If It's Too Loud...

Photo by Alec Pugliese For their upcoming album, Washington DC's Ekko Astral get political... in a way that only they can. According to the press release, the beltway is burning , "... plays out like a vignette, with Ekko Astral beckoning listeners into their fictionalized version of The Beltway (the area within I-495), in which Adam Sandler is a god-president and the DMV has become a demilitarized zone, a wasteland run by butt rockers and Soundcloud rappers." The first single, "lil xan goes to washington," is a burst of post-punk chaos with an almost whimsical sound. I think this would fit into the "laugh so you don't scream" side of things, and the song is one of the most fun and party ready political anthems we've heard in the past year. It's weird calling this song fun, but it could be exactly what you need right now. The aggression does come bursting out in a blast of noise towards the end, giving the song an LCD Soundsystem meets Soni...

Photo by Murphy Gerrasch Washington DC's Ekko Astral have a powerhouse of a new single out. The band is considered punk, but "horseglue" pushes the boundaries of that genre. It's a two minute and fifteen second burst of chaos and noise. Only the very bare minimum of song structure is observed here, as it goes completely off the hinges very quickly. The song swirls around the listener with a sense of malice, in an oddly hypnotic way. "horseglue" is most certainly not for everyone, but if it's for you, you're going to find it glorious. We've been fans of Ekko Astral for a while, but a song like "horseglue" is sure to make us even more obsessed.  Jael Holzman (vocals/bass) says of the band's latest single: "'horseglue' is a screeching call for moral clarity. Anything short of courage against the rise of The New Authoritaria is complicity. It is important to focus on how integral the Messengers really are, and that some of ...

Photo by John Lee One thing I'll always listen to is any artist that comes out of the D.C. punk scene. The latest we've discovered is Ekko Astral. They take the sound of modern artists that combine dance and pop into punk like Mannequin Pussy and Model/Actriz, but through a D.C. lens. Just when you think you know what their latest single, "baethoven," is going to sound like, it cranks everything up multiple notches and bursts into fantastically noisy gang vocals. Ekko Astral are part of the newfangled punk movement that is as intense as possible while still having a sense of fun and enjoyment. And we're here for it. Ekko Astral say of their new single and video: "The moral of the song is in the lyrics: "There's nothing endless, there's no Frank Ocean / you should let me your classic love / I'll be your bae-thoven." The point is, there's nothing as perfectly clean and pristine as a Frank Ocean song in this world right now but there is...