Philip Montoro, Reader music editor, is obsessed with . . .
Rorcal, Vilagvege Swiss band Rorcal titled their third full-length with the Hungarian word for the end of the world. Vilagvege combines the frenzied nihilism of black metal, the barely coherent rage of hardcore, and the suffocating density of doom—plus the drummer sounds like he’s playing on garbage trucks with cannonballs. Lung-collapsing screams scour guitars that swing from seesawing dissonance to tooth-grinding drone to what sounds like the wandering melody of an ecclesiastical chant, all of it blackened by heat as it plunges to earth at 40 times the speed of sound.
Katherine Young, composer and bassoonist
Steven Takasugi, “Iridescent Uncertainty” This 11-minute track, which Takasugi recorded, edited, and mixed himself, is intended for headphones, and its meticulous sonic and musical detail gives me goose bumps every time. Every little sound in its abstract acoustic assemblage sparkles with life: the plucked and bent strings, gentle metallic scrapes and whirs, and pattery percussion swirl around between your ears, piling up and crumbling down. If you like sounds for their own sake, you’ll be captivated.
Major Scaled song videos Some brilliant person has taken familiar songs, predominantly in minor keys, and manipulated them with scale-changing and transposing software to turn them into wake-up-on-the-right-side-of-bed major-scale tunes. This social experiment is a sure hazard for creatures of habit. I’m so intrigued by this hopeful phenomenon—if whoever’s responsible for this twist on entertainment could somehow land a record deal, that would make me a happy man. I won’t hold my breath, though.
