12xu

Water Damage

Repair

12xu

Water Damage were always destined to be veterans. It’s not only that its members are themselves veterans of a daunting roll call of groups, but that this particular juggernaut was born to birth a solid-to-the-core set of dispatches. The four performances that make up Repair rank among their best. The m.o. of listing their track titles “Reel 45,” “Reel 38,” etc. now registers as a clearsighted, long-game approach and a wise sidestepping to the nuisance and potential for distraction of giving these workouts programmatic titles. They’ll tell us the order in which they were laid down, but what else do you really need to know in advance?Because “in advance” with Water Damage seems largely irrelevant. It’s what happens when the sticks are clicked and the band lurches into gear, whether ten players or twice that number. In the case of Repair, it’s an even ten plus simpatico pals Wendy Eisenberg and Ricardo Dias Gomes.Repair what? Repair to where? Reel 45 charges out of the gate at what you might imagine to be peak intensity. But not yet. A frenetic beating of the traps—no slow burn here—becomes a mutated thrash beat and summons Mari Maurice’s Shepard tone-ish climb. Cymbals swell, everybody join in, safe to call it one of the group’s new high water marks. Also sounds like they’ve been doing cardio. Where do you go after that? Reel 38 is boppy garage rock with sneaky cellular subdivision, a splinter group let loose inside the broader band. Fiddle appropriately takes the...

Sproton Layer

Press Your Hand And Feel the Whole Room Fluctuate

12xu

***The Miller Brothers, Roger (Mission of Burma, etc. etc. etc.), Laurence (Destroy All Monsters, etc. etc. etc.) and Benjamin (Destroy All Monsters, etc. etc. etc.) grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan in a musical family. When the Beatles hit in 1964 Roger was 12 and Laurence and Benjamin were 10, all three ready to rock. Their first band, which covered 13th Floor Elevators, Love, Kinks, Yardbirds, etc., performed two shows summer 1967 (ages 15 and 13). In 1969, their spontaneous improv. session "Freak Trio Electric" sealed the fate towards Sproton Layer. With a complete belief in weed as the doorway to an alternate universe, Roger began a furious bout of composing that spring. There was a lull in the summer, but in the fall, with the addition of Harold Kirchen (brother of Bill Kirchen, Commander Cody, etc. etc. etc.) on trumpet, they were off and running again. A few recordings were made in 1969 with one mic on the ping-pong table, and Mark Brahce (who recorded "With Magnetic Fields Disrupted" eight months later), set up his first session with the band. The best of these recordings make up the "1969" side of "Press Your Hand and the Whole Room Fluctuates."At the end of August 1970, Mark Brahce recorded their album "With Magnetic Fields Disrupted" in the Miller family recreation room, and the band promptly folded when they got no notice or response. Their brand of psychedelia was on the wane. They reformed briefly in 1971 as an instrumental trio (see...

Hobknobs

Helmets Off

12xu

***Helmets Off can be described as an honest attempt at honesty. Although all options are open at the moment of conception, the end result often remains bare. Instruments come in when they are needed, but the songs apparently don’t need that much at all. Every word and every strum sounds like it’s placed in exactly the right moment. Perhaps it is this bareness of the songs, that makes it feel as if The Hobknobs are speaking to the listener directly. It is clear that they don’t want anything to cloud this human interaction.Yaël Dekker, whom you may also know as the singer of The Klittens, and Arie van Vliet, who used to spread his word through the band Lewsberg, were once described as loving misanthropes. Listening to Helmets Off, this description seems rather accurate. A consoling song like “The Mind” sounds haunting. Even words seem to have lost their meaning in “Dictionary”. Songs that seem cheerful and naive at first appear to be pleadings on second listen. And is “Enarmoured” a pro-war protest song? What war do they want to fight?Dekker and Van Vliet’s voices seem to know each other well, in a way that magnifies the songs on 'Helmets Off' beyond their deceptive simplicity. Together with the minimal production by Jaap van der Velde, it makes that the album hits the sweet spot somewhere in the middle of ‘instantly familiar’ and ‘no one else sounds quite like this’.

You-On

New Side

12xu

***You-On is a collaboration between Masami Tomihisa and Jim White.Three sessions, all improvised consisting of keyboard and drums were recorded at Jim’s in April and May of 2024. Guy Picciotto mixed, edited and sequenced the recordings comprising ‘New Side’, the duo’s first album together.You-On is two Japanese characters put together, asobu which means to play or to have fun andon which means sound.‘New Side’ is a work of precise, at times otherworldly beauty. The interplay between Tomihisa and White is nothing short of uncanny—it seems hard to believe these are the results of their first recordings together.Masami Tomihisa is a pianist, composer and improviser based in New York City. Prior to this, her most recent release was the ‘Invitations’ cassette released by Purplish in 2024.Environmental concerns prevent us from publishing drummer Jim White’s entire associated discography ; his most recent solo album, his second such LP for Drag City, ‘Inner Day’ was released in the Autumn of 2025.

Sleeves, The

The Sleeves

12xu

***The Sleeves are the duo of Jack Cooper and Tara Cunningham, both likely known to you as one half of Modern Nature. Following an all-instrumental Mossy Tapes release last November, Cooper and Cunningham have recorded 10 new songs showcasing their vocal and guitar interplay with only the faintest echoes of prior efforts (individually or collectively), representing a fully realized leap forward from their largely improvised debut.'The Sleeves' is a somewhat counter intuitive take on the guitar/vocal duo formula (provided you think there is such a thing) though it's not nearly as simplistic as "the space between the notes"—it would be the height of exaggeration to say an album this simultaneously expansive and incandescent is unprecedented. But it doesn't happen nearly often enough, either.

