June’s album of the month discussion

We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.
 — Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

Released this year in the darkest days of January, Blackwater Holylight’s Not Here Not Gone got me through a winter so bleak, I questioned my pluvophile tendencies. The shining gloom of the trio’s fourth album grounded me and provided catharsis. But as the rain clears here in Metro Vancouver and the album remains on high rotation, I am not prepared to leave the album on my winter roster.

I always consider how place peeks through art. For me, the light and the climate are the landscape’s first language. Think about the atmospheric shift when X-Files moved from Vancouver to LA. When Blackwater Holylight moved from their native rain-drenched Portland, Oregon to sunny L.A., listeners were curious how it might change their sound. Of course, band member accounts are much more nuanced and complicated. They moved to L.A. and had to rebuild their lives while crafting Not Here Not Gone. The album, much like this all-female trio’s sound, is a tale of contrasting landscapes.

Blackwater Holylight had demos ready for Not Here Not Gone as early as 2022 but decided to give their songs time to develop. The result has been both critical praise and a literal record of personal transformation. Reviewers note a new sonic integrity but too eagerly attribute it to the band’s relocation rather than their artistic refinement and vision. Usurping the familiar for fresh perspective (such as moving cities) is often generative, but when asked whether the cloudless climes have added levity to their sound, lead vocalist Allison “Sunny” Faris retorts, “not a chance. I think our music is more depressing than ever.” She admits of Portland, “I guess we took a little bit of that with us.”

Still, over a rain-drenched winter that brought “storm parades” to much of the Pacific Northwest, I inhabited Not Here Not Gone’s lush, voluminous sound, heavy with grooves and sonorous vocals, as if echoing a familiar coastline yet also promising me a way out of its undertow. Despite the melodic heft and guitar tempests, the crepuscular rays break through.

Blackwater Holylight’s compositions welcome exciting counterpoints. The album’s first single “Heavy, Why” thrusts forward with a gale of riffs and Eliese Dorsay’s walloping drums that are tempered by heavenly vocals. The proggy synth electrifies the gloom. The layering of tone is ecstatic.

Not Here Not Gone’s concept of exploring light and dark is apt, given its balance of weightiness and ethereality. The songs often alternate between sharp focus (“Void to Be,” “Poppyfields”) and static that hums, then howls, while propelling forward. But what separates Blackwater Holylight from shoegaze is the bright, emotional intensity that is never lost in the fog.

Though infused with echoes of metal, psychedelic, shoegaze, and doom, Not Here Not Gone’s sonic variation creates a wholly unique idiom. Mikayla Mayhew and Sunny Faris — who fluidly alternate bass and guitar — employ reverb and distortion with an articulate sense of scale. The wall of guitar in “Poppyfields” emerges from a simple guitar lead-in and tapers again to quieter bridges and a gorgeous violin outro. “How Will You Feel” — the sensual and dreamy opener — stands in counterpoise with the hard-driving “Spades”. The balance of light and dark — hard and soft — in the album’s progression is painstakingly intentional. As a result, the album unfolds within a sensate architecture that is immersive but never overwhelming.

The sludgy riffs on “Bodies” and “Spades” thrill me only in the way Alice in Chains’ Dirt did, blasting out of my friends’ cars in the summer of 1993. While it can be hard to cleave an album from the season of its first impressions, I just had my first chance to blast “Poppyfields” — windows down — from my car last week on a warm evening. This is my metric for the success of Not Here Not Gone. There is something about its heaviness that speaks to the ominous weight of dog days as much as it does to winter solstice’s darkest days. The album has been moving with me in time.

Not Here Not Gone is a bridge for the “the duality of light and dark” as well as for seasons. So may it be for the sonic landscapes and dual cities that brought it to being. Not Here Not Gone’s contrasting textures provide a space to mentally process and to feel.

To me, this makes it a landscape to revisit in multiple contexts. Faris’ vocals balm the sonic intensity and the two forces evoke a kind of resplendent sorrow. Faris’ and Mayhew’s guitar crest along with Dorsay’s drum ricochet all the way to the edge. But the other side of that edge is an unexpected soft landing that leaves you with the residue of a dream that never fully shakes from the day.

Join us to discuss this album on June 28th at 2pm Pacific/5pm Eastern. All are welcome, as is any level of participation. Can’t wait.

Tagging a few regulars but please spread the word: Terry Barr, Kevin Alexander, Nicole Brown, Anthony Overs, Keith R. Higgons, Jeffrey Harvey, Charles in San Francisco, Steve Goldberg, Troy DeRego, Stanley C., Buddy Gott, Robert Gowty, Paul Combs, Steven Hale, Bill Cooper, Bob Mildenhall

Meeting details:

June 28, 2026 2pm PST/5pm EST

ID: 84888255829
passcode: bTr⁰uB5

Meeting link: https://presby-edu.zoom.us/j/84888255829?pwd=0Ty0rY1k3hQ5dHaGI9tvuZpbBfCMxa.1&jst=2

Liner Notes:

Suicide Squeeze Records
Produced by Blackwater Holyligh and Sonny Diperri
Mixed by Sonny Diperri, assisted by Zach Capittifenton
Engineered by Sonny Diperri and Felipe Aldana
Recorded at Sonic Ranch Studios/ Mixed at Octopus Beak
Mastered by Howie Weinberg
Art Direction: Candice Lawler/Photography: Magdalena Wosinska
Design: Julian Gross/Cover Model: Jordan Rondel
Giraffe beats by David Andrew Sitek

This album was written by:
Sunny Faris — Guitar/Bass, Vocals
Mikayla Mayhew — Guitar/Bass
Eliese Dorsay — Drums
Sarah McKenna — Synths
Camille Getz — Violin

Bandcamp: https://blackwaterholylight.bandcamp.com/album/not-here-not-gone

Jessica Lee McMillan © 2026

Blackwater Holylight | Not Here Not Gone was originally published in The Riff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Greetings friends!

I’m excited to announce my poetry chapbook to be released April 2026 via Pinhole Poetry.

Shine Like a Dime in the Dirt under the Moon is part of a larger collection in progress that examines in/visibility and the physics of light in our everyday lives. The meditations on light — engaging in literature, science, and pop culture — become a means of understanding our place and of holding attention. The poems ask us to imagine the unseen spectrum of energy that quietly influences our lives and supports life itself.

“Compact Disc” was recently published in New Poetry from this collection.

