Blog: Latest Disgrace

Let me just say it's great to see former Lucy Dreams guitarist/vocalist Lloyd Wingard back at it with another project, especially one that seems to be given to distended drone and cosmic bursts of textural guitar noise. Founded in early February, Cult Relic finds Wingard partnering with producer and engineer Nathaniel Kiser to unleash a billowing torrent of shoegaze bliss on the glorious "Decay," the second of two tracks the duo recently unveiled on Bandcamp . It's a song that just seems to push relentlessly forward, each note and chord building into an impressionistic tidal [...]

Savannah alt-rockers Cusses kick off their spring tour tonight all the way on the other side of the country with a performance at Los Globos in Los Angeles. The show marks the first of five consecutive dates in the golden state before the band heads up the coast to continue a nearly month long trek in support of their self-titled debut album. After hitting the Pacific Northwest, the group will make their way across the midwest before wrapping things up with a four-date stint in Tennessee. Oddly, there are no Georgia dates scheduled, at least not [...]

THIS WEEK'S BEST BET: Benefit for Justin Green w/ Mlny Parsonz, Terminal Slaughter, Order of the Owl Tuesday, April 9 Basement - 1245 Glenwood Avenue SE in Atlanta 30316 Admission $10 donation On Saturday, March 16th, Justin Graham, a full-time Georgia State student and newly-divorced father of one, was found lying on the side of the road after finishing his shift at Vortex in Little Five Points. While the details of the accident remain unclear, the severity of the injuries are not. Graham suffered broken ribs, [...]

In anticipation of their upcoming full-length LP, Exist , local stoner sludge four-piece Halmos have released the record's first single—the bruising yet tuneful "Excursion Into Chaos." It's the first we've heard of the band since Order of the Owl axe-slinger Casey Yarbrough and bassist Melanie Maher joined the ranks, and although the sample size is small, there's plenty here to get excited about. Bone-crushing riffs, infectious psychedelic grooves and spacey-to-growly vocals meld together into a grimy, fuzzed-out stew that is heavily indebted to such stoned-out forebears as Kyuss and Sleep, while still retaining a fairly [...]

There are days when I coast obliviously. Days when I allow myself to grow lazy and fat on bad food, scripted reality and mindless celebrity-obsessed culture. It's rarely by design, although I'll admit there are times when I crave the relative peace of idleness and greasy overindulgence. But generally it isn't long before I feel the need to purge the excess. And in these moments there's nothing quite like some Am Rep pigfuck noise brutality to rub your nose in the shit and set your mind straight. Atlanta has no shortage of inciting agents willing and capable of delving out [...]

Courtesy of Break On a Cloud , Monday saw the premiere of yet another Cloudeater single, this one for the rousing, hyper-charged "Idiot March," taken from their forthcoming EP, which will apparently be titled Purge . Following in the footsteps of the like-minded "Always On the Way," the track finds the band further refining their finely textured and expansive post-industrial rock. You can see the direct line between the two songs and the more pop-oriented material the group churned out on their 2011 full-length, Sun and Sidearm , but the sound has [...]

• CLOUDEATER - Idiot March

Recorded at the Cottage in mid-January, the latest video from Atlanta folk septet Book Club finds the band returning to the studio where they recorded their most recent EP, the lovely, sepia-toned Shapes On the Water . The elegant single-shot performance is quietly captivating; a pensive, soft-spoken affair that feels like a languid walk down a lonesome country road. Director Russell Shaw's slow pans and lingering camera work may not seen like much, at least from a purely technical perspective, but they force the viewer to focus on the players and the subtle interactions they [...]

Lid Emba's latest single, "One Less Philistine," is the audio equivalent to blue balls. For the first couple of minutes, it's nothing more than one abrasive blast of static-y noise after another—a grating yet strangely alluring fit of mechanicalized seething and mounting tension. Everything about it leads you to assume that an eruption is imminent, that some massive soundscape is about to unfurl before you (or at the very least some semblance of a groove). You keep waiting for that rush of release, but it never arrives. As an experimental electronic document, it's certainly in keeping with the Lid [...]

• Lid Emba - One Less Philistine

Spring as a metaphor for fertility and renewal may be a worn-out cliche, but it's hard not to feel optimistic about the future when porch weather hits Atlanta and you've got this much potentially great new music to look forward to. I mean, March certainly had its moments—new records from AkuYou , deadCAT and Calm White Noise come to mind, as do those Cloudeater singles—but April just looks filthy stacked . And unlike last month, which saw many of the releases arrive in the form of singles or short EPs, April comes [...]

Local trio Pillage & Plunder have had a turbulent month. Like dozens of other Atlanta artists, the band made the pilgrimage to SXSW in search of good times and even better exposure. Tragically, shortly after arriving in Austin, the band's trailer was broken into and the thieves made off with over $16,000 worth of the group's gear. It was a crushing blow to a young band looking to jump start their music career, but rather than wallowing in their misfortune, they made the best of it and finished out the tour using borrowed equipment from other bands eager [...]

