We need this right now. Something dark & chaotic that you can STILL dance & party to. It's the end of the world. Might as well dance and remain D-E-F-I-A-N-T. URGH is going to become the soundtrack for our resistance. You just watch. 😈
Oh, & MJ! Mandy, Indiana are just one (or two) Kevin Bacons from Curve as far as sound goes (i think.) Tap, pretty sure you'll love it.
What FEBRUARY 6TH, 2026 release do YOU have your ears & heart set on when midnight strikes?! 🔭👀
MadhattanJack wrote:
Honestly, the only previously-announced album I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, and probably this entire month (until the 27th, when we should get the new LPs from Mitski and Nothing), is from Ulrika Spacek (no relation to Sissy Spacek).
They're sort of an art-rock, post-punkish band from London who are often tagged as "experimental" for lack of a more specific genre label. This will probably be their best album yet, though I won't really know that either until tomorrow when I can hear the whole thing.
There will probably be a surprise drop or two, though... There usually are! :)
Oh yeah that Mandy, Ohio one seems cool, very interested. Also been curious to hear EXPO. I've got like 49 things listed for this week at https://www.endaural.com/anticipationlist.html and I'm too lazy to paste the highlights here, but the big one for me is
Florian Hecker - Natural Selection
Hecker has been going long and super weird with it lately, but this one on PAN is supposed to be keeping the duration reasonable while keeping the computer music extreme, I'm excited to hear it!
Wow, that's quite a resource you've got there! Very impressive...
Does the data come mostly from other lists, or are you regularly checking (or RSS feeding) label sites and download sites yourself? It looks like a lot of work either way, so... thanks! 👏
Quote:
Hecker has been going long and super weird with it lately, but this one on PAN is supposed to be keeping the duration reasonable while keeping the computer music extreme, I'm excited to hear it!
Indeed, it''s not quite the sort of thing you'd have on for a campfire singalong at the next camping trip... however, I've got it on now, and it says tracks 1, 3, 4, and 8 are all under a minute, and track 5 is 1:45, whereas track 2 is 25:15, track 6, "Layer" (my personal favorite) is the reasonable one at 5:30, track 7 is 10:01, and track 9 just drones (on what I believe is F-sharp) for 34:24.
They're sort of an art-rock, post-punkish band from London who are often tagged as "experimental" for lack of a more specific genre label. This will probably be their best album yet, though I won't really know that either until tomorrow when I can hear the whole thing.
Hmm... I assume you mean the UK trip-hop band and not the more recent Canadian synthpop artist...? Laika was more jazzy and had a female singer (Ulrika Spacek doesn't), but I guess that's fair.
To be honest, now that I've heard the whole thing... it's pretty good, but I was hoping it would be more of a mid-period Radiohead-ish sort of affair than it is. It actually sounds more like mid-period Arcade Fire than mid-period Radiohead, only without the accordions of course. (I never understood the accordions.) This is also weird, because the second track on Funeral is subtitled "Laika," but I guess that's early Arcade Fire, not mid-period. So it's okay.
Ehhh, this also came out today — not a surprise drop, but I was definitely surprised at how much I liked it:
Dream Nails call themselves a "witch-punk" band, which is nice, since we needed more witch-punk bands. They're still probably best-known for their first single back in 2017, "Deep Heat," which featured the refrain "I don't care if your dick is on fire" — quite a nostalgia trip for me of course, considering how many times I called the Fire Department during the late-70s punk days and got that exact same response. It's like they had access to all my police records and everything!
Back to the topic though, I was expecting more surprise-dropping than I've seen so far, especially last night — mostly because it's Bandcamp Friday (for 4 more hours, anyway) and they're only doing them every other month now. I guess they're not being treated as "events" like they were initially.
Hmm... I assume you mean the UK trip-hop band and not the more recent Canadian synthpop artist...? Laika was more jazzy and had a female singer (Ulrika Spacek doesn't), but I guess that's fair.
Right. The UK band from the '90s. I loved them & Pram. Always lumped those two in together for some reason.
I thought I heard some Kid A influences when I listened to the new Ulrika Spacek. Definitely more Radiohead (to me) than mid-period Arcade Fire. Which is good because I could never get into anything past Funeral. I don't know though. I only heard it once driving home with my kids this evening. I'll listen again, but I was pretty impressed!
