Genius #27 - March 2026

Hello Geniuses.

Late Genius filings, but it was worth the wait bc this is a good one (they're all good ones).

I've been having trouble squaring two things: 1. that I have been in a rare good mood over the past few weeks & 2. how horrible things are in the world with the constant ratcheting up of tensions. Something something warmer weather, something something getting outside.

Let's recap some positives: I went to the doctor and found out that my Vitamin D levels are below the threshold for health & could be why I've been having a bad time inside of my brain, so I'm taking my vitamins now and now I'm healthy. I joined Beyond Video and started watching 3 movies a week (highlights have been Where Is The Friend's House? (Kiarostami, 1987) and Familiar Touch (Friedland, 2024), and Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor & Paravel, 2012)). Lastly, in the past month or 2, I've been making a lot of visual art! For instance, the monster mash on the cover of the single for my longtime friend Adam's (Person) (Noun) folk-punk project and all of the Chanp art.

Anyways let's get into it. The tunes – they're really good this month. Like truly. First month in a while where I've had to pare the list down to fit one blog, next month's gonna have a decent scrap heap too. It feels really good to offer some good tunes & a warm fuzzy feeling when things are so bad out there, hope you find something you like in here.

• Capitalism - Pedal Power
• Album Recs
• Garbage Corner
• Upcoming Shows

Capitalism - Pedalboard Power

I can only bring myself to purchase utility items these days. Sad! We want to see something flashy and stupid! I ordered a Cioks DC7 Pedal Power supply & installed it over the weekend. My Walrus Audio Phoenix did not meet my power needs & was a 3lb behemoth under my board – the DC7 is just 1 lb and has almost double the power that I need.

The DC7 has seven configurable outputs, each rated for 6W of power (660mA at 9V, each outlet can be stepped to 12V,15V,18V for pedals that need it). There's a USB out for powering an iPad or my MIDIHub or whatever else I might want. Downsides: Cioks has a vaguely proprietary cabling setup, using RCA-male-to-2.1mm barrel male, so all of my existing pedal power cables are useless.

Not a knock against the Walrus Phoenix, but it's just old tech – it's really heavy, it has 15 power outlets, but only 4 of them provide more than 100mA (I have six pedals that draw more than 100mA on my board). By switching to 7 outlets with 600mA each, I can run daisy chains and easily provide enough power to all 13 of the pedals on my board. There's an expansion if I run into noise issues, but so far it's all been mostly pretty quiet. A good move so far!

Album Recommendations

Landowner - Assumption (Exploding In Sound, Feb '26)

nervous post-punk

Assumption, by Landowner

12 track album

Landownerandrewtherooster

Jittery two-guitar post-punk with fast, hard-picked basslines & raspy speak-singy lyrics comparing modern life to medieval living. The band also backs up Wendy Eisenberg in Editrix (as written up in GDC#20), but Landowner's got a woodier and drier sound. The gnarled up punk stuff is a huge selling point, but IMO the main draw is the lyrics. There are too many great lines to quote, but highlights for me are "Linear Age" which addresses the listener as if they are running a game of Civilization and "Uninhabitable" which switches back and forth between a picnic with the Grim Reaper & a heightened scene with a bucolic father-woodsman who sings to his family in a baritone after slinging the corpse of the last living elk onto the dining room table. Just the right mix of serious and strange.

femtanyl - MAN BITES DOG (self-released, Feb '26)

high energy electro

MAN BITES DOG, by Femtanyl

10 track album

FemtanylSirGamers

High tempo and bouncy electronic music/ I had a lot of trouble thinking of things to say about this record because I really just put it on and went "oh yeah this is a good time." If you're into machinegirl but wish they were a little goofier, then you're in luck. Every synth sound has been crushed and smashed into a distorted mess, the drums squish against the limiters, glitchy little vocal hits skip around the beats. There are tiny micro skits between the songs. This is perfect for a workout playlist, you could just throw this on and hit the elliptical for 30min and glide through it. The artist's profile on bandcamp just says "have fun" and I am!! I am haveing fun!!

