Being misunderstood is exhausting. Being misunderstood repeatedly, while also having to explain why you are being misunderstood, can become an almost full-time occupation. J. Quimby’s "The Invisible", the latest release under the Rhins name, approaches this predicament without attempting to translate it into a reassuringly legible musical narrative. Instead, it makes a virtue of the very things that conventional communication tends to reject: repetition, overload, interruption, disorientation and the refusal to settle into a recognisable pattern. This is not ambient music designed to help the listener find their happy place. In fact, the happy place appears to have been evacuated, its furniture thrown out of the window and the windows themselves replaced with malfunctioning synthesizers.

The album was conceived during a period of upheaval, as Quimby was moving house and navigating other changes in life. That instability is reflected in the music's construction, but the significance of "The Invisible" reaches beyond the familiar association between personal turmoil and noisy electronics. Its central concern is the frustration of trying to communicate in a neurotypical world, where the expectations and conventions of interaction can make one's own experience difficult to express. Quimby describes the music as a form of communication in itself, one that does not depend on verbal explanation. The distinction is important: this is not simply an album about distress, nor is its intensity offered as a spectacle for curious outsiders. It is an attempt to establish a language on its own terms, even when that language is abrasive, fragmented or difficult to follow.

Rhins is the project of Scottish sound artist and composer J. Quimby, whose earlier releases have appeared through labels including Tombed Visions and Aurora Borealis. The new project also reconnects with a more aggressive musical past, particularly Quimby's involvement in Take A Worm For A Walk Week and Remember Remember, as well as the collaborative performance work with artist Iona Kewney under the Knights of the Invisible name. Those experiences help explain the unusual combination of force and ethereality found here. The music draws on the physical impact of noise and distortion, but also on the more delicate vocal and string-based sensibilities developed through theatrical and performance contexts. The result is not a compromise between two approaches so much as an attempt to make them coexist without smoothing away their differences. Quimby's previous Rhins release, "The Burnout", had already explored suffocating electronic textures; "The Invisible" pushes that vocabulary into a more personal and deliberately unstable territory.

The method is as significant as the subject. Rather than beginning with finished compositions and gradually dismantling them, Quimby starts from improvisation, allowing analogue synthesizers to develop into extended passages before subjecting the material to a process of destruction, subtraction and reconstruction. It is a compositional approach that resembles the repeated application and removal of paint, except that the canvas is sound and the paint occasionally appears to be industrial waste. The resulting pieces retain traces of their original gestures, but those gestures are buried beneath layers of distortion, overlapping tones and recurring patterns. What might initially seem chaotic gradually acquires an internal organisation. Not necessarily a comfortable one, admittedly, but comfort is hardly the album's principal concern.

"Iona" establishes the terms with considerable force. Thick, overlapping synthesizer tones accumulate into a dense mass, with distortion giving the sustained notes a rough, almost physical surface. There is a sense of something attempting to emerge through the pressure, although the music never provides a clean passage out. Its title gives the opening a personal dimension, particularly given the album's dedication to Iona Jane Kewney, whose artwork also accompanies the release. The connection between the dedication and the sound is not something that needs to be decoded; the piece is sufficiently affecting without turning into a puzzle about biography.

"Knights of the Invisible" introduces a different kind of presence. The additional vocals of Emily Quimby bring a human element into the electronic turbulence, but these are not conventional vocal performances in search of a melody or a lyrical message. The voice appears as texture, gesture and atmosphere, at times suggesting a ritual whose words have been deliberately withheld. A more discernible rhythmic movement eventually takes shape, giving the piece a sense of forward motion without making it any less uncanny. There are echoes of the slow-building dread associated with older horror cinema, particularly the synthetic unease of 1970s and 1980s soundtracks, but the music avoids becoming a nostalgic exercise in analogue spookiness. No haunted house has ever sounded quite so poorly equipped to deal with its own electrical system.

