Back in 2023, North Carolina post-punk/dream pop outfit Cor de Lux released Media, an album which channelled the uncertainty of the present and attempted to turn its energies into something more constructive. Single ‘Rumors’ came complete with an animated video created by Matt Smithson which further delved into these themes, matching the song’s story of losing a friend with a picture that captures the folly behind so many human interactions. “The video is a super abstract story of some amoeba/single cell things emerging, becoming sentient, trading ideas, fighting about their ideas,” the band explain, “until there is nothing left: no color, just rage until it all implodes at the end.”

Media is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Cordelia Gartside – December

Based in Hastings, Cordelia Gartside is a singer-songwriter who uses a mix of indie folk and rock sensibilities as a vehicle for delivering succinct and emotionally charged vignettes. Centring on  what she describes “spinning out in December when the light goes and time’s weird and it’s hard to know how you feel about anything,” latest single ‘December’ is the ideal introduction to her narrative-driven work. A track hushed in tone but winding taut with feeling, capturing the volatility of one’s internal weather when the outside world presses in a little too heavily.

Crying at commercials, I know
I should try to be discerning with
My emotions
Don’t know how I’m feeling
December it’s me again

Ground Loops – Get It Right

“The lasting impression is that of organic development,” we wrote of Ground Loops‘ self-titled debut release via Rue Defense back in 2020, “the various components reaching out in all directions and meshing with those around it, knitting together to form a dense and textured sound.” Follow-up EP When A Stoppable Force Meets A Movable Object sees TC Brownell (Wild Pink, Dead Painters) channel his new surroundings of the Pacific Northwest to offer a freshly verdant edge to the sound, as opener and single ‘Get It Right’ attests. A song which exists within the landscape’s foggy breath without sacrificing the level of detail Brownell’s precision and patience creates.

My Best Unbeaten Brother – Slayer on a Sunny Day

With Ben Fry joining Ben and Adam Parker, who you might now from Audio Antihero favourites Nosferatu D2, The Superman Revenge Squad Band and Tempertwig, My Best Unbeaten Brother is the latest project to rise out of Croydon swinging. This year will see the band unveil their debut EP, and for now we have the non-album track ‘Slayer on a Sunny Day’ by way of introduction. First appearing on Joyzine’s 20 Years of Joy compilation, the song channels the wry contradiction of its title, pairing a racing momentum with droll delivery in an attempt to look on the bright side and make the best of the present moment, no matter how difficult outside forces conspire to make such a mindset. As Parker sings: ‘The apocalypse can wait until tomorrow.”

‘Slayer on a Sunny Day’ is out now via Audio Antihero.

Routine Caffeine – In The End Now

Louisville, Kentucky‘s Routine Caffeine are prepping a new EP for release in 2024, and latest single ‘In The End Now’ offers a glimpse at the band’s penchant for rich, bittersweet soundscapes. Rising from careful beginnings, the song explores the benefits and pitfalls of holding your tongue within a relationship, and if the quiet tiptoeing of the opening suggests a certain hesitance to raise difficult topics, the track soon gathers conviction as the momentum builds and tips into a cathartic back half. Speaking the truth might cause things to unravel, but sometimes change requires a few things to be broken in order to precipitate.

SAVAK – Leash Biter

Brooklyn post-punk outfit SAVAK come from strong musical stock. Founded by Sohrab Habibion (Obits, Edsel) and Michael Jaworski (The Cops, Virgin Islands), the band features Matt Schulz (Holy Fuck, Enon) on drums and welcomes Jeff Gensterblum (Small Brown Bike, Her Heads On Fire) and Matt Hunter (New Radiant Storm King, Silver Jews) for live performances. New full-length Flavors Of Paradise utilises every inch of this collective experience to create a brand rock as politically-charged as it is catchy. Single ‘Leash Bitter’ shows off the brooding swagger and bite of the SAVAK sound, simmering around a taut rhythm and gradually coming to a boil.

Dogs on every corner
Biting at my heels
Teeth cut through like a razor
A scar that never heals

Secret Secret – She’s Tired!

Consisting of childhood friends Sadie Alan, Marika Stuurman, Maria Donjacour and Thomas Fendert, and cutting their teeth in the San Francisco underground scene, Secret Secret is a band centred around collaboration and trust. Their self-titled debut full-length introduced their brand of “lullaby punk” in 2020, and now the outfit are preparing to release a brand new EP. Single ‘She’s Tired!’ is the first taste, a song which explores ideas of exhaustion and burnout with a playful energy, capturing Secret Secret’s trademark balance between fun and emotion. “Are you tired? / Are you waking up with no desire?” as Alan asks. The song is also supported with a surreal video which pitches the band into their own dreams.

‘She’s Tired’ is out now via the Secret Secret Bandcamp page.

Tractor Beam – Set In Stone

The project of Toronto-born, New York-based songwriter Sasha Balazic, Tractor Beam is less a solo endeavour and more an outlet for collaboration and friendship. Following last year’s debut album Turtles All The Way on Kingfisher Bluez, Tractor Beam have returned with ‘Set In Stone’, a brand new single that sees them continue their signature style, what the label calls “an eloquent mix of freak folk and 2000’s indie rock.” Balazic’s earnest vocals are joined by gentle guitars and lapsteel, building from a soft and subdued beginning to something genuinely stirring, complete with propulsive percussion and joyous call and response lines. But it’s not all good vibes, melancholy and potential tragedy linger at the edges, something brought into relief with the use of audio samples from the 25th Challenger space mission towards the end.

