Cheap Thrills - Q1 2024

This month: experimental rock, industrial hip hop, chamber pop, and more!

This one is super late, and, well...I don't have a great excuse! The good news is that the music wasn't the problem—I've found a lot of great name-your-price tunes over the last few months—but it's been difficult to find the motivation to sit down and write after work. Nonetheless, we will forge onward with yet another semi-quarterly edition of Cheap Thrills featuring a delightful smattering of tunes and rhythms from across Bandcamp. 

Ciśnienie - Zwierzakom

Though I try not to judge books by their covers, I was fully expecting this to be some kind of bass-heavy dubstep release, but thankfully, it's not. Zwierzakom still hits like a sledgehammer, though, with its fascinating collision of piano, saxophone violin, drums, and bass. I suppose I could categorize this as some kind of post-rock by way of early 1970's King Crimson—that is, delightfully weird and crushingly heavy, like a cyberpunk jazz freak-out. 

Miracles of Modern Science - MEEMS

It's hard to believe that this delightful little EP is over a decade old. It had been years since I listened to it, but after receiving an email about the band's new song, I decided to go back and listen to their brief discography again. MEEMS is a tight little EP of upbeat chamber pop that will have your foot tapping in no time. The instrumentation is consistently excellent, full of fun flourishes such as the unison slides on "Dear Pressure" or the swelling Philip Glass-style arpeggios on "Don't You See". The standout track for me is "The Singularity", an ironically morbid take on dystopian sci-fi that is both timely and insanely catchy that will have you gleefully singing along to lines like "We'll shoot the supplements into our veins so we can reprogram our genes".

Mowan - Svitaye, Palaye

Morwan has been my go-to working music for the last month. I just can't get enough of it. Alex Ashtaui, a Ukrainian multi-instrumentalist, combines the gothic chill of Eastern European post-punk with winding Middle Eastern melodies for a haunting and hypnotic listening experience. I'd be lying if I said that my productivity has gone through the roof while listening to Morwan's discography, but these head-nodding rhythms have definitely made the work much more bearable. 

Aura Merlin - Illuminations

My ongoing journey into the world of dungeon synth has borne much fruit, with Aura Merlin being the most recent discovery. Illuminations is one of the more actively engaging albums that I've encountered in this space, which is by no means a knock against the genre. It's just that so much of the fantasy/synth that I encounter—including the stuff I enjoy—is more suited for background listening. Aura Merlin's music is multifaceted and detailed, its compositional flourishes demanding attention: a melodious haze swirl around ominous piano chords on "Castle Gardens"; reverb-heavy trip hop beats adds hypnotic rhythm to the otherworldly gloom of "In the Willow"; and album closer "Fond Farewell" is a synth odyssey whose lush drones are best experienced with headphones on and eyes closed.

BLACKHANDPATH - These N***** Is At It Again

Yes, their name is in all caps, and yes, it deserves to be so. BLACKHANDPATH perform chaotic industrial hip hop that sits somewhere between jpegmafia, Death Grips, and Lil Ugly Mane. Young Kozy's vocals are always delivered with a cartoonishly villainous snarl, and Bileblaster's instrumentals combine bizarre sample collages with chopped up boom-bap beats for a messy but always engaging sonic assault. 

For the heavier stuff, head on over to Invisible Oranges for the most recent metal edition of Cheap Thrills!