Kurt on Music: Wiggly Air…. Actual reviews of recorded music both modern and otherwise

Disquiet Riot. The Russian activist art collective Pussy Riot has never been needed more than they are now, and by “now” I mean in the 14 years since the feminist provocateurs occupied news broadcasts and computer screens with their 30-second performance of “Punk Prayer” at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, cut short by arrest and earning them visibility and notoriety. Pussy Riot gave voice to a collective conscience that was calling out hidden forms of sexual abuse of power. Their name itself was a confrontation, anticipating the fury that would fuel Donald Trump’s “grab them” pronouncement and the #metoo movement in the coming years.

Statements from the masked members were strong and songs were rare. After a few years of seeming more an occasional sensation than anything else, frontperson Nadya Tolokonnikova began releasing electronic-based music that seemed a far cry from the unschooled electric guitar assault upon which their punk promise was built. There was still power in such songs as 2016’s “Make America Great Again” or “Putin’s Ashes” from 2023, but it seemed they’d abandoned their original musical mission in exchange for something that, frankly, made more sense in the 21st Century.

It might be surprising that Tolokonnikova has kept the Pussy Riot name alive for so many years without releasing an album, but maybe it’s just a sign of the times. Their medium is music videos and their timeline is now. And after all, punks accused the Sex Pistols of selling out when they put out an album a half century ago. CYKA (Russian for “bitch” and self-released to streaming services June 12) is a compilation in spirit even if the songs are new. It’s not a punk album—not in the old-fashioned sense, anyway—but at times it has more of a grind than heard from them before. “Faceless Pigs” might be shy of guitars but it has a straight-up OI chant and “Disobey” is screamingly hardcore. The latter is a 90-second blast about the Russian invasion of Ukraine written in a fit of depression for their unsanctioned Venice Biennial appearance and, Tolokonnikova has said, built around her own, very drunken screams of terror.

There are also tracks that, to these ears, are intolerably clubby, but they’re in the minority, cuts that may well accumulate more plays on the major, corporate streaming services where CYKA can be found. The first single from the album, “Candy Dopamine,” (recorded with California metal band Avenged Sevenfold) takes aim at looksmaxxing, designer drugs and utopian/dystopian fantasy goals, and sounds like the hollow culture it addresses. Despite being an outfit with an album out, the Riot is still an art project, and video clips continue to be their best format. “Disobey” and “Candy Dopamine” have videos posted, and more are likely to come along. Consume and consider.
Like Wagner with lasers. Last month, I used this space to rail on a bit about the ridiculousness of rock operas. I don’t really mind them, it’s just that the plotlines are generally a shambles. But to be honest, that’s true of a lot of classical operas as well. The storylines are kind of like the toilet at a restaurant—I don’t necessarily need to see it, but it’s good to know it’s there, even if there’s a fairly good chance it’ll stink.

The Spanish six-piece Pylar pummels like no other. Their new Delyrio (CD, LP, download July 10 from Cyclic Law/Cavsas) is a fantastic 40 minutes of hellishness. They make good demonic moans and whispers and are clever enough to employ melodic elements without falling into the trap of actual melody. The album is the opening movement of the band’s final album cycle (so you can see where this is going) following the Law of Salazar, which apparently is “a mechanism of radical perspective displacement.” I’ll trust them on it. Delyrio does radically shift perspectives, from reverb-drenched covens to atmospheric abyss, with a keen display of various musical alloys. But it’s the dual voices of Ibb-ib’thu the Renegade and Linea Serpentinata that paint the stage. They animate the four long tracks, which are really more scenarios than songs. Not all metal bands sound alike, but too many metal bands sound like themselves too much of the time. Delyrio is extreme entertainment.

From up Ontario way comes the quintet Yeti on Horseback, who’ve been purveying sludgy doom for a decade now. They’re a bit more rote than Pylar, but they do it with a sense of the absurd, but not so much a sense of humor. Animated voices are buried under the floorboards of Traditional Addictions (self-released LP, digital out July 24) and bubble up like a Beatles coda, providing bits of disembodied charm. Titling a song “Erotic Goth Dad” suggests an ironic bop, but the song is about sexual abuse in the church. The album addresses vicious cycles of trauma and addiction in shredded throat steadfastness and does so with a slow-grind brutality, but the thread that runs through it is kind of only there if you want it.

Delyrio and Traditional Addictions each have two tracks per LP side, a generally promising distribution within the sound/time continuum, and each uses its time well. The concepts are no doubt important, but I’m just there for the riffage.

Bisi does it. Brooklyn engineer extraordinaire Martin Bisi has produced records for Blind Idiot God, Cop Shoot Cop, Material, Sonic Youth and many others over the last several decades, as well as his own occasional efforts, which he’s stepped up in recent years. The new Dancing on the Power Lines (download via Black Freighter Records July 10) is eight tracks of neighborhood dread and everyday strife. Working with a small band and poetic lyrics by Nora Almeida and Joan Hacker, Bisi crafts edgy urban art rock like a Gowanus Lorax looking for life balance between the Cubesmart and the elevated tracks. Even as a singer/songwriter, Bisi’s a producer, and the album is richly layered with floating voices and swirling spaces. Power Lines ends with annihilated personhood and annihilated nations, time and belonging rescinded, in the haunting “Anarcho Nihilist: The Final Communication.” More concept and another unhappy ending.