08 Apr 2021

Wave Cage, "The Portrait"

By Max Allison

Well, I, for one, am glad that groups of plucky young musicians get together and decide to make jazz fusion in the year 2021. As an avowed devotee of late-'60s through -'70s fusion as pioneered by the likes of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Mahavishnu Orchestra, I can’t help but smile when a contemporary band can hit with horn voices, electronics, and funk rhythms all at once. Iowa City’s four-piece band Wave Cage get there.

08 Apr 2021

Chaircrusher, "Stars Have Fallen"

By Max Allison

The rate at which prolific musicians in the Bandcamp era can churn out new material on a short notice will never cease to amaze me. The idea of an “album cycle” in which an artist drops one album a year, or even less frequently, and spends the time between proper releases promoting and performing based around one album’s material still exists in the upper echelons of the music industry.

07 Apr 2021

Everlasting Light, "Split with Changeling"

By Max Allison

Rock Island-based black-metal band Everlasting Light has been a favorite Quad Cities project of mine since the release of Heavy Sanctuary back in 2019. A project that revels in the extra layer of obfuscating scuzz that comes from a more informal approach to recording, they still always manage to hit a sweet spot between the high fidelity detail of a “proper” studio take and the more room-tone-soaked final product of a DIY demo tape.

13 Mar 2021

Landethics, "phantom tidepools ii"

By Max Allison

Iowa City-based producer landethics’ release phantom tidepools appeared in the Reader’s pages back when it was released in May of 2020, and its lovely blend of post-video game OST melodicism and tonal choices, fused with a fine-tuned sense of beat programming, won my heart.

12 Mar 2021

VoidDweller, "cum"

By Max Allison

Bettendorf’s resident freak-noise-slash-post-rap industrial producer/vocalist VoidDweller has been trolling our eardrums with their aggro strain of free-for-all genre-mashing psychosis for a minute now, but the charmingly titled cum is probably their most fully formed and ultimately “complete” release to date.

11 Mar 2021

Pariah x Robscire, "Idle Hands"

By Max Allison

Whoa. Here’s a nice surprise from a Quad Cities-based project that until this point has been nowhere near my personal radar. A five-track EP of mostly instrumental hip-hop beats from the Davenport duo Pariah and Robscire, Idle Hands perfectly scratches a sweet spot between the kinetic, proto-trap drum patterns and throbbing basslines of Memphis hip-hop staples such as Three 6 Mafia, and a strain of more tripped-out modern-rap beatmaking closer to, say, Death Grips.

10 Mar 2021

Giallows, "Lost Boy"

By Max Allison

The Davenport-based horror-score psych-rock experimental crew Giallows dropped a new track called “Lost Boy” on the most recent iteration of Bandcamp on March 5 – the first Friday of the month being the day the music-hosting platform cedes its usual share of profits directly to the artists, which has caused a huge monthly spike in both artist output and fan purchasing.

13 Feb 2021

Nraakors, “Hoppel Poppel”

By Max Allison

It took me, like, a minute into the first track on Iowa City experimental rock crew Nraakors’ album Hoppel Poppel to decide that I frickin' love this band.

12 Feb 2021

Troll Trax Studios: Slop Fountain's “Sloppy Seconds” and Meat Crayon's “Drunken Doodles”

By Max Allison

Troll Trax Studios’ fiery compilation of Quad Cities technical death metal and grind core titled The Cave Compilation landed in January and laid out an entire roster of like-minded Midwest metal freaks that all proved capable of shredding our guts to pieces.

11 Feb 2021

dead lizard grin, “My Atlas of Never-Taken Paths”

By Max Allison

In the wake of Princess Dismal, December 2020’s album’s worth of outtakes that proved just as compelling as his typical “proper” album material, Rock Island’s resident drone kingpin and improbably prolific composer Terry Skaggs hovers back into view with a new batch of extended ambient meditations titled My Atlas of Never-Taken Paths.

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