Genius #26 - Feb '26
New music from CHANP. Album recs for Horse Lords w Arnold Dreyblatt, Kalia Vandever, pôt-pot, Rafiq Bhatia, Gelli Haha. Show review from Ryosuke Kiyasu @ The Undercroft.
Hellooo Geniuses,
Please enjoy a Genius Dot Com first listen!! Here is the Chanp demo titled Proof of Concept (deno). Six songs written, recorded, mixed/mastered, artwork etc all by the band, released TODAY. Annette, Sean, and I are really proud of how this turned out – a fully DIY record made 100% in-house by the band. Please enjoy and celebrate by screaming "death to america" as loud as you can.
Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 31, 2025
Quick one this month, so let's a get a shoutout RIP for secretary noem, who can finally go back to doing what she loves, murdering puppies and grimacing without blinking.
Anyway, enjoying art is a critical experience for humanity, so we soldier on. Hearing a song and going "hey that sounds pretty good" makes you less of a ghoul, every moment counts. Here are some album recs from 2025 that I missed and a big list of upcoming records to look out for in March. I went to a wild show at The Undercroft and wrote about that experience. Lots more good live shows on the horizon. Let's listen to some tunes, together.
- Album Recs
- Scene Report - Ryosuke Kiasu @ The Undercroft
- Upcoming Shows
Album Recommendations
Horse Lords & Arnold Dreyblatt - FRKWYS Vol. 18: Extended Field (RVNG, 2025)
collab between instrumental rock music and modern classical composer
D. G. Fitch
If you're into the harmonic series, have I got a record for you! Dreyblatt's overtone-inducing arco techniques & harpsichord-esque synths merge incredibly well with Horse Lord's more distorted approach to microtonal abstract rock. Each half has 2 parts: an ambient piece & a rock piece. Side A's "Advance" & "Extended Field" are more like a march with overtones that push and pull in a rhythmic lurch. Side B's "Suspension" drones through different instruments one at a time until the band comes in to deliver a rocking ending in "Impuse Array." Another corker for Horse Lords AND for RVNG's great collab series.
Kalia Vandever - Another View (Northern Spy, 2025)
trombone quartet jazz
D. G. Fitch
I'm not usually a big jazz trombone fan, but Vandever's playing is expressive and lyrical with just the right mix of modern composition & classic sound. Her compositions are tense, but the rhythm section of Kayvon Gordon and Kaonoa Mendenhall stay loose and find free space within the repetitive, tight harmonic structures. Mary Halvorson's guitar playing suits these songs really nicely, she does a great job bridging the gap between a melodic and rhythmic figure and the pitch-shifty pedalwork that she always does is (mostly) tasteful. The third track "Cycle In Mourning" in particular really caught me off-guard as a great piece. This is a GDC self-note: I've recommended a bunch records with Halvorson on this website, even tho I identify as a hater, so I prob need to rethink myself and to stop biting.
pôt-pot - Warsaw 480km (felte, 2025)
dreamy, noisy post-punk
pôt-pot
Very cool debut from the Irish-Portuguese quintet. To my ears, this record is split right down the center: the first half is all about basslines (mostly driving, but some more groovy and laid back), screechy feedback guitars, while the second half is more sparse and gives more space for the band's spooky 50s rock n roll influences. Bandleader Mark Waldron-Hyden offers rhythmic snarls that are buried deep in the mix and lets bandmates Elaine Malone and Sara Leslie's blissful understated harmonies push the melodies forward. There's harmonium drones buried underneath and there's also a dedicated tambourinist, which gives everything a 60s psychedelic element. Really excited to keep watching this band to see what they put out next.
Rafiq Bhatia - Environments (ANTI-, 2025)
tectonic ambient-jazz
jondo69
Eight movements that are each pretty long, describing the birth of islands thru volcanic eruption (I think?). We open with an aviary and a look at the sky, the earth and sky each open up, the eruption is just 6 minutes in the latter half, then crickets, then another view of the aviary. Bhatia's guitar playing is more structural than flashy, he uses the guitar to match motifs and brings this album to life by the shifting plate tectonics of his live sample flipping. We hear a mix of synthesized environs and field recordings underneath the compositions. Filling out the trio is Riley Mulherkar (who finds so many places to put explosive trumpet lines) and percussionist Ian Chang who adds to cinematic vibe with a super varied kit (lots of toms and cymbals). Listening to this feels exactly like looking at the album cover's stark color palette, at times it's almost more structural than musical.
