R.J.F. - Going Strange LP

Highly recommended.

For the past 18 years, Ross Farrar has been leading Ceremony, a California punk band that has been through tons of different stylistic evolutions, from frantic powerviolence to stately synthpop.

Now, Ross Farrar, using the name RJF, releases his debut solo album Going Strange. This music is mostly slow, spare post-punk, built around echoed-out basslines and soft synth-drones. Farrar doesn’t sing or scream so much as intone. His lyrics have a loose, poetic feeling, and he slathers his voice in reverb.

Going Strange represents him trying a few things out for himself. The end result is something dubby and idiosyncratic and oddly pretty.

We're not even sure how to describe this thing - if Majical Cloudz had been a Dischord band in the ’90s, maybe? Rowland S. Howard playing with Alan Vega?

Whatever it is, we're fully on board. On the ever reliable Digital Regress label.