Lupo Citta

Inverno

12xu

***The title track for Lupo Città’s second LP, Inverno (‘winter’ in Italian), was born in January 2023. Written in waking sleep at 4 am. Looking out the window at the winter world below when it's too quiet, no one is around, but anything and everything feels possible. Lupo Città wrote the songs for Inverno by instinct: each song, in viscera, a life and personality of its own. Chris, Jenn, and Sarah each brought in songs at different stages, in different forms and moods. Some came together fast, others took long. Some songs had to be stripped, slowed down or sped up, while others were completely gutted and rebuilt. A hard coming out of post-COVID lockdown, trying to relearn to live outside of isolation. Moving from the dark of winter into light, a jarring shift, the world was changing so fast in such stark contrast between the quiet isolation we settled into with close friends and family. We couldn’t look away anymore, in the light of day, escalating political and social chaos happening outside, now rapidly closing in.While Lupo Città’s debut was melodic, energetic, world-weary, sometimes chaotic, Inverno is out on a limb, taking a risk, and not caring at all how it turns out. Inverno is a snapshot of the bad and good, trying to stay awake and be present, fighting off the sleep of winter and the lure of time standing still, so we can create the world we want instead of trying to survive the world we're in....

Rump State

Psychic Sidekick

12xu

***Mark Morgan (formerly of Sightings and Silk Purse) and Gaute Granli first met in Brooklyn at The Glove in 2017 while Granli was on tour from his home country of Norway. The following year, Morgan embarked on a solo European tour and he and Granli did three shows together in Norway. Ultimately finding each other reasonably tolerable and able to agree to disagree on punk versus prog, they soon thereafter toured together in the fall of 2019 in Europe for 50 days with each playing solo. As the tour progressed, both found themselves influencing and being influenced by the other and by the end, they decided they should do a band together (easier to book one act rather than a package deal). Plans were made to reconvene in 2020 to record and possibly tour but then Covid threw a wrench into the works.A couple of years later, Rump State finally started playing and recording together in 2021 at Entropy Studio in Redford, Michigan (notably the childhood home of Ted Nugent who purportedly refers to it as "Tedford"). Outside of agreeing that there should be a strong focus on duo vocals and that Morgan would play guitar and Granli electronics, not much else was discussed in advance of first playing together. From these sessions, their first LP "Retaliation Aesthetics" was cobbled together and eventually released on the Parisian No Lagos label in March 2023. Since then, Rump State has toured the USA once and Europe multiple times.'Psychic Sidekick', Rump State's second...

Winged Wheel

Desert So Green

12xu

***“So, how did this band even happen?” That’s the question most often asked of Winged Wheel, a creatively and geographically scattered collective who have somehow congregated to make a noise that’s unexpected but undeniable. The band includes Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Circuit des Yeux), Cory Plump (Spray Paint, co-owner of the dream venue Tubby’s), Matthew J. Rolin (solo guitar wizard and half of the Powers/Rolin Duo), Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Lonnie Slack, and Fred Thomas (Idle Ray, Tyvek), each player living in a different city and bringing their own unique element to the group’s chain reactions. Early long distance file-trading between a few members yielded 2022’s No Island, a debut album that was accidentally really good. Good enough for the band to expand their membership and meet in person for the sessions that became 2024’s Big Hotel, a surgically-assembled murk of high energy kosmische rock with jammed-out tendencies. Fast forward just a little and all of a sudden the band that started out as a passing idea has completed multiple tours, become a taper’s dream with sets that drift through structure and improvisation, and ridden the momentum to places unforeseen on their third album, Desert So Green.After a run of shows across the Midwest in the spring of 2025, the group settled into a studio on the outskirts of Chicago to track their next record. Though the full lineup had only been solidified for a little over a year at this point, time together on stage led to a quickly-expanding sound...

Gotobeds, The

Masterclass

12xu

***"I first encountered the Gotobeds in August 2014, at a benefit for the great rock bard Karl Hendricks in their mutual hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Gotobeds went on fashionably (if not voluntarily) late and proceeded to lay waste to anything else anyone tried to do that evening.I took an abnormal number of photos and was made a fan for life.This kind of instant affection happens to me, particularly in my jaded dotage, so very rarely that I feel it is worth noting.Almost inevitably, an attempt to describe an unnameable jolt will devolve into predictable cliches.I’m talking about old chestnuts like: Bouncing off the wallsSpending about half an hour in a washing machine full of bolts and rose petalsHaving sand thrown in your eyes just before being kissed vigorously on the neckAll of which are a) barely better than nothing on the word front but b) do apply, if lazily so, to the Gotobeds’ various, terrific issuances: on 12XU (to which they have happily returned), their erstwhile label Sub Pop, etc. And the latter two apply perhaps most especially to their terrific new record—’Masterclass’.The Gotobeds have an unwavering commitment to bending and breaking things in the process of remaking them into something bolder and better (and, a couple of lineup changes to the contrary, not laying anyone off wantonly from critical government jobs)...The Gotobeds are aggressive, cannily disjointed, occasionally raw propellent, with an ear for melody that leavens the entire enterprise with a reasonable, non-diabetes-inducing amount of sugar...Hmmm…how about…Rowland S...