Angel Du$t - Cold 2 The Touch (Run For Cover, Feb '26)

Baltimore alt-rock with hardcore edge

COLD 2 THE TOUCH, by Angel Du$t

11 track album

Angel Du$tDeath Itself

Nice mix of smooth high fidelity, mid-tempo melodic rock songs with just enough snarl to remind you of the band's hardcore pedigree. I love how much this album plays with your expectations – huge beatdown riffs that start and then fizzle into sunny acoustic guitars, big harmonized guitar solos that suddenly stop to make room for a mosh pit. The history of Angel Du$t/Trapped Under Ice is above the scope of this blog (and I'm not the right historian), but I appreciate the hot & cold imagery that vocalist Justice Tripp employs here. The album ends with babies crying (a la Marty Supreme) and then the absolute banger hardcore scorcher "The Beat." If you're into experimental poppy hardcore stuff like Turnstile, you might dig this – Baltimore stay winning!

Midori Hirano - Otonoma (Feb '26, Thrill Jockey)

quiet, compelling ambient

OTONOMA, by Midori Hirano

10 track album

Midori HiranoMidori Hirano

The Berlin-based composer merges her interests in analog synthesizer soundscapes and classical piano – while some of these were written for film, none of it feels like background music. The title has a double meaning in Japanese as either "the space between sounds" or "a room of sounds" – and I think these pieces are appropriately residential. Each track invites the audience to find a seat and listen in between the notes, to nestle in. A comfortable mix of composed pieces with chance-based modular experiments bundled. Her piano playing is very lyrical & the sound design is satisfying – a winner for yr ambient chill vibe needs.

Use Knife - État Coupable (Viernulvier, 2025)

evil fourth world

État Coupable, by Use Knife

7 track album

Use KnifeUse Knife

Jon Hassell coined the term "fourth world" for cutting edge electronic music that drew from traditional and non-Western music – typically, this is a fairly pleasant mix of synthesized flutes and hand percussion. What if it was instead a post-colonial mechanized nightmare? Enter Use Knife, a trio of 2 Belgian electronic artists and an Iraqi vocalist–percussionist. The group writes pounding noisy techno that draws from traditional Arabic rhythms. Put the limiter into the red, let this thing rip. It's dance music, it's noise music, it's political, it's pop, it's Eastern, it's Western. Every track sounds like it's been run through the ringer – thumping repetitive basslines, groaning saxophones, evolving percussion (both big techno drum machine's and the "Iraqi Drum Set" of hand percussion) with Saif Al-Qaissy's mournful wail increasingly digitized and shredded. A great push and pull. Of course this thing was mixed by Hotel2Tango head Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, who also is a guest on a track. Thanks to my chanpmate Annette for sending this my way.

Coscradh - Carving The Causeway to the Otherworld (20 Buck Spin, Feb '26)

Disgusting death metal from Ireland

Carving the Causeway to the Otherworld, by Coscradh

8 track album

CoscradhMichael Nightscreamer

So much metal focuses on Norse mythology – this is a rare one influenced by the Roman subjugation of Ireland, pitting the Roman pantheon against the druidic earth. The big draws for Coscradh are the vocals & the drums: vocalist Ó Críodáin finds all kinds of bizarre and gross ways to deliver his mixed English/Irish lyrics about druids and destruction & Burger's drumming is way up front in the mix to better highlight how he expertly guides each verse and bridge along. I love the way the band ratchets the intensity up and down in these compositions – each part is really satisfyingly built up and down. Oh and duh, there are also some absolutely massive guitar solos.

