Machine Girl

Equally apocalyptic and ecstatic, the music produced by Brooklyn's Machine Girl (Matt Stephenson) is an explosive, cathartic blend of footwork, jungle, digital hardcore, and rave. The project debuted in 2013 with self-released EPs 13th Hour and Electronic Gimp Music, followed by several releases on London-based, including the 2014 full-length WLFGRL. The album's remix EPs featured mixes by a variety of footwork, jungle, and breakcore producers, ranging from of Chicago's collective to Detroit's. Second full-length Gemini was released by in 2015, receiving much acclaim from several music websites. Machine Girl toured across the United States extensively, often with drummer Sean Kelly. A split cassette with Detroit-based rhythmic noise artist Five Star Hotel appeared on Visual Disturbances/Emergency Tapes in 2016, as the two acts toured together. Machine Girl returned to with 2017's . . .Because I'm Young Arrogant and Hate Everything You Stand For, the project's most vocal-heavy, punk-influenced release to date. Follow-up The Ugly Art appeared on Kitty on Fire Records in 2018. MG Demo Disc and U-Void Synthesizer both appeared in 2020. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi

Kill Alters

The dense compositions of NYC-based trio Kill Alters crash into you as a glorious mess of hyperactive vocal lines, pulsing electronic textures, and interwoven percussion patterns. Primary composer and producer Bonnie Baxter leads the band with her impassioned vocal performances, pummeling drum machine beats, and peals of chaotic synthesis. In addition to Kill Alters, Baxter has released solo albums and is 1/2 of the duo Prolaps alongside Machine Girls' Matthew Stephenson. In Kill Alters, Nicos Kennedy serves as the project's co-producer/mixer, sound engineer, and synthesist, both shaping their sound in the context of performance and rendering their final recorded output in all its overloaded detail. Hisham Bharoocha (formerly of seminal US underground projects Lightning Bolt and Black Dice, and a solo artist under the Soft Circle moniker) provides his signature battering ram drum performances, which collide with electronic percussion elements to animate the band's ballistic compositions both on record and in the context of their live shows.

Baxter and Kennedy started the Kill Alters project as an outlet to recontextualize the audio from an archive of home-recorded tapes made by Baxter's mother, which date from the 1970s through the 1990s. The care and the vulnerability with which Kill Alters infuses their music with these archival recordings recasts the trauma and confusion documented within them as a source from which to draw power and achieve a new sense of clarity.