Axis: Sova with Desert Liminal and Ovef Ow

 

On their journey from blown-out solo bedroom project to full-blown band, Axis: Sovahave been described as “prime movers of robo-boogie for the central United States” (NPR) and “like The Stooges riding shotgun on a Suicide track” (Pitchfork). Yet their mutant glam has truly crystallized on a different level with their latest, Blinded By Oblivion (God?/Drag City). The group – Brett Sova, Jeremy Freeze, and Josh Johannpeter – wrote their new album within the steel-grey confines of their hometown, Chicago, then flew out to Southern California and recorded it at Harmonizer Studios. The resulting clash of industrial steel vs. indelible nature is sonically palpable, with the music hinging on tension and full of cathartic release, all produced for rock n’ roll radio. Throughout, Axis: Sova take a slew of heady musical inputs to inform a harrowing and insistent lyrical POV lit up by allegories of social estrangement, personality crisis, and compassion for our collective fallibility. It’s the human condition: we’re all just Blinded By Oblivion.

 

Desert Liminal is an experimental pop trio who’ve honed their unique sound within Chicago’s rich underground music community for nearly a decade. Songs center dream-like poetry and vocal harmony within a cloud of analog synth textures and swirling violin loops. KEXP called their 2024 album Black Ocean a “captivating, string-enhanced set of sweeping art-rock, cinematic shoegaze, and poetic dream-pop featuring a lush, enveloping sound.”

Ovef Ow

Chicago’s Ovef Ow have been making synth heavy art punk for the better part of the last ten years, pulling influences that seem to range from B-52s and Devo to The Raincoats and Sleater-Kinney. Agitation is met with upbeat party anthems, paired together to create a swarm of new wave jangle and rough but friendly post-punk. Synths peel, drip, and flail across guitars, bass, and drums, ringing out with surfy exuberance, the band’s entire mood shifting between sunburnt joy to a stumbling sense of bliss. (by Dan Goldin, @post_trash_)