The Answer Is In The Beat

Wetdogg: pssssssp… LP (Hold Me Recordings, 2025)

April 20, 2025 at 8:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I saw this artist live years ago and all but forgot about her, but I remember she was the best act on the bill that night. Here’s an LP out on a new-ish Detroit label which also put out an MGUN record. The music on this record is intimate bedroom electronics, reminding me of what Unicorn Hard-On used to do, or TALsounds. Lyrics are usually short and simple (“hold me close, don’t you know, you’re the one I want the most”), and the tracks are curious, minimal synth grooves. They don’t explode into neon colors but they have a unique sparkle and shimmer to them. “y can’t we b friends” is a sort of barroom conflict with an incredibly beautiful electropop melody. The second side is a bit more techno-ish, and “dream last night” is a really beautiful, woozy dub-soul track. “signal” is also pretty, if less memorable. “wetdoggs beat” is a playful little tune repeating a sample of the project’s name.

Longmont Potion Castle: Alive in ’25 (D.U. Records, 2025)

April 13, 2025 at 6:24 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

The new LPC doesn’t dip into political talk like the last one (I’m still cracking up over Reince Priebus and Wayne Freebus), but it contains a lot of flat-out absurdity and deception. He argues with an Australian dude at 3AM about a breadstick, and tries to collect unused drugs from people who claim not to use drugs but get extremely riled up and paranoid about the subject. He keeps insisting that a yellow-ish tomato-like fruit is called a permission, and asks record stores for albums by Brush (the Canadian band with a high-voiced singer who had a hit with “Huckleberry Finn”) and Toolbox (they have 15-minute songs and their singer’s name is Elmo). “Harps of Eternity” applies LPC’s love of jargon to Ren Faire subjects, and elsewhere he tells a guy with aquariums that fish can have a plankton spasm, otherwise known on the street as a leech belch. Also, he put contact mics in grandfather clocks and got them to play a wild version of “Won’t You Let Me Take You on a Sea Cruise”. Also, this one includes a 70-minute phone interview with a pair of writers from Amsterdam, recorded during the pandemic, and LPC wasn’t quite sure if he was going to be able to keep putting out albums, but obviously he has anyway. And there’s also mention about an Adult Swim show falling through because they wanted to use voice actors for legal reasons, and other things that indicate that how mainstream media doesn’t really see eye to eye with what LPC does. So any opportunity to gain some insight into his process is always fascinating.

lunch: Dinner (Midwest Microscope Boneyard Records, 2024)

April 1, 2025 at 10:47 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

I’m going to make a confession here. I never saw this band live, even though their guitarist was co-music director with me at WCBN for basically the entire time this band existed. Furthermore, I didn’t even check out any of their music during that time. Listening to their album now, more than half a year after it was released and the band broke up, I just feel shameful, because this astonishingly good. Instrumental math-rock with tons of volume and complexity, saying an entire band’s worth with just guitar and drums, not unlike Hella. “Rat Surgery in a Sedan” is an all-at-once brain-shocker that attacks in a nice way. “Hex.Dritalin (For Kyle at the American Legion)” is a longer one which starts with some sharp frequencies, and trails off into more emo guitar melodies. “The Idea of Tamara Tamara” feels like a bit of a rest, then “Oh, You Just Missed It” builds and gets increasingly agitated, with minimalist guitar riffs and battering drums, though they both switch between intensity levels. “xkeyscore kidney” is a slowly-building 13-minute epic which requires patience, but reaches a massive conclusion.