The Boosh.Zone

2020 has been shit...except for the music!

That point in the year where I find that one Noise Rock record that blows my mind, defies all expectations, and has my ears bleeding. Sex Swing's latest release, Type II, is an excellent collection of psychedelic brain-melters that wastes no time and trims all fat.

It was very interesting to see the rise in popularity Fishmans gained this past decade. Not a lost group or record by any means, but undoubtedly a project that got it's Western audience due more recently than upon their heyday in the 90s...but really at the end of the day the best I can take away from this is that it is a pretty and dreamy Pop record.

Experimentation-laced rock with traces of late 90s and early 2000s culture that had me hooked for the remainder of the 2010s. With their most consistent and hard-hitting album to date, The Garden have quite simply blown me away. Gone is the stripped back production and Casio keyboard SFX packs (well mostly). In it's stead, Kiss My Super Bowl Ring delivers well polished experimental punk that finds The Garden at their most aggressive and witty yet...

After listening to What's Tonight to Eternity several times, I think I have landed on the sound of Cindy Lee being the resulting spirit split from the body (Preoccupations) from the whole of the being (Women)... a restless spirit caught in purgatory between 60s girl groups and the grasp of some otherworldly being. This harsh and somber duality is expressed so masterfully and has made me gain a whole new appreciation for all aspects surrounding Women and their split...

On the intro track “2 Pieces of One: Red”, the bass improvisation and percussion interplay is reminiscent of Free Improvisation, holding a musical form but operating near the boundaries some may call music. And then the band kicked in, and blew my socks off. This is how I knew I was in for a treat of Avant-Garde Jazz...

Bohren & der Club of Gore are back with their most defined and cathartic release since 2002's Black Earth. While the atmosphere isn't as foreboding as Black Earth's crushing delivery, the resulting space allotted allows for some of the most intentional and moving compositions the group has ever put out. The mood developed from the cool electric piano, smooth saxaphone, and almost non-existent drumming is a near-perfect approximation Film Noir in audio form...

On one hand, I accept the general quirkiness of GFOTY and think the overall minimalistic production that flows through the jingles is quite pretty...On the other hand, this is basically just a drive-by shit-posting of TV shows and not even the last track can save it from being a novelty...

The classic Ed Banger Records sound is seemingly dead. Mr. Oizo, Justice, and hell even Kavinsky have been seemingly left behind in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Long gone are the impressive plunderphonics, signature bass twang, and French House mastery that launched them, SebastiAn included, into the forefront of dance music. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Well if you are like me, you were highly anticipating any new music from SebastiAn since 2011's classic, Total. It's heavy use of plunderphonics to create a dark brooding Electro Disco experience was pulled off to near perfection. But here we are in 2019 with a new SebastiAn album in my hands and I find myself extremely disappointed.

After four years of silence since their 2015 debut Holding Hands With Jamie, eclectic No-Wave tinged Noise Rock group Girl Band are finally back with brand new music. The followup to one of my absolute favorite albums of all time definitely has some gigantic shoes to fill. Upon hearing Girl Band had come out of their hiatus and announced a new album with a fresh single to boot, I was filled with mixed emotions. How could Girl Band live up to the expectations that I had placed on them at that point? Well it’s safe to say that my anxiety (in one form I suppose) was squashed...

Heaviness and density is the name of the game for the sophomore album by Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Nocebo. True to Noise Rock standards, distorted guitars and pounding drums power the sound train, however there is so much nuance abound to this album's sound which really kick it into something special. The vocals are some cross Janis Joplin and Joanna Newsom, providing a somewhat delicate and nasally delivery that can somehow power it's way over the sonic heaviness most tracks bring to the table...

Yikes!

As ahead of its time as this is, the soundscape is actually pretty fitting. The space race was in the midst around this time along with the vast amount of sci-fi B-movies coming out that reflected these Cold War tensions. If anything, this albums soundscape is all encompassing of a space feel...