08.02.2026
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.
*Volume Warning*
The Sprigs – For Red Riverbank
How experimental is the Sprigs’ For Red Riverbank? Well, there’s a guy named fucking Tweedle on it. Yeah, you’re getting too deep into abstract folk music. Tweedle is deadly serious about his folk fuckery. I would go out and touch grass, but there’s hail with the sky colored apocalyptic. So I guess I am stuck here with whatever you want to call this. Technically there are guitars in there somewhere, underneath all the sonic debris. Sometimes melodies emerge, but for the most part they do not. You are taken on this utterly perplexing journey, folk music as designed by Graham Lambkin. Lo-fi does not even accurately describe the level of muddle. Right when you decide that it is getting far too gone, otherworldly levels of strange, they pull it back for some heartfelt odes. This ebb and flow, the push and pull, gives the album an allure. Unspoken narratives emerge throughout the journey, making each piece feel completely lived in, as if this music was being performed long before you, the listener, ever arrived. The band is indifferent to your presence, and yet remains unbelievably emotional. Perhaps that’s the unifying structure amid this structureless meandering: that deep, heavy-hearted fervor that borders on an experimental form of tenderness.
Listening to it brought back memories of the sadly short-lived genre of freak folk. The reference points to early Animal Collective (very early), and Jackie-O Motherfucker are fully there. A nice collective interplay becomes doubly lovely, as it highlights a sense of togetherness, of working together. Fidelity-wise, the lo-fi works in the sound’s favor, making it feel as if you stumbled upon your uncle’s weird art project from two decades prior on a poorly stored cassette tape. Much of it has a tape warble to it, and that again adds to the overall appeal of the journey. Purely instrumental, the instruments sing boldly. Choices made with the instrumentation, like the toy box melodies on Ratty & the moles get to work, show a nostalgia for a time that never was. On that track, there’s this other timeline quality, as if Philip K. Dick was right about different timelines branching out from our own. Right here proves it; this is ancient yet released just now somehow? It is a marvelous thing, and the softer side of the group alongside the more extended experimental segments help to give the album a degree of well-roundedness. They know when to remain mysterious and when they need to get a bit closer to the listener to give them some melodies to chew on, as that previously mentioned Ratty would do.
You can tell they are English because the only snippets that remind you of Planet Earth occur with decidedly sitcom-esque clips. I am a pure-blooded American, as American as they come, but even I can spot that whimsy from a million miles away. The tape work becomes even more fragile with these snippets, as the recorder feels as if it could outright collapse at any given moment. Rotation of the cassette player is felt too, adding to the physicality and channel-jumping adventure of the experience. I guess the UK continues its devolution with this album too, as the tape is caked in nostalgic musings of the currently paralyzed political situation. As an American, I know a thing or two about abject hopelessness with the current political environment; we basically started the gradual decay of society’s structures and exported it across the universe. I apologize on behalf of my countrymen who made it possible, but, in the middle of hopelessness, you get unexpectedly gorgeous, mournful tunes like the kind the Swigs do so damned well. A few moments even aim for the joyful, as if a long-lost Olivia Tremor Control outtake was just unearthed, so you get a nice spectrum of the emotions found on here.
Personally, I enjoy the longer-form music that reads as a John Fahey hallucination; that’s when all the various elements combine in a most satisfying way. The work is downright exquisite, difficult, off-putting for sure, but well worth the effort. Go where the Bison roam, as that fine London label released these things back out of their comfy English homes into the wild from whence they came.
Estelle Schorpp – In My Ears (for Maryanne)
Interestingly, I had listened to this album a while ago while driving from Michigan into Illinois. Every few months, I do that trip over. Today, while dealing with a torrential downpour, something inside my memory was jarred out of its restful slumber. Typically, I like to let my brain wander while driving. So I was driving past almost the exact same spots, because it is the Midwest and there are only so many roads to travel on, and this came back into my mind. Schorpp’s In My Ears (for Maryanne) deserves the return visit. I like quieter music during travel because I want to see how the silence can stifle out the noise that surrounds me. The idea that silence can deafen noise appeals to me, and this is one of the reasons I like L-NE as a label so much, because L-NE has that virtually as a mission statement. Even by their standards though, this is a special album, tender and experimental in equal measure.
That tenderness comes from the object of devotion, that of Maryanne Amacher. For those unaware, shame on you! Next you’re going to tell me you know nothing about otoacoustic emissions? She remains one of the very few composers to utilize this phenomenon on a large scale within almost her entire body of work. Well, thanks to this devotion to a sound that exists entirely within yourself, you can experience another discipline of hers, that of Schorpp’s In My Ears (for Maryanne). Hence, the tenderness. Even with the Supercollider levels of programming, there is heart here.
