7th Level Music

Rewind Review: Iguana Death Cult – Echo Palace (2022)

Hailing from The Netherlands, Iguana Death Cult both blend and defy genres on their 2022 album Echo Palace.

Opening with funky post-punk on “Paper Straws,” IDC instantly reminded me of !!! with their quirky dance grooves and solid bass lines from Justin Boer. The title track brought some of Parquet Courts‘ groovier stuff to mind, and Tobias Opschoor‘s frenetic guitar riffs on it are great.

“Pushermen” is a good example of the band clicking together in the studio, as they wrote it in about an hour. It seems to be a song about escaping the constraints of the urban grind (“Living in a box of concrete, how do you keep occupied?…Maybe I’ll take you anywhere. Don’t believe the hype. Maybe I’ll take you anywhere. Freedom’s in the mind.”).

“Sunny Side Up” is a quirky garage rock track, not unlike early Devo, about how trying to make it through a typical day of work and the “superficial spectacle.” (“I’d give you all of my money if I could borrow some time.”). Benjamin Herman‘s guest saxophone solo on “Sensory Overload” is outstanding. “Conference to Conference” once again tackles the banality of the corporate life.

“I Just Want a House” is a great post-punk track with great back-and-forth vocals between Jeroen Reek and his bandmates as they pine for a simpler life away from the hustle and bustle (“I’ll admit I’m confused on how we even got here. Just want a house where I can lay back.”). “Oh No” is like a lit fuse racing toward a pound of dynamite. Boer’s bass borders on panic, and Reek blasts out trombone honks to inspire more wild dancing in the clubs.

“Rope a Dope” is a good example of Arjen van Opstal‘s “sounds easy but is deceptively difficult for others to place” drumming ability and the keen and subtle use of Jimmy de Kok‘s synthesizers. You realize that a lot of the tracks on Echo Palace wouldn’t sound right without them.

van Opstal’s hi-hat work is on-point on “Heaven in Disorder,” and I love the slight echo effect on Opschoor’s guitar in it – and the neat sense of menace in the last quarter of the song. The album ends with the garage / new wave (How did they mix those genres so well?) rocker “Radio Brainwave.” It’s a great way to wrap up the record.

I discovered IDC when I saw them open for Osees last October. They won over the crowd right away, and I’m keen to see where they go next.

Keep your mind open.

[I just want you to subscribe.]

Review: Lonnie Holley – Tonky

Lonnie Holley is singer, songwriter, artist, educator, and poet…and, surprisingly to me, a trip hop artist. I knew that his new album, Tonky (named after his nickname from growing up in and around honkytonks), would be full of gripping tales from his life and views on the current American landscape. I didn’t expect it to be layered with found sounds, electric beats, and trip hop touches.

The opening track, “Seeds,” is the longest at over nine minutes and has Holly telling about how fields he worked as a child until he was exhausted or often beaten so bad he couldn’t sleep. The string instruments strum out growing tension while simple synth chords are like the hums of spectres watching from the other side of the veil. “Life” is a short poem of hope with Holley encouraging us to use small actions to grow big change.

“Protest with Love” is the most punk rock song I’ve heard in a long while, and it’s wrapped in a lush trip hop track. “If you’re gonna protest, protest with love…Let love do its thing,” Holly advises. Loving thy neighbor, heck, just being nice, is one of the most rebellious acts you can do in 2025. In the jazz and post-funk (Is that a thing?)-inspired “The Burden,” Holley tells us all that it’s on us to remember those who came before and how we need to honor them (“The burden is like a spell that’s been cast upon you. Burdens of our ancestors to unravel and clarify in history.”).

“Let those who have ears, let them hear…We might not have it all together, but together we have it all,” Holley preaches in the beginning of “The Stars” — a powerful track about how people brought over on slave ships saw the same stars we now see, but how much have we progressed since then? The included rap by Open Mike Eagle is so slick it might drop you to the floor.

Holley makes sure you’re paying attention on the growling (and slightly funky) “We Were Kings in the Jungle, Slaves in the Field.” “Strength of a Song” has some of Holley’s strongest vocals on the record as he sings about finding hope and power in music. Near-industrial drums make “What’s Going On” sound like a roaring muscle car engine. “I Looked Over My Shoulder” is psychedelic jazz mixed with dark-wave synths.

“Wait a minute…” Holley says at the beginning of “Did I Do Enough?” Good heavens, haven’t we all thought that at some point — especially if you’ve been through a tragedy, or someone close to you has? The song is just Holley’s heartfelt vocals above ambient synths that build to gospel-like grandeur and it’s a stunner. “That’s Not Art, That’s Not Music” has Holley firing back the criticisms aimed at black music and culture upon their detractors.

