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Acoustic Punk Road Scholar Duane Regretzky Swings Hard at AI Art on Blistering Single “Cannibal Integrity”

Eric Alper
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Acoustic Punk Road Scholar Duane Regretzky Swings Hard at AI Art on Blistering Single “Cannibal Integrity”

‘Mind Palace,’ the new album from acoustic punk road scholar Duane Regretzky, is out now on High End Denim Records, and it arrives with 14 tracks of vaudevillian mania, punk anthems, heartfelt protest songs, and acoustic ballads that occasionally explode into skate punk or power metal riffage without a moment’s warning.

Second single “Cannibal Integrity” lands as one of the record’s sharpest moments, a full-throttle dive into the threat of generative AI art. Regretzky doesn’t hedge. “Fuck generative AI. Don’t use it to make art. It’s a pointless drain on our planet’s finite resources. It looks dumb and homogenized. It steals real life income from human artists.” That directness runs through everything he does, and it’s a large part of what makes him so compelling.

‘Mind Palace’ is the clearest expression yet of Regretzky’s range and versatility. The record free falls through culinary calamities and full-band punk anthems with equal comfort, held together by sincere, thoughtful songwriting that sits comfortably alongside the likes of Jeff Rosenstock and SNFU. It’s a wild, funny, occasionally furious record from an artist who earns every bit of the chaos he creates.

Progressive Metal Project Primaluce Deliver Their Most Fully Realized Album Yet With ‘Way Of Perfection’

Eric Alper
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Progressive Metal Project Primaluce Deliver Their Most Fully Realized Album Yet With ‘Way Of Perfection’

‘Way Of Perfection,’ the new album from progressive metal project Primaluce, is out now via Primaluce Records, and it marks a genuine leap forward for a project that has been building toward this moment for over a decade.

Recorded at Colosseum Sound Factory in Rankweil, Austria and written by Stefano Primaluce, the album is the project’s first fully vocal record, a distinction that immediately expands its emotional range. The foundation is classic progressive metal, rooted in structure and discipline, but ‘Way Of Perfection’ consistently reaches beyond the genre’s usual borders without losing its sense of weight or direction.

The album’s central tension is compelling: control versus release, precision versus emotion, melodic intensity balanced against cinematic atmosphere. Rather than chasing technical excess, Primaluce drives the record forward through motion, contrast, and transformation. It rewards full-album listening in a way that feels increasingly rare.

Two music videos frame the album’s range well. Opener “The Wind Remains” establishes scale and atmosphere immediately, while “Running Out of Yesterday” locks into momentum and reflection, reinforcing the record’s central themes of growth and acceptance. Both are streaming now.

‘Way Of Perfection’ follows 2025’s ‘Dark Mirrors,’ which Aardschok Magazine featured as one of the best rock and metal albums of that year. Where ‘Dark Mirrors’ explored fractured identity and inner conflict, this new record pushes the narrative toward acceptance and evolution. It’s a continuation with purpose, expanding Primaluce’s emotional scope across 12 tracks and nearly every corner of the progressive metal spectrum.

Primaluce is Stefano Primaluce on rhythm guitars, keyboards, backing vocals, and programming, Andrea Rocchi on lead and acoustic guitars, Marco Adami on bass, Michele Avella on drums, and Falco on vocals.

‘Way Of Perfection’ Tracklist:

  1. The Wind Remains
  2. Back Into the Blue
  3. The Turning of the Circle
  4. Countdown at Dawn
  5. Running Out of Yesterday
  6. Heart of the Moment
  7. When the Light Returns
  8. Stand in My Name
  9. Black Static Halo
  10. Echoes of Tomorrow
  11. In the Tides of Time
  12. Where the Water Meets the Stone

Indie Rocker Andy Jans-Brown Returns With Cinematic Fifth Album ‘Airport Departure Lounge’

Eric Alper
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Indie Rocker Andy Jans-Brown Returns With Cinematic Fifth Album ‘Airport Departure Lounge’

Andy Jans-Brown’s fifth studio album ‘Airport Departure Lounge’ is out now, and it’s the most ambitious and emotionally expansive record of his career.

Built around the image of a departure lounge as both literal setting and existential metaphor, the album moves through broken dreams, heartbreak, grief, surveillance culture, democratic decline, and the strange purgatory of modern life where time stretches and accelerates simultaneously. It’s a meditation on suspension, on standing at the edge of a historical rupture with no clear path forward.

