Genius

Genius #33 - Sep '26

New music from Hana Stretton, Team Work, ear, Sweeping Promises, Blind Yeo. Revisiting Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention's debut. Show calendar & more!

Larry Michaels

01 Oct 2026 • 14 min read

Spotted just outside of Baltimore, MD

Tomorrow is Bandcamp Friday! Bandcamp is waiving their typical 10% fee on Friday 10/2 and giving 100% of profits to the artists!

Bandcamp

Hellooo geniuses!!

This month's GDC is a big one. On top of the normal album recs, I processed some thoughts while revisiting the first Frank Zappa LP. PLUS, a fully featured show calendar through the end of the year (in DC, Baltimore, and NYC), and some esoteric music theory musings from a YT account.

I think a lot of great records will come out before the end of the year – I'm really excited to hear some of the records scheduled for release in October.

I don't have any shows to plug in October. If you're in Baltimore, Chanp will be back at Peabody Heights Brewery on Nov 1st in support of Trans Rights Advocacy Coalition and on Nov 20th, I will return to Peabody Heights to play with Catherine Savage as well.

OK let's listen to some tunes.

Commodity Fetishism
Album Recs
Replay
Garbage Corner
Upcoming Shows

Commodity Fetishism - Dirtywave M8 iOS App

Cheers to the one-man operation by trash80 at Dirtywave – in September, he ported his incredible M8 tracker hardware to iOS, so I can finally put my Teensy to other uses.

I thought I would have a track to share, but instead I just have screenshots that show the Instrument page & the Song page

The app costs $30 and is fully-featured to behave exactly like the hardware device: 8 tracks, 128 instruments (including hypersynth, FM synth, macro synth, a chiptune "wavsynth", and a sampler that can play individual hits & chop up longer samples), effects, super deep sequencing, the works. I've been playing around with it all month and have a couple kinda chiptuney things coming together.

I think what sets the M8 apart from other tracker software is the level of control made available & the helpful UI (as helpful as a tracker UI can get). There's good hierarchy of information, the navigation is simple, and the sound design is super deep.

Album Recommendations

Hana Stretton - Tiarn (PW Elverum & Sun, Aug '26)

lowercase songwriting in ambient wash

The Australian singer-songwriter-recordist returns with more of her softly recorded ambient works. She records folky soft songs and uses a wealth of field recordings to add a different mise en scène to each of her songs: whether it's chirping crickets, creaking floorboards, roaring ocean, each sound bubbles underneath her multitracked vocals and barely-strummed acoustic guitar. There's a rich resonance to the recordings, at times sounding like listening to the record on a broken sound system. IMO don't bother trying to understand her sweetly sung lyrics, just let the sound of her whisper quiet voice wash over top of the rest of the stew of scratchy violins, indigenous percussion, proximity effect faux-bass, accordions, and (tasteful!) soprano opera vocals. Listening to Stretton's work is so unique, she has a specific washed out vision for recorded sound and she renders these sketches with precise brushstrokes.

Team Work - Somebody's Gotta Do It (Feel It, Jul '26)

experimental artsy rock

Lise of Leipzig & Ronni from Baton Rouge discovered each other's bands on Soundcloud and struck up a conversation – the artists compared their shared loves of post-punk, no wave, ambient, and twee indie rock, then collaborated on this cross-atlantic art rock record that blends all of those sounds. The songs where Lise sings lead are dancier, with punchy basslines, cutting guitars, and dizzying drums; the songs where Ronni sings lead are introspective and pulsing with a more varied sound. The instrumental interstitial tracks are full of sound design wonders, guitars interlock around feedbacking pitch-shifters & bells, whirring sounds hum and whistle, etc. The combination of these influences results in a record that is greater than the sum of its parts.

ear - Rumspringa (A24 Music, May '26)

deep listening twee-electronic

I've been on the hunt for bands that are sort of like Sweet Trip (without their personal drama) and this record really scratches that itch. Sometimes, the meandering song structures can be a little disorienting, but there's a sense that they really put everything that they had into this album: little voice notes, samples, hyper-processed microloops, giant bass synths, raw acoustic guitar recordings that have the same frequency response as my 2008 Macbook's internal mic (Brian Eno was right!). I especially like the use of hocketing – the two vocalists sharing verses going back and forth, the synths that share a single melody. Like listening in on a conversation between 2 people and you mostly understand what they're talking about, but you have to use context clues to fill in some gaps. This record is easy to put on and just enjoy, but rewards the deep listener who untangles the mess of sounds that make up the whole.