Water Damage

Instruments

12xu

***"Water Damage is ten people from one town and one sound from twelve people. For Instruments, the plus two are guitarist David Grubbs and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, neither of whom blunt the angle or confound the aim. The tempo? Slow and low. Four tracks, averaging twenty minutes each, the pace never above a comfortable walk. The damage creeps, a forest becomes a mountain, and the faithful move forward. The album is named after Fugazi, in a manner, and 'Reel 25' takes after the Shocklee Brothers, in a cry. Stop asking the lord how many drummers this band has and and ask him how much of your mind, babe. Some people say drone and same people say trance and some people say invocation through patterned unity. Some people just say rock and we let them set their clocks back. Lie down and let these holy treads flatten you. Just because Water Damage know what they are doing doesn't mean you have to. Fix your hearts or die!"—Sasha Frere-Jones

Blank Hellscape

Hell 2

12xu

***Hell 2 is not the first album from Austin’s Blank Hellscape, but it’s certainly the most fully-realized. OK, at least it’s the LONGEST. The three-piece nightmare band knocked around the claustrophobic end of the house show circuit for a longish spell but right around pre-‘dermic times, the trio of Ethan Billips, Max Deems and Andrew Nogay morphed into a multi-dimensional synapse-snapper with little regard for genre nor their own self-preservation. On that front, Hell 2 was echelons in the making; it would not be an exaggeration to say the writing / recording / editing process was arduous and lengthy enough it nearly took Blank Hellscape out of the game for good.But before you declare, “better luck next time”, strap yourself in to your favorite listening chair / apparatus and bask in this sprawling double album, to these ears, an uncanny musical & lyrical representation of the confusing, scary and thoroughly oppressive state we currently find ourselves in (not specifically Texas, but yes, Texas, too). I could not be more proud to dub this their long-awaited MAGNUM OPUS, and not simply because doing so will totally fuck shit up for whoever puts out their next album.

Brokaw, Chris

Ghost Ship

12xu

***Four years after his rock juggernaut Puritan, Chris Brokaw delivers Ghost Ship, a landscape meditation (at sea) for vocals and electric guitars."I set out to make an 8 song statement like Desert Shore or Raw Power, but it became a 9 song... something else. I've described it to friends as Twin Peaks-ish but that feels only part right. The songs were written on a 60's Teisco Del Rey electric guitar, set up by the Belgian luthier Flip Scipio with heavy gauge flat wound strings and an .80 gauge low E string tuned down to a low A, which reframes how you play the instrument. I wrote them all quickly in a kind of fever."—Brokaw

Shit And Shine

Mannheim HBF

12xu

***"So the bad news is, in a fit of pique, I asked Chat GPT (nicely) to compose a one-sheet for the new Shit and Shine double album, Mannheim HBF. The even worse news (yes, even worse than resorting to such tactics) is that the resulting biography is halfway passable and on some levels, superior to the sort of thing being published by what’s left of our weekly coupon-shoppers. But for fuck’s sake my friends, Craig Clouse did not get to where he is today today by settling for halfway passable and neither should you. That Shit and Shine’s discography is vast and dizzying is already well established; what’s not nearly as established are these recordings being specifically dizzying. I don’t know if there’s anyone else in modern music as skilled in waltzing around the periphery of so many disparate idioms ('noise', being one of the least prominent this time around) and somehow, against all odds, tying ‘em together in the most intricate of knots. And who doesn’t love knots?We all have our favorite ways to experience music that’s all-engulfing, but whether your preferred method is thru a stadium sized sound system or ear buds affixed as you’ve leapt off the tallest building in Bastrop, TX (the Jerry Fay Wilhelm Center for the Performing Arts, since you asked), not for the first time, Shit and Shine is entirely appropriate in either instance, possibly every instance. There are moments where I think this is a club record. The Friars Club, however.Far be...

Kuepper, Ed & Jim White

After The Flood

12xu

***Back in the mid-90s the Dirty Three opened for Ed Kuepper in Melbourne. That’s when Ed and Jim first crossed paths. Jim of course was well-aware of Ed; who wasn’t? This was an artist who had redefined Australian music not just once with The Saints, not just twice with Laughing Clowns, but was at it again for a third time. under his own name. For his part Ed was watching Jim play and making a mental note.Time passed… a lot of time passed. Jim left the country with the Dirty Three and built a formidable reputation as a collaborator and sideman. Ed was in his pomp, touring and releasing albums, building a remarkable body of work that now stands at over 50 albums.Roll forward to 2020. Time became malleable, even these most industrious of artists found themselves with time to kill. Jim was unexpectedly back in Australia, in fact stranded in Australia. Despite all the complexities of the pandemic Ed recognised an opportunity to capture the collaboration he’d long had in mind.The original idea was for the two of them to do a few shows together. It would be ‘casual’. But it proved to be anything but. Amidst the on-off restrictions and the threat of the virus the tour was a turbulent ride. They performed two sold out nights at the Sydney Opera House and fluked the only gig at Rising before the Melbourne Festival was cancelled. Other gigs were blown out and plans would be changed at the last...

USA / Mexico

Live In Paris

12xu

***'Live In Paris' is the 4th album from the Austin TX trio USA/Mexico, and their first since 2021's 'Del Rio'. As the title suggests, the album was recorded live at Paris' Le Petit Bain in March of this year. As on their prior studio albums, the group remains guitarist Craig Clouse (Shit and Shine), bassist Nate Cross (Water Damage, Marriage) and drummer King Coffey (Butthole Surfers). Again, in keeping with established tradition, the album is being released by 12XU in North America and Riot Season Records in the UK and Europe.

Mope Grooves

Box Of Dark Roses

12xu

***"Mope Groove’s final album; Box of Dark Roses. A 27 song 2 disc LP of songs that Stevie prepared for release before she left. Rest in peace sweet angel. We love you forever." “box of dark roses is a 27 song LP where the same images repeat and repeat until you might have some idea of what roses have to do with armed struggle, trans autonomy, losing your house (again), angels, women political prisoners, violence returned to sender, suicided poets, refusing to recant, insisting on life, & how the revenge of twenty billion screaming ghost women could unmake the worst of all possible worlds”—Stevie