The album ends with the hopeful “A Change Is Gonna Come,” but Holley asks, “Are we ready for something to happen?” One has to recognize the signs, when to stand up, and when to take flight. We have to be willing to accept change from divisiveness to inclusion. “How can I love God without loving you?” a woman asks not only herself, but also all of us. It’s the main message Holley wants to convey, and one we all must hear.

This is already one of the best albums of the year.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe.]

[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Sally Shapiro share “The Other Days” from upcoming new album due May 30, 2025.

Swedish italo disco / synthpop duo Sally Shapiro announce their fifth studio album, Ready To Live A Lie out May 30th and today are sharing the first single “The Other Days”. Taking inspiration from synthwave, italo disco, nudisco, indie pop and bossanova, the album becomes their second for Italians Do It Better – again mixed together with label founder Johnny Jewel (Chromatics, Glass Candy, Desire).

“The Other Days” on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eIwjvEdUMvI?si=PzVUYfjT6509Smif
“The Other Days” on other streaming services: https://idib.ffm.to/theotherdays
“The Other Days” on Bandcamp: https://sallyshapiro.bandcamp.com/album/the-other-days

Made up of producer Johan Agebjörn and an anonymous female vocalist who uses the pseudonym Sally Shapiro; the duo are known for their dreamy, melancholic sound and nostalgic homage to 1980s Italo disco and gained international recognition with their debut album Disco Romance (2007), which was then followed by My Guilty Pleasure (2009), Somewhere Else (2013) and their debut for Italians Do It Better Sad Cities (2022).

The name “Sally Shapiro” has always referred to both the duo, as well as the enigmatic anonymous singer whose real name is something else. But “Sally” is also a third entity: the fictional character singing about her love stories. It’s now been 18 years since Sally Shapiro’s debut album Disco Romance, that took influences from italo disco and indie pop with a naive and youthful flavor, as if everything “Sally” did was to “walk in the moonshine thinking about my love affairs”, as she once put it.

Ready To Live A Lie may, however, be the duo’s darkest album yet. The lyrics have shifted from the euphoria of first love to exploring “Sally’s” struggles in long-term relationships—love triangles, boredom, resentment, and the lingering sense of loneliness.

On the record, Johan said, “We live in the era of lies. We deceive ourselves, our partners, and those around us. On social media, we paint pictures of perfect lives, only to be fed falsehoods in return—by algorithms, newsfeeds, and politicians.”

Sally added, “But perhaps, at times, we need these deceptions to get by. Maybe loneliness is somehow inescapable and we simply do our best to navigate life.”

Ready To Live A Lie is out on Italians Do It Better on May 30th and includes the duo’s acclaimed Pet Shop Boys cover “Rent.”

Pre-save album: https://idib.ffm.to/readytolivealie

Keep your mind open.

[I’m ready for you to subscribe.]

[Thanks to Frankie at Stereo Sanctity.]

Water Machine announce their debut album, “God Park,” with its first single – “Tiffany.”

Flooding out of Glasgow in 2022, Water Machine have quickly gained a reputation for their weird and wonky art-punk, winning hearts with sing-along songs about dogs, struggling artists and the housing crisis. Now, they announce their debut album God Park out 20th June via FatCat Records, as well as sharing first taster with new single ‘Tiffany’. Explaining the track, vocalist Hando says, “This song was originally called Orange as we think it sounds like an Orange Juice song. We decided not to call it that due to a certain king and the city we live in being Glasgow. Eventually it was changed to Tiffany as it felt safer for our careers (we are not sectarians). We wrote this in one sitting after I had a panic attack in the studio and we decided to write something happy. As usual it ended up being a hypothetical love song about a car crash.”

Listen to ‘Tiffany’ HERE

Debut album God Park takes a collection of disparate influences and distils the disjointed into something new. Taking influence from everywhere, the tunes are always on the verge of falling apart or breaking down. Their world is a swirling eddy of melodic bass lines and volatile guitar sliding between jazz chords and punk riffs, all the while narrated by sardonic social commentary, silly stories, and pop sensibilities. This group of young Glaswegians recognise that they owe something to the city’s rich musical history, in particular the 1980’s scene captured so brilliantly in Grant McPhee’s documentary, Teenage Superstars.

Tired of listening to songs about gloom and heartbreak, Water Machine, instead, want their lyrics to provide a “realistic escapism.” Their words, while rooted in the day-to-day-maybe-mundane, are spun into what the band call “hyper conceptualised allegories.” So while they might sometimes sing about love, this is hidden amongst copulating clouds, car crashes, housing crises, rabies outbreaks, toxic jobs and unrequited office romances.

