Managed to put together some thoughts I've been bouncing around in my head lately. I'd very much like to know how y'all feel about this.
#spotify #fuckspotify #musicindustry
MISSION STATEMENT
Hi, my name is Jess and I’ve started this account to share my love for writing about experimental music.
Content posted here could be described as album reviews for practical purposes, but what I have in mind is closer to recommendations. More like a friend at a party, 3 AM in the kitchen, telling you excitedly about an album they dug out and liked, rather than someone stamping a rating and moving along to the next one. There are many places to argue why an album rated 7/10 is clearly an 8/10, and this isn’t one of them. That's also why there won't be many negative "reviews", unless I will have something really interesting to say about an album I didn't like. All of this is aimed to reflect my personal taste and listening practices, as opposed to trends and algorithmic hype economics, which in my opinion often have a negative impact on music discourse online.
The New Rock shoe has been picked as a visual cue for several reasons. It’s a nod to SOPHIE's song whose lyrics are quoted in this project's name, as well as to the alternative culture in general. I also feel that New Rocks' heavy, blown-out silhouette matches abrasive, disjointed sounds that I'm going to explore. I've asked @antekkrenz to draw it with his signature, perspective-shifted style to reflect my interest in deformation as an aesthetic category, which I suspect is going to be one of reoccuring themes here.
My ultimate goal for _justsohard is to show you, the person reading this, your next favorite album or project. For that reason, I strongly encourage everyone to go a bit against the grain and look up posts about albums they don’t know yet, not just cross-check what I think about their favorites (trust me, I tend to do this as well). And please let me know if you liked something that I’ve written about, this is the biggest return I hope for!
HiHelga - CRYSTAL MUNTER COKE SMOKE GIRL and thee OPIOD CHRIST CIS SISTER ICE ISIS DELIGHT
Many discographies tend to be more engaging for me at their earlier stages than later for one specific reason: I am usually more interested in listening to people when they are still figuring stuff out, making mistakes and being blissfully unaware of all the rules. So many artists past that stage inevitably fall towards convention, perhaps because exploring actual music theory is more satisfying than churning out noise in the long run? One way or another, many “mature” works end up as something not for me.
HiHelga’s latest full length album of a prohibitively long title for cramping a review in an Instagram post does not fall into this category. It’s certainly her most intentional, cohesive and fleshed out work so far that showcases her strengths as not only an irreverent genre-basher, but also songwriter in a true sense of the word. And while I’ve been less enthusiastic about HiHelga’s excursions towards post-punk/tradgoth style in the past, here I find it pretty hard to dislike any of those incredibly catchy melodies, especially when these stylizations are just some of the moving parts constituting what CRYSTAL MUNTER… is as a whole.
What are other of those moving parts? Well, let’s start with the fact that this is pretty close to a concept album, complete with spoken word interludes by fellow provocateur Grooming, exploring the curious connection between Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and Travis the Chimpanzee (seriously, look it up, it’s 100% real). And I suspect Helga might not appreciate this association, but the way this thematic arc is presented brings me back to the best days of what was later regrettably called “conceptronica” (think: Angels Rig Hook or ORCORARA 2010), especially given the fact that the album is basically designed as a nonstop megamix.
(continuation in the comments…)
𝗥𝗔𝗗𝗜𝗢 𝗖𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗢
Interview with @heylaffyyy
this evening at 8pm on @radio_kapital
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It's a podcast version of the interview available on our youtube channel as a part of CASTELLO TV. For those who prefer an extended radio version with music ( ꈍᴗꈍ) ♪
interview by @_justsohard
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Next episode of 🅲🅰🆂🆃🅴🅻🅻🅾 🆃🆅: Interview/breakfast with @heylaffyyy 🥐🎶
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An interview took place on 27.07.2024 during ℭ𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔬 𝔅𝔦𝔷𝔷𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔬 Festival in Będzin, Poland ✧｡*♡
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Next episode of 🅲🅰🆂🆃🅴🅻🅻🅾 🆃🆅: Interview with @nihiloxica
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hosted by @_justsohard
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ig reel by @klaudcore
produced by @klaudcore & @castellobizzarro
videography by @andieriekstina
concert footage by @opardon
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⚔️
An interview took place on 27.07.2024 during ℭ𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔬 𝔅𝔦𝔷𝔷𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔬 Festival in Będzin, Poland ✧｡*♡
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Download - Furnace
1995
This album strikes me as something of many contradictions, interestingly enough most of them being external to the work itself. Let me elaborate: Download is usually filed under myriad Skinny Puppy side-projects (note that it’s named after the last track on Last Rights, SP album finished before Download the band was formed), this particular one starting as a duo between cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel until the latter’s untimely death. And Furnace definitely does have a side-project energy, with songwriting that isn’t nearly as laser-precise as on preceding Skinny Puppy releases, and many tracks feeling almost like test runs for the state-of-the-art electronic equipment dragged to the studio just before the sessions.
