Quick-fire Roundup - July 2025
Short reviews for some of our favorite releases of the past month.
Quick-fire Roundup is our chance to highlight a few of the albums we’ve been digging from the past month(s) that we may not have had the time or energy to pump out full essays for. These releases nevertheless deserve a gold star and a spot on the podium.
Rick White - Again
38:01 // June 13th, 2025 // Blue Fog Recordings
Rick White shouldn't need much of an introduction, but even 90s indie heads who hold Love Tara in high esteem may be unaware that Rick White never stopped writing and recording music after Eric's Trip bit the dust. His bandcamp page is currently sitting at a staggering 59 releases, including full-lengths from his various bands and solo projects, archival demos, and even cover albums of golden hits from each decade ranging from the 50s to the 90s. His prolific output may very well be a contributing factor to his continued obscurity, for one look at his discography would surely be enough to induce choice paralysis and a quick retreat for the uninitiated. He is CanCon's best-kept secret, perhaps by design. So where do you start?
Well, you can start right here. Again, the title of Rick White's newest solo endeavor is a self-aware reiteration of the ideas that Rick has been playing with ever since he recorded his first high school punk band in '87. You see, despite his tools evolving from 4-track cassette to computerized home studio and his ear for melody growing ever the wiser, Rick White has never really changed his approach to songwriting; he has maintained an unwavering commitment to DIY simplicity, using the least amount of chords possible to craft psychedelic rock and grungy punk bangers, and somehow he pulls it off every damn time. This may indeed be Rick White doing what he does best for the 59th time, but there is a certain comfort that comes from knowing what to expect from a Rick White project and feeling fully baptized by the experience nevertheless. His sound is timeless, brimming with his unique personality, and Again is another superb addition to a growing catalog that never grows old. (7.0/10)
- Damon Reyes
Open Mike Eagle - Neighborhood Gods Unlimited
38:08 // July 11th, 2025 // Auto Reverse Records
Approximately 20 years into a hip-hop career that’s simmered and steamed without ever setting the kettle off, Open Mike Eagle’s world-weariness is more feature than bug. The self-coined “art rapper” has reveled in lethargy following the release of 2020’s Anime, Trauma, & Divorce, and Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is his most cohesive and engaging effort since that pivot point, lassoing loose thoughts on artistic independence, cultural baggage, and mental health into a streamlined pseudo-narrative that intoxicatingly flits between crushing reality and trippy dream logic.
Eagle’s skills as a storyteller reach discography highs by toying with perspective—on the K-NITE-produced standouts “woke up knowing everything (opening theme)” and “my co-worker clark kent’s secret black box,” he subverts the mania of paranoid conspiracy theorists by lifting the veil on schemes as large as rabid jingoism and as small as seeking a sustainable work/life balance. “ok but im the phone screen” autobiographically taps into his sapped creative drive in the aftermath of dropping his cell in the street; “me and Aquil stealing stuff from work” likewise dredges humor in flashback from the depths of retail job hell. The record’s middle run largely appeases any nagging doubts that making rap on his own terms has been an unfulfilling venture—its final leg almost contests the opposite, receding into the creakiest and most stifled crevices of Mike’s brain with sparse, alien instrumentals to match.
Neighborhood Gods Unlimited professes this tug-of-war not as an oppressive mechanism—therapy’s worked its due there—but as the inherent byproduct of reclaiming your humanity in a world governed more by chaos than cover-up. The beats’ expedited, warbled, and tranquilized energy reflect its MC’s persistent rainclouds while his commentary feels sharply refined by recent forays into talk radio via Twitch et al. Yesterday’s stone cold idiots won’t be won over so quickly by the relative amorphousness within, but NGU is made by and for the uncs, the socially conscious, and the mental spirallers, all of whom at this point might as well consider themselves one and the same. (8.0/10)
- Zack Lorenzen
Deliquesce - Saviour / Enslaver
41:25 // July 25th, 2025 // Lacerated Enemy Records / Iron Fortress Records / BTK Recordings
Listeners well-disposed to the verbose ‘technical brutal death metal’ tag have been offered quite the multi-course menu in 2025. Putridity and Kakothanasy may currently be vying for this year’s BDM crown, but Australian outfit Deliquesce aren’t far behind. While their debut, Cursed With Malevolence, was ostensibly rooted in sempiternal 90s brutality and thus more revealing of guitarist Adrian Cappelletti’s involvement with Disentomb, this sophomore full-length sees the band carve out their own niche in the ever-expanding BDSU (Brutal Death Sonic Universe™). Employing the services of alleged devil worshiper Lyle Cooper – a name that makes me grasp at any cheap excuse in the playbook to hear him drum – they’re near-jazzing away at the strings on Saviour / Enslaver, treating us lowly brutech addicts to that unpredictability high we’ve been chasing since the first free-sample fix.
