Welcome to The Direct Deposit
Hello!
If you are reading this you are most likely a relative/friend/bored follower. Amidst another life crisis, I decided to finally start a Substack to seriously pursue writing about music. This has long been a dream of mine that I’ve only sporadically engaged with. If you look back hard enough online, you might find a Ms. Lauryn Hill or LCD Soundsystem concert review, or you might own a Finnish jazz journal with the odd record review, or an in-hibernation quarterly with a longform profile on a Los Angeles jazz legend. I’ve always wanted to write, but have never made much of an effort to consistently do it. I’m hoping with this newsletter, which will be coming out on a bi-weekly cadence (thus the name), I’ll be able to churn out features, interviews, record reviews etc. It’ll be enough writing to save offline and read on your morning commute.
For this first edition, I’ve got an interview with one of my favorite 2024 discoveries so far, Kalamazoo, MI-based noise rock duo Bronson Arm. I’m hardly ever bashing my head on the punk rock, but I spent too many nights in my young adulthood losing braincells at DIY shows not to be drawn to the duo of Blake Bickel and Garrett Yates, whose debut studio album recalls some of my favorite experiences listening to bands I never bothered to learn the names of in a stranger’s backyard. I’ve also got a expanded breakdown of a Twitter engagement prompt that was floating around recently of several of my “Baker’s Dozen” albums. And lastly, I’ve included several shout-outs to several new releases that I’ve been returning to. Thanks for reading!
An Interview with Bronson Arm
On some nights when he can’t sleep, Blake Bickel will grab a guitar and put on a horror movie. It doesn’t have to be anything highbrow, or even remotely terrifying. Any of the anonymous direct-to-streaming titles littering his TV screen can double as inspiration and sedative and the occasional fake scream or music queue in a chase scene might get recorded on his phone to be referenced later. A sound engineer by trade and gearhead by passion, Bickel is up most nights until 3 in the morning, often working on commissioned projects or souping up his instruments, but makes time to work out ideas for Bronson Arm, the noise rock band he is one half of.
Born from Bickel’s move to Kalamazoo and eventual link up with drummer Garrett Yates, Bronson Arm is built off of the collective years the pair have separately logged in DIY scenes across the country. Having released their debut self-titled full length this past January on Learning Curve Records, the duo have made a compelling statement of intent that welds together various strains of “that good shit” - the sludge of Boris, call-and-response chaos of Lightning Bolt, and apocalyptic defiance of Gnod and Destruction Unit. You could spend the entire runtime dissecting their influences, but you’re better off listening.
Bickel’s baritone guitar carries enough weight to contend for a deadlifting title, and Yates is the rare drummer that can lean into blown-out anarchy without losing sight of a groove. Together, they pummel and pull with the precision of a thrill ride on tracks like “Hard Pass” or “Tedious Company”, which both build tension with distorted fanfare before breaking into a jagged groove fit for a circle pit. Although Bickel insists there are usually no moshers at a Bronson Arm show, the music itself commands release.
While he doesn’t consider the project inherently political, Bickel’s songwriting taps into feelings of alienation stemming from late stage capitalism, with tracks like “His Ilk” blaring out orders with motorik intensity. The album’s striking cover taken by Tim Arrowtop photo feels less subtle, featuring a pair of dogs scavenging the bones of a long-deceased horse in the middle of a barren wasteland. The bones are decaying all around us and the system is failing, and Bronson Arm captures that restlessness to survive.
Tell me a little bit about your musical background and what you've been up to with this Bronson Arm project.
BB: I work as an audio mastering engineer and live here in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is new for me. I moved my family here just about five years ago. I still feel like I'm kind of getting to know the area. But before Michigan, I lived in Seattle for a little over a decade playing in bands, and that's where I started the mastering business. Before that, I was in Missoula, Montana for college and got into audio engineering. I think I technically got into music playing the cello when I was a kid. At the time, I definitely felt that it was not in my wheelhouse. Still though, I enjoyed it. So a few years later, I started learning basic guitar, and it just exploded from there. The first year or two, I mainly stuck to acoustic guitar and just grabbed together a drum set, and then the keyboard, and that is when I truly got into audio engineering.
Does your background in audio engineering or your time spent on the West Coast inform the music you write for Bronson Arm?
BB: I think it absolutely informs how I design my rig, like the tones, textures and dynamics. I approach it very, very methodically. Almost every piece of gear that I use has been modified in some way.
The mastering background has absolutely helped shape where I've taken certain aspects of sound. I'm sure it's made that process easier for me, but harder in others because I just have to kind of stand back and say, “that's exactly what's in my head.”
Were you in a lot of projects in the Kalamazoo area and did they have any influence on the work you are doing now?
