#ritual error

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.