CONTENT BLOCKS
Emerging from New York City’s subterranean trenches, Content Blocks explore the acoustical infrastructure of their environs through reflective soundscapes and post-club iterations. The duo, consisting of Ian Campbell and Matthew Hord, have collaborated and participated together for years in musical endeavors and events. Their near-decade of shared experiences crafting, programming, and operating the electronic instrumentation in heralded industrial/noise rock act Pop. 1280 [Sacred Bones, Profound Lore] has informed this journey further into hardware experimentation – and this new partnership shows the results of their journeys into ambient abstractions, dancefloor deconstructions, and fractured pop tropes steeped into darker realms.
IMDS, their first release, explores their focus on melding off kilter percussive patterning into textural immersion and manages to find a balance between plaintive and uplifting. A fever dream of reverb is smeared across a dancefloor malaise, the disaffected vocals inhabiting a space not unlike the walk home after the afters – the avenue empty, the building surfaces emitting echoes of parties past. Conceived further in concept as an audiovisual experience, the single is accompanied with a video created by longtime collaborator Scott Kiernan (ESP TV), focusing on an accelerating centrifuge interspersed with frames of cell death and electronic feedback, all orbiting the centerpiece of a lone dancer. This track is the beginning of multiple collaborations between Content Blocks and Kiernan that can be expected in later months to come.
ALICE SANDAHL
Alice Sandahl’s forthcoming second album pulls off something difficult, something entrancing—something that might best be described as magic. It wraps around you and draws you into its search: a search for just the right note, the right melody, the perfect tone for each moment. Yet, in this exploration, the artistry never feels lost—it always has its footing.
This masterful foundation Alice has created is well-earned. She has spent the past 16 years delving deeply, transforming her experiences in academia and life on the road into her own spellbinding sound. Her journey began with classical training in college and evolved into her role as a founding member of the acclaimed rock band La Luz. Over a decade with the band, she released four albums on the notable indie label Hardly Art, collaborated with visionaries like Ty Segall and Dan Auerbach, and logged countless hours on the road.
The proficiency makes sense: miles have been traveled, hours have been labored, and a wealth of knowledge and skill has been earned. But understanding the how doesn’t diminish the real magic of the work. That magic comes from a curious soul, constant movement, and the quest for the "new now." Alice Sandahl fully connects with the present on this album, offering a striking documentation of it, while also posing the question: what’s next?
THE INTELLIGENCE
Lars Finberg, confirmed genius guy and poet laureate of sunken 21st century Rock, acts as manager in perpetuity of THE INTELLIGENCE, primary vehicle for his prolific creative swirl and a project that has taken on new shapes across myriad trials and shifts. The project began in his Seattle bedroom – a lad and his Tascam cassette 8 track – with the classic Boredom & Terror and has now landed in his Los Angeles studio apartment – an urchin and his Tascam digital 12 track – with Lil’ Peril, a new album that finds Finberg 1000% back at the controls. Over the course of 11 albums (!), The Intelligence has established a backbone that boogies through revolutions, allowing each jam-crammed dispatch to feel and sound admirably unique. The angular sharp shocks heard in earlier years have steadily evolved into the ballooning grooves heard on more recent releases (including Finberg’s recent solo work). Lil’ Peril is a dreamy gamble that captures this current bubbling penchant in The Intelligence’s inaugural homemade mode.