Exploding Skull: Coyote

Contrast is a wonderful thing, and something that Brooklyn’s Peter Joseph knows all about. His more renown gig as vocalist and guitarist of OOF – the collective that splices together street-level-inspired humour with proto-punk – worlds away from his solo side hustle as Exploding Skull.

Formerly of Pelviss and Rathaus, Joseph’s Exploding Skull endeavour sees the guitarist move beyond the sound worlds of the above-noted acts to somewhere that could be described as a meditative enclave. On the project’s latest full-length release, Coyote, the guitarist shapes a series of sketches that are subtly transcendental.

It’s true that instrumental composition is open to interpretation, but throughout Coyote, the brushstrokes become thicker as each part of the canvass is used. The cyclical riffs and warm drones of opening piece, Armstrong, oozing from the speakers and forming the kind of visual backdrops of eroded landscapes, making it symptomatic of these times.

On Byrom and Senzaki, Joseph conjures up a tension of cerebral drones that push against emotive guitar lines that drag the mind to the darkest corners. Again, purely through sonic exploration, Joseph orchestrates the kind of bleak imagery that is omnipresent.

And while he tries to escape it on Hanh, a meandering drone movement that seemingly oscillates between planets, we’re quickly brought back to reality with Watts. In all its weighty tonality, this is like a brain haemorrhage somewhere in the desert, mirroring the scorched, visceral moments one would associate with droneroom.

It leads into Wolf, which is essentially experimentalism from the vortex. Scarred and etched with blackened tones fit for your nightmares, it’s the point where post-rock and the avant garde intersect. While both styles make for unlikely bedfellows, somehow Joseph orchestrates this union to great effect.

In many ways, Coyote conveys similar colours to Lee Ranaldo and Michael Vallera’s excellent collaborative LP, Early New York Silver. Albeit at more of an unhurried pace, however the aesthetic that Joseph taps into here is equally as bleak with the stakes just as high. Some will draw a line to to New York native Loren Connors, and even David Grubbs’ more sonically palatable moments, however, by and large, Joseph drowns out the noise from afar by creating his own voice and musical language.

Coyote is out now via Bad Channels Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.