On April 24, New Orleans psych-pop artist Urq release debut album This Dismal Village via Exploding In Sound. And today, they’ve shared a new single from the album, “Kings In Bed.” The track is a warm, crackly and otherworldly gem reminiscent of the Elephant 6 collective of bands from the late ’90s, such as Elf Power or Olivia Tremor Control, along with the warped surrealism of The Residents, and on this track, they employ some unusual instrumentation from the 1970s in crafting the sound. Hear the surreal lullaby below.
The band said in a statement, “This song is based off a few chords looped from an iPhone app which recreates a ’70s instrument called the Optigan. It works by playing back loops off of optical discs in different musical styles, and you can then press different buttons to change between a limited amount of chords.
Lyrically, this song ties in a lot of the most dire themes of the album. Pervasive bleakness, resignation and hopelessness in the face of horrors. A king assassinated in his sleep, only to resurrect in a new, contorted form. More and more people are dropping out, whether we realize it or not. But the battle against apathy and cynicism is worth fighting!”
Ridgewood, Queens-based artist Beck Zegans (f/k/a Goo)is set to release her new album Engraving Of Armor on May 22nd via Exploding In Sound Records. She’s also shared the lead single “I Want You,” a song about dating in New York and how the past poisons the present, which simmers during the verses before bursting into something far noisier in its bold, expressive chorus. Watch the accompanying video, featuring visuals by Madrid, now.
“‘I Want You’ is all swept up in this insidious urge to bolt when things start getting too good. We're all just bits of trash blowing in the wind down Myrtle Avenue, trying to go anywhere but here,” Zegans explains. “We filmed at Union Pool, Cassette, Baby’s All Right, The Space at Irondale. It doesn't have a plot exactly but the loose concept was ‘what if the backstages of all the venues were secretly connected?’ I've worked at 3/4 of the venues we shot at, so it's also a nod to audio engineer life; going from one venue to the next every night.”
Co-produced with bandmates Alex MacKay (Cutouts, Nation Of Language) and Julian Fader (Remember Sports, Ava Luna)–and featuring Palehound’s El Kempner, whose band Zegans has been a part of in recent years, on two tracks–Engraving Of Armor is available to pre-order.
On Engraving Of Armor, Zegans explores the strange architecture of an emotional fortress through a series of songs that flash between fiery rock, experimental folk, and psychedelia. The album centers on themes of emotional defense and desire, and sings to the invisible shields we build around ourselves, the weight they carry, and those fragile moments when it all starts to unravel. These nine immersive tracks move between confrontation and contemplation, grounded by cyclical, meditative drums, bursts of heavy guitars, and the occasional warm pulse of analogue synths. At its heart, Engraving Of Armor digs into what it means to wear emotional armor. Zegans seeks the answer to this question through songs that touch upon longing, ambivalence, and avoidance, as well as the complicated exhilaration of falling in love–of both wanting deeply, and resisting that want at the same time.
Much of the record’s sound can be traced back to the years surrounding its creation. In lockdown, Zegans found herself gravitating toward heavier, more confrontational music, and that tonal shift reshaped her songwriting. Where earlier material sometimes leant on metaphor or distance, these songs aim for clarity and are armed with bluntness. “I got angrier during the pandemic and was listening to a lot of angrier music,” she says of this time. “I think that inspired me to not hide behind metaphors too much. I tried to be pretty frank.” The change is audible not only lyrically but in the texture of the music. Throughout, guitars push harder and harder against the rhythmic spine as the songs meet their subjects directly, each arrangement dripping with desire, hesitation, and escapism.