Upcoming April albums:

POMPEII // UTILITY, by Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE & SURF GANG

33 track album

MIKEJon M

• NYC Hip hop mega-collective Surf Gang are doing a gigantic double-LP collab record with Earl Sweatshirt & MIKE. I'm hyped. Pompeii//Utility came out on 4/3 via 10k.
• Jazz-improv-open heart songwriter Wendy Eisenberg released an eponymous solo record of kinda soft emotional songs for Joyful Noise on 4/3. Love basically everything they do, stoked for this one.
• glitch noise white belt freaks .gif from god are back with Dissimulation out 4/17 on Prosthetic Records.
• Portrayal of Guilt are back at it with a new vibe (at least based on the single). Got kinda a nu metal vibe? With NIN callback lyrics. No idea how I feel about it tbh! But will still check out ...Beginning of the end on 4/24 via Run for Cover

Garbage Corner - Cranqui UXO pt 2

This is part of a continuing series analyzing connections between streaming services and military contracts. If you want to see pt 1 on Spotify, see GDC#25's Garbage Corner.
It's not a secret that I'm using Apple Music for most of my music listening, so I wanted to torture myself to see where my $14/mo family account money is going. In 2016 my trusty iPod Classic was stolen out of a rental car in Albuquerque NM – I bought a refurb – but it died about a year later, so I relented. I test drove a few streaming options first and chose Apple Music. Roast me.

We can start with the CEO, Tim Apple and his apolitical stance. He personally donated $1M to the Trump inauguration fund, and hand delivered a stupid participation trophy, and of course found time to attend the Melania vanity film screening.

Of course you can't be an apolitical CEO, so let's start with Apple's ties to the occupational forces in Palestine. Apple has several Israelis in the C Suite, including VP Rony Friedman who says “it’s hard to find an Apple product without an Israeli touch.” Which makes sense since Apple has an enormous R&D facility in Herzliya, IS. In January, Apple purchased Q.ai, an Israeli audio AI company that specializes in speech to text and, according to Reuters, "filed a patent application to use 'facial skin micromovements' to detect words mouthed or spoken, identify a person and assess their emotions, heart rate, respiration rate and other indicators." Fucking YIKES.

So while Apple has historically not taken contracts with the military industrial complex, that has shifted in the past few years. In order to better develop its "Vision Pro" series, Apple recently acquired Mira, a headset company that has contracts with the US military to build HUDs for pilots using their Prism headsets. In addition, in 2023 Apple Vice President Doug Beck was appointed as the new director of the Defense Innovation Unit of the DoD (now Department of War).

While Apple isn't directly tied to weaponry, it's still clear that the tech giant benefits from the colonial forces of this world. We didn't even talk about Foxconn, the factory that employs workers who build iPhones... Since 2007, a total of 24 workers have committed suicide on the factory grounds in Shenzhen. In 2013, the factory installed netting to stop workers from jumping out of windows.

Scene Report

Two Chanp shows in April – 4/11 at Holy Frijoles (late show, prob going on around 9pm) and 4/25 at Peabody Heights (early show, prob going on around 5pm). Come thru!!

In addition, there is an ENORMOUS amount of stuff going on these days, Spring is here – go to a gig, chat with someone. It'll be good, I promise.

Orcutt, Shelley, Miller @ Metro (March 23)

Real joy to catch this trio at Metro. They have a striking stage presence, playing in a straight line across the stage: Orcutt scowling in his chair, Shelley grinning ear to ear as he beats the shit out of the drums, and Miller grooving with a giant hat on his head. I love seeing the old rock drummers getting in with jazz weirdos (see The Messthetics), I think it's a perfect way to merge intensities.

Orcutt's weird 4-string telecaster is a freeing instrument, his hand moves so fast making great use of open strings to get from anchor note to anchor note through heavy traffic. I don't mean to be demeaning when I say that I was mostly surprised by how much I liked Miller's work on the bass – I'm just not as familiar with him. But the Paul McCartney violin bass brings a very vocal sound to the bass and cut through the noisy shrillness of Orcutt's guitar to give each song a unique sound. The songs are all so lively, and the 2 string players made great use of feedback, to fill in the space and make it feel like even more people were playing at once than were standing on the stage.

