Panchiko
On July 21st, 2016, a user on 4chan’s /mu/ board posted a photo of a CD they’d found at a record store in Nottingham, UK: a rough-worn demo titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, purportedly released in 2000 by four musicians: Owain, Andy, Shaun, and John. The listener uploaded the ripped audio – the recordings sounded like they were plagued with disc rot – to file-sharing sites, and later YouTube, where they began circulating among internet music circles. The record’s sensationalist appeal was multifold. Was this an honest- to-God ’90s curio? A prank hatched by internet-savvy teens? An internet experiment in nostalgia, in the spirit of vapourwave? Nobody knew. So the Panchiko hive mobilised, gathering on subreddits and discord servers, examining every square inch of the packaging for potential clues, and even calling the Nottingham record store where D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L had allegedly sprung up in the first place.“I woke up one day,” recounts Owain, “and ping – there’s a message on a defunct Facebook page of mine, ‘Hello, you’ll probably never read this, but are you the lead singer of Panchiko?’” The query took Owain by shock; to his and Andy’s knowledge, D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L had never been uploaded to the internet. The Panchiko fandom finally made contact the following day, when they received their reply from Owain, a simple “Yeah.” At last, the world had confirmation: not only were Panchiko not 14-year-old kids, they were the real deal, right down to the disk rot.Links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Spotify
The Black Angels
The best music reflects a widescreen view of the world back at us, helping distill the universal into something far more personal. Since forming in Austin in 2004, The Black Angels have become standard bearers for modern psych-rock that does exactly that, which is one of many reasons why the group’s new album, Wilderness of Mirrors, feels so aptly named.Says vocalist/bassist Alex Maas, “a big focal point of this record is just the overall insanity that’s happening. What’s true? What’s not?” Adds guitarist Christian Bland, “We leave our music open to interpretation, but our topics are always universal themes—problems mankind has had since the beginning of time. You can relate them to any period.”Indeed, in the five years since the release of the band’s prior album, Death Song, and the two-plus years spent working on Wilderness of Mirrors, pandemics, political tumult and the ongoing devastation of the environment have provided ample fodder for the Black Angels’ signature sonic approach. If the group’s members were terrified as they honed new music heading into an election year, they realized they didn’t even know how scary things could still get. So, they looked inward, focusing on both their ongoing creative and musical development as well as their own struggles amid the external chaos.Wilderness of Mirrors (to be released 9/16/22) hits even closer to home, as the group recorded solely in the friendly confines of Austin for the first time in more than a decade and entrusted co-production duties to its longtime front-of-house engineer, Brett Orrison. “It was a really great experience, because Brett understands us a lot on a musical level. We’ve grown together,” Maas says. “We worked on this record for over a year in the studio in Austin. I don’t know any other situation where we’d have been able to do that in a 9-to-5 way.” Adds Bland, “Doing it in Austin allowed for open creativity and took away the stress of rushing to get something done. We used our time wisely.” That methodical modus operandi can be heard throughout Wilderness of Mirrors, which expertly refines the Black Angels’ psychedelic rock attack alongside a host of intriguing sounds and textures. “History of the Future” and opener “Without a Trace” are classic blasts of fuzzed-out guitars that simultaneously perk up the ears and jumpstart the mind (“Is it still possible to be invincible when everyone else is expendable?” Maas wonders aloud on the latter), while a fast, thumping bass line and an allusion to a world leader hiding in his bunker propel “Empires Falling” into an ominous decree: “Every time youwake, I want to end you.”“I came in with a riff that was kind of slow and mid-tempo-y,” Bland says of the song. “When I showed it to the band, [drummer] Stephanie [Bailey] started playing a quicker beat over it, [guitarist] Jake [Garcia] added this cool mercurial lead guitar line, and [multi-instrumentalist] Ramiro [Verdooren] laid down a heavy driving bass, and all the sudden it had some rock’n’roll gasoline behind it. That’s the beauty of being with these folks. Everybody brings their creativity to the table and a song could become something you never had envisioned before.”Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
Courtney Marie Andrews
