Review: "The Many Deaths of Laila Starr"

By the third issue of The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, I feel like I could have followed Death through whatever life she wanted to show me, if only to see the kinds of worlds she hangs around. Inhabiting the body of Laila Starr, and with a few favors to call in, Death is flung wildly into the different lives and times of Mumbai to find a way to restore her role as a god. Written by Ram V, the story is framed in such a way that hooked me every time a new issue began. The familiar stranger at the party, or the friend tagging an old pillow factory wall, sweeps Laila into slices of life (and death) she may have missed in her previous profession. Filipe Andrade, the artist for all currently released issues, makes the city breath with the energy of a large population. At times the details are overwhelming, crowded, and intricate. But in other places they flow in the shaky dance of smoke - or water, or flowers, or the hot city streets - that make the pages feel all consuming. The colors are bright and fluid, which makes even the night feel unique with life.

In the first issue, “Once Upon A Falling Starr,” we are shown the rapidly colliding paths of Death, the goddess who is fired from the corporation of gods and cast to live among the mortals; Laila Starr, who’s orphan body Death now inhabits; and Darius Shah, the baby who would grow to be the inventor of immortality. As Death, now Laila Starr, grapples with living in a mortal body, and whether to kill the baby Darius Shah or not, she dies and is brought back to life again by an old friend: the God of Life, Pranah.

Death and Pranah share quiet moments at the end of each episode and, as coworkers, as old friends, they catch up in the way only people who know each others’ past can - with sympathy and wisdom.

What is striking about The Many Deaths of Laila Starr - as the second issue flies by, and then the third - are these tender moments. Reflections on death and life couch so easily into the different characters’ histories. Whether the focus is on the personhood of a servant, who spends his days harvesting mangoes and jackfruit and sapodilla but is not allowed to eat them, or how new love can sometimes make you contemplate mortality, The Many Deaths… is a delicate look into what surrounds a person’s life, and what makes up their inner worth. There are mistakes and fleeting moments; there are heavy realizations. There is death. But when the issue ends, and Laila Starr returns to Pranah (to Life) from another death, there is often the calm sea - or the view from the balcony, or a room with a bed and a chair by the window - that acts as a re-centering of perspective. The finality of death becomes the end of a day from which you can start again to realign with the cosmic reality of a person’s journey.

This comic is a gift to the audience, not only because it’s an insight into a world and culture we may not be familiar with (especially in this medium, especially this widely distributed in the US), but also because the story builds beautiful empathy for life (and in many ways death). By forcing the God of Death into a mortal form, even if that form is repeatedly resurrected by the God of Life, the story becomes about the human elements she may have missed in her previous existence. It becomes about us.

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr is written by Ram V and illustrated by Filipe Andrade, and issue #4 is out this week from Boom! Studios.

Episode 190 - Erica Schreiner

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast we talked with video artist, poet, and Marietta Magazine founder Erica Schreiner. From riot grrrl inspired introspection to the body depersonalization that comes from editing and modeling yourself for so many years, Erica takes us deep into the life of an artist living and working in New York.

Erica Schreiner's work is best found on her website. (some of it may not be safe for viewing at work).

Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller.

direct download.

Review: Spellling's "The Turning Wheel"

The Turning Wheel, Spellling’s third full length album, is a fantastical departure from the synth driven records before it. Featuring over 30 musicians, the album feels plucked from another time, or maybe from outside of time.

The Turning Wheel, according to the artist behind Spellling, Chrystia Cabral, “revolves around themes of human unity, the future, divine love and the enigmatic ups and downs of being a part of this carnival called life.” Split into two sections, Above and Below, the album navigates these themes first with a sense of wonder, then with a darker tone.

On the first side, Above, I was surprised by just how joyful the songs could sound. “Little Deer” is flowy and fantastical - horns lend a big band jazziness, while the harp adds a dreamy texture to underlie the song. “Always” feels inspired by doo-wop ballads, singing “Please don’t steal my heart” while a bass plucks under strings and horns. 

To me, the big standout track of the album is the title track. “The Turning Wheel” is anthemic. Tonally, it sounds like it came straight out of the early 70s. The piano, backed up by organ, guitar, strings, and horns, builds to a joyous mid-track solo that invokes a feeling of people laying in fields of flowers. This, paired with Cabral’s fantastic vocal delivery, makes us believe that maybe we can, in fact, break out of the Turning Wheel of life, step out of time, and transcend to a new state of being.

“The Future” is the most theatrical feeling song on the album. It is easy to imagine this track performed in a musical play, perhaps where the lead is discovering a latent magical ability that has been hiding within them. “Awaken” continues this theatrical feeling. The vocal delivery and organs paired together, with the climbing percussion and horns, are the first steps to beginning a journey that will change you forever; a crossing of the threshold in sort of Campbellian terms (as a note, this is not an endorsement of Joseph Campbell’s ideas of monomyth, moreso an acknowledgement of his influence on modern storycraft).

With the track “Boys at School” we have fully submerged into the Below. Darker tones reign from this point forward - pianos dance in minor keys, and the formerly flamboyant horns now feel more somber. The boys never play by the rules, and we hear a grasping at youth and innocence sure to be lost. The following track, “Legacy,” is a sort of seductive haunting; rolling strings and plucky synths backed by a Latin percussion section invite you in. Cabral sings “I’ll crawl, I’ll crawl, into the daylight” to find a frightening legacy.

