listens before i move, late feb 2026
hi. i'm moving this weekend! not far, you'll still see me around the city. my band elsinore's album got released recently! czech it out. i play guitar and noise junk. the positive feedback i've gotten has referenced its "grooviness" compared to other free jazz albums. maybe you'll like it!
i went through my bandcamp wishlist and took off everything i had already acquired or wasn't really interested in, whittling it down from 800+ items to about 60. so a lot of what's going to be described below is stuff i finally got around to listening to after it sat on my wishlist for ages!
2026 rolls on
janna lee / chad m clark / weasel walter - lee/clark/walter
released on the very talented Bob Bucko Jr's Personal Archives label, this is a great, nasty no-wave/free rock album of a type that I think should be more common. stripped down and simple from a recording/mixing perspective, focused on a purely nihilistic and snarky delivery from every sonic corridor. i think Janna Lee does great work as the vocalist here. i have a very old cd-r called Fuck Young Girls by the belgian group Mokronog that kinda recalls this but basically no one else has ever talked about (it was released on a label called Young Girls Records so the title is a fairly, uh, crass pun) but obviously the touch of sir weasel gives the lee/clark/walter album a bit of a technical and pro edge you wouldn't get from an improvised noise rock cd-r released in 2009.
let's just werewolf them - s/t
a wonderful guitar/drums/piano trio album that combines the textures of classical 90s post-rock along the lines of tortoise with skittering free jazz and a romantic post-minimalist tone palette. a real feeling of sublime beauty in frozen moments pervades this album. i don't know anything about the musicians involved other than the guitarist & drummer are in the band teen primes together, which i have not heard. found via searching bandcamp for free improv.
BOOKERS - ENOUGH NIHILISM
my band Elsinore opened for members of this group in a literal college classroom over the summer. the guitar player especially left an impression with his wild cut-up noise style. this has a great blurb from weasel walter and it's all true. really harsh and in your face aggressive "rock band" free improv with occasional incongruous samples and plenty of fuzzy noise.
the mountain goats - live archive vol. 1: going to princeton 10/20/24
this is up there with the better volumes of the jordan lake sessions, a good document of a good show, and honestly it's welcome after the disappointment of jordan lake vol 5. i got my start in mountain goats appreciation via bootlegs posted on archive in high school and honestly even with a full band the vibe is still intimate, playful, and communitarian.
forced out//shut in - infinite release
brutal electronics and grindcore drumming is a combination always welcome in my ears. there's a lot of crap tagged as noisecore on bandcamp, even among the stuff that actually is genuinely describable as noisecore sonically (i'm glad that the war was finally won on the wikipedia page after years of it redirecting to mathcore and being mostly about the dillinger escape plan, lol) but this was a gem i was glad to have found after a good bit of browsing.
alex ward / james paul nadien - voracity
this has great free noise guitar madness as well as some fantastic clarinet playing. alex ward is really a virtuoso and has produced a lot of good stuff on both instruments. james paul nadien is the current drummer for the flying luttenbachers and a really nice guy. both of them in top form on this duo improv record.
local stuff (not from 2026)
patrick breiner & david bernabo - words as feelings
two very talented individuals in a sax & synth duo from 2019. it's just amazing what a polymath david is. he's one of those types that can figure out something interesting to do with basically whatever instrument or even artistic medium you hand him. patrick of course is a magician you'd think came straight out of 60s chicago. this is only 15 minutes long give or take but a good mood setter.
derek bendel / dylan zeh - s/t
speaking of creative pittsburgh duos. dylan on bass and derek on sax, from 2024. a side session completed after recording for a sam rivers tribute album and once again has the energy and creativity of the free jazz classics. huge fan of both of these folks.
ZABB - sounds from the solstice
this live set was recorded at the government center in 2023. features previous players bendel & zeh, but with bendel on guitar instead of sax, plus ross antioch on drums and jeff berman on vibraphone. definitely a wonderful set that deserved capture and dissemination.
not local and not new, but new to me and really great
teresa riemann - head shot shy
this is an absolutely hypnotic drums-and-vocals ritual released on cassette in late 2025. wandering shamanistic vocal melodies find a path through polyrhythmic all-encompassing pointillistic drumlines. listening to this i had the feeling of finding something i've always wanted to hear, already in its perfect form.
that's it!
there's been more listening but i'll leave it here for now. enjoy the end of february everybody!