Gelli Haha - Switcheroo (Innovative Leisure, 2025)
warped synth-pop
Kadallah
I loved this wacky little synth-pop album with ONE (1) song about pissing in a jar. What a hoot! Stereo blippy arpeggios, absurdly fat basslines, and a prevailing sense that the artist is just having fun making up some songs for you to hear. The different intensity levels on the songs is nice, there's a mix of lower-key nearly-shoegazing serious songs and funnier little clown songs. It can be hard to make sense of what's serious and what's a joke (the opening track "Funny Music" even ponders this directly), but Gelli leans into that uncertainty and plays with your expectations as a listener. I love every synth tone on this thing, the way she uses stereo panning & envelopes to make sounds seem "sharp" and "dull" creates a great sense of foreground and background. This isn't joke music, it's just that the world is funny and weird and so our music should reflect that – would def try to catch her live if possible, it looks insane.
Upcoming March albums:
2026 is in full swing & I'm really excited for a bunch of records coming out this month – I cut this list down from 10 albums I'm looking forward to so that it's not just information overload. Let's gooo
jondo69
- Mexican pushpit punks Margaritas Podridas are back with more scuzzy pop. Metales Pesados is out on Hopeless Records today, 3/6.
- Gregory Uhlmann has a solo record of guitar wizardry out today 3/6 via Int'l Anthem. Extra Stars features all 4 of his SML compadres, looks like a hit.
- Armand Hammer half Elucid has a stripped down LP with Sebb Bash out on 3/13 called i guess u had to be there via Rhymesayers and Secretly Canadian.
- Glad to get even more Bill Orcutt in 2026. Music In Continuous Motion is another solo quad-guitar release, but promises to be an evolution in the sound. Out on 3/13 via Palilalia.
- Drone organist Kali Malone & harsh noise cellist Leila Bordreuil are dropping a banger collab of organ, cello, feedback, and sine waves recorded live. Music For Intersecting Planes is out 3/20 via La Becque.
- I'm so stoked for singer-songwriter Grace Ives new release. A rare major label rec from yr boy Larry M! Girlfriend is out on 3/20 via True Panther/Capitol.
Scene Report
Ryosuke Kiyasu, Bao Ngyuen, Brandon Gouin @ The Undercroft (2/25/26)
Special show for a lot of reasons, but wanted to write up my experience at this wild one. The Undercroft is a church basement in Baltimore that is collectively run – this show was a unique mixed-bill of performance artists & noise acts.
I arrived just in time to see the 2nd half of Gouin's performance of Aphasia from composer Mark Applebaum – a piece for solo performer to mime synchronized movements to a prerecording of complicated rhythmic sounds & tape effects. I'd never seen anything like it before! Really interesting to consider the role of percussion and the body, the piece takes about 9min and requires full attention from the performer. There's no sheet music, so it's pure memory and practice. The audience sat on the floor in complete silence. The finale of the piece has the performer counting 1s as a metronome while noises come in at seemingly random intervals with less and less movement until they are sitting perfectly still on the stage. Really impressive to see live!
Nguyen is a local performance artist/terrorist, whose art lately has been a transgressive free improvisation based on audience participation and shock. They began their set by asking the crowd to sit back down on the floor, then they got up on the merch table, stripteased their whole ass and then asked an audience member to put on latex gloves and rhythmically spank them. They began sobbing, then suddenly got a wild grin and exclaimed "Experimental music could NEVER." It only escalated from here – they sucked off a tubelight until their gag reflex kicked in, sang and goaded the audience into more participation. The big finale: "What else do you want me to do?" Of course someone from the audience asked them to insert the lamp into their anus. Of course Nguyen collected a condom first (then a second condom when the first one broke) and made it happen. Of course they asked an audience member to turn the lamp on and off while it was held in place. The audience was perfectly split between entranced & horrified (I spent much of the show having a nervous good time & watching audience reactions). Cheers to the brave souls willing to engage with the artist when they are so obviously at a disadvantage.
Off to the side, Kiyasu had a completely untraceable expression. He went on stage with just a noise table, a snare drum, a microphone, some brushes and sticks. The set opened with simple brushes, clean paradiddles and crisscrossing patterns. The brushwork got more and more complicated until he pushing the brushes against the table, then bouncing the snare around. Soon, the brushes were replaced with sticks, the patterns similarly crisscrossing and using more and more of the table below, more and more of the sticks themselves, more and more picking the snare up and dropping it to produce tones. Then the microphone that was on the floor came up onto the table.
Kiyasu is also of the Japanese grindcore band Sete Star Sept, one of the first grind bands I ever got into. While the SSS sound is over the top intensity from start to finish, the tension of when-and-how Kiyasu's solo set would boil over was what had me transfixed. The rhythms got more and more chaotic, with the performer jumping as if he would jump onto the table, then pulling back to try to reign in his own intensity.