Orcutt Shelley Miller, by Orcutt Shelley Miller

5 track album

Orcutt Shelley MillerAlphonso Acosta

They just played the record from start to finish with a few little interstitial moments (mostly judicious feedback), so the show was over sooner than I expected.. but I also don't know how much more I could have wanted – the band touches on a great blend of noise rock and psych, like a freaky jam band with a relieving sense of brevity. Nice to hear a blazing solo for like 45min then go home.

Upcoming Shows

Baltimore

• 4/6 (Mon) Toshi Makihara, Tom Borax, Daniel Lin, Alex Wu, Ida Dierker, Sarah Parker @ Wax Atlas
• 4/6 (Mon) Lexie Mountain Boys, Lemuel Marc/John Moran/Victor Vieira-Branco, Corey Thuro @ Comptoir Du Vin
• 4/8 (Wed) Polluted Tongues, Libby Quinn, Mowder Oyal, Shock Collar @ Ottobar
• 4/8 (Wed) Plant Fight, Powerwasher, The Dead Ringers, Dan Mansion @ Metro
• 4/8 (Wed) Sudario, Aux Tail, Sam Pluta @ Normals
• 4/9 (Thu) Trash Diva, My Wife’s an Angel, Tongue Scrape @ Holy Frijoles
• 4/9 (Thu) Maurice Louca, Killick & John Jansen, Dave Benham @ Normals
• 4/10 (Fri) Mast Year, Sloth Herder, They Don’t Sleep Anymore, Wince @ Wax Atlas
• 4/11 (Sat) Locked In A Vacancy, SevenCrimsonsuns, Insignia, Chanp @ Holy Frijoles
• 4/12 (Sun) El Khat @ Current Space
• 4/12 (Sun) Audra, Waco Mammoth, Velvet Zombie @ 2640 Space
• 4/12 (Sun) Poison The Well, Converge, Spy, Balmora @ Nevermore Hall
• 4/13 (Mon) Subwoofer Duo, Voicehandler @ Normals
• 4/13 (Mon) Drums Of Life, Ida Dierker/Brandon Gouin, Hoegberg/Schmidt/Feldi @ Comptoir Du Vin
• 4/16 (Thu) Jailbird, Home Invasion, Sluggo, Infiltrators @ Holy Frijoles
• 4/17 (Fri) Ceremony Drum, Chris Lyons, Perhaps Hand @ Normals
• 4/18 (Sat) Snail Mail, Swirlies & Sharp Pins @ Union Craft (Outside)
• 4/18 (Sat) Grudge EP Release w/ Controller, Julia Set, Everything @ Holy Frijoles
• 4/18 (Sat) Snail Mail, Swirlies, Sharp Pins @ Union Craft Brewing
• 4/18 (Sat) Saltbox, House Mouse, Shark Shark, Volumetric Thing, Red’s Motel, Love 4 All @ Zen West
• 4/19 (Sun) Hammer, Persel, Zaldivar, Sean McFarland @ Fadensonnen
• 4/19 (Sun) Pallbearer, Knoll, Lathe @ Ottobar
• 4/19 (Sun) New Forms, Life, Votive @ Holy Frijoles
• 4/20 (Mon) The Beak Trio, Rachel Beetz, Dave Fell @ Comptoir Du Vin
• 4/22 (Wed) Commitment, HIRS Collective @ Ottobar
• 4/23 (Thu) Old Outfits, Adjective Animal, Silent Old Mountains, Fozzy Mare @ Ottobar
• 4/24 (Fri) Consumer Culture, Miracle Blood, Ploy Machine @ Holy Frijoles
• 4/25 (Sat) Benefit for Central Maryland Immigrant Rights: Chanp, Dickgirl, Jupie, Estuary, KrystalSwords, Dicqbeats, DJ Mason Macleod, PParanoia-crux @ Peabody Heights
• 4/26 (Sun) Haitian Drumming w/ Komite Ayite @ Motor House
• 4/27 (Mon) Macie Stewart, Crying Laughing @ 2640 Space
• 4/27 (Mon) Powerplay, Chained, Ousted, Scorpion @ Scott's Kitchen (DM a band)
• 4/27 (Mon) Toshi Makihara/Peter Redgrave, Dave Heumann/Walker Teret, 0.1 Grand @ Comptoir Du Vin
• 4/28 (Tue) Connie Converse Tribute w/ Linda Smith, Austyn Wohlers, Howard Fishman, Wheatie Mattiasich @ Normals

