Ramp Local Vinyl, CD & Tape 11 Items

Hitting play on SEAMOSS2, the latest missive from Portland noise-tinkerers Sea Moss, is like punching the big red button on a cartoon bomb before it explodes into a multicolored mushroom cloud. From the second “Nap Time” revs up, vocalist Noa Ver and drummer Zach D'Agostino absolutely clobber the listener with a distorted hodgepodge of sounds as raw and violent as they are winkingly playful, as if Black Dice and Melt-Banana were caught in the middle of some kind of psychotic square dance together.
The duo’s setup—which involves a primitive assemblage of hacked feedback oscillators, colorful Rococo tin boxes, and a contact mic plugged directly onto Ver’s neck to capture her barking intonations—harkens back to an era of DIY where live performance meant everything. Blurring the line between reckless improvisation and tightly-knit compositions, the band achieves a disorientingly complex interplay. Though Sea Moss’s music may initially seem to be an act of pure blunt force, the duo’s true prowess lies in the intricacy of their rhythmic interplay. As freeform as it all might seem, SEAMOSS2 contains the band’s most potent, precise compositions yet, refining the distinct style they forged on disorienting releases like Bread Bored and Bidet Dreaming into a thrilling act of controlled chaos.
In an era where the communal spirit of DIY feels more difficult to achieve than ever, Sea Moss embody the classic ethos of weirdo punk music in all its absurdity and wonder. It’s this same sense of scrappiness that’s earned them attention from legends like Lightning Bolt and Machine Girl, and SEAMOSS2 illustrates why they’re every bit as deserving of their own trophy in the noise-rock hall of fame—one adorned in broken contact mics and scuffed-up scratches from one too many bloody basement shows.

A classically trained opera singer, an indie-rocker, and an experimental saxophonist walk into a karaoke bar.

This isn’t a joke set-up. It’s the origin story of Tyrannical Vibes, the playful, deceptively brilliant new album from Kolb—aka Brooklyn-based songwriter Mike Kolb—with a little help from his friends Carolyn Hietter (Sweet Baby Jesus) and Ani Ivry-Block (Palberta, Shimmer, Fire Roast). After spending four years as a touring member of electro-pop duo Water From Your Eyes while self-releasing the occasional EP or tape, Kolb is properly introducing himself as a solo artist. The album is a gem of lo-fi wonder, drawing influence from karaoke outings and cramming more melodic ideas into 25 minutes than gravity would seem to allow.

A decidedly homespun affair, Kolb performed nearly every instrument himself and recorded in his apartment, in a room so small he could barely stand up. Despite these humble origins, each track vibrates with inventive arrangements and melodic ingenuity, and the entire LP is steeped in the spirit of collaboration. Guest vocalists Hietter and Ivry-Block alternate lead and backing duty throughout, deliberately evoking the anything-goes feel of a karaoke party: “That energy of people hanging out and creating songs back and forth influenced this [music],” Kolb says. “The mix of songs and vibes can be disorienting, but when the situation is good, the camaraderie and openness is so sweet.”

That joyful preoccupation with the possibilities of the human voice is central to Kolb’s music. The musician is meticulous about harmony, fascinated by Baroque-style four-part voice arrangements, and obsessed with the idea of melodic lines interacting in counterpoint. Even at its most modest, Tyrannical Vibes never skimps on vocal harmonies. Perhaps, for Kolb, writing melodies for your friends to sing is a radical act of love. Now, how about adding these songs to some karaoke songbooks?

Turbo World is the sunny and shady brainchild of co-conspirators Stephe Cooper and Caroline Bennett. Best known as the mastermind behind avant-prog boppers Cloud Becomes Your Hand and a member of Guerilla Toss, Cooper continues to stand out for his madcap compositions that embody the spirit and ethos of avant rock groups Aksak Maboul & Slapp Happy. Joining forces with Bennett, the manic scribe, singer, and multimedia wizard of digital hardcore duo Stice, their debut album, My Challenger, is an experimental prog-opera that leads listeners on a surreal, animated jaunt through the world of organized crime. The album’s north star is Joey the Hitman aka Max Kurschner, whose 1973 interview on The David Susskind Show, forever immortalized on YouTube, serves as inspiration and source material.

Rising from the underground river of primordial goo that runs between New York City and Philadelphia and ascending toward some unknown ethereal plane beyond our comprehension, comes to us the revelatory debut of music and mythos from Godcaster, Long Haired Locusts.

The venerated and shining troupe of David Mcfaul (keys), Von Lee (flute, vox), Lindsay Dobbs (trombone, vox), Bruce Ebersole (bass guitar), Sam Pickard (drums), and Judson Kolk (vox, guitar) transmit a brand of devout, sassy rock and pop that thrashes through stages of blissful, comforting highs and devastating lows, preaching the convergence of the holy and the heretical. This is best displayed on songs like 'Apparation of Mother Mary in My Neighborhood,' where the anxious exertion of sharp, jittery guitars and cutting drums follow the increasingly quickening pace of Kolk's narrative of trepidation before the tension grows too tight and snaps into violent, cathartic outbursts. Similar nerves are addressed and released throughout Long Haired Locusts'the navigation of celestial beauty and corporeal rot is omnipresent and important. 'Serpentine Carcus Crux Birth' and 'Christ in Capsule Form' are both bouncing and vibrant, while 'Blister Intercom' is lush with rejoicing choruses that accompany the marching guitars and drums, and songs like 'All the Feral Girls in the Universe' naturally builds upon an undeniably danceable composition until it reaches, like the album as a whole reaches, a phenomenally euphoric peak.