While Below is darker, and less fantastical than Above, it also feels connected to change. In the Above section, we are in the dream world; we see the unity and divine love from Cabral’s statement. In Below, there is action: “I draw my sword from the sorrow,” “too far to turn back now,” “I’m in a permanent revolution.” Reality is painful. It can feel like we’re trapped on this Turning Wheel with no way off, no way to stop the repeating revolutions of the sun. But this reality is also where we explore how we can bring ourselves closer to our dreams and to each other. There’s a hope in the darkness of Below that we can find our own pieces of the utopian Above. It’s a theme that could easily come off as corny, but through Spellling’s fantastic and fantastical writing, it comes off as sincere and heartfelt.

The Turning Wheel is available now on Bandcamp and through Sacred Bones.

Episode 189 - Nadja

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast we have an interview with Aidan Baker from the doom/experimental metal band Nadja. They have a huge catalog and a nearly constant state of production, so it was great to talk to Aidan about life in Berlin, soundtrack work, books, and a 3-hour performance as the sun was coming up over a parking garage in Toronto.

Nadja's new album, Luminous Rot, is out now on Southern Lord.

Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller.

Direct download.

Review: Ryou Minenami's "Boy's Abyss"

Content Warning: This review, and the manga it highlights, deal directly (and often) with the subject of suicide. This manga is also sexually explicit and not safe to read at work.

What stood out to me about Boy’s Abyss (Shonen no Abisu in Japan) in hindsight was that every character the story interacted with was haunted by the legend of their town. Up the road, not far from Market Street, or the school, or the bridge that becomes the centerpiece for many chapters of Ryou Minenami’s Seinen manga, is a place called Lover’s Abyss. Made popular by the novel Spring's Coffin (a fictional novel famous within the story), Lover’s Abyss is the location of a lover’s suicide that happened a generation before our main cast takes the stage. Throughout the six volumes currently available – through tumult and peril, life and death, escape – nearly all of the characters are burdened with the mystery, or in some ways the seduction, of Lover’s Abyss, which not only connects all of their stories in a meaningful way, but builds their foundational drives. 

Small towns are the settings for many dark stories because they easily embody a relatable seclusion from what a majority of readers may currently be experiencing. In Boy’s Abyss, the small town is introduced as Reiji, the main protagonist, takes the very attractive and secretly pop idol famous Nagi Aoe around on the back of his bike. He’s amazed that she has decided to live in their small town after not only being famous, but also living in Tokyo (a place he dreams of going, but feels very far from ever living in). Reiji, who has many challenges to his home life and with his self esteem, is easily swooned by the story of Lover’s Abyss and the idea that a lover’s suicide might actaully be a way to escape his life; while that is a very obvious and emotionally charged journey for the main focus of the story, it is not what I’m talking about when I say the characters are haunted by Lover’s Abyss. Nagi Aoe knows the story – she’s read it– saying at one point, looking over a bridge at night with Reiji, as they both dwindle into apathy, “I kinda felt jealous [after reading Spring’s Coffin]. It’s the happiest way to die, after all.”

But Boy’s Abyss is not a loveletter to suicide, despite its repeated motifs and direct mention of the act. Reiji goes through many iterations of the outcomes of his own death and, repeatedly, finds reasons to live (even if they are, sometimes, for the wrong reasons). Most of the characters are confronted by it. The dreary, rainy small town. The poverty of Reiji’s family and why they feel stuck in their situation. The bridge, ominously between Market Street and home. As Reiji tumbles to the edge of the bridge and back to the safety of the grassy hill just to the side of it, he is embraced by the different characters in his life. His best friend, Sakuko, who introduced him to Nagi’s idol group, not to mention the novel Spring’s Coffin, fills him with hope that they can both escape to Tokyo and be happy together. Yuri, a well meaning homeroom teacher, interferes to give Reiji some financial and housing assistance – although, at points, this is to his detriment and serves to amplify his depression and hopelessness. As you get further into the volumes, Boy’s Abyss becomes a deeply connected story that often pays off things that were thrown away early in its serialization in Young Jump magazine. The characters shift and push against each other, always leaving room for new realizations and perils. Reiji goes from hopeless high school senior, stuck in the endless cycle of his family’s life, to someone with profound life experience stuck in the endless cycle still. 

The serialized nature of the story works for a large part of the six volumes that have been translated, but towards the end (as new chapters are released weekly, then later translated and put online) the story begins to reach further than its core premise. At a certain point it became obvious the manga was popular and the demand meant the story would need to continue much further than it might have been originally planned. Side characters are given front-facing motivations and storylines that feel slightly out of place next to the pitch-perfect mood of the first five or so volumes. 

