05.10.2026
Good Morning,
This is Beach Sloth. Below are this week’s albums:
· Editor’s Note – Moving forward, anything that is abnormally loud and noisy beyond what a ‘reasonable person**’ would subject themselves to will be prefaced with a *Volume Warning*. Thank you.
Seefeel – Sol.Hz
I miss shoegaze. Everything about it. Never has a genre been so gigantic and at the same time, humble. Musicians from shoegaze bands simply disappeared into their projects. Any time I have gone to a shoegaze concert, the bands get to the point. Banter, non-existent, they go right into the thick of things, which, as a person who is constantly listening to other people talk at each other, is downright relaxing. You can relax and let the bands drift you off into some dreamland. Noise and melody combine to create a language that feels ethereal.
Seefeel takes their time between releases. As a sloth, I appreciate this level of slowness. Why speed things up? Better to slow them down, since there are plenty of things that ask you to go faster. For Sol.Hz is a nice addition to the joyous, lovely Seefeel family discography. A strong system is recommended because they have stated that this is their dub album, and they are completely accurate in that assessment. Everything about the atmosphere is blown out in bliss, with little traces of vocals right at the periphery. Yes, they have always been fond of dub; they are British after all, yet this album has them embrace much harder than they ever have before, which is really saying something, as they’ve always existed in some shimmering haze anyway.
They have been around for a while, and so has the label that gave them this initial start, Warp Records. In fact, Warp Records is going very hard on nostalgia, given the cryptic Boards of Canada advertising campaign and various other resurgences, like their support for Stereolab’s long-anticipated, not-totally-certain-it-would-return return. Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock, besides having the most unbelievably British names in existence, are joined by bassist Daren Seymour, who contributes a ton to the overall atmosphere.
Initially, I thought I would listen to a track or two and save the rest for later. That’s my usual standard, as, despite being a sloth, I am awfully busy, overwhelmingly so at times. Yet Seefeel asks you to make time for them. Everything about their pieces has an unhurried presence behind it, showing how they influenced a wide variety of groups, both close to home, like Flying Saucer Attack’s hazier, harsher attack on the sense of their rural psychedelic rock variety, alongside the Arizona-based drum-less lovesliescrushing, which took certain elements from Seefeel and went in an even more ambient, gauzy direction from their location in Arizona. Though, for this latter point, I must say that lovesliescrushing was taken by Arizona from the far superior, much more artistically inclined Michigan.
You only need to give Seefeel about forty-odd minutes for their album. They do not put out a ton of stuff, so this is time well spent. My other piece of advice would be to employ patience on the album, since they do. While it may appear that the first two tracks are particularly ambient, stay with it because Ever No Way is by far one of the sweetest, kindest little pieces I have heard in a long while. From there, it only grows and expands. Think of it this way – nobody mentions the first chapter or two of Catch-22, but that chapter is necessary to set the scene, for what follows. Seefeel does a similar thing with the first two pieces, introducing the vocabulary they will use, a virtual thesaurus, before they dive you deep into soothing, perfectly sculpted basslines.
Honestly, just put this on and adhere to the sage wisdom of Timothy Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out,” as this embodies that quote as a literal sonic vibe.
ANSIEDAD1000 – Abizzmo
Stoned surf rock set to a broken-down dancefloor, a delirious haze exists across the entirety of ANSIEDAD1000’s Abizzmo. The sun-damaged samples draw from everything, in a literal sense. Cocteau Twins and the Beach Boys coexist within the sound, and it somehow works. How it does it is remarkable, and the whole album has a gleeful demeanor that is genuinely joyous to behold. Everything about the hooks work, the beats are far from expected, and at times, the tracks appear to consist of separate layers operating on different time signatures. A highly messy experience, but there is a great deal of happiness in ANSIEDAD1000, aka Tony Gallardo.
Remember that name, Tony Gallardo, because it will come up repeatedly, as that is the name of the artist behind the album I am currently reviewing. Outside of this project, he has been working on the periphery of pop outcast, R. Stevie Moore, but younger, without the problematic Ariel Pink collaboration, and with a genuine ear for movement. The lo-fi element throughout Abizzmo is not new to Tony either; he has utilized a similar approach in his El Capricho project. For the previous house (which, you could argue, successfully, that Abizzmo is), see his Tony Gallardo II project. I appreciate anybody who has a project with their name, then sticks a II right after it. Takes guts, guts that artists used to have before they went softer on the public than a maggot-encrusted banana. Yeah, I’m talking that soft. Additionally, he has a third project (that I could find; there’s more out there, I’m sure) of María y José, which incorporates aspects of cumbia, rumba, and new wave, among others.
