(Cruel Nature Records)

At the top of the bandcamp page for Karen & Peter’s ‘Aggro Dolce’ album is a video. It’s a 32 second clip of the 5th track ‘Weekend in the Berkshires.’ And it’s a perfectly apt sample of the entire record. If you like it, you’re gonna love the album. If it doesn’t do it for you, none of the songs, the sounds, or the spoken word poetry vocalist Karen Schoemer is famous for are going to reach you.

The clip is so bleak and creepy, so seemingly random and filled with mundane stream of thought observations… a series of random fuzzy high art images flash slowly, almost painfully, and then a face appears within the haze. It’s Karen Schoemer, New York punk poetess of the 21st century, monotonally berating you in a calm and measured but almost unbearably intense, direct manner. She’s staring right at you. Speaking right to you. Seeing right through you.

If you’ve heard any of Schoemer’s other projects (our local favorites Sky Furrows perhaps or her collaborations with Watt, Wreckless Eric, Amy Rigby, etc.), you’re going to recognize her inimitable vocal stylings and post-beat post-punk poetry. If not, the calm and placid monotonal stream of consciousness utterings covering over an ocean of endtime anxiety that run throughout the entire course are evocative of other NYC punk princess poetesses’ we’ve compared her to before like Patti Smith and Kim Gordon.

But this album is very different from everything else I’ve heard Schoemer involved in because of the post-rock, classical music/sound collages under the vocals. The free synths and white noise so perfectly encase and are used as a vehicle for her idiosyncratic vocals, both of which complement each other to such a great degree that they enhance one another in a way hereto unheard of. Which, if you’re used to Schoemer’s other projects, is a shock to the system. Even she admittedly states she’s in unusualy territory here, as on ‘En Hiver “it’s unnerving. The way these songs change. No rhythm tracks in the snow. No marks. No measures. The hillside strangely empty of drums and guitars.”

And yet the minimalist ambience created by Peter (Taylor)’s anxious, existentialist soundscapes speaks of a spirit so kindred to Karen’s vocals that’s even further increased by seeing his artworks juxtaposed with her written poetry in the liner notes (who knew that recorders in this century were still using every piece of the artwork and space available to them to express themselves?). And yet, according to the liner notes, they’ve never met! Peter is living in a region of England scarred by coal mining and asbestos contamination. Karen, as far as we know, is in the gigantic brownfield that is the American post-corporate Capitalist scape (“woods without squirrels or insects”) of the ‘Empire State’. In which case it makes a great deal of sense that 2 artists that have never actually met are completely ‘in tune’ with each other, like the ‘special relationship’ between the trappings of the old Empire and the New, which is now also slowly but surely crumbling and decaying. Perhaps if they were to meet it might actually spoil the bond that clearly exists between them on the record — in any case here’s hoping they continue to collaborate from their eerily similar home spaces (anyone that’s worked from home with colleagues knows what I mean and the shared feelings you experience regardless of distance, time, or space), joined by the toxic leavings of the hands of unimaginably powerful, irresponsible men that have destroyed our worlds.

In case I haven’t made this clear, this is NOT happy or light music in any way. It is DARK and it is HEAVY. And it is repetitive and pointless and anxious yet calming and 20 months pregnant with the suspense of 7 civil wars that could start at any moment, ‘just a shot away’. That’s the mood it paints, and that’s the mood just about everyone’s in right now whether they admit it or not. The radio plays ‘pop tones’ while a hellish backlash Presidency that nearly reignited the same stupid Civil War we’ve been passively aggressively fighting for over 150 years was interrupted by a global pandemic thrown into the powder keg that locked us in our miserable homes where we hate and plot against our neighbors because THAT’S WHAT STRONG PEOPLE DO in America according to the television shows we binge watched while at all costs we told ourselves REMAIN CALM REMAIN CALM REMAIN CALM.

It sounds calm; this is what calm sounds like. Peter Taylor’s synths, found sounds, and the very occasional/rare crack or pop that heralds some kind of a beat — it’s a circle of hell. It sounds like a slow boil off the entire surface of the ocean while Karen whispers in our ear calmly, “100 men flayed raw…” and then something about the Velvet Underground(?). “This road wasn’t here. This valley wasn’t here. The stream became a reservoir. The flood came down the hill past the Catholic Church. This was a stream. It shouldn’t be a lake!”

I completely understand it and yet I don’t. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. I know we have to stay calm and tend to our mundane little lives in the midst of indefatigable and unstoppable global change and misery.