Popularity, while good for the manga and for reaching a larger audience, can often lead to unreasonable (and dangerous) work conditions. An ongoing conversation about burnout and health risks related to the timelines and expectations of manga and anime are a topic that I have only recently become aware of, but see as a parallel to conversations about game design crunch, wherein a smaller number of people than necessary are rushed and bullied into completing tasks through extremely long work periods, despite the evidence being high that this practice does not produce quality work or longevity in the industry. This is all to say that I do want this manga to blow up and become popular, but not at the risk of the creator’s mental or physical health and, while I think it’s within the means of this review to be slightly critical of the story spreading thinner than it may have been originally planned, I’d like to note that this is definitely not a commentary on how the creator should just “work harder” or “plan better,” but instead a commentary on how we should treat creators with patience, time, and the money they need to live productive and healthy lives doing what they love to do. 

Boy’s Abyss is the best manga I’ve read so far. After consuming six volumes, I started over because I knew there would be minute details I missed and couldn’t stop thinking about them. The characters and the writing are deep wells of human insight and drama. At no point, even now, do I feel like I would be able to tell you where their lives would go or in some cases where they’ve been. But I feel like I know all the characters so well. I think about Reiji and Sakuko’s friendship. I think about Nagi Aoe and why she made the choice to leave fame to live as an anonymous person in a small town. I want to read Spring’s Coffin, which we get small excerpts of in the later chapters. Ryou Minenami reaches into the dark, small town of Boy’s Abyss and finds a cast that can not only act as the shadow facets of a relatable psyche, but also shows his audience where people come from and how they’re built; how escape is misguided by youthful angst, and how a home can be shaped around the survival more than the unit of a family. 

More people need to read Boy’s Abyss so I can talk to them about some of the elements I wasn’t able to spoil in this review. Unfortunately the only place to read the English translations legally right now is through Kindle. A physical edition has not been produced yet in English.

Episode 188 - Bustié (re-run)

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast we are finishing out our summer break re-run episodes with Bustié! This interview was originally recorded in a cafe outside of The Liquor Store in Portland, right before Bustié played on their Birds of Paradise tour in 2019. We have fond memories of this interview and the show, and are happy to bring it back out again.

Bustié's "Birds of Paradise" can be found on their bandcamp and look out for their shows starting up again!

Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller. For more episodes or direct downloads, check out our archive page.

Review: Schwefelgelb - "Der Rest Der Nacht"

I have a long history of pushing Schwefelgelb on this site. From the first time I heard Dunkel Vor Den Augen Uns I have been totally hooked on their synthesis of techno and EBM. Ten records later I’m still finding their interpretations of the genre the most compelling of any EBM act out there.

Der Rest Der Nacht, Schwefelgelb’s latest release, hits immediately. “Impulskörper” slams out of the gate with an incredibly hard hitting kick and minimal composition. Slowly building, Schwefelgelb layers on hats and bass. It’s fully a minute and half before we get some semblance of a melody, and even the melody, when introduced, feels percussive. 

Something Schwefelgelb consistently does well is create songs that, despite averaging around 6 minutes in length, manage to have such movement and evolution that you never really have a chance to get bored with what’s happening. Just when a rhythm starts to feel like it’s about to get repetitive, they hit a switch up, moving to a new bassline or making significant changes to percussive soundscape, and pull you straight back into the movement of the track.

You can really hear this expert construction on the“Lichtenberg-Figur”, a 7 minute long absolute banger of a track. Starting with a simple four on the floor backed by a percussive melody, the track soon cuts the kick and introduces off-beat hat hits. This moves to a simple vocal section that introduces some subtle variations in the kick rhythm and some distorted hits. Before you know it, the song cuts away to a sort of rave stab melody that completely changes the feel of the song. Schwefelgelb goes on to use subtle variations on the earlier percussive melody and the rave stab melody to ensure that the track keeps you moving and unconcerned with its length. 

When confronted with tracks like “Horizont,” with its stuttering kick, rolling stabs, and compressed to hell percussion, I find myself involuntarily jumping around, dancing, hooting and hollering in my room, pulling out my hair in disbelief of just how good it makes me feel. When you break down what’s happening at any given point, you find there are not that many layers there - despite sounding maximalist at points, the choices Schwefelgelb makes in their compositions are clearly very intentional, with nothing more than what’s needed to achieve their desired effect.

The final track is a remix from Randomer. It’s always hard to imagine taking a Schwefelgelb track and turning it up. Everything is already so well constructed that it requires a full reimagining to pull off a good remix of Schwefelgelb’s work. Well, “Wie Viel Haut” is certainly re-imagined here. Ripping acid synths roar over a wild, driven, and absolutely unhinged reconfiguration of the track. It hits me in a completely different way, but still manages to never be boring and keeps my head slamming from start to finish.

If you haven’t dipped your toes into the discography of Schwefelgelb, Der Rest Der Nacht is absolutely a great place to start. There’s not a bad track on the release, and when played at high volume I imagine you’ll find it as hard to sit still as I did.

Schwefelgelb is a techno project based in Berlin. You can find Der Rest Der Nacht on Schwefelgelb’s Bandcamp.

Episode 187 - Divide And Dissolve (Re-Run)

For our second Summer Break episode we are excited to re-run our interview with the doom / experimental metal project Divide and Dissolve from February of 2019. Divide and Dissolve are one of those bands who really challenged us on our views and the way we talked about metal music. We both came away from the interview feeling like we'd just had our asses kicked in the most fantastic way.

Divide and Dissolve describe their aims as a project as “a simple one: to secure Black futures, liberation, and freedom; demand Indigenous Sovereignty; uplift people of color’s experiences; and destroy white supremacy.”