Chimers

Through Today

12xu

***Through Today is the sophomore album for rising Australian band Chimers. A husband / wife duo comprising life partners Padraic Skehan (vocals / guitar) and Binx (drums / vocals). Recorded by Jono Boulet (Party Dozen) over two days at Stranded Studios, Wollongong and mixed at Boulet’s Sydney home studio, produced by the band and veteran manager / promoter / producer Tim Pittman (Feel Presents), Through Today features ten tracks of tightly-coiled intensity that barely lets up for all of its 34 minutes. In enlisting Boulet, the band were confident that due to his own experience of being one half of Party Dozen, they had someone who understood the confines of working within the structure of a two-piece but also the possibilities that creates. Boulet, in turn, rewarding that trust by capturing a powerful bedrock of sound that allowed the band's taught rhythms to circle and permeate and yet give full breathing space for the melody within. For Pittman’s part, having a third ear on hand to devote serious listening time and critical commentary was an added bonus. Through Today is a great album. Solid and confident from the get go. No waste. No unnecessary fat. Should it be Chimers last it would remain a defining statement of originality and intent. But it’s not the last, it’s just the beginning. And there’s plenty more where that came from.

Voice Imitator

Of How Hits

12xu

***“In attempting to write this dispatch on the second Voice Imitator album my instinct is to pitch them as somewhat of an antidote to the current ills of what could be described as the post-Noise Rock landscape. I’m trying not to tread too far down the path of negativity and slander, so let's just say that while on paper they share basic characteristics with popular groups in the pigfuck to frat rock pipeline, Voice Imitator possess a tact and vision scantly seen in Repetition Orientated Rock.” “On ‘Of How Hits’ the members decades long individual and collaborative experiences in punk/rock, the avant-garde and electronic music, are further honed to form an internal logic that doesn’t merely cut and paste from these experiences, but creates a distinctive and singular group sensibility. Self conscious subcultural baggage is removed from past youth music experiences, only the molten core remains.” “With each listen the distinction between traditional band and synthesized modes becomes harder to distinguish, like a zoomed in Killing Joke welding itself to Robert Hood’s technominimalism. Lyrics reflect the surreal banailty and horrors of modern existence, like a co- worker recapping their interstate trip away to the Banksy exhibition. The album ender, ‘On Cloud Nine As One Of Three Percent’ can only be compared to Lou Reed and Metallica’s ‘Junior Dad’. In short, affecting contemporary music.” - Nic Warnock

Weak Signal

Fine

12xu

***"The music of New York trio Weak Signal (Mike Bones, guitar and voice; Sasha Vine, electric bass, violin, and voice; Tran, drums and voice) is a masterclass in simplicity and economy but these aspects aren’t present for their own didactic sake. Rather, their art is world-building in the most essential of ways, subtly spinning out in an enveloping, rich haze from a clear, architectural core. There are sections of knife-like collective squall and dialogic drift that glance at improvised music; while not strictly pop, the tunes are incredibly catchy with wry, keenly memorable lyrics that easily stick in one’s craw. With associations including Endless Boogie, Sian Alice Group, and Soldiers of Fortune, Weak Signal formed in 2017. They waxed two full lengths in the period leading up to the pandemic ('LP1'; 'Bianca'), and during that unsettling year-plus without many gigs to speak of, the trio kept busy and unleashed a handful of choice digital EPs and a couple of split 7” singles (cue up 'Rolex' if you haven’t heard it). In 2023 the group released 'War and War', a self-published book / CD (its title taken from a volume by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai) that was reissued on LP by 12XU the following year. 'Fine' is their fourth full-length to date, its tight ten-song program fleshed out with sonic icing from keyboardist Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip) and guitarists Doug Shaw (Gang Gang Dance; White Magic) and Cass McCombs."—Clifford Allen

Winged Wheel

Big Hotel

12xu

***"Big Hotel, the sophomore effort of Winged Wheel, is an evolutionary document. Core members Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Rider/Horse, Expensive Shit), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), and Matthew J Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo, solo) expand their lineup to include Lonnie Slack (Water Damage) and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), and instead of the entirely remote method utilized to create their 2022 debut No Island, the far-flung party convened in person in Kingston, NY for a long weekend of live studio recording. The results are undeniably compelling. The band’s signature cyclonic energy is simultaneously augmented and refined with the approach of real-time collaboration. After tracking three days’ worth of group improvisations, weirdly-born songs, and other spontaneous creations, the hours of material were edited with a similar intensity. Half-hour jams became three-minute ragers and fragments were looped into infinity, calling on the same spliced aesthetic as some of the most adventurous material by Can, Faust, or more recently the experimental production of the International Anthem camp. The stereo field has been torn apart and sewn together again, rerouted with strange and mesmerizing left turns. Vignettes of ambiguous construction, both tightly coiled and exploding, revolve around themselves, gathering intensity and mass, coalescing into something greater than the sum of its parts. 'Demonstrably False' swells into existence like a motorik tidepool, tossing fauna onto the shoreline where it sprouts legs with a steady gait lying readily in wait within them. The controlled frenzy of 'Sleeptraining' marks a determined dash to a patch...

Water Damage

In E

12xu

***"Volume, repetition, volume, repetition, volume and repetition, this is the sonic mantra of Austin, Texas's Water Damage. On their new record In E, Water Damage continues to scorch the earth with walls of punishing sound. It's no secret that something truly special can happen to the psyche when you are being pummelled with trance inducing drones, you can transcend time, you might laugh, you might cry but hopefully you look inward, letting a calm wash over you with metric tons of distortion. Water Damage are the rare 'rock' band that follow in the lineage of artists like Faust, Tony Conrad, Steve Reich and Pärson Sound, one that creates such heavy yet minimalistic audio treasures that not only hit you viscerally but also give space to contemplate on your place in the cosmos. Their longest offering yet, Water Damage hits you with 4 side long tracks of krautpunk ending with a cover of 'Ladybird' by Shit & Shine featuring Craig Clouse on vocals. Drone until you hear god speak."—Joe Trainer, Dummy Water Damage is Mari Maurice, Thor Harris, Jonathan Horne, Nate Cross, George Dishonor, Travis Austin, Mike Kanin, Greg Piwonka, Jeff Piwonka and Lonnie "Palmtree" Slack.

