What We’re Listening to This Week (7.26.26)

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What We’re Listening to This Week (3.1.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (3.11.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (4.2.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (4.15.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (4.23.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (5.4.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (5.12.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (5.22.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (6.13.26) · What We’re Listening to This Week (6.25.26)

Equalizer hosted by Heterodox Records 10-08-25 – Live Set By Spines

This set is admittedly nostalgic for me because I was there live. Here’s what I wrote about it:

“It’s that rare night where schedules, weather, and stellar music sets are in sync on a Saturday in Portland. The perfect storm. The captains of this bloody sea are the music makers and we are the ancient sea life swimming next to a vessel that’s from out of this world, as it guides us safely off to darker and more dangerous ground. SPINES, our resident Alien sea captain, is absolutely shredding this place to bits. The crowd is moving as one organism – hypnotized and feral. I will never miss an opportunity to bathe in their organic beats and wailing siren frequencies. “

What a great night.

This Could Be Us by Enzo Caselnova

Enzo Caselnova is unassuming. That sounds underhanded, but when you meet Enzo you’ll understand what I mean. He is warm in the actual human sense, a big hugger with no detectable interest in scene hierarchy, and when he listens to you, he listens with his whole heart. You can usually tell when someone’s generosity is cosmetic. Enzo’s seems built into the frame. When you hear his music, it confirms that his energy is one of the megafauna that roams this planet. Enzo’s energy is gentle on the surface, then suddenly megafaunal. I mean that literally … in the emotional sense. It has the weight of some ancient creature moving through the deep forest – an Eremotherium laurillardi planting its feet after reaching into the high trees, enormous and calm because it has no reason to do otherwise.

Love this album.

Live in the Depths 69 – Sumner Live Set

Again, I was there for this Sumner set, though enough time had passed that my memory had flattened the night into a general impression. Returning to the live recording corrected that immediately: the performance was far stronger than I had managed to remember. Production Unit Xero and noyouyesme are always going to give you something worth showing up for, but this was the first at Live in the Depths I remember where it felt like the crowd was going appropriately insane. Just listen for yourself and try to get lost in this amazing live set. Also looking forward to Sumner’s next release which will no doubt be a four-disc concept album about the moral collapse of linear time. I hope.

RetrospectMixEP2012 – 2014 by Wet Mango

When some people make art, it’s not a result or some kind of left over remainder of a system – that’s a condescending notion. Some art is a direct reaction to the system. It’s a system filled with little humiliations that come with trying to live, let alone making something “strange” in a world built to flatten strange things into a product. Wet Mango consistently chews through that bullshit, and with enough music like this (and the music in this article), the relationship between art and environment will hopefully begin to invert. Art reflects its conditions, then starts reorganizing them in return, until the environment itself becomes a product of the work. I look forward to that day.

Moving People Around by all the stores are closed

I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks deep in the all the store are closed catalog, which inevitably led me to an album I had somehow missed. This came out alllll the way back in 2020 in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Jason Morales never ceases to surprise me with his instrument choices, because I swear on Track 2 I heard a fucking theremin intermingled with a bongo drum. A great ancillary benefit of listening to Jason’s music is knowing he’s down to destroy this white supremacist technocracy, and Moving People Around is dedicated to those fighting in the class struggle. I appreciate that kind of clarity. It’s worth a listen just for that.

wrong number by John Nap

John Nap is a soldier. I don’t think he would mind me saying that. Whatever training he was given, and whatever original system that training was meant to serve, the useful part has clearly been redirected. A lot of his music really does feel like someone taking inventory of the weapons, the wounds, and the field, then deciding what can be repurposed. Again, having had conversations with John and listening to his album C.C.T. (Christian Conservative Terrorist), it makes his albums that much more enjoyable to listen to. My only complaint is that this record is too short. Give it a listen.