In The Headphones: loscil, Coffin Prick, Grails, Kilynn Lunsford
loscil
Lake Fire
kranky
Released: 5/2/25
Scorched Earth and settling ash, electronic sound artist loscil (Scott Morgan) took a road trip into the mountains of British Columbia, celebrating another journey around the sun amidst a haze of gray smoke rising from the flames of a not-so-distant fire. The image used as cover art for Lake Fire, the latest loscil project, was taken by Morgan during this excursion from the seat of a rowboat.
Meditating on the natural rhythm, or the pulse, of life into death, Lake Fire, through the inorganic medium of circuit-bred composition, was itself built from retooled material that had, at some point, been left neglected. As if to liken forsaken work to decimated landscapes, there is a desire for renewal.
Opening with the slight anxiety of Lake Fire’s first track, “Arrhythmia,” many of the tracks have an undulating and cyclical throb, tonal loops that at times, as with “Arrhythmia” and, to some extent, “Silos,” instill some level of unease. With “Bell Flame,” however, the instrumental’s lurking urgency is somewhat quelled by the gorgeous and flowing tonal layers that overtake the composition. “Candling” is a slow, melancholic seesaw of oscillating sounds; the intervention of delicate keystrokes can barely be heard over the din for most of the track’s runtime.
Also highlighted are the aforementioned “Silos,” the patient tempo and deep expanse of “Spark,” and the airy and gorgeous restlessness of “Flutter.”
Coffin Prick
Loose Enchantment
Temporal Drift
Released: 5/16/25
Coffin Prick, the sobriquet of multi-instrumentalist Ryan Weinstein, caught my attention with his album, Loose Enchantment, its odd, albeit entrancing, assortment of peculiar pop flavors exhibiting many of the same synth-led eccentricities that informed the Dolby / Numan lesson plan (“Shortly Forgotten Pleasure”). Add an asterisk and accompanying footnote or two for some added Eno-glean via David Bowie’s Low (“Loose Enchantment”) and even credit Frank Zappa’s Jazz From Hell as possibly enlightening (“Exile In Exile”). And while Coffin Prick mostly draws from the post-punk / new wave idiom, Loose Enchantment is varied and immediately appealing, the electronic oddities coexisting with the mutant funk of “Spy Vs. Spy” and the hypnotic resignation of “Work.”
Grails
Miracle Music
Temporary
Residence Ltd.
Released: 5/16/25
Like any Grails release, headphones are required.
Miracle Music is the band’s latest album, a continuance of their signature penchant for crafting unearthly shapes and arrangements, which are worked in alongside dusty post-rock (“Earthly Life”), some glitchy and pulsing electronics (“Silver Bells”) and resonant acoustic elements (“Harmonious Living”). As if taking a pointer or two from David Axelrod (“Strange Paradise”) and maybe even Autechre (“Homemade Crucifix”), Grails traverse their psychedelic plain a tad, keeping the ideas fresh following the band’s 7-year hiatus, which was thankfully halted by 2023’s Anches En Maat.
Kilynn Lunsford
Promiscuous Genes
Feel It Records
Released: 5/16/25
Promiscuous Genes is the latest solo album from Kilynn Lunsford (Taiwan Housing Project, Little Claw), a warped pop oddity fused with iconoclasm, crude electronics, and free-range experimentalism. A follow up to her equally cool and twisted 2022 solo debut, Custodians Of Human Succession, Promiscuous Genes is a full-body embrace of No New York and Vinegar Syndrome, equal parts Lydia Lunch and Daniel Johnston along with Roger Corman and Richard Kern informing instances of circuit-propelled minimalism (“Nice Quiet Horror Show”), noisier uptempo rawk (“Gates Of Hell”), and the delightful corruption of long-venerated material (probably the most fucked-with version of a Beatles song I’ve heard with Lunsford’s rendition of “You Never Give Me Your Money”).
The aberrant nature of Lunsford’s POV is the album’s common thread, a disposition and knack for arresting word choice conveyed via “Lillibilly”’s jovial hootenanny-level whimsy, the drooling, inebriated and bass-entangled sway of the album’s title track, or via the multi-tracked, beat-propelled spoken word of “Some Mothers Do.”
And, the covers: Aside from the aforementioned Beatles deep cut, Lunsford removed the otherwise sentimental tone of The Beach Boys’ “Disney Girls,” kicked up the tempo, added some funk and whistle embellishments, and blessed her voice with ethereal reverb. Lunsford’s take on “Disney Girls” might be the most accessible song on the album, (although the Juliana Hatfield-level sweetness of the “Saddest Of Dreams” probably takes that crown). Sharpening knives over an unsettling loop of heavily pitched voices, Lunsford reinterpreted Syd Barrett’s “Maisie” as hyper-stylized and unsettling dance music.
With Promiscuous Genes, Lunsford tries a lot here: an evident proclivity for genre-bending force-fed through houses both art and grind respectively and respectfully. And, it all sticks.
Sincerely,
Letters From A Tapehead