Divide and Dissolve have a new album out now called Gaslit, which you can check out on their Bandcamp.

Talking to Ghosts is recorded and produced by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller.

Direct Download.

Review: Hiraki - "Stumbling Through The Walls"

Over the last few years, chaotic art music has become a core-level emotional experience in the experimental metal and noise scenes. With bands like Mamaleek, Frontierer, and Street Sects making deep ruts in my frequently recommended albums for anyone seeking an intense musical experience, I was surprised to find that I’d never heard Hiraki’s 2017 debut album Modern Genes. How could a band with such a perfect balance of messy and cohesively chaotic energy make a follow up that could not only rival their debut, but turn it in a way that felt fresh and linear at the same time?

How could someone win me over after hearing Mamaleek’s Come and See? For Hiraki, the answer to this was to go even harder. More discomfort; more crushing, intense rhythms; more beauty in moments of chaos (and sometimes malice). From the analog synth gates to the blown-speaker transcendence of modern noise rock, Hiraki finds a way to make the discomfort stick to your ribs. The vocals are gross, but also deeply emotional. The drums are huge, never to be overtaken by other sometimes more intense rhythmic elements.

“Proto Skin,” which comes six and a half minutes into the record, is the first moment of reprieve from the madness of the first two tracks. But even “Proto Skin,” with it’s almost post-hardcore second half and it’s suddenly more traditional emotional hardcore scream, can’t be trusted. From the start of the track, a very mechanical guitar riff, which is almost old school industrial in its rhymicallity, devolves into a mess of cymbals and catharsis, which then returns to the mechanical, plodding-along tension of the start. “I’ll be here all year,” vocalist Jon Gotlev repeats many times, “just yelling.” 

Out of context, “Proto Skin” would slip rather comfortably into a screamo playlist. It would have to be near the noisy peak of pure emotion, but I believe it would work. In context though, next to the aggressive churning and frantic “Wonderhunt,” or the nearly death industrial vibe of “New Standards,” it is the balancing point that forms a cohesive map to the latter half of the record. It shows that Hiraki are not only not fucking around, but that genres are for suckers. Heaviness by any means necessary and transcendence through raw human emotion.

“Mirror Stalker,” like “Proto Skin,” is built around a pulsing, mechanical rhythm. The track is littered with almost-notes from the guitars. It’s almost a strum, but cut off. Even the notes that are played are out of tune. It’s so frustratingly uncomfortable. But goddamn does it work well as an atmosphere that surrounds someone yelling “Mirror stalker, mirror stalker!”

The final track, “The Alarmist,” combines all of the energy and catharsis of previous tracks to bring the entire frenetic mess to a stumbling, noisy end. The track devolves from a classic hardcore build up, to a breakdown driven by quick hits on a highhat, with the guitar and the noisy atmosphere filling out both the high and low end, until the noise layer takes over and churns slowly from a melodic, almost uplifting, run to a nightmare of overblown, clipping bass distortion. The drums disappear, then the guitar, then everything, into the reverb tail at the end of the track.

The evolution of Hiraki from one album to the next seems to be more bleakness, more disgusting, raw humanity, and I’m here for it. The noisy, electronic elements are more developed and the overall sound design has crossed from progressive art metal over to raw electronic power. In a decade filled with fantastically avant garde and progressive art musicians like Street Sects, Lingua Ignota, and Daughters, it’s always amazing to me when a band manages to just blow my mind in the category. Stumbling Through The Walls is a massively intense and complicated album, and if the progression from debut to sophomore album is any indication, the next work from this project will be crushing.

Hiraki’s Stumbling Through The Walls is out now on Nefarious Industries, or directly on Bandcamp.

Episode 186 - Muscle & Marrow (re-run)

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast we are re-running our 2016 interview with the experimental metal band Muscle & Marrow (featuring a new intro and slightly improved audio)! Although this band is no longer active, the duo have a great new pop project called So Sensitive!

Muscle & Marrow were one of our favorite projects and it was an amazing opportunity for us to interview these great folks while they were still living in Portland, OR. 

Talking to Ghosts is recorded and produced by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller. Check out our archive page for previously released podcast episodes, or the Reviews page for new reviews!

Direct Download.

Review: Go

Go is a 2,500 year old two-player board game where players take turns placing stones, working to capture territory on a grid. The basics of Go are relatively simple, and with a friend who knows the game guiding you, you can see improvement in your play within an hour or two of starting.

Photo of two people playing Go by Brian Jeffery Beggerly

I started playing Go in mid-2020 as a way to spend time with my friends online. A good friend introduced me and several others to OGS, one of the main western servers for playing Go online. I was surprised to find that once I knew the basics of the game, I could very quickly look at more advanced players’ games (even professional matches) and have an understanding of what was happening and who was ahead. Unlike Chess, where you need to know a huge number of set-ups and variations, Go is visually straight-forward and easy to follow. All the information you need to understand the board is right there in front of you. 

