#patrick masterson

Slept Ons

Tunde Adibempe — Thee Black Boltz (Sub Pop)

It’s been a generation since TV on the Radio blazed its singular trail across indie-land, full of pulse and passion and inflamed experimentation, with soul vocals riding hard dance beats, weird sonic elements pinging off undeniable bops. Heck it’s even been more than a decade since they called it quits, more than time for TV on the Radio’s spiritual father to stake out his own legacy. And now here it is, the first ever solo album from Tunde Adibempe, with the drive and oddball hooks you remember. The singer who put a doo-woppy take on the Pixies’ “Mr. Grieves” reloads that casual oddity with “Pinstack”’s choral interpretation of “Would You Like to Wish on a Star?” its 1920s singsong flaring with guitars and chaotic rock energy. “I was thinking about my time in space/I was thinking about the human race,” croons Adibempe in the synth-stabbing, hands-in-the-air anthem “Magnetic,” as corrosively groovy as anything from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes. In its heyday, TVOTR was one of the best live bands going, tight and skilled and powered by an unstoppable rhythm section (Jaleel Bunton on drums and the late, much-lamented Gerard Smith). Now all his own, Adibempe somehow retains much of that juggernaut power, breathing urgent life into a signature legacy sound.

Jennier Kelly

Samantha Fish — Paper Doll (Rounder)

I forget how I found this one, but it was probably an algorithm of some kind, or maybe the cover looked interesting. But right away I was hooked: Fish’s voice rises to a shout and she rips off slide lines like Lowell George at his best on “I’m Done Running” and on “Can Ya Handle the Heat” the band rocks like White Denim at their best. When the organ swells and her guitar sizzles, it’s some of the best blues-rock I’ve heard in a damn hot minute. And the thing is, blue-rock is a genre that’s easy to do but hard to do well. Anyone can copy an old Willie Dixon riff and ride it for a few minutes; lots of singers rely on lines that were old back when Eric Clapton was still a sidesman. Fish’s music feels alive to me in the way she’s using layers of background singers, the way she’s singing about female desire and the way the band thrashes like Crazy Horse. At her best, she draws on decades of rock but never feels like she’s indebted to any of her inspirations. It’s only a matter of time before she’s on Saturday Night Live or something and you wonder why you hadn’t heard of her before now.

Roz Milner

Fetty P Franklin — Frank (GroundHawg Entertainment)

Honorable mention here to Sublime Frequencies’ They Shall Take Up Serpents, Dari Bay’s Longest Day of the Year and any one of about four Boldy James projects, but I’m choosing instead to highlight a record that came out in early October right around the time Rob Mitchum began tracking year-end roundups in which, more than 600 entries later, Fetty P Franklin still has not appeared. The Charlottean gained some notoriety in late December linking up with fellow Queen City native DaBaby on Kirk Franklin, but it’s still Frank that (f)ranks as the more enjoyable listen. Fetty’s been hustling for a decade now, but this feels like his most accomplished work yet. Part of the appeal is that Fetty stands on his own two; the guy has never leaned on features — 2018’s Gettin’ Mine Off da Land featured an ascendant Deniro Farrar, Icewear Vezzo has joined him a few times in recent years, and DaBaby cameos on “SDA” for this one — which, as with any solo effort, only serves to immerse you in the artist’s world better. The first time I caught “Self Discipline” in a mix, I thought I was hearing RXKNephew, but Fetty P Franklin comes free of such drama, falling more in line spiritually with the Southern street rappers of yore. Savor accordingly.

Patrick Masterson

Hedonist — Scapulimancy (Southern Lord)

I have my son to thank for this one. Scapulimancy, the first LP from British Columbian band Hedonist, came out back in August. I listened to it and thought I might listen more closely, but then 2025’s unending cataract of music did its thing, and Scapulimancy receded in a flood of hardcore records, death metal demos and raw punk tapes. Months later, when the kid and I checked in with each other about end-of-year favorites, he said, “And of course, that Hedonist record.” Something about that “of course” made me listen again, and my son is right. The record is a pitch perfect blend of OSDM and brutish crust, with just enough of a sheen of production on it to make it effectively brawny through headphones. I especially like “Parasitic Realm” and “Profanation,” when the band’s pace and intensity verge into crasher crust, but the whole record is great. Fans of Vancouver’s excellent d-beat outfit Bootlicker should take note: git player and tatted rowdy Athena provides bass and viscera-vibrating vocals here. Still: Hedonist? Is the idea of prioritizing pleasure above all else really what’s needed right now? Maybe, if you can locate pleasure in music this nasty and full of sonic violence. I sure have.

Jonathan Shaw

Jamie Lidell and Luke Schneider — A Companion tor the Spaces Between Dreams (Northern Spy)

Jamie Lidell and Luke Schneider don't feel like natural collaborators. Lidell made his name primarily through his electronic music. Schneider has played pedal steel for an array of country musicians. Both artists, though, share an affinity for sliding across genres (Lidell's soul and Schneider's ambient music, for example) and for smart experimentation. They come together on A Companion tor the Spaces Between Dreams for a six-song set designed as an aid for Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy, or more general reflection.

Used for therapeutic purposes or not, the record's ideal for careful listening. Lidell's synths and Schneider's pedal steel create a fluid and immersive atmosphere. Tracks suggest a deep peacefulness across their scope while offering surprises in individual moments, the details creating a new world to get lost in. The album opens with “New Land,” a psychedelic cut full of crystal points, a pinging entry into the thickness of the sound. The duo shift throughout this space, alternating the focus between the synths and the guitar until closer “Left to Heaven.” The record closes with this lengthy meditative stretch, Schneider perfectly synced to Lidell's electronic orchestrations, creating a sense of enlightenment no matter how the album is used.

Justin Cober-Lake

Paal Nilssen-Love — 5th of March 2021 (PNL) Paal Nilssen-Love — 15th of December 2024 (PNL)

This is getting to be a bad habit. Last year I confessed to sleeping on a boxed set of long form explorations of resonance released by a Norwegian label. This year, my behind-the-beat review addresses a pair of concert-length investigations of resonant metal and room sound, both by Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love. The first is a COVID-era, audience-free performance at Galleri Vanntårnet, an art space in an old water tower located near Nilssen-Love’s home outside of Oslo. The second took place nearly four years later in the Gustav Vigeland museum, a structure with a legendarily long echo. The first spends a lot of time on swelling sounds; the second is more episodic, capturing both the musician’s playing and his perambulations between different gongs. Both are recordings that reward patient immersion abetted by decent speakers. So, what’s my excuse for delay this year? Every time I played each disc, I got lost in the sound and forgot that I was supposed to be figuring out what to write.

Bill Meyer

SML — How You Been (International Anthem)

Not only did I sleep on How You Been, the sophomore album from Los Angeles quintet SML, but I slept on most of International Anthem’s output from 2025. It’s sad, because there are numerous highlights in the roster, many of which I’m just discovering now. This particular release grabbed me immediately, with its noise bursts, electronic wizardry, passages of funky jazz, and its kaleidoscopic arrangements. The band (Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann) conjure a unique essence that blends their live sound with studio production; they pull sections of actual gig recordings together and use the alchemy of post-production to build clever worlds of shifting vibe and focus. It’s an arresting experience from start to finish, equally uncanny and groovy, and full of exploratory energy. Its echoes of Chicago’s genre fluid avant-garde fit it into the International Anthem oeuvre, but How You Been is a unique beast to behold. Fans of the weird and wonderful, take note.

Bryon Hayes

Winter — Adult Romantix (Winspear)

It feels like the last couple of years, especially as people become more aware of the practical issues with streaming (to say nothing of the many, many other issues, especially if one actually wants people to be able to make music for a living), I’ve been seeing more and more people ask how others are discovering new music. And I always feel like I don’t have much to say about it, because I’ve never adopted streaming not initially for any principled reason so much as… I didn’t need to. Now that promos are digital and Bandcamp exists, between those, the good folks here at Dusted, other friends, and keeping the occasional eye on music sites I’ve never felt like I’m missing much. So I’m a bit… miffed to only even hear that the maker of one of my favourite records of 2022 put out another LP last summer and I didn’t even hear about it until I was so sunk into working on my year-end piece that I didn’t find a chance to play it until 2026 rolled around. And even after just one listen Adult Romantix is great: longer, more diverse, and less densely punchy than What Kind of Blue Are You? but absolutely sharing many of its virtues. If I had been listening to it since August, I think it’s entirely likely it would have made my 2025 list. Now, what I could have possibly removed to make room for it, don’t ask me that…

Ian Mathers

Listening Pest

Armand Hammer — Mercy (Backwoodz Studios)

The first track of a recent JPEGMafia EP is pretty much just Peggy hating everything Flume lays down for a beat. It’s rare to hear that interaction actually on record, but you have to imagine it happens a lot more often than we hear (or hear about). Too bad, then, that results suggest no one is giving Alan Daniel Maman that kind of feedback. The producer better known as The Alchemist has been pumping out beats for a plethora of rappers in recent years — he shared top billing on four albums in 2025 alone — but the more you listen to his work, the more you realize he’s long since found his profit-making cratedigger pocket and isn’t budging an inch. I was never going to give Freddie Gibbs’ Alfredo 2 or Hit-Boy’s Goldfish much credence to begin with, but Armand Hammer are possibly the best working duo in bars-oriented hip-hop right now, and they’re certainly the most visible; that billy woods and Elucid sacrificed a slew of rhymes to an Alc on autopilot suggests both sides need some kind of slap in the face to shake them out of the stupor. Flatly, this is a boring record, which is a tremendous feat given the men behind the mics (not to mention the emcees’ respective solo records over the last year and change with other producers). At one point on “Track 1,” JPEG jokingly tells Flume, “I’m gonna have to call Fred again..., bruh.” I’m not necessarily saying it’s a good idea Armand Hammer dial those same digits, but I am saying it’d be in their best interest to find another number and let the phone ring next time Alc says he’s turned lead to gold.

