New Music You Shouldn’t Miss

Skerik
SKERIK 061725
(Loosegroove)

Seattle saxophonist Skerik (aka Eric Walton) has done seemingly everything a musician can do in his 30-year career. Even a cursory rundown of his activities would exceed my word count, but, real quick: He’s toured with Roger Waters and Les Claypool, guested on Sunn O)))’s Monoliths & Dimensions, and headed over a dozen bands, including Critters Buggin (hybridized jazz, rock, whirled music), DRKWAV (sinister, beat-oriented soundtrackage), Garage A Trois (Medeski Martin & Wood–like jazz funk), and Sound Cipher (dystopian sci-fi synth journeys). With his new LP for Stone Gossard and Regan Hagar’s Loosegroove (out now), Skerik has plunged into ambient music with aplomb. 

Premonitions of SKERIK 061725 can be heard on the desolately touching “Entropy Pool” from Sound Cipher’s All That Syncs Must Diverge, parts of Critters Buggin’s Amoeba, and the 2001 solo joint Psychochromatic. But overall, the layered saxophonics of 061725 is Skerik like you’ve never heard him. He describes it as “don’t-wake-the-baby music.” His ferocious fire-breathing sax blasts, funky syncopations, and malevolent electronics have taken a hiatus for soothing ambience that caresses your synapses from the first seconds of opening track “Synesthesia.” No surprise that Skerik cites Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports and the ECM label’s spacious jazz as inspirations. 

People, I hear about 993 ambient albums per year, so it takes a lot for one to cause more than a shoulder shrug. And SKERIK 061725 zeroes in on that low, lonely sound that chills you out and spurs you to meditate on life’s most profound matters. Heads, you win.

Debt Rag
It Is Clear What’s Going On
(Post Present Medium)

With their longest song clocking in at 2:25 and their shortest at 23 seconds, Olympia trio Debt Rag don’t mess around while making their caustic points on It Is Clear What’s Going On. Percussionist Lillian Maring, bassist Marissa Magic, and keyboardist/trumpeter Max Nordile clearly have a potent chemistry. 

Debt Rag’s 2023 debut album, Lost to the Fantasy, roughed up punk with math-rock strangeness and fuck-off timbres. On It Is Clear, they’ve reached a new peak with advances in art-damaged song structure and off-kilter vocal interplay—plus, everyone sings with a loopy conviction you won’t easily forget. Nordile yelps like Nick Cave’s understudy in Birthday Party, Maring and Magic channel Lydia Lunch in harangue mode. Magic’s bass leads the way, grunting like a rutting beast.

The title track is staccato art rock with witchy undertones and wicked cowbell, while “Cold Kitchenette” harnesses Six Finger Satellite and Brainiac’s electro-rock recklessness. “Syzygy” makes Trout Mask Replica sound like the Eagles; it’s crazy in the most cunning way. Several rickety yet indomitable songs—especially “Beat the Clock”—move with Rube Goldberg machine logic. “Gary’s World” is the closest they come to a single, as toy piano, bass, and drums cohere into a damnably catchy anti-anthem bursting with Kleenex/LiLiPUT energy. 

On It Is Clear, it sounds as if Debt Rag have invented a whole new mathematical system for their unruly music. Don’t believe the pessimists who say rock is dead. In Debt Rag’s mischievous hands, it’s writhing with pugnacious life. 

Seattle-area musicians can send music to [email protected] for possible coverage.

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