Love Child

Never Meant To Be: 1988-1993

12xu

***"At the very dawn of the 90s, Love Child's debut 7” made a splash on the burgeoning scene of shambolic bands and lo-fi recordings. Back then, they were mentioned in the same breath as Pavement, Sebadoh, or Beat Happening. But Love Child’s two great albums and sparkling singles have become the stuff of record collectors, unavailable vis streaming and out of print, until now. Never Meant to Be: 1988-1993 pulls from these releases and some unreleased radio sessions, unearthing a trove of lost gems by a band that could be the bestof all of the 90s buried treasures. Culled from their smashing debut 7-inch, their two full-length albums, another great single and some unreleased radio sets (including a Peel Session), Never Meant To Be has catchy hooks, gritty noise, sneakily-deft playing, brainy but blunt lyrics, and lots of other awesome stuff. Love Child were part of lo-fi’s beginnings, but also had the NYC pedigree to absorb predecessors like the Velvet Underground, the Voidoids and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. (Their swirl of brightness, brains, and brawn led Byron Coley to liken them to a fantasy VU made up of Moe Tucker, Doug Yule, and Angus MacLise). Will Baum started Love Child while a student at Vassar College, bringing on classmates Rebecca Odes and Alan Licht. At first, Baum wrote the majority of the songs, bringing a Modern Lovers-like garage-pop attack to the band’s 19-song whirlwind debut album Okay? (Homestead, 1991) But Odes and Licht contributed songs as well, each with...

Gerycz Powers Rolin

Activator

12xu

***"Activator is the third installment from the trio of Jayson Gerycz, Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin, who respectively need no introduction writ-large. For anyone observing the American underground in the last decade, whether live, on tour or across various listening formats, these names are attached to the crucial goings-on propelling the Rust Belt and beyond. Here we find the trio expand their collaborative vernacular across two sides of vinyl starting with the steady strumming of 'Entrance', a paradox of pensive riffing and anxious percussion where Gerycz and Powers meld into a nebulous cluster of shapeshifting staccato and phantom rhythms. Tracks like 'Sun Rays' and 'Ivory' walk a tightrope between structured songcraft with chord patterns and concise riffs held together by steady cadence, ranging from hand bells to the bombastic, full-kit eruptions Gerycz has perfected over many years. As each piece ascends and unfurls, Powers provides a gentle tessellating from her dulcimer, with each strike landing like raindrops upon shallow puddles. The title track 'Activator' displays the full range and might of the trio, highlighting and merging the many facets and abilities each individual brings to the table, forming the singular identity that has made the project so beloved. Starting with slow dulcimer swells, watery bells, and mellow, motorik electric guitar, the track slowly tangles up its own elements and tumbles itself with grace and patient beauty while ascending to an ecstatic explosion of distortion and thunderous drumming before dissolving into an iridescent singing bowl meditation. Activator leaves it all on...

Lupo Citta

Lupo Citta

12xu

***Sarah Black played bass and guitar and wrote music in several Minneapolis bands including Kickball, Period, Plain Jane, the Bleeding Hickeys, the Lie-Ons, the Pointing Geenas and Brandy Thunders. In the Minneapolis performance scene, Sarah was a performance artist, drag and burlesque performer. Sarah is also a scenic painter and welder who worked on commercial sets, films, and music videos including some rock sculptures that can be seen in Prince's video 'The Holy River.' Jenn Gori trained as a vocalist and was a member of impossibly nerdy musical ensembles and performance groups, singing and arranging music for multi-part vocal compositions including madrigal music, a cappella, and improvisational harmonies. After moving to Minneapolis from Boston, Jenn ventured into punk, drag and burlesque performance, songwriting and playing drums in the Bleeding Hickeys, the Lie-Ons, Pointing Geenas and Brandy Thunders. Chris Brokaw was and remains a member of Come, Codeine and the Martha's Vineyard Ferries, sometimes Charnel Ground, sometimes the Lemonheads. He makes solo albums and film scores, and teaches guitar + drums. Chris and Jenn + Sarah made odysseys living in New York and Seattle for several years each, at exactly the same times, without being aware of each other, all ending up (back) in Boston at roughly the same time a few years ago, apparently following the same north star on the same crooked path. Chris met Jenn + Sarah at a yard show at Brad Searles' house as the pandemic was cooling in 2021 and connected further via the Mr./Mrs....

Lewsberg

Out And About

12xu

***The fourth album from amazing Dutch four-piece Lewsberg. Since forming in 2016, Lewsberg have gone from strength to strength. Despite never really considering themselves as a ‘productive band’, together they have released three LPs, one EP and a series of cassettes and 7”s including 2022’s "Six Hills" which was released via Speedy Wunderground's singles series. Lewsberg are named after writer and fellow Rotterdammer Robert Loesberg, famous for his dangerous novel Enige Defecten from 1974. This is one of the band’s main sources of inspiration: the counterculture and big-city cynicism of the 1960s and 1970s. Yet there is also a softer side to Lewsberg’s music and lyrics. On Out And About, this side is more present than ever. Rudimentary pop and rock songs are deliberately kept bare, only occasionally embellished with a violin or organ part. In the lyrics, the tendency towards existentialism and black humour is nuanced with an almost naive openness and engagement. Recorded in Amsterdam in Spring 2023 with producer Yulya Divakova, Out And About sees founding members Shalita Dietrich (vocals, bass guitar), Michiel Klein (guitar) and Arie van Vliet (vocals, guitar, violin) joined for the first time on record by drummer and vocalist Marrit Meinema, who joined the band in the Autumn of 2021. Out And About embraces a collaborative spirit, allowing each member to contribute their unique songwriting talents. The result is a collection of tracks that capture the band's collective creative energy and their individual perspectives. The lyrics for "A Different View" were written via...

