Chasing Fridays: Wisp, Playboi Carti, Huremic, more
Musings on shoegaze, post-rock, digi-emo, power-pop, slowcore, and plain 'ole 'MUSIC.'
"D-D-D-DJ SORROW, TURN THE FUCK UP!"
Sematary's producer tag at the beginning of "Creepin' Thru Da Woods" was my brain's lobby music this week. Why? Because I wrote my first-ever Pitchfork review on Ghost Mountain's October Country, the long-awaited solo debut from Sematary's Haunted Mound collective co-founder. For research purposes, I spent the weekend running back a bunch of old Sematary and Ghost Mountain material, and if you spend enough time creepin' thru their dense acre of witch-housey horrorcore then you start to hallucinate that your skin's turned burlap like a scarecrow, and the keywords "True Religion Depop" enter your search history. If that sounds at all interesting to you (and if you truly fuck with the full breadth of my coverage at Chasing Sundays, then it should), then you can read the review here.
I wrote about plenty of other music this week that has nothing to do with Chief Keef or Salem. For my weekly Chasing Fridays column, I weighed in on new singles from Wisp, aldn, and Planning for Burial; went long-ish on Parannoul's new side-project Huremic; plugged fellow music scribe Colin Joyce's band Coolant; picked my favorite and least favorite moments on Playboi Carti's MUSIC; and then wrapped up with a retrospective on Charades' "En Ningun Lugar." As always, that final portion of Chasing Fridays, in which I go in on an older piece of music I've been spending time with, is for paying subscribers only, so you can toss me $5/month to read that and any other paywalled content on my site. Thanks to everyone who supports me monetarily, as I wouldn't be able to dedicate as much time as I do to this site without your generosity.
Huremic - Seeking Darkness
I've written before that while I have immense respect for Parannoul and am certain that he'll go down as one of the century's most important shoegaze artists, I've never been a huge fan of his music. His nasally, placid vocal delivery grates on me after a song or two, and I think his brittle, lo-fi production is taxing to sit through for the hour-long intervals that his albums encompass. Huremic is a different story. Last week, Parannoul surprise-dropped a new album called Seeking Darkness under the new moniker. Its five songs total up to an hour's worth of material, and at no point did I find myself reaching for the escape hatch. Instead, I was pulled into the record's dark, clattering jungle of mechanical whirrs and tribal thumps, and I was sad it was over by the time it wrapped up.
Nothing about Seeking Darkness is remotely shoegaze. The first composition, "Seeking Darkness Pt. 1," has a dubby groove and incantation-like vocal that reminds me Darkside – at least until the walls come crumbling down and the track descends into a maddening cacophony of malevolent noise with a diabolical drum pulse. While Parannoul is a guitar-centric project, Huremic's songs are percussion-focused. The drums are booming like canon fire at all times, accelerating into Lightning Bolt drum breaks ("Pt. 2"), loping forward with a drunken gait ("Pt. 3"), or simply cracking apart into a grooveless frenzy (the last section of nearly every song).
HMz
According to the album's brief Bandcamp description, Parannoul made Seeking Darkness entirely with virtual instruments (as is his typical method), except this time he mined specifically from an archive of sounds that were assembled by the Seoul National University Arts and Science Center. I wish we could know exactly what (non-)instruments he was using to craft these brooding soundscapes, but few of the noises on here resemble guitars. I hear wailing saxophones, clonking bongos, buzzing feedback, abrasive synths, and all sorts of circuit-frying gadgetry, though it's impossible to say what any of these digitized samples actually are. I suppose guessing is part of the fun.
Meanwhile, Parannoul goes out of his way to contort his voice into new patterns and timbres. He's mostly either muttering or rhythmically talking, and the Eastern folk chants that bridge the gap between "Pt. 2" and "Pt. 3" sound like they were sourced from a different singer's mouth. By the time Parannoul's recognizable croon comes croaking through the droney shards in the album's final track, the levity it provides feels like a well-earned respite. I've never been so happy to hear his tinny wail. It's early, but I already feel confident declaring Seeking Darkness my favorite release in Parannoul's sprawling discography. Don't write Huremic off as a casual side-project or a tossed-off experiment. This is just as sophisticated and meticulous as any Parannoul LP, and its unrelentingly sinister tone is a welcome vibe shift away from his main band's life-affirming grandeur.
Wisp - "Sword"
If you, like me, have never been blown away by Wisp's music, then give this new song a shot. "Sword" is the TikTok shoegaze star's most dynamic song by far, and it sounds like the beginning of a new phase in her young career. One notable feature of this track is that it contains production courtesy of aldn, a former hyperpop producer (glaive, midwxst) who's since pivoted to making digitized emo that I'd situate adjacent to jane remover and quannnic (more on aldn below). aldn songs are premised on steep loud/soft inclines, so hearing the way "Sword" swooshes to the stratosphere during its second chorus feels like aldn's handiwork – and it's a maneuver that suits Wisp's music well.
My main issue with her 2024 EP was that the music was so atmospheric that there was nothing to cling to, making it insufficiently vivid for the fantastical world Wisp was building out in her videos and cover art. She brings a much livelier energy to "Sword" that distinguishes her from her shoegaze influences, and simply makes her music more engaging to hear. The biggest difference between this and "Your Face" is the song's majestic arrangement, but I also like the layered harmonies during the chorus, and how she shrewdly pares the swelling back to emphasize specific lines. Whereas previous Wisp songs churned and lurched, "Sword" flows and swoons. Between this and her peppy previous single, "i remember how your hands felt on mine," I'm optimistic about where Wisp is headed.
aldn - "push you away"
I figured I'd also weigh in on aldn's new solo track, "push you away," which just dropped last week. His 2024 single, "icantbelieveiletyougetaway," sounded like a curious cross between Weatherday and Porter Robinson, with pitchy emo yelps and brittlely overblown drums that were configured into dramatic bass drops. It's an interesting concept that I sadly find more irritating in execution, but I like "push you away" much better. It's also emo as hell ("you're happier with anyone but me," the song begins) and nearly as explosive during its stomping chorus, but the melodrama is reigned in just a tad, and the production is less derivative of Weatherday's crumbling lo-fi. Back in 2020, a bunch of 100 gecs demos leaked that sounded like late-2000s neon pop-punk through the prism of hyperpop. If gecs followed that concept through on their sophomore record, it might've sounded something like "push you away."
