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In 2012, Gossip Wolf reported on a 2009 supersession involving Chicago cosmic garage band Disappears (at the time singer-guitarist Brian Case, guitarist Jonathan van Herik, bassist Damon Carruesco, and drummer Graeme Gibson), noisy drone duo White/Light (guitarist Matt Clark and electronicist Jeremy Lemos), and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. The resulting recording was tentatively scheduled for release on Shelley’s Vampire Blues label in fall 2012–which turned out to be off by about eight years. This week, Vampire Blues finally dropped the self-titled album, mixed by John Congleton, via Bandcamp. Its double-drummer drone improvisations and thumping space punk a la Spacemen 3 often swing with a heavy dub sound that foreshadows Disappears’ evolution into Facs.
Gossip Wolf last heard from electronic-pop trio Weatherman when they released a charmingly intimate self-titled EP in 2017. Drummer Jason Toth says that two and a half years ago, he and singer-keyboardist Annie Higgins left Chicago for a “tiny medieval village” in France, where they’re “recording and releasing new music under Annie’s name as AM Higgins.” Last week, they dropped the ruminative “Who Can Say?” on Soundcloud–it features former Weatherman bandmate Joshua Dumas on keyboards plus bass and vibraphone from Casey Foubert, who’s recorded with Pedro the Lion and Sufjan Stevens.
[embedded content]Chicago electronic producer Sam Bik charmed Gossip Wolf last year with his debut 12-inch as Ahero, Ultima Flux, on his own Faceway label–its lively, cinematic sound blends ghostly vaporwave sonics and go-for-broke synth-pop hooks. Since then he’s dropped another Ahero album (February’s Spirit) and used the alias Talk to Me to release relatively straightforward retro-pop songs. On Monday, Talk to Me put out the dazzling full-length Drop Shadows, whose exultant single “Kingdom Come” should be on everybody’s playlists. v
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