Lewsberg

s/t

12xu

***The first US pressing of the Dutch group's first album from 2018.

Water Damage

Two Songs

12xu

***More Water! More Damage! The second proper LP by this Texan juggernaut is even more biggerer than the first, a head-drowning pair of new 'reels' (every Water Damage tracks generally take up a reel of tape, hence the 'reel ____' song titles) that makes you feel like you’re swimming in a sun-drenched river of sound. Two drummers, two bassists, and tons of vibrating strings are once again a recipe for massive rocking-drone fires. Two Songs has two songs, and they’re kind of the yin/yang of Water Damage: one toned very low, growling and roaring, groaning over a beat, while the other hums high, troubling the treble clef and ringing like a bunch of church bells that don’t want to be in church. They’re more alike than different though, divining momentum from repetition, flying forward by staying in place, climbing a mountain that they’re building as they go. Enough ink has already been spilled about the previous-band pedigrees of the players in this hurtling collective, and by this point, the past seems way less relevant than the present when it comes to Water Damage’s present-pounding sound. These people know what they’re doing, sure. You don’t need a resume in front of you to figure that out. It’s there in every second of this gigantic, eternal music—in all the strings being bowed, the skins being slammed, the rumbles being rumbled. You might notice that this time around, Water Damage haven’t just given their tracks reel numbers. They're also called 'Fuck This' and...

Weak Signal

War&War

12xu

***The first vinyl edition of NYC trio Weak Signal's second album, 2022's War&War, originally issued digitally by Colonel Records. Weak Signal is Sasha Vine, Tran and Mike Bones. Ryan Sawyer plays additional percussion throughout. Sarim Al-Rawi plays additional guitar throughout. Cass McCombs plays guitar on "Spooky Feeling." Produced and Mixed by Jonathan Kreinik at Vitos Fall 2020 and Union Pool Spring 2021. Mastering and lacquers by Carl Saff. War And War is a novel by László Krasznahorkai. "crazily focused & powerful"—Jennifer Kelly, Dusted "a slyly incendiary collection wracked with rippling tension"—Raven Sings The Blues "a mesmerizingly morose journey, yet a scenic one too. Just don't whack it on the turntable when you're feeling at your most fragile."—JR Moores, The Quietus

Rocket 808

House Of Jackpots

12xu

***Rocket 808’s self-titled debut album came out in late 2019, and luckily, absolutely nothing happened in 2020 to divert the world’s attention away from the release. Combining the primitive analog drum machine of 1970s New York underground icons Suicide with the raw guitar of Link Wray, Rocket 808 blasted rock n’ roll guitar into our new, weirder present. Now Rocket 808 returns with a new LP, House of Jackpots, taking up where the previous record left off while adding some new elements to juice things up. Still channeling Alan Vega, the Cramps, and Duane Eddy influences from the first LP, House of Jackpots further explores 1980’s television cop show themes and Ry Cooder film scores. “Punk rock Mike Post” might not be something you knew you needed, until you hear the first cut of the record. Slide guitar gives you your own personal screening of Wim Wenders’ "Paris, Texas" in your mind’s eye, or imagine if instead of the Barry De Vorzon intro, "Simon & Simon" opened with a trash-rock instrumental instead. Saturated in big-screen iconography whether its surf tunes for 100-foot waves or David Lynch soundtracks for a grimy 1970s Las Vegas strip, House of Jackpots takes you out of our current reality that frankly, we all probably want to forget anyway. Covers of 1950s proto-goth Jody Reynolds and reviled eighties electro-rockers Sigue Sigue Sputnik give nods to the obscure rock n’ roll weirdos of the past while dragging them into the future. Recorded by Grammy-winner Stuart Sikes and...

Brokaw, Chris

Live At The Decomissioned Power Plant In Florli, Norway

12xu

***"In 2022 they invited me to participate in a small festival in Florli, about an hour from Stavangar. It's only accessible by ferry and there's not much there. Year round population is about ten people, and it's most famous for its 4444-step wooden staircase up the side of a mountain, big hiker attraction. The 'festival' turned out to be more like an artists' retreat, combined with the wedding of Iver and Marit. My involvement was kinda last minute but I was very happy to be there. I met some great artists, experienced some cool and unusual performances; and played 2 solo sets, one electric in this giant decommissioned power plant, and one acoustic in the living room of a cabin. Both were thrilling for me; my new friend Jim Dawson recorded the electric one. This tape is that whole performance. As 'post covid rejuvenation get togethers' go this one was pretty great; the tape a good memento to an inspiring weekend."—CB, Cambridge 2023. Edition of 150 copies.

Winged Wheel

No Island

12xu

***Winged Wheel is made up of four musicians whose worlds have intersected for years without them ever all being in the same room. Cory Plump (Spray Paint, Expensive Shit), Whitney Johnson (Matchess, Damiana), Fred Thomas (Tyvek, Idle Ray), and Matthew Rolin (Powers/Rolin Duo, solo) have been longtime participants in various d.i.y. communities, crossing each others’ paths through shared gigs, working on releases, or taking the stage at Cory's small upstate NY bar. Each player has developed their own personal practice of improvisation and home-recording, and Winged Wheel began by chance when Cory asked Fred to send over some rawly-recorded drum loops to jam over. Cory tracked rangy guitar and bass parts over these repetitive loops and songs slowly started taking shape. Matthew's guitar layers took these foundations to a whole new level, and Whitney's submerged vocal tracks solidified everything, elevating the project from a soup of partially formed ideas into something intelligible. The entire album was written, recorded, and mixed in remote collaboration, eventually turning into a balancing act of precisely arranging sonic details and maintaining the formless excitement the music began as. This paradoxical process can be heard in the final form of the album, a continuous zone that manages to be strange and amorphous while still carving out space for four distinctive musical personalities. It’s a sound that hovers and stumbles as often as it takes declarative turns in unexpected directions, the circles getting smaller the closer you zoom in.