Hmm... I assume you mean the UK trip-hop band and not the more recent Canadian synthpop artist...? Laika was more jazzy and had a female singer (Ulrika Spacek doesn't), but I guess that's fair.
Right. The UK band from the '90s. I loved them & Pram. Always lumped those two in together for some reason.
I thought I heard some Kid A influences when I listened to the new Ulrika Spacek. Definitely more Radiohead (to me) than mid-period Arcade Fire. Which is good because I could never get into anything past Funeral. I don't know though. I only heard it once driving home with my kids this evening. I'll listen again, but I was pretty impressed!
Ha! Now that I go into LISTENING FOR what you're talking about I do hear it. The odd thing is I probably would not have heard it otherwise. So I'm now going to completely forget that you ever said it! 😅
Still an enjoyable listen.
Here's another cool take on the album by a reviewer - Bill Pearis - I like in BrooklynVegan...
BrooklynVeganIndieBasementGuy wrote:
London art-psych band Ulrika Spacek have always had a collage-like approach to their music, taking ideas from jam sessions and using them as raw materials for fully formed songs. On their fourth album, however, they’ve taken that concept one step further, sampling themselves to create a personal “sound bank” from which they built beats and skeleton ideas that the band then fleshed out by playing overtop.
Ulrika Spacek aren’t the first rock band to use a method like this, but in their skilled, creative hands, it’s resulted in their best album yet — full of memorable songs while paving all manner of new side streets on their unique roadmap...
There are moments on EXPO where they incorporate drum-and-bass, jungle, and other electronic styles in ways that recall Dummy-era Portishead, Björk’s Homogenic, and Kid A-era Radiohead — but it’s all made by the same band on the same album...
Ulrika Spacek remain one of the most unique rock bands of the current era, and EXPO is a stunning showcase of what they’re capable of.
Ha! And now we know where I got thatKid A idea from! I'm soooo malleable!!! 🙃😅
I like it! Definitely chart worthy! We'll see how it stand up to repeated plays. Thanks for the rec, MJ!
For those of you not yet familiar, they're a folksy dreampop band from New Zealand, also with really nice female vocals. This album starts out a bit harder-edged than their previous stuff, but they revert to form and slow things down about halfway through. I would've preferred they not do that, personally, but I assume that's what the surprise drop was for — they didn't want to warn me in advance in case I tried to fly to New Zealand, find their recording studio, and loudly demand that they become a full-blown shoegaze act.
It would have been over my dead body because this is a PERFECT blend of Alt Pop & '90s Alternative/Shoegaze hitting that hard to find sweet spot over music that's irresistible to BOTH my kids and me. I'm always searching for stuff like this! Thanks! 🌻
No word on a physical release yet, and it's not really the best LP they've ever done or anything like that, but that doesn't matter! It's awesome!
(For those of you not familiar, SPC ECO is Curve's Dean Garcia and his daughter, Rose Berlin, whose vocals sound enough like Curve's Toni Halliday that you can still sort of close your eyes and imagine that Curve never broke up. )
Finally got a chance to listen to this since it's not on Spotify unfortunately. And it totally sounds like Curve. I might have to take a deep dive back into Curve at some point since I really do love this sound. Definitely another chart worthy addition!
Wow, that's quite a resource you've got there! Very impressive...
Does the data come mostly from other lists, or are you regularly checking (or RSS feeding) label sites and download sites yourself? It looks like a lot of work either way, so... thanks! 👏
It was a fair amount of work to get it set up (and to fix all the formulas when it breaks for being too lengthy) but yeah, whenever I see something I want, I plug it in.
Once there was a simpler time. Us metalheads had a united kingdom, and we all spoke a common tongue. Alas, our kingdom became divided. Into tongues of Death and Doom and Black and countless "-cores." But what is this I hear pouring forth through my speakers? Could it be a band capable of speaking in all tongues? One band to unite us all?! Perhaps WORM is the portent so dearly needed in these divided times. 🙏
Likely my most anticipated Metal album of the year!!! 😈
What FEBRUARY 13TH, 2026 release do YOU have your ears & heart set on when midnight strikes?! 🔭👀
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