Structurally speaking, Deliquesce are weaving a richly textured high-low carpet here, constantly switching tempo and cadence to keep the listener engaged and attentive. At the same time, they successfully avoid stepping into the slam bear trap, instead opting for more technical low- to mid-tempo grooves accompanied by ever-so-tweedly fretboard taps and the occasional pinch harmonic – and, all the more impressively, never sounding formulaic. The slowdowns rarely happen when you’d expect them to, and the techniques employed to shake things up are manifold. It’s exactly this variety, this frequently renewed promise of something new and fresh lurking just around the corner, that makes this album such an engrossing listen. The total runtime is a tad longer than what BDM fiends have been conditioned to expect, and indeed it seems like it would have been easy to condense the material further to shave off ten minutes, but no section stands out as innately skippable, much less dull.
Looking for faults in this offering is an exhausting task, but I suspect that the vocals might be a point of division. For the most part, they’re not your typical burpy-gurgle style and often lean more toward core shouts (think DiSalvo with a deeper timbre), which might deter some hardliners. I thought they meshed with the instrumentals perfectly and found them to be a welcome shift from the almost stigmatic ‘same old story’ type beat commonly associated with DM growls. Plus, there’s plenty of post-prod magic at play, like phasers and precisely dosed reverb, helping steer clear of any monotony that might otherwise grate on your ears.
Don’t add this to your backlog. If you dig brutal tech, check this stat, because there’s a good chance it’ll land in your top 10 of the year. (7.5/10)
- Nex
glittr - eastern light
19:12 // July 25th, 2025 // Broken Levee
Some albums require many words, other albums don't. glittr's debut eastern light is a perfect little summer record: it's nineteen minutes long, features both sparkly ambient pieces and floaty house songs, and does not beg for extended discussion. Its most memorable cut is the Dreamweaver-meets-Nurtureisms of “north star”, featuring sunbreather's ethereal vocals guiding a punchy beat to its tiny moment of euphoria. Similarly, “thought i knew you better” closes the album on a high note, blending piano-aided ambience with increasingly entrancing textures. eastern light feels small, but might just be this summer's most replayable collection of sheer bliss. If this is how half of Ruby Haunt spends his time off the prolific dream pop outfit, I'm hoping for at least a few more summer breaks. (7.5/10)
- jesper
Sa Pa - Ambeesh
56:12 // July 21st, 2025 // Short Span
Dub techno is traditionally the realm of all things aqueous with its wash of reverb, squelching textures and echoing sonar-esque accents, but this timely collection of unreleased material reaffirms Sa Pa's unique selling point: the man's tunes sound like they were made a mile underground, in deep communion with some obscure earth deity. Intense and often too claustrophobic for comfort, his palette scratches its way through one tactile set of imaginations after another. Midway highlight "Nonspiration" could practically be written from the perspective of a subterranean dirt trickle, precipitated under stray footsteps that unknowingly disturb an ancient cavern, while "Blue" and the aptly-named "EOALH (Pressure Rhythm)" are equal parts peace and panic, the kind of thing that makes me fantasise about some alternative therapy exercise that involves being buried alive with an oxygen mask for however many hours as a means of confronting severe isolation or powerlessness and, y'know, taking them on the chin.
If this sounds less than pleasant, then Sa Pa has never sat on the casual or everyday end of the spectrum, but like all his best stuff, these oppressive textures are underpinned by a deep sensitivity to the timbres and breathing rates of nature , and the effect is overall cleansing. Ambeesh doesn't quite cohere as a full album experience (unsurprising given that these tracks were made disparately over a five-year time span), but it does pack enough winners to deserve careful sampling and reassembly from anyone with an ear to such things.
- Hugh Puddle
You Must Believe In Spring - S/T EP
18:44 // July 4th, 2025 // Summer Darling Tapes
You Must Believe In Spring is a new shoegaze band from Vancouver, B.C. Born from the local hardcore scene (and boasting members of A Mourning Star, Unmoved, and Second Nature, amongst others), yet inspired by the likes of Slowdive and Codeine, You Must Believe In Spring has become a vessel for escape from the mosh pit and into the warm embrace of slower and moodier textures. That doesn't mean you can't still hear the group's hardcore influence seeping through, particularly in the way they layer three guitars and a rocket-ship snare (drenched in reverb, of course) into a wall of sound that is sometimes serene and sometimes absolutely crushing. While a majority of the EP floats by in ethereal slumber, the crux comes in the form of third song "Some Have Died For Love", which quite literally snaps in half at the midpoint like a steel beam crashing into a river in slow motion. It's beautiful, it's tragic, and it's reason enough to give this whole EP a whirl. Overall a promising debut with fantastic production value, and a breath of fresh air in a locality that is sorely lacking in shoegazers and yearners alike.
- Damon Reyes
That Deliquesce record rules so far. also “Brutal Death Sonic Universe” is such a great term lmao.