What the Bandcamp Daily editors are listening to right now.
Gazelle Twin
Black Dog
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
One of two newly arrived releases I’ve picked out with Halloween in mind, Black Dog is the fourth album from Brighton singer, composer, and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz, better known as Gazelle Twin; a beguiling, bewitching feat of experimental-electronic worldbuilding that examines themes of fear and trauma through the lens of Victorian horror. The name isn’t a reference to Led Zeppelin, but rather a nod to a centuries-old beastie from British folklore, the living embodiment of death, depression, family curses, and other foul omens — as well as the symbolic vessel from which all these dour, mangled digiscapes are born. “Two Worlds” is an artful study in doppelgangery (another prominent Victorian motif) that deploys distorted, multi-layered operatic vocals reminiscent of David Bowie’s Blackstar, while “Unstoppable Voice” leans into violent delirium with bleary synths, taunts of “Push Me!”, and erratic, scratchy percussion that sounds like someone trying to claw out from under a slab of concrete. The arrangements’ slow-building tension, combined with the shadowplay of the synths and Bernholz’s devastatingly gorgeous singing, add up to an experience that’s fun, fresh, and just a little bit frightening. Tricks and treats for you all. Now go forth and listen.
–Zoe Camp
Nivek B
The King’s Regalia
Released in July on Rugged Triad records, the label founded by Atlanta rapper Indigo Phoenyx, The King’s Regalia makes its intentions known early. Opening with a brass fanfare worthy of a John Williams Star Wars score, rapper Nivek B and a small army of collaborators lay out the album’s themes: A war is on, and this is battle music. That idea seeps deep into every second of Regalia: in the martial stomp of the drums, the high-tension instrumentation—glissando-ing strings, the menacing bass—even the song titles: “Front Line,” “Let’s Go,” “Danger Zone.” The latter of those is an album high point, opening with a stuttering Gang Starr sample and then easing into a track built from icy xylophones and brought to life by steely bars from Nivek and Staten Island rapper Squeegie Oblong. “Slow Burn” is gorgeous, a haunting soprano vocal flying high above hard-knocking beats, the perfect complement to Nivek’s muscular flow. Like everything on Rugged Triad, it nods to the past without burglarizing it wholesale—there’s a moodiness to “Thump” that summons a Wu-Tang Forever outtake, but soon a strange, gurgling vocal sample enters the mix and the track takes on an eerieness all its own. Rugged Triad has been quietly amassing a catalog of stellar hip-hop over the last three years. Take this as your cue to start digging in.
–J. Edward Keyes
Nídia
95 MINDJERES
Vinyl LP
After spiraling far, far away from the dancefloor on mesmerizing experimental records like 2020’s Não Fales Nela Que A Mentes, the Portuguese producer Nídia hurtles back into its orbit with 95 MINDJERES, a record built for velocity, each of its 11 songs centered around obstinately insistent percussion. Every second of it electrifies: “Pose” is a wild hallucinogenic house number, with lightning-like flashes of synth sparking and vanishing over a beat that hisses like water dripping on a hot stove. On “cp,” pads that sound like steel drums pogo between a samba-like rhythm track. And the melody of opener “É COMO?” sounds like a sly inversion of the synth riff that powered Usher’s “Yeah!,” a straight-ahead dancefloor banger. As always, the album’s most fascinating moments are the ones where Nídia indulges in experimental flights of fancy; “Mindjeres” is a masterpiece, Nídia sending a giddy flute melody spiraling out like a silk ribbon in the breeze while she holds a steady synth pattern in lockstep underneath as the drums slip deliberately in and out of time. Nídia’s been making music since 2014, but 95 MINDJERES is only her third full-length. The wait turns each drop into an event—a chance to witness the latest discovery of a true musical scientist.
–J. Edward Keyes
Seablite
Lemon Lights
Vinyl LP
Blue Ocean
Fertile State
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
I’m breaking with tradition by considering two records in one write-up, but nothing in this world stays the same so why should your Essential Releases be any different? In any case, both of these records come from bands associated with San Francisco’s not-dead indie pop scene, another place where nothing stays the same. The reliably twee Seablite go full dream pop on Lemon Lights, a record custom-made for anyone who’s worn out their copies of Split and Spooky. It’s not as egregious as it sounds (never mind the cover art) and actually makes sense for the band—Lauren Matusi and Galine Galine Tumasyan’s chiming vocals always did the heavy lifting in Seablite’s music; it was much the same for Lush—but the leap forward in songwriting is what makes Lemon Lights a true delight, all baggy and catchy and doused with enough Aislers Set-esque din to feel resolutely San Francisco. Terrific! Blue Ocean’s Fertile State represents the slightly colder, more experimental iteration of shoegaze, with noisier passages and more mechanization and even dips into gothy post-punk. Yet this is a Slumberland Records band, so Blue Ocean makes plenty of time for moments of pop transcendence—literally, in fact, as the record’s longest song, the nebulously hooky, submerged-sounding “The Radiant Edge,” is also its most memorable.