But that’s precisely what my hottest take for this post is about: try and change my mind, but Skinny Puppy and Download used to be probably the most technologically advanced electronic projects of their time, at least until Warp Records affiliated artists accumulated enough experience and knowledge to reach the cutting edge. The sheer complexity and variety of sounds on Furnace are still mind-boggling, even without considering the amount of work and dexterity required to pull something like this off with equipment available 30 years ago. I think that Skinny Puppy’s extended discography is generally overlooked in the history of leftfield electronics mostly due to their subcultural associations. Perhaps all that separates this music from more high-brow reception is cEvin Key and Nivek Ogre swapping all the leather and mesh and chains for some The North Face jackets.
The other contradiction about Furnace is how it sounds undeniably of its time, especially with stylizations towards now-outdated styles like acid house or illbient (as one can guess, those slower tracks are definitely my favorites), but at the same time also very much ahead of it. I genuinely believe that Download’s hi-tech, genre-mashing approach anticipates that of contemporary post-genre auteurs in the vein of, say, Iglooghost or Hesaitix. If you still need a tagline for this one, let’s say that Furnace is like a 30 years old deconstructed club record.
New episode of 🅲🅰🆂🆃🅴🅻🅻🅾 🆃🆅: Interview with @death_addict_society ☠️☠️☠️☠️
See the full episode on youtube 🖤 𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓲𝓷 𝓫𝓲𝓸
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produced by @yungklaud & @castellobizzarro
videography by @andieriekstina
ig reel by @yungklaud
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An interview took place on 26.07.2024 during ℭ𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔬 𝔅𝔦𝔷𝔷𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔬 Festival in Będzin, Poland ✧｡*♡
Subscribe to 𝕮𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖔 𝕭𝖎𝖟𝖟𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖔 on youtube! link in bio ♡(> ਊ <)♡
Next episode of 🅲🅰🆂🆃🅴🅻🅻🅾 🆃🆅: Interview with @porosty_zaskorski
See the full episode on youtube 🖤 𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓲𝓷 𝓫𝓲𝓸
hosted by @_justsohard
edited by @mariia_lemperk
produced by @yungklaud & @castellobizzarro
videography by @andieriekstina
ig reel by @yungklaud
logo by @polak_
⚔️
An interview took place on 26.07.2024 during ℭ𝔞𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔩𝔩𝔬 𝔅𝔦𝔷𝔷𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔬 Festival in Będzin, Poland ✧｡*♡
Subscribe to 𝕮𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖑𝖑𝖔 𝕭𝖎𝖟𝖟𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖔 on youtube! link in bio ♡(> ਊ <)♡
Purulent Circle - I want to be hunted down by the oceans
2025
The first time I saw Purulent Circle was their live debut at an illegal show in an abandoned bunker. I still vividly remember lying on dirty floor and doing nitrous oxide, looking at rusty, moldy ceiling bathed in strobe light and thinking that I'm in a point of total aesthetic convergence: the noise, the dissociation, the decay and the unheimlich brought by technology, everything came into incredible synergy.
I'm happy to report that I want to be hunted down by the oceans, Purulent Circle's first proper release after some years and lineup shuffles, continues with similar orientation towards aesthetic choices and relentless intensity. Compared to previous offerings, the main change is the presence of a rhythm section in the form of a rather rudimentary kick drum loop. To be fair, I'm usually not a fan of this approach to noise/power electronics, as it often strikes me as not much more than a low-hanging plea for accessibility, but the way Purulent Circle pulls it off is anything but accessible - the "beat" has this nervous, raw pulse quality that makes it more akin to a radar or Geiger counter than anything one could dance to. This also fits the marine and existential themes in lyrics, the latter presented in a morbidly poetic manner characteristic to the group's frontman Mold, known best in metal circles for his contributions in bands like Loathfinder or Totenmesse.