DC

• 4/8 (Wed) Anthony Pirog Trio, Skullcap @ Hank Dietle's
• 4/10 (Fri) Art Brut reunion show @ Comet Ping Pong
• 4/10 (Fri) Sunn O))) @ Lincoln Theatre
• 4/10 (Fri) Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co. @ Black Cat
• 4/10 (Fri) Art Brut, Des Demonas @ Comet Ping Pong
• 4/11 (Sat) Mclusky, PILE @ Black Cat
• 4/11 (Sat) Cuni, Career Day, Two Thumbs Down @ Quarry House
• 4/12 (Sun) Stuck @ Comet Ping Pong
• 4/14 (Tue) femtanyl, Govlink, takihasdied @ The Atlantis
• 4/14 (Tue) R.a.p. Ferraria, Nappy Nappa, Melan @ Comet Ping Pong
• 4/14 (Tue) femtanyl, Govlink @ The Atlantis
• 4/16 (Thu) JFDR @ DC9
• 4/16 (Thu) Heavenly, Swansea Sound, Lightheaded @ Black Cat
• 4/16 (Thu) JFDR @ DC9
• 4/17 (Fri) Waxahatchee & Mj Lenderman @ The Anthem
• 4/18 (Sat) Landowner / Brnda / Drawn @ Rhizome
• 4/23 (Thu) Danny Brown @ Fillmore
• 4/24 (Fri) Liberation Weekend (Laura Jane Grace, Snowing, Gladie, Spring Silver, Eevie Echoes & The Locations, thisdogllhunt) @ Black Cat
• 4/25 (Sat) Liberation Weekend (Devi Mccallion, Pissed Jeans, Bambara, Ragana, Mx Lonely, Adult Human Females) @ Black Cat
• 4/25 (Sat) Consumer Culture, Xk Scenario, Miracle Blood @ Quarry House
• 4/26 (Sun) Liberation Weekend (Pool Kids, Ezra Furman, Pom Pom Squad, Pretty Bitter, Pinky Lemon, Hit Like A Girl) @ Black Cat
• 4/6 (Mon) Noise / hardcore:Bondage Party, Docking, Lupara Bianca, Allium @ Hart Bar