The subsequent "Black Regent" and "Self Interrupted" maintain the album's uneasy momentum. The former works through layered drones and shifting electronic pressure, allowing its darker textures to develop without resorting to obvious climactic gestures. The latter feels more abrupt and fractured, its title almost functioning as a description of the listening experience: just as one begins to follow a particular sonic direction, something intervenes. This is not accidental awkwardness. Interruption is part of the album's grammar, and the repeated disruption of expectation becomes one of its most effective compositional tools.

"Electric Woods" offers a more spacious environment, though its apparent openness should not be mistaken for tranquillity. The synth textures have a more enveloping quality, creating an atmosphere that is simultaneously inviting and suspicious. There is something almost organic in the way the layers develop, but the sense of nature suggested by the title is far removed from the pastoral conventions of ambient music. These woods are electrically charged, and the trees probably have a better grasp of circuit diagrams than the average visitor. "Spectrum Collectors", meanwhile, introduces more restless movement through repeating electronic figures and shifting layers. Its patterns seem to gather momentum, only to become absorbed into the surrounding density. The effect is less that of a conventional build-up than of an unstable system repeatedly trying to establish equilibrium.

The closing "Waiting for the Sea Eagle" is particularly revealing. Its softer passages and more open melodic contours suggest the possibility of release, perhaps even the calm that the album has repeatedly seemed to seek. Yet the tension does not disappear. As the piece develops, the more abrasive elements return, disrupting the apparent resolution. The title evokes an act of waiting, but the music offers no guarantee that the awaited arrival will make anything better. The sea eagle may be magnificent, but it is apparently running late.

Across these seven compositions, Quimby works with a strikingly physical understanding of electronic sound. The synthesizers are not merely instruments for creating atmospheric backgrounds; they become extensions of bodily and emotional gestures, repeating, swelling, colliding and withdrawing. The wordless voices are equally important. They suggest the presence of communication without submitting to the assumption that communication must always take the form of intelligible speech. This is where the album's relationship with neurodivergent experience becomes most meaningful. Its refusal to conform to conventional structures is not presented as a decorative aesthetic choice, but as part of a broader struggle over whose modes of expression are recognised and whose are routinely treated as inconvenient noise.

That said, "The Invisible" does not require the listener to approach it as a document or an explanatory statement. Its musical language has enough substance to withstand repeated listening independently of the context provided by the artist. Indeed, the album's most interesting quality is the tension between its raw origins and the considerable care involved in shaping the final result. The improvisations may begin without a predetermined architecture, but the reconstruction is anything but careless. Lawrence English's mastering preserves the density and force of the material while giving its overlapping layers a coherent presence. The music remains difficult, but it is not indiscriminate.

There is also something quietly radical in the decision to make an album whose title refers to invisibility and whose contents insist on being heard. The invisible is not necessarily absent; sometimes it is simply overlooked, misread or denied the space required to become perceptible. Quimby responds by turning that condition into sound, not by making it easier to consume, but by refusing to dilute its contradictions. "The Invisible" can be oppressive, disorienting and occasionally exhausting, yet its intensity is never empty. It gives form to an experience that resists easy explanation, and it does so without pretending that music can magically solve the problems of communication.

Perhaps that is the album's most affecting achievement. It does not ask to be understood through the usual channels, nor does it offer a reassuring conclusion in which all the noise eventually makes sense. It simply insists on its own presence. In a world that often mistakes unfamiliar expression for an absence of meaning, that insistence is worth hearing.

There is a particular kind of nostalgia that has very little to do with wanting to return to the past. It is closer to remembering how it felt to encounter something for the first time, before familiarity made it manageable, before the things that once seemed impossibly vast became neatly filed away in the mental archive. Bruno Silva’s latest album as Ondness seems to inhabit precisely that peculiar territory. "I Can Only Put So Much Into a Song" looks back towards the music that helped shape his formative years, but it doesn't behave like a retrospective, a tribute compilation or an exercise in recreating some supposedly glorious period of independent music. Instead, it approaches memory as an unstable substance, something that can be stretched, distorted, submerged and occasionally mistaken for something else.

