Last year, rising Montréal-based outfit Choses Sauvages — La Sécurité‘s Félix Bélisle (vocals, synths), Totalement Sublime‘s Marc-Antoine Barbier (guitar), Theirry Malépart (keys), Tony Bélisle (keys), Philippe Gauthier-Boudreau (drums) and Frais Dispo‘s Charles Primeau (bass) — released their third album, Choses Sauvages III through Audiogram.
The album, which featured album singles “Incendie au paradis,”En joue,” and “Cours toujours” showcased a decidedly post-punk sound that featured elements of post-punk, New Wave and krautrock. Released to praise from critics across Quebec and Europe, Choses Sauavages III landed on the 2025 Polaris Music Prize Long List and received an ADISQ nomination for Album of the Year — Alternative.
“Seul,” their first bit of new material since last year’s Choses Sauvages III, continues a run of hook-driven, shimmering post punk — but while showcasing subtle No Wave elements with bursts of funky horns.
“’Seul’ deals with limerence and the romanticization of toxic relationships. This song is a question directed both outward and inward—a moment when the obsession with finding answers to matters of the heart embraces the vulnerability of a lost child in a shopping mall,” Choses Sauvages’ Félix Bélisle explains. “These emotional states unfold against a sonic backdrop that is at once danceable and abrasive, drawing inspiration from the New York No Wave movement.”
BUÑUEL — OXBOW‘s Eugene S. Robinson, Afterhours and A Short Apnea‘s Xabier Iriondo (guitar), The Framers‘ Andrea Lombardini (bass) and Il Teatro Degli Orrori’s Franz Valente (drums) — is a transatlantic supergroup that specializes in heavy music that’s been described as beautiful, merciless and unforgiving.
Creatively, the band has always been led by instinct and the id-like impulse to expressed completely unfiltered and unvarnished emotion through song. And through their close musical alliance, they’ve displayed a seemingly innate ability to craft material that warps and buckles with complexity, freedom, tenderness and primeval energy — simultaneously.
“BUÑUEL is a name that embodies a certain cultural and literary reference, which evokes an entire world,” the band’s Franz Valente says. “Like his films, our Buñuel is surrealism. We take the listeners into a place that’s suspended between dream and reality.” Eugene S. Robinson adds “What we’re doing with BUÑUEL is to carve out a very specific glimpse… partly into hearts of darkness, but more specifically into the depth of our secrets. Secrets we keep from each other, ourselves and whatever futures we’ve imagined for ourselves. We are ultimately trying to communicate something direct and deadly about the human condition.”
The transatlantic supergroup’s latest album, 2024’s Timo Ellis-produced Mansuetude derived its title from an archaic word which means “meekness” or “gentleness.” For a band known for being punishingly heavy, the title is an ironic juxtaposition. Firmly anchored in their long-held penchant for surrealism, the album saw the band taking every possible opportunity toad stretch their musical tendrils towards discomfort and deconstruction of tradition, while pushing towards absolute abandon.
Sonically, the album’s material encompassed many moods — sometimes simultaneously — while blurring elements of post-hardcore, avant-noise, hard blues, post-industrial, symphonic thrash, metal and free-jazz. The record is, in Robinson’s words “extreme but articulate.”
“High. Speed. Chase.” is a bruising and breakneck, mosh pit inducing ripper, anchored around a furious and unhinged Robinson vocal turn, scorching riffage and thunderous drumming. At its core, the song expresses a mix of rage, confusion and ad desire to defy death — and in some way, it also makes the song the perfect soundtrack for the titular high speed chase.
Directed by Annapaola Martin, the accompanying video for “High. Speed. Chase.” is split between footage shot on the road with city skylines, highways and convenience stores race by through the windows, and footage of the band destroying stages with their incendiary live show.
BUÑUEL — OXBOW‘s Eugene S. Robinson, Afterhours and A Short Apnea‘s Xabier Iriondo (guitar), The Framers‘ Andrea Lombardini (bass) and Il Teatro Degli Orrori’s Franz Valente (drums) — is a transatlantic supergroup that specializes in heavy music that’s been described as beautiful, merciless and unforgiving.