Everything on the album packs positive, punk energy. As Henry Rollins put it: “Water Machine is a very cool band”.

Water Machine are: Hando Morice [they/them] – vocals, violin, synth, Flore De Hoog [she/her] – bass, vocals, Nicky Duncan [he/him] – drums, percussion, Baby Cousland [they/them] – rhythm guitar, Ellie McWhinnie [she/they] – lead guitar

God Park is out 20th June via FatCat Records. Pre-order HERE

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe!]

[Thanks to Amy at After Hours PR.]

Rewind Review: The Jesus and Mary Chain – Honey’s Dead (2009 reissue)

The Jesus and Mary Chain came out swinging on their 1992 album (their fourth) Honey’s Dead. First, the title refers to their hit “Just Like Honey” and how they’ve decided to move on from it, so get on the train or get off the tracks. Then, the first line of the opening track, “Reverence,” is “I wanna die just like Jesus Christ.” The song was banned across many BBC airwaves for that lyric (along with “I wanna die like JFK.”) and its repeated apparent references to suicide – which were actually about letting go of relationships and the ego.

There’s no hidden meaning behind “Teenage Lust.” It is what’s advertised. William Reid‘s guitars sound like they’re being banged around in a tool & dye plant. “Far Gone and Out” is still one of JAMC’s biggest hits, and it has Jim Reid singing about a woman he wants to teach a lesson (“No one works so hard just to make me feel so bad.”).

His brother, William, on the other hand, has much better things to say about the subject of “Almost Gold” – a woman who was the closest he’d come to perfection by that point in his life. HIs guitars on “Sugar Ray” roar and growl like angry wasps as he tries to tell a woman that he’s not like “All those boys [who] have fun with toys. All I want is you.”

“Tumbledown” has Jim Reid dealing with the fallout of another lover who’s nothing but trouble, while Steve Monti, bringing a nice return of live drumming to the band, knocks out frantic beats. “Catchfire” is a standout if you love some psychedelia mixed with your shoegaze. The title might be a drug reference. After all, the album was recorded in their studio they’d named the “Drugstore.”

Jim Reid finally finds Mrs. Right (Now?) on “Good for My Soul” – a downright lovely shoegaze song giving praise to a woman who “Ever since she came I’ve been whole, believe me.” “Rollercoaster” is an early 1990s rock gem with William Reid trying to forgive his past after others have already done so (and Monti nails some killer beats in the meantime). On “I Can’t Get Enough,” he sings “Honey, you’re so cool” to a woman, but you really don’t believe him. His brother’s guitar work highlights his snarky frustration.

By the time we get to “Sundown,” William Reid is ready to give up. “The planet poisoned me. It’s a sick place to be. I’ve got a taste for it. Now I’ve gotta leave.” “Frequency” is the sibling to “Reverence,” which much the same lyrics but with William Reid on vocals and extra guitar crunch and shredding sprinkled on top.

Honey’s Dead was (and still is) a good record, and a second launching point for the band to explore more options and sounds. Don’t skip it.

Keep your mind open.

[Coast over to the subscription box while you’re here.]

Photay releases “Jet Stream” from an upcoming extended version of his “Windswept” album.

Nearly six months after the release of his album Windswept, Photay (Evan Shornstein), returns with Windswept: Expansions, out March 28, 2025 via Mexican Summer. The expanded album features two new tracks from the album’s surplus of exceptional sound alongside the producer’s own remix of standout single “Air Lock.” The first of these new tracks, “Jet Stream,” is out today.

“Pushing past the dynamic ceiling of Windswept, ‘Jet Stream’ peaks in our upper atmosphere, and as a result, it didn’t fit on vinyl,” explains Shornstein. “At the start of 2025, on the other side of Windswept tours, I lost my home and studio to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. Although this piece (and Windswept) were made well before this disaster, for me they grow in relevance. I use sound to understand the greater elemental forces and our vulnerability to them. I believe music will continue being a source of uplift and clarity amidst intensifying weather and atmospheric conditions.”

Following headline tours in the US and Asia in 2024, Photay will perform at London’s Polygon Live LDN Festival this May.

Photay’s Windswept is, in the producer’s own words, a nine-track sonic exploration of the wind as a “powerful, deep, unpredictable and at times overwhelming spirit.” Traversing IDM, ambient-techno, and jazz funk electronic modes in unpredictable, undeniable ways, Windswept blew away those familiar and new to Photay’s music, even being named the #1 album of 2024 by Juno Daily.