Patrick Masterson

Big Thief — “Grandmother [feat Laraaji]” (4AD)

Big Thief’s songs are musical equivalents of the sweet nothings we whisper to ourselves in our least capable moments. “Grandmother [feat Laraaji]” has the band’s requisite gossamer textures but is somehow less subtle. It states its superficialities baldly: “It’s all right / Everything that happened / Happened.” Trenchant. Still, we might ask, what happened? The song seems to report on some catastrophe, a destruction of our contemporary cultural infrastructure (“…soon there’ll be no bar / No car / No stadium”). Fearsome negations for a massively successful musical act — where will they play? where will the Spotify streams go? — all delivered over shambolic rhythms and gentle, melodic strumming. They seem intent on rocking us to sleep, but Big Thief has plans for the loss and bummer sentiments: “Gonna turn it all / Into rock and roll.” That may put you in mind of another set of losses and another invocation of rock’s capacity to make things “all right.” In 1970, Lou Reed imagined Jenny “shaking to that fine, fine music” in spite of all the cynical “computations” of GE and McDonnell Douglas and all the horrific “amputations” of the Vietnam War. There was rock and roll on the radio, and “it was all right.” But there are crucial differences between the songs. Lou and the VU sing in past tense, in which Jenny had her epiphany when “she was just five years old” and was too young to know any better; more important, “Rock & Roll” works from the scene of her dancing by the radio out to the social world, where the computations and amputations go on, relentlessly. Big Thief’s song moves in the opposite direction. In its second half, the lyric speaker is heading back home and in that solitary situation sees “sun through the clouds” and “love through the pain.” Must be nice, to move in such insular comfort, toward greater comfort still. Again, the band informs us of their intent to “turn it all / Into rock and roll.” I might take that more seriously if there were any sign of rock and roll within earshot, especially if that music didn’t seek to assure us of the quietist pleasures of retreat.

Jonathan Shaw

KP Skywalka — I Tried to Tell You (Beat the Odds LLC / NEWWRLD)

There is no single reason why it wasn’t lost in the shuffle. A couple of years ago KP Skywalka made forgettable regional rap music, and nobody gave a damn. But in 2025 he accidentally has become a ‘rising star’ for the white audience. His music, it’s possible, got more lyrical and poppish, yet it remained the same regional rap like the one hundred other artists make. It’s neither too violent to alienate the middle class listeners, not too lyrical to completely cut ties with the streets. Somehow KP Skywalka was proclaimed a true original but he steals beats from Kookei (for example) and southern flow from dozens of rappers. “Pockets Flat” and a couple of other songs on I Tried to Tell You are amusing but it’s a real headscratcher why anybody would drool over it. 

Ray Garraty

Goose — Chain Yer Dragon (No Coincidence)

I mentioned in my year-end review that I had a project for 2025 where I listened to a new album every day. Almost every single one of those listens were of the entire record (it felt a little unfair otherwise), but just as I gave myself a birthday dispensation to listen to whatever I wanted to that day and allowed the occasional reissue of a beloved favourite (as long as it had some new songs!), one day I played something I reacted so viscerally to that I both had to shut it off literally sixty-six seconds into the first song and post about it. The second we started talking about Listening Pest I knew that I had to pick Goose’s Chain Yer Dragon and equally dreaded having to listen to more of it. I don’t actually like being mean on the internet and I normally try to have some nuance about these things, but the beginning of (ugh) “Hot Love & The Lazy Poet” gave me a full-body, severe, seizure-like “oh my god everything about this fucking sucks” reaction. And while I couldn’t bring myself to listen to any other songs that day, I did read all the lyrics on the Bandcamp page and they all gave me the same sort of horripilated reaction. These guys are beloved by a lot of jam band fans, based on the size of venues they’re playing, and I’m sure (or I hope) they’re nice people. Not everything needs to be for me. But god, I could write about a book about why I think the lyrics are bad (I won’t do that here, you’re welcome) and finding out upon further listening that yes, it’s all married to the most anodyne, smoothed out, glossy, “tasty,” “soulful,” “rock” music activates my nervous system in a profoundly unpleasant way. Even though I know it must be possible, I cannot imagine sharing any common ground with a person who hears this record and loves it. And the fucking thing is 87 minutes long!

Stickydisc was a low-key operation of Broucek’s (MySpace) design. The lore is limited, and there were but three official releases: STDs 001, 002 and 003, each 12" vinyl singles. But as this compilation shows, the work he and Wiley — whose name might be familiar to fans of pre-cake-throwing Dim Mak (he was in Automato) or New York nü-disco devotees (Jessica 6) — did in their brief time together over the space of two years need not be cluttered with narrative.

Broucek rode mostly solo for the first two releases — and, it turns out, one additional track previously unreleased of comparable quality called “Enough” that serves as the closer for this comp — as Babytalk. The first of which was seven-minute “Keep on Move,” a spartan italo number with the title sung on repeat under deep echo. This kind of cosmic lo-fi approach was a through-line for these songs, with production operating at a restrained register that could just as easily have been from 1978 as from 2008. On the flip was an exploratory remix courtesy Six-Leg Friend, who was likely also Broucek given the moniker has never featured anywhere else and Eric’s the only name credited on the vinyl; its contrast with the original mix recalls the “Crass” and “Pretentious” versions of LCD’s “Yeah” 12” from a few years before. Following “Keep on Move” was “Chance,” which was probably the highest-profile release of the three given it featured a Hercules and Love Affair remix right when Andy Butler was breaking through as the big name of DFA’s second wave. The original mix features some additional keys from Wiley, which makes me wonder if that’s why the B2 is a Babytalk remix of … Babytalk. For his own part, Butler adds more depth to the percussion and foregrounds the vocals; you won’t be surprised to (re)learn it sounds like one of those early Hercules singles.

Broucek and Wiley teamed up in earnest as Watussi for what turned out to be Stickydisc’s final release. “Purple Moon” runs on squelching and swirling synth lines with increasingly clear vocals here, and though James Murphy isn’t credited, that sure sounds like him in the same way that he was instantly recognizable in Shit Robot’s “Triumph.” Wiley turns in a dub mix for the compilation that’s also new. But the real reason you’re reading this review is the second song on that double a-side: “If All We Had Was Love” has been stuck in my head since I first discovered it as an mp3 on the dearly departed 20jazzfunkgreats blog. That mp3 was of such low quality that the song’s piano line was buried in the mix; Bob Weston’s remaster brings it up to match Carter Yasutake’s glorious trumpet. The deadpan vocals from which this compilation gets its title burst to life as the song swells to its peak, then descends just as gently. There was also some accidental magic in that mp3’s low quality because I misheard the title’s rejoinder for years: Instead of “If all we had was love / then that would be enough,” it’s actually “then I would give you up” — the complete opposite meaning. Either way, it remains one of the great underheralded dance tracks of this century.

DFA’s anthological effort comes on the back of James Murphy rediscovering the Stickydiscs’ power in recent live DJ sets, but the truth is that these songs’ potency has always been stealthy, just a little under the radar, not immediately eye-raising. They do, however, remain tracks to be savored, repeat listens rewarding more and more with some new detail emerging or a core earworm lodging in your brain indefinitely. The chance to do so, if you’ll excuse the pun, has never been better.

Christian Carey

Raven Chacon — Voiceless Mass (New World)

Car Seat Headrest — The Scholars (Matador)

Jürg Frey — Voices (Neu)

Barbara Hannigan, Katia and Marielle Labéque, and David Chalmin — Electric Fields (Alpha) 

The Hemphill Stringtet — Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head)

Jenny Hval — Iris Silver Mist (4AD)

loscil — Lake Fire (kranky) 

David Murray — Birdly Serenade (Impulse)

Quatuor Diotima — Livre Pour Quatuor (Pentatone)

Steve Reich — Jacob’s Ladder (Nonesuch)

Tim Clarke

Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K/Perennial)

Moreish Idols — All in the Game (Speedy Wunderground)

Perfume Genius — Glory (Matador)

Richard Dawson — End of the Middle (Weird World)

Dutch Interior — Moneyball (Fat Possum)

Natural Information Society / Bitchin Bajas — Totality (Drag City)

Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)

Lifeguard — Ripped and Torn (Matador)

Bryon Hayes

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet — HausLive 4 (Hausu Mountain)

Califone — The Villager's Companion (Jealous Butcher)

CHIME OBLIVION — S/T (DEATHGOD CORP)

The Ex — If Your Mirror Breaks (The Ex)

The High Water Marks — Consult the Oracle (Meritorio)

Index for Working Musik — Which Direction Goes the Beam (Tough Love)

Mess Esque — Jay Marie, Comfort Me (Drag City)

Mark Molnar — EXO (Constellation)

The Moles — Composition Book (Splendid Research)

Open Head — What is success (Wharf Cat)

Sam Amidon — Salt River (River Lea)

Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K)

Steven R. Smith — Triecade (Worstward)

Tim Hecker — Shards (Kranky)

Water Damage — Instruments (12XU)

Alex Johnson

Artificial Go — Musical Chairs (Feel It)

Francis Bebey — Trésor Magnétique (Africa Seven)

Hectorine — Arrow of Love (Take a Turn)

Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)

Cameron Knowler — CRK (Worried Songs)

Willie Lane — Bobcat Turnaround (Cord-Art)

Meetsysteem — Gekleed In Donker, Ze Vroegen Niks (Nous'klaer Audio)

The Tubs — Cotton Crown (Trouble in Mind)

Various — Star Charms (Inscrutable)

Jennifer Kelly

Anika — Abyss (Sacred Bones)

Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)

Motorbike — Kick It Over (Feel It)

Michael Grigoni/Pan*America — New World, Lonely Ride (Kranky)

Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country (Sophomore Lounge)

Caroline — Caroline 2 (Rough Trade)

Pulp — More (Rough Trade)

The Mekons — Horror (Fire)

Ty Segall — Possession (Drag City)

Thalia Zedek Band — The Boat Outside Your Window (Thrill Jockey)

Patrick Masterson

Barker — Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)

