Bleep

Having stunned us with long players from Carla dal Forno, Tomorrow The Rain Will Fall Upwards, Raime and Secret Boyfriend, Blackest Ever Black draw to a close, the fifth year of operations with Gunshots at Crestridge, the latest and greatest from Philadelphia artist Jesse Dewlow.

Favouring the same strung-out and hung out lo-fi folk sketches that are favoured by label-mate Secret Boyfriend, Gunshots at Crestridge is ripe with carefully constructed experiments and sketches that are quietly encapsulating and if you give yourself into them; hugely absorbing.

From bedroom-rooted electronics to harsh noise assaults and densely psychedelic mirages of reverb-soaked swirling post-punk realism, People Skills is the winter months' to Secret Boyfriend's endless summers adorned on 'This Is Always Where You've Lived'.

Much like the label's monthly NTS show whose tracklistings catapults armies of record hungry heads to Discogs, racking up their want lists with all manner of extensive and obscure yet vitally essential 7"s and LP's from the post-punk underground, People Skills has crafted an album that could have easily come out alongside the waves of self-released obscurities, yet perfectly carries forth a sound and style that remains strikingly in the present.