Chasing Fridays: The Hellp, 7 mini-reviews, NOWHERE2RUN Q&A

Today is my birthday. I am 31 years old. To some of you, that number makes me an ancient unc. To others, I am a mere child. Most days, I feel like both. The best thing about getting older – specifically as it relates to music – is that I've heard and seen so much, and I've accumulated so much knowledge and experience that I can to apply to everything I hear going forward. This might sound simple, but it's truly so rewarding for me to be able to say, "Ah, I remember when that band existed during that time, and now the context of that scene or sound has changed."

At the same time, I still feel, and will likely always feel, like I know nothing, have heard nothing, and am constantly playing catch-up with other music lovers who have heard and know more than me. Accepting my own naivete when it comes to the genres of music I like and dislike – and the ones I've yet to form an option on – is as rewarding as feeling like a certified expert in a given niche. The older I get, the more I'm able to appreciate those two modes of ego existing in harmony. To paraphrase the sampled quote in that one DJ Shadow song: "I'm a student...and I'm also a teacher."

For this week's Chasing Fridays, I went in on new music from The Hellp, who're gearing up to release an album that will either be a titanic classic or a moderately forgettable shrug. Then, I went in on seven new releases that I've been spending time with, and finally finished off this edition by interviewing one of my favorite subjects, Jami Morgan – frontman/drummer of Code Orange, and one half of his electrifying new industrial techno outfit NOWHERE2RUN.

Are The Hellp about to drop a classic?

Sometimes, I like the idea of a band more than I actually enjoy listening to them. I like what they stand for and/or what they're trying to achieve, even if they've yet to fully achieve it. That's how I feel about The Hellp, the L.A. duo who I got into about a year ago, and have been watching with a keen eye throughout 2025 as I become increasingly invested in the world they run in. The Hellp were supposed to release a new album this month called Riviera. However, unless it materialized on Halloween, the day this newsletter goes live, then The Hellp missed their deadline. That's OK. I can wait. I'd rather The Hellp take their time and drop a classic when they're ready than rush out some mid. And judging by the singles they've dropped so far, Riviera might actually be a classic.

The Hellp have had a strange trajectory. They started in the mid-2010s as a post-punk trio who released one grating album, 2016's Twin Sinner, before reconfiguring their lineup (paring down to singer Noah Dillon and percussionist-producer Chandler Lucy) and readjusting their sound. Their 2021 mixtape, Vol. 1, was saddled with more unlistenably shitty post-punk, but The Hellp were beginning to figure their schtick out. The project's cover art – a high-flash photo of a woman's back tattoo – was a couple years ahead of what so much underground pop now looks like: esoterically sleazy, seductively vacant. Vol. 1 also included a couple songs, "Ssx" being the best of them, that were suspended by breakbeats, rife with glitchy incisions, and where Dillon's mewling groan was converted into software with three main modes: Alan Vega howl, MGMT circa "Time to Pretend" exhale, and post-hyperpop digitized warble.

The Hellp's 2024 album, LL, is when they came into their own. The LP, billed as their proper debut and arriving nine years after they formed, was still sonically scattered, but the post-punk thread had finally been snipped and The Hellp zeroed in on writing modern pop songs that weave quick-cutting electroclash, snotty pop-punk, and flecks of trendy electronic music from the last 15 years (a little hyperpop here, a little witch house there, a lot of big-room EDM throughout) into an "indie-sleaze" tapestry. Although The Hellp certainly have the same fans as acts like Snow Strippers, Bassvictim, and Suzy Sheer – the true-blue soldiers of recession-era electropop supremacy – LL was a lot less moody, druggy, and dead in the eyes than those other artists were at that point in time (Bassvictim have since grown a soul).

Hellp songs like "Go Somewhere" and "Caustic" are much closer to Frost Children and 2hollis than anything tagged "FFO: Crystal Castles": bright, squeaky, earnestly kind of dweebish despite the whole leather jacket cool guy look. LL is uneven and inconclusive as a full record, but the brilliant ideas were starting to percolate. Since then, The Hellp have only gotten better. Earlier this spring, they dropped a follow-up EP, LL Revisited, that houses some of their best work yet, including a song called "Hazel" with Julie singer Alex Brady that I like more than any Julie song. And since teasing Riviera in September, The Hellp have dropped three more singles that almost live up to the breathless praise Dillon's small yet dedicated stan community lays at his feet (I can't find it now, but I know I saw someone earnestly call him our generation's David Bowie in a recent comment thread).