Mogwai — The Bad Fire (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

PinkPantheress — Fancy That (Warner)

Boldy James — Conversational Pieces (Real Bad Man) or Permanent Ink (Royal House Recording)

Maribou State — Hallucinating Love (Ninja Tune)

Quade — The Foel Tower (AD 93)

Ghais Guevara — Goyard Ibn Said (Fat Possum)

Ela Minus — Día (Domino)

Anthony Naples — Scanners (ANS)

FACS — Wish Defense (Trouble in Mind)

Maria Somerville — Luster (4AD)

Water Margin — Gleaming Cursed (Darla)

Ian Mathers

Alan Sparkhawk — With Trampled by Turtles (Sub Pop)

Brìghde Chaimbeul — Sunwise (Glitterbeat/tak:til)

Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)

Cloakroom — Last Leg of the Human Table (Closed Casket Activities)

Hekla — Turnar (Phantom Limb)

Horsegirl — Phonetics On and On (Matador)

loscil — Lake Fire (Kranky)

Oklou — choke enough (True Panther Sounds)

Sleigh Bells — Bunky Becky Birthday Boy (Mom + Pop/Torn Clean)

Walt McClements — On a Painted Ocean (Western Vinyl)

Bill Meyer

AMM with Sachiko M — Testing (Matchless)

The Ancients — The Ancients (Eremite / Black Edition Archives)

The Ex — If Your Mirror Breaks (Ex)

Mike Gangloff — April Is Passing (VHF)

Edith Frost — In Space (Drag City)

Vijay Iyer / Wadada Leo Smith — Defiant Life (ECM)

Damon Locks — List of Demands (International Anthem)

Brandon Lopez / DoYeon Kim — Syzygy Vol. 1 (577)

Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas — Totality (Drag City) 

Sarah Belle Reid + Vinny Golia — Accidental Ornithology (Infrequent Seams)

Josh Moss

Sadie Siskin — Sadie Siskin (Drongo Tapes)

David Ivan Neil — I Hope Yer Ok (Perpetual Doom)

Playboi Carti — I Am Music (Interscope )

John Swanke — Horizon Lines (Bud Tapes)

Aux Meadows — Draw Near (Eiderdown)

Jerry David DeCicca — Cardiac Country (Sophomore Lounge)

Free Water Shrew Ensemble — Bounty of the Floe Edge (Drongo Tapes)

Daniel Bachman — Moving Through Light (self released)

Midwestern Medicine — Ripped Headline (self released)

Austin Potter — New Romantic (Cruel Nature/Liquid Library)

Ella Hanshaw — Ella Hanshaw's Black Book (Spinster Records)

Joseph Allred — Old Time Fantasias (Scissor Tail Records)

Ernie Francestine — Alternate Place (WarHen Records)

Bantam Draper — Inversion Therapy (Funny/Not Funny Records)

Barry Walker Unit — At The 13th Moon Gravity Well (Jean Sandwich Records)

Jonathan Shaw

Blood Monolith — The Calling of Fire (Profound Lore)

Culture Shock — S/T (Youth Attack)

Puffer — Street Hassle (Static Shock)

Retirement — Attention Economy (Iron Lung)

SUMAC & Moor Mother — The Film (Thrill Jockey)

Actors Artificial — Strategies of Absentees (Disfold)

It begins with a shimmer, a sparkling cloud of tone shards and ghostly breathing. This beautiful entrance into Strategies of Absentees, the sophomore release from Actors Artificial, eventually dissipates, revealing a stark and mournful atmosphere. It’s a song, complete with melody, rhythm, vocals and a title. Jonathan Parant (Fly Pan Am) has conjured it into existence, with help from Dominic Jasmin on bass and drummer Sam Bobony. But he’s transcended the notion of “song” altogether, instead crafting “models of melancholic rock stasis alongside processes of noise-recombinant conversions.” His music is a conduit, a structure that he manipulates in a digital séance to create gorgeous atmospheres that are “intensified through interrupted relays executed via the electroacoustic tactics of Roger Tellier-Craig.” The results are mind-altering, infectious, and reality-bending like a Christopher Nolan film. Flipping the cassette over reveals more fractalized sound to behold and digest, further evidence that Parant and his comrades are rewiring the circuitry of song.

Bryon Hayes

Amphisbaena — Rift (I, Voidhanger)

Idiosyncratic black/death from weirdos who have also brought you music from unhinged outfits like Rites of Thy Degringolade and the mighty Antediluvian. On this new LP, Amphisbaena toggles between atmospheric passages of sound that could almost be called pretty and torrents of chunky, tormented sonic ugliness. If you (like this reviewer) are sick to death of all the praise for the “ambient,” toothless music of Blood Incantation, Dream Unending and their ilk, then have no fear: tune into Amphisbaena’s “Rift III-Ruinous Godlike Simulacra” and let yourself get pummeled and twisted into Lovecraftian impossible geometries. With that in mind, it might be better to say: Have fear. Amphisbaena is clearly trying to open a rift — maybe in Reality, maybe in your small colon, maybe just in your head. But if the band pries it open much wider, something awful will emerge. Sounds about right.

Jonathan Shaw

Allysen Callery — King Neptune b/w We Float Down the River (Tepid Toad)

Two eerie folk songs, just delicate lattices of finger-picked guitar and serene, half-note bending vocals, are lovely and light as a spider’s web. In the track with vocals, “King Neptune,” Callery sings in a manner that fits somewhere between Sandy Denny’s trilling mysteries and the cool, otherworldly tones of Linda Perhacs. The shorter “We Float Down the River,” highlights guitar skills that put her in a class with Annie Briggs. It’s all pretty wonderful, and the only possible quibble is: can we have some more? 

Jennifer Kelly

Amy Cimini — See You When I Get There (Relative Pitch)

You might know violist Amy Cimini from Architeuthis Walks On Land, her duo with bassoonist Katherine Young, or from her scholarly investigations of Maryanne Amacher’s work. But if you frequent San Diego karaoke bars, you might know her as the person who loves to do Iron Maiden’s “Number Of The Beast.” Out of that breadth of interests comes this solo recording. Cimini’s aggressive bowing and a hint of electronic enhancement charge winding, non-repeating performances that revel in the popping qualities of plucked and scraped strings. If you appreciate Jessica Pavone’s solo recordings, this album will likely scratch similar itches; Cimini even dedicates the first track to her. But the pieces on See You When I Get There are more mercurial than Pavone’s work, spinning unexpectedly into pure, unstable sound.

Bill Meyer

Dark Thoughts — Highway to the End (Stupid Bag)

It’s easy to take the sort of punk rock that Philly band Dark Thoughts writes and plays for granted: some would call it straight-up Ramones worship, cut with textures from those early singles from the Queers and the street punk ethos of the Cockney Rejects. And if you have kicked around the fecund Philly scene for any time at all over the past 10 years, it’s easy to take Dark Thoughts for granted. Seems like they will always be there, to play another set with energy and tunefulness that appear effortless — and to organize another bill and promote another show for six or seven other local bands. But there’s a valedictory vibe to this new tape’s title and a bummer sensibility to some of the songs: “So Alone,” “Off the Rails,” “Please Don’t Be Lonesome.” The “end” in the title may be metaphorical, but it’s a good reminder. We shouldn’t take anything for granted — especially not punk bands that glue their respective scenes together with such generosity of spirit, and with such great riffs.

Jonathan Shaw

Avalon Emerson — Perpetual Emotion Machine (Dead Oceans)

My two favorite EPs of 2025 were recently released within a week of each other. The first is Avalon Emerson’s latest, Perpetual Emotion Machine (not to be confused with the recent Radium88 album), which finds her returning to the dancefloor via Dead Oceans after a stint helming the more pop-oriented Charm. Emerson has a well-established reputation for thoughtful approaches to DJing — a tour highlighted by her Zohran Mamdani sample at Nowadays is a recent example — and it’s no different here despite ultimately being guided by pretty standard 4/4 rhythms. All of these tracks were club-tested prior to release, but that doesn’t render the classic Beauty and the Beast reference of Air France’s “Collapsing at Your Doorstep” 17 years on or a deeper-cut Oppenheimer Analysis cover of “Don’t Be Seen With Me” any less potent. If you can get past the nostalgia for either of those, it’s hard to pick a favorite. Beautiful work from a producer in her prime.

Patrick Masterson

Family Ravine — Horizonites (Eiderdown)

Have you ever looked out from the ocean shore or the edge of a flat expanse of land to watch the sun rise and set? Maybe you’ve experienced the circadian cycle through a window, watching the sky lighten and darken over a cityscape. With Horizonites, Kevin Cahill attempts to reflect this cyclical phenomenon in his music. He leverages guitar, mandolin, kalimba and melodica to craft long-form meditations: macrocosmic tapestries from microcosmic threads. Cahill begins with skeletal latticework patterns that multiply and fractalize into beguiling tone swarms, bending diurnal melodies into nocturnal thrumming. It’s easy to get lost inside these dense thickets, particularly the side-long “Line Under a Circle Moving Together,” which folds the racket of the city into twilit pastoral bliss.

Bryon Hayes

Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes — Reveries (Constellation)

Of these two composing/performing sisters cellist Rebecca Foon might be more well known to most Dusted readers, having co-founded Esmerine and worked with Thee Silver Mt. Zion and Set Fire to Flames among many others. But violinist Aliayta Foon-Dancoes has been playing in symphony orchestras and amassing a lengthy list of collaborations and compositions in her own right. For their first album together, both of their main stringed instruments are augmented by piano and subtle production touches (from the duo working with Jace Lasek as co-producers). The resulting 38-minute suite in in turns graceful, mournful, and foreboding, engaging with both artists’ longstanding concerns around environmental collapse in a manner that is no less intense for all its beauty.