Lewsberg

In Your Hands

12xu

***"Sometimes change comes with big shocks, sometimes it comes with small steps. On In Your Hands, Lewsberg’s new album, a bit of both seems to be happening. Take the second song, ‘The Corner.’ A remarkably discreet song: a violin plays a simple melody; a gentle drum loop keeps its finger on the pulse. 'This brick is a brick to build,” it sounds, though a little later: 'This brick is a brick to throw.' A brick offers many possibilities, for those who want to see it. One time as a part of something bigger to come, the next time just as a simple stone, left on the ground. After all, most things are relative. Sometimes one can achieve more by breaking something than by building something. If you think you can determine which of the two is needed, you’d be fooling yourself. In Your Hands embodies the moment when all the bricks are there, but the wall has yet to be built. It’s a moment with perspective, a moment where everything still seems possible, but caution is advised. The album sounds both smaller and more spacious than the previous albums. Guitar chords are plucked instead of fiercely struck, the bass guitar is given more room for melodic explorations, the drum kit is dismantled to just a tom and a tambourine. There is doubt in the lyrics, but it’s a strong kind of doubt. A doubt that can stand in the way of a wrong decision but also invite for a good...

Florry

Big Fall

12xu

***Gram Parsons coined the phrase "Cosmic American Music" to describe the synthesis of country, blues, rock and soul that he traded in. Sheridan Frances ‘Francie’ Medosch wouldn’t be born for another 28 years after Parsons’ 1973 death, but that Cosmic American sound was waiting for her all the same. On 'Big Fall', she embraces it like an old friend.   Medosch grew up outside of Philadelphia in a family home that encompassed three cats, a dog and a pig. Her mom loved music; she played all kinds of stuff around the house, but mostly alt-country like Gillian Welch and Wilco. 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot', the seminal 2002 album by the latter became formative to a young Francie’s love of music - “I never really got into 'Sgt Pepper' or anything, so I think that album kinda took the place of that.” She learned violin for a while, then she was a natural on piano, but that stuff bored her. Eventually, her mom bought her a guitar. “I was actually very bummed out at first. I think I wanted an Xbox or something that year. But I came around to it very quickly,” she laughs.  As a teenager she got into obscure underground rock and power pop, influences she channeled in the band she initially named Francie Cool, which would later transition into Florry (these days it’s a solo project, in which she’s backed by Jared Radichel on bass, John Murray on guitar and Joey Sullivan on drums). In 2018,...

Dead Space, The

Chlorine Sleep

12xu

***After a six-year absence, The Dead Space returns with Chlorine Sleep. Recorded days before their breakup in 2015, this album marks a turning point, both the trio of Quin Galavis, Garrett Haden and Jenny Arthur, as well as for their collective scene in Austin, Texas. The Dead Space never quite fit in since forming in 2008, and never really cared to. The trio quietly managed to craft their own brand of tightly wound art rock, equal parts bleak and brooding, presented in stark tones. Whether their allergy to artifice was a roadblock, in keeping with their character or some combination of both, it's hard to say. Either way, the band was very much on the outside looking in prior to the release of their well-received first album, 2014's Faker. And when it finally seemed they could reach a broader audience, they did what any good band should do—they broke up.   Slightly before that, however, the band returned to Ian Rundell’s Second Hand Tacos studio to record Chlorine Sleep. The record carries their history forward with arduous blasts of force, contrasting with lean efficiency, exposing a sense of fragility and vulnerability atypical of their prior works. With guitarist Garrett Hadden’s return to Texas after an extended spell in Seattle, the group are readying a return to the stage later this year and next with a renewed vision and sense of purpose. The Dead Space’s ferocious second album expands on previous themes while forging a new path all their own....

Sharkey, John III

Shoot Out The Cameras

12xu

***Written and recorded amidst the devastating bushfires which ravaged his adopted hometown Canberra, just before the wave of pandemic broke, Shoot Out The Cameras reveals John Sharkey III to be a master craftsman; honing in on the existential dread of living in a burning world, and the imperative to find beauty in what remains. Perhaps best known as the creative force behind Clockcleaner, Sharkey’s credentials include Cleveland's 9 Shocks Terror and more recently, literate rock explorations as Puerto Rico Flowers and Dark Blue., the latter having released a pair of 12XU full-lengths. It was love (of course) that brought Sharkey from Philly to Melbourne in 2008, where he worked behind the bar at beloved venue, The Tote. Sharkey and his partner Yasmin moved back to Philly for several years; then, amid the darkening landscape of US politics, the couple decided to settle in Canberra, Yasmin’s hometown. At a physical but not psychological remove from the horrifying dysfunction of Trump’s America, Sharkey watched catastrophic bushfires encircle Canberra, raging through the hills of the Southern Tablelands, the city glowing orange, the suburbs suffocating in smoke. This is when the songs of Shoot Out The Cameras took form. As if to echo the craters of “before” and “after” that apocalyptic events leave in our collective consciousness, the songs arranged themselves into a cinematic narrative arc, from the foreboding of disaster (Side A) through its aftermath (Side B). The background horrors of totalitarianism, paranoia and surveillance also stalk the album—he cameras of the title...