"Country Road," released back in September, reanimates the more musically serious, tonally dusky iteration of The Hellp that they killed off for the jaunty LL. The duo put you right behind the wheel on a dimly lit L.A. highway, the amber synths flickering at a steady clip while Dillon sings under his breath about a Kubrickian acid trip that ends with names etched into eyelids. Whereas LL's pace was convulsive and jarring, "Country Road" is gradual and luxurious, pulling you in with the song's alluring musk rather than pushing it onto your plate with a lunchlady-like scoop. The next single, "Doppler," is soft and marshy, similarly slow-growing yet even more understated than "Country Road." It wouldn't be out of bounds to call The Hellp's older music "annoying." A track like "Colorado" is good precisely because its hook is kind of irritating. "Doppler" and "Country Road" aren't annoying. They're actually pretty suave.

"Here I Am" was the Riviera single that made me go, "Wait a second, are these guys about to drop a classic?" Dillon pulls out his best Depeche Mode impression over the plunky synth-pop bassline, and we get a full minute-and-ten of The Hellp at their starkest and smokiest. Then, a guitar – or maybe a synth? or maybe both? – starts shoots sparks like a downed electrical wire. At first, the violent surge sounds severe and elegantly theatrical. Then, The Hellp remind you that they're not a serious band. Maggie Cnossen, a visual artist with an assistant director credit on 2hollis's "flash" video (which Dillon directed), starts babbling the remarkably stupid refrain, "from L.A. to L.A. / la, la, la," with a robotically coastal deadpan. It's one of the most confoundingly stupid songwriting choices I've heard this year, and yet I also find it difficult to truly hate.

In the end, "Here I Am" is redeemed by Cnossen's minty-cool verse, a steamy Dillon hook, and a squelchy synth build that kind of sounds like that "Dream of the 90s" song from Portlandia (complimentary). That right there is quintessential Hellp: bracketing the awesome with the obnoxious and doubling down so hard on something moronic that it somehow becomes unflappably cool. Something about The Hellp that I find endearing is that they've never had big heads about their music. “Our music has never even been that good," Chandler bluntly told The Face last year. These new singles don't sound like The Hellp confidently shooting for mainstream success or angling to capture a specific market. They sound like honest attempts at trying to impress themselves. Songs that they can finally, after a whole decade of trying, feel proud of. Chandler's right: for years, The Hellp's music failed to match their own hype. But now, they really are that good.

Some thoughts on a bunch of new releases...

October is always one of the busiest listening months for me. I'm trying to revisit everything I've liked throughout the year in preparation for AOTY season, while also filling in gaps and keeping up with the deluge of weekly drops. Through that process, I've heard a bunch of music that I have one or two thoughts on, but not a full review's worth of opinions. Below, are seven mini-reviews of a bunch of random music where my takeaways range from fawning praise to profound disappointment.

After - EP 2

I've determined that this band are corny. I was hopeful that After's Y2k "trip-pop" pastiche would develop beyond its reference points (Michelle Branch, Sneaker Pimps, Owl City) following their profusely uninspired spring EP. But this second helping is somehow even more derivative and cloyingly precise in what it's aiming to achieve. After so desperately want to be world-builders, but all of their materials – the glittery aesthetic, saccharine songwriting, and sterile production – are as flimsy and phony as cardboard castles in a children's play. EP 2 may sound bubbly and carefree, but it feels like I'm watching actors faking smiles in a drug commercial.

Dazy - Bad Penny

Meanwhile, here's some FFO: Ivy music that actually makes me feel alive. Dazy, the solo band of singer-songwriter James Goodson, is always putting out music and I won't pretend to have heard all of it. His 2021 comp, MAXIMUMBLASTSUPERLOUD, is a staple of modern power-pop, and Dazy's 2022 and 2023 efforts were solid yet not quite as engrossing. Bad Penny feels like a recalibration. It hits all the familiar pleasure points – fuzzy, understatedly clever slacker-rock propped up by breakbeats – while also stretching Dazy's legs with a six-minute title-track that could fit snugly on Primal Scream's whimsically roaring XTRMNTR.

