Working On Time Well Spent

Nothing like a bit of humanitarianism with your post-hardcore. Florida band Frameworks are releasing a new 7” EP, Time Spent, in three different versions – clear with black smoke, white, and translucent gold. The clear/black smoke variation will have a $1 from each donated to the UN Refugee Agency to help with the crisis in Syria. The music itself is as typically asymmetrical as always, offering a melodic thrum before an explosion of razor-edged noise. There is a further industrial element underscoring Framework’s aesthetics though, a sign that Time Spent has been time spent expanding and reframing. ‘Time Spent’ spools out violently with moments of sepulchral calm – Nothing or a Jason Reece-led …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead comes to mind here. Frameworks are priming an album for later in the year – this is the perfect precursor. You can grab it here.

Nothing Cult Of Death

Deafcult is a new band out of Brisbane who I hadn't even heard of before the other day - but considering it's a new project from Innez (Roku Music, Tiny Spiders, Feathers) and Matt Bach (The Quickening, El Motel, The Gifthorse), it shouldn't surprise me how bloody great it is. Taking the shoegaze shine of Roku and adhering it to the Nothing mould of post-hardcore ferocity, the tracks on the Deafcult EP (recorded at Incremental Studios) are incredible intense, sonorous, intricate and cathartic in their sonic expulsions. I'm blown away by how complete this six-piece already sounds - expect massive things from these guys this year.

Deafcult have a few good gigs coming up - they are supporting Pale Heads (alongside Deadshred and a rare show from the excellent Tiny Migrants!) June 20 at Trainspotters, as well as an earlier show at the Sewers fundraiser as that band prepares to assault the US with their excellent second album on the cusp of hitting the shelves (it's bloody killer) June 6 at The Underdog.

Kicking Goals, Son!

This has been a long time coming. I’ve been a fan of Boston band Soccer Mom since their inception back in 2010; they were the subject of one of the first ever Sonic Masala interviews (an element that has come in fits and bursts, but has included the likes of Civil Civic, Angie (Straight Arrows/Ruined Fortune/Circle Pit), White Walls, Batpiss and Alpine Decline amongst others); my write-ups find a small space in the nether regions of their press releases. And yes their moniker is incredibly misleading. But if you haven’t jumped rampantly on their bandwagon, no need to go back to the beginning. Simply dive headfirst into the distorted world of their debut self-titled album – it’s an exercise in calibrated tension, serrated guitar lines opened up to the sky, a series of noise and nuance that embodies what guitar rock should be.


Start with opener ‘It’s Probably Not Your Fault’ – my favourite track on the album, because it IS Soccer Mom. Crawling out of an aluminium bin with the requisite fast-approaching din, we enter the kind of loud-sedate territory that Archers Of Loaf made (make?) their own, creating a cacophony of fuzz and cymbals amidst the sonorous chorus, everything tempered with gazed-shoe precision (including the feedback-toying close). Its that sense of frivolity and earnestness tagteaming amongst the chaos that makes them such an enthralling listen. Elsewhere the is the swirling guitars and disembodied of vocals of ‘Orejas’; the glazed dreaminess of ‘No One Left’; the anguished stutter of (im)personality on ‘Dry Mind’; and the crowded instrumental interlude in the middle of ‘Hideaway Sands’ is the kinda things that coalesces into a vibrant catharsis of crossed strings and smashed slings that Deerhunter-via-Sonic Youth revel in. The brooding closer ‘Open Heart Surgery’ is more openly abrasive, still tempered by crooned insistence, but offering an expulsion that to be honest doesn’t even need to come - if you aren’t an acolyte by album’s end, why are you still here?

The band continue to connect, playing alongside the likes of Weekend, Whirr, Speedy Ortiz and Nothing, bands in particular that embody the yin and the yang of Soccer Mom’s aesthetic. I know there will be albums this year that will grab my attention harder and for longer, but this is such a solid opening gambit longplayer, especially having listened from the beginning, that it’s hard not to get rabidly excited. Well done guys. Soccer Mom is out now through 100m Records – you should definitely get this.

Guilty Of Nothing

We put out Roku Music as our first label release, so you know that Sonic Masala is all about good quality shoegaze. Of course in this day and age there are so many variations that it's hard to discern the good, the bad and the ugly - you get enough of the last one and you are likely to turn off from all the noise (bless me Kevin for my blasphemous tongue...) Philly's Nothing certainly use some of the tropes emblematic of shoegaze, but there is definitely a lot more going on here - this band has their roots as entrenched in early hardcore as they do in 80s English midlands. This is apparent on their excellent record Guilty of Everything.  The vocals remain submerged in the miasmic swirling noise on display, but its the dynamic at play here that makes this a different beast altogether. It comes down to the calm and quiet that nestles amongst the bluster – a sonorous quality permeates tracks like 'Hymn To The Pillory', 'Endlessly' and 'Dig' allowing the noise to seep smoothly into the pores of your being. There’s a familiarity in the wavelength-like undulations of Guilty Of Everything, but that makes it even more arresting. A seriously good release - and if I hadn't put out the best shoegaze album of 2014, then this would surely be it...

Guilty Of Everything is out through Relapse now - get it here.

Nothing Is Greater Than Nothing

 

I've done this a few times now. I thought I had posted about Downward Years To Come, the new release from Philly shoegazers Nothing. I was listening this afternoon to it and thought, “I can’t remember what I wrote about this” – turns out I haven’t. I’m not going entirely senile then…

It’s been out a couple months, through A389 Recordings, and I'm a big fan. It hits all the requisite wall of noise blanketing your ears goodness – a silky opening in ‘The Dives (Lazarus In Ashes)’ bleeds into a more explosive title track – but the moment that gets me is the singular track on the B-side, ‘The Rites Of Love And Death’. It’s a gentle, languid track that drifts away, an ethereal beauty that benefits from the acoustics and gentle vocals, almost like a cast-off from The Virgin Suicides soundtrack. It may seem a strange way to finish what has been a physical suite of music, but it fares incredibly well, the gentle coda to the despair that takes place beforehand.

 

At less than 25 minutes Downward Years To Come is fleeting, but the richness of these songs resonate. You can grab it here, hopefully still in white vinyl... If you're in Philly tonight, or close by, you need to get to Johnny Brenda's - Nothing will be supporting Psychic Ills. Now THERE'S a show!

Nothing – Downward Years To Come