Ian Mathers

Hard Chiller — Baby! (Born Losers)

As that once ubiquitous, reviled genre known as nü-metal covertly (or not so covertly, if the name Holiday Kirk means anything to you) continues its rehabilitation and Gen Alpha rediscovers its charms, it’s been interesting to watch the downstream influence of its history shifting from one whose core artists contemporaneously were Korn, Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit to one where the subgenre’s entire axis pivoted on Deftones. You’re going to have a more tasteful (if less interesting) record if you lean on the latter nine times outta 10 regardless, but Santa Rosa’s Hard Chiller are especially adept in execution on their debut LP Baby!. It shouldn’t be a huge surprise once you see the pedigree — members of From Indian Lakes, RxBandits, No Motiv and The Velvet Teen pool their collective experience in an alluring marriage of White Pony and Placebo. Efficient and full of earworms, Hard Chiller cut the fat from their forebears. Time to chug the chugga.

Patrick Masterson

Inland Years — Keep Your Eyes on the Road (BSDJ)

You might get a big whiff of Sebadoh from this Inland Year’s bedroom psychedelia, in fuzz-sloughed but indelible melodies that emerge from Keep Your Eyes on the Road. Foggy rockers like “Make You Feel Better” coo minor key harmonies over rattling beats, a bit like Honey Radar, while “That Day” clatters and soothes in a tripped out way, like an off-cut from the Sadies in a psychedelic vein. Everything sounds like it’s happening several rooms away, not as loud or crisp or emphatic as it might be if you were right there. But that just adds to the dreamy, unreachability of these songs, which slip away even as you’re trying to grab on.

Jennifer Kelly

Eiko Ishibashi & Jim O’Rourke — Pareidolia (Drag City)

The story behind this collaborative release doesn’t really offer many clues as to what it might sound like before you press play. In 2023, Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O’Rourke embarked on a two-week tour of Europe. The musical material they brought with them to play was prepared individually, with no advance knowledge of what the other was planning. The live sets were recorded, then pieced together into the two sides of music represented here. This means that although each of the four tracks may comprise elements from different performances in different locations, the results are surprisingly coherent. There’s plenty of abstract, shimmering synthesizer textures that will be familiar to anyone who’s dipped into O’Rourke’s ongoing Steamroom series, plus recordings of trumpet and manipulated tom-toms, and some fluttering flute that was presumably played live by Ishibashi. The first half feels more tentative and exploratory; the second half reaches its culmination with some lovely sustained pads and a satisfying sense of resolution. Pop a pair of headphones on and the forty minutes of music becomes a mesmerizing journey.

Tim Clarke

Sofia Kourtesis — Volver (Ninja Tune)

The second of my two favorite EPs of 2025 comes by way of Berlin-based Peruvian Sofia Kourtesis, who’s been an elite producer since her Studio Barnhus days but kept a relatively low profile (and thin discography) up until 2023’s masterful Madres, a full-length debut that struck me as similar in tenor to DJ Koze’s Knock Knock in its grander swings and pop nods after years in the heads-only trenches. Volver finds her in an even more festive mood; though lead single “Unidos” with Dan Snaith’s Daphni alias is a delightful English-language anthem, it’s celebratory Spanish that permeates both the lyrics and the sonic palette more broadly both in choices of singing (plus one additional cameo from fellow Peruvian Miguel Ballumbrosio) and in percussion, where the occasional bongos and shakers color in the margins of the Latin house on offer. Inspired by a Pedro Almodóvar movie and dedicated to the LGBTQIA+ community, the “Unidos” chorus acts as artist statement: You never let them get you down. One of the year’s best releases in any genre.

Patrick Masterson

Peachfuzz — Impeachment (Facada)

Lisbon outfit Peachfuzz is made up of three adventurous musicians from that city’s vibrant music scene. Guitarist Norberto Lobo brews enigmatic concoctions through both acoustic and electric means. João Almeida’s trumpet benefits from his youthful exuberance, as he stretches his instrument through electronics and extended techniques. Equally precocious is drummer João Pereira, as he’s involved in a variety of musical conceits. As a trio, the gentlemen focus on stretching sonic boundaries, blending instrumentation and electronics into swirling maelstroms of sound. With Impeachment, their wittily named second release, they establish multi-layered tapestries emblazoned with noise, drone and improvisatory exhalations. The album shows off the trio’s versatility, ranging from high energy free improvisation to deep sonic meditation. The payoff is dependent on the mood of the audience. Capricious listeners may not have the stamina to digest the 20-minute drone workout of “A Peach Ó Comboio,” but those with patience will definitely be rewarded.

Bryon Hayes

Primitive Impulse — Piss It Away (Feel It)

Cincinnati’s worst belch up 20 minutes of buzzing, thumping hardcore, and it’s all pretty good. Check out the three-and-a-half minutes that compose “Dogs Will Hunt” and “Dying Wage,” and you’ll hear the gruff sort of street punk that lets melody in through an alley doorway, a sudden burst of blues-metal guitar worthy of the Necros and gravelly vocals that you’ll need to pick out of the patch of roadrash they leave on your ass. Sound like fun? The whole record (which you may still be able to cop on “clear beer vinyl,” natch) is full of that variety of angry, recalcitrant punk rawk. Skullets, big bellies (channeling Pig Champion, but not quite there yet) and working-class rage — maybe you’ve heard it before, but no one has ever heard enough. Vocalist Thad snarls, “Your debt is your grave!” Some messages never get old.

The big question of why has been given a simple, economic enough answer: Yeah, actually, this did start as a cash-in. The band initially reformed to celebrate the 20th anniversary (and re-release) of their debut self-titled album in the spring of 2023.

“We agreed to do the first weekend and there were some concerns, just in terms of how it would feel to play for three nights, four nights in a row, and just keep that as a very fixed goal … we’ll play with each other, we’ll play with our friends, and we’ll see how it goes,” Daniel Martin-McCormick told Treble recently. What the group found over the course of those shows, mining old material for a zine and a subsequent extended tour, was that there was a thrumming vitality to the decades-old songs, and the encouraging performances led to jam sessions that led to new music that led to new recordings that led here to Hostile Design.

What they haven’t emphasized as strongly is that there are grander parallel conditions at work, too. The current political climate, that aforementioned hellish timeline, a country at war with everyone and itself led by a bumbling fool too blessed by protection to be stressed by election — in those ways, Black Eyes’ timing could not be more apt because they’re picking up exactly where they left off in a chaotic environment only adjusted for inflation of thoughts and prayers. It makes sense this group sounds just right for right now — or, as Martin-McCormick puts it on opener “Break a Leg,” every regulation speaks to an immaculate design.

And what startling design the band has concocted over six songs at just about half an hour. What struck me at one of those reunion shows was just how jammy it sounded, but it’s interesting to note on Hostile Design that they still manage to breathe considerable room into what can at times be a suffocating skronk despite the fact that this is their most efficient release yet. Some of that is due to a slight shift in experimentation: Though the band’s core setup of two drums, a bass, guitar and sax remains the anchor, members’ individual pursuits have now added bass clarinet, live multichannel dubbing, and electronic drum triggers and samples. “Break a Leg” and “Burn” are ideal openers in this sense, leading with the furious fists of old before downshifting to dub (and then escalating again); at the other end of the album, “Yeah, Right” and “Tomtom” wrap things up as both the shortest and longest songs here. The tweaks are subtle on aggregate, but the added depth is noticeable in comparing their three records in back-to-back-to-back listens.

The lyrics haven’t pulled any punches, either. Their words have reliably occupied a sort of liminal realm where they’re loose enough to be about domestic politics, merely putting up with your parents or free-flowing brain fluid poetics, and that remains so here; in any case, though Martin-McCormick’s high-end vocal scrawls sound slightly more weathered, Hugh McElroy’s delivery hasn’t aged a day and even with the introduction of Greek (“Burn”), Arabic (“Pestilence”) and Haitian Creole (“Tomtom”) verses, there’s little question who you’re listening to or where they stand more broadly.

Of Dischord’s millennial post-punk generation that ushered out the ‘90s stalwarts — a trifecta that also included Q and not U and Faraquet — Black Eyes’ disbandment seemed at the time both least surprising and least likely to be resolved. That they’ve not only reformed, but made fresh art that sounds as essential as anything else in their catalog, is one of 2025’s welcome miracles. Let the bruise blood flow, let it be known: Hostile Design is the evolutionary form Black Eyes faithful no longer need lament for not having come to pass.

Boldy James & Antt Beatz — Hommage (Empire)

Who nominated it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? Yes, Ray wrote, “Hommage is one of the six albums Boldy James put out in 2025. It’s much better than the rest of them.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Ray’s the expert on Michigan rap, but I was taken with the slow-moving menace of these cuts. James drawls sharp cultural references and lurid crime narratives over his producer’s slurring, back-slipping beats, many of them lush with florid piano runs but bounded, on the low-end, with resounding, pounding bass. James’ delivery is bleary, exhausted, but knotted up with quick bursts of machine gun sprayed imagery (for instance, in “Concrete Connie” “Now I spin a zip of flake for a pair of sneakers/Nigga still running base like I'm Derek Jeter/Pull up something Dilla play with the foreign features/Now a nigga charging $10.08 for a feature.” ). James brings in fellow Detroiters like Baby Money and BandGang Lonnie Bands for guest appearances, the latter turning up in “Met Me” with an unexpected hockey reference (“like a jetski/I sold so much ice they call me Wayne Gretsky”). Oh right, Canada’s right over the bridge, isn’t it?

Damon Locks — List of Demands (International Anthem)

Who nominated it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No (but Bill did here)

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

During “Distance,” the second song on List of Demands, Damon Locks intones, “Urban renewal, redlining and block busting / That’s distance / Disinvestment, destabilization, murder and disenfranchisement are the stories, nonfiction.” Locks effectively grounds his array of concerns in material terms, in concrete and embodied phenomena that change space and drive black and brown people out of neighborhoods, out of nations, out of their very lives. That provides a provocative contrast with Locks’ musicianship, which digitally layers and links jazz and soul music, field recordings, voices of ghosts from the archive of sound he has at his disposal. The complexity of the sampling and arrangements can verge on chaos (check out “Everything’s under Control,” an ironical gesture) or a sort of icy tension (“Click” is redolent of it, full of dread). Locks demonstrates a sharp understanding of how to evoke feeling from all the digitized information he assembles, incisively responding to the rage and despair that has flowed through anyone paying attention to how race operates as a discourse of oppression and of community in the US. Is race a material experience, something in the flesh? Is it socio-cultural construction, something in the language and many, many other symbol systems? A political wedge or an identity? List of Demands has no answers, just more imperatives.