As I've mentioned some posts ago, live noise albums often feel lacking in some crucial aspect of immediacy and often aren't nearly as engaging as actually being there, even if the show is just a guy standing by a table and twisting knobs. This is especially true in case of Purulent Circle, a mostly live project with ferocious stage presence. Fortunately, I want... isn't just a recording of a live performance like the trio's previous releases, but standalone, studio-mixed, heavily narrative listening material that nevertheless retains all expected qualities of an obscure noise tape which is sold wrapped in a piece of a wire fence, allegedly including actual human teeth in the package.
DOOR EATER - try
2025
DOOR EATER is something akin to a supergroup, at least to a certain specific audience. What has most likely started as a one-off featuring on Lauren Bousfield’s masterpiece Salesforce, since then has developed into a separate entity with ex-Black Dresses’ Ada Rook on vocals and Bousfield taking production duties. While I tend to be skeptical towards hypey collaborations, this time I was really excited, as for everything Lauren Bousfield has anything to do with. Upon its release, I’ve had a good, albeit too rare experience of being invested in something that actually lives up to expectations.
All 17 tracks on try follow a roughly similar pattern - no intro or interludes, the onslaught of dense textures, screams and charged melodies starts from first seconds and ends with the last song. Compositionally it contains lots of Bousfield’s signature tricks, but gone are convoluted dialectics of repetition and rupture from her recent solo albums. The approach here is more brutalist, relying on discrete blocks that often form a fairly regular song structure, but with endless bends, twists and allusions to different strains of contemporary music and every piece based on a distinct and incredibly catchy musical idea.
This compositional layout contributes to a striking contrast between dense, complicated music and Ada Rook’s lyrics that thrive on candidness that borders on discomfort (and even Lauren Bousfield’s sporadic contributions don’t read like riddles from her previous work). I came to a conclusion that the sound adds one crucial layer to try’s subject matter of loss, discord and identity, namely that of change. Notice how many songs contain some sort of decoy, starting with something completely else than the rest, or switching abruptly between structures. Change here is a kind of a double-edged sword, making things fall apart when we don’t want them to, but also ensuring the possibility of getting out of a seemingly inescapable situation. Lauren Bousfield has once said that the main theme of all her work is hope, and here it’s translated to a statement of being worth it to at least *try*.
weed420 - amor de encava
2025
Yeah, they really named themselves like that.
As I write these words right now, I‘m still not entirely sure whether their name does a massive disservice to this Venezuelan collective, or on the contrary, it accurately reflects their irreverent approach to making music. It’s likely that both of those statements are true to some extent, but the name issue certainly loses relevance once you immerse yourself in the crowded soundscape of amor de encava.
Where do I even start with this? RateYourMusic sages have shelved this release under “epic collage” category and while it definitely fits the literal meaning of the phrase, it has none of the stylistic choices typical for stuff like Julek Ploski or Yikii. To me, weed420 seems like the first project to take direct influence from Chuquimamani-Condori (of course, save for the entire deconstructed club scene that was shaped by their releases as E+E or Elysia Crampton): just look at how weed420 proudly displays their origins via plunderphonics, not to mention those deep-voiced DJ tags. However, while Chuquimamani-Condori thrives on meditative repetition, their younger successors rarely reprise any idea, opting for lightspeed doomscroll poetics.
Contrary to what weed420’s name might suggest, this effort is pretty far from a sonic shitpost. A Venezuelan native, RYM user kaasi06 elaborates on the album themes in the longest review I’ve ever seen on that website far better than I’ll ever be capable of from the opposite side of the globe. Long story short it appears to reflect a cacophonic, multi-faceted experience of using the Venezuelan public transport system, titular Encava, which serves as a lens to reflect on themes like nostalgia, immigration and cultural decay under economic hardship. Yes, it’s that deep - all of the music I write about is (unless it isn’t).
Amor de encava blends influences like cloud rap or chopped and screwed with different strains of Latin music until nothing is recognizable anymore, to the point where even I sometimes have a hard time penetrating through all of those sounds playing at once. I suppose that’s what the world sounds like for many people right now.
