#cardinal fuzz

11/2/25.

Trimdon Grange Explosion are a London, England band who have been around for the better part of two decades. They started out with a more of a folk direction. Their first LP (2017) was handled by Cardinal Fuzz/Feeding Tube and was described as "a farm-house Velvet Underground.” It sounded a bit like a more traditional folk version of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci.

"Dreams Buried Under the Sea" does have an LP version available courtesy of Feral Child records, but it looks like you need to find it at a record store. Monorail Records has one as I'm sure many shops in Britain do.

Tremor by Human Hand

Tremor can be filed into what is by now a well-established genre: the post-lockdown catharsis record. Human Hand –  guitarists Joe Hollick (Wolf People) and Karl Eden ( tRANSELEMENt), and drummer Jonathan Dickin (MUMS, Honey Spider) – recorded the album in two days, a process involving noisy improvisation, tape manipulation and real-time overdubs.

This latest salvo from the PDX cosmic outfit is a continuous rush, its multi-guitar onslaught striving towards anthemic, psychedelic motion, its giant drum (a marching band’s bass drum turned onto its side) pounding in ritual, magic exultation. You can still experience the spreading, unbound serenity of past releases—“Walker’s Dead Birds” is, at its center, full of stillness and awe—but, in general, these cuts move. “New Imposition of Light,” is a stirring vortex of 1960s gnostic rock; it will give you some sense of where we are when I say that it reminds me of Aphrodite’s Child’s landmark 666.

Water Damage,

Velvet Elevator - Principium (Cardinal Fuzz, 2018)

Water Damage - 'Live At Le Guess Who?' (12XU 171-1) ltd. edition LP coming September 5 Water Damage don’t play songs. They invoke states. It’s not rock and roll, it’s ritual repetition therapy, like if Glenn Branca got stuck in a feedback loop with La Monte Young and they both forgot what year it was—Texas 2025 or Berlin 1972 or maybe just eternity’s parking lot. This isn’t music for driving—unless you’re driving into the sun with your eyes rolled back and the gas pedal held down with a cinderblock of intent.

Captured in Utrecht, Netherlands at the almighty Le Guess Who? Festival, where churches tremble and strobes reflect off every holy surface, Live at Le Guess Who? is a document of sustained sonic immolation. Eight members. Two drummers. Multiple stringed instruments. One saxophone. All hammering away at "Reel 25," captured live here shortly after the recorded version which would end up becoming the lead track on their most recent double LP Instruments. A single idea drilling into the molten center of your skull with the grace of a jackhammer ballet. It’s not a show. It’s a slow-motion landslide with amps.

And for this particular descent into the drone abyss, Water Damage were joined by two very special fellow travelers & honorary members: Ajay Saggar (Bhajan Bhoy, University Challenged) adding six-string sorcery and smolder, and Patrick Shiroishi, the free-reed exorcist himself who is a guest on Instruments and just happened to be at Le Guess Who? as well, channeling ghosts through saxophones like he’s trying to crack the sky. As if Water Damage weren’t already enough of a wall, these two brought the ceiling and the floor.

Water Damage, the Austin psych-drone monolith with the un-Googleable name and the wall-of-amplifiers ethos, doesn’t just flirt with chaos—they drag it behind the van and mic up the gravel. Their motto? “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation.” Which sounds like the world’s most menacing yoga class or a commandment from some amp-fried cult, and maybe it is.

This ain’t no avant-noise chin-stroke either. It’s hot and dense and loud like a steel mill hallucination, and if you find yourself dissociating mid-set, that just means it’s working. This is music that doesn’t “build”—it grinds. It gnaws. 

for this recording and tour, Water Damage was :  Greg Piwonka, Thor Harris, Travis Austin, Mari Maurice Rubio, Nate Cross, Johnathan Horne, Ajay Saggar, and special guest Patrick Shirioishi

Recorded by Marc Broer & Vera Kraaijkamp, November r8 2024 at Tivoli, Vrendenburg, Utrecht Netherlands as part of the Le Guess Who? Festival