God bless the barbarians and the ignorami for rescuing us from an even more repulsive technological society .. If we hadn’t had a “dark age,” if Mao’s fanatic followers hadn’t put the intellectual class out to pasture and dashed their skulls in the dirt, if there hadn’t been Magyars, Vikings, Christians, anti-science zealots of every stripe, iconoclasts, country music disc jocks, the Amish, and other regressive forces to set civilization and progress back every once in a while, can you imagine the festering quagmire we’d be in? Something even more digitally dismaying than the present perhaps.
That’s why the rock ‘n’ roll of Kilynn Lunsford is so vital; it’s a pagan & primitive rhythm music that has served to stymie the development of neoliberal libertarian hegemonic forces & Silicon Valley’s strange cyborg agenda alike (as well as inspiring more than a few indie rockers to attempt something more interesting). Invoking the ghosts of Michael Zilkha’s sleek Ze Records disco-electro-bongo punk stable with some Pop Group, Man Parrish, Pink Section, New Age Steppers, On-U sound, Lene Lovich, & Algebra Suicide— with some Birthday Party/Bat-cave follies thrown in for good measure.
Kilynn is a legendary performer whose many records defy categorization or easy assimilation in the mainstream indie market which has cozied up to the digital leviathan so snugly. Her music is dance dissonance; irresistible but difficult for the algorithm to understand. Kilynn Lunsford doesn’t go in for the trite stories publicity teams use to wage their lowbrow PR campaigns. Hers is a hard road but ultimately the high one.
With the new record, Kilynn has done it again; “My Amphibian Face” is cafe jazz for Lemmy Caution. “Promiscuous Genes” is nightclub music for the hotel on AURORA 9. Kilynn Lunsford’s music is a stand out; tough, charming, fun, menacing, and impossible to classify. It really can’t be pinned down, which is an obstacle Lunsford has faced innumerable times since the dull minded vocation of rock journalism demands that everything be made normative, neutered, and defanged.
For those who have dedicated their lives to the promise of rock ‘n’ roll —i.e. perversity, outrage, non conformity, wit, & creativity—there is the hope that a hero might appear; someone who could redeem the tangled and now indistinguishable mess that music has become.
Kilynn Lunsford is that person; the fuzz dub Paladin whose music evokes the bloody vitality of pre digital noise but is irresistibly of the moment. Kilynn is the real deal; the legendary performer whose scene is resurrection rock ‘n’ roll. Kilynn Lunsford creates Burroughs Gysin cool cut-up chaos; an exquisite corpse of chords and beats that brings the crumpled body back to life and dares us to believe again.
“If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection” pulls further on the thread Emily started with “How to Moonwalk,” a stripped-down “when in doubt leave it out” approach that leaves the essentials…guitar/amp/electricity. What more do you want??
Where How to Moonwalk feels like it almost aggressively cuts away all of the other elements you’d expect in a rock setting…”If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection,” recorded by Emily at her own Suddenly Studio, is more laid back, the pieces feel like they don’t really have a beginning or end, but that we have been dropped into the middle with an invitation to imagine them as they really are, stretching out endlessly in both directions. Mind-erasing rock riff as forever playing loop, the neverending throb of a runout groove, skuzzy and beautiful, edited here only for the sake of space and time. There’s an intimacy to the tracks, as if we the listeners are eavesdropping on someone playing for the sake of playing and enjoying it as such without any kind of concern for formality….a real looseness that invites you in to experience the sound of the guitar for its own sake. The guitar is skeletal but little sounds like the pick on the strings or a finger moving along a fret are given equal footing in the mix and all of a sudden we are there in the room with Emily. Fuzz, repetition, amp hum and before you know it it’s over and yr flipping it again and again and again and again and again.
–Bill Nace Philadelphia PA 2023
The quartet of Sonam Parikh, Pier Harrison Juliette Rando & Kat Bean are the glorious blood & guts behind Eraser. Much can be said of their paths to this apex, how these sounds coalesced , but who has the time? We are here, now, to speak of Eraser’s debut release, ‘Hideout’, on Siltbreeze Records.
First, let me ask that you are familiar with the golden age of Rough Trade? Then if so, you would immediately connect with the sound of Eraser, which twitches & gyrates in a mashup of Pere Ubu & Kleenex. And yet there is a distinct New York-meets-Berlin No Wave tension underlying the fun. Think The Static meets Mania D. Are you in or out?
And yet all of these are just luscious trajectories to lead you into the lair of Eraser’s infective polygot of sound. There was a saying in the old days, “The person who can’t dance says the band can’t play”. But in current times that is a bygone sentiment & both burn feverishly in the bloodstream of Eraser. They are here to spread their beguiling contagion upon all who will it. And no vaccine can deny them.
FFO; ZE Records, 99 Records, Lust/Unlust, Zickzack.
Ashley Burrows + Eva Killinger.
