Getting Hitched, Going Dark
Here's a month's worth of tunes to tide you over
Hello.
I am getting married soon. Like, within a month. If you’ve ever organized a wedding or even attended one with a perceptive eye, you can imagine that I have a lot on my plate right now. So much on my plate that I’m going to be real: I don’t have the time to sit around writing newsletters. At least until after the wedding. Consider this a formal announcement that I will not be posting again until September. There are some exceptions. Paid subscribers will receive two posts in August: one Playlist Postscript and one Behind The Kit. The rest of you will have to wait. If you want access to this newsletter in the month of August, consider subscribing now.
This is also a great occasion for those with paid, or comp’d, subscriptions to assess whether or not they would like to be paying subscribers in the next year. I urge you to click on the link below and decide for yourself whether you’d like to renew your membership. It should cause you no surprise that I’d like you to renew your subscription. Consider it a kind of wedding gift. That said, it’s rough out there. I will not judge you for sticking to the free form of the newsletter. However I will judge you positively if you decide to contribute to the cause.
In either case, to make up for my absence over the following month, I will leave you with a supersized version of the Listening Diary. Please enjoy the 20 songs below. I’ll see you in September.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Listen to this year’s diary on Apple Music.
“Ponzu Saiko” by Aiming for Enrike (Music For Working Out, 2020)
If you like the French Canadian polka-dot duo, you will probably like this equally wacky, technically adept drum and guitar pair from Norway. Runaway ice cream truck music, not too dissimilar to Battles. The syncopation is so sharp you could sharpen other knives with it, and, like the album title suggests, enough energy to get you through a grueling session at the gym.
“Hasta Jesús Tuvo un Mal Día” by CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso (Free Spirits, 2026)
Elder statesman Sting gives his blessing to a pair of zoomer jokers doing an excellent yacht rock approximation. It seems like the set up to a Zoolander bit but from what I can tell its completely sincere and sincerely rocks. Whoever played drums on this crushed it.
“Gamuen Duet” by Mid-Air Thief (Crumbling, 2018)
Absurd density in the name of beauty. Not exactly shoegaze. Not exactly not shoegaze. This Korean track came my way thanks to the homies in the Ferrn discord chanel.
“Block” by Soft Machine (Seven, 1973)
Ambling around the Soft Machine catalog. I gather this is not a fan favorite but I enjoyed it. Big fan of that distorted organ (?) sound.
“La Leina” by La Lupe (La Lupe Es La Reina, 1969)
Off the charts energy on this track, the whole percussion section sounds like a foot race over burning coals.
“Two Candles” by The Silver (Looking Glass Hymnal Blue, 2026)
There’s a moment near the end of this towering achievement in riffwork where the band makes a full stop so their singer can make a “blowing out a candle” sound. Obviously this song would be a blast without that little detail, the lengthy mid-tempo digression in the middle alone is worth the price of admission, but moments like that speak to the band’s absolute confidence and meticulous craftsmanship. After all the twists and turns, the black metal blasting and the prog-y melodicism, the faux classical cadence that closes the tune feels completely earned and utterly triumphant.
“Nothing Is” by Ka (The Night’s Gambit, 2013)
I find it nearly impossible to write about Ka songs without just copy-pasting lyrics followed by exclamation marks. “My pen be the panacea” !!!!! That line about “novice verbs” and “pro nouns” like….. are you kidding me?? It is wild how much Ka improved from his first two releases to this one as both a lyricist and a producer.
“No Bombardeen Buenos Aires” by Charly García (Yendo de la cama al living, 1982)
My yearly check in with the vast Charly García catalog. Funky stuff! My initial suspicions that García is, reductively, Argentina’s Peter Gabriel are neither confirmed nor denied by this upbeat but politically charged tune.