Shine Like a Dime in the Dirt under the Moon is now available to order here on the Pinhole Poetry website.

Take care and thank you so much!

Jessica

Jessica Lee McMillan (she/her) is a poet and teacher. She has an English MA, is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, and is a full member of the League of Canadian Poets. Recent/forthcoming poems can be read in CV2, The Malahat Review, Crab Creek Review, QWERTY, ROOM Magazine, and Canadian Literature. Jessica spends a lot of time in the local poetry community on the land of the Halq̓eméylem-speaking Peoples (New Westminster, BC). She lives with her little family and large dog.

jessicaleemcmillan.com

The Beat | ‘Special Beat Service’

August’s album of the month

Famed poet Ocean Vuong recently addressed the double edge of “cringe culture” resulting in young people performing cynicism. Like a type of self-imposed surveillance based on the perception that demonstrating effort is shameful. While not new, performing detachment has increased every decade of my life where I choose to resist flamboyantly with both sharp skepticism and unabashed enthusiasm.

Moving into increasingly uncertain times, The English Beat’s catalogue continues to resonate with uncontainable vitality and provide a source of refuge with its forceful buoyancy while managing to meditate on the darkness of the world. The sense of doom in having to be “on the right side of things (“Rotating Head”) during an oppressive regime like Margaret Thatcher’s — no different from now when the “rights and wrongs don’t get much wronger” in order to protect power. Where “we know where our hearts are — right behind our wallets” (“Sugar and Stress”).

The original lineup of the Beat (as known in Europe) was multigenerational and racially diverse — each talented musician with a unique approach that drove the audience to dance to their propulsive rhythms. The core members of the Beat were Dave Wakeling (vocals, guitar), “Ranking” Roger Charlery (vocals, toasting), Saxa (saxophone), David “Shuffle” Steele (bass), Andy Cox (guitar), and Everett Morton (drums).

That sometimes Roger and Walkeling’s vocals were indecipherable from each other was reflective of their democratic approach as a band. Members shared earnings equally six ways, often shared songwriting duties, and made creative decisions together, despite Roger and Wakeling’s image as the face of the band.

In a recent interview on KUTX, Wakeling marvels:

So everybody we met was the only person we met, the first bass player, the first drummer, the first toaster, the first saxophonist. It seemed sort of enchanted, in a way.

Wakeling often played his guitar upside-down and wrote enigmatic, subversive lyrics with depth and clever wordplay. Roger (co-vocals, toasting, scatting, and percussion) had a tremendously energetic style and, along with his peers at the time, brought reggae into the mainstream. Cox (guitar) and Steele (bass) were critically lauded for their key contributions to the band’s uncompromising sound that unified the Beat’s chimerical influences, from ska and punk to Motown.

Also celebrated was Morton’s singular reggae drumming style, and Saxa— the idiosyncratic, wise elder of the group — on sax. The band had an authentic fusion of influences emerging from members with roots in St. Lucia, St. Kitts, Jamaica, and in Birmingham, England — a culturally fertile town of fusion forms despite Thatcher’s iron-fisted government.

Major ska acts emerging from the West Midlands, including UB40, The Specials, and The Selecter, were markedly anti-racist and anti-oppression. “Stand Down Margaret” from the Beat’s first album I Just Can’t Stop It (1980) puts the band’s politics front and centre.

Of this zeitgeist, Wakeling tells The Quietus:

The ska revival was the right thing at the right time, combining the three things I needed at that exact moment: adolescent antisocial snottiness, a burning anger against social injustice, and something that made you jump up and down. It also stood for racial integration in the face of the rise of the racist National Front, and The Beat — every bit as much as their … cousins The Specials — lived it like they talked it.

The band initially decided to mix ska and punk during their infamous house parties, where they would have to alternate genres to keep people on the dancefloor. One of the parties drew Ranking Roger — then a punk drummer — to crash the stage and start toasting. From then, the band started to make sense as a ska-punk act. That is, until they outlived their mold.

The relentless pace of “Mirror in the Bathroom” (with the bass in 2/2 timing) captures the band’s relentless energy and their first album and second album Wha’ppen (1981) even prompted some dance-happy fans to ask them to slow down so they could actually dance along. I would argue when the band decided to play with alternative tempos, they made room for evolution, not that I don’t crave the frenetic charge of their first albums.

More complex than their 2-Tone contemporaries, the Beat became something greater than a mashup of genres by their sophomore album, but especially on their third album, Special Beat Service, introducing more prominent calypso, straight-up reggae, jazz, West African Highlife, and New Wave.

The Beat would tour with REM (as their opening band), Talking Heads, The Clash, The Police, and The Pretenders, playing for audiences as large as 150,0000. Despite sales that showed it would take longer to break North America, the matrix of musical influence in Special Beat Service made its future mark on audiences — well promoted by college radio — and musicians alike, especially Eddie Vedder, Pete Townsend, and Adam Duritz.

Special Beat Service strikes me from the opening bars of “I Confess” with spaciousness. As a deliberate revision process, the band were staying together in a house in London and would work on (revising) three songs a day. The breezy piano chords in “I Confess” and scoring for the strings in “Save It for Later” introduced another Dave to the band — “Blockhead” as Saxa would call him to separate all the Daves. While the members had impeccable musicianship and were notoriously tight live, Dave Blockhead added a refined element to the album’s overall sound that still gives Special Beat Service a more timeless feeling.

Frequently cited as an under-appreciated band, The English Beat’s third and final album has been celebrated as an overlooked gem. The many critics who loved it knew it would go over people’s heads. Marc Wasserman’s Soul Salvation: A Gen X Love Letter to the English Beat (DiWulf Publishing, 2024) dedicates most of its pages to Special Beat Service, entwined with coming-of-age memoir set during Regan-era America.

To Wasserman, the Beat’s appeal struck him in the band’s balance of oppression and joy:

Wakeling’s lyrics looked inside an increasingly dark and complicated world of inequality, racism, sexism, misunderstanding, anger, and betrayal. At the same time, those songs cultivated ideas about perseverance, forgiveness, tolerance and acceptance. (pg 23)

While Special Beat Service is less political than the first two albums, the songs tackle difficult themes of infidelity and narcissism (“I Confess”, with the video doubling as a parody of The New Romantics), the bewilderment of adulthood (in the double entendre “Save It for Later”), domestic abuse (“She’s Gone”), and surveillance culture (“Rotating Head”). And with that, moments of joy in “Sole Salvation” and childhood games and fleeting happiness (“Ackee 123”), friendship (“Pato and Roger” and “Spar wid Me”).