Silva is hardly a newcomer to the business of making sounds misbehave. The Lisbon-based musician has been active since the mid-2000s, developing a remarkably varied practice through Ondness, Serpente and several collaborative projects. While Serpente has often explored more physical, rhythmically adventurous territory, Ondness has provided a space for a different kind of electronic imagination, one interested in the transformation of samples, fragments, melodic suggestions and sonic debris into something that feels both familiar and strangely displaced. Silva is also involved in Portugal's musical infrastructure as a programmer and producer at Espaço das Damas, and his work has appeared on labels including Discrepant, Holuzam, Ecstatic and Where To Now?. His musical vocabulary has never been particularly keen on respecting borders, and this album finds him turning towards guitars without abandoning the electronic sensibility that has informed much of his previous output.

The references behind the record are unusually revealing. Iran's "The Moon Boys", The Microphones' "It Was Hot, We Stayed In The Water", Fennesz's "Endless Summer" and the sprawling, communal aesthetics of the New Weird America underground form a loose constellation around Silva's memories of adolescence and early adulthood. There is also a persistent black metal shadow, less a matter of genre imitation than a source of emotional pressure. These are not simply names dropped to establish the artist's alternative credentials, nor does the album sound like a checklist of influences assembled by someone who has spent too much time browsing old record collections. Rather, they suggest a period when guitar music, homemade experimentation, noise, folk, electronics and extreme music could coexist without anyone feeling obliged to explain the arrangement to a genre classification committee.

The opening "Tevens" immediately establishes the album's unsettled character. Guitar tones expand into thick, reverberant masses, while the vocal presence seems to emerge from somewhere behind the instrumental surface. There is a recognisable shoegaze ancestry in the way sound accumulates and obscures its own details, but the result is more shadowy than blissful. The guitars don't so much invite the listener to disappear into them as suggest that something might be waiting on the other side of the distortion. "Vento Gelo Valentine" deepens that impression, its heavy chords and ghostly vocal gestures carrying an almost ceremonial quality. The song feels as though it has been transmitted from a distant gathering whose participants have long since forgotten what they were celebrating.

One of the album's most appealing qualities is its refusal to let this atmosphere become monotonous. Silva understands that a dense sonic environment needs occasional openings, and he introduces them with a lightness that prevents the music from becoming trapped in its own fog. "Celesting" and "Blisser" provide different degrees of movement and melodic definition, the latter introducing a more clearly electronic pulse into the guitar-led material. Its small, nimble synth gestures don't dismantle the surrounding haze; they simply give it something to move around. There is a quiet pleasure in this juxtaposition, as if a modest piece of digital machinery had wandered into an overgrown garden and decided to stay.

The album's shorter pieces also contribute to its unusual sense of proportion. None of the nine tracks is especially long, and the entire record lasts just under half an hour. That brevity is significant. Rather than stretching its ideas into extended atmospheric exercises, Silva works with compact forms that feel like recollections surfacing briefly before slipping away again. The titles " (muito pouco)" and "(quase nada)", which translate roughly as 'very little' and 'almost nothing', seem to acknowledge the limits of what can be retained or communicated. They are small interruptions, but they also point towards the album's central concern: how much of an experience can actually survive its conversion into music? The answer, perhaps, is not very much. But the fragments that remain can be remarkably evocative.

"Glideness" offers another subtle shift in perspective, its textures moving between melodic suggestion and blurred abstraction. There is a looseness here that recalls the more exploratory corners of early-2000s independent music, when the distinction between a song, a recording experiment and an unfinished idea could be pleasantly difficult to establish. Silva does not attempt to polish away that uncertainty. His production allows sounds to retain their rough edges, while the mastering by Carlos Nascimento gives the material a coherent presence without sanding down its more unruly details. The result is intimate but not fragile, with distortion functioning less as an aggressive gesture than as a means of making the music feel physically close.

