Tough Trouble – Radiation Sickness

Tough Trouble’s Illnesses is 14 odes to pestilence, constantly calling to mind mortality, suffering and death. On that note, what disease would we like to catch listen to today? Let’s go with an old Cold War paranoid fantasy favorite: Radiation Sickness. This leaden, bleak sound is likely to draw comparisons to plenty of bands that are all half (un)dead by now, but inventive refinements and subtleties save it from the realm of reductive post-punk nostalgia. Dreamy Durutti Column style guitars submerge beneath building layers of digitally compressed froth, while the temperamental kick drum mashes out an off-kilter groove, alternately lending and denying momentum. Despite the intention that listeners experience Illnesses as an undivided piece of work, this particular track could be as well suited to a dark tempered dance floors as a dimmed apartment with decent speakers. If this were really what disease sounded like, sick days would never be wasted on hangovers.

Tough Trouble – Radiation Sickness

Illnesses is out now via Geneva Lake Records, edition of 80 cassettes.