#russian baths

Russian Baths.

January 28, 2017 

“Responder” was not only a standout off Brooklyn dark noise rockers Russian Baths’ listmaking debut album Deepfake, but one of the best songs of 2019. For Bandcamp Friday, the duo of Luke Koz and Jess Rees have gone deeper into the black hole which the listen sees in us, and immerses listeners in with a reimagined “Night” version. Here, the vacuous rip curl of the original takes’ atmosphere meets an eerie tension in its heavy calm with the inverted feedback replaced with by infinite ripple of piano tiles and cosmic echoes, and Koz and Rees’ vocal collision softened to a black metal-like whisper screaming from one end of space to the other. You can feel a whelming distance between the two, reflecting our current emotional state where such uneasy quietness has become a numbing agent in our daily lives. Listen below...

Responder (Night) by Russian Baths

Between a cancelled SXSW, postponing tour dates, and having the unfortunate luck of releasing new music right at the start of a global pandemic, these last couple months have not been a great time to be any artist, but especially that of a new band with a new album with nowhere to support your work beyond finding creative ways on the Internet to do so. Brooklyn four-piece Activity released their debut album Unmask Whoever on March 27th right as stay-at-home orders were beginning to sweep the nation as well as their NYC habitat, but if there is any ironic upside to this situation, it’s that Activity’s sound is also sculpted for our collective isolation.

Its members are well-versed in the art of the discomforting avant garde, with guitarist and vocalist Travis Johnson and drummer Steve Levine formerly being of sonic adaptive post-punks Grooms, guitarist Jess Rees of morbid noise-rockers Russian Baths, and bassist Zoë Browne turning ears toward the soul as part of Field Mouse. Throughout Unmask Forever, their collective presence comes and goes in a physically transcendental manner with the static and currents of tracks like “Spring (Low Life)” and “Violent and Vivisect” booming through ghostly apparitions. Erstwhile, that same amorphous ability of Activity’s tripped up guitar craft strikes a spiritual connection with its gravitational properties, as it does in the eerie air of early single “Calls Your Name” or the melted atmosphere of “The Heartbeats”.

It’s easy to become transfixed by this strange being of hybrid light and darkness emitted by the NYC four-piece on their debut full-length. In watching the video for “Violent and Vivisect” -- shot entirely in each member’s own respective isolation in their New York and Philadelphia apatments -- there’s an audible and visible ebullience in the way the listen creates a magnetic field that pulls their energy toward one another across before it boils over. Right now, we’re all going through these swaying motions in our emotions, especially as the existential cracks widen inside our heads. Absorbing Activity’s Unmask Whoever may be one way unorthodox self-care made for these times in helping us reveal them.

Unmask Whoever by Activity

OUT NOW! Electric Shoegaze Powered Debut Album By New York Duo RUSSIAN BATHS – Here’s ‘DEEPFAKE’…

Band: Russian Baths Who: New York based duo that “fuses the abrasive sounds of New York in the eighties, the angular outbursts of DC hardcore, shoegaze’s torrents of noise and the suffocating anxiety of the Information Age. One part horror movie soundtrack, and one part personal confession, the band’s music is at once imposing and intimate.” Album: Deepfake – debut album Sound: Overall this…