Long Haired Locusts, recorded live to tape by pop-mysticist Ryan Power in a Philadelphia basement, is a no-frills showcase of Godcaster's essence and best consumed at high volume with as few breakable objects as possible within a flailing extremities reach. And as well as Long Haired Locusts captures the exultant frenzy of Godcaster, it is best to see for yourself the type of magic that bubbles even further beneath the surface that no physical recording could possibly capture. The visceral intensity of any of Godcaster's public ceremonies of performance, small or large, further highlights the immediacy and impact of their guttural, primal expression and unveils more of their enigmatic presence. The thunderous crash of symbols, the slicing guitars, the driving bass, and the angelic cacophony of keys, flute, and voice'especially that of Von Lee, whose crystalline falsetto has a particularly paralyzing magnificence live'leave very few non-believers in their wake. Godcaster creates their own kind of protean piety based on the exaltation of movement and sound and Long Haired Locusts is the first of their sacred texts. It is a statement of purpose and acknowledgment of future growth beyond the limits of these sounds or any others. Whether you praise be or shutter in fear, we must all bear witness to the mythic rise of the music and the movement that is Godcaster.

Something happened on No. The early EPs from Baltimore’s Tomato Flower were pretty, dreamy psychedelia. Warm to the touch, like looking up at the trees on a cloudless day. On No, the four-piece’s debut album, those trees, that cloudless sky, have become haunted, thorny, stormy. It takes Tomato Flower from buttoned-up, almost technically formalist psych pop to something more urgent, raw, emotionally immediate. No is messier, more expansive, and through all of its chaos, the band’s most rigorous artistic statement to date.

No is the band’s first effort made entirely in person, the first thing tracked in a studio instead of in a bedroom. It is a highly collaborative record written and recorded by everyone, partially made live. It is very much the byproduct of a band that has done some serious touring, following a coast-to-coast tour with Animal Collective in the summer of 2022.

Lead single “Destroyer,” has Jamison Murphy practically screaming over angular guitars, oscillating in a sonic space somewhere between the prettiness of Broadcast and the sludge of Jesus Lizard. It also presents an early entry point to one of No’s major conceptual underpinnings: that of the breakup between Murphy and fellow co-lead vocalist and guitarist Austyn Wohlers, which occurred during the composition of the album.

It wouldn’t be fair to just call No a break up album. It’s far more complicated with that. No is a record about negation: I will not do this, you cannot tell me what to do, we are not living in a utopia, don’t be delusional. No embraces a kind of brutal realism, a confrontation of life that only happens when you wizen up a little bit. All of it is a brutal delight, a departure from the past, a nod to a startling present.

Something happened on No. The early EPs from Baltimore’s Tomato Flower were pretty, dreamy psychedelia. Warm to the touch, like looking up at the trees on a cloudless day. On No, the four-piece’s debut album, those trees, that cloudless sky, have become haunted, thorny, stormy. It takes Tomato Flower from buttoned-up, almost technically formalist psych pop to something more urgent, raw, emotionally immediate. No is messier, more expansive, and through all of its chaos, the band’s most rigorous artistic statement to date.

No is the band’s first effort made entirely in person, the first thing tracked in a studio instead of in a bedroom. It is a highly collaborative record written and recorded by everyone, partially made live. It is very much the byproduct of a band that has done some serious touring, following a coast-to-coast tour with Animal Collective in the summer of 2022.

Lead single “Destroyer,” has Jamison Murphy practically screaming over angular guitars, oscillating in a sonic space somewhere between the prettiness of Broadcast and the sludge of Jesus Lizard. It also presents an early entry point to one of No’s major conceptual underpinnings: that of the breakup between Murphy and fellow co-lead vocalist and guitarist Austyn Wohlers, which occurred during the composition of the album.

It wouldn’t be fair to just call No a break up album. It’s far more complicated with that. No is a record about negation: I will not do this, you cannot tell me what to do, we are not living in a utopia, don’t be delusional. No embraces a kind of brutal realism, a confrontation of life that only happens when you wizen up a little bit. All of it is a brutal delight, a departure from the past, a nod to a startling present.

Tallahassee, FL singer-songwriter Sarah Morrison’s debut studio album Attachment Figure depicts the strangeness of exploring new relationships with subtle and spacious electronic production. As a former live keyboardist in Locate S,1, Morrison co-produced Attachment Figure with fellow bandmates Ross Brand and Clayton Rychlik, both of whom also play in Of Montreal's backing band. She was motivated to experiment with looser song structures and more unconventional chord progressions by her collaborators’ fondness for avant-garde jazz, as well as Locate S,1 frontwoman Christina Schneider’s idiosyncratic writing style. Throughout the album, echoing keys, woodwinds, and guitar ripple like a moonlit lake from which Morrison’s voice emerges. Her presence is spectral, yet conversational, willing to conjure concrete imagery of mango-flavored vitamins and the warmth of phone chargers alongside ghost stories of mannequin corpses and epistolary curses, a balance shaped by an obsession with the theatrical sincerity of Kate Bush and Mark Hollis. Lyrically, Attachment Figure meditates on questions about identity, personal growth, and helplessness – whether within a relationship or the oppressive structures of society itself – often rooted in Morrison’s experiences growing up in the South. “There’s a connection between Southern hospitality and femininity and just allowing things to happen,” Morrison says. "I've been in many relationships with people who have used that 'southern charm' to their advantage. I think a lot of people, non-men in particular, put on this charm instinctively. It's a defense mechanism that I was interested in studying." Attachment Figure is perpetually suspended between states of being, harmony and dissonance, and contradictory sentiments we all hold as we enter into the arms of someone new, but ultimately, it’s guided by a desire for authentic love—and a flair for intricate, intuitive songcraft.