Walt McClements — On A Painted Ocean (Western Vinyl)

Who recommended it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes, Ian wrote, “The album title’s evocation of a massive body of water, captured at one particular moment (taken from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) is played out over its whole length.”

Bill Meyer’s take:

Walt McClements gravitated to the accordion after experiencing a crisis of relevance while performing song-based music. His approach can be summed up with the equation, minimal gestures + maximal effects = tidal drama. McClements’ intention to treat his instrument like a synthesizer steers him towards undulating waves of sound that radiate the sort of shininess I associate with 1970s vintage string synthesizers. The moments when the music feels most understated and ecclesiastical work best for me; those where he induces guest saxophonist Aurora Nealand to wax melodramatic are a bit too corny.

Mess Esque — Jay Marie, Comfort Me (Drag City)

Who picked it? Bryon Hayes

Did we review it? Yes. Tim Clarke wrote, “being unafraid to let things fall apart is part of the band’s charm and allows their most satisfying moments to feel all the more transcendent.”

Patrick Masterson’s take:

For the first time, Helen Franzmann and Mick Turner were able to record as Mess Esque in one room. Following two remote collaborations in 2021’s Dream #12 and eponymous Mess Esque, Franzmann and Turner have given it another go four years later with Jay Marie, Comfort Me. In a way, the removal of that barrier makes this slightly less of an achievement than what was accomplished for the first two albums, but that’s a minor barb reserved for serious nitpickers; ultimately, this is more enjoyable on a whole than its predecessors. I seem to be on the same page as everyone else in agreeing “Take Me to Your Infinite Garden” is the natural single here given its killer riff and fantastical lyrical leaps, but I’m also with Tim’s review in two other ways: First, the real highlight is without a doubt “That Chair,” a lush, bluesy bummer of a song I could’ve kept listening to for double the length; second, “Let Me Know You” is a cabinet curiosity at best and its removal from the tracklist would’ve done no harm to the overall experience. That it’s the shortest track here is just mercy, the comfort of the remaining songs more than enough to mask its inadequacy. Another fulfilling album from an entity that feels like it could keep doing this forever.

Mogwai — The Bad Fire (Rock Action / Temporary Residence)

Who nominated it? Patrick Masterson

Did we review it? Yes, Christian Carey said, “Mogwai continues to expand its palette while still bringing the noise.”

Tim Clarke’s take:

Over the last 20-odd years, Mogwai’s music has meant a great deal to me at various points. When the band first emerged in the late 1990s, while I was at university, I was really taken by their early compilation, Ten Rapid. Then, in 2003, soon after a close friend of mine died in a car accident, Happy Songs for Happy People offered deep solace. Beyond that, The Hawk Is Howling (2008) also hit the spot, and when I saw them live around the time of 2011’s Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, they were excellent. Since then, I can’t say much of Mogwai’s output has registered beyond the surface level. On The Bad Fire, the band seems to focus on their methodology of layering instruments and building a mood, patiently shifting upwards through the gears until your hair’s blown back and the density of sound is chewy and widescreen. This approach works pretty well during the first half of the album, when the band hits cruising altitude and keeps on roaring. I’m especially drawn to two of the songs during the album’s central stretch, “Pale Vegan Hip Pain” and “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others,” where the emotional heft of the music feels a bit more weighty. The Bad Fire is cause enough for me to reevaluate Mogwai’s last few releases to see if there’s more there to appreciate.

Moreish Idols — All in the Game (Speedy Wunderground/PIAS)

Who nominated it? Tim Clarke

Did we review it? Yes, Tim wrote, “On the back of two buzz-building EPs, English quintet Moreish Idols bring sharp songwriting and dynamic band-in-a-room energy to bear on their excellent debut album, All in the Game.”

Christian Carey’s take:

Cornish band Moreish Idols bring a number of different musical styles into play on All in the Game, their debut full length recording. These include psychedelia, post-rock, Brit-pop, and even a splash of laconic speech-song on “Railway.” The title track combines double-tracked lead vocals, falsetto harmonies, undulating rhythm guitar, and post-bop saxophone riffs, including some sheets of sound á la early John Coltrane. On “ACID,” a heady dance and yawping vocals are balanced by heavy rock guitar strums and harmonic minor scales that flirt with being non-Western insertions. One might not be sure on which continent the ardent narrator has dropped a tab, but we know that the result is fervidly unbridled.

The major to minor ying-yang of the chords on “Slouch” are steadily reiterated to dizzying effect. The album closer, “Time’s Wasting,” is a bit shy of two minutes, but its multi-part vocal hook, thrumming bass line, forceful guitar solo, and hazy ambience recall a plethora of past artists. They are blended into a singular concoction, or, as the case may be, tablet.

David Ivan Neil — I Hope Yer OK (Perpetual Doom)

Who picked it? Joshua Moss

Did we review it? Yes. Joshua wrote, “Rising to the occasion, it is the best produced work in his lengthy catalog, boasting the barest studio sheen and a tight, stripped-back honky-stoner band, the A-OK Players, who lend urgency and back-beat movement to DIN’s emotionally zoomed-in half-slurred confessionals.”

Patrick Masterson’s take:

I went into I Hope Yer OK about as blind as one can go. I knew nothing of David Ivan Neil before this; I didn’t recall a shred of Joshua’s (albeit convincingly argued) mid-March review; hell, I didn’t even look at the tracklist before I pressed play. I just figured I’d wheel it and find my own footing before I dug into the details. It took exactly 40 seconds of opener “Drums” to get me wondering how much Silver Jews this David’s listened to, but over the course of the ensuing three-and-a-half minutes (and nine songs including, sure enough, a cover of “K-Hole”), I Hope Yer OK reveals itself to be more than a mere homage to that David. The approachable, nakedly vulnerable lyrics, as sincere as they are sarcastic, offer an arm around the shoulder the way the album title suggests. This is a friend telling you in a darker moment of perpetual doom that yeah, actually, it’s exactly as bad out there as you think — but you wanna hear something funny? And so you laugh through a wicked hangover and the only instance of mandolin you’ve been able to tolerate in 2025 and you joke about jumping in front of city buses for the payout and you swoon to paeans of broken bird dreams and somehow, when it’s all over, you go to bed sober and acutely aware of the noble futility of the human endeavor, willing (if not eager) to wake up and take another crack at it come morning. Aware, alert, alive: This is what music can make us feel at its most potent, no matter the year or condition. Maybe you’ll feel as much, too, after a quick spin of the DIN.

RETIREMENT – ATTENTION ECONOMY (Iron Lung Records)

Who nominated it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan wrote, “It’s unrelenting — the band’s sonic abuse, and the punishment visited on us all by capital’s latest, ever more vicious version of the mode of production.”

Josh Moss’ take

Portland, Oregon hardcore band RETIREMENT (stylization theirs) doesn’t pull even one tiny punch on ATTENTION ECONOMY, their latest tape for Iron Lung Records. This is music explicitly about living in the “zone of interest” to quote the title of a recent film — the queasy surreal discomfort of knowing, being constantly reminded in jarring, discordant ways, that your comfort and joy is paid for in the brutally extracted blood of other innocent people. RETIREMENT’s crusted over musical assault does a good job of keeping your ~attention~, but this blackened, filthy, metal inflected punk is not 100% blitzkrieg. RETIREMENT makes space in these short songs for eerie atmospheric passages, ambience that oozes out from between the cracks of thrashed out riffs and plodding, pit-moving beats. This is music to put a nitrous boost in your indignation at the state and capital. It demands you open your eyes, like Alex at the end of A Clockwork Orange, and look at the prices everyone is paying for western hegemony.

Sharp Pins — Radio DDR (K/Perennial)

Who picked it? Tim Clarke

Did we review it? Yes, Jennifer Kelly described it as “conjuring the bittersweet baroque pop magic of icons like the Hollies, the Byrds and Tom Petty.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

The opening “Every Time I Hear” immediately makes me think ‘Guided by Voices if they were [even?] more interested in sounding like they were actually from the 1960s,' and while that’s a bit reductive for Radio DDR overall, it’s not a bad start. The Dusted review is correct, I think, in calling this “garage pop” as opposed to rock; any distortion or muddiness feels cozy rather than confronting, and not in a bad way (honestly the more balladic material like “Sycophant” makes for some of the best songs here). More upbeat, jangling material like “If I Was Ever Lonely” manages to walk the line of sounding period appropriate without feeling like mere mimicry; there’s some je ne sais quoi that keeps my “wait, is this just from one of the Nuggets compilations that I never listened to?” alarm from going off. It takes a certain self-confidence as a young band to plant yourself so firmly in such an established lineage (and even less specifically throwback-y songs like the raucous “When You Know” still exist in conversation with that lineage, just more with acts between then and now that also pay homage), but Sharp Pins pay it off. For those with divisive feelings about that legacy of 1960s garage pop (in either direction), you can probably apply those directly here.

Sadie Siskin — Sadie Siskin (Friends of the Road)

Who picked it? Joshua Moss

Did we review it? No

Ray Garraty’s take:

A lot of people get into music-making because you don’t need much to get started, maybe a banjo. But you need to learn how to play banjo first, which is not something many of us will be ready to master. The banjo is not the only element of Sadie Siskin’s self-titled tape’s appeal, which sounds as if it were recorded in pre-recording era, like somebody just sneaked in and recorded it anyway to later release it for a wide public (or not so wide). Its free flowing sound streams bring you back into a forgotten past. When Sadie sings (as on “Rolly Trudum” and “Yea! Wheels Turning At High Heaven”), the music moves towards more traditional ground and gets a bit poppish. Nonetheless, it’s a beautifully made tape.