Geoffrey Himes noted in The Baltimore Sun:

Three years of playing together have paid off on the new album in a new sound that is so well unified that it sounds distinctively like the English Beat and no one else. The overt Carribean and new wave influences have blended together around their common ancestor: American soul. (Wasserman, 141)

The banjo in the reggae-forward “Spar wid Me” or the ska-meets-accordion stylings of “Jeanette” likewise highlight the strength of Special Beat Service in harmonizing tone and influence. If formidable critic Robert Christgau — who scored all the Beat’s Albums within the A range— was correct in contending the band was always pop, it is pop with complex harmonies from the quirky contributions of each member.

If the Beat were doing pop, it was the thinking type of pop — askew from the mainstream and refreshingly without the erudition of, say, Elvis Costello, who nonetheless admired the album, as Walkeling admired Costello.

At their zenith, just after being invited to do more shows with David Bowie, the band dissolved. The contention between band members resulting from total burnout is well-publicized. The band had been touring nonstop, producing three albums in as many years. Breaking America nearly broke them. Walkeling and Roger wanted to earn enough to support their new families, but Cox — and especially Steele — had become publicly contemptful, wanting a two-year break. The band’s gift of compromise was weakened. Transcendent pop tracks like “Save It for Later” were repeatedly turned down by Steele until the label forced it on their album, resulting in a third of their catalogue’s earnings.

The label grew impatient, and Roger and Wakeling had a new single at the ready, which launched General Public. A year later, Cox and Steele would form Fine Young Cannibals.

Walkeling recently told Noel Murray at AV Club:

Sadly, that went down in history as me having split the group up, but to be honest, the group had been split up months before then. I was just the one with the balls to pull the plug. And so “Tenderness” became the beginning of General Public’s career.

In 2004, the band was featured in VH1’s Bands Reunited, and it was sad to see how much Ranking Roger regretted that decision. However, it was heartening that he was still jamming with Saxa and Morton, maintaining an admirably stoic attitude. The band came together and exchanged a few tender moments, then played a local Birmingham stage, expectedly without Cox and Steele.

Two different versions of the same band would perform for a number of years on opposite sides of the Atlantic, but we lost Saxa in 2017 at 87, and, heartbreakingly, Everett Morton in 2019 at age 71 of the same cancer as Ranking Roger — age 56 — in 2019. Roger’s warmth and loveliness melts me to the core. I am now working my way through his autobiography, I Just Can’t Stop It: My Life in the Beat (with Daniel Rachel, Omnibus Press, 2019). I think of Roger with the heavy heart of a lost relative.

I don’t think Wakeling takes the Beat’s impact on their fans and countless musicians for granted. He now has a reputation for being approachable and gives generous interviews with lots of tales. And for whatever sense of loss or regret, the music buoys us. And thanks to the producers who heavily discouraged novel sounds of the synthesizers ubiquitous in the ’80s, their sound holds up so so well. With the release of Special Beat Service in America, the band also minted a new, vital indie label, I.R.S., with a top 40 hit.

Many experts contend ska has never died. Despite clearly demarcated waves of popularity (1st wave in ‘60s Jamaica, 2nd wave in post-punk England) ska has been there. On my musical journey, ska has not been marred by the bands vomited up on the shores of California. The whole genre is not “cringe” if we are going to commit to an open-minded concept of genre, enjoying ska classics — and new bands that BrooklynVegan is often quick to review. Listening to ska shouldn’t make the listener a white fratboy apologist or complicit in the gross appropriations of artists like Gwen Stefani, who has and always will be simpering, affectatious, and vile.

I am still grateful for the third wave, which brought The Specials back into rotation at clubs. I was only a few years old when the Beat emerged, and I had records and cassettes of General Public and Fine Young Cannibals. But I have to thank that third wave for making its way into the goth community here in Vancouver, where — of all places — I first learned to skank to Madness in my late teens.

Musical influences can travel anywhere — like language — and while we want to respect its origins, genre — like language — is a living thing that evolves and migrates.

Special Beat Service is the album you intentionally pull out several times a year. It is a rock. It is a place to return.

That’s why I have chosen it for the album of the month.

Please join us to talk about The English Beat’s Special Beat Service. Our monthly discussions are a safe and inclusive place, and you are welcome to participate as little or as much as you would like. It’s a place of unabashed enthusiasm. Please do spread the word. Meeting info is below, along with some helpful “liner notes.”

Terry Barr, Nicole Brown, Jeffrey Harvey, Steve Goldberg, Buddy Gott, Kevin Alexander, Anthony Overs, Charles in San Francisco, Stanley C., Rob Janicke, Keith R. Higgons, Scott Fountain

Liner Notes

Special Beat Service Personnel

Ranking Roger — toasting; vocals; percussion
Dave Wakeling — vocals; guitar
David Steele — bass; banjo
Andy Cox — guitar; mandolin
Everett Morton — drums
Saxa — saxophone
Wesley Magoogan — clarinet; lyricon; saxophone; sax FX unit
Dave “Blockhead” Wright — keyboards; piano

Additional musicians

• Bob Sargeant — telephone; marimba, Marc Fox — percussion, Jack Emblow — accordion, Markandey Mishra — tabla, Vince Sullivan — trombone, Dave Lord — trumpet, Steve Sidwell — trumpet, Pato Banton — toasting

Production and artwork

Bob Sargeant — producer
Trevor Hallesy — engineer
Mark Dearnley — engineer
Brian Gaylor — engineer
Ian Cooper — cutting engineer
Mike Hedges — producer (“Pato and Roger a Go Talk”)
Ranking Roger — producer (“Pato and Roger a Go Talk”)
Martyn Atkins — art direction
Nick Rogers — supervisor

Meeting Info:

When: Sunday 24 Aug 2025 ⋅ 4pm — 6pm EST

Zoom Meeting Link:
https://presby-edu.zoom.us/j/85339128617?pwd=MDfb510FCFXCayaFPNtatnLiUdEsey.1&jst=2

Jessica Lee McMillan © 2025

Special Beat Service was originally published in The Riff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Interview with Underground Garage DJ Bill Kelly

Thanks to a recent email chat with Susan SurfTone about her new album Cover Art, I learned about America’s legendary garage DJ, Bill Kelly and his show Blackhole Bandstand on the famous Little Steven’s Underground Garage on SiriusXM, Channel 21 from 5–9 pm EST. I am grateful to both Bill and Susan for letting me be a small part of the conversation.