After about 20 minutes of pushing and pulling, Kiyasu jumped on top of the table and started writhing and moaning into the drum (which had a microphone on the other side). He deathrolled off the table and launched it behind him. Wild eyed looking around the stage, he found the mic and threw it at the snare drum, then stood on top of the snare drum as he bashed it with a drumstick, shifting his weight to change the tuning of the drum as he rolled. Then he kickflipped off of the thing and launched it into the wall with the table. The set was complete. A short encore show of moving the legs around on the table in a show of packing up, then a bow. Kiyasu immediately turned away from the audience and stood against the wall, catching his breath for a long time.
Upcoming Shows
Baltimore
- 3/2 (Mon) Machine Girl, Show Me the Body, Lustsickpuppy @ Union Craft Brewing
- 3/4 (Wed) Prison Affair & Snõõper @ Ottobar
- 3/4 (Wed) Contact Mic: Open Experimental Jam @ Wax Atlas
- 3/5 (Thu) Sinister Haze, Hagstone, Lathe @ Metro
- 3/5 (Thu) Mast Year, American Motors, Choking Boys, Pluot @ Holy Frijoles
- 3/5 (Thu) Dan Spencer, Carl Gene, Limit Break, Dared2Live @ The Undercroft
- 3/7 (Sat) Chain Of Memories, Brothers Dibiase, Ragdollz, Weathervane @ Skatepark
- 3/7 (Sat) Peter Evans w/Borax, Pluta + We Sundry Vessels @ The Red Room
- 3/9 (Mon) Bootprint, Bolt Swallower, Saafeway, Death By Despair @ DM Band for address
- 3/12 (Thu) Little Lungs Album Release with Planette Automatic, Morgan Gorgon @ Ottobar
- 3/12 (Thu) Bruce Willen & Sarah Manley, Melissa Hyatt Foss, Carillon, Xor @ 2640 Space
- 3/13 (Fri) Powerwasher, Wax Jaw, Gist, Radium Girl. @ Holy Frijoles
- 3/13 (Fri) Hideo Rakudoan & Xin Ni, $2 Trip, Claire Alrich, Sarah Hughes, 40HZ Oscillator @ Wax Atlas
- 3/13 (Fri) Three solo guitar pieces: The Distortion Of Memory // The Fragility Of Time // The Complexity Of Distance @ 2640 Space
- 3/14 (Sat) Eyelet, Ousted, Gloop, a paramount, a love supreme and Starveling, @ Metro
- 3/14 (Sat) Stripmallravestarrr, Alovesurpreme, Annamae, Bella Hayes, Black Grealish @ Royal Blue
- 3/14 (Sat) Invisible Cities, Chromafix, Sickle Cell @ Peabody Heights
- 3/14 (Sat) The Croaks, Pluot, Jupie, Carpet Walker @ Old Major
- 3/14 (Sat) Joe Henderson @ An Die Musik
- 3/14 (Sat) Gary Numan, Tremours @ Soundstage
- 3/17 (Tue) Gumby’s Junk, Ploy Machine, File Select @ Wax Atlas
- 3/18 (Wed) Contact Mic: Open Experimental Jam @ Wax Atlas
- 3/19 (Thu) ZETA @ Metro
- 3/19 (Thu) Community Modular Meetup @ The Red Room
- 3/20 (Fri) Matchstick Percussion w/ Hi-Tom Ensemble @ 2640 Space
- 3/20 (Fri) Joyce Manor, Militarie Gun, Teen Mortgage, & Combat @ Nevermore Hall
- 3/20 (Fri) Ulrika Spacek @ Metro
- 3/22 (Sun) Shift Meal, Old Eastern, Still Bones @ Holy Frijoles
- 3/24 (Tue) Orcutt Shelley Miller @ Metro
- 3/24 (Tue) Evicshen @ Ottobar
- 3/24 (Tue) Rosemarynodsuponthegrave, Life, Samskara, Bone Gripper @ Wax Atlas
- 3/25 (Wed) Healthcare For The Homeless Benefit w/ Joshua Reinking, Boatwater, Broken Things, Sara Jane Miller, +MORE @ The Depot
- 3/26 (Thu) Receiver, Suppai Helwa, Friday Junior @ Peabody Heights
- 3/27 (Fri) Procedures w/ Mind On Fire, Pique Collective, Black Cherry Puppet Theater @ 2640 Space
- 3/27 (Fri) Consumer Culture, Insignia, Rags of Might @ Gopher Hole (Goucher College)
- 3/30 (Mon) Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, Rosali @ Ottobar
