my band has released an LP.

https://troughband.bandcamp.com/album/human-human

It has certainly been a very long time since I have made a post on this blog, and may be another long time until I make the next. But since a few people have expressed interest in what I have been working on instead of this blog, I figured I would share this, although it isn’t necessarily going to be up everyone’s alley. I am in a band called Trough that has just released its debut LP. We are a strange kind of punk band, a punk band that you might describe as being experimental were we not reasonably catchy and structured, that you might describe as dissonant if we weren’t also highly melodic, as post-punk if we weren’t so aggressive, etc. the contradictions continue. I do think we have a distinct style, although we are not reinventing any wheel by any means. We are a little noise-rock, a little death-rock, a little post-hardcore, a little D-beat, a little free jazz, a little no wave, but more than anything sound like an odd amalgam of these. Our friend Rob Magill, who is a free jazz composer and horn player, contributes ghastly squeals and squawks on bass clarinet and saxophone on three songs. Our guitarist, Andy Lopez, adds in dissonant piano textures, as well as kalimba and octave mandolin.

It would be troublesome to say *who* exactly we sound like, but I’ll take a leaf from Rob’s book and instead give a list of some people who are possibly responsible in some faint measure for how we sound, through repeated listens on our part if nothing else: Slint, The Jesus Lizard, Captain Beefheart, Dead Moon, Rudimentary Peni, Sun City Girls, Oxbow, Swans, Lydia Lunch, Big Black, Discharge, Siege. On and on it goes, and none of it is especially illuminating, but those are a few of the people we’ve listened to, individually and collectively, a lot of.

I am the vocalist for this band, and write the lyrics, which can be found on the bandcamp site. Subjects include dementia, murder, the socialization of men towards violence, cannibalism, empty life in rural towns, and so on. As a sampler, here are the words to our song “Pretty Low Levels of Radiation,” and many thanks for those who have read this blog over the years:

In youth is beauty: Your bones wake to the sun, Before the body’s betrayal. But in youth is cruelty – A salamander writhing on a nail. But at least you had your fun? I know you And what we’d do While the sun was high in the sky. Pavillions and courtyards And statues of butchers. Monuments to the bastards That cast us little psychopathic shadows.