Listening to Bill Kelly’s Blackhole Bandstand, is a full-sound immersion in rare classics, rebel rock, and irreverent vamps paired with the best iterations rock has to offer. Bill’s long-running show is the antidote to the mediocre sets on the classic rock stations I grew up with, which are now churning out Dave Matthews and Counting Crows for early Millennials and late Gen Xers.

My local Vancouver rock station played segments of Underground Garage a good twenty years ago, and I remember how my head felt like it was instantly expanding. There is something about ‘60s rock — itself a culmination of soul, blues, jazz, and country — that has me coming back. And the free-form viscosity of garage music that emerged in the ‘60s still enlivens rock music today. I can feel its vitality and grit in from The Kinks, 13th Floor Elevators, ? and the Mysterians, to Johnathan Richman, The B-52’s , The Detroit Cobras, The Oh Sees, to — of course The White Stripes — and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

With Bill Kelly’s Blackhole Bandstand, the days of sitting or lying around with some tunes while taking a deep dive are still here. Bill Kelly provides the liner notes. The self-proclaimed Guru of Garage, The Viceroy of Vinyl, The Black Hole of Rock and Roll himself, New Jersey-based Bill Kelly helms a catalogue with roots deeper than any Spotify playlist. His Saturday shows remind us that radio is a living thing. And his music comes alive with the huge community who still actively engage in non-algorithmic musical exploration.

Bill has logged a lot of airtime, and with nearly 21 years now at SiriusXM, he estimates his DJ “career” (his quotations) has spanned 47 years, including work at WFMU, WCHC-AM (1969–70), and approximately an hour each at WAAF-FM and WFDU-FM in the 1970s. He has as many anecdotes as knowledgeable facts about band origins and their labels. Evidence of an artist who strives to hone their craft with loving attention and a commitment to the music community.

To me, this bears the hallmark of having a real and meaningful vocation. Not only did Bill Kelly have an incredible career during some of radio’s halcyon days, he is now a bulwark of radio today, drawing hundreds of thousands of listeners.

Blackhole Bandstand tells me a dynamic, breathing story of rock, and I appreciate more deeply that loving music includes doing the work and understanding the hustle that goes into putting it into the world.

Bill was gracious enough to take the time to reply to my questions about his legacy and his approach, as well as share wee tales about big names in rock. In some of his responses — I suspect — a mischievous twinkle must have been in his eye. Or maybe it was just the patchouli.

Tune in!

JLM: I understand Steven Van Zandt scouted you for Underground Garage. Can you tell us little about that?

BK: Steven was originally introduced to my now-defunct FM show by his ‘Gal Friday’ at his offices, the late Holly Cara Price. After an unspecified period of time, Holly called to have me meet Stevie at a Pub in New York City at his request. He’d been inspired enough by the show to consider expanding his love of music into the wonderful world of radio.

JLM: One of the best things about your show is its spirit of discovery — looking back and looking forward. It’s clear you have a lot of methods of finding gems. What are some recent exciting finds for you?

BK: Most of my best ‘finds’ came decades ago. As an avid collector of 1960s garage band 45s, I began to note names associated with a song and the geographical locations of the band through record labels. Dialing information for phone numbers was the next step. You’d be surprised how many former band members were out there with a small stash of their own 45s that they were thrilled to revisit. I wasn’t greedy, like some collectors. I’d only try to obtain one or two copies, some of which would fetch hundreds of dollars to the more serious fans. I wanted them for the radio.

JLM: Among your fine garage selections, I have a running list of surf tunes from listening to Blackhole Bandstand and your archived shows from WFMU’s Teenage Wasteland. What bands would you recommend to surf music enthusiast to deepen their catalog?

BK: I like to think of the show as displaying all of rock & roll’s many styles from the post-war era. ‘Surf & Drag’ instrumental music, especially now that it’s summertime, has always been a big part of that. The Ventures, Dick Dale, the Chantays, Davie Allan, the Pyramids, etc… are the obvious gimmes. One can also find some absolute gems begging for the surf music enthusiasts to discover. Try the band The Velvetones if you want evidence of surf music on Mars.

JLM: I appreciate your musical stewardship and how you’ll play The Ramones after The Beatles or Taj Mahal & Keb Mo and Concrete Blonde in the same set as The Drifters. It helps the listener connect bands to a diverse but deeply rooted lineage. Your show has a dimension of storytelling in the themes, tracks as well as your own anecdotes. Does a lot of this happen before or during the show or a mix of both?

BK: I don’t really look to program themes or musical arcs into the broadcast when I’m preparing a new show. However, after inserting the most recent rock songs I’ve collected as my first step in the process of show preparation, I absolutely do review what other tracks I’m considering for ironic or whimsical musical pairings and triplets that I can insert. This may happen on a limited scale every 2/3 weeks.

JLM: Your show has great mashups of old film clips leading into the next song that gives the show a great atmosphere. How have you developed segues between songs over the years?

BK: All of the in-set inserts or drop-ins as some call them, are courtesy of the folks at the U.G. who do the grunt work for the show. Currently, that would be the Program Director Dennis Mortensen and Jordan Hallerman. Some are so timely and topical that I find myself laughing out loud at the one part of the show I can’t control to some degree.

JLM: In your interview on Nick Z’s Rock Talk, you mentioned how much your grandma was a patron of your musical appreciation. Are there any music influences from her (or your parents, despite their differing taste) that you still carry with you?

BK: My musical tastes seem to have sprung from nowhere. I was exposed to Broadway soundtracks, Mitch Miller, and Harry Belafonte at an early age. It’s been said that I had a crush on Kate Smith when I was a year or two old. Rock & roll came into my life when my sister and I began watching Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in 1956 or 1957. We initially watched for all the wrong reasons, laughing at the oily, lumpy Philadelphia greasers in the crowd. She became bored after a while. I stayed for the rock & roll.

JLM: Do you have any favourite requests you received?

BK: I tried to never encourage requests. There are too many people in the audience who still want to hear the Starship or Adam & the Ants, no matter what they’re listening to. Blondie and Roky Erickson will have to take a backseat if the requesters have their way.

