Welcome to Spin Cycle! It’s the biweekly aural hygiene you deserve in a handy-dandy cheat sheet format for albums of particular note from Portland and beyond! The Rose City is not unlike a homing beacon for discerning audiophiles, semi-professional appreciators of physical media, and folks who spend three-quarters of their waking lives with headphones fastened over, in, or around their earholes. In an effort to commune with this zeitgeist of turntable freaks, cassette heads, CD ironists and, sure, even streamers, this humble column is hurtling at you every two weeks with critiques on local and non-local records, big and small releases, and every genre known to the waking (and sleeping) world. Along the way, we hope to introduce you to your next weird sonic adventure, through which the dregs of modern survival might be better assuaged.
Let’s get spinning!
Trigger Object
Choking on a Crunchwrap Supreme as the World Burns
I can’t think of a more fitting album title for the collective futility that our planet is experiencing at present than Trigger Object’s latest effort, Choking on a Crunchwrap Supreme as the World Burns. We’ve all been there, but what does that particular plight sound like?
Helmed by Portland multimedia artist and composer Vern Avola, Trigger Object is the sound of a trillion byte death wobble of algorithmic static. Akin to the thousand-yard stare most of us unwittingly don in the wake of receiving a nonstop torrent of bullshit every day, the album’s messy beauty is a kind of acknowledgement that we are not alone. The world is currently every shade of screwed, but it’s also occasionally capable of uniting us under the emotional minutiae of comforting possibilities—just like Crunchwrap Supremes.
Earth-shaking beats abound, flanked by twisted symphonies of frequency noise, walls of sordid discordance, and an ever-present sound bath of chaos that feels like you’re being led into the abyss of a synthesized fever dream. Harshness is its superpower, and even at its most grating, as heard on “Mechanical Bull Party Rental (Apocalyptic Remix),” the sheer presence it exudes alludes to a collective pulse of pissed-off slackers. It’s the kind of album that’s near-perfect for grimy, sweaty dance floors in the subspaces of a flailing metropolis. It can feel like a straight-up assault at times, as with the unflinching banger “Cloud of Daggers,” but a sly sense of humor writhes just beneath the surface, too.
Prepare for involuntary stank face.
Choking on a Crunchwrap Supreme as the World Burns released March 6 on Vern Avola’s own Eat My Shit Records, and is available in vinyl, CD, cassette, and digital download formats on Bandcamp.
Irreversible Entanglements
Future Past Present
On the heels of their lauded 2023 LP, Protect Your Light, the free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements triples down on the improvisational spirit of their wide and varied talents on their new drop. Future Past Present isn’t so much an extension of their previous efforts as it is a bold turning of the page, replete with a formidable slate of off-the-map jazz freakouts.
You can hear echoes of the noise and experimental scenes the players sprouted from in cuts like “The Messenger,” spotlighting the dueling skronk of trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and saxophonist Keir Neuringer. The song’s controlled furor is eventually tempered by vocalist Camae Ayewa’s dazzling poetics (“This is not just music / It’s atmosphere”) and the rhythmic insistences of bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Tcheser Holmes.
Ayewa, AKA Moor Mother, channels ancestral wisdoms and the power of collective vision as a path forward in troubling social landscapes through incendiary verse. Never cloying in the delivery of her missives, the space she helps create in busy avant-jazz tracks like “We Know” help to balance the psychedelic fringes of the band’s dizzying acumen. This song features New York-based vocalist MOTHERBOARD, whose throwback jazz vocal dynamics expand the band’s experimental palette on multiple tracks. Lead single “Don’t Lose Your Head” is about as anthemic a song the band has ever produced, with rallying cries of “It’s time to stand for liberation / The people will rise and stand / It’s time to organize and plan.” Hear, hear.
Future Present Past drops March 27 on Impulse! Records and is available for preorder in vinyl, compact disc, and digital download formats from the band’s website.
The Wave Pictures
Gained / Lost
Splintered memories and scattered dreams permeate the soundspace of Gained / Lost, the latest LP from London underground pop-rockers The Wave Pictures. Led by guitarist-songwriter David Tattersall, the band’s cult following in the UK and beyond has helped yield nearly 20 albums since their 1998 inception. They also just happen to be one of the best bands in the whole world, and are obliged to prove it yet again (he writes with unchecked authority).
Gained / Lost’s cover is a nod to the Stones’ Exile on Main Street, patching together a menagerie of old photos and pop culture ephemera, suiting well the tenderhearted core of Tattersall’s affecting quiver of tunes. The band’s dynamism drives Tattersall’s lyrical songwriting into both sentimental rearview ballads (“Faded Wave Pictures T-Shirt”) and freewheeling pop magic (“Samuel”). While the band excels on songs that glide on saccharine-sweet melodies and jangly guitar runs, Tattersall’s occasional forays into big-riff rockers, as on “You’re My Patient Now,” help in breaking the vise-grip of his spell, delivering the kind of barroom revelry that made yesteryear tunes like “Pool Hall” from 2016’s Bamboo Diner in the Rain thrum like the trenches of smoky blue collar vistas.
On both the lead single “Alice” and the mid-record title track, Tattersall flexes his skills to embody a kind of punk-cult guitar hero in extended shreds that would bring Tom Verlaine to his knees. Tattersall’s chirpy solos land like slippery slabs of angular bliss, almost always expected and never faraway or indulgent.
Listen, and become delighted in the tides of The Wave Pictures’ storied oeuvre.
Gained / Lost dropped February 27 on Bella Union and is available in vinyl, compact disc, and digital download formats on the band’s Bandcamp.