This is not only the soundtrack of our lives but inside our MINDS right now. Somewhere between a late Scott Walker track and an ambient Eno airport scene about to break into a Wolf Eyes nightmare at any minute. And Karen keeps whispering in our ear… over our “Weekend in the Berkshires”; “don’t drink the water… species crash disturbs the unintended garden… no sense of space under there… just cement, on dirt, the weather warm and strange. Sweating no longer cools the body — are you coming over after band practice? Are you ignoring my texts?

God, it’s only Tuesday.”

This is a perfect descriptive piece of art, the ‘soundtrack of our minds’ for anyone in the old Empire living through 2022. Our stupid lives, childhood traumas, pointless adult lusts pulsing through the bleak soundscape of the hypnotising hellish (or calming, entertaining bread and circuses depending on how you look at it) soundscape that keeps us stable and sane enough to say ‘everything is alright… enough’. But it sure as hell is not. And this photorealistic capture of this moment in time of the collective unconscious is what art SHOULD BE.

Damn those blatantly superficial radio songs that are clearly designed to put us in a buying mood and out of our existential, nihilistic anxiety about the present and fuck me do I NOT want to even THINK about the future. That’s what the people are listening to because that’s what’s being aggressivley marketed to them without mercy. But Aggro Dolce by Karen and Peter is what’s really going on… in our world, in our minds, defining new sounds and a new form of music for the post-post modern age. It’s found sound collage and ancient beatnik poetry and sadcore that’s accepting of and refuses to be terrified by the current age but accepts it as it is. It’s as bleak and hopeless as it gets.

And it’s the most transcendent piece of art I’ve heard in decades, pointing THE WAY FORWARD for genuinely artistic, expressionistic music in the new century and beyond

-Keith Sonin

Every good record should hold the elusive concept of the Yin and Yang; the soft and hard; the quiet and loud (or in this case, the loud and the LOUDER). 

Despite Terralite and Iudica’s (the band that singer/guitarist Brian Michael and drummer Nate Fidd were previously in) aversion to acoustic guitars, they do venture into more pop balladeering on their debut record as Terralite.

But then again perhaps it’s unfair to judge their work based on any previous effort under their previous Iudica label…

But what is really different about Terrallite compared to Iudica? There was a different bass player, and now there’s another new one.

More significantly in terms of the overall sound, band dynamic, and potential dissociative identity disorder is new member Thom Grover, who is taking on increasing songs as the lead singer and songwriter. This as opposed to Brian Michael who clearly appears to be suited to be band leader, steering the ship unapologetically. 

While Grover’s voice is getting stronger, and his songs (if they are his creative babies completely) are showing more dynamics than Iudica songs, Brian Michael’s writing is still more confident and demands more control. 

While the majority of the songs on the record are good, and, more than ever before — groovy, the thing that stood out to me on the second and third listen through is that there is a slight split of personality happening throughout the record. This may be a Paul & John type thing where previously there was collaboration now the singer is the songwriter and never the twain shall meet; it’s like a mutiny aboard a ship where the crew are loyal but as with every enterprise new blood must flow. And a changing of the guards sometimes presses subtly but relentlessly, like a gigantic elephant in the room..

Yes, after my third listen, I wanted to say: this is a schizophrenic album.

Too late. 

I said it, but perhaps it isn’t entirely fair.

There is some cohesiveness that runs throughout and hints of the embryonic glue that delicately justifies it as a complete album.

You could split the album in two and call it a double EP – but now we’re splitting hairs. 

Despite this tug and pull, the band has pulled something off that is a sign of more great things to come; they are still together and getting better.

I suggest catching them live too, they are a great live band now, but one of the highlights of the record is that it does their live sound justice. That’s not easy to capture.

There are also fewer drum rolls – thank god – but maybe that’s more of a sign of the increasing power and strength of the songwriting than the playing itself.

Michael, for one, has grown as a singer and is perhaps closer to knowing what he wants from music. There is more sophistication in the songwriting and the arrangements. There is more vulnerability in his voice, which is more honest in my opinion, after all, we are not gods.

‘Coming Out’ – here comes the single (I think).. I can definitley hear this one on an alternative rock station. 

(The angels of grunge are wondering where the syringes are).

They remain loyal to their dirty high school blues and mascara-ridden (yet no sign of bleeding black streaks, yet) emo, loud guitar-driven rock n roll.

They are certainly breaking out of their mould, and venturing into new territory (for them). It should make for an even more dynamic show. 

Having said all this, they are true hometown, USA, working-class rockers, and for that, I salute them!

-Terry Chagrin

Editor’s Note — This is a preview. Prototype will be released to the public on November 17th.

