During April 2020 the whole world stayed in lockdown, but fortunately good music kept coming. Volume 23 of Stream And Destroy compiles a few of those tracks we didn't cover canonically, ranging from darkwave to psychedelic folk.
Iceage returned with a spontaneous single touching on the COVID-19 subject, doing their part in raising spirits amidst the crisis, while another Danish band, The Love Coffin, released their peculiar and very promising second album, Second Skin, on which they lay out a series of different eccentricities through a wide range of sounds and styles.
Window, the darkwave/industrial/EBM project by Dylan Travis (Some Ember) and Reuben Sawyer (The Column, Anytime Cowboy), came through with a great new EP with an experimental direction and a lot of intensity that further justifies them as one of the genre's finest cult acts. Similarly dark and goth, the great Clan Of Xymox keep being busy and follow their recent EP, She, with another one composed of new track, Lovers, and a set of collaborative remixes.
North Carolina dreampop band, Winfield, return with a new self-tiled EP which comes two years after their debut, GIANT, and explores the sulkier aspect of their songwriting. The always moody and emotive The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die gallantly chose to cover a 1994 song by Sunny Day Real Estate, and they delivered. Berlin noise rockers, HEADS., also came through, after signing to the highly respectable Glitterhouse Records, and unveiled the first single off their anticipated third album.
Richmond, VA band, Grem Smiley, have just released their noisy rock 'n' roll album, Canvas, drawing from garage rock, punk, stoner rock and psychedelia to amount to something quite fierce and venerable. Philadelphia's fresh psychedelic rockers, Magic Cobra, emerge forcefully with a series of early singles mastered by super-producer, Kramer, and bring their occult themes and strong psychedelic sound into something brilliant, accurately self-described as 'witchedelic rock'.
New Zealand's rising power pop band, The Beths, prepare for the release of their coming album, and introduce it with the incredibly memorable and appealing first single, Dying To Believe.
Newly signed to Secretly Canadian, Helen Ballentine's Skullcrusher breaks out with the very delicate first single, Places / Plans, harbinger of the artist's forthcoming debut self-titled EP.
The sudden passing of Psychic Ills vocalist, Tres Warren, was followed by a parting gift, a two song release of covers of tracks originally by The Beach Boys and Charles Manson, expressing the artist's interest in those acts' uncanny connection, and the story which comes with Cease to Exist and Never Learn Not to Love, and how they are essential the same song.
01. Iceage - Lockdown Blues
02. The Love Coffin - Seasick
03. Window - Desert
04. Clan of Xymox - Lovers
05. Winfield - Contusion
06. The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die - In Circles
07. Heads. - Push You out to Sea
08. Grem Smiley - Void
09. Magic Cobra - Skin Suit
10. The Beths - Dying to Believe
11. Skullcrusher - Places / Plans
12. Psychic Ills - Cease to Exist
ZR