Creatively, the band has always been led by instinct and the id-like impulse to expressed completely unfiltered and unvarnished emotion through song. And through their close musical alliance, they’ve displayed a seemingly innate ability to craft material that warps and buckles with complexity, freedom, tenderness and primeval energy — simultaneously.
“BUÑUEL is a name that embodies a certain cultural and literary reference, which evokes an entire world,” the band’s Franz Valente says. “Like his films, our Buñuel is surrealism. We take the listeners into a place that’s suspended between dream and reality.” Eugene S. Robinson adds “What we’re doing with BUÑUEL is to carve out a very specific glimpse… partly into hearts of darkness, but more specifically into the depth of our secrets. Secrets we keep from each other, ourselves and whatever futures we’ve imagined for ourselves. We are ultimately trying to communicate something direct and deadly about the human condition.”
Slated for an October 25, 2024 release through SKiN Graft Records and OVERDRIVE Records, the transatlantic supergroup’s latest album, the Timo Ellis-produced Mansuetude derives its title from an archaic word, which means “meekness’ or “gentleness.” Certainly, for a band known for being punishingly heavy, the title seems like an ironic juxtaposition. Firmly anchored in the band’s long-held penchant for surrealism, the album reportedly sees the band taking every opportunity they can to stretch their musical tendrils towards discomfort and the deconstruction of tradition, all while reaching absolute abandon. Sonically, the album’s material encompasses many moods — sometimes simultaneously — while blurring elements of post-hardcore, avant-noise, hard blues, post-industrial, symphonic thrash, metal and free-jazz, played at great cost. The record is, in Robinson’s words “extreme but articulate.”
Earlier this month, I wrote about “Class,” an urgent, amygdala-driven teeth-bared, id-fueled ripper built around Robinson’s primal shouts and howls, thunderous drumming and scorching riffage. Seemingly featuring elements of heavy metal, No Wave, thrash punk and noise rock, “Class” sonically seems like a forceful synthesis of Boris, Bo Ningen, The Stooges and several others while being deliriously artful. But underpinning it all, the song is rooted in incisive socioeconomic criticism that’s furious yet very funny. “America is schizophrenic about class and class attributes,” BUÑUEL’s Robinson explains. “On the one hand we claim it doesn’t exist here, on the other hand like Paul Fussell lays out in his book on class it works its way through every aspect of American life and living. The song itself eviscerates the notion by placing it where it most needs to be placed: in the iD fuelled [sic] underworld.”
Mansuetude‘s latest single “American Steel” features The Jesus Lizard’s, Tomahawk’s and the Denison Kimball Trio’s Duane Denison continues a run of unhinged, amygdala-driven, id-fueled rippers anchored around Robinson’s primal shouts and howls, thunderous drumming and scorching riffage. Sounding much like a man, who has gone absolutely mad, “American Steel” captures a certain kind of power madness with the song pays tribute to something particularly American: our love of big bore hemis, assault weapons, tanks, violence and Harleys.
Duane Denison says. “Eugene Robinson’s vocals have the effect of listening to a desperately flailing drowning man, and my guitar serves as a malfunctioning floatation device–it never quite makes it long enough to provide actual safety.”
BUÑUEL — OXBOW‘s Eugene S. Robinson, Afterhours and A Short Apnea‘s Xabier Iriondo (guitar), The Framers‘ Andrea Lombardini (bass) and Il Teatro Degli Orrori’s Franz Valente (drums) — is a transatlantic supergroup that specializes in heavy music that’s been described as beautiful, merciless and unforgiving.
Creatively, the band has always been led by instinct and the id-like impulse to expressed completely unfiltered and unvarnished emotion through song. And through their close musical alliance, they’ve displayed a seemingly innate ability to craft material that warps and buckles with complexity, freedom, tenderness and primeval energy — simultaneously.
“BUÑUEL is a name that embodies a certain cultural and literary reference, which evokes an entire world,” the band’s Franz Valente says. “Like his films, our Buñuel is surrealism. We take the listeners into a place that’s suspended between dream and reality.” Eugene S. Robinson adds “What we’re doing with BUÑUEL is to carve out a very specific glimpse… partly into hearts of darkness, but more specifically into the depth of our secrets. Secrets we keep from each other, ourselves and whatever futures we’ve imagined for ourselves. We are ultimately trying to communicate something direct and deadly about the human condition.”