The album is primarily reliant on Shornstein’s fresh, home grown electronic textures and acoustic drumming. Numerous friends also add instrumental touches including Randall Fisher, Will Epstein, Carlos Niño, Laraaji, Nate Mercereau, and Mariana Bragada. Windswept’s compositions were largely written-out and specifically produced, though a couple were also turned into “songs” out of improvised sections. But all were under the spell of the wind, of climate change and weather phenomena — from their titles on down.

One reason that Windswept may especially feel like an organic solo statement is that the previous handful of projects Photay had been involved in were all explicitly collaborative. There was the new age improvisation albums with Niñoand friends; there was the album he produced for London-based Indian-American drummer Sarathy Korwar; and there was WEMA, a kind of studio supergroup involving members of the Afro-Latin dance band Penya and Tanzanian gogo master Msafiri Zawose. Each of those projects took Shornstein in very specific directions he did not dictate. Windswept was a response to those experiences, an opportunity to reconnect with his own vision, and apply newfound lessons.

There is admittedly a higher quotient of direct-towards-dance-floor energy to Windswept than recent Photay recordings have featured. Stretches of tracks are moderately home-rave-ready, but there is a thematic balance with moments of reservation as well, and of Evan’s voice embracing the moment. These songs — gorgeously sweet melodies and tart textures, layered synths and instruments, off-kilter rhythms and treated voices, all gliding from structure into another — contain much of the warmth and fresh-air that’s made Photay’s various sounds so distinctive and unified through the years.

Keep your mind open.

[Jet over to the subscription box!]

[Thanks to George at Terrorbird Media.]

Smut releases new single that’s anything but “Dead Air.”

Smut — the Chicago band comprised of vocalist/lyricist Tay Roebuck, guitarist Andie Min, bassist John Steiner, guitarist/synthist Sam Ruschman, and drummer Aidan O’Connor — releases “Dead Air” via Bayonet Records. It’s the first new single from a forthcoming release out later this year and follows their revelatory 2022 Bayonet debut, How the Light Felt, hailed by Under the Radar as “pop perfection.” “Dead Air” starts out with crystalline guitars and fall air-crisp bass. Then Roebuck’s vocals come in. She sounds like Elizabeth Fraser, but more rock ‘n’ roll, shifting her vocals from honeyed and dreamy to a pop punk shriek. It’s patched together Frankenstein-style, with lyrics and riffs the band worked on solo and together. Lyrically, it’s a break up song, a band break up song— a song about relationships ending and changing. “I heard you say forever,” she sings, “Forever.”

Stream “Dead Air”

When setting off to write “Dead Air,” Smut wanted to make something that rocked. They wanted to make something that was as fun to make as it was fun to listen to. They went back to their favorite bands growing up, playing My Chemical Romance and Metric. Green Day and The Fall. Twisting metal riffs into a pop context.

“Dead Air” marks the first track drummer Aidan O’Connor and bassist John Steiner have recorded on as full-fledged members of Smut. Part of what makes the song so electric is the excitement the band felt working in this new iteration. “We have so much energy right now,” says Roebuck. To record, “as live as they could,” they went off to New York to work with Aron Kobayashi-Ritch (Momma) at a studio in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Right before they went off to New York, Roebuck and Min got married. When they were recording, Roebuck had completely blown her voice by the end, chugging lemon and honey and hot water. The band slept on friend’s couches and floors. Smut has always been DIY. Because they love it, they love to work together. They love to collaborate. “Dead Air” is the product of that collaboration.

Formed a decade ago in Cincinnati, OH, Smut have conquered national tours with Bully, Swirlies, Nothing, and Wavves since their founding. Where their 2020 EP Power Fantasy dipped its toe into the experimental, their most recent album, How the Light Felt (mastered by Heba Kadry), dives head-first into 90s influences — brit-pop, shoegaze, and trip-hop, taking Smut’s sound to exciting heights, with more new music to be released in the coming months.

Stream/Purchase How the Light Felt

Keep your mind open.

[Why not subscribe? You’re here, and the subscription box is just over there.]

[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Blackwater Holylight announce new EP, “If You Only Knew,” with its first single – “Wandering Lost.”

