In The Headphones: Agriculture, Water Damage
Agriculture
The Spiritual Sound
The Flenser
Releases: 10/3/25
There is no Zen here.
“Bodhidharma” is the lead single from the upcoming new album from Agriculture, The Spiritual Sound, scheduled to release 10/3 via The Flenser. Arguably in line with the quiet nature of the meditation and mindfulness which sits at the core of Zen Buddhism, “Bodhidharma,” named for the founder of this spiritual practice, initially uses the absence of sound as an unsettling feature. A thematic series of aggressive and layered melodic lines introduces the track and then abruptly stops, leaving only single snare and kick beats to disrupt the silence along with one agonizing shriek:
“You look like… you’re dying!”
From there, barely audible whimpers carry out the stanzas until the next instrumental break, the track’s structural adherence retained throughout its runtime, albeit with slight textural add ons and percussive variation. For its late bridge, a cathartic guitar solo is worked in, some rampant fret work pushing through the third act.
Not for spiritual renewal.
Via Rarely Unable:
“Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, was an Indian monk who famously stared at the wall of a cave for nine years. He even cut off his eyelids in order to prevent himself from falling asleep. At one time, another monk approached him in his cave and pleaded ‘master, my head is on fire with anxiety, can you pacify my mind?’ Bodhidharma just kept staring at the wall and Huike waited outside of the cave all night until he was buried in snow up to his waist. Finally, as a gesture of desperation he cut off his arm and offered it to the great master. Huike later became Bodhidharma’s successor."
- Dan Meyer
Links:
Agriculture — Official / Bandcamp / Instagram
The Flenser — Official / Bandcamp / Instagram
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of Rarely Unable:
Across its runtime, The Spiritual Sound traces a narrative arc through extremes: searing, sky-cracking catharsis on side A; a slow-burning, devotional undercurrent on side B. The album is largely a fusing of the visions of its two principal songwriters, Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson: distinct voices, deeply complementary.
Dan writes like someone clawing toward the divine through noise, channeling Zen Buddhism, historical collapse, ecstatic grief. Leah’s songs move differently: grounded in queer history and AIDS-era literature, amid the suffocating fog of the present, they carry the weight of survival as daily ritual. Her writing asks how to honor queer community and collective struggle without turning it into identity branding or personal mythmaking—how to stay honest, how to stay present. Though distinct, their voices converge in a singular spiritual grammar—one that defines the totality of The Spiritual Sound, not as separate parts, but as one unified expression.
Agriculture’s formation mirrors this duality. Whspirat began as a loose collaboration between Kern Haug and Dan Meyer in the Los Angeles noise scene evolved into a shared pursuit of the sublime through heavy music. With the additions of Richard Chowenhill and Leah Levinson, the project solidified into the band’s current form. The ecstatic black metal foundation was laid on 2022’s The Circle Chant, expanded into something more precise and far-reaching on their 2023 self-titled full-length, and deepened further with 2024’s Living Is Easy: a record that embraced devotional intensity and radiant heaviness in equal measure.
Agriculture’s writing process is built on dismantling and revision of self. Dan and Leah bring songs to the band and then allow them to be pulled apart and rebuilt communally: reshaped through conflict, repetition, and deep trust. Richard adds guitar melodies and solos, and Kern constructs rhythms which are sometimes familiar but often unconventional. Finally, with Richard producing, the final form of each song is realized through intense collaborative work in the studio. Although a time consuming and ego-frustrating process, this allows the band to find the spirit of the songs not through inspiration, but through persistence.
Yet, even in its most ambitious moments, The Spiritual Sound remains rooted in the ordinary and in the day-to-day relationships between the people who made it. Gas station snacks. Inside jokes. Sleeping on floors. Playing shows in rooms that smell like mildew. The spirit here isn’t abstract, it’s live. This is spiritual music that starts with imperfect gear and a long-in-the-tooth tour van.
Agriculture doesn’t offer salvation. The Spiritual Sound isn’t a map out of the fire. What it offers instead is presence: a confrontation with the moment, however unbearable, however divine. It insists that meaning is still possible, even in a world hell-bent on reducing everything to content, and where suffering itself can be conducive to recovery. As the Buddhist saying goes “the only way out is in.”
When the founder of Chinese Zen, Bodhidharma, was asked by the emperor of China “What is the true meaning of the holy truth?” He replied, “Vast emptiness. Nothing holy.” This is not background music. This is not for vibe. The Spiritual Sound is music that asks.
