Our Mother The Mountain

Listening Sessions

Ginger Nuts

Single Review: "Velvet Earthquake" by Neon Raccoon Cult Neon Raccoon Cult has always straddled the line between genius and total chaos—and with their latest single Velvet Earthquake, they've jackknifed right through it. The track kicks off with a kazoo solo (bold) layered over what sounds like a chorus of robotic frogs chanting in Morse code. And just when you think you've figured out what's happening, the tempo triples and you're launched into a wall of sound that feels like your brain is doing cartwheels in a glitter storm. Frontwoman Zyn Vox delivers lines like, “Your love is a geological incident / tectonic in my chestplate” with such conviction that you stop questioning the metaphor and start dancing. Is it dance-punk? Is it techno-opera? Does genre even matter anymore? Whatever it is, Velvet Earthquake doesn’t ask for your approval—it yanks you into a sweaty mosh pit of interdimensional emotions and dares you to leave unchanged. Want to give this band a ridiculous origin story next? Or should we write the review from the perspective of a time traveler?

Neon Raccoon Cult

Cosmic Vortex blasts onto the music scene with a stellar mix of spacey synth-pop and heavy psychedelic rock 🚀🎸. Originating from the mysterious planet Nebulon-9 (or maybe just Brooklyn), this trio creates cosmic soundscapes that transport you lightyears away from reality 🌠✨. Their debut album, Galactic Daydreams, is a vibrant journey full of shimmering synths, pulsating beats, and electrifying guitar solos ⚡🎶. Lead singer Luna Starfire’s dreamy vocals 🌙✨ float effortlessly over the hypnotic rhythms, making every track feel like a trip through a starry nebula. Known for their electrifying live shows featuring laser lights and zero-gravity dance moves 💃🕺, Cosmic Vortex is quickly gaining fans who crave music that’s out of this world 🌍➡️🌌. Standout tracks: “Nebula Nights” 🌃 “Orbiting Hearts” 💫❤️ “Supernova Serenade” 🌟🎤

don k

NEON MEAT ANGEL isn’t a band—it’s an explosion in a kawaii data center. This Tokyo-based hyperpop duo, made up of AI vocaloid wrangler Noxii.exe and ex-J-pop dropout Miki Cyanide, has dropped one of the most unhinged, gloriously chaotic mixtapes of the year: ✨💔404GODMODE💔✨. Clocking in at a frantic 19 minutes for 12 tracks, this debut is a pixelated sugar rush of distorted bass, glitched-out vocals, and absurdly catchy hooks about love, doomscrolling, and finding transcendence in a broken vending machine. Opener “U Up? (Skrrt Skrrt Nihilism)” sets the tone immediately with pitched-up screams layered over harpsichord trap beats and lyrics like “kiss me in the Wi-Fi void.” Standouts include “RAM Romance.exe,” which samples a Nokia ringtone before detonating into a breakcore chorus, and “Crytyping @ 2am,” a strangely sincere ballad made entirely of auto-tuned Google Translate voices over soft synth pads and the ambient sound of someone sobbing into a mechanical keyboard. Some might call it a mess, and they wouldn’t be wrong. But in the fractured world of post-genre hyperpop, NEON MEAT ANGEL thrives in overstimulation. Every track is a meme waiting to happen, a TikTok edit in embryo. Their visuals—a mix of cyberpunk Hello Kitty aesthetics and Y2K MySpace horrorcore—only add to the experience. Not everyone will survive this sonic rollercoaster, but for those who do, ✨💔404GODMODE💔✨ is a glorious wreck you’ll want to crash into again and again.