If you’re familiar with the current superhip Troy (or Albany or Saratoga where he hails closer to/from) music scene, you’ve heard of Sinkcharmer. Or if not Sinkcharmer, one of Paul Coleman’s other projects. Haley Moley, a band he formed with his wife Jen Maher Coleman and other local musicians Andrea Kosek (aka DJ Goldeedust) Pat Thorne, and Mike Broomhead (the latter two making up DJ Partyhorn). Or maybe Architrave, an already legendary danceable electronic post-punk duo he also formed with his wife Jen. OR any of the dozens of local production and engineering jobs he’s done for other local artists…

Point is, if you’re reading this, you probably know who Paul Coleman is and have heard Sinkcharmer. So we don’t need to describe him to you. But we’re gonna anyway (how else are we gonna write enough to fill up the 100 or so words neededd to fill up this space)?

To us Sinkcharmer’s a cross between late 70s/early 80s post-punk/dance/new wave and east coast 90s lo-fi/alternative artists. In fact, Sinkcharmer began all the way back in the late 90s in Boston. But he seems to have found his home and greatest fanbase here in the Capital District.

Back in 2017 Coleman released ‘Sit Up Straight’, a collection of terrific little sequenced pop gems. This was followed up with ‘vs. Reactor House’, a series of singles and comps. However, to date no full record has been released to as much fanfare as ‘Radical Luck’, an album so sought after by the local press that writers were contacting Coleman begging for pre-releases and interviews before he announced the release date.

Well, as you and I both know your pals at Times Boredom are the most ingenious damned hackers in the business and we bug everyone’s laptop that makes music here in the Capital District. So we didn’t ask. We took! And then, lazy bastards that we are, we just sat around listening to the album and enjoying it so much we didn’t get around to reviewing now, after he’s released it to the general public. So much for the hype.

But fuck do we love what we hear. More and more everytime we play it through. Like previous mentioned releases Coleman balances out electronic drum machines and sequencers with lo-fi nerdy pop vocals and signature postpunk guitar tones (i’ve heard he plays a tenor guitar and switches it to a bass with a pedal — also that he built his own guitar from spare parts he found at the junkyard and several processors he built the same way).

Just like all the great Sinkcharmer albums, what I love about this one is how it seamlessly blends proto-goth rock with lo-fi Lou Barlowesque melodies, post-modern instrumentation and sensibilities. The album begins with reverb laden hollow ringing chords that would fit perfectly on an early Cure album. And then begins the best song about the pandemic I’ve heard as of yet; comparing it to an event with biblical proportions (because when it comes down to it, we all potentially will do so in twenty years). However, unlike the actual flood story, this one doesn’t seem to have an end. We go inside the ark, than go outside, the light’s to bright, back into the Ark! Just like all the times we keep thinking this fucking thing is over.

Season Six Script Planning is a BRILLIANT song about the randomly exciting and terrifying events that are taking place in America right now. America’s treating itself as a television show that was on its way out, so in season 6 we go off the rails, hoping it’ll keep everyone’s attention. But instead it may (or may not) be an entertaining romp, but it’s real fucking life. Whoever’s in control needs to stop fucking around, poking all the bears, making them dance for the cameras because there are serious consequences that no one’s taking seriously but, rather, are just treating like some dumb tv show.

The remainder of the tracks follow similar patterns pitting new wave beats behind sullen post-goth sonic guitar fields and monotonal vocal patterns with catchy hooks. Chaotic Dreams and Dwell seem to almost be a dyad of personal torturous emotions, and represent a far darker more introspective side of Sinkcharmer. Kept and Terrible Protector (the latter of which was originally included on the world changing 518 Covid Comp), are tracks that most remind me of Sinkcharmer’s Dinosaur/Sebadoh tendencies. That mid to late period 90s indie rock vibe with the dance beats is if nothing else a fascinating juxtaposition. And they’re juxtaposed (interposed?) by Stochastic Reality, a highly danceable tune with Nine Inch Nails like descriptions of an eerie controlling invisible power that feeds our pleasure centers to get us to submit.

And then of course there’s the exception of course of the cover of Madeline Darby’s Innovation, which is a terrific take on what’s recently become a Troy scene electro-noise classic. And, as expected, Sinkcharmer like any good folk song preparer makes the song his own; I doubt that people that don’t know the track or read the notes will even know it’s a Darby penned song (though if you’re reading this you should and you should head to Madeline Darby’s bandcamp page after this!)

Sinkcharmer is pulling esoteric threads from four decades of underground music to combine the perfect ear candy for the indie fan in all of us. Thanks for another great album; keep it up!