Slated for an October 25, 2024 release through SKiN Graft Records and OVERDRIVE Records, the transatlantic supergroup’s latest album, the Timo Ellis-produced Mansuetude derives its title from an archaic word, which means “meekness’ or “gentleness.” Certainly, for a band known for being punishingly heavy, the title probably seems like an ironic juxtaposition. Firmly anchored in the band’s long-held penchant for surrealism, the album reportedly sees the band taking every opportunity they can to stretch their musical tendrils towards discomfort and the deconstruction of tradition, all while reaching absolute abandon. Sonically, the album’s material encompasses many moods — sometimes simultaneously — while blurring elements of post-hardcore, avant-noise, hard blues, post-industrial, symphonic thrash, metal and free-jazz, played at great cost. The record is, in Robinson’s words “extreme but articulate.”
“Class” Mansuetude‘s latest single is an urgent, amygdala-driven teeth-bared, id-fueled ripper built around Robinson’s primal shouts and howls, thunderous drumming and scorching riffage. Seemingly featuring elements of heavy metal, No Wave, thrash punk and noise rock, “Class” sonically seems like a forceful synthesis of Boris, Bo Ningen, The Stooges and several others while being deliriously artful. But underpinning it all, the song is rooted in incisive socioeconomic criticism that’s furious yet very funny.
“America is schizophrenic about class and class attributes,” BUÑUEL’s Robinson explains. “On the one hand we claim it doesn’t exist here, on the other hand like Paul Fussell lays out in his book on class it works its way through every aspect of American life and living. The song itself eviscerates the notion by placing it where it most needs to be placed: in the iD fuelled [sic] underworld.”
Initially formed in Québec City back in 2016 and now currently featuring members split between the Québecois cities of Montréal, Québec City and Gatineau, VICTIME — Ponctuation’s and Pure Carrière‘s Laurence Gauthier-Brown, Album’s Simone Provencher and Corridor‘s and Kee Avii‘s Samuel Gougoux — quickly made waves across the province with 2017’s Mon VR de rêveEP, 2018’s full-length debut La femme taupe and Mi-tronic, mi-jambe EP.
With their first three releases under their collective belts, the trio began to make the rounds of the Canadian festival circuit, playing sets at Sled Island, Up Here, Francos de Montréal, FME and Taverne Tour. Adding to a growing profile across the country, the band opened for the likes of Lydia Lunch, Guerilla Toss, Frigs, Ponctuation and Jesuslesfilles, as well as a series of tour dates in France.
The band’s forthcoming effort, En conversation avec is slated for an October 25, 2024 release through Mothland. En conversation avec is the result of a new creative process for the band, informed and inspired by the band being split across different cities in the province. Written over the course of the past five years, the trio frequently relied on the spontaneity of sporadic get-togethers and remote work in which they shared files among each other.
Reportedly the effort sees the band simultaneously showing a newfound patience while being among their most layered. While still holding on to their post-punk and noise rock roots, the trio explore a wide-spanning spectrum where tensions and openings coexist, colmating breaks and ruptures, cracks and fissures with elements of trip hop, avant rock and IDM. Thematically, the material touches upon feminism, vengeance, violence, being a female, speaking out, obliterating patriarchy and more.
“It was a long process, the sum of three minds in three different cities. We felt the urge to create in a new way, to break out of our guitar-bass-drums mold, to be less of a rock band,” the band explains. “So, we started from sounds and sonic explorations, finally recentering everything around a more simple songwriting process. And though it is packed with weird sounds and whatnot, we feel this is the best music we have ever written. It is informed by the many projects, contracts, experiences, etcetera each of us took on over the past few years, a logical follow-up to our individual paths.
We were inspired by many things, namely: the Sisters with Transistors documentary film, Kim Gordon and everything she represents, the sadness of roadkills; electronic prototypes, breadboards and sonic experimentations; musique concrète [or concrete music], mechanisms, eye (but also other parts of the body) surgeries, Giacometti, The Da Vinci Code, the total solar eclipse, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.”