BB: Not in this area. I moved here about five years ago, within the same month as Garrett, my drummer. We met pretty soon after and started Bronson Arm. Both of us are definitely very active in the music community here. Outside of audio mastering that I do for friends and clients here in town, I also build pedals.
As Garrett and I got together and decided we wanted to start playing out and around was right when the pandemic hit, which obviously changed a lot of what we could do. A lot of the local music venues stopped functioning and never really picked back up once things reopened.
So, I helped Garrett, who basically runs a DIY venue out of his garage. That's the way he's able to kind of give back and support the community. We’re both also able to use the contacts and relationships that both of us have built over the years outside of this area, bringing in different musicians into town that maybe otherwise would have just passed it over.
You mentioned the pandemic; had you been sitting on some of these songs for a while prior to recording them?
BB: The first five songs we wrote in the months leading up to the pandemic, and the other five songs on the record, we wrote during shutdown. As the shutdown happened, we were like, “well, we can't play shows, let's nerd out on recording.” Even though I'm a mastering engineer and my mastering studio is at my home, I have enough equipment to function as a recording studio as well. We were just doing everything we could to feel that we were being creative and productive.
Are there pieces on this recording that you're exceptionally proud of from an engineering standpoint?
BB: It's definitely the happiest I have been with a project that I've had a hand in basically, from top to bottom. We did have a close friend and colleague of mine, Robert Cheek, mix the record, because I’d recorded it and I knew I was gonna master it. Some people can pull that off, I cannot. Personally, I would go in circles, I'd mix it and be like, “this is what I want”. But I know I would get to mastering it and be like, “maybe I want something different.” So for me, it was really important to have an outside person mix it, so when the mixes came back, It was kind of like, “okay, that's what I'm working with.”
What inspired you to write like these songs from the beginning?
BB: The inspiration comes from a lot of different places, a lot of times. For whatever reason, it's hard for me to pin down why, but I'm really attracted to sounds that are uncomfortable and dissonant, you know? Sounds that kind of have a dark overtone to them. There will be many times where I'm watching a horror or suspense movie and there's like a synth tone in the background of the score, right? That drowning synth tone is something that gets me so excited. All of a sudden, I’ll start hearing drums and guitar parts kick in. So, I take my phone and record just a sample of it, just to keep a mental note of that In my head. A lot of times it's really simple things like that, where it's just a sound that I hear. Sometimes, it's stuff that just spontaneously happens when Garrett and I are playing together. There's two songs on that record where we sat in and had been in a rut where we were trying to write something new and had not landed on anything that felt worth continuing. And then, We were just like, “well, let's just make some sound and noises,” and then 30 minutes later we have what is basically an almost finished song? I mean, not top to bottom but it's like we have the different parts laid out and we’ll know the relative structure. I might still need to work on the lyrics, but the framework of ninety percent of the song will have materialized right there.
So are you a big fan of horror movies?
BB: I mean, I am in a way where if it's late at night like, you know, and I'm still awake. There's definitely times where I want to go to bed at like 10:30, and call it an early night, but I literally can't until like three in the morning. My wife will go to bed, so I'll sit down and pull up whatever streaming platform and just pick any horror movie, and I'll watch it even if it's bad. I'll have them playing constantly, you know, and I'm even necessarily paying 100% attention, I'll just pick something random that I haven't seen before, and pick up a notepad or a guitar and kind of be half watching it and half doing other things. And then, if it's a really good film, I'll put down the notepad or the guitar and get sucked in.
Are there any particular horror movies that had a significant influence on you and the music on this record?
BB: I mean, one of my favorite horror films is the original Phantasm. It combines a little bit of everything that I like. In the past almost decade or so, I really got into hot rods, and building muscle cars. And Phantasm has muscle cars, and it's got rock and roll. There's three characters in there that feature in multiple scenes of them just sitting down and playing music together, just jamming. But I also love the horror aspects because there's this subtle unease. Even in the slower slice of life scenes, you just get the feeling that something's off. And then there's the surreal and sci-fi aspects, which definitely resonate with me. I do a lot of my music because I love that very real sense of unease, the kind that puts you on edge, where you don't know what's going to happen.
Do people tend to express a sense of unease when they see you perform live? Or is it moreso a heady experience?
BB: I think it's a pretty heady kind of thing. I think a lot of people, the first time they see us, curiosity has been sparked. They're fascinated, but they don't know exactly how to respond. There are certain places that we've gone out and played and I start to recognize people that are coming out and people that interact with us on social media, and I see them moving to the songs and getting into it, but, you know, even though we're a heavy, aggressive, and confrontational band, we're not the kind of band that's gonna have like a mosh pit, you know what I mean? There's a couple of songs and definitely a few passages of a lot of our songs where maybe that energy feels right, but there’s never going to be a giant circle pit.