Steven R. Smith — Triecade (Worstward)

Who nominated it? Bryon Hayes

Did we review it? No

Ian Mathers’ take:

Steven R. Smith (under various monikers) is practically an institution at this point, and one that Dusted has shown plenty of love to over the years. So why is this the first time I’m actually sitting down with one of his records? Sadly, pretty predictable, mundane reasons: too much music in the world to listen to, time is finite and ever passing, his discography is more than a little daunting. I’d just never hit that magic combination of opportunity and motivation on any particular release. Until now! And I’m glad it did, because while I can’t speak to how Triecade compares to the rest of his work, I can say coming to it with very little in the way of expectations I think it’s great. One of the joys of the midyear exchange, then; being “forced” to pay attention in a particular direction and finding the result so richly rewarding. If the credits on Bandcamp didn’t indicate that it’s just Smith himself playing the guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards here I might have thought this was a quartet honed by years of playing live together (and I guess in a sense that’s not inaccurate), so satisfying and seamless is ‘their’ interplay. The whole thing ebbs and flows so smoothly I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to pick out track titles without looking at the player, but who needs to when the whole 36 minutes comes together this well?

The War and Treaty — Plus One (Mercury Nashville)

Who nominated it? Justin Cober-Lake

Did we review it? Yes, Justin said, “With Plus One, they maximize both their personal traits and their broader opportunities for exciting new sounds that still (and happily) sound like where they came from.”

Tim Clarke’s take:

Sophie Agnel & Joke Lanz — Ella (Klanggalerie)

Who recommended it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No.

Justin Cober-Lake’s take:

Ella might be the most unusual record I've heard this year. Sophie Agnel's a free improvisation pianist and, I think, is often working with a prepared piano. Turntablist Joke Lanz makes up the other half of the duo, meaning no matter how weird Agnel gets, there are always more sound coming to push the music to new places. It's hard to make art much more abstracted than this album. There's no easy point of entry here, the artists mostly eschewing melody and rhythm, but it's possible to get lost in a world that's constantly shifting and surprising.

“Sporadic Bursts of Sympathy” sounds quintessential. Lanz feints at grooves, giving the impression that there's structure to come, but these are just the “bursts.” Agnel likewise offers deep rolls and high plucks, hinting at a fractured piece, as if a song's been deconstructed, only there was no construction there to start with. It's a bold statement, and a challenging listen. “21st Century Humans” closes the album with tension that the pair hesitate to release, although the track does build to a bounce (by their standards). A piano motif gives way to a repeated “good morning” before one final squeak sees us out, as if even approaching linearity inevitably leads to silence.

Anika — Abyss (Sacred Bones)

Who picked it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes. Jennifer Kelly wrote: “It’s one of the best albums so far in 2025.”

Alex Johnson’s take:

The last time I heard Anika was the debut album, a stark but charming mix of minimalist post-punk and skeletal girl-group pop. Contrasting it to sunnier indie contemporaries, Dusted wrote: “its beats are too deliberate to be catchy.” “Deliberate,” I think, as in studied, predictable. Not so on the vastly more powerful Abyss, which is plenty deliberate, but as in purposeful, and catches hold early then never lets go. The basslines are bendy and relentless, the guitars squall and grind and pull out perilous arpeggios, wander but never quite break rank, the drumming is unavoidable, undeniable and airtight with a flourish. The band recorded live and quickly and, in the best way, you can tell. These are dance floor dirges; up tempo laments for modern ruins.

To quote Dusted’s review of this album: “what sets [Anika] apart from many contemporary post-punk front people is that she sings really well.” Exactly. Singing or speaking, often embellished with an echo, she’s just as much orator as lead vocalist. The lyrics, too, are sharp and immediate, narrating said modern ruins. The line “the cars are flying” from “Last Song” doesn’t sound like a technological breakthrough but the result of an explosion. There, Anika seems to be heartbroken by the whole of humanity. You could read “the truth is I don’t really like myself/and the truth is I don’t really like anyone else/and the truth is I’d rather be alone than with you” from “Walk Away” in the same light, or interpersonally. Regardless, it’s the best break-up/kiss-off song I’ve heard this year. The moment a brief, surf-y arc of guitar accompanies Anika’s utterly content “so screw you” is especially satisfying. Start to finish, Abyss is furious, gripping not clenching, a storm stirred up and ridden.

Artificial Go — Musical Chairs (Feel It!)

Who Picked it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? Yes, Alex wrote that like its namesake, Musical Chairs is “a party event, still precarious, still requiring a sense of balance, but played in a whirling, laughing scramble.”

Bryon Hayes’ take:

I was surprised yet delighted to hear new music from Artificial Go so soon after their debut Hopscotch Fever. As Alex described in his review, the band has grown quite a bit in the intervening months. Musical Chairs moves beyond snappy post-punk to explore thicker guitar textures, poppier song structures, and a broader vocal palette. Earworms like “Circles,” “The World is My Runway” and “Hallelujah” really showcase this sense of progression, yet they retain the band’s signature whimsical charm, which is refreshing. Album closer “Sky Burial” spins off in an entirely new direction, embracing dub-like echo effects. It was good strategy by Artificial Go to save such a digression until the end; we’ll be thirsty for more of it when album number three rolls around.

Barker — Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)

Who recommended it? Patrick Masterson

Did we review it? Yes. Andrew Forell wrote, “Within his template of minimal techno, Barker adds billowing ambient passages and intricate drum programming that unfold with the depth of dub and the logic of jazz."

Justin Cober-Lake's take:

Sam Barker does something extremely impressive on this album: he makes a craft out of formalizing ostensibly chaotic movement. There's some jazz influence here, and the sense of an underlying order comes through at times, but the movement of each of these pieces is all Barker. The rhythms start tight and subtly change, altering each track, but without ever jarring; it's truly drift and not madness. Just as the songs move, the album gradually shifts, but always in a way that feels organic and sensible. Barker has elements of jazz, techno, minimalism, ambient, and more, but it never feels like a mishmash or an exercise in juxtaposition. The album's whole progression has a focused fluidity (if such a phrase makes sense). The song can have slow atmospheric passages, but when it winds up in a complex rhythmic stretch, it feels like a natural, if unanticipated, result. That's the genius of the album, and Barker makes it sound so easy, as if it could happen by chance.

Blood Monolith — The Calling of Fire (Profound Lore)

Who nominated it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan wrote “Your reviewer is moderately tempted simply to repeat ‘this rules’ a few hundred times, in place of attempting to describe or understand the music on The Calling of Fire, Blood Monolith’s debut LP. While repeating the clause (foaming at the mouth, clenching fists, roiling in a dank cellar…) would constitute a review of sorts, it’s likely not what folks show up to Dusted to read. Too bad.”

Ray Garraty’s take:

This does rule, no way to deny it. While Blood Monolith has an eye on the past, the band never just simply indulges in Death or Siege or any other grindcore-ish Mastodon worship from the 1990s. Its music corrupts your ears but is not corrupted by the modernizing tendencies which have soured a lot of metal music lately. It never pats you on the back, reassuring you in your soft cushion taste in metal. It just slaps you in the face and gives a nice blow to your skull. Maybe that is why The Calling of Fire angered some metal fans who were asking for… melody? Well, not everything is supposed to be melodic. This isn’t.  

Raven Chacon — Voiceless Mass (New World)

Who picked it? Christian Carey

Did we review it? No

Alex Johnson’s take:

“Voiceless Mass” opens with a chime, followed by a rumble. It’s almost but not quite overwhelming; it swaddles and carries the listener in. For music largely structured around sustained notes, nothing really lingers. The effect for me was of a slideshow of landscapes: each scene displaying then giving way, echoing but not replicating what came before. “Biyán” demands attention in a different way. Grand swaths of terrain swapped for ground-level observation of organisms. Squeaky-door horns and hard-to-place but charismatic scribbles of playing dominate the movements but are tempered (and given emphasis) by the transitional calm of a high violin or a fade to near-silence. Like the chime from “Voiceless Mass,” timpani is a catalyst, signaling another sliding, chirping crescendo or a cue for the squiggling, scraping strings to exit stage left.

Voiceless Mass isn’t quite voiceless. If the title track is a mass due to elemental power, “Owl Song,” the only piece with discernible vocals, is a mass as in teeming. There are chants and short shrieks. A wobbling yet lucid soprano is paired with a burst of jazz drumming. A piano is struck. New voices jump in, up and down the scale, before tagging in an instrument of similar timbre. Strings are plucked, bows grind, vocal notes are, at times, more gnawed than sung. There are whistles and gunshots of timpani. “Owl Song” sounds less like a musical ensemble than a bustling cast of character actors. It completes the album’s journey from the monuments of “Voiceless Mass” and bristling fauna of “Biyán” to the chaotic joys and strains of humanity.

Brighde Chaimbeul — Sunwise (tak:til)

Who nominated it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes, Ian wrote, “Even more so than on the excellent Carry Them with Us there’s a powerfully ceremonial feeling to this set of songs, aided by the even more minimal instrumental lineup and that frosty, imposing first side.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Brighde Chaimbeul is a master of the Scottish smallpipes, a hand-held wind instrument related to the (somewhat larger and better known) bagpipes. It’s a traditional instrument backed by centuries of lore and practice and Chaimbeul has all that under her belt (she’s won folk piping contests), plus a restless experimental bent that has led her to collaborate with Colin Stetson, Caroline Polachek and others. Sunwise bends archaic resonances towards the shape-shifting forms of modern improvisatory drone. The opener, “Dùsgadh/Waking,” is more or less unadulterated tone, one sustained note that flickers and vibrates uninterrupted for just over nine minutes. If you go with it, which takes some meditative intent, it becomes a portal to stillness, a link to reverberations both within and outside this particular music. It stops you dead, in other words. “A' Chailleach” continues in that vein, but with a bit more frolic in it; to the long murmuring laments, she adds a bit of melodic flourish, which builds and finally culminates in some lovely highland evocative singing. Sunwise is a family enterprise. Chaimbeul’s dad closes “Duan” with some stirring (but inscrutable) Gaelic spoken verse, while her brother Eòsaph sings with her on the closing “The Rain is Wine and the Stones Are Cheese,” the lightest-hearted and most dance-able of these tracks. Music from the stone age might easily turn constraining, especially for younger, female artists, but Chaimbeul is too much of a free spirit for that. She frees it without disrespecting it and uses its forms for her own 21st century ends.

Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)

Who Picked it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes, Christian wrote, "Fohr’s songwriting is as strong as ever and her singing voice is singular."

Bryon’s take:

In his Dusted review of -io, Tim Clarke found the album "couches existential terror within ritualistic performance and orchestral musicality, and is often a challenging listen." If you replace "orchestral musicality" with "chilly EBM," he could be describing Halo on the Inside rather aptly. Haley Fohr has travelled deeper into the darkness with this record, wrapping her powerful voice in thick synthetic harmonies torn from the dust of Stranger Things’ parallel world. The music is icy and sinister, but elegant and rhythmic. The melodies and textures tangle with the vast expanse of Fohr’s signature croon to evoke imagery consistent with nocturnal activity. She’s constructed a frigid funk that is at home both on the dance floor and in a good set of headphones. I can imagine Helena Hauff spinning these songs in an abandoned power plant or a sweaty, black-walled basement. I can also see Halo on the Inside as the perfect soundtrack to a midnight stroll. It’s new territory for Fohr stylistically, but this album retains enough of her signature spirit to fit snugly within her overall body of work.

Ezale — Town Taxes (Foreal Foreal)

Who nominated it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? Nope

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

Town Taxes flashes by in 22 minutes of rump-shaking, sunny sounds, lightened even more by Ezale’s slightly nasal, upper-register voice. There’s a winning charm to the record’s sonic textures, which gravitate more toward radio-friendly Earth, Wind, & Fire or late-1970s Gap Band than harder funk or the grit of neo-soul. Those bright surfaces belie some of the more interesting thematics Ezale engages; the release’s high point (sorry…) may be “Ironic,” which suggests the complicated feelings that lurk just under the music’s incessant search for pleasures. It’s a good song. For sure, among the persistent, prevailing concerns of hip hop, Town Taxes is a lot more interested in getting smoked up and chasing girls than it is in stacking cash or flashing gats. But by the time you get to closing track “Make Her Gig,” it’s clear just how much of the ostensibly good time comes at the expense of women (or, inevitably, in the parlance of Town Taxes, “bitches”): Ezale croons, “I bet you I can make her do what I tell her to / I bet you I can make her gig without her wig / Hangin with me instead of watchin her kids.” And it’s there from the jump, as on opening track “Hang Wit Them,” when he happily chirps, “Ain’ no tellin what the bitch’d do / I was all on her face like barbecue.” Swell. It feels like punching down. Seems like there must be other ways to elevate the self, or to get higher.

Hectorine — Arrow of Love (Take a Turn)

Who nominated it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? Yes, Alex called the album, “ornate without being baroque and whimsical without affectation. This is precise and dramatic, yet conjured and dreamy music, delivered with devotion.”

Christian Carey’s take:

Sarah Gagnon is the creative songwriter and vocalist behind Hectorine, and explores a dark Sumerian myth on Arrow of Love, her third full length recording. It is the story of Inanna, an ancient Sumerian warrior goddess who goes to hell and back (literally) in a tale of fratricide, demons, human sacrifice, and a final (sort of) redemption. Gagnon channeled the depths of this dark tale, in part, to exorcise recent losses in her own life, both of a job and a relationship.

Arrow of Love juxtaposes lyrics as desolate as Inanna’s story and her own grief, with music that is (self-described) soft rock that is artful in approach. The overall result is eloquent in its restraint, with co-producer Geoff Saba providing multiple instruments to create a bed of sound, as well as several adroit saxophone solos, to accompany Gagnon’s expressive alto voice. The title tune is an example of the fetching results, with a synth solo appearing prominently and a cocoon of backing vocals from Betsy Gran and Joel Robinow. Ancient Sumerian soft rock? Sure.  

Jenny Hval — Iris Silver Mist (4AD records)

Who nominated it? Tim Clarke

Did we review it? Yes, Tim wrote, “Jenny Hval brings acute intelligence and a conceptual bent to all of her work, infusing her art-pop with depth and intricacy.”

Josh Moss’ take:

Iris Silver Mist, the latest record from Norwegian singer/songwriter Jenny Hval, is centered around her ethereal, ice-clear voice, but the production styles pull from across decades and genres to create a modern, experiential take on art pop. The sounds of the Pure Moods compilation blend with the experimentalism of Björk, early ought’s indie-dance-pop moves meet the hermetic melodicism of Kate Bush. Spoken word elements throughout seem to emphasize the album’s themes of sensory and tactile experience — one that sticks out describes the physical movement of a sound being recorded, and ends with “Happy Birthday,” nearly shouted. Sound being recorded and played back; in other words conceived and born. The album is named after a rare perfume scent and is at least in part inspired by the collision of a budding music career with the grim realities of the COVID pandemic. This could be seen as the loss of one sense, which can force a being to lean harder on another to interact with reality — but in this case Jenny Hval’s quarantine-era obsession with scent led her back around to music, resulting in Iris Silver Mist.

Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith — Defiant Life (ECM)

Who picked it? Justin Cober-Lake

Did we review it? No

Bill Meyer’s take:

Cruel Diagonals — Calcite (Beacon Sound)

The planet will be fine. We’re the ones in danger. Megan Mitchell, the producer and vocalist known as Cruel Diagonals, takes the long view of environmental devastation in this four-track EP, lending her unearthly soprano and chilling electronic atmospheres to a tale told on a geological time scale. Wordless swells of vocal sound, trilling high and murmuring low, usher in “Scintillation,” her interpretation of planetary formation. Her voice has a ululating middle-eastern quality, but also operatic precision and resonance, as glitchy beds of ominous sound percolate and morph as freely as liquid rock. “Disobedience” tracks the disastrous impact of human destruction in echoing, curving laments and the flicker of electronic keyboard patterns. “Euxinia” glowers in low-toned menace, massed, slightly dissonant voices surging in autotuned, uncanny valley choruses. “Calcite” meant to evoke a post-human, post-biological planet of bare rock, instead ricochets with hocketing voices and blasts of low-brassy synths. It mourns but lightly, agily. All four parts glow with luminous, unreal beauty, abstracting the end of existence into pure tone and emotional heft. Cruel, indeed, but gorgeous.  

Jennifer Kelly

John Davis — Landlines (Students of Decay)

Bay area musician John Davis presents a poignant overarching framework for Landlines, a collection of pieces that “reflect on the importance of connection — to ourselves and to the world around us.” The album’s eight compositions leverage their own unique trajectory as they seek to address this concept. The meditative “Cluster Tone” presents a bare, David Grubbs-ian acoustic guitar that wanders wistfully. A muted trumpet serenades a skeletal piano on the title track, as the two instruments shoulder their way through an Eraserhead-like windstorm. Some of the tracks are kaleidoscopic in nature, segueing between multiple thematic approaches but staying within Davis’ underlying conceptual fabric. The effervescent “Ovum” transitions from sprightly minimalist repetition into a lonely organ howling over a scene of playing children. The entirety of Landlines gracefully emits a sense of fond nostalgia. It flows gently from scene to scene with a dreamy logic that beautifully reflects the artist’s thematic intent.  

Bryon Hayes

Decimus — Morning and Evening Ragas for Solo Electric Guitar (Kelippah)

This is the fourth entry in Pat Murano’s Morning and Evening Ragas series, where he ventures outdoors to record extended sessions among the flora and fauna of upstate New York.  His crepuscular meanderings dissolve themselves into the sounds of birds, crickets, and passing cars. It can be a challenge to discern whether he’s influencing his surroundings or vice versa.  Either way, the results of his extended jam sessions are entrancing. On this recording, Murano pares his arsenal down to the titular instrument: six strings and electronics.  He offers up two divergent pieces. The first is a meditative feast of gurgling mantras and metal whirling through the air, while the latter is a pot of drones brought to boil and poured over a slithering mass of melody. Both sides of this LP defy gravity and float off into the twilit sky, auricular messages that Murano emits with grace.

Bryon Hayes

Drugs of Faith — Asymmetrical (Selfmadegod)

Drugs of Faith has one of the best band names in the biz, even if that moniker sneaks up on the didactic (“Religion is the opium of the masses,” anyone?). The lyrics to the band’s new record Asymmetrical don’t sneak; they go all in. Check out this passage from “Divestment”: “Droughts, floods, heatwaves, fires and hurricanes / They never stop! / Food riots, climate refugees, resource wars / No hiding on the garbage patch from leaks of unnatural gas / Water is the new currency.” And so on. The band’s music is even less subtle. For reasons unfathomable to this reviewer, Drugs of Faith calls its sonic stylings “grind’n’roll,” an execrable phrase, and an even worse idea. But never fear: mostly what you hear on Asymmetrical is a muscular variety of the heavy that combines the angriest sounds of Mission of Burma, the most unhinged guitar breaks Fugazi ever managed, and the occasional superfast bit from early 1980s hardcore. It’s a winning combination that makes the lyrics’ sledgehammering self-righteousness nearly tolerable. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe direct language is precisely what’s needed. As vocalist Richard Johnson (also of grind mainstays Agoraphobic Nosebleed) shouts at one point, “I forget we’re at war all the time.” Which war does he mean?