404godmode

From the wind-blasted fjords of eastern Iceland comes Frostgnaw, a five-piece band that blends bleak atmospheres, primal aggression, and an unhealthy obsession with ancient Norse whale burial rites. Their sophomore effort, Howl of the Hollow Ice, is both a terrifying sonic glacier and a surprisingly introspective meditation on loneliness, extinction, and melting permafrost. Led by frontman Hrafnulf Sigurdsson—who allegedly only communicates in Old Norse and lives in a cave—Frostgnaw fuses traditional black metal elements with ambient drone and field recordings of calving icebergs and screaming arctic foxes. The opening track, “Rime-Wolf’s Dirge,” sounds like a ritual sacrifice held during a blizzard. It's followed by “Glacier Maw,” a ten-minute epic featuring alternating blast beats and throat singing that builds to an avalanche of distorted tremolo fury. The band’s self-created subgenre, “Glaciercore,” is more than a gimmick—it’s a frigid aesthetic. Songs are often recorded live inside abandoned fish-packing facilities, with microphones dipped in melted snow for “tonal purity.” Whether that adds anything is up for debate, but the result is undeniably cold, raw, and occasionally haunting. Still, Howl of the Hollow Ice isn’t perfect. Some tracks blur together like whiteout conditions, and the 14-minute closer “Death Beneath the Tundra Fog” might test even the most seasoned kvlt metalhead’s patience. But when Frostgnaw hits their stride, like on “Frozen Blood Chant,” they conjure something brutally beautiful—a primal scream echoing through a dying glacier. They’re not reinventing black metal, but they’re definitely making it colder.

Frostgnaw

Emerging from the misty outskirts of Portland’s underground music scene, Crimson Lemur have clawed their way into indie consciousness with their debut album, Echoes from the Treehouse — a dreamy, bizarre, and strangely poignant collection of synth-folk lullabies that sound like they were recorded in a haunted co-op greenhouse. Fronted by ex-zoologist turned theremin enthusiast Jules McCready, Crimson Lemur blends analog synths, autoharp, and field recordings of endangered birds to create a lush soundscape that feels like Fleet Foxes got lost in a Tron reboot. Tracks like “Photosynthesize Me” and “Quantum Ferns” layer soft harmonies over pulsing bass lines, while the lead single “Marsupial Regret” is already gaining traction on obscure Lithuanian radio stations. There’s something undeniably weird yet hypnotic about their refusal to follow traditional song structure—most tracks end abruptly or morph into ambient noise for minutes on end. And yet, the entire album feels oddly cohesive, like a fever dream you didn’t want to wake up from. Live, they’re even stranger. Their recent show at the Crystal Dolphin Dive Bar included interpretive dance by a man in a lemur suit and a five-minute flute solo played through a gas mask. Crimson Lemur might not be for everyone, but for those craving something experimental, organic, and slightly deranged, Echoes from the Treehouse is the perfect gateway drug.

Crimson Lemur

Live Review: Neon Raccoon Cult at The Howling Lantern, Camden If you didn’t leave The Howling Lantern with glitter in your teeth and existential questions in your heart, were you even at the Neon Raccoon Cult show? Taking the stage at precisely 9:09 p.m. (because “it’s the most symmetrical minute,” according to frontwoman Zyn Vox), the band launched straight into Velvet Earthquake with a pyro display that singed at least three eyebrows and possibly a few parallel dimensions. Zyn prowled the stage in a mirrorball cloak, whisper-screaming lyrics into a microphone shaped like a taxidermied raven. Guitarist Noodle Panic shredded through a solo using a broken violin bow and what may have been a baguette. The bass vibrated so hard it allegedly reset two pacemakers in the front row. Midway through the set, the band paused for a ritualistic group yodel and handed out tiny jars labeled “Emotion Sludge” to the crowd. One fan fainted. Another proposed. It was, as they say, an evening. By the encore (Your Aura Is a Crime Scene), even the bartenders had abandoned their posts to dance like they were being exorcised. Neon Raccoon Cult didn’t just play a gig. They summoned an experience. And Camden may never recover.