The cumbia element can be felt throughout the whole thing, in the pitch shifts to the slowed-down grooves he deploys to great effect. In some ways, it has a distinctive sun-drenched approach. He keeps things happy, even loopy in certain aspects. Had Black Dice taken their pots-and-pans industrial aesthetic and applied it to surf rock, this is probably where they would have landed. It helps that Tony has a pop background because the hooks are solid. Some are lifted from shoegaze, another beloved genre that appears multiple times. He gives the whole experience a dreamy, out-of-body quality, even as this is very much a body-movement kind of music. Track lengths lean toward a distinctive pop format, with none of the songs exceeding 4 minutes. Yet he experiments a lot with that catchy format, making it impossible to predict where these songs go. If anything, the longer tracks work better, as on LODO teases out the Heaven or Las Vegas’s guitar riff until it becomes almost completely unrecognizable. I only recognized the riff because I have listened to this song and all these songs multiple times, and I lack real-life friends. You’re welcome.
Nyege Nyege Tapes’ Sister Label, Hakuma Kulala, put out this wonderful thing. It fits perfectly with the experimentation for the dancefloor aesthetic that Hakuma Kulala was created for, and the entire album brings nothing but the best vibes, which, in this era of bad vibes, are very much needed. Good liquid sunshine for the eardrums.
Ranil y Su Conjunto Tropical - Galaxia Tropical (Analog Africa No.43)
Easy, the best way to start your Sunday, there are effortlessly chill vibes throughout the good for the heart grooves of Ranil y Su Conjunto Tropical’s Galaxia Tropical. Throughout the whole thing, he reminds you that disassociation from reality can be a very fine thing every now and then. Personally, I was going to simply listen to a track the first time I heard it, intending to go back with a more proper listen. So addictive, I let the whole album (compilation) play out, and it does not ask too much of you. In under 40 minutes, it is unintrusive. Plus, there’s a nice blend of psychedelic, cumbia, and poppy elements, with music that reflects the Amazonian environment that gave birth to it.
The ‘70s were wild. An extended cut of the late ‘60s, it perfected all the oddities that the public craved. Everything felt possible, from an artistic perspective. From that political perspective, not as much, more on the chaotic side of things. Given how we are living, I guess we are due for some great grooves and fantastic art, possibly overdue even. With a greater amount of my musical diet consisting of cuts from the forgotten, deeply strange decade, I’ve grown to appreciate what happened during a time when my existence was far from assured. In short, I did not exist back then, at least not in my current form. No doubt I was living a prior life, perhaps in the highlands of some Central Asian Soviet Republic, or in the lowlands of scummy-ass Manhattan, Lower East Side, fascinated by the raw arts scene that would no doubt end my life. Either way, a fun time.
Ranil’s output is all over the place. Most active in the ‘70s, his albums are almost impossible to find on any site. You pretty much must fly down there to get a handle on it. With the sheer magnificent geeked-out Discogs, multiple albums of his have never been sold. Keep in mind, these are the obsessive types who love buying and selling the most obscure of records. To avoid even their radar systems means that these are very difficult to get one’s hands on. Whenever an album has been sold, it has gone for well over $200. The album artwork is all over the place, and catalog numbers are wrong, but these only add to the mystique. I mean, the focus is on the music, which has a relaxed attitude. Why would the numbering system be adhered to, that simply could not co-exist with music this mellow?
Analog Africa put out this fine little collection of some of his songs to make it accessible to the wider public. When the individual trying to get in contact with Ranil landed in that special part of Peru, Iquitos, the taxi driver was like, “Oh yeah, I know that guy. He has a radio station. I’ll drive you there.” Thus, Ranil’s chillness persisted decades after he released his final albums in the ‘80s. Honestly, if you are trying to figure out what got released when, you are missing the point. The point is the music. Everything else is secondary.
Going for a fine blend of traditional and their own imaginations, the percussionists number about four, so the size of what an average family was decades ago, before things got so expensive. Ranil did more than create a label to release his music at the edge of the Amazonian rainforest. He ran a radio station. Politics were not ready for him, though he was ready to be the mayor of Belén, a district of Iquitos. He never won. Reading about the city and its extreme isolation, smack dab in the middle of nowhere, the world wanted to protect this little legend, to give him a slice of heaven for the great energy he’d radiate.
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**Your idea of a reasonable person, music-wise, I’m sure, differs from mine. **Still, if you’re already here, you’re already unreasonable by sheer virtue of your attendance, and I thank you for that. **
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