- 3/31 (Tue) Dirty Three @ Recher Theatre
DC
- 3/3 (Tue) Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy and Friends play R.E.M.'s Lifes Rich Pageant, Bobcat Goldthwait @ 9:30 Club
- 3/13 (Fri) Butcher Brown @ The Atlantis
- 3/20 () Skaiwater, Baby Osamaa @ Union Stage
- 3/21 (Sat) Tosser / Bloodsports / Guttered @ Rhizome
- 3/24 (Tue) Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore @ Miracle Theatre
- 3/26 (Thu) Anna Von Hausswolff @ Songbyrd
- 3/30 (Mon) Dirty Three @ 9:30 Club
- 3/31 (Tue) Perfume Genius (duo) @ Lincoln Theatre
NYC
- 3/3 (Tue) The Shape Of Jizz To Cum: Ka Baird, more eaze + gabby fluke-mogul @ Singers
- 3/3 (Tue) Brandon Seabrook, Sam Weinberg, Tom Bruckner @ Sisters
- 3/4 (Wed) Anh Vo: Experiments with Ca Trù @ Roulette
- 3/5 (Thu) Dommer, Receive, Pippy @ Footlight at Windjammer
- 3/6 (Fri) OUTLINE: The Spits, Prison Affair, Times New Viking, SNÕÕPER, The Serfs @ Knockdown Center
- 3/6 (Fri) Dot Iso, Sunjay Jayaram / Stan Zenkov / Hans Young Binter @ dada
- 3/13 (Fri) Porcelain Vivisection, Clown Syndrome, Uncle Blender, Consumer Culture @ Purgatory
- 3/14 (Sat) Chaser, Microwaves, Shardik, Radio Shock @ Gold Sounds
- 3/15 (Sun) Artifact Experimental: More Eaze + C. Spencer Yeh, Enhancement (Ben Babbitt), Jessica Pavone @ Sleepwalk
- 3/17 (Tue) Vagabon & Friends @ Public Records
- 3/19 (Thu) Permanent Press = new label from Nathan Chamberlain & Orchid McRae; orchiddBB: McRae w/ Jen Sapiro, Vivek Menon, Hans Young Binter, Mario Fontes; Storytime: Toni DeVincentis, Samantha White, Anjali Shinde, Kathleen Barnes @ Brothers Wash & Dry
- 3/20 (Fri) Orcutt Night #1/2: Shane Parish, Kris Gruda, Chuck Roth, Bill Orcutt Solo & Guitar Quartet (w/ Parish, Ava Mendoza, Wendy Eisenberg) @ Roulette
- 3/21 (Sat) Orcutt Night #2/2: Ava Mendoza, Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt, Cyrus Pireh, Bill Orcutt's 'The Four Louies' @ Roulette
- 3/21 (Sat) Outline: Geordie Greep, Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore, Delroy Edwards, Still House Plants @ Knockdown Center
- 3/22 (Sun) CHOLO, Oof, Hard Job @ Mama Tried
- 3/22 (Sun) Orcutt Shelley Miller // Zeena Parkins + William Winant // Mariam Rezaei + Bill Orcutt @ Roulette
- 3/25 (Wed) Rich(ard) Dawson, Wendy Eisenberg @ LPR
- 3/26 (Thu) Evicshen, Leila Bordreuil, Pública @ Life World
- 3/28 (Sat) Shayna Dunkelman, Aakash Mittal @ Barbes
- 3/28 (Sat) Lucy Liyou: 'Mister Cobra' @ Performance Space
Future Shows
- 4/9 (Thu) Maurice Louca, Killick @ The Red Room (Baltimore)
- 4/10 (Fri) Art Brut reunion show @ Comet Ping Pong (DC)
- 4/10 (Fri) Sunn O))) @ Lincoln Theatre (DC)
- 4/11 (Sat) Mclusky, PILE @ Black Cat (DC)
- 4/11 (Sat) Chanp @ Holy Frijoles (Baltimore)
- 4/14 (Tue) femtanyl, Govlink, takihasdied @ The Atlantis (DC)
- 4/16 (Thu) JFDR @ DC9 (DC)
- 4/17 (Fri) Waxahatchee & Mj Lenderman @ The Anthem (DC)
- 4/18 (Sat) Snail Mail, Swirlies & Sharp Pins @ Union Craft (Outside) (Baltimore)
- 5/4 (Mon) Gelli Haha @ Songbyrd (DC)
- 5/8 (Fri) C2C: YHWH Nailgun, Arca, Aya, Los Thutanaka, Nourished By Time, etc. @ Knockdown Center (NYC)
- 5/9 (Sat) The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis @ Black Cat (DC)
- 5/10 (Sun) Silkworm reunion(??!!) @ Pearl St Warehouse (DC)
- 5/21 (Thu) The New Pornographers, Will Sheff @ 9:30 Club (DC)
- 5/21 (Thu) caroline @ Knockdown Center (NYC)