Jans-Brown frames it directly: “These songs were born, or rather torn from one womb and placed into another. A waiting room. A strange purgatory. But the shell is cracking and what emerges will shape everything that follows.” That sense of imminent transformation runs through every track.

Musically, the album draws from a compelling set of references. The War on Drugs, The Cure, and early U2’s atmospherics sit alongside Springsteen’s forward motion, Lennon’s raw vulnerability, and R.E.M.’s wry social observation. Cameron Spike-Porter’s epic cinematic guitar layering and Grant Gerathy’s snappy drumming give Jans-Brown’s distinctly human voice the perfect foundation. The album was mixed by Spike-Porter and mastered by Jordan Power.

This is Jans-Brown’s second collaboration with Spike-Porter, following 2024’s ‘Falling,’ which Keyline Magazine called “an indie rock masterpiece.” Jamsphere Magazine has described the duo as “among the most creative forces in indie rock today,” and ‘Airport Departure Lounge’ makes that case convincingly.

The artist’s career spans music, film, theatre, and visual art. He’s shared stages with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Portugal. The Man, and The Preatures, and his 2018 project ‘Hell is Light’ won Best Film, Best Director, and Best Original Soundtrack at the 2019 Pinnacle Film Awards. ‘Airport Departure Lounge’ adds a significant new chapter to a body of work already defined by emotional honesty and social engagement.

Hana Piranha Drag You Into a Destructive Romance With Haunting New Single “Valentine”

Eric Alper
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Hana Piranha Drag You Into a Destructive Romance With Haunting New Single “Valentine”

“Valentine,” the new single from Hana Piranha, is out now, and it announces the arrival of their forthcoming ‘Heart of Darkness’ EP with real confidence and atmosphere.

The track crystallises that electric, fateful moment of meeting someone and watching the entire arc of a relationship flash forward at once, the promise, the passion, and the inevitable unravelling. Breathy vocals float over lush, atmospheric synths, packaging nightmares in dream-like wrapping. It pulls you in while narrating the very trap it describes.

The literary influences running through “Valentine” are specific and deliberate. The predatory tension of Dickens and the moral ambiguity of Graham Greene shape the song’s emotional DNA, giving it a depth that goes well beyond standard romantic territory. This is attraction as slow-motion catastrophe, and it sounds extraordinary.

Following the success of 2023’s ‘Wingspan,’ Hana Piranha arrive here with their most focused and immersive single yet. Soaring strings, atmospheric synths, and a seductive chorus combine into something that lingers long after it ends.

The ‘Heart of Darkness’ EP follows later in 2026.

Watch a Monk Play the Semantron and Try Not to Be Completely Mesmerized

Eric Alper
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Watch a Monk Play the Semantron and Try Not to Be Completely Mesmerized

The semantron is a percussion instrument used in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic monasteries to call monks to prayer, essentially a large wooden plank struck by mallets, and this video of one being played at escalating speed by a monk with extraordinary rhythmic control is one of those clips that stops everything the moment it starts. The instrument predates church bells in Orthodox tradition and produces a surprisingly rich, resonant sound that shifts in tone and intensity depending on where and how hard the mallet strikes. Watching the pace build from deliberate and measured to something genuinely urgent and propulsive, you start to understand how this sound has been gathering communities for centuries. One of those videos that reminds you how wide the world of percussion actually runs.

Spanish Indie Rockers Depresión Sonora Deliver a Breathtaking Live Set for KEXP in Bilbao

Eric Alper
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Spanish Indie Rockers Depresión Sonora Deliver a Breathtaking Live Set for KEXP in Bilbao

Depresión Sonora’s full live set for KEXP, recorded at Bilbao’s Iglesia de la Encarnación, and it’s the kind of performance that stops you cold. The 5-song set moves through “La Ley del Pobre,” “Domingo Químico,” “No te Hables Mal,” “Cómo Será Vivir en el Campo,” and “Vacaciones para Siempre” with loose, assured energy, anchored by Marcos Crespo García on guitar and vocals, and elevated by an unexpected, genuinely moving contribution from Mimetiz Eskolako Abesbatza, a children’s choir that adds warmth and texture over the band’s already compelling sound.

Electro-Industrial-Metal Trio Hexxes Arrive With a Dark and Bewitching Debut Single “Fragile Things”

Eric Alper
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Electro-Industrial-Metal Trio Hexxes Arrive With a Dark and Bewitching Debut Single “Fragile Things”

Hexxes have arrived, and “Fragile Things” is exactly the kind of debut single that makes an immediate case for paying attention.

