So there we have it, the best music submissions of the year all curated and lined up for your glistening pleasures. The best of ROTR ’24 Part 2!
Gothic
“Let this be a showcase of the sounds and aesthetics Kick so pleasurably tangle together. Now go dig out their latest LP. It’ll creep slowly up on you too…”
“So let’s start ’22 with a cool blast from Mexico, where new wave and post punk and frosty electronics hit against blurred grooves of agro…”
“When we last heard Last Wars it was hard-boiled and rasp-filled and retro electric, like a B-side of ‘Saturn Strip’ Vega. But now we get polish, and pumped up production, in an EP that flexes and kicks…”
“This is Pamela Sue Mann at her best. Wide-eyed and clean in the rubble. If the first listen snags you, the second will snatch, and the third drags you right along with her….”
“Each track is a glut of industrial sounds, each song is a cold future grind. Kallalit makes music that strips EDM of superfluous glamour, and wraps it in gloss gothic shine…”
“In a debut EP that stands eight minutes long, every song cracks its whip at two minutes. That’s enough time to show off the want and the love to pick up on known grind-horror blueprints…”
“The communal gurn of a sweat-stunk back room, the heat and the steam of a DIY shoebox that’s packed tight with low light and writhe… This is all that’s imagined and conjured up during ‘Killadelica’s 42 minutes…”
“Hearing the switch between hardened and heart-broke, it surprises, draws in, pulls us close. We learn not to expect outright acts of defiance, but we glimpse at what goes on behind…”
“It’s a new set of ash-smothered sonics, an EP of remixes of songs never made, ideas stripped before ever seeing daylight. Spectrograph’s mini-album is caustic and lean with a roughshod apocalypse kick…”
Rats on the Run 