The creation of Engraving Of Armor also marked a major evolution in Zegans’ recording process. Rather than arriving in the studio with fully arranged songs, she built them piece by piece through collaboration with bassist and synth player MacKay and drummer Fader. Each track began as a home demo of guitar, vocal, and a drum loop; writing to loops for the first time opened up a different rhythmic approach for Zegans, and it gives the songs a steady pulse that would later influence each musician’s performance. From there, she would bring the demos to MacKay, and the two would continue writing and recording layers at MacKay’s home studio in Ridgewood, Queens. Next, Fader would track drums and additional instruments, record vocals, and continue sculpting the songs’ sonic landscape at his Honey Jar studio. The collaborators approached each song as its own universe, gradually expanding and refining each over the course of a year. For Zegans, the method was both educational and liberating; by building each piece incrementally, the trio could pull apart the arrangements, play with the elements, reshape structures, and let the songs evolve organically. Zegans, MacKay, and Fader anchor the recordings, while Kempner appears on “Riddle” and “Woods,” adding signature flashes of expressive lead guitar.
Musically, Engraving Of Armor sits in conversation with a wide range of influences, and is equally comfortable leaning into the textural experimentation of Autolux and Sonic Youth, the intimate songwriting of Nick Drake, or the modern urgency of Fontaines D.C. A sense of place also played a subtle but notable role in shaping the record. Zegans has lived in Ridgewood for seven years, surrounded by a dense ecosystem of musicians and venues. Her environment seeped into the songs, with some tracks exploring a particular form of urban self-numbing–the way a city like New York can offer endless distractions from the things people want and fear most. As she puts it in one lyric: “It’s New York / in rivers of beautiful trash we’re all hiding from the things we want too bad.” Despite the ambivalence embedded in that line, the album isn’t a rejection of the city. If anything, Engraving Of Armor reflects its sprawling magic, and the strange tenderness that comes from loving something that can also overwhelm you.
At the end of the month Stuck will release their new album Optimizer, from which we've heard a couple of singles already: "Instakill" and "Deadlift," both of which we named some of the Best Songs Of The Week. Today the Chicago band are back with another preview int he form of "Sicko," a blast of pummeling post-punk that laces its fun hooks with some pointed questions: "Don't you wish you were someone else/ Don't you ever get sick of yourself?" Yes, sometimes! And maybe you do, too, so check out "Sicko" below.
One for the bedroom bound freakers today, the debut LP from New Orleans’ Urq. The band comes from the mind of the man behind Spllit and W-9, an art-damaged solo stint that lets him stretch out on scooped lo-fi pop, bringing to mind GBV’s compact chaos, jitter punks from MX80 to Devo stretching back to prog godfathers Gong in their rumpled glory. First single “Another Mystery” finds no comfortable purchase, no slump to settle into. It’s hackled and hinged, banging bent guitar lines into blindfolded origami shapes and thrusting them through Urq’s trusty 4-track for aesthetics. The band’s debut comes coursing out of the always stellar lineup over at Exploding in Sound. The new album, This Dismal Village, is out April 24th from EIS.
The members of the Massachusetts post-punk band Landowner say that their new album Assumption was built on the intentionally ridiculous concept of "weak d-beat... as if Antelope were reading the sheet music of Discharge." That's pretty fun! The album drops on Friday, and we've already posted the singles "Rival Males" and "Normal Returns To Normal." Today, Landowner share "Bow To Your Superior," which really does sound like the restrained, arty version of a transcendently angry 76-second hardcore protest anthem. (It doesn't really sound like d-beat, though.) Here's how frontman Dan Shaw explains it:
"'Bow To Your Superior" is a short banger about obediently submitting to the supremacy of artificial intelligence. The lyrics suggest AI as a sort of boss we come across at work, whose high position we've been trained to submit to. A lot of Assumption explores how our lives are shaped by the various assumptions we all make, as we engage with media, politics, anxiety, and our own internal landscapes. "Bow To Your Superior" contributes to this theme: AI essentially generates output based on computers making assumptions, and our culture has quickly pushed us to bow to this new tool. We assume AI can do the thinking for us. We're submitting to AI's authority by choosing "Bow To Your Superior" as a single, because, as you may know, short songs perform more successfully on most streaming platforms' soulless algorithms. There's a chance this song reached you today in part due to our obedient cooperation with the machine."
You, however, can hold your head high knowing that you did not encounter "Bow To Your Superior" through streaming-service algorithms. You read about it on Stereogum dot com! Listen below.
