Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. But it does occasionally pause. All of which is to say, let’s give a hearty welcome back to AthFest this week. After pausing for the past few years, the annual event, which is easily the most visible representation of Athens live music for the rest of our immediate area, is back. If you’re local, go out and have a ball. If you’re visiting us this week, be friendly to our local wait staff, bartenders and others who are working their proverbial tails off trying to accommodate everyone. And, to the organizers and staff of AthFest itself, congratulations. Your hard work and perseverance deserve to be recognized. So, consider yourselves seen and heard. With that, let’s jump into this week’s news.
WATTS, UH, THE DEAL?: I’ve been mildly obsessed with Iodine Watt over the past couple of weeks. There’s very little information about this prolific yet reticent project, but whoever is behind this has put out multiple singles, as well as two album-length releases, since January 2021. The most recent collection, Where God Went Wrong, came out this month. This five-piece set is spectacularly sequenced, composed and performed. Arranged nearly like a small chamber group that keeps adding elements, Iodine Watt also looks backward sometimes into explorations of trip-hop and very slight boom-bap sensibilities. These are indeed slight, though, and more representative of the group’s older work. The relatively straightforward and album-oriented No Good Will Come From This came out in January 2021. While there is a slippery blend of loosely related styles on that, Iodine Watt pulls everything together into a compelling blend of old and new while neither sounding pretentious nor like an intentional throwback. Find each of these releases, as well as the aforementioned singles, at iodinewatt.bandcamp.com.
SOME KIND OF RAIN WILL FALL: New Cloud Recordings, uh, recording artists The Rishis’ debut album August Moon is out now. Running 10 songs long, it’s remarkable in how little it demands of its audience. It swims seemingly effortlessly in the comfortable low tide of folk rock and 1990s-era indie rock—differentiated only slightly by use of pedal steel and occasional 1960s-ish Elephant 6-style pop moments (“Oh So Young”). The singular moment here where the listener is compelled to lift their head and say, “Hey! What’s that song?” is the undeniably sweet Stone Roses-esque “Just Between You & Me.” Overall, this is as easy to put on and talk over or listen in solitude while doing something else. This is available digitally as we speak at therishis.bandcamp.com, and there are plans for a vinyl release later this year. Follow along at facebook.com/therishisband.
DUTY NOW FOR THE FUTURE: Dan Nettles (Kenosha Kid) advised this week that tickets are on sale now for a triple bill at Tweed Recording Friday, Sept. 2. The full show features Kenosha Kid, Cicada Rhythm and Night Palace. Advance tickets are $20 and can be purchased via kenoshakid.com/palace-kid-rhythm. Doors are at 7 p.m., and music begins at 8 p.m. This show is for ages 18 and over. In other news, Kenosha Kid is still ramping up to the release of parts two and three of its ambitious, expansive, triple-LP project October Book. Part one was released this past May. For more information on these, please see kenoshakid.bandcamp.com and kenoshakid.com/october-book-part-one.
SOME MORE BLACK: While they won’t play an official release show until July 1 at Flicker Theatre and Bar, the dudes in Guillotine A.D. are still celebrating a new record this week. It’s titled Born To Fall, runs eight songs long and comes out digitally Friday, June 24. The night before, June 23, the band will host a listening party at Akademia Brewing, which will also introduce a new “Born To Fall” Cold IPA this night. From a production standpoint this is as pro as one could possibly expect having been produced by Matt Washburn (Atheist, Mastodon, Withered) and featuring cover art by Eliran Kantor (Testament, Sodom, Kataklysm). The inside, where the actual music is, is nearly as dark as the band could get without veering into straight up black metal territory, although they do come very close. Mostly, though, this record stays within the death metal realm and does so quite solidly. Highlights here are opening track “Vultures Of Paradise,” as well as the title track and “War First.” Find this over at guillotinead.bandcamp.com, and be a pal via facebook.com/guillotine.ad1.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