Sweeping Promises - You Say I Romanticize (Sub Pop, Aug '26)

driving garage rock

I don't think it's an overstatement to say that Lira Mondal is one of the best rock singers doing it these days. She wails, harmonizes, snarls & her trebly bass tone and smart writing are the engines that push the band's songs forward. Her collaborator, Caulfield Schnug recorded and mixes their records, bringing just the right level of fidelity (low enough to be cool, high enough to not be grating). But he also adds expert minimal & biting guitar lines that dance around the bass lines. I don't know if I like You Say I Romanticize as much as their previous two LPs, but there are some jams on here and I think it's a good midpoint record between the DIY beginnings and the stratosphere that they might be heading to.

rhythm-heavy psych rock

What if Stereolab dropped acid instead of drinking space age martinis? That said, maybe this is just what psych music is supposed to sound like: all synth stabs against triplet percussion, male-female harmonized vocals telling you to "just sit back in the hour glass of the eye" or that "your body is just a memory to the soil" amongst little guitar licks that wind each bar to the next. Hard to explain, but you can tell these guys are of a slightly elevated social class – there's PMC trappings all over this thing, no dirty hippie stuff is here. Any naturalism in the lyrics or melody is offset by krautrock rhythmic propulsion. There's electric cello riffing, auxiliary percussion, chanting vocals – not a sitar in site. You achieve oneness by losing yourself to the pulses.

Upcoming October albums:

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is releasing another forward-thinking dance album that she calls "sonic martial arts ... made for the movement of the unmovable" RUIN: It's Not Just Music is out on 10/2 thru the artist's new SOMEONE SPECIAL label
Catalan composer & songwriter Marina Herlop is back with more ethereal songs and lush, alien beats with Dja Dja. Out on 10/9 thru !K7 and Lapsus.
UK folktronica artist Bibio & Austrian jazzy analog synth sketcher Dorian Concept are teaming up for a cozy lo-fi LP, perfect for the approaching autumn. Answers is out on 10/16 thru Warp Records
Philly folk-psych duo @ [at symbol] return with Autosmile, their first for 4AD out on 10/16 via 4AD. The singles are super ambitious! Excited for this one.
Edinburgh-St Louis transatlantic mathcore freaks Frontierer are back with Ultraviolet Parasite to put a blade through your skull. To be self-released on 10/23.

Replay - The Mothers Of Invention - Freak Out! (Verve, 1966)

You know, I bought this CD at Best Buy when I was about 15 years old and was well on the road to becoming The Way That I Am Now. I liked it! I listened to it a lot! I did not really get it! I liked the bookending tracks because I thought it sounded like a prank tape or like a novelty comedy album – Zappa comes across as kind of a Weird Al figure who speaks in misanthropic koans. But I found the middle mostly confounding. If he is capable of writing complex and strange musique-concrete experiments, why is he fucking around with old timey rock and roll?

On the 60th anniversary, the album was remastered and re-released by Frank Zappa's estate as a 5-cd recording, so I was glad to revisit for the first time since I was in high school.

First, the obligatory brief biography of this record: In 1964, there was a Los Angeles R&B band called The Soul Giants. In 1965, they fired their guitarist and invited Frank Zappa to join. Zappa was of a more elevated music snob – at the time, he was mostly scoring films, composing for orchestras, and working on tape manipulation experiments at his music studio. He agreed to join on the condition that they stop playing covers and start playing his original compositions for the band. Zappa took over and they changed their name to The Mothers (short for "The Motherfuckers"). The band bluffed their way into a recording contract with Verve Records, who immediately told them to change the band name. According to Zappa "necessity is the mother of invention."

Freak Out is the first record that the band recorded and released. The album title and cover look like a regular psych rock band’s album title and cover. But then almost all of the songs on this record are like funhouse mirror 60s rock tunes – regular rock band instrumentation, sometimes with wall-of-sound Phil Spector style compositions adding vibes and slapback reverb. Occasionally, some kind of weird blip happens – there's a rhythmic change-up between 2 parts, or a kazoo appears in the mix, or someone screams and the composition lurches into a new direction. It teeters on a knife edge between pop sensibility and avant garde art rock.