Neon Raccoon Cult

Live Review: Turbo Possum at The Smelted Anvil, Manchester 🔥🎸🦝 If chaos had a soundtrack, it would be Turbo Possum. The Smelted Anvil was already at capacity when the band descended—literally, via zipline—from the ceiling in matching fluorescent jumpsuits. They opened with "Rustpunk Rhapsody" and didn’t slow down for the next 74 minutes of pure, high-octane, genre-bending bedlam 💥. Lead singer Riff Sizzle screamed into a microphone taped to a garden trowel, while drummer Bangette McThump unleashed a solo so intense the fire alarm briefly considered quitting. 🎤🥁 Audience members were pelted with confetti, marshmallows, and (we think?) motivational fortune cookies. One unlucky fan got crowd-surfed directly into the lighting rig. He said it was “a spiritual experience.” By the final encore—“We’re Not From This Ecozone”—Turbo Possum had turned the venue into a post-apocalyptic sock hop meets alien invasion. 🌍👽🕺 We laughed. We screamed. We possibly evolved. 10/10 would get possum-punked again.

Turbo Possum

Album Review: "Tinfoil Swan Dive" by Echo Flamingo 🎤🦩💿 Echo Flamingo’s debut album Tinfoil Swan Dive doesn’t just push the envelope—it folds it into an origami crane and sets it on fire under a disco ball. From the first track, “Cephalopod Promenade”, it’s clear this electro-glam quintet has no interest in staying grounded. Synth lines ripple like electric jellyfish, while lead vocalist Dasha Prism delivers lyrics like “Your love is static cling in the laundromat of my soul” with unnerving sincerity. 🔥👗 The album ricochets between the glittery chaos of “Karaoke from Mars” and the haunting stillness of “Echoes in a Lava Lamp”, a song that allegedly caused a minor blackout during its first radio play. 🪩🫠 There’s even a surprise folk-trap track, “Banjo in Zero Gravity”, which shouldn’t work—but somehow absolutely does. Banjo drop included. 🎶🪕 Closing with the breathtaking 8-minute opus “We All Drown in Glitter Eventually”, Echo Flamingo cements themselves as the space opera heartthrobs we didn’t know we needed. Verdict: bold, unhinged, transcendently sparkly. Don’t listen. Ascend.

Echo Flamingo

Album Review: “Chrono Noodle” by The Spicy Stopwatch Collective ⏱️🍜🔥 Few albums have left me this confused, emotionally detached, and vaguely embarrassed to own ears. Chrono Noodle is marketed as a “genre-defying time cuisine symphony,” but what it delivers sounds more like a group of sous-chefs attacking a microwave with synthesizers. The opening track, “Boil Me Softly”, sets the tone with off-tempo xylophone hits, whale calls, and what might be someone crying in a cupboard. That’s the highlight. Lead vocalist Glib Marmoset attempts to channel cosmic poetry but ends up sounding like an animatronic fortune cookie. Lyrical gems like “You steamed my timeline with your spicy regret” left me wondering if it was a breakup anthem or a noodle ad gone rogue. Production-wise, it’s chaotic. One song fades out mid-chorus into a voicemail from someone's grandma. Another loops the sound of a slinky going down stairs for two full minutes. Avant-garde? Maybe. Listenable? Barely. By the time the final track, “Miso Existential Crisis”, sluggishly wraps things up with a tuba solo and a spoken-word rant about soup-based metaphysics, you'll either be screaming into the void or reaching for earplugs shaped like tiny clocks (yes, that’s part of the deluxe vinyl package). Chrono Noodle doesn’t push boundaries—it dissolves them into noise soup and serves it lukewarm.

Spicy Stopwatch Collective

Music Review: 'Lunar Hearts' by The Static Reverie After a two-year hiatus spent "finding the perfect frequency in the Norwegian fjords," The Static Reverie crash back onto the scene with Lunar Hearts, a dream-pop fever dream wrapped in analog synth and reverb-soaked guitar. The track opens with shimmering pads that sound like they were stolen straight from a satellite's daydream, before launching into a bassline so smooth it practically levitates. Lead singer Cass Solaris croons like a radio signal from another galaxy, painting cryptic verses about love, loss, and quantum entanglement. Is it deep? Who knows. Is it catchy? Absolutely. 'Lunar Hearts' might just be the summer anthem for those of us who stare at the stars and wonder what genre the moon listens to. Spoiler: it’s definitely this.

Static Reverie