FLOOR BABA – FACILITIES EP 

Experimental electronic composer FLOOR BABA creates colorful, high-energy pieces that dart and squiggle like computer-generated insect colonies hopped up on floating gold coins. Their music draws from the pinging sonic palette that characterizes video games—a medium that FLOOR BABA, fittingly, has soundtracked—to create a mood that is simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic. 

FACILITIES, FLOOR BABA’s new EP, is a science class protein synthesis animation come to life. Fragments of chintzy synth, jittery percussion, and squelching bass act as zooming RNA helpers working frantically on their final product. Each of the EP’s six tracks feels like its own little ecosystem, complete with evocative title. Opener “a million mile waterslide” pairs a caffeinated drum break with chipmunk chirps and tilt-a-whirl melodies; a kaleidoscoped choir rejoices in the background. You can picture the pixelated trees and blocky clouds scrolling by. Another aquatic offering, “swimming in post-suburbia,” is more placid, with tones that shimmer like sunlight off chlorinated water, a scene contained within VR goggles whose embrace obscures a charred wasteland. “crashing out” enlists a back-alley brass sample for one of the cuddlier bangers you’ll hear, and pulsing, buzzing closer “chaotic eternal inflation” could back a PowerPoint presentation that explains why you can’t have nice things and why you don’t actually need them. Let FACILITIES be your accompaniment to the absurdity that is life on the internet.  

Gina Gory – Died Laughing

The climactic scene in the 2002 horror classic The Ring features (spoiler alert) a girl’s ragged ghost crawling out of a television set. The music contained within trio Gina Gory’s debut LP, Died Laughing—which sounds like the title of its own horror movie—feels like it’s dragging itself from the speakers in a similar manner. The songs are warped; notes sound detuned, melodies hit sideways, and Veronika Cloutier’s guitars often resemble buzzing kitchen appliances, especially on the droning “TV Star.” Unlike the girl in The Ring, though, Gina Gory is not here to hurt you. All she wants is to deliver haunted pop songs. 

For a band that employs relatively simple instrumentation, Gina Gory produce a rich and varied sound. Guitarist Cloutier, bassist Connaley Martin, and keyboardist/drum machinist Dylan Henricksen harmonize like a chorus of disembodied spirits floating through the rooms of a disused recording studio. Cloutier’s axe sounds, at various points, like it’s been squeezed out of a tube (the turbocharged start-stop of “The Loser”), replaced by busted coils of couch spring (the wavering lullaby “Heaven is Overflowed”), and thrust into a grumbling duet with a chiming elevator (the subdued, acoustic-tinged “Riding (Alternate)”). The songs themselves run the gamut, too. For every devastatingly beautiful churn—fallen-angel opener “This Song Contains a Lie,” for one—there’s a track that displays a sly, dry sense of fun. “Bunny” buries surfy “bop-mmbop” backing vocals under layers of whirring chords, and “Hart of Gold” contains finger-wagging count-ins and giggly passages that melt like ice cream in a power outage. So, when you hear Gina Gory coming for you, don’t run away; just put on your headphones. 

My Betsy – Finish Your Drinks, The Uber's Here (no you don't have time to pee)

Betsy Schmeler cut her teeth in the Pittsburgh music community (as a high schooler, no less) playing with the band Wild Blue Yonder, before moving out to Los Angeles for college. She records out there in the City of Angels under the name My Betsy, but still reps Pittsburgh at the top of her Instagram page. 

In the world of My Betsy’s new EP, the extravagantly-titled Finish Your Drinks, The Uber’s Here (no you don’t have time to pee), home is a cozy black hole, one whose nurturing suck is explored best through tumbleweedy acoustic rambles. “Room Doom” sets the mood with slow-building drums and faraway swoops that hit like birdsong through a closed window. “The AC is really kickin / And my nose is getting cold,” Schmeler sings, her hushed tone making it clear that she’s staying inside anyway. Even when she gets out, it’s not without trepidation. As the spry, minimalist hoedown “A lot of Money, A Little Fun” makes clear, there’s cost to consider; the Ubers and beer might be worth it, but only if they’re accompanied by transcendence: “Please say these memories / They’ll last forever.” The reasoning is even simpler on the slow-smoldering “Independence Day”; “We can’t stay in anymore.” Despite the looming specter of bed rot, the EP is far from a downer. The twangy toybox saunter of “No Thank You” finds Schmeler reassuring, “I’m not trying to steal your car,” a sentence that you definitely don’t hear or say every day, and the aforementioned “A lot of Money, A Little Fun” features the rescue of an imperiled duck. Meandering closer “Glue” elegantly sums up the album’s dazed disposition. While synths flit like embers, Schmeler makes a request: “Dear Life, please go slow / there’s these things I’m dying to learn to know.”