The lyrics are full of double entendres and rock trope subversions. As a youth, I appreciated the moments where it felt like the lyrics directly addressed the listener. I felt like I was in on a joke that the less discerning listener might have missed.

The reward for the listener, having listened to 12 pop songs is an album coda of three experimental compositions. "Help I'm A Rock" is a rhythmic track where Zappa free associates on the nature of policing and includes a weird pornographic moment. Context: in 1965, Zappa was arrested in a sting operation when he was approached in his recording studio by an undercover cop to make a audio recording "for a bachelor party" & was then subsequently arrested when the lewd tape was produced and paid for.

The other 2 experimental songs are the vocal composition "It Can't Happen Here" where Upton Sinclair's fascist fever dream mantra is repeated by the band, inhabiting the role of suburban parents worrying about their kids "freaking out" and becoming hippie weirdos. The album closes with a nearly-12 minute experimental track. "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" opens with dialog, then a breakbeat over which multiple vocal tracks mutter gibberish, there are sudden changes in tone. Way ahead of its time for a rock album in 1966! My favorite moment where the music stops and Zappa says "America's wonderful! Wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful . . ." The album ends with chipmunk vocals sped up and repeating the words "cream cheese" over atonal piano. Why not?

As a kid, the way that I interpreted this was that the "real" fans would get to the end and enjoy the novel strangeness, while the fake fans would get to the end and realize that they had been at the butt of a weird joke. Listening now, I find the whole endeavor kind of odd – it speaks to the "old" way of making music (record companies paid artists to make music that they thought would make a return on their investment) vs the "new" way of making music (bands self-finance their music and make the stuff that they like and mostly just lose money on the whole thing). I can't think of any artist today who would write 10 songs in the dominant culture's style while trying to "sneak" new music experiments in through the back door... but I would be very interested in being proven wrong!

Garbage Corner - Palm "Bread" analysis by The Pop Descriptivist

I've been a Palm mega-fan for about 9 years at this point – I heard their Audiotree in 2017 and immediately bought a ticket to see them at DC9. Since then, I saw them another 5 times (twice more in DC, twice in NYC, & I caught their final show in Philly). I would have also seen them open for Battles in Portland in 2019, but there was a snowstorm and they couldn't cross the mountains. At one point in 2022, I tried to help Eve & Kasra find an apartment in Brooklyn (my downstairs neighbors were looking for a subletter).

I think this analysis of their song "Bread" from 2018's Rock Island gets at what makes Palm so special to me. There are very few DIY bands who are writing with polyrhythms and polymeters, nonetheless doing both in one song. The interlocking rhythms are even more impressive when you see the music written out – drum parts in 5/8 while the rest of the band is in 6/8 until they all converge, basslines that come in-and-out of being in each time signature, etc.

I have since watched more of this guy's videos and they're pretty good – he has one on a Horse Lords song and bell changes, one on the nature of Diminished 7th chords and their use in establishing secondary dominants, etc. Not bad!

Upcoming Shows

Baltimore

10/2 (Fri) Powerplant, Carrion Kids, Slot @ Metro
10/5 (Mon) Russian Circles, Pelican @ Soundstage
10/8 (Thu) Usurp Synapse, Eyelet, Crawler, .gif from god @ Metro
10/10 (Sat) Horse Lords, Crying Laughing, Duncan Moore @ Ottobar
10/11 (Sun) Panopticon, Catharsis, Born of Plagues @ Ottobar
10/16 (Fri) Glimmer, Blisshouse, Chanp(?) @ Le Mondo
10/17 (Sat) Slot Album Release w/ Saafeway, The Beach People, Ballerine Nadiya @ Holy Frijoles
10/18 (Sun) The Dillinger Escape Plan, Johnny Booth, Godseyes, Burial Waves @ Nevermore Hall
10/19 (Mon) Spy, Empty Shell Casing, Spite House, Ousted @ Ottobar
10/22 (Thu) Ploy Machine, Orchid Club, Overton Window @ Wax Atlas
10/23 (Fri) Yhwh Nailgun, Samba Jean-Baptise @ Ottobar
10/23 (Fri) Heaven’s Die, Sinister Feeling, Fade To Nothing, Necromancer @ Holy Frijoles
10/24 (Sat) Animal Boy Anniversary w/ Warxgames, Skallar, Darker Than, Devilust @ Peabody Heights
10/24 (Sat) Asher White, Dickgirl, Little Lungs @ The Compound
10/29 (Thu) They Are Gutting A Body Of Water @ Ottobar
10/29 (Thu) Pangelica, Moth Broth, Albert Bagman @ Current Space
10/31 (Fri) The Sun Ra Arkestra @ Keystone Korner

