goes well. Still haven’t found a job though. Cheers.
Hey! I always love your gigs. Die Spitz are great.
That Sky soundtrack looks really interesting, I love soundtracks from forgotten tv shows. In old UK sci-fi tv they really went all out with the electronic developments of the day and often hired some interesting composers. Not that I know anything about sci-fi.
One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of big lit fic books at the moment have quotes from some publication on the cover saying how ‘sexy’ the book is. It’s quite interesting that sexiness is a selling point, and I think the assumption is that the reader will get their rocks off in some way, though they might not go to the lengths of masturbation. With sex, I think the best ‘sex writing’ is getting on to more than just sex, as you know, and I don’t mean that the sex is just a metaphor. But the ‘sexy’ tag is not so different to books that promise to make you laugh or cry, because I think that’s how people are conditioned to think about art in school, that everything an artist does is in service of generating a very clear and recognisable emotion. It confuses a lot of people when they don’t understand where they stand in relation to the art, which I suppose is where the lazy categorisations like ‘gay’ or ‘transgressive’ fiction come in.
Anyway, this might make me sound bad, but ultimately, if those kinds of labels are effective in getting my writing published/read/etc. then I’m okay to think of them as necessary evils.
hi dennis! moor mother! abhorrent expanse! yes yes yes! and as always lots of other cool stuff for me to check out
and yeah, i suppose editing is kind of intuitive or just…complicated, if thats what youre saying. ill take that with me tho, the part about concision and tightness. its a quality in your work ive always admired (hehe sorry to be a brownnoser). anyway, i finished my first draft today so WHEEEEEE
haha i talk about screaming like i have any idea what im even saying. who knows! i might sound like a haggard old chainsmoker too in however many years, although that might just be because…i am a smoker lol. pls do tell me your friends old screamo band! i would love to hear it!
Don’t think I’ll hold up the sign either, but I’ll wear the The Devil, Probably t-shirt I made, and that should suffice. Really wish i’d had time to lsiten to these today but will save for the weekend. Agree with you heavily about the sauna. Any encounter with quotidian nudity has seen an outsize improvement in my relationship with things. It’s weird to think about just how much body-related social conditioning there is.
Another interesting gig, Dennis. That’s an intriguing project from Moor Mother, will have to check out the whole record. That Patriachy video is all over the place. Is that the same Bug from the drill ‘n’ bass days? Probably not.
Have you heard the new Thighpaulsandra? I couldn’t really get into it, sadly.
Finally got to Muriel Spark’s Aiding and Abetting after your recommendation. Great fun.
Bill