“We produced the album ourselves. We recorded everything way too hot, so it’s distorted. Also, we didn’t use a grid when tracking, so we struggled with the sessions quite a bit. Amongst the files we sent to Simon Labelle, who mixed the album, there are easily 47 tracks with takes we had no business keeping and well over a dozen tracks named “Noise 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8…”, so he probably hates us now. I guess we kept our reckless-kids-playing-in-the-back-alley mentality, all the way to the financial means. Simone [Provencher] builts effects pedals with Fairfield Circuitry, which meant we could use breadboard prototypes on a few tracks, so that’s pretty legit, right?”
En conversation avec‘s latest single “Résonne encore,” is the band’s first ever love song. Anchored around a propulsive and forceful, tribal drum pattern, “Résonne encore” features reverb-soaked vocals, angular guitar stabs and bursts of synth oscillations for the song’s first two-and-a-half minutes, before abruptly stuttering into a glitchy trip hop-like bridge seemingly inspired by Portishead’s “Machine Gun.” The song’s coda features bursts of guitar dissonance, the introductory section’s propulsive and forceful tribal drum pattern paired with an ethereal and dreamily sung vocal incantation. The result is a song that feels feverish, woozy and a bit heartsick, much like an uneasy yet new love.
With the release of 2019’s critically applauded full-length debut, Useless Coordinates, Leeds-based experimental outfit Drahla — currently Luciel Brown (vocals, guitar), Ewan Barr (guitar), Rob Riggs (bass) and Mike Ainsley (drums) — exploded into the UK post punk and experimental rock scenes.
The British quartet’s long-awaited sophomore album angeltape is slated for an April 5, 2024 release through Captured Tracks. Recorded with Matthew Benn and Jamie Lockhart last year, angeltape is reportedly an avant-garde document oft he events that unfolded over the course of the five-year gap between albums, which saw a variety of changes — both good and bad — that steered their professional and personal lives down unfamiliar territories.
Of course, instead of succumbing to adversity, the band’s sophomore album sees the band re-emerging sounding creatively rejuvenated with deeply reflective perspectives. Over the last few years, the band’s members have suffered devastating losses and yet have expanded upon their sound with the addition of their newest member Ewan Barr.
Inspired and informed by their recent experiences — collective and individual — the album features a considerably darker, tonally more complex and conceptual sound. The addition of Barr signaled a significant shift in the band’s dynamic and ultimately reshaped the way they approached their angular arrangements, with the band being feeling the freedom to experiment with form more than ever before. Brown, in particular embraced the opportunity to find different ways to inhabit her contemplative lyrics. Naturally, because of the band’s new lineup, there was a readjustment period when they convened to write angeltape — but it helped to kickstart a renewed creative approach. “There was an uncertainty and anxiety in not knowing how to rekindle what we had, and what we did have just didn’t exist in the same format,” Brown explains. “I feel this is apparent in the music; the constant changes, opposing ideas and structures, the overall energy and drive of the songs. I think there’s also the sense of reconnection, encouragement and freedom, too. There’s excitement borne from us finding something together again.”
The album also draws some inspiration from the work of experimental rock outfit This Heat, but the band primarily found that their greatest motivation came from listening to and following one another throughout the writing and recording sessions. “I think the process and inspiration for this album has been way more experimental and insular than taking on any external musical references,” says Brown, “This record feels like it was built on a foundation of insular inspiration.” The band’s Rob Riggs adds, “When the four of us are in a room, we each bring separate things to the table. Sometimes, a session would start a little bit disjointed but then we find a way where we could all interlock together for a moment in a song and then disperse again.”
Sonically, the album’s material is rooted in the interplay of driving bass riffs and charged drum patterns provide an uneasy yet captivating contrast to Brown’s melody sing-songy spoken delivery. The material is also heightened by searing saxophone contributions from the band’s longtime collaborator Chris Duffin.
angeltape‘s third and lates single, the wild and expressionistic freakout “Grief In Phantasia” is a No Wave-inspired take on post punk — or maybe a post-punk-inspired take on No Wave — built around angular and scuzzy guitar lines, primal saxophone skronk and off-kilter yet forceful percussion serving as a tumultuously and uneasy bed for Brown’s melodic sing-songy and punchily melodic delivery.
According to the band: “This song was informed by others on the record and those we’d written in the past. It felt like the closing track when we wrote it, as though it summarised the chaos and the calm of the album.”
