Crate Digging: January 2025


Crate Digging is back! Our monthly feature—focusing on new-to-us music that’s off the radar, underheard, obscure or maybe just merited a second listen after all these years—returns after a year-end pause. Now that our survey of the year’s best can take a break for another 10 months, it’s a pleasure to be able to dive into what we’ve been digging, through literal vinyl digs, digital discoveries or otherwise.

Bruford Levin Upper Extremities – Bruford Levin Upper Extremities
A side-project of two prog, art rock and jazz legends, this group was a recapitulation of the lineup of David Torn’s solo record Cloud About Mercury released a decade prior. (Consider this one a twofer!) The music here is shockingly modern, focused more on deep and complex grooves, again like the same work Torn would deliver with Sonar on progressive post-Sade lounge minimalism. It’s just genius playing, stupendous and rich. – Langdon Hickman
Listen: YouTube

The Great Old Ones – Tekeli-li
I was obsessed when this first came out nearly a decade ago now. It’s black and death metal but with a wildly heavy doom and post-metal edge making the material far more about the atmosphere without falling into the boring-coded “atmospheric” realm. I sleep to records on occasion to help with sleep disorder issues; this one always gave the most vicious and dreadful nightmares. – Langdon HIckman
Listen: Bandcamp

Thom Holmes – Radio Meditations
Although Radio Meditations technically dropped in 2024, it’s actually a collection of pieces he recorded between 2015 and 2023. If his name sounds familiar, you might know him from the Holmes Archive podcast tracing the history of electronic and experimental music, or from his books on the subject. This new album is a captivating mix of field recordings, electronic flourishes, and ambient soundscapes, and it wraps up with a two-part track—each running 26 minutes—that swings from dizzying to solemn. Every time I listen, I catch something new. – Ernesto Aguilar
Listen: Bandcamp

Kings of Leon – Because of the Times
Look, I’m not going to fight for the Followill boys if you put a gun to my head, but I will defend their third record, their last before they opened Pandora’s Box with “Sex is On Fire” in 2008 and cast beige, impotent rock demons towards mainstream music coverage. Because of the Times was the antithesis of cultural taste when it was released in 2007 in that it is an ugly homunculus of stadium and Southern rock. Remember, 2007, the year of Boxer, Neon Bible, and In Rainbows? Because of the Times was cooked upon release. There was no way its loudness war-era production and Caleb Followill’s shrieking on “Charmer” would ever be seen as anything other than bar rock on trenbolone. That being said, this was also the last time the quartet ever burnt a calorie while making music, with the aforementioned “Charmer” and “McFearless” possessing actual musculature. Caleb’s nasally drawl was also at its most refined and defined, before he neutered his vocal identity with later albums. When taking these qualities into consideration and divorcing Because of the Times from its sophomoric standing among 2007 rock, you’ll find that it’s a bastion of rockism that actually supports its thesis. It doesn’t need to begrudge what rock had become; it displays what rock is when meeting it head-on. – Colin Dempsey
Listen: Spotify

Harold Land – Choma (Burn)
Saxophonist Harold Land’s first recording was in 1948, which meant the jazz veteran had more than two decades under his belt by the time he embraced fusion. His 1971 album Choma (Burn) doesn’t have the name recognition of an album like Bitches Brew, nor the girth—its four tracks come and go in under 40 minutes—but its dense and dynamic arrangements are similarly revelatory. The ensemble here is magnetic, and includes a key lineup of players including Land’s own son on piano, but it’s the interplay between Land’s saxophone and flute and vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson that make this one feel like sonic sorcery. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp

Pleasure Forever – Alter
In 2003, during Sub Pop’s second Golden Age, to speak—when Hot Hot Heat, The Shins, The Postal Service, Fruit Bats and a slew of others flooded just the label’s roster but indie rock on the whole—one of the best Sub Pop records of the millennium slipped through the cracks. Subdued, lo-fi and muted in its approach despite discharging noise-rock through clenched teeth, Alter was a question mark of a record and easy to gloss over for music critics chasing the other aforementioned bands with cult-like zeal. Graciously, Pleasure Forever are currently reminding us of their short-lived brilliance through a series of reissues. Yet to be revisited, though, is Alter, the second and final record by the band formed from the ashes of VSS. It was a true diamond in the rough, with Joshua Hughes’ wiry guitar work, Andrew Rothbard’s alien-like modulated vocals and Dave Clifford’s refusal to pass up the opportunity to sneak in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it drum fill. Nary a moment elapses over the course of 12 tracks without a pitch-perfect pop hook or melodic curveball, all presented with an underlying, implicit sorrow that only a band on the verge of a breakup can bring. – Kurt Orzeck
Listen: Bandcamp

A Primary Industry – Ultramarine
Given the resurgence in interest in shoegaze in the 2020s, and the slate of reissues that have accompanied its upward swing, it’s a wonder that there’s still so much left in the archives waiting to be discovered. London’s A Primary Industry is one such band, having released only one album before splintering and members Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond enjoying a much longer career as electronic duo Ultramarine. Which, you’ll note, is also the name of API’s one and only studio album. Still out of print and seemingly ripped from an old vinyl copy when heard on Apple Music (which honestly only makes this all the more amazing), Ultramarine is a record that ties together various threads of underground music in the mid-’80s without committing to any of them fully. It’s an early permutation of shoegaze, or perhaps proto-shoegaze, with the austerity and intensity of industrial, the sleek grooves of post-punk, and with some avant garde touches of clarinet and supremely funky bass. It’s something like The Pop Group paired with early Cocteau Twins, produced by Cabaret Voltaire, which is a trifecta that speaks to me very specifically. Whether that combination of sounds appeals to you is a complicated equation of variables, but this is a wild record ripe for rediscovery and—if anyone willing to do the work is listening—a long overdue reissue. – JT
Listen: Apple Music