JLM: What is the most notorious moment working at the station over the years?

BK: A few years before he passed, Sky Saxon from the legendary 60’s garage band, The Seeds, showed up for my live radio show unannounced. He’d been walking in New York City during a stopover and was spied by a fellow free-form radio disc jockey who was familiar with garage band music. The sales pitch must have worked! Humorously, Sky was being chaperoned by another of the former Seeds, Jan Savage, to keep him out of trouble. That didn’t stop him from ‘jonesing’ for pot. Regrettably, nobody was holding. He was also a great guest. Thanks again, Fabio!

And a postscript from Bill…

BK: You didn’t ask me about this, but I still laugh about this today…Grandma bought me my first transistor radio. Of course, it wasn’t the first time I’d ever listened to one. When I turned it on, the first 3 songs that played were “Sea of Love”, “Moody River,” and “Sea of Heartbreak.” Maybe that’s where I first thought about musical pairings.

Bill Kelly's Blackhole Bandstand | SiriusXM

Jessica Lee McMillan © 2025

Related:

Interview with Susan SurfTone

The Black Hole of Rock and Roll was originally published in The Riff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An interview with Laphona’s John Tyner

Laphona’s sophomore album Novellas wastes no momentum in its opening track — a high octane take-off that stomps, revs, swears under its breath, and shoots laser guns. A marriage of Laphona’s punk and surf backgrounds, “My Trip to Space” prepares us for the journey and shifts into the contemplative second track, “Quiaios,” which lands us by the shore’s ambient echoes of seabirds and water, underpinning a lonely guitar melody. On the run again with “Murphy’s Law,” police sirens, and assertive guitar hooks, it is clear that Novellas takes on an arc of vignettes, distinct in tone but much like an epic journey’s ebbs and flows and much like the light and dark moods that span the emotional texture of our days.

It was an honour to chat with Laphona’s architect, John Tyner, again as Novellas was in the mixing and mastering process — one he describes as “cold lightbulbs in public bathrooms that reveal every line, bit of flaky skin and unflattering pore in one’s face”. Learning about Tyner’s evolution from early days of Bay Area’s alternative band Mk Ultra to helming an instrumental concept album is inspiring for any creator who understands their creative output as a bigger journey. And the polish of this newly released gem is as clear as the intentions of the album’s beginnings. Novellas has found an indelible groove after Laphona’s debut.

JLM: It’s a joy to listen to Novellas, your follow up to IIIIII (One Divided by Seven) and hear the evolution in a fascinating narrative structure coloured by post-punk instrumental surf with tones of western, prog and goth. What has changed for the band since the debut album?

JT: Perhaps the main thing is a sense of direction. In IIIIIII, there was experimentation with sonic metaphor and an exploration of the role of verse with instrumental music — but the whole thing was glued together at the end rather than composed as a whole. Novellas, on the other hand, is meant to be much more intentional in its voice and direction — so much so that a genre/name was needed give it a clear path to follow: Storycore. That established the framework by which the story of the album would be told, and also helped clarify what the voices would be. Another crucially different approach was to keep the material fresh to myself. To that end, when the small 6 week window opened up for me to do it, I pretty much threw away 90% of all the material I had written up to that point and just let the new come out. I can’t recommend this highly enough in whatever art you practice.

JLM: Novellas is framed by an introduction that takes us on “My Trip to Space” and ends with a fantasy reference “I Want to Be a Real Boy”. The movement through the album feel like suites bookended by these two songs. I appreciate the deliberate ordering that assures the listener is on a journey but also allows us to meander in its full palate of moods. Tell us a little about how the songs came together on Novellas.

JT: Quite so. “My Trip to Space” is literally the theme for the whole album in that I’d like you (and me) to leave behind our preconceptions and enjoy an exciting ride. Also, its cinematic approach is meant to tickle curiosity about the actual story being told — it’s not just a collection of sound effects around surf/spy guitar (that’s already been done) but just a little more — a cohesive story from beginning to end. It also hints that the rest of the album might also have hidden (written) narratives and that each song is a short story, a “novella”.

“I Want to Be a Real Boy” represents the question of authenticity — what is it, and who can give it to us? Musically, it made sense as a final song — but more so, it reflected my mood when wrapping up recording. Much like the short-lived victory experienced by the protagonist, I, too, needed to leave my own fantasy to face a new and unsavory world (November 2024). The songs in between were ordered by mood and dynamics, tension followed by relief — harsh followed by soft.

JLM: I believe art needs to speak for itself but Laphona’s commitment to storytelling through instrumental music comes across so well in its careful arrangement and delicate, emotive transitions from high tension to reflection. What is fascinating to me is how you honour the written word in unsung lyrics/tone poems to provide more dimension to your songs. The tone poems are so rhythmic and their imagery so tactile, which is very grounding considering how many places the music can take an individual listener. How do you want people to read your lyrics and understand your idea of storycore when they listen to the album?

JT: Any engagement is wonderful in whatever fashion it takes, but since you’re asking, I hope someone hears the music and forms an idea about its mood — what it’s trying to say. Then, on the second listen, they read the lyrics/poems/stories for the songs, hopefully considering how those sentiments are spoken silently in the music. If they’re like me and hoping for the hidden prize inside the cereal box, perhaps they’ll notice that some songs have ‘Unsung Lyrics’, which would be a clue to try and match a guitar voice with a verse — just like a lead singer would do. These layers of content, context and interactivity are core values of storycore. It’s a bit DIY, but any type of interactivity requires participation.

This thing just got released and it’s early days, but I’m very hopeful that I can sync the lyrics with the music inside Spotify and other platforms, removing some of the ‘work’ the listener needs to do to appreciate the connection.

JLM: The written narrative and poems bring me to stretches of time in my youth when I’d sit with the album and liner notes. Did you have this in mind? What are some albums that you fondly remember reading liner notes?

JT: Though I can’t conjure up specific examples, I loved liner notes… I needed them as I wasn’t good at discerning the words correctly just by listening. I’d read the lyrics but I was most interested in everything else. What were the names of the band members and could any of them be cooler than Lux Interior? When they did use pseudonyms, where did they take them from as in ‘Slade the Leveller’ (from my favorite band NMA). Who was credited with writing the songs and what guest musician courtesy of what label sat in? If I was lucky there might be photos, like I remember one showed each band member at their day job making pizza or working a front counter. Maybe importantly, I noticed when the words — as a visual block of artistic intent — stood on their own without music. In truth, I was often disappointed at the way the lyrics looked just written out. On their own a bit stilted and quite repetitive. It was special when they read like maybe the song was crafted around them instead of the other way round.