I started watching Go matches on YouTube, doing tsumego (life and death) puzzles, and bought books so I could study and become a better player. Go became a direction to point myself during a pandemic that had robbed me of my focus. While I had trouble creating music or art, I could look at these little black and white stones and learn their patterns and strategies. I felt it change not just how I played Go but how I approached other things as well; the study had affected and sharpened my problem solving outside of the game. Slowly, I began moving up in rank on OGS.

A beginner starts at a rank of around 30-kyu and moves to lower numbers as they get better. Kyu can be thought of as a “student” rank. Within the kyu rankings, you can generally think of double-digit kyu players (often abbreviated as DDK) as casual or beginner players, and single-digit kyu players (abbreviated as SDK) as more intermediate players. Once you pass 1-kyu, your next rank would be 1-dan, with dan being a sort of “master” rank. At this point, you can rank up to 7-dan, the highest amateur rank.

Right now I’m sitting around 15-kyu. I’ve been playing enough to not be quite a beginner but also not quite intermediate. As one of the few things I’ve been able to focus on in the past several months, I’ve spent a lot of time watching games live on OGS. As a semi-casual player, it’s fascinating to watch different ranks of play in Go. At low ranks, like 25-20 kyu, I am amazed to see mistakes that, while obvious to me now, I was making constantly not very long ago. Then, when watching SDK ranks, I’ll think I’ve read out a solution to an area of play, only to see moves I never would have considered completely blow my reads out of the water (looking ahead in a series of moves is referred to as “reading” in Go).

Go also lends itself to developing a personal style. Masaki Takemiya, a 9-dan player, who uses an instinctual “cosmic style,” says that Go is more like a dance than a fight, and notes that learning to dance made him a better player. Cho Chikun, also 9-dan, is extremely thoughtful about how he reads out moves, and is a master at fighting for the life of groups. Then you have many players who study the latest AI inspired plays, plays with potential for high points but may seem unintuitive to human players who can’t read out hundreds of possible board states in a split second. This room for creativity and expression is another reason Go is both fun to play and interesting to watch.

While the increase in focus has been nice, the most important aspect of Go has been the time that it’s given me with friends. We’ll periodically call an impromptu Go club, where we take turns playing each other, with various handicaps to account for differences in rank (stones pre-placed on the board), and review the games we’ve played to help each other better understand the game. Now that my friends and I have started to get vaccinated, one of the first things we plan to do as a small group is play Go on real boards, in person (probably in a park because, let’s be honest, we’re all going to be dealing with a lingering anxiety about enclosed spaces for a long time). This deceptively simple game has had what I believe will be a long lasting impact on me and my relationships, making those friendships stronger, and creating a noticeable difference in how I think about problem solving, pushing for more patience and strategy. 

During the pandemic, we’ve all had to find ways to be with the people we are forced apart from. For you, maybe it’s been a book club, a remote movie night, or video games. I’m deeply grateful for my time with Go and with the people it’s brought me closer to. I look forward to seeing where it takes me as I start playing in person. I hope you’ll try the game yourself and find it as capturing as I have.

Episode 185 - Big|Brave

This week on Talking to Ghosts we talked with Mathieu Ball from Big|Brave about their new album "VITAL," which is out now on Southern Lord. We talked about recording during the early phases of pandemic lockdown, minimalism in art and music, and sound art. 

Big|Brave is an experimental metal band from Canada and their new album is heavy and brutal. Check out more from them on Bandcamp.

**SUMMER BREAK ANNOUNCEMENT**

We will be taking a little over a month off from the show to refresh ourselves after 7 years and a hard pandemic. TTG will be re-running our next three episodes with new intros. We will still be doing brand new reviews for the site during our down time. Returning on 6/28 with a new interview!

Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller.

Direct Download.

Review: GLAARE - "Your Hellbound Heart"

When we interviewed GLAARE back in 2018, outside of the now demolished Tonic Lounge in Portland, we were not prepared for the live show we were about to see — the energy of the flashing lights and the fierce movements of the band were not quite what we expected from a project that is so steeped in the dreamy atmosphere of post-punk synth music. For me, it reframed their first album, To Deaf and Day, in a way that shifted from darkly dreampop, to a kind of sinister vulnerability. Tracks like “Ruins,” which start punchy and active are overtaken by a stressed and almost painfully maudlin performance by not only lead singer Rachel Pierce, but the rest of the band too. Perhaps I’m nostalgic for live shows, after a long year of streaming concerts and festivals, but when the new GLAARE album was announced, all the excitement and intensity of their performance flooded back to me. 

Your Hellbound Heart has a bright and grotesque cover. Not Pharmakon grotesque, where the sweaty bodies pile over each other and give me a sticky, queasy feeling, but the washed out neon grotesque of a late-80s digital underground. Fingers in a pink mouth, aggressively. It’s an image that fits the album musically, but also communicates so much of the themes in each song. Love and vulnerability, aggression and for-better-or-worse, aging and that feeling when you just want to leave town forever.  

From the first moments of “Young Hell,” it is clear the production is huge. The blend of post-punk, heavy reverberated guitar, noisy atmospheric pads, and electronic drums — something that was so key to the sound of To Deaf and Day — has been fine-tuned to an almost overwhelming wash of glamorous tension.