‘Set In Stone’ is out now via streaming services.

wheel kid – shortcut through graveyard

wheel kid is a project based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that combines folk sensibilities with sound collage and noise styles to evoke both the New England landscape and the emotional terrain of those who inhabit it. The first in a series of small releases, burning sister taylor river might seem a modest offering with only three songs, but each provides into own miniature world into which the listener is invited. Take ‘shortcut through graveyard’, whose sparse lyricism is supported by a rich and patient sonic palette.

ester born in 17-5
21 years old when she died
buried in the yard on the highway side
see her grave from the kitchen window

captain alexander 1812
sailed to the far north in pursuit of the right whale
buried underneath the pool at the motel
where the kids do laps in the shallow end

Zoya Zafar – You Meant Nothing, Too

Back in October, we wrote about ‘Tunnel Vision’ by Orlando’s Zoya Zafar, the lead single from her forthcoming album Some Songs. With the record due for release this spring, Zafar has unveiled a second song to further whet appetites. Titled ‘You Meant Nothing, Too’, it’s a slow and solemn song built on droning piano, Zafar’s softly intimate vocals and strikingly poignant negative space. Acoustic guitar and subdued percussion eventually join too but things remain pared back to their essential elements. Zafar uses minimalism not as an austere stylistic choice but as a tool to hone her music’s emotional weight, suffusing it with warmth despite its direct and unfussy arrangement.

‘You Meant Nothing, Too’ is out now via streaming services.

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The majority of this came via the project Nosferatu D2, though Ben Parker set out solo as Superman Revenge Squad once the initial outfit wound down and reunited with his brother for The Superman Revenge Squad Band later. The former set out the Parker brothers spirit, a whole gamut of feelings distilled into an instinctive, spontaneous sound. The instrumentation veered between raucous and minimal, Ben’s guitar often loud and erratic and prone to descending into warped cacophonies despite the lack of effects peddle. Meanwhile, Adam’s drums hammered out lines that formed the skeleton for these creations, their insistent drive capturing the fury and furore that made the Parkers’ music so distinct.

The lyrical component was no less ambitious or impassioned, a breakneck deluge of wry jokes, honest admissions and pop culture references. The tone was sad and livid with the way life had turned out and even sadder and more livid that the only recourse is to write songs, as if art ever made a difference. The result was an exhausting and wholly recognisable blend of cynicism and sincerity, powered by a constant rage with the banality of things, to the degree to which Ben Parker suggested he couldn’t play these songs if he wasn’t angry enough. Immediately after playing what was to be their biggest show (supporting Los Campesinos! and Sky Larkin), the brothers found that this prediction had come true, and in that moment they decided to shelve their freshly recorded debut album and pronounced Nosferatu D2 finished.

Only, like their namesake, the band were not so much dead as undead. A fan in London loved their music so much he set up a label specifically to release their album, and the birth of Audio Antihero reanimated Nosferatu D2, giving them a posthumous renaissance. With what has now become the hallmark of the label, Jamie Halliday put out the record (and a subsequent album from The Superman Revenge Squad Band) as a labour of love, letting the music speak for itself while maintaining a healthy discontent with the wider industry—not genuflecting to the bloated cast of publicists and taste-makers in the hope of wider success, but letting a community coalesce around the music. He created a space for the cult albums to germinate and bloom, the roots of the Parker brothers maintaining soil structure for what was to come.

However, the Parkers were writing and recording music prior to these projects, playing under the moniker Tempertwig along with bassist Daniel Debono. The songs from these early days were long thought to be lost, though after some millennial archaeology, a collection was unearthed from hard drives and CDs, and Audio Antihero has teamed up with new label Randy Sadage to release FAKE NOSTALGIA: An Anthology of Broken Stuff.

The record, described as a “time capsule of an uncelebrated town in gloomy South London,” isn’t out until the 29th March, but we’re honoured to be able to share two songs a few weeks early to set expectations. With its melancholic, tired anger, ‘Comfort Blanket’ is classic Parker brothers, the vulnerable honesty balanced with an unceasing self-consciousness, the cost of trying to communicate candidly in a culture that Mark Fisher labels ‘capitalist realism’—where everything has long since been used up and commodified, and nothing new can emerge. “Why is the bedroom so cold etc. etc.?” Parker asks, condemned not only to being secondary and belated to previous generations and their golden idols, but fatally aware of the fact. Ours is a time in which every thought and sentiment is an inane reference to something else, made stupid and empty by the ubiquitous quotation marks.

Opening with a gentler, brighter sound, ‘Everything Can Be Derailed’ is a reaction to this, born of the tension between making peace with the situation and attempting to overthrow it. “It’s alright, we can laugh and smile and keep our fingers crossed,” Parker sings, as though seeking small mercies or miracles in hell, “and hide the sleeping pills up there on the bedroom cabinet, on the left.”

But the refrain offers a different mindset, the insistent repetition forming a mantra that aims to break the spell of complacency and fatalism that marks the culture that came to dominate in the 00s. Everything can be derailed—the tyranny of capitalism, social order, nostalgia, the beatified idols still working from the grave—we just have to remember it, scream it, repeat it slowly beneath our breaths. As Mark Fisher concludes at the end of Capitalist Realism, “the tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizon of possibility,” and perhaps a way out of capitalist realism could be charted “from a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.”

FAKE NOSTALGIA: An Anthology of Broken Stuff is out on the 29th March via Audio Antihero and Randy Sadage Records. Also, if you haven’t already, be sure to delve into Nosferatu D2, Superman Revenge Squad and The Superman Revenge Squad Band‘s back catalogues too.

Artwork by Benjamin Shaw, photos courtesy of Rattail.net

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