JLM: At what stage did you decide to add ambient sounds to the album? They add a sense on environment but also, give us a sense of the cinematic. How does film factor into your concept for this album?

JT: As soon as I clarified my vision — that moment when I tossed out a years worth of recording ideas — when I found storycore. My goal is all about the construction of a visual without the visual, so yes, film was a primary influence — in particular the craft of the sound foley artists — the ones that create the sounds important to the story being told on screen. At first I feared lest it come across as gimmicky to rely on sound effects in music — but in this new light, I let go of those external considerations. Whatever served the story was the only important thing

JLM: What were the most demanding technical aspects of making this album?

JT: My own non-virtuosity! Gods teeth, how many retakes I did and it is still full of flubs and mistakes. Oh well, as long as I’m aiming at the target I don’t mind missing it. Also I truly didn’t understand the nuances of audio quality and all that entails, so it was a hot mess that I had to ask my mixing guy to deal with. Lessons for the future!

JLM: “Swim for Shore” has such gorgeous momentum — including hand claps! Is finding the rhythm of a song you are writing immediate. Does it ever change in the process?

JT: The rhythm is immediate — absolutely. The rhythm dictates how the questions and answers will be phrased, which then informs what the song is about. Once I can grip those beginnings, I check-in with the tempo. Until I have the pieces firmly tucked together, any part of it can change in service to the rest. “Water on Stone” started out as a fast country jam but I couldn’t get it to work, so I slowed it down by half. Sometimes the change is even more drastic — a mostly complete piece about watching Peter Murphy perform is 90% there but has problems I can’t reconcile. The answer? Keep the one riff I like from it and the word “Murphy” and toss the rest. Then create a whole other song “Murphys Law” with them. Is it a better song for all that? Maybe, but what really counts is I consider it finished and so can release it from my head.

JLM: The guitar work propelling “Meant to Tell You” brought me to some of my favourite riffs by The Cure and Killing Joke. There are several dark tonal shifts, such as “In Solitude We Are Least Alone” — what a great title — and the song is like Joy Division meets Dick Dale. In “I Want to Be a Real Boy,” I also feel hints of industrial. We’ve chatted about our shared love of the goth canon but when it comes to musical influences, do you ever have this chorus of influences whispering in your ear?

JT: It’s a wonderful thing when you can channel those inner voices and feel them coming through your fingers — a rare treat. I get glimpses of my heroes when I write, but it’s fleeting — they’re impossibly too cool and I’m trying to find something outside of their influence. For mood, I’ve always preferred dark theatrics, edgy soundscapes and assertive instrumentation. Gloomy but not sad, dour but not sour… darkness without negativity is a fascinating place. Industrial definitely was an influence, but The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste was the only record I had. That said, it left a deep mark, which I can hear parts of on this album actually.

JLM: The space western/opera is apparent in the song titles and the rising action through shifting rhythms, deep, baritone reverb and compelling sound editing. But the vibe remains Surf to me. I think we have discussed the similarities between the two and for me, western and surf are not just heavy reverb but the narrative of the lone traveller. I read somewhere that Tommy Tedesco mentioned Surf is just opera with reverb. What do you think? I wonder if Surf is more “the third kind” that can unite genres.

JT: Wow, the “narrative of the lone traveler”— so true, and spooky. It actually hits a little close to home, and metaphorically I’ve had to swim for shore a few times lest I am lost at sea during this process. When I think of the two, they’re so similar and yet yin and yang. Western is our known habitat, the familiar, our waking life — it’s solid, opaque, gritty. “From dust we come and to dust we’ll return”… the story of land. Surf connects with the unknown and unknowable — of shapelessness and translucence, of water and elemental beginnings, secrets and treasures, gods and monsters — of dreams… so yes, I see it complimenting any other genre.

JLM: I have such a weakness for space rock. The journey to space is such a rich trajectory for an album and it has been done beautifully from Holst to Failure to Pink Floyd to Air. How do you think the journey to space theme plays out in Novellas now compared to when you were having space dreams as a youngster?

JT: It is ‘youngster’ all the way! As I mention in the Storycore article, my first introduction to building visuals from music was the Star Wars soundtrack my mom used to play at home. I danced like a madman to the opening theme, running about doing karate moves, sort of imagining I was kicking stormtrooper asses. There was this rich connection between the music and my imagination. So you can imagine how much fun it was to make that first track… but the whole album is akin to a space journey. The kind of space journey you imagine as a kid — filled with strange wonders and new possibilities. It was mostly spontaneous and I learned where I was going along the way.

Listen here:

Jessica Lee McMillan © 2025

RELATED:

The Powerful Story of Surf

By John Tyner:

Storycore and the Inception of ‘Novellas’

Surfing Through Space: Laphona’s Narrative Journey on Their Second Album was originally published in The Riff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Riff’s February 2025 Album of the Month, February 16th

He climbed the construction like a machine
Erected on the platform four solid walls
Brick on brick in a magical design
His eyes dull with cement and tears
 — Chico Buarque, “Construção”

A timeless allegory for the struggle against fascism, the multi-talented, living legend Chico Buarque poses the heartbreaking life of a construction worker as the modern Sisyphus against the capitalist machine and against the Brazilian dictatorship in his 1971 masterpiece Construção.

And ended up on the ground like a limp bundle
Agonized in the middle of the sidewalk
Died on a one-way street disrupting traffic

The artist himself, a Sisyphus against imprisonment, censorship and threats that would exile him to Italy until just before the album’s release, Buarque’s story is a metaphor for the artist’s plight today more than ever — given the call to confront regimes fed by capitalist delusions of manifest destiny. In 1969, Brazil faced a coup just as ugly as the purchase of democracy in the US and the demise of civil liberties at the hands of panic-stricken denialists of the far right all over the world.