DC

10/4 (Sun) Unsane, Consumer Culture @ Pearl St Warehouse
10/4 (Sun) Ceremony, Poison Ruïn, Dry Socket @ Black Cat
10/4 (Sun) Hana Stretton, Heather Stebbins @ Songbyrd
10/8 (Thu) Slift, Rhododendron @ The Atlantis
10/10 (Sat) Deadguy, Malform, Oxrun @ Pie Shop
10/12 (Mon) Show Me The Body, Whispers, Lip Critic, Combust @ Black Cat
10/13 (Tue) Chanel Beads, Horse Vision, Car Culture @ Black Cat
10/13 (Tue) Kelela @ Fillmore
10/14 (Wed) IIIsa / Heather Stebbins & Rachel Beetz / projections by Ex Lamp @ Rhizome
10/15 (Thu) Rebecca Black @ 9:30 Club
10/15 (Thu) Maneka, Tosser, Ducts @ Quarry House
10/16 (Fri) Pretty Bitter, Pulses., Padfoot, thisdogllhunt @ Black Cat
10/19 (Mon) The Band Feel, Little Lungs @ Pearl St Warehouse
10/20 (Tue) Guerilla Toss @ Songbyrd
10/23 (Fri) Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical present Helado Tropical @ Black Cat
10/30 (Fri) Boy Harsher, True Blue, Kassie Krut @ Howard Theatre

NYC

10/1 (Thu) Josiah Mcelheny convenes Raven Chacon, Jennie C. Jones, George Lewis, & Fred Moten to talk & listen @ Giorno Poetry Systems
10/1 (Thu) Sally Gates / Tim Berne / Kenny Grohowski, Miss Ambivalent (Jeong Lim Yang, Santiago Leibson, Kevin Shea) @ Mama Tried
10/1 (Thu) & 10/2 (Fri) Lambchop @ Public Records
10/3 (Sat) Arts For Arts InGardens: DoYeon Kim / gabby fluke-mogul / T.J. Borden, Janice Lowe Museoetry, Aakash Mittal / William Parker / Trae Crudup, Open Drum & Dance Circle @ First St Garden
10/3 (Sat) Arto Lindsay, Dr. S+M, Beat Detectives, Exoplex, Stewey Decimal @ Light & Sound Design
10/3 (Sat) Geese, billy woods @ Forest Hills Stadium
10/4 (Sun) Arts For Arts InGardens: Endless Season Trio (Ayumi Ishiito, Daniel Carter, Yuko Togami), Eli Berman & Bonita Oliver, Che Chen Yarrow Array (w/ Lesley Mok, Todd Capp) @ First St Garden
10/5 (Mon) Krallice (Record Release), Veldune @ St Vitus (new location)
10/7 (Wed) Hana Stretton @ Public Records
10/8 (Thu) Cor de Lux, Editrix, Yuvees, Big Girl @ The Broadway
10/8 (Thu) Horse Lords, Jules Reidy, Silk Fence @ Pioneer Works
10/8 (Thu) Neko Case @ National Sawdust
10/8 (Thu) Jawdropped, The Heaven @ Night Club 101
10/9 (Fri) Moss Cathedral (EP Release), David Grubbs, Leah Coloff, John Brattin (projections) @ Ki Smith Gallery
10/9 (Fri) Sunn O))) @ Basilica Hudson
10/14 (Wed) Contemporary East:Ikue Mori, Charmaine Lee, Nava Dunkelman, Reggie Nicholson, Yuko Fujiyama @ Roulette
10/14 (Wed) Chanel Beads, Horse Vision, Nirosta Steel, Car Culture @ Knockdown Center
10/15 (Thu) Chaser, Ewen / Dahl / Chase @ Mama Tried
10/15 (Thu) Gilla Band, Piss @ Elsewhere
10/16 (Fri) Mount Eerie, Mirah @ New York Society For Ethical Culture
10/17 (Sat) Duffy, Uhlmann @ Union Pool
10/21 (Wed) Fuji||||||||||ta, Ka Baird, Actress, Team Rolfes @ Alice Tully Hall
10/21 (Wed) Animal Collective (Feels Live) @ Knockdown Center
10/21 (Wed) Juana Molina @ LPR
10/21 (Wed) Built to Spill, Quasi, Melanie Radford @ Music Hall of Williambsurg
10/22 (Thu) claire rousay, Martyna Basta, Keith "Giant Claw" Rankin, Julek Ploski @ Lincoln Center
10/22 (Thu) Animal Collective (Feels Live) @ Knockdown Center
10/22 (Thu) Built to Spill, Quasi, Melanie Radford @ Music Hall of Williambsurg
10/23 (Fri) Pardoner, Laughing Cocks, The Smarthearts @ Night Club 101
10/24 (Sat) Mark Guiliana @ Public Records
10/25 (Sun) Helado Negro, Reyna Tropical @ Knockdown Center
10/25 (Sun) SAVAK, Thalia Zedek, Dan Friel @ Mama Tried
10/27 (Tue) Ka Baird, Chris Ryan Williams, Leila Bordreuil, Luke Stewart @ Roulette
10/28 (Wed) Sō Percussion (Steve Reich's Drumming) @ 92NY
10/29 (Thu) PC Music, A.G. Cook, Sophia Stel, Hudson Mohawke, umru, Grrl, Holly Waxwing @ Knockdown Center
10/29 (Thu) Jeremiah Chiu @ Public Records

