Remember AIDS Wolf? In their heyday (’06) these Canadians were the foremost inheritors of the Arab on Radar sound — really high quality noise rock (also in the vein of An Albatross, Melt Banana.) Well, this new spinoff of AIDS Wolf – Drainolith – aka guitarist Alex Moskos, is a departure to say the least. In comparison, AIDS Wolf was a completely obvious art-school jaunt for the early 2000s climate. Drainolith is a headscratcher. He is hard to place in today’s scenes– this record I’m discussing (which is called Fighting!) is on John Elliott of Emeralds’s label Spectrum Spools, and yet Moskos only flirts with synths on this record – it certainly isn’t ecstatic, cosmic, kosmische, whatever. In fact, as a part of Elliott’s camp it’s surprisingly unsettling, confrontational. And for a confrontational record, it’s supremely lazy… each song being recorded in a one-shot take, the album comes off as pretty bare (obviously, I’m into it — I love the laziness). To compare it to a recent record it’s kinda like Nate Young’s Stay Asleep Regression Vol. 2, but it’s so much more. It might even be more perverse than Nate Young.

It’s really just nauseating, listening to Moskos slurring words over thin guitar noodling and staggering synth lines. That’s all this record is, but it’s so good.

Out now on LP and digital download on Spectrum Spools. Stream preview below the video.