Post-punk, which has been going through a decade-long explosion in popularity, does not quite describe GLAARE. In the same way that bands like Hante. or All Your Sisters have shifted into something more unique than the larger scene label, Your Hellbound Heart feels characteristically unconcerned with sticking to the conventional wisdoms of what you might think of as post-punk. On “Divine Excess,” for example, the synth melody is much closer to computer-music or bedroom-pop than the big washy synths used on “Young Hell,” or the more guitar driven, classic sound of “Mirrors.” Then, a track like “Buyers Remorse” will hit and, while it sometimes feels out of place next to previous tracks, it bangs. The trance gate that leads the track is layered on and subverted by more and more instrumentation. The track evolves in the way I would expect something from Boy Harsher to turn and grind into that deep close-your-eyes-and-drift feeling. The dark room, the crowd all around you, swaying. I cannot wait to see this song performed live.

After a fluid mix of heavy drums and atmosphere — some dance tracks, some big moods — a drumless soundscape takes us home. It isn’t sudden; the plucky, single-note rhythms that filtered through the entire album come to a close in a slow wave that disappears into nothingness. “I guess I’ll just be happy” are the last words we hear, then the music fades out, and it’s over.

GLAARE is a band I forgot I was so in love with. From To Deaf and Day, which was a strong debut for a collection of experienced and lived musicians, to Your Hellbound Heart, where the production and sound design is second only to the emotion and tension that lies in every synth stab and pad, GLAARE have easily slipped back into my everyday playlists. Rachel Pierce is a force on stage and I think a lot of that energy has been captured in the vocals on this record. Your Hellbound Heart is a strikingly beautiful and subtly uncomfortable record that I feel will only be more intense in a loud, live environment. 

GLAARE’s sophomore album, Your Hellbound Heart, is out on April 30th via Weyrd Son Records. You can pre-order it now on Bandcamp.

Episode 184 - Xiu Xiu

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast we talk to Jamie Steward from Xiu Xiu about their new record of duets called "OH NO," which is out now on Polyvinyl Records. We talked about pandemic life without near constant touring, the Xiu Xiu subscription service through bandcamp, and the Twin Peaks album. 

Xiu Xiu is best found on Instagram, or if you want to check out their music, check out their Bandcamp page. "OH NO" is fantastic and is out now!

Talking to Ghosts is recorded and produced by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller.

Direct Download

Reveiw: Amulets - "Blooming"

In the summer of 2020, I was flashbanged, chased, and screamed at by the Portland Police, marching not far from my own neighborhood. The experience left me reeling, having trouble sleeping, and, for a while, I had a hard time processing music like I normally would. In this time, I started listening to ambient music on repeat; Crystal Quartez, Marcus Fischer, and Amulets became the soundtrack for my weeks.

It was a chaotic time. The quarantine lockdown was only a few months old, and after the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, protests demanding justice and racial equity filled streets across the country. For Randall Taylor, the artist behind Amulets, it was also a moment of personal upheaval. This was the backdrop of Amulets’ new album, Blooming.

Blooming is an interesting and complicated album. Tonally, it feels darker than previous work by Amulets. The first track, also titled “Blooming,” enlists heavy, pounding guitars that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Holy Fawn or Planning For Burial album. It firmly announces that we’re hearing something new and different. What sounds like distorted screams roar under a sparkling soundscape punctuated by the songs of birds. It’s emotional, it’s heavy, but as its title implies, there’s also a sense of rebirth and hope to it.

The long, beautiful droning textures underpinning “New Normal” create a sense of anxiety and waiting – through the morphing unending tones, you are left wondering what comes next. Strings enter, and with them a feeling of sadness. The layered textures create a sense of loss at what came before as we settle into the wait.

When the pandemic started, I was living alone in a studio apartment. From March until October, I didn’t have any in-person conversations – no human contact that wasn’t mediated by a screen or a pair of headphones. I had all the time in the world, but a complete inability to focus or concentrate on anything. An endless holding pattern – waiting for some unseeable end to this isolation.

In “Heaviest Wait,” Amulets continues the heavier tone of “Blooming.” Growling bass that would be at home in a Ben Frost composition underpins the track, creating a seething feeling that plays against the soft twinkling guitars that float over the top of them. It feels like anger and anxious hope – maybe something will give, maybe change will come, but in the meantime all that can be done is to wait.

A few weeks into the pandemic, I started to get hopeful that this crisis would spark some mass change. Unemployment was skyrocketing and it was clear that there were no real safety nets to help people through the crisis. People finally were seeing what essential work was – what would we do without the grocer? Without the delivery driver? The farm worker? Jobs that were treated as low wage and low skill were finally seen as the piece of critical infrastructure they were. Maybe, I thought, we would see the failings of our system and through some mass political awakening we would restructure ourselves into a more fair and more thoughtful society. 

“Tears in the Fabric” is testing the waters, putting one foot in front of the other, searching for solid ground as it moves forward. Slowly intensifying drones, distorted bass, and sweeping guitar march into destruction as the song builds. Repeating mechanical sounds rip at the fabric of the track, until it gives way back to that searching, careful feeling.

I feel like I barely remember life before the pandemic. I can think back to going to shows, sitting in a movie theater, seeing my friends, but it all feels fuzzy and unreal. Even with the vaccine in my arm, it’s hard to imagine ever doing the things I did before. What does it feel like to be in a room with 200 other people now? What does it feel like to give a friend a hug? How terrifying will intimacy be after COVID killed more than 2,400 people in Oregon, 561,000 people in the US, nearly 3,000,000 world wide?