Drahla will also head out on tour across the EU and UK through May and June; their first since their European dates in 2023. Their reputation as a fervent live act is ever-growing, having toured across the world and shared stages with the likes of Parquet Courts, Ought, Buzzcocks, and several others. Tour dates are below.
Drahla – Confirmed Tour Dates
03/30 – Leeds, UK – Jumbo Records (in-store performance)
Currently based in Trenton, noise rock/no wave/experimental rock/art punk outfit Joy on Fire — founding members John Paul Carillo (guitar), Anna Meadors (saxophone), spoken word artist Dan Gutstein (vocals) and a drummer — can trace their origins to Baltimore‘s art scene, where the band’s founding members originally met and started writing material together.
“Baltimore is a city where musicians of different stripes come together quite readily. With the art college (MICA) [Maryland Institute College of Art] up the road from The Peabody Conservatory, trained jazz / classical musicians come together, in the city’s Station North Arts District, with self-taught musicians who bring other artistic disciplines into their music, a Talking Heads vibe,” Joy on Fire’s John Paul Carillo writes in a statement about Baltimore and its influence on the band. “In my case, while Anna was at Peabody, I was at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, getting a degree in fiction writing. Anna and I met in a basement jam session, and the band began then. We still play the first song we ever wrote together, ‘Red Wave,’ which finally appeared on 2021’s Unknown Cities.”
Meadors’ background as a classically trained saxophonist collided with Carillo’s love of experimental art rock and punk and creative sparks immediately few between the pair. “I knew pretty early on that a career in classical saxophone wasn’t for me; I met John during my sophomore year [at the Peabody Conservatory], and the world of weird rock music opened up for me,” Meadows writes. “I had been listening to this Terry Riley album for saxophone quartet and vocalist, Assassin Reverie, and fell in love with it, and John introduced me to the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass, as well as the bands Morphine and King Crimson. There is this saxophone solo on King Crimson’s ‘One More Red Nightmare‘ that changed my life, it is so visceral, and it starts with just a long trill that is so simple and so perfect for the part. When Joy on Fire started, I was able to use the techniques I learned from jazz improvisation over this big chordal electric bass sound that John has, and it was such a thrill.”
Since those early jam sessions between Carillo and Meadors, the band has expanded to a quartet with the addition of Gutstein and a drummer while being remarkably prolific, releasing five full-length albums: 2015’s full-length debut The Complete Book of Bonsai, 2017’s Fire with Fire, 2019’s Hymn, last year’s Unknown Cities and Another Adventure in Red, which landed at #7 on Concrete Islands’ Albums of the Year list for 2021.
Joy on Fire’s seventh album, the Carillo and Meadors-produced States of America is slated for a June 11, 2022 release through their longtime label home Procrastination Records. The album’s material can be traced to a joint writing session between the band’s Carillo and Gutstein, which quickly “grew into monsters” as the duo turned loose song structures, ideas and lyrics into fleshed out songs. Most of the album’s material was recored at Princeton University‘s Studio B, where Meadows is currently a Ph.D. student in Music Composition.
States of America‘s latest single “Selfies” is a neurotic, New Wave-meets-No Wave-meets-art punk ripper centered around a menacing Stooges-like groove, thunderous drumming, Gutstein’s sardonic, spoken word lyrics about the emptiness and vapidity of social media narcissism paired with Meador’s saxophone skronk and wailing that initially creeps its way into the arrangement and builds up in intensity as then song ends with an explosive and chaotic coda. The song captures the relentless need to be liked, seen as cool, successful and popular that’s inspired by the social media age in a way that’s startlingly accurate yet wildly hilarious.
“‘Selfies’ began with a riff I had hanging around for a while, a riff that has a bit of a Stooges vibe, especially with the reverse delay on it, and when lyricist / vocalist Dan Gutstein joined Joy on Fire, I arranged it for vocals,” Joy on Fire’s John Paul Carillo writes. “Dan has some great lines in it, displaying his edgy sense of humor: ‘Happiest,” goes the refrain, ‘we were happiest / Lying to each other.’ The piece is a critique of narcissistic culture, with ‘Love is like gazing everywhere / Catching an echo with your hands…Why not, why not, why not selfies!’ The impossibility, emptiness, and sadness of trying to catch an ‘echo with your hands’ is (not) relieved by taking selfies, would be one interpretation. Often in Joy on Fire songs, saxophonist Anna Meadors begins the song or at least jumps in pretty quickly. This time, she lays out for the body of the song, and then just kills it over a vamp that drives to the end of the tune, with Dan then sneaking back in, like the sax has driven him mad: ‘La-la-la-la-la Selfies!’ The wild saxophone is a further Stooges connection. The acidy vibe that Iggy Pop asked for from Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay — Anna certainly has it here, and then some.”