Then comes "Megadawn II", a title that inevitably invites comparison with Silva's earlier "Megadawn", released in 2022. Here, however, the electronic elements are not simply a continuation of the producer's previous experiments. They become part of the album's broader recollection of a musical past in which the supposedly incompatible could sit comfortably together. Beneath its celestial surface, the track contains a restless rhythmic undercurrent, a reminder that Silva's interest in electronic construction has not been suspended in favour of guitar nostalgia. The closing "Tevais" returns to the album's opening atmosphere, with another substantial wall of guitar sound and an elusive vocal presence. Its position creates a circular impression, although not quite the comforting symmetry of a journey completed. It is more like finding oneself back at a familiar location and discovering that the place has changed, or that one's memory of it was never entirely accurate.

The album's title comes from Farrah Abraham's "My Teenage Dream Ended", a record whose strange collision of celebrity confession, synthetic pop and emotional dislocation makes it an unexpectedly fitting reference point. It also introduces a wry little contradiction: Silva may claim that there is only so much he can put into a song, but the nine pieces here suggest that the limitations of the form are precisely what make it interesting. A song cannot preserve an entire adolescence, reconstruct every first encounter with music or settle the complicated business of becoming an adult. It can, however, hold a few distorted impressions, a half-remembered melody, a particular shade of melancholy or the sensation of hearing something that seems to belong simultaneously to yesterday and tomorrow.

That is where "I Can Only Put So Much Into a Song" finds its emotional weight. Its nostalgia is not particularly sentimental, and it avoids the familiar trap of treating youth as an irretrievable paradise populated exclusively by excellent records and questionable haircuts. The past is present here as a collection of imperfect impressions, some warm, others abrasive, all subject to the distortions of time. Silva's achievement is to make those impressions audible without turning them into a museum display. The music remains open-ended, occasionally opaque and quietly restless, allowing its influences to dissolve into a personal language rather than arranging them behind glass.

There is something touching about an album that accepts the inadequacy of songs while continuing to make them. Perhaps that is the whole point: music cannot contain everything, but it can preserve the outline of something that would otherwise disappear. And sometimes an outline, especially one drawn with this much distortion, says considerably more than a complete picture.

There is a particular kind of freedom that comes with getting older: the gradual realisation that one no longer has to impress anybody, follow the latest musical fashion or pretend that every disappointment was secretly a valuable learning experience. Russ Tolman's "Stray" operates from something close to this position. Its ten songs move through country, folk, rock, soul and Americana with the unhurried confidence of a songwriter who has spent decades learning what to keep and what to discard. There are no elaborate gestures towards reinvention, no desperate attempts to sound younger, and mercifully few signs of an artist checking the charts before deciding which guitar to pick up. Instead, Tolman offers a collection of compact, carefully arranged songs populated by imperfect characters, unresolved relationships and the occasional glimmer of hard-earned optimism. The album's title might suggest someone who has lost their way, but these songs sound more like the work of someone who has finally stopped asking for directions.

Tolman's musical history stretches back to the late seventies, when he formed Suspects with Steve Wynn and Kendra Smith, before founding True West in 1980. The latter became associated with the Paisley Underground, the loose Los Angeles scene that brought together psychedelic guitar music, jangling melodies and a healthy disregard for the boundaries between garage rock, folk and country. True West developed a darker, more hypnotic approach than some of their contemporaries, releasing two albums and touring extensively, including a stint opening for R.E.M. during the "Fables of the Reconstruction" tour. Tolman left the band in 1985 to pursue a solo career, beginning with "Totem Poles and Glory Holes" (1986). Subsequent records such as "Down In Earthquake Town", "Goodbye Joe", "Road Movie" and "Sweet Spot" established him as a songwriter with a strong attachment to American roots traditions, though his work has never been especially interested in observing genre boundaries. Alongside recording, he has also been involved in label management and reissue production, a career trajectory suggesting that he has spent as much time preserving musical history as adding to it.

