It's been a little over a year since Piles released their debut Planet Skin, one of the most purely addictive records the Milwaukee punk scene has produced in years. Seriously, it's a Pringles can of an album; I've probably played it several dozen of times over the last 12 months and haven't come anywhere close to tiring of it. There's no set release date for a proper follow-up album, but in this week bassist Nolan Truttschel offered another fix of sorts in the form of a solo album,\NASTOS\, released under the moniker IXAT. It's a true solo affair, written and recorded entirely by Truttschel over what's easy to imagine as a stretch of long winter nights when nothing else was going on and it was probably too cold to go outside anyway.
Rather than try to recreate the pummeling velocity of Piles Skin, Truttschel's opted for a dreamier, more relaxed feel—he sounds like a one-man Yo La Tengo on opener "Rain Emissions"—but the bleary melodic sensibilities of the band come across, making for something a lot more unique than the typical "dude in a room" record. The whole thing feels like a demo tape for SST records that got lost in the mail and has been sitting in a dead letter office since 1989. It's a wonderful little escape.
Stream it below, via IXAT's Bandcamp page.