–Mariana Timony
Slauson Malone
EXCELSIOR
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
If you were to go off just genre descriptors alone for Slauson Malone’s EXCELSIOR, you would be sorely confused—I know I was. And yes, while it does, in a sense, span everything from no wave to free jazz and modern classical; from bedroom pop to lo-fi hip-hop and noise; it’s just this shapeshifting restlessness that keeps you listening for more—you never know what you’ll get next! Here you can expect to find clouds of harsh noise and squiggling electronics that build only to dissipate into reverent piano and orchestral interludes before they too abruptly transition to a skittering beat or a split-second Cher needle drop. Despite all of his eccentric sensibilities, the iconoclastic producer’s (real name Jasper Marsalis) restless searching doesn’t get exhausting but rather feels dynamic and surprisingly sensitive—there’s a lot of soulfulness to be found here. “Where I go? (Where I go?)/ Waiting any day now, weather’s always strange now/ I’m waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting/ For a change to come in,” Marsalis sings on “House Music,” modulating his voice into alien pitches that pang with isolation and longing. There’s a tether, too, in the warm strum of acoustic guitar and plucks of piano keys which keep the record from wandering too far afield from some kind of sonic order. Regardless of how you define his sound, it’s easy enough to press play on this album and find yourself along for the ride, wherever it’s going.
-Stephanie Barclay
Tele Novella
Poet’s Tooth
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
The merry duo of Natalie Ribbons and Jason Chronis return with more twangy baroque pop on Poet’s Tooth, Tele Novella’s third full-length and second for Kill Rock Stars. The band have dialed down the medieval melodrama of 2021’s Merlynn Belle but kept the twinkly country & western vibe, Ribbons stepping into the role of velvety-voiced singing cowgirl dressed in pigtails and vintage pinstripes, strumming her nylon-string guitar under the paper moon. There’s a charming literary quality to Poet’s Tooth in that almost every song is like a little morality tale, the stories populated by a cast of vampires, clowns, and unicorns—fantastical outsiders one and all on a quest to follow their star. The music is adorned but comfortably so, freckly face Americana with a light smearing with British psych-folk fairydust. But there’s a snub-nosed pioneer determination underpinning this Wild West fantasia and one that feels hard-won, the morals of Ribbon’s pretty fables—tell the truth, mean what you say, be true to yourself—simple enough for children to understand and easy for adults to forget.
–Mariana Timony
Various Artists
The Stone Tape – Analysing A Ghost By Electronic Means
Cassette
The Stone Tapes, Peter Sasdy’s BBC drama series, released in 1972, is often cited as one of the most influential ghost stories ever made, partially thanks to the exceptional writing and editing, but mostly because of the influence of the Stone Tape Theory—the film’s central theory regarding the science of hauntings—on the paranormal investigation community writ large. (Seriously, there have been studies on this stuff.) The idea is that emotional and traumatic events (i.e. death) contain energy that is sometimes transferred (or “recorded”) onto mineral components (anything from a limestone wall to a concrete slab to a circuit board), which can be “replayed” under certain circumstances. In other words, ghosts are just field recordings trapped in rocks—and if that isn’t the basis for a compelling album, I don’t know what is. Released by Hidden Britain Records in (slightly belated) commemoration of the film’s 50th anniversary, in partnership with a host of UK-based experimental labels (Wayside & Woodland, Clay Pipe, Castles in Space, Spun Out Of Control), The Stone Tape – Analysing A Ghost By Electronic Means illustrates this principle from an ambient electronic perspective: an episode of “Ghost Hunters” directed by William Basinski. Some songs feel haunted by violence, like Drew Mulholland’s “The Strange Beyond;” industrial crackling samples materializing just to disintegrate seconds later; corroded mechanical clanks melting into corrupted, roaring engines in the back-end. Others, like “Comparing The Properties Of Stone, Brick And Concrete,” by the Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan, pierce the veil with the light and warmth you’d associate with a New Age record: unsettling, and yet serene. Who knew ambient music could sound so supernatural?