“Mac 10 Handle” by Prodigy (Return of the Mac, 2007)
For years I’ve heard the podcast Cookies Hoops crack jokes about “staring at Randles” without realizing they were referencing this Prodigy deep cut. I love when a rap song paints an anti-aspirational picture of the MC’s lifestyle. So he’s got the time to light a bunch of candles, smoke some weed, and load his gun, all while watching Hard Boiled, but can’t find the time to clean his dirty ass room? Hilarious image, insanely hard song.
“綱渡り” by Minako Yoshida (Tobira no Fuyu, 1973)
I was introduced to Minako Yoshida through her later disco-ish material, so it was quite a surprise to hear her early, Carol King-esque songwriter period. Even more surprising to hear a song like this go full prog at the last second and lock into a killer 7/8 groove with a wild keyboard solo.
“I Love You So” by Junko Ohashi (Magical, 1984)
If the album is from Japan and has the World Trade Center on the cover you know the music is going to be smooth as hell. You know, you don’t actually need all the fancy editing techniques of vaporwave to hear a sadness in this era of Japanese pop music. It already sounds too good to be true, as fleeting as a dream.
“Dopamine” by Robyn (Sexistential, 2026)
At the risk being way too eggheaded, Robyn raises a heck of a quandary on this track. What could possibly be the difference between a “real” feeling and the chemical process that produced it? If you can’t trust the veracity of your own sensations, what can you trust? Anyway, that “do-do-do-do” vocoder motif is both funny and effective.
“Nobody Knows” by Sunsuke Fujieda Group (Fukushima, 2025)
J-Jazz gets violin right in a way that I rarely hear on this side of the Pacific. Gorgeous soloing all around and a great drum performance that doesn’t get too “ticky-tacky” as is often the case in modern jazz.
“Remnants of Grief” by The Gorge (Mechanical Fiction, 2023)
What I like about this djent tune compared to most of its ilk is how patient The Gorge are. They give you enough time with each riff to actually sink into the rhythm and groove a little. Also they don’t share their fellow low-string chuggers amnesia for metal prior to the 21st century. They’ve got an honest to god thrash break on this baby!
“Ma’na” by Maryam Saleh (Syrr, 2026)
Shouts out to Zachery Lipez for recommending this record on Bluesky. Really subtle changes in the rhythm on this tune, going from compound time (groups of three) in the verses to a steady 4/4 in the choruses. The percussion has such a light touch that you might miss the shifts entirely.
“Azuwi” by Casimir Liberski (Cosmic Liberty, 2019)
This one comes by way of I guy that I met at a friend’s summer BBQ. I took him for a Dave Matthews Band type but we ended up gabbing about jazz fusion and djent, Matt Garska’s name making several appearances. Has the average beer bong bro leveled up? This is some tasty stuff, lots of great keys and organs firing off over a nervy rhythm section.
“I I - I I I” by Blood Abscission (I I, 2025)
Shouts to To The Teeth for reminding me to catch up on this hyped black metal album from last year. Blood Absicssion have some of that spaced-out dreamy keyboard work that you’d expect from a band with that album art, but their riffs keep things grounded. Not too buzzy, but plenty relentless.
“I Won’t Let You Go” by Converge (Hum of Hurt, 2026)
Converge had first released this song as part of the soundtrack to Cyberpunk 2077, a video game that I have no interest in as anything other than the subject of an Action Button review. Better late than never to this killer track. Converge get up to some real black magic with the two-against-three polyrhythm on this one.
“Likeness” by Hamlam (Forming Harmonies, 2023)
Late to this release from the homies at Altamira records. Chirping, burbling electronic music with lots of pitched percussion. Like a conversation between sentient wind chimes. I love the fake digital applause at the end lol. You won’t be surprised to learn that this one was a hit in the Ferrn discord.
“Wunai” by Scattered Purgatory (Post-Purgatory, 2026)
Shouts out to Wolf Rambatz for recommending… whatever this is. Judging by this track alone you might file Scattered Purgatory away in your industrial rock section. That wouldn’t be entirely off base, but it doesn’t tell the full story either. This is the kind of music you’d play while hacking a logistics company off the shores of Shanghai on some Michael Mann Blackhat director’s cut shit.