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Jonnine Standish, one half of the long-running Australian moody, atmospheric post-punk band HTRK, also makes solo stuff that I’ll let her bio describe: “Skeletal rhythms slink and echo through dimly lit streets framed by fragments of guitar, bass, breath, keys, scrapes, and haze.” HTRK inspired a lot of bands I’ve featured lately, like aso, Astrid Sonne and Acopia
Mar 6, 2025
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It's the album I come back to again and again. It makes me actually weep. I found it on /mu/ in high school and got more into her discography in art school while painting in my allotted studio. My partner plays the harp so we bonded over JN early on. Striking imagery in JN's lyrics and she's able to make the harp sound fresh with her coo caw and squeaky vocals. Unconventional song structures, songs sometimes reaching 6-9 minutes, more complex narratives.
Jun 28, 2025
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Liz Harris – the one-woman, do-it-all singer/songwriter/musician who essentially IS Grouper – is the sound of someone disappearing before your very eyes; an ache with no underlying injury; a whisper from an unseen voice. Such is the ephemeral ghostliness of her music, an intensely private form of expression captured within a very public context. If you took My Bloody Valentine’s layered collage of sounds and applied Low’s 4AD ambient acoustic surface to them (vs. Kevin Shields’ concussive, punishing feedback waves), you might be approaching the outer rings of Grouper’s orbit.
"On dreams I'm moving through heavy water/
The love is enormous, it's lifting me up/
I'd rather be sleeping."
Druggy, sexy, arty, pretty, but never pretentious. The sound of the waking dream.
Mar 20, 2024
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It's haunting and melancholy but very passionately performed. If you like Christine and the Queens, Holly Humberstone, or Holly Herndon for that matter, you'll dig this probably (but put through a Celtic filter). Came out in April and I keep returning to it. Especially "Life of the Forbidden," "Wee Rosebud," "Into This, Called Lonliness," and the closing track "S.O.S. Song of the Sword" is VERY on the Kate Bush tip.
Jul 12, 2024
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I was at a party and this song came on, and it’s the best. Cansei de Ser Sexy (named after a Beyonce quote that she “got tired of being sexy”) were a Brazilian group you were either a fan of or at least heard played in Zune commercials. I completely missed a reunion tour last year and that is a bummer!
I always thought the Death From Above they were talking about were DFA but on closer inspection of the music video, it is indeed, Death From Above 1979 they are listening to while making love.
I always thought the Death From Above they were talking about were DFA but on closer inspection of the music video, it is indeed, Death From Above 1979 they are listening to while making love.
Mar 6, 2025
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I’ve posted about Chanel Beads a few times on onrepeat.substack.com as one of the bands popping off in Brooklyn and beyond right now—a collaboration between musician Shane Lavers, vocalist Maya McGrory (Colle) and experimental instrumentalist Zachary Paul. The sound is a result of manipulated strings and something called “fake jazz” which I can’t describe but sounds right.
Mar 6, 2025
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Beak> has been around for some time now, featuring some of Bristol’s finest talents, including members of Portishead. They came on my radar when they produced the debut Anika album many years ago. This is pure CAN and that’s not a bad thing to be!
Mar 6, 2025