On the honey shores of Cape Cod in a beach shack, Courtney Marie Andrews found self-love and her voice. Every morning, she’d walk 6-8 miles around the back trails of an island and meditate on her life, perusing old memories and patterns like browsing a used bookshop. That summer of introspection led her to a joyous sense of beginnings and ends. When she let love for herself in, she therein let the outside love in, too—the summer feeling, the swaying cypress, the full moon, and the possibility of healthy love. This phase came only right after one of her darkest, though, where being alone with oneself was the most terrifying thing you could do. After more than a decade on the road, the Phoenix-born songwriter, poet, and painter finally had the space to process all the highs and lows of a life of constants. She was finally ready to make a record of triumph, while not completely forgetting the years that made her. That record is Loose Future. After committing to penning a song a day, Courtney found the sounds of summer flowing through her writing—the romance, and possibility, and the free sounds. Collecting an album’s worth of material, she tied up some loose ends in Bisbee, Arizona, her “soul place” and beckoned Sam Evian to come and produce a record. Her guideposts were lots of harmonies and alternative percussion. The rest was pure exploration. At Flying Cloud Recordings in New York, she dipped in the creek every morning before proceeding. She wanted to embody the feeling of letting love in. Taking the dip is what letting love in feels like. Sometimes you plunge, and sometimes you walk slowly in. This summer feeling materializes on the first single “Satellite” where her shimmering vocals orbit delicate acoustic guitar, a soft beat, and buzzing intergalactic synths. As if bottling rays of July sun, it glows with the affirmation, “I like to see you shine—my favorite piece of the sky.” “I’ve written a lot of love songs, but there’s always a tinge of heartbreak,” she explains. “I wanted to write a love song with no caveats, which I’ve never allowed myself to do. A satellite is so mysterious to the average person. It’s the idea somebody is floating around your mind. You’re not quite sure why, but you like it.” Then, there’s “I’ll Be Thinkin On You.” A bombastic beat echoes as an organ underscores her lovestruck delivery as she rethinks the whole concept of “missing” the one you love. “I fell in love with someone,” she goes on. “Instead of saying, ‘I’ll be missing you,’ we’d say, ‘I’ll be thinking on you’. When you’re ‘thinking on’ somebody, it means this person is on your mind and not absent.”The opener and title track “Loose Future” embodies the core of the album’s message. Her voice rings out through a guitar amp pedal as off-kilter bass lines thump with lush guitar, mirroring the ebb and flow of her constant self-work to reach this point creatively, personally, and spiritually.Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Spotify | YouTube
School of Rock Chapel Hill’s Mid-Season Preview Show
Free Show / $5 Suggested DonationShow Times:12:00 – Best of R.E.M.12:30 – Yacht Rock1:00 – Rock 1011:30 – House Band – The Who’s “Who’s Next”2:15 – Best of Reggae2:30 – 90’s Alt Ladies3:00 – Rock 2013:30 – Allman Brothers Band vs The Grateful DeadLinks: Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Chloe Moriondo
On her new album SUCKERPUNCH, singer/songwriter Chloe Moriondo inhabits an entire cast of unruly characters: a larger-than-life vigilante who collects ill-behaved boys like figurines, a champagne-popping Barbie doll with its hair chopped off, a champion boxer stepping into the ring in a satin pink Hello Kitty robe. Expanding on the untamed imagination and volcanic emotionality of 2021’s Blood Bunny—a critically acclaimed album that landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of The New York Times—the 19-year-old Michigan native uses that whirlwind storytelling as a vessel for self-exploration, uncovering potent truths about self-image and obsession and the complexities of power. At turns campy and confessional, tender and explosive, SUCKERPUNCH is heralded by the sticky-sweet anthem “Fruity” and marks a bold leap forward from the understated indie-pop and jittery pop-punk of Blood Bunny, often echoing the sheer unpredictability suggested in its title. But despite that seismic shift in sonic direction, Moriondo continues to imbue each track with the diary-like honesty that’s earned her a global fanbase of millions, slowly revealing the immense depth of her sensitivity and creating the most gloriously uninhibited work yet from a truly one-of-a-kind artist.Links: Website
Madison Cunningham
Two-time Grammy nominated artist Madison Cunningham is set to release her highly anticipated new album, Revealer, September 9 on Verve Forecast. The Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter-guitarist recently received her second Grammy nomination for Wednesday (Extended Edition) in the “Best Folk Album” category, previously having her debut album Who Are You Now nominated for “Best Americana Album” in 2020. Cunningham is fresh off the heels of a successful 2021, having opened for Harry Styles at his sold-out Madison Square Garden shows, toured with the likes of Andrew Bird, Bahamas and My Morning Jacket, and joined the touring band for “Live from Here.” She performed on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (alongside Courtney Marie Andrews) and penned an original song “Broken Harvest” for the NPR “Morning Edition” Song Project. Her forthcoming album Revealer finds