Tropical Fuck Storm - Braindrops (Ltd Ed/Neon Magenta vinyl)
August 23 street date. Sophomore album from Australia's Tropical Fuck Storm, featuring ex-Drones members Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin. Listening to "Braindrops" is a jarring and exhilarating experience, full of pulsating grooves, dissonant experimentation, and unsettling dystopian plot-lines. Liddiard cites "Doc At The Radar Station"-era Captain Beefheart as a key sonic touchstone, and "Braindrops" certainly shares the Captain's penchant for pounding abstract grooves. Liddiard describes the LP's title track as "Fela Kuti in a car crash," and talks of creating a sonic atmosphere that "sounds like chloroform smells" for "Maria 62", which takes aim at the once-marginalized alt-right conspiracy theories that now seem to be a driving force behind the rise of fascism in global politics. "Itâs about a Mossad agent traveling to Buenos Aires to assassinate Maria Orsic, a Nazi witch who telepathically got the blueprints for warp drive engines from aliens," Liddiard shares. "It may be the most stupid song ever written," Liddiard jokes. He's wrong, "Maria 63" is emblematic of Tropical Fuck Storm's keen ability to mine the extreme edge of pop culture's periphery for potent musical and conceptual spice.