The textures of “Collapse in Memory” feel like they’ve lost sight of the hopefulness of some of the earlier tracks. The reversed, repeating tones feel like they’re reaching out and grasping for something, but it’s slipping through their fingers. Deep drones create a baseline of anxiety in this reaching tone. These tones build, and as the track moves towards its conclusion, are supported by a building, distorting texture, wavering left and right through stereo space. Like the previous track, it is pulling apart at the seams, but this time there’s no release back to some earlier feeling – the distortion tears you straight to the end.

Blooming is filled with beautiful and masterful compositions that, for me, really capture the feelings of the year. Anxiety, anger, sadness, a deep collective and repeating trauma that, for a long time, had no end in sight. Through the use of looping textures, drones, strings, and guitar, Amulets creates a soundtrack for one of the worst years of the 21st century.

Blooming was released on April 2, 2021 on The Flenser. You can find it on Bandcamp, or on The Flenser's website. You can also find our recent interview of Amulets here.

Episode 183 - Amulets (again!)

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast Amulets returns to talk about his new album, Blooming, which is out now on The Flenser! We talked a lot about the new album, the pandemic (of course), and the new mini documentary about Amulets, Tape Wizard by Kilian Vidourek.

Amulets' new album, Blooming, is on its second pressing from The Flenser. 

Check out our first episode with Amulets here.

Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller.

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Review: Dreamwell - "Modern Grotesque"

I have always been a person who judges books by their covers and Dreamwell’s Modern Grotesque is no exception. Running orange and white and black, diluting to yellow, almost burnt in some places, bubbling – not quite a shape, not quite nothingness, but the swell of colors melt together to visualize emotions. The album title appears in a square of letters that don’t quite match up – MOD ERNG ROTE SQUE. Back in February, during the pre-order, I wishlisted this album but never listened to it, which seems to be the only way I can find anything at all in 2021.

Modern Grotesque begins with soft guitar and reverberated pads. Then, screaming – far away – for a minute and a half. While this is a very apt mood setter for the album that follows, and a track that leads seamlessly into the next, it could have easily been in the middle of the album (or at the end, for that matter).

My introduction to screamo/post-hardcore was the My Fictions / Aviator split, which Wes thought I would like. At the time, I was straddling Boston hardcore acts like Have Heart and deathcore beatdown bands like Emmure. But Aviator was different. Longtime readers/listeners will be very familiar with how we both feel about Aviator (a seemingly annual mourning ritual we both parade out for our listeners whether they like it or not!), so to say that Dreamwell accurately captures the feeling I had when I first heard Aviator is extremely high praise. It would be hard for me to describe the sense of excitement with every new track that came on as I ticked through this album.

The third track, “Sayaka,” reminded a lot of reviewers of La Dispute, but I feel that misses a far more interesting aspect of both the vocal performance and the song writing. There is a moment, at 1:38, where I am convinced Tool’s “Sober” was expertly slipped in for twenty seconds. What the fuck? I had backed the track up many times. It’s not the same. But it feels the same. It hits me so hard in the back of the head that I am back at a childhood friend’s house watching the Tool music video collection after his parents went to bed. The bass runs with the drums as the guitar pushes out ethereal single note melodies. But then the groove breaks down and the guitar melody gets faster. The vocals, too, remind me of Tool in that moment: “I need someone to believe in, because I need someone to betray.” What is amazing to me about this section of the song is that, without feeling awkward or messy or out of place, what follows both reminds me of La Dispute and AFI. For a moment, a characteristically similar Davey Havok-like, high-pitched section takes us to the edge of the breakdown, to a one-word turn. The emotionality of the vocal style is never lost as it twists and turns through the different moments in the song (or throughout the album). They become a part of the vulnerability in a way that feels natural.

The album progresses, effortlessly, like the art of the album cover. Influences spill and blend into each other, burning at the edges – creating something new. While I find the listed influences for Modern Grotesque truly fascinating (thanks to this extensive IDIOTEQ.com article, where vocalist Keziah Staska reference Daughters’ You Won’t Get What You Want as a massive influence on writing and vocal style), they can only be a vessel for what makes this album bleed emotional depth. Like so many of the bands they credit, Dreamwell isn’t here to hide deeply personal elements of their life. Sometimes it is steeped in metaphor, like in “Plague Father, Vermin Son,” when Staska sings: “This anxiety’s a black stone you vomited out when you swallowed your children. You must have engraved the worst parts of you in my bones.” But sometimes it is more direct, like in “Painting Myself A Darker Day,” in a long line of screaming comes: “I'm just nervous for the future. Exhausted by the present. Hands are shaking and always on the verge of beating myself into the ground where I can get some sleep. I'm so desperate for sleep.”
Wes and I only made it to one Aviator show before they disbanded. If shows ever return in a real way, and Dreamwell somehow makes it from Rhode Island to the West Coast, I will not be making that mistake again. Modern Grotesque, played start to finish, gets me so amped to bang my head that it's hard for me to even imagine how wild the live experience will inevitably be.

