<p><span><span>- For a band always on the watch for shorts at gigs, Regular Gonzales<strong> </strong>don’t seem particularly keen on small things. The sheer weight of their music has you scratching your head as to how a three piece can combine to birth such a bulky, beautiful, behemoth. Maybe that point is akin to a Zen Koan and the more you dwell on it, the less you can enjoy what’s around you. What’s around you when you’re listening to <em>Biege Alert </em>is an abundance of bouncy grooves displayed with self-assured gravity.

<p><span><span>- E4’s intricate songwriting is apparent right from the first few tracks of his new record, <em>Autumnal Eve</em>. <em>Lightning Bolt</em>, a meditative slow burn, opens quietly, with a rustic, folky sensibility, before larger instrumentation swells from the song’s emotional core. Though the song grows in complexity, it never feels overburdened. <em>Blank Blue May</em> captures this transition in scope.

<p><span><span>- There’s a red moon rising. In fact it’s been shedding a baleful glare across us for a while, since as far back as 2016, when Converge &amp; Chelsea Wolfe, performing under the moniker Bloodmoon, first had a go at performing some revamped Converge material for the <strong>Roadburn</strong> festival over in the Netherlands. It was a meeting very well received by the assembled hordes of heavy music aficionados and so, everyone involved decided to take it further.

<p><span><span>- Perhaps in response to impatient fans, songwriter extraordinaire Courtney Barnett has titled her third and latest album, <em>Things Take Time, Take Time</em>. However, even with the extra time afforded by lockdowns, or perhaps because of its straitened circumstances, the songs are minimalistic and seem as if they spent little time in gestation. Rising to prominence on the back of a style both verbose and aggressive, the new album is a significant shift.

<p><span><span>- The fecund beginnings have yielded new shoots and what they have produced is glorious. Snail Mail<strong> </strong>are well on their way to being to conduit for modern romantics, both the lovers kind and that art movement from back in day. Songs steeped in cathartic-relationship-confessionals spark bonding chemicals in your brain. Outside the omnipresent emotional weight, tell me the aesthetic of the record doesn’t reek of romanticism?

<p><span><span>- To listen to My Disco’s new album -ever more full of ominous soundscapes, industrial machinery and crashing metal- feels pandemic appropriate. If thy flesh is diseased, cut it out! Gone are the organic, muscular guitars that these formerly <strong>Big Black</strong>-worshipping postpunks employed to crank up the sweaty tension.

<p><span><span><span>- Arca’s </span><em>Kick </em><span>series began in early 2020, when the release of her single </span><em>Nonbinary</em><span> set the tone for this era, what would be the most complex and lengthy of her oeuvre so far. </span><em>KiCk i</em><span> acts as a taster, an insight into the various phases and soundscapes Arca explores through the project.