Punchlove – 7th Level Music

“Today You Can Learn the Secret” of Punchlove’s new single.

Last March, Brooklyn’s Punchlove released their debut LP Channelson Kanine Records. Composed of multi-instrumentalists Jillian Olesen, Joey Machina, Ian Lange-McPherson, and visual artIst viz_wel, the group’s debut earned praise from outlets like Stereogum, Bandcamp, FLOOD and Paste, who called the album “one of the most compelling shoegaze debuts in recent memory” and included the album on their Best Debut Albums of 2024 list.

The album’s reception has paved the way for a busy start to 2025 for the band, who have already toured across the UK and Europe, and will be heading out in the US later this month. Last month, they also released a new single called “(sublimate)” that teased a promising new direction for the band. The track moved beyond the shoegaze swirl of their debut, introducing layers of glitchy electronics and a heavier sound, a wave of industrial-inflected noise pop that Consequence called “further proof of the Brooklyn-based outfit’s proclivity for tasteful disturbance.“

Today, the band are returning to share another new track, a single called “Today You Can Learn The Secret.”

Where every Punchlove release to date has been self-produced, “Today You Can Learn The Secret” was co-produced with Xav Sinden. As Olesen explains, the track was inspired by an experiment in automatism that led to a revelation about the way her digital life had been impacting her subconciously.

Olesen says of the track:

This release is a surrealist, portal fantasy-inspired encounter with the unconscious mind. This latest song started with just the title itself (“Today You Can Learn the Secret”), and then Ian wrote all the instrumental parts. When it came time to write the lyrics, I had started leaving an open notebook next to my bed each night as a creative exercise in automatism I’d read about somewhere and basically started waking up to find all kinds of scribbles and chicken scratch all over the pages each morning. It was like scary psychological Christmas each morning. At times there was really raw stuff in there. It kinda freaked me out, but it was also exciting and really started to shift my perspective on my own humanity, as well as the world around me. It felt like I had a new window into understanding how certain things were really affecting me, and to start grasping the nuances of how I had been unknowingly absorbing and filtering my (excessively digital) daily stimuli on an unconscious level, from which I could begin to make real changes. So outlining my own experience and some of the recurring themes of these bizarre dream entries, O is the journey of moving from an outward facing, always-on, digital world in towards the deepest, darkest, realms of ourselves, where we are found face-to-face with our own humanity and mortality in new and unexpected ways.

Keep your mind open.

[Today you can subscribe!]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Top 25 albums of 2024: #s 20 – 16

Here we are at my top 20 albums of 2024. That was fast! Let’s get to it!

#20: Curses – Next Wave Acid Punx Deux – Secret Cuts

This collection by Curses is a great one of rare goth, darkwave, and synthwave cuts that makes you wonder where these bands have been all your life.

#19: Punchlove – Channels

The wall of sound on this shoegaze record from Punchlove is at times deafening and other times soothing. They’re one of my top picks to be one of the Next Big Things.

#18: Paperkraft – Not C but K

Here’s some groovy house music for you from Japan. This EP was a great debut.

#17: Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol – Big Dumb Riffs

“What if we made an album that was all big, dumb riffs?” Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol asked. Well, they did it, and it’s a lot of big, dumb, riffing fun.

#16: Dion Lunadon – Memory Burn

It’s another scorcher from Dion Lunadon as he packs more energy into this EP than many double albums you’ve heard.

Who’s in the top 15? Come back tomorrow to learn!

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe!]

Review: Punchlove – Channels

Every now and then, you hear a new band described as arriving “fully formed” on the scene. It’s actually true in Punchlove‘s case, as they sound like they’ve been making shoegaze since at least 2010. You hear their debut album, Channels, and think, “This can’t be their first record.”

Yet, it is, and opening track “Breeze” hits you as heavy as any track Hum would’ve put out in their heyday with roaring guitars and crushing drums. The album was created not only post-pandemic, but also post-move from one continent to another. Jillian Olesen and Ethan Williams landed back in NYC after being forced out of Prague by the COVID-19 lockdowns. They met up with other NYU music technology students and Punchlove was born.

So were songs like “Screwdriver,” which sounds like The Cure meeting Failure in a battle of the bands. The ethereal fuzz of “Pigeon” is wondrous to behold. “Dead Lands” might be about Jillian Olesen’s feelings about returning to the U.S. to find it shut down and essentially empty thanks to the pandemic. It’s a lovely track.

“Apartment” is warped and weird. Every guitar and vocal in it sounds like it was partially melted in a studio fire that almost got out of control. “Birdsong” flies back and forth between bursting guitars and subtle chords. “Guilt” takes those bursting guitars and somehow pushed them further until it feels like you’re racing downhill with the band in a tour van without brakes.

I don’t know which is louder on “Elapse,” the driving guitar riffs or the drums hit and cymbal crashes that sound like Godzilla kicking over a power line tower. The album closes with “Corridor,” which could be thematically interpreted as a song beginnings or endings depending on where the corridor leads. It’s the softest song on the record and probably the most haunting as well.

This is all fine shoegaze stuff from Punchlove, who are already far ahead of other current bands in the genre. A lot of people are scrambling to catch up while Punchlove is making it look easy.

Keep your mind open.

[Punch your e-mail address into the subscription box while you’re here. I’d love that.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Punchlove wander into “Dead Lands” with their new single for their new label.

Punchlove are announcing their signing to Kanine Records. To mark the announce, the NYC quintet is sharing a new single entitled “Dead Lands” that is premiering today via FLOOD Magazine.

LISTEN TO PUNCHLOVE’S “DEAD LANDS”

Composed of multi-instrumentalists Jillian Olesen, Ethan Williams, Joey Machina, Ian Lange-McPherson, and visual artIst Viz Wel, the group quietly evolved from a bedroom project started by Olesen and Williams, into a full band whose live shows have begun attracting attention in their native New York. Their debut single on Kanine makes immediately clear why that is. Patiently constructed and subtly foreboding, the track uses three glassine guitars to create a shimmering wash of textures that swells and subsides under Olesen’s reflections on grief following a death in their family.

Olesen says of the track:
“You end up hurting yourself more when you don’t allow yourself to give into the greater static of the inevitable decay all around you, as well as the grief and change. It’s all part of being human. For me, this song is about the frustration you face when you try to avoid it.”

Keep your mind open.

[Punch your e-mail address into the subscription box while you’re here.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]