Dreamwell managed to capture everything about my favorite bands and distill it into a release that feels both nostalgic and progressive. From riff-heavy bangers like “Painting Myself A Darker Day” to the peak-Aviator meets Our Lady sad chaos of the titular track, Modern Grotesque is an album that greatly rewards multiple listens. While a lot of the core members worked on their debut album, The Distance Grows Fonder, Dreamwell has made something entirely new with their sophomore release. I would have been perfectly happy with a very competent screamo album (which I think their debut album is), but Dreamwell have shown us that there’s more to be made of the genre yet.

Modern Grotesque was independently published by Dreamwell. You can find it on Bandcamp.

Episode 182 - Jonathan Tuite (The Flenser)

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast we talk to the founder of The Flenser Jonathan Tuite about the early days of the label, what he looks for in an artist, and the future of The Flenser. 

Some artists from The Flenser who we have interviewed in the past include: Street Sects, Elizabeth Colour Wheel, and Sprain! As we mentioned in the interview, the new Amulets album is now available for pre-order! For more releases from The Flenser, check out their Bandcamp page.

Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller.

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Review: Saturate Records

Longtime listeners and readers of Talking To Ghosts will be familiar with my love of Saturate Records. Going back to 2012, they were a jumping on point for my introduction to bass music as a genre broadly. At the time, I wanted to find something that scratched some of the same itches as aggressive American dubstep, but also something that I could find more artistic interest in. Juke, 2-step, and especially future bass really hooked me, and this led me to the artist Krampfhaft, which in turn brought me to Saturate Records.

Saturate Records’ free compilations became a staple in my repeat listening - Saturated! Vol. 3 introduced me to Luisterwaar, G Jones, and Subp Yao. Vol. 4 introduced Deadcrow, Mad Zach, and Ethan Glass. Later releases, like Frenquency’s Greyscale and Starkey’s Odyssey Five, became instant favorites.

A couple years ago, before we entered this long quarantine, I started going to a bass music night regularly here in Portland called Wake The Town. Located in the basement of The Liquor Store, I’d show up around 10:30 and dance until close, around 2:30 in the morning. It didn’t feel like home in the way the industrial nights had when I was younger, but it was still a wonderful and physical escape – it was a feeling I had forgotten as I got tired of hearing the same goth songs over and over every week. Every month was something new, something I hadn’t heard before, and it all made me want to move.

At some point I stopped keeping up with Saturate’s new releases. Part of this is inevitable - I am constantly trying to find new and interesting music – but part of it was that as time went on, Saturate was focusing more and more on a post-trap sound that, while still fun, was a little less interesting to me than the weird syncopated experimentation of the earlier future bass releases. The music felt increasingly predictable, and that just wasn’t where I wanted to spend my listening time.

Recently, Michael put me back on to Saturate, sending me a few of their recent releases. They were pretty post-trap focused, as I expected, but I was surprised by a strange feeling of nostalgia that took over when I put them on. Every drop, every triplet snare roll, made me want to move in the way that all those nights in the Liquor Store basement made me want to move.

Saturate’s most recent release, Syntax Error by SIGKILL is just completely nasty - the song “Diesel” in particular trades the traditional post-trap 808 with a huge distorted saw that just rips through the mix and begs you to go wild. “Nah Nah” opts for a more drum and bass inspired beat to underpin the track, throwing screaming samples and synths on top to great effect.

Malware by Zack Hersh, released in October of 2020, scratches some of those same itches - dripping acid leads over huge distorted bass and syncopated rhythms brings back incredibly sensory-specific memories of dance club air, humid from a hundred and fifty sweaty bodies pressed into each other going wild over some previously unheard track.

The more I dig into Saturate’s recent releases, the more I’m overcome by this deep and intense nostalgia. I miss those early moments of the evening, where the DJs are playing more experimental tracks. I miss the radiant energy of people enjoying themselves. I miss escaping to the cold rain outside for a few moments to cool off from the heat of a packed basement. The longer this quarantine goes, the more intense these feelings get – the memory somehow becomes more sharp and more distant. It’s hard to know how to process this nostalgia – is it a hope for things to come back soon? Or instead of looking back should I look forward, and hope that some strange and interesting change happens in how we approach clubs and shows? 

As long as that remains a question, as long as resolution is pushed into the endless horizon of this quarantine, music from labels like Saturate will continue to spark these complicated nostalgic feelings for me. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to shake ass to Pixelord in the privacy of my own home.

Saturate Records is a label based in Hamburg, Germany. You can find their many releases on Bandcamp.

Episode 181 - PIFF 44 Coverage

This week on the Talking to Ghosts podcast we talk about the films we watched for the Portland International Film Festival (PIFF 44). A Rifle and A Bag and many short films are on the list for conversation, so join us as we go through some of our favorites! PIFF 44 is still happening and you can grab virtual passes here. If you are in Portland, there are some Drive-In films playing, the times of which can be found here. 

There is a CONTENT WARNING for this episode. During our discussion of the short film Anita we touch on the films use of sexual assault (Minute 22 - Minute 29). Please feel free to skip this section if this is an issue for you. It does not come up again in any of our other conversations.

Talking to Ghosts is produced and recorded by Michael Kurt and Wesley Mueller. 

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