Recording under the moniker Regal Murk, Brooklyn’s Zach Schwartz describes throwing his most recent album Neat Defeat into the void and leaving it there. Released in 2019, the record had a low-key unveiling, existing on bejewelled USBs mostly sent to friends and staying under the radar on the overwhelming library that is Bandcamp. But in preparing new work, Schwartz returned to the album and found himself struck by what he found. A product of hard work and sizeable ambition, worthy of rescue from the void, however humble the operation might be.
With its lo-fi textures and intimate delivery, the Regal Murk sound is rooted in the traditions of bedroom pop. But to confine it to the genre is to ignore its sheer vision. And there is plenty of room for invention, as Neat Defeat clocks in at twenty-seven songs which sprawl out between the poles of folk, indie rock and ambient styles. The frantic energy of ‘magic is dead’ is worlds away from the downbeat, Dusted-esque simmer of opener ‘fresh hell (heaven is a prison part 1 or 2)’, while ‘the beautiful uncut hair of graves (a trifle)’ has all the offbeat charm of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone. The experimental ‘voicemail’ interludes combine push right out into ambient/drone territory, their creepily automated voices pressing through like hauntings.
It is this mood which links the eclectic mix across the record. A blend of playfulness, pessimism and fury, casting Schwartz as a kind of self-aware, self-hating preacher at the end of the world. This might present as tongue-in-cheek gloom, as typified on the wonderfully titled ‘precambrian days (manichaean nights)’—”You believe the earth was made by some bored cunt in seven days,” goes the opening line, “now sacrifices must be made”—as well as a more defiant tone that challenges the society in its sights. Take ‘Archduke’, a song rising from the humming stillness of an empty room, sitting within a quiet fondness but soon reaching out with a kind of desperate plea.
dead i stand, demonstrably damned
the heart i need was hidden inside cut my guts out
wear them with pride and desert your homeland
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In many ways, the story of the album suits its overall mood. Recorded as though destined for the void, just like everything else. But with its endless invention and wry rage, Neat Defeat is also a statement of opposition. A small rally against the encroaching doom. If or when someone hears it is almost besides the point. It’s there, it’s waiting. Why not lend a ear?
Neat Defeat is out now and available from the regal murk Bandcamp page.