Artistically speaking, Construção is a stunning achievement of musical arrangements and haunting melodies carried by Buarque’s brilliant wordplay and syllabic rhythms (paroxytones) that transcend the language barrier. The album’s political message rendered by poetic lyrics eluded authorities, and the message lives on as urgently as it did over 50 years ago. A collaboration of over 60 musicians, musical guests, and songwriters such as Vinicius de Moraes and Antônio Carlos Jobim and avant-garde arrangements by Rogério Duprat, Construção is a marvel of bossa and samba woven into fragile, somber laments with colorful, symphonic and choral bursts. I look forward to hearing first-time listeners’ responses to this album's epic lyrical and musical textures.

My love of Brazilian music is fairly well known, and part of my story with Construção is obtaining it on vinyl, which took a mighty effort, given the average price to ship a good copy to Canada. For years, I lurked on Discogs, almost settling in desperation for an $80 water-damaged copy with a dog-eared corner. When my wonderful Brazilian friend discovered my affinity for Bossa Nova and MPB, she had her sister acquire a copy she could bring back to me from her recent visit.

The album has a history of high demand. When it was released in 1971, it sold so fast (140,000 copies) that Phillips had to use two additional pressing plants to meet the demand. Since then, the album has been recognized as the 3rd best Brazilian Album, and its title track the best Brazilian song of all time by Rolling Stone.

The charismatic appeal of Construção is inseparable from the artist. Chico Buarque, born Francisco Buarque de Hollanda, has produced great musical and literary works that continue to dazzle the public and earn high recognition at the national level, recently winning the Brazilian equivalent of The Booker and a Nobel Prize nomination.

The overriding narrative of resistance threads throughout his literary and lyrical repertoire. Resistance to a cycle — a notable motif in Buarque’s work — of each generation meeting the absurdity of its regression with no choice but to seek meaning in genuine, artistic expression. All those who stand against the absurd consensus of reality are equally exiled. As Albert Camus notes in his titular masterwork of essays, “Although ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.”

Please join us to talk about Chico Buarque’s Construção. Our monthly discussions are a safe and inclusive place, and you are welcome to participate as little or as much as you would like. Please spread the word. Meeting info is below, along with some helpful “liner notes.” Scott Fountain Terry Barr Jeffrey Harvey Nicole Brown Steve Goldberg Kevin Alexander Stanley C. Anthony Overs Charles in San Francisco Keith R. Higgons Bill Cooper Buddy Gott

Lyrics:

Deus Lhe Pague
Construção
Valsinha

Track List with English Translations:
Side A
1. “Deus Lhe Pague” (“May God Pay You”)
2. “Cotidiano” (“Everyday”)
3. “Desalento” (“Dismay”) (Chico Buarque, Vinicius de Moraes)
4. “Construção” (“Construction”)

Side B
5. “Cordão” (“Cord”)
6. “Olha Maria” (“Look Maria”) (Tom Jobim, Chico Buarque, Vinicius de Moraes)
7. “Samba de Orly” (“Samba of Orly”) (Chico Buarque, Toquinho, Vinicius de Moraes)
8. “Valsinha” (“Waltz”) (Chico Buarque, Vinicius de Moraes)
9. “Minha História” (“My Story”) (Adapted by Chico Buarque, written by Lucio Dalla, Paola Pallotino)
10. “Acalanto” (“Lullaby”)

Meeting Info:

Time: Feb 16, 2025 4:00 PM EST/1:00 PM PST
Join Zoom Meeting

Join our Cloud HD Video Meeting

Meeting ID: 834 7956 3167
Passcode: 915833

Jessica Lee McMillan © 2025

Related:

Rebellious Heart

The Brazilian Sisyphus was originally published in The Riff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An interview with Berlin’s rising star in Surf

Formed in 2023, the indie surf rock band Cactus for Breakfast hails from Berlin. They include members from Germany, the US, and Indonesia coalescing into a high-energy sound that is toothy and will have you humming days after.

The “Cactus Boys” are Robin Wilms and Shane Wagner on vocals & guitar, Thomas Dwi Putra on bass, and Timo Wunderlich on drums. As we will learn in the following interview, the band harmoniously blends influences from garage, blues, and psychedelic to country, and their enthusiasm for musical exploration is contagious.

Cactus for Breakfast just had an eventful summer supporting the release of their mini album Horsemilk Hangover, a catchy set of 5 tracks brimming with style and satisfying hooks. I was thrilled to speak with the band over email about their summer, backgrounds, future touring plans, and the release of several new singles in 2025— starting with “Take Me Where You Go,” which just dropped.

I can’t wait until you hear its gritty surf rhythm, glimmering riffs, rolling drums and dirty trip into psychedelia.

JLM: I really enjoyed watching your “What It’s Really Like to Tour in an Indie Band” on YouTube to get a sense of the band and music. It looks like you are having fun. How did you come together as a band?

Robin: All of the Cactus Boys have moved to Berlin a couple of years ago — in Berlin, you’d call us “Zugezogene” (meaning “the ones that moved to Berlin and have not actually grown up there”). Berlin is full of music, besides the huge techno scene it also offers a great scene for alternative music. Since we’ve all played music for nearly all our lives, each of us looked for other musicians to jam with. We all checked out the community board of a local rehearsal space, found a fitting post and voilà — beginning of 2023 we were jamming for the first time together. We enjoyed the jams a lot, started playing some covers and the first originals. After some structural changes we found our drummer Timo at the end of 2023 and are cooking up tunes in this formation ever since.

JLM: You have been playing a lot of gigs following your June 2024 release Horsemilk Hangover and it looks like the band is motivated to tour. Are there any locales you dream about outside Berlin or Germany as the band grows?

Robin: The shows in 2024 were incredible! We had the chance to play more than 10 gigs over the year — a lot of them in Berlin. Through a befriended band from Hamburg (“The Figs”) we also played some shows in Hamburg, Bremen and on the “Wheels and Wake Festival”. Right now we were on a winter break and we are all craving to play shows again. Our goal is definitely to play more gigs around Germany, especially in cities such as Leipzig, Dresden, Cologne or Dortmund. We applied to a lot of music festivals and are hopeful to be considered for lineup at some of those. Since we’re releasing our new EP in the summer 2025 we’re planning an EP-release-tour and want to make gigs all over Germany and maybe even some international cities such as Warsaw or Prague happen. Besides that, we are in contact with some bands from the UK and will most probably play some shows in the UK in May! We’re really excited for all the upcoming shows!

JLM: Cactus for Breakfast seems to be on a creative streak with a string of singles to be released in 2025 — starting with “Take Me Where You Go” on January 7th. How are the songs coming to the band right now? In rehearsal, while touring? Both?