Water Damage
Instruments
12XU
Released: 5/16/25
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Live At Le Guess Who?
12XU
Released: 9/5/25
A 10-member group with miles to go, the Austin-based Water Damage is the work of musicians Mari Maurice, Thor Harris, Jonathan Horne, Nate Cross, Danielle Hills, George Dishner, Travis Austin, Mike Kanin, Greg Piwonka, and Jeff Piwonka.
For Instruments, released on 5/16/25 via Gerard Cosloy’s 12XU label, Water Damage jams out on the motorik thing, generating a weather-worn and acid-tested combination of Neu!’s persistence, Earth’s vastness (no pun intended), and Sunburned Hand Of The Man’s heavy ensemble and enlightened improvisation. The band’s extensive trips, or “Reels” as they’re titled, sound led-footed and dusty, albeit hypnotic and meditative. And for as immersive as these discorporated travelogues can be, there’s something grounded about them. “Real 28,” for instance, carries itself with a world-weary march, eyes set on an elusive horizon line.
Space is not the place, but this place is spacious.
“Real 25” has more of a dissonant edge, bows rubbing against acoustic strings and producing a series of slurred phrases that fall beneath a two-blow snare cycle and a high-pitched mew. Some of that tension is carried into “Real 32,” a scratchy whine and fuzz-laced guitar notes (courtesy of Gastr del Sol’s David Grubbs) anchored by its locked-in percussion.
“Reel 27: India (Slight Return)” is a rendition of a song by Swedish psychedelic band Pärson Sound, well-adapted to fit the tone, texture, and tempo set in place by the album’s intro.
For Water Damage’s upcoming live recording, Live At Le Guess Who?, a modified line-up (featuring guests Ajay Saggar and Patrick Shirioishi) performed an expanded version of “Real 28” for an audience in Utrecht, Netherlands as part of the Le Guess Who? festival. Clocking in at over forty minutes, the perpetual motion and incremental heightening of both the instrumental layering and ad-libbed intensity of “Real 28” is cranked up quite a bit, wildly bowed strokes and restless brass fingerings attempting to bury the track’s thematic melody under layers of arguing sonic discord. It’s a rush that’ll test one’s threshold for patience as well as the potential to become overwhelmed.
Links:
Water Damage — Official / Bandcamp / Instagram
12XU — Official / Bandcamp / Instagram
Links, knowledge, and sounds were handed over courtesy of 12XU:
Water Damage don’t play songs. They invoke states. It’s not rock and roll, it’s ritual repetition therapy, like if Glenn Branca got stuck in a feedback loop with La Monte Young and they both forgot what year it was—Texas 2025 or Berlin 1972 or maybe just eternity’s parking lot. This isn’t music for driving—unless you’re driving into the sun with your eyes rolled back and the gas pedal held down with a cinderblock of intent.
Captured in Utrecht, Netherlands at the almighty Le Guess Who? Festival, where churches tremble and strobes reflect off every holy surface, Live at Le Guess Who? is a document of sustained sonic immolation. Eight members. Two drummers. Multiple stringed instruments. One saxophone. All hammering away at "Reel 25," captured live here shortly after the recorded version which would end up becoming the lead track on their most recent double LP Instruments. A single idea drilling into the molten center of your skull with the grace of a jackhammer ballet. It’s not a show. It’s a slow-motion landslide with amps.
And for this particular descent into the drone abyss, Water Damage were joined by two very special fellow travelers & honorary members: Ajay Saggar (Bhajan Bhoy, University Challenged) adding six-string sorcery and smolder, and Patrick Shiroishi, the free-reed exorcist himself who is a guest on Instruments and just happened to be at Le Guess Who? as well, channeling ghosts through saxophones like he’s trying to crack the sky. As if Water Damage weren’t already enough of a wall, these two brought the ceiling and the floor.
Water Damage, the Austin psych-drone monolith with the un-Googleable name and the wall-of-amplifiers ethos, doesn’t just flirt with chaos—they drag it behind the van and mic up the gravel. Their motto? “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation.” Which sounds like the world’s most menacing yoga class or a commandment from some amp-fried cult, and maybe it is.
This ain’t no avant-noise chin-stroke either. It’s hot and dense and loud like a steel mill hallucination, and if you find yourself dissociating mid-set, that just means it’s working. This is music that doesn’t “build”—it grinds. It gnaws. And then it blooms. If you're lucky, it leaves you somewhere softer.
Le Guess Who? handed them the altar. Water Damage, Saggar, and Shiroishi set it on fire.
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