Seven years have passed since "Goodbye El Dorado", and "Stray" finds Tolman working with a small group of musicians whose contributions are fundamental to its character. Tom Heyman, known for his work with Chuck Prophet, Hiss Golden Messenger and Alejandro Escovedo, supplies guitar and pedal steel, bringing just the right amount of melodic ache to the arrangements. Mike Coykendall, whose credits include M. Ward and She & Him, handles drums and backing vocals, while San Francisco musician Rusty Miller contributes bass, piano and harmonies. Tolman has surrounded himself with players who understand the value of restraint. Their performances are lively without being showy, and the arrangements leave enough room for the songs to breathe. Nobody seems particularly interested in demonstrating how many instruments they can play before the next chorus arrives.

"Streets Of Denim", co-written with longtime associate Steve Wynn, is an effective opening statement. Its concise arrangement combines a country-rock foundation with a melodic immediacy that recalls the more accessible side of the Paisley Underground, while the guitar work adds a slightly weathered edge. There is a sense of looking back without becoming trapped in the exercise. The song's subject matter, concerned with memory and the uncertain significance of past encounters, fits Tolman's recurring interest in the way ordinary moments acquire emotional weight over time. It is a strong introduction to the album, and its brevity is part of its appeal: the song makes its point and leaves before anybody can start explaining what it all means.

"My Way Back" shifts towards soul, with a melodic sensibility that nods to Smokey Robinson and the Detroit tradition. The song's determination to recover lost emotional ground is familiar territory, but Tolman avoids turning it into a grand declaration of romantic desperation. There is something appealingly modest about its persistence, as if the narrator has accepted that reconciliation may require more patience than a dramatic gesture. The rhythm section keeps things moving, while the backing vocals lend the chorus a warmth that never becomes sugary. "Make It Fine" continues in a more reflective vein, its gentle country-rock arrangement allowing Tolman's vocal delivery to carry the emotional burden. His voice is not conventionally polished, and that is precisely why it works. It has the grain of someone who has accumulated a few stories and no longer feels obliged to make every one of them sound heroic.

"It's Because" introduces a little more guitar-driven energy, with Heyman's playing giving the song a welcome bite. The album's balance between roots music and rock becomes particularly effective here: the arrangement has enough momentum to avoid becoming overly contemplative, while the songwriting retains its preference for ambiguity over easy resolution. "Why Do We Fight" is one of the two outside compositions, written by k.d. lang and Laura Veirs for their 2016 collaboration with Neko Case, "case/lang/veirs". Tolman approaches it with an understated sense of gravity, allowing the song's questioning character to emerge without adding unnecessary drama. Its presence also broadens the album's emotional vocabulary, introducing a perspective that sits comfortably alongside Tolman's own writing.

The other cover, Arthur Alexander's "If It's Really Got To Be This Way", draws on a deeper strand of American soul and country songwriting. Alexander's compositions have often been interpreted by artists from very different musical backgrounds, and this particular choice suits Tolman's affection for songs in which heartbreak and resignation are inseparable. The performance avoids the temptation to imitate the original's historical setting. Instead, it becomes part of the album's own musical world, with the pedal steel and restrained rhythm section giving it a gently bruised character. It is a reminder that a good song does not require constant updating. Sometimes it simply needs another voice that understands what it is carrying.

The title track "Stray" is among the album's more introspective moments. Its position gives the record a centre of gravity, bringing together the themes of displacement, independence and emotional uncertainty that recur throughout the collection. Tolman's writing is at its best when it allows contradictions to remain unresolved. The characters in these songs are neither tragic heroes nor uncomplicated survivors; they are people who have made decisions, lived with the consequences and occasionally discovered that the alternative might not have been any better. "Our Love" moves into a softer, more affectionate register, while "Back To Yesterday" revisits the familiar pull of nostalgia. Yet the latter is not simply an invitation to romanticise the past. Tolman seems aware that memory has a habit of improving the lighting and quietly removing the less attractive furniture.

Closing with "Hello Rising Sun", the album leaves behind a relatively optimistic impression. Its title might suggest a conventional gesture towards renewal, but the song's understated character avoids any suggestion that the world has suddenly become a more cooperative place. The sun rises regardless of our personal circumstances, which is perhaps one of its more dependable qualities. The arrangement is warm and melodic, bringing the record to a close without manufacturing a grand finale. After thirty minutes spent among old attachments, second thoughts and uncertain destinations, a little daylight is welcome.

