Scrap Heap 19.5

Larry Michaels

15 Aug 2025 • 6 min read

Hello to the scrap heap, hello to my friends and readers. I'm continuing to iterate on the purpose & feel of the scrap heap – today I've got a cascade going from soft ambient to hardcore, with each step a little more aggro than the last. Plus! A great Fugazi live song poking the listener into action against the creeping dread of living. Ok thanks for reading, will return in Sept with more GDC.

YouTube Classic

Leftovers from the big GDC Fugazi deep dive last month. Fugazi live in front of the White House in 1991. This whole freezing cold show is on youtube, but this performance of Turnover is my favorite from the set & love the camera work throughout. The breath from the air, the crowd jumping together, the way the camera moves when the band hits the bridge at 2:40, the cuts at 3:00, just a great document of a moment in time.

Scrap Heap

This scrap heap gets progressively louder as it goes down the chain – starting with ambient music, into beat-driven electronic stuff, then the poppy side of rock, noisier rock, and rounded out by punk & hardcore. Let's scrap.

Ambient

Gets more and more lively as it goes – Haber/Jaar/Mousa's compositions are so washed out, then Chu/Honer's go more pastel & watercolor, before the dayglo of Slugabed's album.

Chantal Haber, Nicolas Jaar, Sary Mousa - Crashing Waves Dance to the Rhythm Set by the Broadcast Journalist Revealing the Tragedies of the Day (Ruptured, Jul 25)

Meditative ambient work, guitar with mild glitches, light synth drones, and saxophones. Slowly gets more and more worked up until Part 4 where it all comes together.

Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer - Different Rooms (International Anthem, Jul '25)

You know I'm a freak about the LA jazz scene!! This ambient record is a great addition to the Chiu/Honer collaborative discography. Viola & modular synth pulses are a perfect combo with crispy field recordings gluing the whole thing throughout. This one prob warrants a deeper listen, since the compositions include reflections of other songs within the release. Unclassifiable and cool stuff.

Slugabed - Inherit The Earth (Anticon, 2017)

Big huge synth sounds and repetitive re-pitched sounds, kinda like a more accessible OPN at times.

Beat music

Don't know what else to call this section! Ordered by accessibility – 2shell's inviting dark hyperpop, DJ Haram's personal & grimy hip-hop, and then Matmos' experiments in writing percussion-heavy electronic music using only metallic instruments.

Two Shell - IIcons (Young, Jul '25)

Dark, glitchy hyperpop from the anonymous duo. A good time! Hard hitting percussion sits satisfyingly amidst disembodied pop hooks. Murky dance grooves that could be playing in the background of an underground club scene in a movie. Not every track is a winner, but the good ones go crazy.

DJ Haram - Beside Myself (Hyperdub, Jul '25)

Nice little mixed genre album from the regular Backwoodz collaborator that has a mix of hard hitting hip-hop and a tasting of a bunch of electronic styles (gabber, ambient, field recordings, jungle) all thru Haram's washy & shuffly & scratchy textures and mixed percussion. Collabs are sick, including a 700 Bliss reunion, bbymutha, and Armand Hammer + collabs with producers like El Kontessa.

Matmos - Metallic Life Review (Thrill Jockey, Jun '25)

To be honest, was only just kinda feeling this one at first, but then the last track started and I got super lost in it (positive). Baltimore duo (and prev Bjork collaborators!) Matmos are truly masters of the free improv weirdo hip hop thing, this album has so many sounds in it. For this album, they live sampled only instruments made out of metal, which is a silly constraint. I think they benefit from the really long song – their experiments need time to unfold.

Rock

Tsunami - The Heart's Tremolo (Simple Machines, 1994)

Cheers to the Numero Group for reissuing this one! Cool kinda forgotten DC alt-rock/art-rock/riot grrrl band from the 90s. Jangly, minimalist, knows when to crank up the tempo and when to ride out a slow-core song.

Forth Wanderers - The Longer This Goes On (Sub Pop, Jul '25)

Gonna revisit this one from the NJ indie-pop band – I dig it, but they've made such a big deal about writing a record without reuniting that I think I was expecting more than this was. I loved their albums from the 2010s and I was hoping for something a little more.

Alex G - Headlights (RCA, Jul '25)

Good on Sandy Alex G for getting that major label record deal bag. That said, this one is not as good as 2022's God Save The Animals which remains the only Alex G record that I have liked.

Noise Rock

Three diff flavors of noise rock, from least noisy to noisiest.

Denude - A Murmuration of Capitalist Bees (Expert Work, Jan '25)

Minimalist rock music in the vein of Shellac or Karate – mathy and angular, but the songs are clean and almost woody, with t0ns of room mic to bring air to the recordings. No fuzz or buzzsaw distortion, no harsh noise, just overdriven amp sounds, tunefully sung and shouted lyrics, and a winding compositional style that pushes a rock trio into new territory. Lyrics toe the line between thoughtful scathing anti-capitalist critique and stuff I might have written in my journal when I was 17, but that's ok. I'll keep offering kindness to myself when I was 17. Cheers to Gabriel for the recommendation!

Shearling - Motherfucker, I Am Both: "Amen" and "Hallelujah" (Mishap, May '25)

Is this the best record of 2025 so far? Uhhhh. It's def one of those records you should try to listen to exactly one time and then you won't ever need to hear it again. One 60-min long song that careens through upsetting lyrical imagery. More horse-fucking than you really feel comfortable with. 44ish min mark is my highlight, when the vocalist starts screaming "This is my masterpiece, this is my Sistine Chapel ceiling."

Melt-Banana - 13,000 Miles At Light Velocity (Tzadik, 1999)

Fun live-in-studio recording of some classic MxBx tracks + a bizarre Beach Boys cover. Worth the listen if you're already a fan of their noisy frenetic style & want to hear what it sounds like in a less controlled environment.

Punk

New screamo releases from Lord Snow & Nuvolascura mixed with the old school sneer of The Germs and new school sneer of Hez. It's summer, it's time to blast high-tempo stuff & boil over.

Lord Snow - Have You Heard Of The High Elves (Jun '25)

I can't tell if I'm not into screamo anymore or not, but I am glad that Lord Snow got together to re-record a bunch of the old demos.

Nuvolascura - How This All Ends (Zegema Beach, Jul '25)

Very cool guitar sound design stuff & sudden change-ups from the CA screamo band. Lots of tempo automation in the ableton proj.

Hez - Panamaniacs (Discos Enfermos, 2023)

Furious riffing & a big spaced out vocal delivery and glitchy bird chirp guitar solos – a great hardcore record from the quartet of Panameños. Lyrics about the quotidian suffering of daily life are extremely sick, and easily followed by even the likes of me who has about 2 years of Duolingo and nothing else. "Podía morir siendo infeliz despues de haber perdido el tiempo"

The Germs - MIA The Complete Anthology (Slash, 1993)

Honestly? Slams. I'd never really listened to The Germs before & the recordings here are visceral and raw, starting with some pretty gnarly lo-fi home recordings before moving on to the Joan Jett produced tracks from GI. "Lexicon Devil" is a truly sick song.