Flesh PanthersNGC 2632 (Tall Pat/Dumpster Tapes)
Zombotron wrote the new album’s lyrics by drawing inspiration from a list of about 100 words and phrases—”flies,” “city living,” and “linear energy,” to name a few. “There’s an insect theme in the album, but there’s also a mysticism that has to do with the planets and stars and space,” he says. Those themes inspired the album’s title, which is an astronomical-catalog designation for the Beehive Cluster in the constellation Cancer (the ancient Chinese called it “Exhalation of Corpses”). Zombotron hopes NGC 2632 is the first of many albums for Flesh Panthers: “Hopefully I can keep on putting out records and people won’t tell me to shut up.”
Fernandez started working on music under the J Fernandez name a few years ago in order to teach himself home recording. After Jake Acosta of Famous Laughs asked him for something to release on Teen River, Acosta’s cassette label, Fernandez recorded six songs in a couple weeks—the lo-fi Olympic Village came out in February 2012. He didn’t have such a firm grasp on Pro Tools then, but his ear for mood makes up for it. “If you listen to everything from the beginning, I feel like it’s getting better,” he says. “I still have a lot to learn, for sure.”
Spend enough time meandering through Chicago with your ears open, and you’re likely to hear the deluxe sounds of Lil Durk’s “Like Me” pouring out of somebody’s car windows. It’s the second single from the Englewood MC’s full-length studio debut, Remember My Name, and it’s primed for crossover success. Producers Boi-1da and Vinylz rein in drill’s tank-assault force and frigid mood for a track that glides with smooth, sleek menace like a black Jaguar XJ in the night. Durk raps about the jet-set life and the city’s murder rate with a hint of Auto-Tune in his voice, and Chicago R&B hit maker Jeremih sings the hook, lavishing another layer of gold plate on the song with every drawn-out syllable.
Dan Schneider launched psych-folk project the Singleman Affair with just a guitar, sitar, a little percussion, and a four-track recorder. He’s since pulled other musicians into his orbit, and after releasing the band’s second album, 2011’s Silhouettes at Dawn, he gathered his whole band in the studio and tracked the new The End of the Affair with everybody in the same room. “It’s more aggressive, it’s darker, louder, because of recording as a band instead of recording by myself,” says Schneider. “I felt that there was a new energy to everything.”