Cunningham working once again with longtime producer and collaborator Tyler Chester, as well as Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Mastodon) and Tucker Martine (Neko Case, Sufjan Stevens). The album is full of confessions, intimations, and hard truths — a self-portrait of a young artist who is full of doubt and uncertainty, yet bursting with exciting ideas about music and life. “There’s a sense of conflict about revealing anything about yourself; not just what to reveal, but whether you should reveal anything at all,” Cunningham explains. “This record is a product of me trying to find myself and my interests again. I felt like somewhere along the way I had lost the big picture of my own life.” Links: Website | Spotify | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
King Buffalo
King Buffalo is the trio of vocalist/guitarist Sean McVay, bassist Dan Reynolds, and drummer Scott Donaldson. Since forming in 2013, the self-proclaimed “heavy psych” band has made its name via 4 Full-lengths, 4EPs, and tours with Clutch, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, All Them Witches, The Sword, and Elder. King Buffalo will issue their fifth full-length, Regenerator, on Sept. 2, 2022, as a self-release in North America and through Stickman Records in Europe. Preorders will be available on June 10th via http://kingbuffalo.bigcartel.com. Written and recorded by the band with mixing and engineering by Sean McVay and mastering by Bernie Matthews, the seven-song outing is the third in King Buffalo’s stated ‘pandemic trilogy,’ following Two of 2021’s Best Albums in The Burden of Restlessness and Acheron. Both of those albums – like 2018’s Longing to Be the Mountain, 2016’s debut, Orion, and the various EPs and other offerings they’ve made over the last eight years – made bold declarations about who King Buffalo are as a band, and Regenerator is no different. As McVay, Reynolds and Donaldson continue to explore the outer reaches of modern psychedelic songcraft, melding progressive rhythms, drifting atmospheres and accompanying surges of electricity, the new collection only further establishes them as one of the brightest lights shining in underground rock today. As the third of three, Regenerator seems inherently to tie together the two LPs most immediately before it, and as King Buffalo unfold the leadoff title-track across nine and half minutes, it becomes clear just how truly they have marked out their own sonic presence. The later melodic highlight “Mammoth” – with McVay’s most confident vocal yet – shimmers with hope that somehow doesn’t come across as desperate, and as “Hours” engages classic space rock and the closing “Firmament” summarizes the first, second and third series installments, the final chapter of this trilogy becomes the essential cornerstone of King Buffalo’s work to-date. The band returned to live activity late last year, touring alongside Clutch and more recently a full North American spring tour with Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. By the time Regenerator arrives, they will have completed a UK and European headlining tour with festival appearances in Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Belgium and Denmark. Links: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Mellow Swells
Links: Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook
Tinariwen
Due to visa issues, Tinariwen is forced to cancel their forthcoming North American tour.The best Tinariwen album hasn’t been recorded yet. Perhaps it never will be. Because the best Tinariwen music isn’t the music they perform in front of microphones. It’s the music they play at night around the fire, back in their own country, amongst themselves and at their own pace. Having eaten, and drunk their tea, the men bring out their guitars, chat, remember old songs and let the music come. In those moments, the music can become like the fire, free, magical and impossible to stuff into a box. It rises up like a shower of sparks or a state of grace, without premeditation; the momentary manifestation of a friendship, a community, an environment, a history; the revelatory connection with something that belongs only to them, and goes beyond them. Their discography stretching out over the last 17 years, all the tours and the international recognition have changed nothing: Tinariwen are still a desert band, only certain aspects of which the western music industry can ever hope to capture and present. Tinariwen existed long before any of their albums were recorded, and they still exist quite distinct from their discographic dimension. So, the best Tinariwen album doesn’t exist. But it’s still worth trying to go and find it.The story of Amadjar, the ninth Tinariwen album, begins at the end of October 2018, at the Taragalte Festival of nomadic cultures in the Moroccan Sahara. After a concert and a sandstorm, Tinariwen hit the road and head for Mauritania, via southern Morocco, Western Sahara and the Atlantic coast. The destination is important (the band have to set up and record their album there, and hook up with the singer Noura Mint Seymali), but no more so than the journey itself. Tinariwen are joined by their French production team, who arrive in old camper van that’s