From Kapelle, Holland
Recommended if you like Black Midi, King Crimson, YHWH Nailgun
Up next New single Maalstroom out now
Tight-fitted in scrimpy Sunday school apparel, Grote Geelstaart – Dutch for great yellowtail fish – make music that’s decidedly less orthodox than appearances suggest. Drums skirmish with frighteningly efficient, jackhammer velocity; synths and guitars buzz and ring like fire alarms; the bass rumbles like a jammed freighter engine. Grote Geelstaart’s clinical chaos goes hand in hand with vocalist/guitarist Luuk Bosma’s primal punk dramaturgy, reminiscent of Nick Cave, James Chance and underrated Dutch punk thespians De Kift. This MO translates wonderfully to Grote Geelstaart’s Zeelandic roots, a place where an intricate network of dykes is built and maintained to keep the unforgiving North Sea at bay: human ingenuity v lawless elements.
Even within a surging landscape of bizarro rock upstarts, Bosma, Jesper Rottier (guitar, drums, vocals), Jeppe Rottier (bass), Danny Rottier (synths, saxophone), and Finley Nijsse (drums, vocals) are total outliers. Not just because of the high-density confluence of ideas and odd tempos within each track, but also because of their insistence on performing their lyrics exclusively in Dutch. Grote Geelstaart is a bit of a family affair too: Jesper and Jeppe are brothers, and Finley and Danny are their nephews. Frontman Bosma, a friend from school, rounds out the five-piece.
Perhaps the one constant of Grote Geelstaart’s perplexing shows is that they don’t stay in the same place for very long: avant garde noise chicanery of Naked City and Boredoms variety can shift at any second towards oddball poetry. With tracks such as Spookrijden (meaning Ghost Driving, about a person forced to drive on the wrong side of the road), Barch – both from the 2025 EP Van Reijnst – and now the hyper-frenetic new single Maalstroom, the band’s bold inversion of rock music feels primed to swallow up anything entering its orbit. Jasper Willems
This week’s best new tracks
Gnod – Shadow Mirror
The Salfordian psych-rock unit are celebrating 20 years in the mind-expansion game with an album trilogy this year, and this is the first track from it: a slow ritualistic groove worshipping a huge jangling riff. BBT
Picture – Tyyyyyyyyy
Issued on UK label of the moment Short Span, this is a sleekly functioning techno machine with an exquisite touch of Roulé-style filter house scuffing up the polish – and the bass drop is pure eyes-closed joy. (Available only on Bandcamp.) BBT
Eilish Constance – 1 Plus 1
There’s a musical-box sweetness to the 16-year-old US songwriter’s spindly folktronica – reminiscent of Y2K acts such as Imogen Heap and Azure Ray – albeit with a goth undertow: “My toes bleed, I’m lost,” she sings. LS
Marnz Malone – Splashin (ft J Hus)
From toting Uzis to treating women like frisbees, J Hus is on morally dubious but poetic form here, as is Marnz Malone, delivering gripping crime fiction over an organ-stacked, almost reggae-leaning beat. BBT
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Sunburned in London
The superb Melbourne indie band return with a seven-minute track musing on dislocation that shows off their rare alchemy: fraught yet breezy; rain-lashed yet sun-dappled. Gorgeous. LS
Power Snatch – DMs
Hayley Williams has been anonymously teasing this new band with Daniel James since last summer. Their official debut EP kicks off with this sleepy, snaky recollection of love fading to a blur. (Available only on Bandcamp.) LS
Xaviersobased – Big Ben (ft Zaytoven)
Over a blissful Zaytoven beat with a two-note melody twinkling like moonlight on chrome, US rapper Xaviersobased slurs his words into a melodic stream of semi-stoned consciousness. BBT
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