Jonathan Shaw

FKA twigs — Eusexua (Young/Atlantic)

Most of FKA twigs’ albums are genre tagged on (that noted authority) Wikipedia as “art pop,” which is fitting enough, but she’s always been club/dance influenced or adjacent enough that knowing that Eusexua is inspired mainly by the techno twigs heard while going to raves in Prague for a while (and yeah, she’s had the kind of life/career where that also seems unsurprising) doesn’t feel like it’s that big a shift. And purely sonically, it’s not quite; but twigs and her collaborators (primarily Koreless and Marius De Vries here, but also everyone from Eartheater to Two Shell) have also made maybe her most focused, consistent record to date. The themes are still the mess of relationships (“Sticky,” “24hr Dog”), the edification that comes from seeking sensual pleasure (the title track, “Room of Fools”), the crucial pursuit of personal autonomy (“Keep It, Hold It,” “Wanderlust”). and here they’re explored over twigs’ catchiest, most danceable set of tracks, even morseso than her fine other albums. An early highlight of 2025.

Ian Mathers

Rich Halley 4 — Dusk And Dawn (Pine Eagle)

Oregon-based tenor saxophonist Rich Halley’s spent a fair bit of his recording coin on collaborations with the Matthew Shipp Trio in recent years, but he’s back on home turf for Dusk And Dawn. The drummer, Carson Halley, has known the saxophonist since birth; bassist Clyde Reed and trombonist Michael Vlatkovich are enduring associates. So, what you hear on this album is a sequence of fluent conversations in a shared language that spans decades of jazz and adjacent styles. During “The Hard Truth,” the drumming prods and tests each horn player in turn, turning up the heat to splendid effect. And on “Spatter,” for example, passages of muscular, acoustic funk sandwich a freer but still propulsive midsection. Vlatkovich and Halley share a penchant for using sturdy, charted passages as jumping-off points for solo exchanges that have an engaging vocal quality.

Bill Meyer

Ofir Ganon — Same Air (Island House)

Ofir Ganon coaxes extraordinary resonance and clarity from his electric guitar. His tone vibrates, shimmering inside a luminous cloud. It splinters like light through a prism into a 1000 different colors. Ganon makes his living fine-tuning other people’s guitars, so perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s able to elicit beauty from his. More surprising, perhaps, is that he does it in a bright, clear idiom that owes very little to folk or blues or Takoma-style picking. “Pelham Blue” for instance, circles restlessly round an arpeggio each guitar sound a liquid drop of melody, but no bends or slides or flatted sevenths. An Israeli who spent time in Morocco, Ganon does slip a bit of middle eastern tonality into the mix, as on the show-stopping “Miel,” which might remind you of Richard Bishop’s Tangiers interludes. “Belleville,” an early single, flirts closest to folky picking, but with a jazz-leaning transparency, every note a bright, sparkling jewel, none run together or blurred. 

Jennifer Kelly

Oh the Humanity! —  Ground to Dust (Sell the Heart)

Oh the Humanity! brought in A Wilhelm Scream's Trevor Reilly for production on their latest album, Ground to Dust. The choice makes sense, given both bands' approach to punk, but what makes this release excel isn't that the band leans into its strengths but that it shows flexibility. The essentials are there, including the anger and emotion, but the group finds coherent ways to blend a mix of sounds. At one moment they push the skate punk sound, but in the next moment they're a metal band in full shred mode. They shift continuously without losing momentum or breaking the flow, mixing angry crunch with catchy hooks (the sound is surprisingly bright, and maybe stepping outside of their hardcore a little bit). When “Never Do Another Rule” gives a solo that could almost be classic rock, it makes sense. Ground to Dust isn't exactly a linear progression, but its sequencing does give it a proper sense of direction. OTH! doesn't quite drift into a commercial sound, but they strike a balance between the punk you might hear in a sticky basement and the punk you'd sing along to in an actual venue. It's a thoughtful album that doesn't relinquish any of the madness, a fun approach to frustration and catharsis.

Justin Cober-Lake

The Rishis — s-t (Primordial Void / Cloud Recordings)

Athens, Georgia’s The Rishis are Elephant 6-adjacent, featuring John Fernandes (Olivia Tremor Control, Circulatory System) among their ranks. This is the band’s second album, and it has a strolling, wide-eyed quality, best exemplified by opening track “Coloring.” It’s easily the best song here, masterfully balancing float and jangle, bringing together dinky bar-room piano, classic E6 horn moves, and a George Harrison-esque guitar break. The rest of the album continues in this mid-tempo vein, led by frontman and primary songwriter Ranjan Avasthi’s sweet vocal tone, but there’s lots of variety to catch the ear, including lovely cello on “Buffalo” and “Dharamsala.” The parts don’t always quite click into place as satisfyingly as they should — such as the hesitant performance of “Miles,” or the overdriven guitars of “Criminal Activities” — but The Rishis is still a breezy, likeable listen.

Tim Clarke

Ritual Error — Dial in the Ghost (TNS)

I’m a simple man: I see a band contextualized by Drive Like Jehu, Hoover and Circus Lupus, I’m gonna investigate that band. Such was the case when I perused the latest output from the Maximum Rocknroll crew and found the blurb for London trio Ritual Error’s first full-length out late last year on Manchester’s TNS. Sure enough, it doesn’t take but a quick listen of first single “Good Conscience in Three Stages” to confirm these guys get it: Okala Elesia’s vocals evoke Tim Harrington at Les Savy Fav’s most wild-eyed, his razor-sharp guitars spew melodies and countermelodies across the canvas, David Thair’s max attack percussion exacerbates headaches, and Alessandro Incorvaia’s bass only just holds it together. Whether it’s talking listlessness at sea or Maggie Thatcher or moving from home for the first time, Ritual Error is for real, and they’ve come a long way in a short time since their three-song debut demo. I told you when I found it; now you tell me when you have, too.

Patrick Masterson

Ernesto Rodrigues / Frank Gratkowski / Guilherme Rodrigues /Michael Griener — Unstable Molecules (Creative Sources)

First off, let’s all give a tip of the hat to the best-named venue in Berlin — Kühlspot. That’s where this encounter took place in March 2024, when Portuguese violist (and Creative Sources CEO) Ernesto Rodrigues improvised with his cello-playing son Guilherme and two other Berlin-based musicians, Frank Gratkowski (alto saxophone, clarinets) and Michael Griener (drums). This could have gone in a number of directions, for while the string players share a predilection for bristly, romance-free interaction, Griener and Gratkowski can push things in a number of directions. In this case, the drummer seems to insert his sounds within the cello-viola dust-ups, matching timbre for timbre and rustle for rustle, while Gratkowski adds just enough ballast to make this chamber session swing. The outcome is pretty cool. 

Bill Meyer

Saint Vengeur — Sex and Repression in Higher Society (I, Voidhanger)

A hybrid of coldwave, witch house and industrial’s mechanized noise, Saint Vengeur’s music is about as arch, icy, irritating and occasionally exciting as you might expect. Does it help that Sex and Repression in Higher Society comes with a booklet of poetry, some verses of which are occasionally recited along with the tunes? Depends on how you feel about poetic language like this: “Exposed wires beat with cursed life / Bursting in excess / For nothing will suffice / Dig black, lace gloves / Satisfaction is now buried / Somewhere in the lies.” But he’s serious, folks — and sometimes, somehow, it all works. Check out the smartly titled “Poor Homme,” which could soundtrack a gloomily antic moment from a John Carpenter film (The Fog, perhaps) or a vampire-themed videogame. It’s one of the tracks on Sex and Repression in Higher Society that seems to wink at its own gratuitous atmospherics and then heads for the dancefloor. “Affection Paradigm” toggles between nimble synthy stuff worthy of early Heaven 17 and the aural equivalent of an East German sex dungeon, c 1982, which ends up being more fun than it sounds. Not sure that’s the intended effect.

Jonathan Shaw

Traxman — Da Mind of Traxman Vol. 3 (Planet Mu)

Rashad’s martyrdom and RP Boo’s belated flowers aside, Cornelius Ferguson to me belongs in the same pantheon from Chicago footwork’s first wave not just for his mastery of the 160 bpm format that goes beyond post-Dance Mania ghetto house and juke, but also because he recognized the viability of the album format right around the time Planet Mu’s Mike Paradinas was peaking in his push via the Bangs & Works series. The first Da Mind of Traxman in 2012 remains, alongside DJ Diamond’s Flight Muzik, Double Cup or Legacy, arguably footwork’s finest single-artist album. The second volume in 2014 solidified his position among the elite, but since then, he’s done what the rest of these guys do by plying his trade and minding his own as both Traxman and his Corky Strong alias. Renowned producer Sinjin Hawke offers us a timely refresher of Ferguson’s talents for anyone who wasn’t around or may’ve forgotten with this third volume that plucks 15 tracks from the archives. Songs range from 2002 (“Kill Da DJ”) to 2022 (a Benny the Butcher sample in “I’ll Write the Hook”); there’s Mortal Kombat in here (“Round 1”); there’s Carly Simon (“I Bet U Think This Track Is About U!!”); there’s plenty more. It’s tough to shake that this feels like a comp in the same way Vol. 2 did, though, which puts it slightly below the elite tier Vol. 1 justifiably deserves.

Patrick Masterson

Ventr — Ubique Diaboli Voluntas (Signal Rex)

The ongoing deluge of satanic black metal records from what purports to be a mysterious underground of malignant entities may put lie to both the “mystery” and the “underground.” When there is so much information (songs, promo sheets, music videos, manifestos and so on) trying to leach its way into the daylight of the open market for music, just how much obscurity can be sustained? Is that even the idea? Anyways: here’s a new record by another relatively recent addition to Portugal’s fecund black metal scene, Ventr’s Ubique Diaboli Voluntas. It doesn’t have the utterly nuts volatility of Mons Veneris (good luck finding that degree of musical insanity just about anywhere else…) or the compelling impulse toward self-extinguishment you can just about feel in recent releases from Black Cilice. Even Portugal seems to have limits. But as traditional black metal goes, Ubique Diaboli Voluntas is fine, perhaps even good. It may be winning song titles like “The Poisonous Blade of Kindness” or “The Rope around the Neck of Ataraxia” (which made your reviewer laugh aloud); it may be the relative fun in seeing a rat fashioned into Ouroboros on the album art — but something elevates Ventr’s record just above most of this month’s inexhaustible stream of black metal releases. Must be February.