Quiet Sun – Mainstream
The record threading the needle between (and featuring members of) Roxy Music, This Heat, Matching Mole and Robert Wyatt’s band. When I talk about the truth of progressive rock as the hidden history of music in a certain sense, this is part of what I mean; a clear connection between the riveting avant garde of one era (This Heat) with another (Matching Mole). – Langdon Hickman
Listen: Spotify

Siglo XX – Siglo XX
Belgium’s Siglo XX formed in the late ’70s around the time Joy Division released their earliest singles, with a similarly dark and raw sound. But four decades after its release, the group’s debut full-length, originally released only on cassette (and with the fidelity to match), has earned the reputation of being a cult classic of coldwave. Pairing primitive synthesizers with abrasive guitar scratch, the group’s first LP shares more in common with a band like The Sound than the analog synth pulse of Fad Gadget, a song like “Obsession” showcasing the band’s grooves at their most jagged and hypnotic, while oscillating keyboards whir like interrupting UFOs. This doesn’t feel bleak so much as cryptic and distant, a mysterious, rhythmic urgency that emerges from a dark fog and seems to disappear as easily as it arrives. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp

Sonar – Three Movements
A newer release but one that flew under even my radar, and this is the kind of thing I follow. Imagine Discipline-era King Crimson crossed with Nik Bärtsch, Steve Reich and Sade. This sits right at the crossroads of progressive rock and jazz fusion but grooves like a motherfucker even as the musicians among us get mentally tongue-tied. Y the time changes. – Langdon Hickman
Listen: Bandcamp

Sun Ra – Excelsior Mill
My introduction to Sun Ra was through an Instagram video. He was at a piano striking in all directions, the energy of his performance giving way to this overwhelming feeling of exuberance. Seeking to hear more of his endless catalog, I
went to my local record store (shouts out to Rattleback Records in Andersonville, Chicago) and picked up Excelsior Mill (I love the album cover art). I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect but based on the little I’d heard and what I’d read of Ra, I was confident I would at least like the record.
Excelsior Mill blew my fucking mind upon first listen. It still does to this day. For 40 minutes, Excelsior Mill is a feast of delightfully bombastic arrangements. Thundering drums and clashing cymbals rise alongside sporadic flurries of psychedelic melodies, the organ drones and Ra plays on and on. It’s frenetic, it’s surreal, it’s cosmic. But for all its sonic intensity, I find the record to be a deeply meditative experience. There are (relatively) restrained moments on it, but whether it’s a slow droning organ or Ra firing away at the keys, the overall structure of Excelsior Mill is intoxicating. From song to song the rhythm is a nonstop rush that you just want to dive into—to let go of everything else and flow with. – Michael Pementel
Listen: Bandcamp

Robert Turman – Way Down
San Diego native Robert Turman emerged in the early ‘80s era of burgeoning industrial, briefly as a member of NON before parting ways with Boyd Rice to pursue his own uniquely dystopian vision. Though he took an extended break from music after the 1980s, he ramped up his solo creations again in the 21st century, including collaborations and splits with prolific noise artist Aaron Dilloway. But Way Down is an early masterwork in his career, merging minimal synth pulse and industrial darkness against a wash of lo-fi haze that sounds like a third generation cassette dub of Blade Runner via Wax Trax! The title track is thrilling and immediate, its industrial-synth drive augmented by pitched-down recitations of the title that sound like a rap producer tag. “Lotek” is retro-futuristic minimal wave darkness and “Mind the Gap” is epic analog-electronic noir. This doesn’t sound like the future but rather viewing it through the lens of the past, and finding that the distance between the two isn’t as vast as it seems. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp

Various Artists – La Locura De Machuca
The Analog Africa label is based in Germany and doesn’t strictly reissue African music, though that’s a considerable chunk of its catalog—and it’s all worth hearing. But one of the offbeat gems among its excavations of obscure grooves is La Locura De Machuca, which translates to “the madness of Machuca.” The Machuca in the compilation’s title is Rafael Machuca, a Colombia tax lawyer who, upon seeing a life-changing performance, literally changed the course of his life and founded a record label that specialized in experimental, psychedelic cumbia and champeta, the likes of which is represented here. Spanning a half-decade in bold and visionary sounds, La Locura De Machuca has few peers or precedents, its eclectic blend of sounds shuffling from lo-fi electro funk to Afrobeat-inspired jams and other, altogether more strange sonic concoctions. Some of which are bands Machuca himself formed under names like Samba Negra and El Grupo Folklorico, proving that “do it yourself” often means something that nobody else likely would have come up with on their own. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Bandcamp

Chad Wackerman – The View
Color me surprised when I learned that the lineup for the first several Wackerman solo records was Allan Holdsworth’s entire band, including the man himself. This makes sense, retrospectively; Wackerman after all was the long-term drummer for Holdsworth. But this revelation still lead to several hours of “new” material from the lineup I’d never heard. – Langdon Hickman
Listen: Spotify
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