What makes "Stray" satisfying is its refusal to treat experience as something that must be converted into wisdom. Tolman's songs contain regret, affection, humour and resignation, but they rarely turn these emotions into slogans. The musical arrangements are equally economical. Heyman's pedal steel adds atmosphere without drowning the songs in country sentimentality; Coykendall's drumming provides movement without imposing unnecessary weight; Miller's piano and bass give the performances a comfortable sense of cohesion. The production allows the instruments to retain their character, favouring the intimacy of a well-rehearsed group over the immaculate surfaces of contemporary studio pop.

There is, admittedly, little here that will surprise listeners familiar with Tolman's previous work or the broader traditions from which he draws. The album's strengths lie elsewhere: in the quality of its melodies, the intelligence of its arrangements and the consistency of its songwriting. Its ten tracks last barely half an hour, but that compactness feels deliberate. Tolman has no interest in stretching a good idea until it becomes a lifestyle choice. "Stray" is a record made by someone who knows that a song can be complete without being definitive, and that growing older does not necessarily mean becoming more certain. Sometimes it simply means getting better at recognising which roads are worth taking, which people are worth keeping around and which arguments are best abandoned before the second verse. A little country twang helps, naturally.

There is something reassuringly unreasonable about Earth Logoff. While much contemporary electronic music seems intent on polishing every transient until it could be used as a dental instrument, the Berlin duo prefer to make their machines sound as though they have developed several incompatible personalities and are refusing medication. "Torments & Temptations", their third release, expands the project's peculiar mixture of industrial abrasion, speedcore impulses, mutant techno and noisecore with an unexpectedly broad assortment of samples, from brass-band eruptions to brittle 8-bit fragments. The result is a kind of mechanical carnival in which the attractions are operated by faulty wiring and the amusement-park staff appear to have joined a militant percussion ensemble. It is unruly, frequently funny and considerably more disciplined than its surface behaviour might suggest.

Earth Logoff is the project of RBRT and Sanaa, both formerly involved with the Berlin noise-rock group Antihairball. Their musical vocabulary has moved a considerable distance from conventional band arrangements. RBRT works with a self-programmed controller, sampling and electronic devices, while Sanaa supplies the physical force of analogue drums. The duo describe their music as a form of apocalyptic dance music, which is a reasonably accurate description provided one imagines the apocalypse taking place in a basement club where the sound system has been assembled from industrial scrap. Their previous releases, "Fungym" (2019) and "Tritium" (2022), established an interest in strange rhythmic structures, abrasive electronics and an almost cartoonish approach to sonic destruction. The present album develops those elements while introducing Sanaa's voice more prominently, adding a human presence to music that often seems to be arguing with its own circuitry.

The opening "dronose" sets the tone through a collision of electronic disturbance and rhythmic insistence. There is little interest in establishing a stable groove and then politely maintaining it for the benefit of dancers who have paid good money for predictable entertainment. Instead, the beat behaves like a machine with a loose connection: it catches, accelerates, stumbles and resumes with an almost irritating determination. The industrial components are rough-edged, but the arrangement has an eccentric sense of proportion, allowing abrupt changes and unexpected details to interrupt the forward motion. The track's short duration is important. Earth Logoff understand that chaos becomes less effective when it is allowed to explain itself for too long.

"Eilat" and "farad" continue this unstable relationship between rhythm and abrasion. The former suggests a peculiar kind of dance-floor functionality, with electronic patterns and percussive elements pushing against one another rather than settling into a conventional hierarchy. "farad" takes the electricity metaphor rather literally, with a title borrowed from the unit of electrical capacitance. One can imagine the duo enjoying the thought of a musical system that stores energy only to discharge it at inconvenient moments. Their arrangements frequently create the impression of several musical ideas attempting to occupy the same space, with no clear agreement about who has priority. Yet there is an underlying precision to the construction. The drums may sound unruly, but Sanaa's playing is remarkably controlled, negotiating abrupt changes and irregular time signatures without sacrificing the physical impact.