Blackwater Holylight crafts music that offsets airiness and immediacy. Today [February 26, 2025], the Los Angeles, CA band announces their new EP, If You Only Knew, out April 18, 2025 via Suicide Squeeze Records. Though it clocks in at just four tracks, the EP traverses countless cosmic peaks and sludgy valleys. The band has also shared the single “Wandering Lost,” premiering on FLOOD Magazine, which gradually evolves from atmosphere to heaviness. Over the course of almost seven minutes, metal, shoegaze, and psychedelia coalesce. The song was slowly conceptualized while Blackwater Holylight was working with acclaimed producer Sonni DiPerri (Animal Collective, DIIV, Suzanne Ciani) in Los Angeles, and mimics the mysterious, sometimes painful chapters of life by shifting between multiple movements. Like all of Blackwater Holylight’s material, there is an ample dose of beauty to be found beneath “Wandering Lost”‘s snarling exterior.

On “Wandering Lost,” singer, guitarist, and bassist Sunny Faris shares: “‘Wandering Lost’ came to us in pieces throughout a handful of weeks in Los Angeles. The four of us intentionally wanted this song to have multiple parts to tell a story that takes you on a journey throughout. This song is very special to us because it represents us as musicians individually and is a perfect reflection of what we’ve created as a group. It’s a song about wandering through the chapters of life, curiosity, and the connection we all have to each other through the unknown of how it will all unfold.”

Keep your mind open.

[I’ll feel lost if you don’t subscribe.]

[Thanks to Andi at Terrorbird Media.]

Levitation France announces its 2025 lineup.

Levitation France has announced its full (?) lineup for 2025, and they’ve packed a lot of good bands into just two nights.

Vendredi (Friday) brings in Italy’s New Candys (whose new album, so far, sounds pretty cool), UK’s Ditz (a sharp new post-punk band), Spain’s Hinds (also promoting a new album), Danish metal giants Kadavar, and the U.S.’ own Blonde Redhead.

Samedi (Saturday) has Angers post-punkers Rest Up, UK’s mysterious HONESTY, goth-queen Heartworms, experimental psych-rockers Bryan’s Magic Tears, and psych-proggers bdrmm, plus the U.S.’ synthwave duo Boy Harsher, and finally French psych heavyweights The Limiñanas.

It’s a good lineup with some serious rock in it this year, and it’s in a new location – a pyramid on a lakefront, no less. Don’t miss it.

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe before you go!]

Big Thief’s James Krivchenia’s new solo single, “Probably Wizards,” is out now.

James Krivchenia (drummer and producer of Big Thief) announces his new album Performing Belief, out May 2nd via Planet Mu, and shares its lead single, “Probably Wizards.” This spring, Krivchenia will play his first ever live show on Tue. June 17 at Elsewhere in Brooklyn, NY (tickets are on sale this Friday and will be available here).

Featuring contributions from electric bassist Sam Wilkes (Wilkes/Gendel) and double bassist/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society), Performing Belief builds rhythmic thickets from gathered sounds interwoven with synths, drum machines and other samples. At the core of Performing Belief is a lush, opulent matrix of percussion ranging from the familiar—hand claps and drum machines—to the mysteriously verdant, sampled largely from Krivchenia’s own field recording collection. Lead single “Probably Wizards” was created alongside Wilkes and carries a profoundly fresh sense of time, blurring the edges of the quantized grid and the boundaries of electronic music.

Listen to “Probably Wizards”

Krivchenia’s previous release, 2022’s hyperkinetic Blood Karaoke, was composed mostly from hundreds of tiny samples of unwatched YouTube videos. Performing Belief sees Krivchenia turning from online realms to the natural world. For years, Krivchenia would record his musical encounters with natural objects: performing on a particularly resonant log on a hike, throwing rocks into a pristine pond, tap dancing in the mud. This archive of sounds became the fertile soil out of which the tracks on Performing Belief grew. Having built these rhythmic nests, Wilkes and Abrams bring the presence of a grounding human witness to the undergrowth, providing a centering and even at times melodic voice to the gathering. This rhythmic language, set in Krivchenia’s long-fermenting electronic musical palate, feels like a revelation — it calls back not only to his wonderfully elastic timekeeping behind the kit, but also to his prior work in computer music as well as his deep study of the vast human archive of drumming.

Performing Belief is in good company in the rank and file of the legendary Planet Mu label. From the foundational early releases of the likes of Jega and Venetian Snares, to the contemporary envelope-warping work of Jlin and hundreds of brilliant releases in between, Planet Mu has been a beacon of forward-thinking rhythmic music for decades, informing Krivchenia’s own sense of the weird metaphysics of musical time since he was a kid. Krivchenia’s contribution to this history calls to mind the principle of organic danceability that subtends Mu’s whole catalogue, while bending our sense of rhythm in new and gracious dimensions.

Pre-order Performing Belief

Keep your mind open.

[You probably should subscribe.]

[Thanks to Ahmad at Pitch Perfect PR.]