WHIMM - 'NO PROMOTION'

Formats

• W25-20 - LP

  850051035199

Details

WHIMM formed around the shadowy heart of the Toronto post-punk underground over a decade ago. The partnership between Mounir Al Shami and Andrew Matthews has emitted sporadic musical shards over time, while slowly evolving into something so much bigger than its beginnings. Ideas seep out of every corner of No Promotion, showcasing a burning desire to explore and challenge while delivering very direct sonic offerings. The result is an album that feels as if you took the entire Coil discography and smashed it into pieces, assembling these precious songs from the fragments. Or as if Vangelis beckoned Section 25 to the studio in hopes of recording the score to a seedy film. The resulting LP is in a state of flux—equal parts motion and decay. Patrick Flegel, of Cindy Lee, welcomed Al Shami and Matthews into REALISTIK Studios in Montreal to engineer half of the tracks for the album, including lending guitar to the opening track “Five in Decline.” That influence is evident early on, as the first three songs are taken from those sessions. “Five in Decline” throbs and barks before racing through the hallways closing in around it. “Another Labour” slows to a spidery waltz as anxious melodies call out to one another. “Returnal” pulses, floats through the night sky and haunts you forever. “Rye” carves a percussive pathway toward similar travellers like Terry Riley and Jon Hassell, before the lament of “A Death Remembered” forms the perfect midpoint for the record. A slow build countered by twitching drums and blanketed by organs recorded at Metropolitan United Church in Toronto, it feels like emotion right on the edge of resolve. “Rhymes of December” screeches through on a solitary train under the towering cityscape as the flickering lights blur past, its doors opening to the candlelit altar of “After the Last Sky” (those beautiful organs again) with an operatic swirl. “K’20” throws you into a claustrophobic and chaotic cab ride (Who is talking? Are those sirens?) until you finally find the quiet of the early morning, waiting at the window for the sun to join you once again as the first notes of “No Promotion” are delicately plucked. The final song from the Flegel sessions, it is over eight minutes of contemplative beauty. A restless heart that is ready to rest. Closing with a final apparition in the key of The Caretaker, “After the Last Sky (Reprise)” is a return to melody when words lose all meaning. Al Shami and Matthews weave their lyrics throughout, words describing a search for lucidity, and of reactions and reflections. Al Shami—speaking from the Palestinian diaspora—ruminates on displacement, both personal and collective. His journey from having “been without a land and I can still see clearly” in “Rhymes of December” to a more defiant “we will be back again, no matter how it ends or where we’ve been” in “Returnal” takes a very insular turn on No Promotion. That sense of alienation pulls at the very center of a relationship when land and circumstances separate: “And after our last breath, all that’s left in me is our flesh and fears, your last words would swim for years, you’ll never find a home in me.” Hearts on the outskirts that know the direction.

Tracks

Press

RIYL: Lowlife, Section 25 and John Carpenter soundtracks

Audio & Video

LEE RANALDO - 'THE SYSTEM (ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK ALBUM)'

Formats

• SC65X - LP (COLOURED)

  769152435633

• SC65 - LP

  769152435619

Details

**AVAILABLE ON LIMITED SEA GLASS COLOURED VINYL / PRE-ORDER ONLY** A quick scan of the world's favorite crowdsourced discography reveals that Sonic Youth co-founder Lee Ranaldo was not a total stranger to crackling electric experimentation in the years following his songwriting turns of the 20-teens. Yet The System, ingeniously culled and sequenced from Ranaldo's soundtrack work for Dutch filmmaker Joris Postema’s "eco-doc" of the same name nonetheless feels like a reawakening. Quietly released in a vastly different (and much more "filmic") form by Doxy Music / Riva Media Records in 2025, this LP reimagines and reconfigures the initial release, including unreleased material (written and recorded for the film) to lend it new stature as both a return to drone-improv form and a reunion with introspective Downtown angst. Given the state of the world, it's not surprising that the film Ranaldo scores -- a documentary on three climate activists bruising their fists on the black iron prison of techno-fascist deathkultur -- is a study in despair and futility. But rather than wallowing in navel-gazing doom and gloom, the film documents the unstoppable spirit that has animated human resistance since the time of the Pharaohs. As it turns out, the gorgeous scope of Lee Ranaldo's guitar palette is a perfect manifestation of the hope and despair that animates the film. But like other high-water marks in the guitar-centric soundtrack canon -- the high plains raga of Bruce Langhorne's Hired Hand, Neil Young's sparse and ghostly solo transmissions on Dead Man, or the monolithic mantras of Popol Vuh's Nosferatu -- its devotion to spectral gestures and meditative song forms launches it firmly outside of the OST orbit into a universe fully its own. It might seem like a long journey from the Lower Manhattan rhythmic grime of the album's opener "Tajikistan (Nice to Meet You)" (reminiscent of guitar opuses like Robert Quine and Jody Harris's Escape) to the ringing cowboy chords of the final track, but the narrative logic of the LP pulls the listener along as solidly as a pack horse. As the LP unwinds, and collaborators like Jim Jarmusch, cellist Leila Boudreil, Yeah Yeah Yeahs snare shaman Brian Chase and guitarist Yonatan Gat take their places, new vistas unfurl -- the ritualistic thrum of "Berlin Blockade," the haunted overtone palaces of "Bergelmir," the cavernous acoustic strumming of "Instruments of Violence." It all winds up with the high lonesome standard "Cool Water," each unhurried note trailing off into long-tail reverb, layers of shifting vocal harmonies pulling everything skyward -- a hopeful note in an album where existential dread never lurks too deeply below the surface. In the end, The System functions both as a film score and a hallucinatory (mostly) instrumental guitar record, revealing a sensibility not too often spotted in the 21st century -- a liminal space where the song, the jam, the meditation merges into a blurred whole. The System's expansive fabric, emerging from a collective sound circling around Ranaldo's signature tones, envelops and amplifies the contributions of its community of creators -- the perfect antidote to narcissistic despair. Much like the subjects of the film light the way toward intra-generational resistance, the music of The System reveals a path through gathering darkness. The world could be yours if you follow. —Tom Carter

Tracks

1. Tajikistan (Nice to Meet You) 2. Pippi Sailing (Cimbalom) 3. No More Slogans 4. Berlin Blockade 5. Bergelmir 6. Something Beautiful to Live For 7. The Conference 8. An Exploding Dandelion 9. Telefoongesprek Henk 10. Both Ends of the Spectrum 11. Instruments of Violence 12. A Just Collapse 13. Tadzio Wild Congress 14. The Cusp of the Change 15. Cool Water

Press

Audio & Video