"labiacs" brings Sanaa's voice into the picture, and the effect is particularly revealing. The vocal presence does not soften the music or provide the reassuring melodic centre that a more conventional producer might have introduced. Instead, it adds another layer of human unpredictability to an already unstable environment. The voice can sound confrontational, playful or deliberately absurd, while the instrumental backing continues its electronic misbehaviour. The contrast is central to the album's appeal: the machinery seems to be malfunctioning, but the people operating it are clearly having a rather good time. There is even a distinctly impudent sense of humour in the way the track treats the conventions of industrial music, refusing to take its own aggression entirely seriously.

"boredub", the fifth track, offers a title that hints at dub's spaciousness while suggesting that the musicians may have become impatient with the genre's more meditative habits. Earth Logoff are not particularly interested in giving the listener time to contemplate the spiritual significance of a delayed snare. Their use of repetition is more abrasive, with rhythmic elements and electronic fragments producing a kind of distorted dance music that keeps changing its mind about what it wants to be. The track provides a useful transition into the second half, where the album becomes even more unpredictable.

"shove it" makes its intentions fairly clear without requiring an elaborate programme note. The title is an appropriately blunt gesture, and the music follows suit, combining forceful percussion with the duo's familiar taste for sudden changes in texture. "ugli igli" is another highlight, its deliberately awkward title matching the music's appetite for odd rhythmic turns and distorted electronic colours. The brass-like blasts and crude digital sounds contribute to the impression of a musical environment assembled from incompatible parts. Yet these elements are not simply thrown together for the sake of novelty. Their placement creates a peculiar sense of momentum, as though the music were constantly discovering new ways to trip over itself while somehow managing to keep moving.

The final stretch, represented by "strumpf" and "umpf" in the supplied tracklist, maintains the album's refusal to settle into a single mood. The rhythmic structures remain forceful, but their relationship with noise and electronic detail keeps shifting. There is something almost physical about the way the percussion occupies the foreground, while RBRT's electronics continually distort the surrounding space. The resulting music is danceable in the same way that navigating a badly maintained staircase can be an exercise in athletic coordination: possible, certainly, but not recommended without a little preparation. The duo's sense of humour is particularly effective here because it never neutralises the music's intensity. The absurdity and the aggression coexist, each making the other more convincing.

What makes "Torments & Temptations" interesting is the way it balances programmed control with the unpredictability of live performance. RBRT's self-built electronic system provides a broad range of sounds, from abrasive industrial textures to almost toy-like digital patterns, while Sanaa's drumming gives the music a muscular, physical dimension. Her vocal contributions further complicate the picture, preventing the project from becoming a purely mechanical exercise. The duo's history in noise rock is still audible in their disregard for conventional musical polish, but their present approach is more rhythmically adventurous and less dependent on the familiar dynamics of a guitar-based band. The result occupies an eccentric territory between industrial, techno, noisecore and a particularly deranged form of experimental pop.

Kitchen Leg Records is a fitting home for this sort of activity. The Berlin-based cassette label has developed a catalogue that favours independent, idiosyncratic music, often with a strong affinity for no wave, experimental rock, noise and eccentric pop. Its releases tend to value personality over stylistic respectability, and Earth Logoff fit that ethos rather neatly. The cassette format also suits the project's deliberately rough character: there is something appropriate about hearing such an unruly collection of sounds through a medium that has its own history of mechanical imperfections and occasional acts of betrayal.

For all its abrasive tendencies, "Torments & Temptations" is not simply an exercise in sonic punishment. Its most appealing quality is the sense of play that runs through the music. Earth Logoff understand that industrial noise does not have to spend every minute impersonating the soundtrack to a collapsing factory. It can be grotesque, rhythmic, absurd and even mischievously entertaining. Their music may depict a world in which technology has gone rogue, but the humans remain firmly in charge of the entertainment budget. In an age when digital systems increasingly promise to make everything seamless, efficient and frictionless, there is something oddly liberating about a record that celebrates malfunction as a creative resource. "Torments & Temptations" makes a persuasive case for the dance floor as a place where disorder can be organised, briefly, into something resembling joy. The building may be on fire, but at least the drums are still working.