Planning for Burial - "A Flowing Field of Green"
I was thrilled to wake up Monday morning with a new Planning for Burial song in my life. The Wilkes-Barre doom-gaze project helmed entirely by Thom Wasluck hadn't dropped an album since 2017's bleak, frigid Below the House, which I kept in heavy rotation during those brutal first few months of COVID lockdown. Now, a new album, It's Closeness, It's Easy, is on the docket for late May, and the first single is a doozy that shakes up Planning for Burial's trudging formula. "A Flowing Field of Green" is faster and rockier than any Planning for Burial tune I can remember. The percussion is loose and groovy, the lead riffs are epic as hell, and Wasluck's singing is more pronounced and urgent. It kind of sounds like Pile playing doom-metal. It's sick as hell.
Coolant - Pest EP
Coolant is the project of Colin Joyce, a fellow music writer who used to work for Noisey (RIP) and who's put me onto a lot of cool shit over the years. It turns out that he also makes music that's right up my alley. His new EP, Pest, is a set of smoldering folk laced with droney metal guitars that sound like they're twirling up from the graying ashes of a mountaintop bonfire. In the email Joyce sent me, he mentioned that while he was pulling from Red House Painters and black-metal, other friends of his compared these tracks to Mount Eerie, which...yeah. His voice is very Elverum-esque, and despite the sparse instrumentation, the songs on Pest conjure the sort of cinematic atmosphere I associate with the Mount Eerie oeuvre. I really love the way the distorted guitars flicker and fray on "the lack" and "pest," and the dueling piano tracks that bring "air of iris" to a close sound like something off of a Blithe Field record. If you're in need of more soundtracks for candlelit nights in and/or late afternoon graveyard strolls, Coolant's Pest will do the trick.
My favorite and least favorite moments on Playboi Carti's MUSIC
I'd be remiss if I didn't chime in on the biggest album of the year thus far, a record that I've been hotly anticipating for almost half-a-decade now. Playboi Carti's Whole Lotta Red is my favorite album of the 2020s, one of my favorite rap albums ever, and easily one of the greatest records I've ever heard. MUSIC, its 30-song follow-up, is none of those things. It's a bloated, celebrity-filled behemoth that contains some of the highest peaks and lowest valleys in Playboi Carti's whole career. I've been listening to it all week and I can't tell if I love it or am disappointed by it; if its irrational messiness will grow on me or if my enjoyment threshold will terminally decrease each time I hear one of Travis Scott's dumbass "Yeah!"'s. MUSIC is an album I'll be trying to make sense of for the remainder of 2025, and probably for many years to come. But right now, there are some moments on it that I absolutely adore, and some others that disgust me. First, my favorites, then, my least faves.
My five faves
1) The way he jabbers the titular words of "Pop Out" like he's angrily spitting a bee out of his mouth.
2) The entirety of "Radar" because I love hearing Carti rap over some quintessential Metro Boomin' horns, and because his babbles on this song are delightfully feral.
3) One of Carti's talents is repeating a syllabically pleasing phrase so many times that singing along has the hypnotizing effect of a religious mantra. After mouthing along to "Munyun"'s hook enough times –"came a long way, still can't believe I made Forbes"– I get so amped by its trance-like pull that I begin to feel like I myself have a 30 Under 30 plaque hanging on my office wall.
4) When Carti inverts Future's dead-eyed hook of "Charge Dem Hoes a Fee" by adopting a supple murmur like he's using his warm breath to try and fog up a cold window.
5) The way he trills, "instead you wanna be the one to lie to me," in "I Seeeeee You Baby Boi."
6) I know I said five moments, but Carti doesn't follow rules so why the hell should I. This list wouldn't be complete without "Cocaine Nose." It's probably my favorite song on MUSIC. Crank it loud.
My five least faves
1) The Kanye-lite church choir vocals during the endless buildup of "Crush." I don't need to be reminded of Jesus Is King when I'm bumping Carti.
2) "Twin Trim," because I didn't click play on a Playboi Carti album to listen to a solo Lil Uzi Vert song.
3) Ty Dolla $ign's saccharine refrain on "We Need All Da Vibes." I've never once thought to myself, "Sweet, I'm glad Ty Dolla $ign is on this song." He's never necessary.
4) All seven times I hear Travis Scott's voice on this album, particularly because I know those are the MUSIC songs I'll hear in public for the next three years. "Philly" is probably the new "Fe!n." Best get used to it now.
5) Virtually every feature on here is more distracting than it is enhancing, give or take Future on "Trim" since he and Carti actually complement one another. Previous Carti records have features I love (Uzi on "Shoota," obviously, and I even go to bat for Kid Cudi's verse on "M3tamorphosis") but I was spoiled by the largely uninterrupted monologuing of Whole Lotta Red and now get irked every time someone intrudes on MUSIC. Carti can produce a whole label roster's worth of voices from his own throat. He's the Mel Blanc of rap music. There's no reason why he shouldn't be voicing every character on his own show.
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