The Portland, Oregon trio comes out swinging with a track that weaves classic post-punk, 1990s electro-industrial, and gothic metal into something genuinely distinct. Mechanized industrial textures run underneath aggressive metal rhythms and shadowy atmospheres, anchored by Agatha Hexx’s seismic basslines and complex synths. Alastair Hexx’s chugging guitars grind and soar through the mix, while Scarlett Hexx’s vocals carry an intense urgency balanced with gothic rock romanticism. The combination lands hard.

The song speaks directly to collective anxiety and uncertainty, a rallying cry toward personal strength in dark times. “Fragile Things” makes clear that outcomes are not pre-ordained and that resilience is a choice. That message doesn’t soften the sonic edge; if anything, it sharpens it.

The band draws from a specific and well-chosen lineage. Gary Numan, Switchblade Symphony, and Ministry are the obvious reference points, and Hexxes honors those influences while carving out their own corner of the darkwave landscape. The Pacific Northwest setting feels right for this kind of music, damp, isolated, atmospheric, and slightly ominous.

Each member brings a defined role to the sound. Agatha Hexx drives the rhythmic and electronic foundation. Alastair Hexx delivers the guitar noise and distortion. Scarlett Hexx conjures the melodies, harmonies, and lyrics that pull the whole thing into focus. Three distinct voices building one cohesive and compelling debut.

Video: Andy Summers Opens His Santa Monica Home and Venice Beach Studio for Life in Six Strings

Eric Alper
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Video: Andy Summers Opens His Santa Monica Home and Venice Beach Studio for Life in Six Strings

Kylie Olsson’s Life in Six Strings series has built a strong track record of getting legendary guitarists to open up in their own spaces, and the Andy Summers episode delivers exactly that. The Police guitarist opens his Santa Monica home studio and walks through his photography collection, spanning his years with the band through to the present, before the conversation moves to his Venice Beach recording studio where guitars come out on the rooftop and Summers teaches Olsson to play “So Lonely” in the California sun. Summers has always been one of the most harmonically sophisticated guitarists in rock, his use of suspended chords and effects shaping a sound that defined an era, and hearing him talk through that approach in his own environment carries a different quality than a standard interview. The episode has already pulled over a million views, which reflects both the depth of the Police fanbase and the specific appeal of seeing where an artist actually lives and works.

Watch Diego Calva Walk the Criterion Closet and His Tattoos Tell the Story Before He Does

Eric Alper
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Watch Diego Calva Walk the Criterion Closet and His Tattoos Tell the Story Before He Does

Diego Calva’s Criterion Closet picks reveal an actor who came to film through genuine obsession rather than professional necessity. He talks through studying Charlie Chaplin’s performance in ‘City Lights,’ pulls selections from Harmony Korine and Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age work, and touches on Mexican cinema and cult classics that shaped his sensibility before Hollywood found him. The most specific detail in the whole video arrives early: Calva has tattoos dedicated to Martin Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’ and Richard Linklater’s ‘Slacker,’ two films that don’t exactly announce themselves as obvious choices for permanent ink, which tells you everything about how seriously he takes this.

Antibalas Take the KEXP Studio and Fill Every Corner of It

Eric Alper
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0
Antibalas Take the KEXP Studio and Fill Every Corner of It

Recorded in the KEXP studio, this full Antibalas session runs four tracks, “Solace,” “La Ceiba,” “Hourglass,” and “Oasis,” and the eleven-piece New York collective fills the room completely. Founded in Brooklyn in 1998 and rooted in the tradition of Fela Kuti, Antibalas has spent more than two decades refining a sound that is simultaneously politically charged and physically irresistible, built on interlocking percussion, layered horns, and vocals that carry real urgency. The KEXP format suits them well, the studio close enough to capture the detail of what each player is doing while the ensemble sound stays intact and powerful. Martin Perna on baritone saxophone, Marcus Farrar on vocals and shekere, and the full horn section of Drew Vandewinckel, Michael Pallas, and Andrew McGovern give the performance its spine, and the rhythm section underneath holds everything with complete authority.

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That Eric Alper

Eric Alper is a 6-time nominee for Publicist of the Year during Canadian Music Week and has overseen the publicity campaigns for over 183 JUNO Award-nominated albums (and 16 in 2025), 45 Grammy-nominated albums, including 47 JUNO Award, 58 Canadian Folk Music Award, 126 Maple Blues Award-winning albums and is also truly honoured to work with some of the biggest and most important artists of our time.

Contact me: eric@thatericalper.com

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