Future Shows

11/1 (Sat) Chanp & More @ Peabody Heights (Baltimore)
11/4 (Wed) This Is Lorelei, @ @ The Atlantis (DC)
11/4 (Wed) Ikue Mori, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Zeena Parkins @ The Stone (NYC)
11/5 (Thu) Built to Spill @ Union Craft Brewing (Baltimore)
11/5 (Thu) Deerhoof, Mercy, My Trio @ Elsewhere (NYC)
11/5 (Thu) Boy Harsher, True Blue, Kassie Krut @ Knockdown Center (NYC)
11/5 (Thu) Zeena Parkins, Ka Baird, Chris Williams @ The Stone (NYC)
11/9 (Mon) Slow Pulp, Her New Knife @ 9:30 Club (DC)
11/9 (Mon) The Tubs, Slippers @ Songbyrd (DC)
11/9 (Mon) William Basinski, Cholla @ Public Records (NYC)
11/10 (Tue) Deerhoof, That This, Jacky Cougar & The Vampyres From Africa @ Black Cat (DC)
11/10 (Tue) Julia Jacklin @ Lincoln Theatre (DC)
11/10 (Tue) William Basinski, Chantal Michelle @ Public Records (NYC)
11/11 (Wed) William Basinski, Chantal Michelle @ Public Records (NYC)
11/12 (Thu) Chat Pile, Soul Glo, Shallowater @ Black Cat (DC)
11/12 (Thu) Giles Corey, Kathryn Mohr, Val Acton Loper @ Pearl St Warehouse (DC)
11/13 (Fri) Protomartyr, JRCG @ Black Cat (DC)
11/13 (Fri) Sweeping Promises, Clear Channel @ Union Stage (DC)
11/13 (Fri) Omni, Saudi Oil @ Elsewhere (NYC)
11/13 (Fri) Red Brick Weekend with Flowers For The Dead, Music Mouse, Cryptid Summer @ Takoma Park Presbyterian Church (DC)
11/14 (Sat) Red Brick Weekend with Omni, Fib, more @ Takoma Park Presbyterian Church (DC)
11/15 (Sun) The Bad Plus @ Keystone Korner (Baltimore)
11/15 (Sun) Gilla Band, Annie-Claude Deschênes @ The Atlantis (DC)
11/15 (Sun) Armand Hammer @ Music Hall of Williambsurg (NYC)
11/20 (Fri) caroline @ Howard Theatre (DC)
12/4 (Fri) Yo La Tengo Hanukkah @ Bowery Ballroom (NYC)
12/5 (Sat) Brainiac @ TV Eye (NYC)
12/12 (Sat) Agriculture @ St Vitus (new location) (NYC)
12/15 (Tue) Haley Heynderickx @ Bowery Ballroom (NYC)
12/17 (Thu) Haley Heynderickx @ 6th & I Synagogue (DC)
1/16 (Sat) Bill Frisell, Mary Halvorson @ The Stone
1/18 (Mon) Ninajirachi @ Terminal 5
1/22 (Fri) Anna von Hausswolff @ Knockdown Center
1/26 (Tue) @ (The band "At") @ Ottobar