Moin's "You Never End", "Belly Up" & West Coast Tour: Mar 28 - Apr 1

The London-based label AD 93 continues down their strikingly hypermodern path, releasing groundbreaking and genre-elusive albums from feeo, James K, YHWH Nailgun, Joanne Robertson, Olan Monk’s album with guest appearances by 4AD artist Maria Somerville, neoclassical from Wojciech Rusin, and two singular post-rock albums by Moin heard on "You Never End", and the "Belly Up" EP. Arriving stateside for a brief west coast tour this spring, including a date at Seattle's Vera Project, Moin are an extension of the work of Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead, who composed notable electronic, rhythmic, post-rock concrete albums for the Blackest Ever Black label as Raime. Their debut full length,"Quarter Turns Over A Living Line" rated on many 2012 albums of the year lists, including The Wire, garnering praise and attention from both the electronic music and avant-rock communities, a cross-genre corner which they explored in discussion with The Quietus, "Intricate Shadows: An Interview with Raime".

For Moin, Halstead and Andrews are joined by percussionist and drummer Valentina Magaletti, who's work has graced collaborations as varied as punk legends Wire, with her ongoing post-rock ensemble, Vanishing Twin, experimental sounds from Tomaga, and contributed percussion to works by Nicolas Jaar, Mica Levi, Bat for Lashes, and last year's exquisite album from Cate Le Bon. Speaking with The Wire on working within the parameters of everything from free jazz improv to dreampop to gamelan, the prolific London-based drummer discusses keeping her options open, "Dada Don't". The Guardian best assesses the meeting of their skills and the assembly of works that are seemingly birthed from collage and construction, as though "Moin Take a Craft Knife to 90s Indie", in the band's creation of sinewy post-punk grooves with layers of vocals, samples and drums. The Quietus digs into the components of this sound, finding that it is a reassembly of fresher, more sinewy grooves than those heard from Raime, while continuing to channel riffs and textures familiar from the duo. The uncanny addition of chopped-and-screwed-style vocal samples sit alongside raw concrete noise, sounds of laughter and breaking glass, with Magaletti's drums featuring prominently in the mix, collaged into careful and sparse constructions of reduction and dynamic minimalism.

Nothing, Full Body 2, Cryogeyser and Violent Magic Orchestra US Tour: Feb 27 - Apr 4 | Machine Girl's "PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X" and US Tour with Sextile: Feb 28 - Apr 9

The sound of Nothing, produced by the Philadelphia noiserock, metal, shoegaze, hybrid band at the forefront of the mass assimilation of genres into metal seen in the mid-2010s was heard on the boldly confident debut full length, "Guilty Of Everything". Over the course of the following four albums on Relapse Records and their live tours of bewildering volumes and intensity, "Nothing Establish that they are Here to Knock You Over", arriving at this year's "A Short History Of Decay" for the label Run for Cover. Yet it is their collaboration with grindcore labelmates Full Of Hell on the collaborative album "When No Birds Sang" that most fully epitomizes this mangling of genre distinctions into hypermodern forms. Touring this spring with fellow Philadelphia-based shoegaze bliss-noise outfit Full Body 2, Nothing are ideally positioned for a night at Seattle's The Crocodile in the converging spaces between their melodic noise, the dream pop of Cryogeyser, and the bewildering assault of the "Death Rave" from Violent Magic Orchestra. The groundwork for VMO's endeavor in total annihilation of genre distinctions was established by Yellow Swans artist Pete Swanson, and his unhinged explorations in deconstructed club music and hard techno, heard on albums like "Punk Authority". Swanson acts as a sonic ringleader and producer for the Osaka gabber-metal-techno four piece, drawing members from Vampillia and light engineer Kezzardrix into what the band describes as, "It's an art project of incomplete harmony of techno, black metal, industrial, noise, and emitting light".

Concurrently on tour across the United States, a very different set of genre hybrids can be heard in the starkly minimal, angular, punkish electronic dance pop showcased by The Guardian in, "‘The Body was the Drums, the Brain was the Synthesiser’: Darkwave, the Gothic Genre Lighting up Pop". Sextile move closely around these same affinities, with assertively electro-punk variables of their own, detailed by Louder Than War in their interview, "Sextile: Yes, Please". These variables share an additional razor-sharp electronic and rhythmic edge with Sacred Bones labelmates The Soft Moon and Blanck Mass, the electro-pop of Pixel Grip, and the defiant electro-industrial noise of fellow Los Angeles duo, Youth Code. Their tour brings them together with the "PsychoWarrior: MG Ultra X" hyperactive neon-lit cyberpunk sounds of Machine Girl. Discussing their latest, which has been referred to as "obsessive, paranoid anthems for the end of world", the duo spoke which Revolver, "Machine Girl on Spitting Blood, Mashing Genres and Transcending Self", in which they discuss the confluence of influences that meet in their sound, where Lightning Bolt, Boredoms, Dillinger Escape Plan and references to the significant contribution of late 1990s British electronic music, Warp Records and Aphex Twin, all play a significant role. Together the two acts will make for a night of electro-punk and frenetic mutations of breakcore, techno, post-hardcore and drum and bass at Seattle's Showbox Sodo.

"Trump vies for Bush’s Crown for Worst Foreign Policy Decision in US History" | The Guardian

David Smith, The Guardian's Washington DC bureau chief writes on the US president upending half a century of foreign policy with another attempt at Middle Eastern regime change, "Trump vies for Bush’s Crown for Worst Foreign Policy Decision in US History". He writes, "George Bush Jr. dragged the US into a tragic war in Iraq in 2003 that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars and was recently crowned by Council on Foreign Relations thinktank as the worst foreign policy decision in US history. The avaricious Trump seems determined to seize that title for himself with another act of Middle Eastern regime change. At least Bush tried to make a case to justify his invasion - mendacious as it was - see NPR's "Orchestrated Deception by Bush on Iraq" for reference - and tried to convince the UN of its merits. Trump did not even bother. He amassed a huge “armada” in the Middle East with little explanation to Congress or the public. In "Trump’s Ever-Changing Rationale for War on Iran", he did not mention Iran until more than an hour into last month’s State of the Union address. Finally, when the bombs were already falling, he tried to offer a rationale in his social media video. The Iranian regime, he said, are “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people” whose menacing activities “directly endanger” the US and its allies. Trump ran through the history of the Iran hostage crisis, the Marine barracks bombing, the attack on the USS Cole and Iran’s hand in killing and maiming US troops in Iraq. “It’s been mass terror, and we’re not going to put up with it any longer,” he said."

Both the New York Times and NPR chronicle the unsupported and exaggerated claims in the president's speech announcing the attack on Iran, "Fact-Checking Trump’s Justifications for Attacking Iran". But none of that answers a simple question: why now? David Smith continues, "Trump went on to reference Iranian proxy groups “that have soaked the earth with blood and guts” and cite Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel, saying: “Iran is the world’s No 1 state sponsor of terror and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested. Trump underlined the US policy that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and glided past his own past claim that last June’s attack had “obliterated” its program, contending that the US wanted to make a deal but Tehran refused. “They rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore,” he said. The president said the US had undertaken “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests” - an ominous sign that Washington could be in for the long haul. The chair-for-life of the new Board of Peace promised to “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy”. Then came an unexpected admission: “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war, but we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.” Here was Trump, the reality TV president, understanding how desperate the optics will look if American service members return home in body bags, their lives sacrificed for a cause that the public little understands and still less believes in." Making for only the most recent, and possibly most ill-conceived chapter in, "From Bush Sr to Trump: The Risks, Lessons and Legacy of US Interference in the Middle East".