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Mark Morgan (formerly of Sightings and Silk Purse) and Gaute Granli first met in Brooklyn at The Glove in 2017 while Granli was on tour from his home country of Norway. The following year, Morgan embarked on a solo European tour and he and Granli did three shows together in Norway. Ultimately finding each other reasonably tolerable and able to agree to disagree on punk versus prog, they soon thereafter toured together in the fall of 2019 in Europe for 50 days with each playing solo. As the tour progressed, both found themselves influencing and being influenced by the other and by the end, they decided they should do a band together (easier to book one act rather than a package deal). Plans were made to reconvene in 2020 to record and possibly tour but then Covid threw a wrench into the works. A couple of years later, Rump State finally started playing and recording together in 2021 at Entropy Studio in Redford, Michigan (notably the childhood home of Ted Nugent who purportedly refers to it as "Tedford"). Outside of agreeing that there should be a strong focus on duo vocals and that Morgan would play guitar and Granli electronics, not much else was discussed in advance of first playing together. From these sessions, their first LP "Retaliation Aesthetics" was cobbled together and eventually released on the Parisian No Lagos label in March 2023. Since then, Rump State has toured the USA once and Europe multiple times.
'Psychic Sidekick', Rump State's second album, is a jarring, dizzying (even!) collision ; prior notions of song disassembly and aural properties being repossessed-then-sold-for-scrap were already due for reassessment. Morgan and Granli have rendered such arguments moot, and if you prefer "discussion" to argument, CONGRATS ON BEING SO (fucking) civilized. That's not gonna diminish this album's impact one iota.
Is this the most challenging album of 2026? How in blazes should I know, it's only February.
As a duo, Kjetil Brandsdal (Noxagt, Ultralyd, No Balls) and Thore Warland (Staer, Golden Oriole, Tørrfall, Plan Affine) have released a series of albums in which they have reworked a wide range of source material from music history. In Hebbex D'expectatio Expectata, they continue this thread, now joined by Helge Thornes, who has a background in dancehall and psychobilly (Troubletone Soundsystem, HBX Crew, Oransjt Mareritt). The lyrics on their new album explore Aubrey Beardsley's unfinished novels, Roman tragedies, and Norwegian newspaper journalism.
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