Corporal＜Colored Vinyl＞

After getting back home from touring behind their 2023 album Datura, the duo behind Lorelle Meets the Obsolete found themselves in a tough spot. Low on funds and lacking inspiration, they pondered giving up music entirely. Eventually, the spark began to flicker again, and they began to work on new songs. What they came up with was different enough from previous work -- both the dreamlike psychedelic waves of their early records or their corrosively experimental 2020s sounds -- that they thought maybe they would change their name. They decided to keep the name the same and with the help of Suuns live mix engineer Antoine Goulet recorded 2025s Corporal. The record certainly covers some new ground for the duo -- many songs have danceable beats and are structured like club tracks, some are structureless noise blasts -- but it also feels very familiar at the same time. The new elements blend into the duos already established approach easily, the result being just as trance-inducing and hypnotic as anything from their early days. The records first "Regresar/Recordar" gives the game away early, shocking the listener with thrumming synths, madly boiling sequencers, and a cracked, almost yearning vocal from Lorena Quintanilla. It sounds like a rough and tumble night out, and the colors start to whirl a little and the tipsiness has given way to something a bit more dangerous. The song was remixed on a single release (not included) by Sabres of Paradise mainstay Jagz Kooner and that is quite fitting since the original version speeds along like the kind of track Andrew Weatherall might have built a DJ set around in 1991. The rest of the album follows suit, definitely sounding more menacing (the slow and steady "Ker," which has the doomy pace of a long walk to a place nobody wants to go), more focused and intense ("Casi no estar"), infused with extra wobbly left-field dub ("Palabra), and more scary (the stripped-down and spooky "Reanimar el cuerpo") than anything theyve previously done. While the hard reset of the band was no doubt not easy for Quintanilla or her bandmate Alberto Gonzalez, the music that came out of it was hopefully worth the struggle since the group has never sounded this immediate and raw before. Its an upgrade of a machine that was already humming along quite nicely to the outside observer -- now they sound unpredictable and daring, which is thrilling. It goes a step beyond the high-wire feats of Datura, a record that seemed to be pushing the band to a breaking point, incorporating the abrasive anger inherent in almost every note there while re-injecting some of the subtle melodicism and trippiness of earlier work. Corporal is a stunning reinvention for the duo that will please those who like their psychedelia spiked with unhealthy amounts of real danger and devil may care sonic experimentation. ~ Tim Sendra