The accompanying video for “Selfies” continues in a similar vein as the video for “Anger and Decency,” with heavy amounts of visual distortion and manipulation atop footage of the band performing the song and fittingly cuts to a number of video selfies.
Optic Sink — Nots’ Natalie Hoffmann and Ben Bauermeister — is a Memphis-based act that specializes in a genre-defying sound that morphs from cold wave to psychedelia to distorted noise rock, often within the same song. Thematically and sonically, the duo fragment and reassemble sounds, concepts and verbal constructs while attempting to find beauty in the journey despite what the final resolution may be.
The duo’s self-titled debut is slated for an October 2, 2020 release through Goner Records — and the album’s second and latest single “Exhibitionist” is a tense and minimalist track centered around arpeggiated synths and chintzy Casio-like metronomic beats paired with Hoffmann’s insouciant delivery. And at its core, is an uncertain and neurotic narrator, who’s rightfully a bit paranoid. “From the pressure to constantly commodify yourself, market yourself, appear to be a certain thing –– the BEST thing –– on social media, to the cold machine eye on the other side that is always watching, taking notes, fitting all of us neatly into its algorithm, and selling this idea of the best version of ourselves back to us,” Optic Sink’s Hoffman explains. “And the overwhelming evidence is that we’re buying it, but what are we actually paying for it?”
Currently featuring founding members Cynthia Sley (vocals), Pat Place (guitar) and Dee Pop (drums) along with newest recruit Val Opielski, the New York-based act Bush Tetras can trace their origins back to when Sley, Place, Pop and Laura Kennedy (bass) formed the band back in 1979. Interestingly, their full-length debut Too Many Creeps was considered one of their scene’s defining moments as it accurately captured the vibe, feel and ethos of that scene’s particular moment.
Building upon a growing profile, the members of Bush Tetras were an opening act during The Clash’s legendary, spring 1981 17 show run at Bond International Casino. After the release of their Topper Headon-produced Rituals EP, which featured the chart-placing “Can’t Be Funky,” Laura Kennedy and Dee Pop left the band and were replaced by Bob Albertson (bass) and Don Christensen (drums); however, the band broke up.
For the better part of the next three decades, the members of the band were fairly elusive, although interestingly enough, the band’s original lineup reunited on a couple of occasions — in 1995, which resulted in 1997’s Beauty Lies and recording sessions the following year, which resulted in a Don Fleming-produced album that was shelved when Mercury Records was sold. That album was finally released in 2012.
In 2005, Julia Murphy replaced Kennedy and they resumed playing and touring across New York. The band toured across Europe the following year. Sadly, Laura Kennedy died in 2011 after a long battle with liver disease. In 2013, Cindy Rickmond, a former member of Cheap Perfume, Grayson Hugh, Church of Betty and Unknown Gender briefly replaced Murphy. And in 2016, Val Opielski, a former member of Krakatoa, Walking Hellos, PSXO and 1000 Yard Stare joined the band.
Last year saw the release of Take The Fall EP through Wharf Cat Records, the first batch of new music from the band in over 10 years. Over the winter, Third Man Records cleared their Cass Corridor showroom floor, invited the band down to Detroit — and enlisted the help of Third Man Mastering’s Bill Skibbe and Warren Defever to record their recently released “There is a Hum”/”Seven Years” 7 inch. A side single “There is a Hum” is a slashing bit of post punk, reminiscent of Entertainment-era Gang of Four and Sonic Youth — but seething with a neurotic anxiousness. B side single “Seven Years” manages to be a mischievously anachronistic track that sounds as though it could have been released at any point within the past 30 years. The glitchy and spastic track features some blistering and energetic guitar work centered around cowbell-led percussion and a sinuous bass line. Both tracks find the legendary post punk/No Wave act boldly reminding the listener that although it’s been a while, they play with a fury, passion and purpose that many younger acts lack.
