Indierock | Alternative Preorder 397 Items

Since 2018, Vancouver BC’s jangle-pop meets riot-twee trio WUT have been making a local name for themselves with their joyfully heartfelt live performances. In 2020, the trio released NOW, an energetic cassette accompanied by 10 DIY music videos. These earnest and often humorous videos reflect WUT’s playful yet sincere songwriting. Recently, WUT recorded Mingling With The Thorns, their sophomore full-length album. Mingling With The Thorns was created during two years of intermittent quarantines which caused guitarist Kaity McWhinney (Knife Pleats / Love Cuts), bassist Tracey Vath (Knife Pleats / Love Cuts), and drummer Lauren Smith (Tough Age / Jock Tears), to write songs independently, and share their ideas through countless emails, dropbox folders, and google drives. Long periods of isolation were consumed by experimentation with different arrangements, and often an idea would be re-worked over and over (and over) again. This resulted in a collection of carefully crafted pop songs that reflect the bands mutual love for c86 jangle pop and early Flying Nun Records bands. McWhinney’s longtime friend and musical collaborator, Christina Riley (Artsick, / Burnt Palms) joins WUT on the track “Your Feelings”, which pushes the band into the realms of garage rock with her raw and frenetic lead guitar. On a surface level, Mingling With The Thorns may seem fun and carefree. However, a dig deeper into the album’s lyrical content draws up themes that grapple with patriarchy and late stage capitalism; specifically the struggle to find personal autonomy within these social systems.

On his new album Sun Glories, Oakland-based musician, composer, and producer Chuck Jo...

Singing black-lit liturgies of bog bodies caked in mud, entranced by nocturnal landscapes flickering in the moon-glow and powered by queer enchantment, Tristwch y Fenywod are a Welsh-language gothic avant-rock power-coven. Exhumed from the depths of Leeds’ experimental underground, the trio consist of Gwretsien Ferch Lisbeth (Guttersnipe, The Ephemeron Loop), Leila Lygad (Hawthonn) and Sidni Sarffwraig (Slaylor Moon, The Courtneys).

Stark, striking and bewitching, Tristwch y Fenywod’s self-titled album is their debut studio recording, following just 10 gigs and a live demo. Formed in 2022, Tristwch y Fenywod ("The Sadness of Women”) record exclusively in the Welsh language, conjuring an eldritch, subterranean, alien folk music played on dual zither, electronic drums and bass guitar. With towering, siren-like vocals curling around the Welsh consonants, accompanied by stark, martial rhythms and swirling claw-plucked strings, Tristwch y Fenywod feels like an early 4AD recording dredged from the waters of an Anglesey swamp. The effect is simultaneously chilling and stirring.

The eight tracks on the record constitute what feels like a recently rediscovered, unholy grail of edgy, atmospheric, occult feminist goth emissions. Gwretsien’s dual-zither playing scatters melodic fragments and spirals of harmony around the decimated space opened up by the lugubrious bass playing and pounding, brooding drum pads. Coupled with the Welsh vocal, Tristwch y Fenywod embody a new, unique Celtic darkwave sound, equal parts Pornography-era The Cure, Svitlana Nianio’s haunted hammered string-work and the dark beauty of Dead Can Dance or This Mortal Coil. Opener Blodyn Gwyrdd feels like the last ride of Princess Ukok, with lumbering bass and 6/8 rhythms in procession to the event horizon with an entreating, impassioned vocal and surprising lyrical theme. The doomed dancing of the zither provides the mysterious melodic bedrock throughout the album, particularly on Ferch Gyda’r Llygaid Du’s heavy funereal sway and the slowly building, paroxysmal banshee breakdown of Awen: an astonishing swell of thrilling chaos.

The album was recorded and produced by Ross Halden and the band at Hohm Studio, Bradford, Summer 2023.

Milky Clear Vinyl.Aprender a Ser: Extended is an EP by Mexico City band MintField. It was recorded in the same sessions as Mint Field'slatest album, Aprender A Ser. Mint Field decided to split thework into an album and an EP as they felt it was too dense fora double album and wanted these songs to co-exist in anotherspace and have its own time to shine. As with Aprender A Ser,the EP incorporates influences from shoegaze, trip-hop, dreampop and electronic music. The final track includes longtimefriend and cello player Mabe Fratti to play Cello.Time. It's something we tend to cherish. As a band, you'retypically thrown into more than usual stressful scenarios whenrecording albums and rushing decisions becomes the norm.Mexico City's Mint Field knows this all too well.Rewind to the spring of 2020 (yes, Covid). The band startedfleshing out their new album Aprender a Ser (meaning LearnTo Be in English), the follow up to 2020's minimalist psych/shoegaze album, Sentimiento Mundial. For the first time, theband was not under any time constraints in the recordingprocess. They wrote, recorded, produced and mixed the albumin isolation. They had time to slow things down and think moreobsessively about the sound, environment and vibe theywanted to create.Aprender a Ser became really intimate, every single detail wasmeticulously worked on. Mint Field recorded take after take, butat the same time tried to keep the soul of the demos intact.Some of the guitar and drums are first takes in the finalversions. The band would let a recording sit, leave it and comeback to it. The songs evolved a lot doing so, but at the sametime didn't lose the essence of its original intention.Thematically, Aprender a Ser talks about opening ourperspective of the reality that we live every day, acknowledgingeach moment that we witness in life. Learning to recognizewhat we are, what we live, what we see, what we feel. Whetherit's seeing ourselves in the past and observing how we have...

Black Bile compiles some of Umberto"s most resplendent, sanguine music to date. The solo work of LA composer Matt Hill draws heavily from the world of cinema, spinning immersive narratives and rich atmospheres using sound alone. Hill, an active composer for film and television, recently scored the 2022 Jerry Pyle film Loveseat (soundtrack was released in 2023). Other recent scores include the 2020 thriller Archenemy, from the producers of cult classic Mandy.Inspired by the ancient Greek theory of the "four humors," an early medical theory linking the inner workings of the human body to the elements. "Black bile" specifically links the feelings of melancholy with autumn. Hill"s celestial compositions are an autumnal soundtrack conveying beauty, yearning, reflection and comfort.Many of the album"s phrases are constructed from just two notes or sounds, arranged by Hill into complex patterns that undulate with an organic pulse. The spare melodic structure holds a myriad of small and beautiful details. The songs began with Hill improvising on the piano, to find the notes and patterns that created the musical and emotional structure from which he could expand with textural detail. Hill then would often remove the initial structure leaving a sparer and more skeletal one which he could again expand upon to create a full piece. The careful attention to each detail gives his minimal compositions emotional heft. The album masterfully stakes Umberto"s claim among other avant-ambient boundary pushers such as Lawrence English or Laurel Halo.