You said confrontational a bit back. Is there a moment on this album that to you stands out as the most confrontational? And I guess I should follow that up with, what do you think you're trying to confront?
BB: I would say the song, “His Ilk.” I usually try to keep a lot of our material lyrically open to interpretation and almost intentionally vague, because I want the listeners to hold their own meaning. Whatever they're gonna get, I want them to create that and hopefully enjoy the process of deciding what it means to them, versus spelling something out. But with “His Ilk”, I would say, without going into too much detail, it is a protest song. Again, it's open to interpretation but I feel that one probably has the most intense lyrics behind it.
With regards to what I am trying to confront, I mean, most of it launches from highly personal stuff. A lot of it is dealing with feelings of struggling in our current system of capitalism, and general culture, a lot of it being financial stuff, a lot of it is dealing with the feelings of being exhausted and overwhelmed and overcoming that. A lot of the lyrics are like reminders to myself.
It's like that reflection in the mirror thing where it's like, I'm talking to the mirror, and shouting at myself to get off my ass and not give up and keep things moving forward.
I absolutely remember in the middle of 2020, I was writing lyrics and having to pause and seriously question what I was putting out there. I remember thinking to myself, “this is really aggressive music. With what's going on, how are people going to respond to this?”
To the outside listeners who aren’t familiar, they might not pick up on it because it's aggressive. There was like a two-month period where I was unsure about what I wanted to be putting out there and then once It took me a minute to get comfortable with it and just be like, “well, It is aggressive. It is confrontational, it is full of very strong emotions”, but I think we've been successful at conveying that it's not about violence, or hatred, or any machismo stuff. I would say there's anger, but not at people, moreso at certain toxic aspects of culture that I get frustrated with.
How do you feel now that the project has come out? And secondly, what do you have planned to do next for Bronson Arm?
BB: When I went to school for visual arts, one thing I realized is that I need to have a vision whether it's a visual art or music thing. Take building a hot rod, for example. You’ll have a vision of what you want to do, and it never turns out exactly so. I’ve learned to really enjoy the process of having a target in mind and working towards it, because half the time you're working towards this visualized goal, you’ll only get halfway there only to decide that actually that's not where this should be going. At which point, I let it stray off course and do its own thing.
It's still fascinating to me how I have incredibly intimate and then detached feelings about a project. Because once it's out, It takes on its own life and I'm looking at it in a different way and almost with fresh eyes or ears. And it's so fun to watch how other people are receiving it, it’s pleasant and refreshing and gives a new life to it. So I'm happy as shit!
We're playing out as much as we can for the next few months just to try to reach new audiences and let them experience our music in person. A record is a representation of the songs, but seeing it performed live in front of you and feeling that is an entirely different thing. We're playing a festival, Caterwaul Fest, which for me is, like, the one festival I want to be part of. Not because of any exposure,but the intention behind the festival, the artists that they curate, it really is like a meeting of the minds. And long-term, we’ve already finished recording the basic tracks for the next full length, and we're gonna get that mixed and all mastered this year. I’m already writing songs for a third record!
My Baker’s Dozen
A few weeks ago, there was a prompt being passed around Music Twitter - what thirteen albums best describe you as a listener? Not necessarily your favorite albums, but the first thirteen that come to mind when thinking of albums that informed who you are. Inspired by a long-running Quietus feature, it prompted a wide range of responses from various corners and scenes. What’s most fun about this exercise is that it is meant to be an ephemeral glance, and that there will be oversights. After typing out mine, I already found at least two, but in the spirit of honesty, they’ll remain omitted. In true content-brain fashion, I’ve staggered these out over the course of the next few editions, and you can read about the first four picks below:
1. Garrett Saracho - En Medio (1973)
If any album deserves to be mentioned by me here, it’s this one. An album recorded over one Memorial Day weekend 1973, released and then quickly buried by a cold and uncaring industry and pure bad timing. Finding En Medio as a college radio DJ in 2014 was the catalyst for some of my proudest accomplishments. Meeting and interviewing Garrett several years later in 2017, finally publishing said interview in 2020, releasing a new record and overseeing the first-ever reissue of En Medio in 2022, and helping produce his first concert in half a century last Summer. All of these things would not have happened had I not picked up a copy of En Medio and set off to learn more about the mystery behind it.