Considering my past praise of Michael Potter's prodigious work ethic, I'm incredulous that it's been over six months since I've made mention of his name. For close to two years it seemed that Potter—who records under the moniker, the Electric Nature —couldn't go more than a couple of months before releasing one his densely-layered ambient drone compositions or some deconstructed pop experiment. But now that he's dropped his latest EP, the four-song Sunspot EP, it's not difficult to figure out what he's been doing with his time. The Electric Nature, it appears, is now a full-on band. [...]

Local four-piece Blackfox play sludgy, guitar-driven rock rooted in a kind of grungy blues that's both dirty yet melodic. In June of last year, the band released their self-titled debut EP and have remained relatively quiet ever since. (I myself only managed to stumble across the record while chasing down the many side projects of Ryan Taylor who, in addition to handling guitar and vocal duties in Blackfox, can also be found holding down the bottom end for droney noise-rockers Aku You , embarking on improvisational guitar freakouts with experimental metal duo Rat Mass , [...]

Started in 1987, the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music and Media Conference recently completed its 27th year, growing from a measly 700 registrants in its inaugural run to over 16,000 in this year's festivities. According to its website , “SXSW's original goal was to create an event that would act as a tool for creative people and the companies they work with to develop their careers, to bring together people from a wide area to meet and share ideas.” As someone who makes a living working in the music industry, I can attest that the convention is definitely an [...]

There's something magnetic about Vera Vera's vocals. They're a little inaudible and slight screechy, yet always emphatic. They attach themselves like livewires to the band's rumbling, garage-infused electro rock grooves, electrifying everything they come into contact with and dragging it to the center of the dance party. There are no unresolved feelings or coy yearnings; every phrase feels boldly declarative. Indeed, if you want to solve the mystery of the group's delirious late night revelry, the vocals are the first clue. But still, they are, of course, only a part of the story. The band, which [...]

THIS WEEK'S BEST BET: Big Jesus w/ Manray, The Dirty Magazines Saturday, March 30 The Earl - 466 Flat Shoals Avenue in Atlanta 30316 Admission $5 ADV / $7 DOS / Purchase Tickets When Big Jesus announced its return from an extended hiatus early this year, it was welcome news, but it also felt a little like a game of musical chairs. Here was former O'Brother guitarist Aaron Womack being brought in to play drums, while Spencer Ussery and C.J. Ridings [...]

As one half of Atlanta's underground hip-hop kings, Clan Destined, Yamin Semali , aka AmDex, has built a reputation for delivering cerebral rhymes and dominating the decks with dope turntablism—skills which one would only assume would help him in his efforts to break out solo. Just over a month ago the producer/emcee dropped his debut album, YAMIN , which features guest spots from such Atlanta brethren as Blc Txt, Boog Broown and, of course, his Clan D partner-in-rhyme, DT. The LP's title track is one of album's many highlights, so it's no surprise that Semali [...]

• Yamin Semali - Yamin

Since the dissolution of his former band, ex-Cassandras guitarist Michael Jordan (real name Michael Meadows) has been honing his solo skills and releasing music at a prodigious rate. Currently, he is hard at work on his fourth EP since he adopted the Nobra Noma moniker last year, and yesterday he unveiled the record's first single, "Anchors." It's an ambitious effort—not so much in the I'm-going-to-write-a-sprawling -20-minute-opus-with-a-barrage -of-time-and-tempo-changes kind of way (although there are some decidedly proggy moments tucked in amidst all the anthemic psych-rock), but more so in the listen-as-I-try-to-craft-the-m ost-massive-hooks-I-can-muster sort of way. "Anchors" is nothing if not a roaring [...]

There is a certain darkness lurking in the corner of every Christ, Lord song. Even at its most blithe and whimsical, you can't help but feel something maudlin hiding behind all those gypsy stomps and vaudevillian flair-ups. Call it a matter of aesthetics. For all their gifts for melody and storytelling, it's difficult not to define the group by their medieval quirks and musical eccentricities, which often border on the baroque. A lot of bands paint pictures with their sounds; Christ, Lord tend to emphasize the shadows against the light, creating a compositional chiaroscuro effect that lures you [...]

THIS WEEK'S BEST BET: Atlanta Film Festival: Sound & Vision w/ Gringo Star, Dog Bite, PLS PLS, Tikka, Cute Boots, Shantih Shantih Wednesday, March 20 The Goat Farm - 1200 Foster Street in Atlanta 30318 $10 / Purchase Tickets On Wednesday night, the Goat Farm will host an evening filled with local bands, art, food trucks, music videos and experimental film called Sound & Vision . It's all part of this year's Atlanta Film Festival, which kicked off on Friday [...]