NYC

• 4/8 (Wed) Container, Expensive $hit, Cube, Pons (DJ) @ TV Eye
• 4/8 (Wed) Green-House, More Eaze @ Public Records
• 4/8 (Wed) Plastic Baby Jesus, Candy & The Kids (Single Release), Dracula & His Band the Draculas @ Sleepwalk
• 4/8 (Wed) Stuck, Editrix, Open Head @ Babys
• 4/9 (Thu) Mirah, Marshall LaCount, Justin Gunter @ The Broadway
• 4/10 (Fri) Dead Gods presents:Vanity Productions, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Imminent Death, Jackson-Pratt, DJ Broken Pillar @ TV Eye
• 4/12 (Sun) Buck Gooter, Public Speaking, Ships In The Night, Dmxperiment, Colin Brown (DJ) @ Cassette
• 4/12 (Sun) Yeah No (Chris Speed, Jim Black, Skuli Sverrisson, Cuong Vu) @ The Sultan Room
• 4/12 (Sun) Chaser, Rope Trick, Receive, Cometa Negra @ Hart Bar
• 4/13 (Mon) thingNY plays Raven Chacon, Chacon (solo) @ Fridman Gallery
• 4/15 (Wed) Wendy Eisenberg, Mal Devisa @ TV Eye
• 4/16 (Thu) ENNDE TYMES 16 -- Festival of Noise & Sonic Liberation –– Night #1/3:Raven Chacon & Iggor Cavalera, Paranoid Time, MSHR, White Boy Scream, Eternities, Primitive Isolation Tactics, Free Reel Burning, BNC, TICKSUCK, Null Copula @ TV Eye
• 4/17 (Fri) ENDE TYMES 16 ––Festival of Noise & Sonic Liberation –– Night #2/3:Caen, Kakerlak, Developer, Body Carve, Boar, Death Kneel, Miracle Wastes, Iris Our, VOSP, LB, CZ, Outdoor Horse Shrine @ TV Eye
• 4/17 (Fri) Alina Jacobs: 'CAPTCHA Analysis,' Night #1/2 @ Sunview Acropolis
• 4/18 (Sat) ENDE TYMES 16 –– Festival of Noise & Sonic Liberation –– Night #3/3:Jeph Jerman, Pedestrian Deposit, Relay For Death, Las Sucias, Shot Dog @ TV Eye
• 4/18 (Sat) Alina Jacobs: 'CAPTCHA Analysis,' Night #2/2 @ Sunview Acropolis
• 4/19 (Sun) Bill Nace & David Watson, Camille Dietrich & Don Dietrich, Keith Fullerton Whitman & Chuck Bettis @ Pianos
• 4/28 (Tue) Sun of Goldfinger (Tim Berne, David Torn, Ches Smith) @ Lowlands
• 4/29 (Wed) Sam Newsome Quartet, William Parker PocketWatch @ Loove Annex
• 4/29 (Wed) Oneohtrix Point Never, John Medeski @ Pioneer Works
• 4/30 (Thu) Oneohtrix Point Never, Tyondai Braxton @ Pioneer Works

Future Shows

• 5/1 (Fri) Poison Ruin with the Serfs, Seclusion & Sluggo @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 5/1 (Fri) Queering Sound Fundraiser w/ Glorian / Bushmeat Sound System / Novparolo / Ja$$ie / Charlee Scythe @ Rhizome (DC)
• 5/1 (Fri) Long Play:Kali Malone's Does Spring Hide Its Joy (ft. Lucy Railton, Stephen O’Malley, Nika Milano visuals) @ Pioneer Works (NYC)
• 5/2 (Sat) Black Eyes, LEYA, Nu Jazz @ Trans-Pecos (NYC)
• 5/4 (Mon) Gelli Haha @ Songbyrd (DC)
• 5/6 (Wed) Wolf Eyes @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 5/7 (Thu) Soul Blind, Split Chain, Downward, Dream Fatigue @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 5/7 (Thu) Kali Malone @ Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center (DC)
• 5/8 (Fri) C2C: YHWH Nailgun, Arca, Aya, Los Thutanaka, Nourished By Time, etc. @ Knockdown Center (NYC)
• 5/8 (Fri) Ana Roxannee @ National Sawdust (NYC)
• 5/9 (Sat) The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis @ Black Cat (DC)
• 5/10 (Sun) Silkworm reunion(??!!) @ Pearl St Warehouse (DC)
• 5/13 (Wed) Jjjjjerome Ellis with Daoure Diongue and Kaz @ Current Space (Baltimore)
• 5/17 (Sun) Cult Counselor , Glorian, Choking Boys, Jon Winslow @ Metro (Baltimore)
• 5/21 (Thu) The New Pornographers, Will Sheff @ 9:30 Club (DC)
• 5/21 (Thu) caroline @ Knockdown Center (NYC)
• 5/21 (Thu) caroline, claire rousay, giant claw @ Knockdown Center (NYC)
• 5/22 (Fri) Mean Sea, Dosser, Oxrun & Fetcher @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 6/6 (Sat) Man Man, Death Valley Girls @ Ottobar (Baltimore)
• 6/13 (Sat) CCAS Reunion Weekend (NoMan, Rob S from Ruinier, WarxGames, Beach Creeper, Unicorn Dogs, more) @ Metro (Baltimore)
• 6/14 (Sun) Eyelet, Life, Oxrun. Consumer Culture @ Ottobar (Baltimore)