I’ve already written a lot about Garrett and En Medio, and you can read some of that here. I’ll also (hopefully) be writing about En Medio more in the near future : )
2. Joy Division - Closer (1980)
I can’t remember how, but when I was sixteen I got my hands on a copy of the second Joy Division album. It practically manifested itself onto my computer overnight, as if it knew it was time. When I think of my music taste shifting in high school from a lot of classic rock and metal to indie rock and indie-adjacent music, this album plays a central role in that shift. Listening to the bass line on “Colony”, and all of a sudden air guitaring at the park after school wasn’t cool any more. I don’t think I even bothered to seek out Unknown Pleasures, which was being pollinated on every Tumblr post and Urban Outfitters t-shirt rack then, until years later. How could it be better than Closer? (It’s not, but it’s pretty good.)
Not only did Closer play out during the curtain call of adolescence, it’s remained on heavy rotation in the years since. It was also my jumping off point to explore more Post-Punk, Dance, & Dub music, and I still find something new to like about it. Fourteen years ago, I would have told you “Isolation” was the best song, then “Twenty Four Hours” a few years later, followed by “Colony”, then “Heart and Soul”, and now “Decades”. It’ll probably change again.
3. Foliage - III (2018)
I first became aware of Foliage not as a musician, but as a shitposter on the /mu/ music board. I didn’t know he lived less than thirty minutes from me, and I certainly didn’t know he was a teenager at the time I was beginning to DJ on the radio. Fast forward two years, and I got to meet Manuel Joseph Walker for the very first time outside of a DIY venue in Davis, CA. A year later, he’s playing a show at a coffee shop that I booked. Several months after that, he’s emailing me the demos for what would become III, the album that convinced me to leave my unpaid internship at the Teragram Ballroom (an internship that I technically lied my way into, by claiming I was still enrolled in college) and become his manager.
Over the next several years, I helped Foliage play with a slew of talented bands all around Southern California and the West Coast, and helped put out two more records - “take” in 2019 & “Foliage” in 2020 - that I remain proud of. Today, amidst an ever increasing wave of shoegaze revival, “III” still holds up remarkably well. Album opener “It’s Time”, coincidentally the very first song from “III” I ever heard, recently went viral on TikTok, being used in posts from everyone from Netflix to Dr. Pepper to The San Diego Zoo to MAC Cosmetics. That this album that I helped promote and share with the world and book the release party for, (The Moroccan Lounge, 4/21/2018, Ruby Haunt, Harmless, & Twen opened, I DJ’d in between sets and mostly played salsa records) is still finding new listeners doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Manuel and Co. are going on tour this Spring, catch them if they come to your area and ask them about the time we played a virtually empty El Cid on Sunset after getting bumped by a burlesque show.
4. Sneaks - Happy Birthday (2020)
After working with Foliage for a second album, I was eager to work with other artists, but hit a handful of dead ends. I talked to local punks about single rollout strategies in a grocery store, turned down a commencement ceremony invite from a Foliage fan, and tried to delicately explain to a group of friends of friends that their band name wasn’t going to work out when none of them were actually from Southeast Asia. Some time around Summer 2019, I saw an Instagram story from Eva Moolchan, who makes music as Sneaks, that she was looking for new management. After a few DM exchanges and a screening call from a lawyer, I was on board managing one of my favorite bands.
Since hearing the first Sneaks EP in 2016 when Merge Records reissued it and loving the subsequent albums that followed in rapid succession - It’s A Myth in 2017 and Highway Hypnosis in 2019 - I’ve always thought of Eva as a generational artist. So few can express what she can in under twenty minutes, and make it sound so fucking cool. But sadly, whenever people talk about artists who’ve thoughtfully embraced our culture wide pivot to short attention spans, Eva is always missing from those conversations.
Like the Sneaks albums that preceeded it, Happy Birthday is a brilliant cocktail of hip-hop, post punk, spoken word and glitched-out industrial that forces you to leave any pre-conceived notions of song structure and step into Eva’s world. Aside from an EP at the end of 2022, Sneaks has been relatively quiet, but I’ll always be happy to celebrate Happy Birthday as a true masterpiece of “pandemic art”, an album that gives in to every impulse and stretches them out as far as possible.
New and Notable
Eyes, the new album from violinist Vanessa Bedoret, is bristling with tension and tenderness, like acknowledging a warning sign and moving forward regardless.
Brazillian pianist Amaro Freitas has returned with an amazing new record that sounds somewhere between Hermeto Pascoal and Steve Tibbetts
Pianist Jasmine Wood’s Piano Reverb soundtracked a lovely late afternoon walk through Golden Gate Park the other week
I was initally lukewarm on the new DJ Harrison all-covers album, but the more the sun has come out, the more I’ve been returning to his excellent rework of Stevie Wonder’s "Contusion”.
And that’s the first edition of The Direct Deposit. Thanks for reading, and if you liked what you read, hit subscribe for another issue in two weeks!