Voice Imitator

Plaza

12xu

***Voice Imitator is the collaborative project of Per Bystrom, Justin Fuller, Mark Groves, and Leon O’Regan. All four have been active as part of numerous, cross-genre ventures in the Australian underground for many years. Bystrom has offered a rhythmic heart for Exhaustion and Leather Towel, whilst further expanding on metrical ideas in Compound, his solo electronic undertaking. Zond, TOL, Grane and various solo outings have all showcased Fuller’s severely manipulated, hallucinogenic guitar and unsettling electronics. O’Regan has provided lithe, turbulent and imaginative bass guitar for The Bunyip Moon, and antagonistic industrial electronics as Dire Ears. Groves, as vocalist, has previously oscillated between the idiosyncratic combination of drily delivered text, close-miked voice and concrète sound for Red Wine and Sugar and solo project Absurd Cosmos Late Nite, as well as functioning as frontperson for noise rock and heavy electronic acts True Radical Miracle and Dead Boomers.   In Voice Imitator, these four pursue mutual auditory fixations and eccentric individual inputs toward a distinctive and cohesive unit. Groves’ texts are the outcome of anxious and fatigued surveillance, emerging as bleak satire and quietly surreal flashes drawn from the mundane. Vacillating awkwardly between barely contained frustration and ironic detachment, this voice is ushered by a relentless ostinato pulse, washes of heavily effected guitar, subterranean electronic noise and a tense ambience of self-conscious nervousness. Recurring undercurrents of motorik rhythm, and motor city techno draw shared obsession together, providing an altogether new construction. Much like the allegory of a boiling frog, here tension slowly...

Brokaw, Chris

Puritan

12xu

***"CHRIS BROKAW is the consummate underground rock musician. In a career spanning thirty-plus years he has been in countless bands (COME, CHARNEL GROUND, CODEINE, and THE LEMONHEADS to name a few) has been a sideman with everyone from Thurston Moore to GG Allin, pounded countless stages on nonstop tours, and played on over seventy recordings. Puritan is his tenth solo album and it's a killer. From the hypnotic repetition on the extended instrumental outro of title-track opener 'Puritan', the wounded grace of 'Depending,' to the fragile beauty of the Velvets-esque duet with Claudia Groom, 'I'm the Only One for You,' and the ghost of Alex Chilton echoing through 'The Bragging Rights,' onto the GBV-like firestorm of 'Periscope Kids,' and ending with the On The Beach-era Neil Young minimal strum of his cover of Karl Hendricks’ 'The Night Has No Eyes,' Brokaw has crafted an understated masterpiece. Puritan is an album that is all heartache and rebirth, resignation and joy, the kind of record that is so needed but all too rare these days. A classic from front to back."—Mark Lanegan 2020

Wolf Eyes / Blank Hellscape

Winter Saturday / Concrete Walls

12xu

***What happens when Detroit's WOLF EYES and Austin's BLANK HELLSCAPE team up to provide a suitably nightmarish backdrop for USA 2020 vanquished by fear, greed, incurable disease, etc.? Fuck if I know, it's not like they recorded their tracks in the same room while watching cable news. I mean, credit both ensembles for having an imaginative bone in their bodies or two. On the left, we have Michigan's synapse-snapping heavyweight champs. On the right, 3 fellas whose 2019 Diseased Tapes debut was one of the year's most harrowing listening experiences. This EP required no fewer than 3 mastering engineers, 2 personal trainers and 1 and a half psychologists (there was a credentials question) to complete.

Lewsberg

In This House

12xu

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  The second album by Rotterdam-based LEWSBERG and their first US release. The quartet’s latest offering seeps into your consciousness in a different way to their debut, though their tendency towards existentialism and black humor is present throughout. Harsher in sound, but more humane in spirit, In This House refuses to let the listener settle for a single moment. The metallic, atonal guitar strum on opening song “Left Turn” leaves no room for discussion. This is Lewsberg at work. The unnerving sound of a revving car, handbrake on, suddenly coming to an abrupt and silent halt. Is the title of this opener a warning for the listener for the rest of the set, as if we’re going down Robert Frost’s “road less traveled,” or is it just a description of this lonesome character’s unexpected behaviour in this particular song? In This House is full of surprises. The teasing guitar break on “From Never to Once.” The two instrumentals “Trained Eye” and “Interlude.” The emotionally affecting ballad, “The Door.” And there’s the pairing of the last two tracks: the fatalistic “Jacob’s Ladder” and the wild, evocative “Standard Procedures”—-as if each piece works independently from the other, gazing back occasionally on what came before and, in turn, adding a different flavour to what comes next. “Cold Light of Day” and “Tbrough the Garden” are textbook Lewsberg; B songs, provocative and enchanting in their minimalism. Whilst “At Lunch” is seemingly innocent and carefree at the start, ultimately conjuring...

Xetas

The Cypher

12xu

***"Why do people start bands anymore? To get rich and famous? Compliment re-tweeting? To gain the respect of their peers in the RIAA? I don’t know, and I don’t have a computer so I can’t look it up. But I bet sometimes bands get started with no goal at all, beyond basics like don’t lose the keys to the practice space, and to share the excitement of making music together. From there, the goals become things like, get better at it, and do it more. But, again, no computer here, so, don’t know 100%. XETAS have been doing exactly that, making wired, joyfully intense music ever since their first 7” in 2014. Their first two albums, The Redeemer and The Tower, are compact, high-voltage, furniture-throwing gems. With The Cypher, they emerge after a year of work as a one-minded beast. The songs blast off and burn, but carry a new depth and weight. Inside gusts of ferocious noise there are subtly sweet melodies that stick in your head; volume gets quiet, tempos charge, slow down, stutter, and implode. The sounds are of a deeper dimension, surprising glimpses of (what’s that?) and (huh wow!). It all creates a rich emotional dimension, which you feel even while the band is thrashing you around in its jaws like an alligator. Instantly you notice the vocal arrangements. Everybody sings every song, whether dividing verses or in unison, in true crew fashion. It’s a moving statement of intent. Punk rock? To be sure, but punk...