German band Felsenreich has been around since 1998, but unless you're from Europe or the U.K., chances are good that you never heard of them. They've released a bunch of albums since their inception and have played many gigs and festivals including Wave-Gotik-Treffen. While 'Motif und Tempo' is their sixth studio album, it certainly does not tell the whole story of Felsenreich. Their first couple of albums - 'Am Ende Der Zeit' (2001) and 'Tiefe' (2004) were reviewed here at Chain D.L.K., the latter positively, the former- not so much. Since I'm among those that have no prior familiarity with Felsenreich, I felt obliged to listen to those albums, plus some of their later work preceding 'Motif und Tempo.' The conclusion I came to is that Felsenreich was definitely an interesting gothic/darkwave band. (I emphasize the word "was.") I can't say that I loved every track on each album I heard but some of their work was absolutely excellent. Their change of style on 'Motif und Tempo' sends the band in a middle-of-the-road direction that I don't think is doing them any favors...at least not here in the U.S.

Felsenreich's sound used to be grand and dramatic. When female vocalist Romy Unger joined the band in 2006 (or 2007?) she enriched their sound for a good long period. She has a voice that leans classical/operatic, perfect for goth/darkwave. She left the band in 2021 or so, and I believe Felsenreich lost something in her departure. Even their more neofolk acoustic album, ‘Blumen' (2017) was richer for her participation. With Romy gone, that leaves the trio of Mathias Sohn ((keyboards, vocals, trumpet); Carsten Schaller (guitar, vocals) and Renato Wesley (vocal, acoustic guitar) to carry on. 'Motif und Tempo' is an album of ten tracks, eight sung in English and two in German. The opener, "Night Bound Train" sounds like it could have been done by any Euro synth-pop/alternative rock band. There is a barely audible female vocalist (Nathalie) singing on it in unison with Mathias or Renato (I have a hard time telling them apart) but she has nowhere near the presence Romy had. "I Will Tell You" is a bit more electro filled with melodic nostalgia but not dark in the least. "This Feeling" is another attempt to recapture the nostalgia of the past, beginning with the lyrics: "Do you remember the clubs? And the music? The spirit! The smell!! The feel. On the way..." This isn’t goth or darkwave. This is just alternative rock. It comes across somewhat like low-rent Bowie. (Nathalie's voice may be sort of buried in the mix.) I think the best thing about this track is Mathias's trumpet. Slowing things down with "The Fall," the song is melancholic and competent, but still not very dark. The first hint of gothiness comes in the up-tempo "Glorious Solution," reminiscent of Sisters of Mercy, but the song begs for a strong hook that never materializes. The first track in German, "Ein Hauch" follows with a sequenced synth rhythm and this one is pretty darn strong. (Dark music always seems to sound better in Deutsche.) "Island of Glory" proves that the drama isn't gone from Felsenreich with its martial theme, although I'm not sure what 'Island of Glory' they're talking about as the lyrics are more generic than specific. "Purpose of Roses" begins with a recitation before the sung lyrics, then moves back to recitation. This is another personally nostalgic number that likely only the band will truly understand. Another somewhat ordinary rock song, "I Get By" yawns by before the finale - "Uber uns der Himmel." It's somewhat dark and melancholic, but not a particularly strong ending.

There's no doubt these guys still have talent, but this mellowing out won't do them any favors over here, despite the album spending a fair amount of time in the top ten in the Deutsche Alternative Charts. When American audiences are looking for new dark music acts to follow, they want GOTH and DARKWAVE, not alternative rock bands that used to be that. The fact that they have a weak Spotify presence (70 monthly listeners), no Bandcamp site, and somewhat minimal YouTube presence isn't helping them. Being that they're on a pretty well-known dark music label, Danse Macabre, one would expect more.