By far my favorite piece is the middle one, One City Away. I love this piece. Everything about it is perfect. The sound involved consists of various high-pitched frequencies and the sighing of a train horn. Given that I grew up with the sound of train horns echoing deep into the night, I consider their horns strangely romantic. I adore the loveliness of the atmosphere, and the duration adds to the emotive aspect. Your mileage may vary, but for me, One City Away reminds me of waiting for the endless number of trains I caught over my entire life. As an aside, every time I hear the train horn-like sighs, I expect to hear the famed “stand clear of the closing doors.” Conditioning goes hard in the brain. I get why Pavlov’s dogs drooled with that bell ringing; the response indicator is hard to break, and I have not heard an echoing train horn (of the New York City variety) in well over a decade at this point. Her melody is subtle and delicate. You will get this melody stuck in your mind; this melody has been stuck in mine for the better part of nearly two years.
Experimentation is here too, but it is nicely parallel with the more playful side of the conservatory and the university. Think when Stockhausen was standing up on that table getting his speakers arranged for Gesang der Jünglinge. Shout-out to my boy, 82-year-old Josef Protschka, for providing vocals on that beast of a track. Tones here allow for a degree of glee, which is an unusual thing to describe an auditory phenomenon. Yet, I stand by it. I recommend playing this on speakers, because you need that all-around surround, particularly the bookended pieces of the Synaptic Choral.
French-born, Canada-based, I am genuinely shocked this is her debut album. There is a confidence here and a fully realized, immersive ecological environment. Sounds teem with life here. Before this, the only other thing that she was involved in was this Die Päonie, another experimental group. Hopefully we will be lucky enough to get another album from her at some point, considering her work in places as varied as EMS Stockholm (Sweden baby!) and Mutek in Montreal. Schorpp and L-NE did the world a great favor by putting these fine tones into the world, and did Maryanne Amacher’s memory great justice.
Earthball – Actual Earth Music – Volume 3 & 4
If you are in the market for music for those human sacrifice ceremonies, do not fret; Earthball has you covered with Actual Earth Music – Volume 3 & 4. The fact that these two extended slabs were live is maddening. Do I think that the audience appreciated them enough? You know that they did not; what could be shown for this level of unhinged terror? An assault on the senses, with the group going into all variants, pitches, timbres, etc. To escape is impossible from this sheer ruckus, and they wisely have all bases covered, for the betterment of mankind. It is time to surrender because there really is no escaping it, as the wise truth-teller once solemnly proclaimed, “I glued my balls to my butthole again,” where they were in fact predicting this very band.
Riffs emerge out of the wreckage, going for a decidedly burnt apocalypse no wave dementia. Had Sonic Youth decided to remain gnarled, cacophonous brats instead of softening their early to mid ‘80s sound and embracing their inner Glenn Brancas, perhaps this could have been the outcome. That’s how ancient it feels. Drums have a tribalistic fury, working on an emotional level more than anything discernibly time-keeping.
Jeremy Van Wyck sounds very reminiscent of Thurston Moore’s deadpan delivery. Isabel Ford’s vocal style proves far icier, going further away from Sonic Youth roots into the austere coldness of Nico’s work. Together the two vocalists play off each other, resulting in this deadened stare that comes through on the whole journey. I appreciate the fact that these are both improvised, as they have a nice ebb and flow to them. Rather than going all hard the entirety of the journey, they go hard for most of it, and dabble with some brown acid varietal, like what those kids took at Woodstock in the 60s before they completely lost their minds. Oh well.
Liam Murphy on saxophone stuns too. He goes for a lethargic, hallucinatory specter. A unique approach that lends itself more to rock gone wrong than the more accessible James Chance, or the complete scorched earth tactics of Borbetomagus. Elements of the saxophone at times blend with the ragged riffs of the guitar, almost being played like that of a guitar. Riffs on here go for a pure haunted quality. Out of the chaos, the riffs emerge, and they are all the nastier for it, like that guitar has seen some shit and wants to share the ugliness with you.
For the loose nature, they do manage a degree of devastation. This is gigantic music. Noise rock barely does it justice, but it is a start. Usually noise rock groups embrace some, but not all, noise. Here you must give it to them; they really get the ugliness of the genre down right. Makes sense that they would exist within the confines of the global city and current madhouse of London, England. I do hope the best for all my British readers, but, as they seem to be adopting the chaos of US-style politics, I can only worry. If that guy who wears a bin on his head wins that election, then maybe there is some hope. Heck, pretty sure that Count Binface guy would rock out hard to Earthball. Typically I avoid weighing in on overseas elections, since I’m American and we have failed at democracy, so what lessons can we possibly teach? However, Beach Sloth is changing tradition and throws all their support behind Count Binface.
Released by the very aptly named label Upset the Rhythm, the rhythm, and really all instruments in general on here, are deeply upset, disturbed even. Sometimes though, that disruption is necessary to give birth to new things, like a phoenix.
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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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