been converted into a makeshift studio. The journey to Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, takes a dozen days or so. Every evening, the caravan stops to set up camp and the members of Tinariwen get to work under the stars – a whole lot better than being in a studio after all – to prepare for the recording, talking things through, letting their guitar motifs, thoughts and long buried songs come. Then, during a final camp in the desert around Nouakchott that lasts about fifteen days, to an audience of scorpions, the band record their songs under large tent. In a few live takes, without headphones or effects. The Mauritanian griotte Noura Mint Seymali and her guitarist husband, Jeiche Ould Chigaly, come to throw their musical tradition on the embers lit by Tinariwen – the curling vocals of Noura Mint Seymali on the song ‘Amalouna’ will become a highlight.This nomadic album, recorded in a natural setting, is as close as you can get to Tinariwen. And also, therefore, to the idea that things can evolve: bassist Eyadou plays a lot of acoustic guitar; percussionist Said tries his hand at new instruments; Abdallah exhumes songs that he’s never played on stage with Tinariwen. And that violin that appears on several songs and reminds you of the traditional imzad? It’s actually played by Warren Ellis. The violinist in Nick Cave’s band is one of several western guests on the album. We also hear the mandolin and charango of Micah Nelson (son of the country music giant Willie Nelson, and Neil Young’s guitarist), and the guitars of Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))), Cass McCombs and Rodolphe Burger. The album is mixed by Jack White’s buddy Joshua Vance Smith.Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Death Valley Girls
Rock n’ roll has always served as a means to elevate the fringe of society, though it’s accentuated the plights of the outcasts and misfits in different ways throughout the years. In its infancy, rock was a playful rebuttal against segregation and Puritanism. In the ‘60s, it became a vehicle for an elevated consciousness. In the years following the Summer of Love and the clampdown on Flower Power, that countercultural spirit adopted the aggravated and occasionally nihilistic edge of bands like The Stooges, Black Sabbath, MC5, and The New York Dolls. And then as the ‘80s approached, popular rock n’ roll turned into a relatively benign celebration of hedonism and decadence, but that contingent of dark mystics from the ‘70s who lifted the veil and used music as a means of rallying people to altered planes had left their mark. It was an undercurrent in rock that would never die, but would percolate in corners of the underground. Today we can see it manifest in LA’s Death Valley Girls.The group feels less like a band and more like a travelling caravan. At their core, vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Bonnie Bloomgarden and guitarist Larry Schemel channel Death Valley Girls’ modern spin on Fun House’s sonic exorcisms, early ZZ Top’s desert-blasted riffage, and Sabbath’s occult menace. Their relentless touring schedule means that the remainder of the group is rounded out by whichever like-minded compatriots can get in the van. On their third album Darkness Rains, bassist Alana Amram, drummer Laura Harris, and a rotating cast of guests like Shannon Lay, The Kid (Laura Kelsey) and members of The Make Up, The Shivas, and Moaning help elevate the band from their rogue beginnings to a communal ritualistic musical force. On the surface level, Death Valley Girls churn out the hypercharged, in the red, scuzzy rock every generation yearns for, but there is a more subversive force percolating beneath the surface that imbues the band with an exhilarating cosmic energy.Death Valley Girls’ sophomore album Glow In The Dark was based on the concept that many of us are trying to become more enlightened, and you can tell by the way they ‘glow in the dark.’ Darkness Rains goes a step further, attempting to shift the consciousness of those that have not yet considered how we are all connected and how that relates to the way we view life beyond death. Those that ‘glow’ can use the songs on Darkness Rains as new chants—or they can be used for pure entertainment. “Songs come from beyond and other worlds, you just have to tune into the right radio wave signal to dial them in. Our signal happens to be in a 1970 Dodge Charger Spaceship,” says Schemel.Album opener “More Dead” is a rousing wake up call, with a hypnotic pentatonic guitar riff and an intoxicating blown-out fuzz-wah solo underscoring Bloomgarden’s consciousness-rattling proclamation that you’re “more dead than alive.” The pace builds with “(One Less Thing) Before I Die”, a minute-and-a-half distillate of Detroit’s classic proto-punk sound. But at track three, Death Valley Girls hit their stride with “Disaster (Is What We’re After)”, a gritty, swaggering rager that takes the most boisterous moments off Exile On Main Street and beefs it up with Zeppelin’s devil’s-note blues. Darkness Rains retains its intoxicating convocations across ten tracks, climaxing on an astral plane with the hypnotic guitar drones and cult-like chants of “TV In Jail On Mars.”Links: Bandcamp Facebook
