August 2021: The Alternative Music Playlist

Hawks

Tunnels

Moving Objects

Alive

Heart-Shaped Scars

The Haunted (feat. Amy Bowman)

Garden of Burning Apparitions

Industrial Messiah Complex

Cough Up Cherries

Rabbit

Psyche Hospital Blues

Throw It All Away

Una Rosa

Sacude

Restore Us

Church Girls - Separated

Purchase from Bandcamp: https://desertliminal.bandcamp.com/album/glass-fate

“I don’t need no southbound highway sign to tell me HELL IS REAL”.

This opening line from the debut single “New Tongue” launches us into the sophomore album Glass Fate by the Chicago based Desert Liminal. Glass Fate takes us through a Lost Highway trip into the subconscious of Sarah Jane Quillin’s year while writing this record. The songs form a collective meditation on Quillin’s hope and grief while processing the loss of a parent, the end of a beloved band Heavy Dreams (a collaboration with DEHD’s Emily Kempf), and witnessing the surreal near-death experience of her best friend, Desert Liminal’s drummer Rob Logan, during one of their shows. Channeling this heaviness into soaring and simmering experimental indie rock, Desert Liminal’s sound is marked by Quillin’s spectral vocal melodies layered over warm, looping walls of vintage synthesizer and violin filtered through a distortion pedal array. Rob Logan’s drumming ranges from driving post-punk drum grooves to thoughtful, held back polyrhythms that serve and elevate the record.

Completing this subverted power trio, violinist and prolific noise artist Mallory Linehan (Chelsea Bridge) joined in 2019, perfecting the trio’s sound with spacious strings and tape loops that blend into the warm wash of resonating reverb and delay. A first listen of Glass Fate reveals a band with an astute ear for creating warm, engaging art-pop that entwines Quillin’s eliding delivery around smart hooks and introspective, bordering on melancholy, melodies. The further these songs move from the source they begin slipping into headier terrain creating neck-craning audio fields of droning violins and looped voice that recall Tony Conrad at his most accessible and Haley Fohr’s experimentations with voice and breath. These sounds cohabitate in the liminal space where meaning and reference slowly fade into Jungian archetype and back again through the trio’s strong grasp on solid, reality-affirming songwriting.

Desert Liminal - Watercolor

Cut / Turns Out I’m Sentimental After All

Narrative bleating 
femimarxist porn
aborting life
Before its born
My body my choice
The rally song
Silence the voice
Justifying wrong

Hijacked covenant 
Between god and man
Symbolic sins 
Satans stand
Rainbow clowns
March along
My life my choice
Their twisted song

Silent genocide 
Controlled and clinical 
Silent genocide 
Satanic and cynical 
Silent genocide 
Abide with me
The truth will set you free

femimarxist-porn-(justifying-wrong-alt-mix).mp3

Silver Lake by Esa Holopainen

Ray Of Light (feat. Einar Solberg)

The Alternative Pop Culture Guide 🤘😝🤘
Home of The Scratch Cast Podcast 🎙🤔🎧
Reviews 📄 Playlists 🎵 Podcasts 🎙
Film 🎬 TV 📺 Music 🎶 Games 🎮 Books 📖

Rabbit

Kills Birds

Recent comments

Shyness Boy

Related tracks