Robin: That’s a tough question (haha)! It always depends on the songs, since they come to the band in different ways. There are definitely songs which we create together as we jam in our rehearsal space. The majority of songs is a personal creation of either me or Shane though. For me, the best lyrics or song ideas come up in the shower or in the train. Sometimes I’m in a total flow and just write down the lyrics all at once (that happened with out upcoming single “Cigarette”, which will come out on 4th of February). At other times I might just hum some melody while doodling around on my guitar — sometimes it just clicks together and a song idea is brought to life.

Another great way for me to come up with songs and refining their structure is using my DAW (I use Logic Proc X) and sketching out some song ideas. I really enjoy the songwriting process, especially when the ideas just flow naturally. Nonetheless, it can also be quite frustrating sometimes, especially when it’s too “forced”. It’s easiest for me to write songs when I’m in the right mood or have a strong emotion such as being sad, in grief or thankful. That was also the case when I came up with the lyrics and core structure for “Lonely Boy” (our third single which will drop on 4th of March). The story behind it is that I lost a very good friend of mine in 2023 — I used music to cope with my feelings of grief and sort of related the song to him. When I presented the idea of the song to the other guys, Thomas came up with some really cool ideas for the chord progression and structure of the song. Shane helped me to extend and refine the lyrics and we had a new song!

Shane: For me music always comes before lyrics. Things will usually come to me at home while playing around on the guitar and I’ll get a small interesting idea and record it onto my phone’s sound recording app. I do that quite a lot and then usually on a long train ride I’ll go through the ideas I came up with and sort through the ideas that I still find interesting and want to expand on and the ones that can stay as ideas. Then after I have an idea I can pretty easily come up with the instrumentation around then it’s the uphill battle of coming up with lyrics for the song. Sometimes I’ll present something I’m working on to Robin and he’ll pull up some lyrics on his phone that he wrote and the two ideas will merge together into something really cool. This happened with one of my favorite songs that we play called ‘Vitamin B’ (which is also coming out later in 2025). I had an idea for a riff and a general chord progression and Robin pulls up his phone and starts singing these really cool lyrics that fit the song perfectly. It doesn’t always happen that easily but it’s a really cool moment when it comes together.

Overall: When we share our ideas with the band we try them out, see where we might need to make adjustments and finalise the songs together to get them stage-ready. Sometimes we have all the instrumental parts already arranged, at other times Thomas and Timo come up with exciting melodies and rhythms at home or in the rehearsal space and we blend them together as a band.

JLM: Your song titles are curious and hint to a tradition of playful naming shared by many contemporary psych bands. What was the inspiration for the band name?

Robin: That question has been asked many times in concert by the audience, we want to give the question back to the readers. What do you think is the right answer? We’re called “Cactus for Breakfast” because …

1. we went to a secluded hut in the alps, met this Shaman from Belgium and he invited us to his ceremony. We ate cactus for breakfast and were tripping hard.
2. we were on a house party, all drunk and fucking around with potential band names. Someone picked up a potted cactus and the names Cactus Erectus came up. Sober we decided on a a more tame version.
3. Timo lived in Mexico for several years. He ate cactus (=nopales) in his breakfast tacos quite regularly.

JLM: Cactus for Breakfast is diverse and international, with members from Germany, Indonesia and The US. How does that inform your dynamic as a band?

Robin: Let’s start with Thomas. Thomas comes from Jakarta, Indonesia — a nation that’s famous for their surfing culture (and music scene!). His island boy vibes definitely sharp our surfy and drippy sound. Flying over to the US, where Shane grew up. Shane is the real country boy, growing up in a small town in Michigan before moving out to Colorado and then eventually to Berlin. His love of classic country records has a big impact on our music — be it his favourite orange Tele, his chicken picking or even hog-calling. Me (Robin) and Timo both grew up in western Germany (but only met once we both were in Berlin) and have both lived and travelled internationally for many years (Australia, UK, Netherlands to name a few) resulting in german rock energy with a weave of psychedelia and surf. Drawing on all our eclectic influences, we strive to craft a sound that combines drippy reverb, psychedelic textures, thumbing basslines and overall good vibes.

JLM: I love the groove-heavy sounds of the band pulling at threads from blues, garage, surf with hints of western and a step further into psychedelic with your upcoming single. You mention classic influences from The Doors and Velvet Underground (and I can hear some early Stones) to contemporaries like The Nude Party, The Grogans, and Sun Room. I am so fascinated with the lineage of surf and how it blends with genres and generations across the world. What was the gateway into surf for some of the band members? Why is surf sound compelling to you?

Shane: I’ve always been a genre diver, I will get into one genre and then just try to find as much as I can and listen to everything in it. I had a streak of hyper-fixation on The Beatles when I was in middle school and would listen to no other band but eventually from there I widened my scope but was still mainly listening to music from the 1960s (The Band, The Doors, Bob Dylan, The Troggs). One day at a record store I bought on a whim a Ventures record because I liked the cover and that’s where the surf interest really started for me. So I started listening to the whole canon of instrumental surf (special shout out to The Astronauts for having the greatest reverb sound of any surf band). I loved the huge swelling sounds, the driving rhythms and the simple but somehow lyrical melodies. I’ve never surfed once in my life but the music of 60s So-Cal really spoke to me somehow. Since we’ve been doing the project I’ve gotten more into modern surf bands too, mainly though Robin.

Robin: I used to do work and travel in Australia as a gap-year. During that time I discovered the Australian surf (music) scene. I’ve started surfing there, enjoyed the laid-back vibe of the surfers, started checking out the music that was playing in hostels, bars etc. and have been following the modern surf music scene ever since.

Timo: I fell in love with surf music through concerts in the Berlin music scene and was fascinated by the juxtaposition of beachy surf vibes and Berlin’s bustling, urban environment.

Thomas: I grew up listening to a lot of different music, but when we started this project, the surf sound immediately felt familiar for me. In Indonesia, it’s an emerging genre, with bands like The Panturas repopularizing it after earlier pioneers like Eka Sapta. It fascinates me how they could capture the nostalgic vibe of old movies my dad used to watch and bring it back with a fresh, modern retro twist.

Cactus for Breakfast:
Soundcloud
Bandcamp
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Related:

Interview with Susan SurfTone

Jessica Lee McMillan © 2025

Cactus for Breakfast was originally published in The Riff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.