Back on Episode 148 of the WOTT Music podcast, we featured the track “Plans to Save” from Adrienne Franke. The piece was taken from a Belcourt performance put on by the Hyasynth House that paired local electronic musicians with silent films; allowing them provide an original score to the pieces (see also: AIR’s Le voyage dans la lune or Coupler’s Dragnet Girl score). Franke’s particular pieces went along with Alice Guy Blaché’s Falling Leaves.

As the original film is roughly 12 minutes long, “Plans to Save” is only one movement in a larger suite of songs. Franke has announced that the entire performance will be available on August 23rd and can be pre-ordered now.

Not having been at the original performance, it’s difficult to speak to what the other three tracks will sound like but “Plans to Save” has been in regular rotation since its initial discovery, so it’s safe to assume the rest will be a continuing treat.

If you haven’t heard our WOTT Music episode with Z, do so now!

Take any singular track from Z‘s latest release, Trauma Center, and you may find yourself experiencing a chunky onslaught of riffs and snotty vocals mixed with effusive screaming, or you might find a sweet pop song with programmed drums, or maybe a sound collage of found sounds and rave style throbbing beats. Somehow, Z is able to weave together a massive sum of influences and styles into one cohesive unit that feels refreshingly diverse instead of alarmingly sporadic.

It’s worth noting that Expecting the Unexpected is normal when it comes to Z. Their Cassette Day EP MAGNUFEEK is a dark and foreboding trip into 90’s Club Kid sounds, while BarbedWire.org is largely full of bombastic, dance-y, indie rock songs. Trauma Center is an entirely different sound altogether but the fruits of their labors have never been traditionally consistent.

All told, Trauma Center is a much heavier experience than what we’ve heard before. Even with the dark songs of Magnufeek or BarbedWire‘s album closer “The Burner” we haven’t heard this level of intensity from the band previously. There’s been a few lineup changes since the original inception and they’ve been on the road pretty much continuously for the past year, so it’s impossible to know if this shift is due to the outfits natural growth or if it’s a direct nod to the fact that the album is called Trauma Center – in which an onslaught of sound would certainly be on theme. In reality, it’s probably a little bit of Column A and little bit of Column B.

All reflective history aside, the album taken as a whole is an immersive trip that should be taken in from start to finish as it feels broken up into movements. I’m not calling it a concept album but every three tracks seems to capture a different vibe; from an intense onslaught, to a descent into nightmare, to a lighter emergence from said darkness. It’s a reach but the tracklist certainly seems curated to oscillate between fevered intensity and a quick respite. The collection ends on a four track suite that seems to repeat and summarize the entirety of the experience through a wildly different choice in instrumentation, primarily consisting of samples and beats.

My fandom for the diversity of the band likely clouds my judgment on being able to comment on it in a more direct way. It’s a big riff rock record with plenty of screaming, broken up with somewhat poppier, comparatively gentler, rock songs. But the fact that there’s ten minutes of rave at the end makes it impossible for me to think of this as anything less than Completely Special.

Fifty years ago on July 16th, 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 rocket took off from Kennedy Space Port and traveled for four days before ultimately landing three astronauts on the Moon. There’s a lot to say of the technical and political implications of the journey but we’ll just leave it at this: it was impressive.

Just a week prior, on July 11th, 1969, David Bowie released a 7″ of “Space Oddity“; a song that tells the fictitious tale of Major Tom and landed Bowie in the UK charts for the first time. The track, partially inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, perseveres as one of the most recognizable songs from the deep catalog of everyone’s favorite shapeshifter and was even played by the BBC during the Moon Landing.

All history lessons aside, local artist Zakariya has taken it upon himself to pay tribute to both the fifty-year anniversary of our lunar journey and the memorable tale sown by Bowie by releasing his own version of “Space Oddity.” It’s a respectable cover that doesn’t try to re-invent the wheel but does just enough to establish Zakariya’s touch on the presentation.

It’s a rare treat for artist to be able to pay tribute to both a historical milestone and a well-loved classic simultaneously – so, thanks to Zakariya for that. Additional thanks for letting this release be a very valid excuse to explore a YouTube rabbit hole of additionally interesting covers of the track.

According to his Bandcamp discography, Levi J. Miller has some thirty-eight releases available to listen to. That’s not counting his twenty-eight other releases on his secondary page or his projects where he is collaborating with other musicians. We’ve been over this before. The TLDR of it all; Levi J. Miller has a great deal of output.

Quantity doesn’t always equal quality but there’s almost always a particular spin or theme to each release. Maybe it’s Garage Rock or maybe it’s Something Darker or maybe it’s 77-minute concept album about how the Internet can make us feel like gods.

With God Complex, Levi J. Miller swings for the fences with an incredibly ambitious concept album spanning 33-tracks that follows the tale of an imagined protagonist that gets Internet Famous through his online art and starts a cult to feed his (or her) ego. Without much introspection, it’s likely a feeling we can all relate to thanks to the serotonin uptick that comes with Likes, Subscribes, Follows and Comments coming in through our own personal Internet Portals.

Admirable concepts aside, the music itself within this opus is an, overall, enjoyable listen. Seventy-seven minutes is quite a commitment for our attention addled brains but Miller has obviously done his best to keep things moving along and sonically interesting with plenty of interesting guitar sounds, different vocal styles and memorable lyrics. It is, by and large, a Rock record but tracks like “A Nonverbal Prayer” or “Confusionism” slow things down from a manic pace into ambient and gentle zones (respectively).

The album closes with a heavily vocoded trip into space called “Thx 4 Listening” – in which our protagonist presumably ascends beyond this mortal coil into pure Light and Technology, a fate we’re all headed for whether we like it or not. Levi J. Miller is just showing us the way.