Emily Sprague - Cloud Time

Emily Sprague's first two albums, 2017's Water Memory and 2018's Mount Vision, were some of the first ambient records I ever liked, and there was a time during COVID lockdown when I listened to her work nearly every day. Cloud Time is her first record since 2020, and I'm once again reminded of how exterior and restorative her music sounds. All of these soft drones were improvised compositions that Sprague recorded live while touring Japan, and I love how aqueous and ventilated the arrangements are. I hesitate to use the word "meditative" in my writing, but I don't know a better way to describe how Cloud Time makes me feel.

The Femcels - "He Needs Me" / "Not ur friend"

The Femcels, the London duo of two girls named Gabriela and Rowan (yes, that Rowan), have two songs. Both sound completely different. Both were produced by Bassvictim's Ike Clateman. One of them, "Not ur friend," is a low-lit electroclash banger that sounds like Bassvictim if they were fronted by a whispering vampire. The other song, "He Needs Me," is a jaunty "laptop twee" highlight that has enough personality and humor to be flipped into a TV show pilot. "Not ur friend" is great. "He Needs Me" is one of 2025's best songs.

The Acacia Strain - You Are Safe From God Here

It seems like people are pretty stoked on this new Acacia Strain record. I'm always happy to see this band thriving because, as I recently wrote, they're the best currently active group from deathcore's first wave. That said, I've always thought they thrived in one or two-song increments as opposed to full-length records. TAS are, more than anything, an excellent live band, and I'm sure that a couple of these sludgy bone-mulchers will make solid additions to their setlist. They're not doing anything here that they haven't already on their previous two LPs, but what more can you expect from a band who're 12 records deep into their catalog?

Geese - Getting Killed

This is probably my album of the year. That might come as a surprise given that I haven't said a peep about it in the pages of this newsletter, or it might register as incredibly predictable given how much I loved the Cameron Winter solo record. I haven't written about Getting Killed yet for a couple reasons. One, because other people have already written about it to death. And two, because when I really love a piece of music, I sometimes just want to sit back and let myself love it without having to explain why. And for now, I'll keep doing exactly that.

Sudan Archives - The BPM

I had never heard Sudan Archives before this album, and I mistook her critical acclaim to mean that The BPM would be some kind of arty, baroque pop record in the vein of FKA Twigs circa Magdalene (great record, but not the kind of thing I reach for in my day to day). The BPM is not that. It's a totally exhilarating dance album that folds neo-R&B, glitched-out pop, and abrasively kaleidoscopic rap (the breakdown in "YEA YEA YEA" recalls Babyxsosa, and "NOIRE" has Yeezus levels of flashbang minimalism) into a cinematic club soundtrack that's both quirky and lavish, nimble and throttling.

Chasing Down

JAMI MORGAN
of
NOWHERE2RUN, Code Orange

Chasing Down is a Q&A series with artists, friends, and others of good taste.

Jami Morgan's music has been with me for a long time. Code Orange, the defunct Pittsburgh hardcore group he drummed for and fronted, were an integral gateway into hardcore for me. Their grungey emo side-project, Adventures, also contributed to my love of indie-rock. Now, both of those groups are firmly in the rearview and Morgan is onto other ventures that I think any Chasing Sundays reader, especially those who had zero connection with his previous bands, should check out. For info about the genuinely insane Bloodrave events he's been throwing, peep this long interview I did with Morgan earlier this month. In this writeup, I'll be focusing on his new band/producer duo NOWHERE2RUN.

NOWHERE2RUN is Morgan and Code Orange synthesist/producer Eric "Shade" Balderose, and their debut EP, What Did You Do?, dropped today. Morgan calls their genre-blurring music "techno noir," which is more concise than my best attempt at tagging it: industrialized rap-techno with the soul of John Carpenter and the skin of Nine Inch Nails. I think a group like Clipping are a decent enough reference point, except I always found Clipping to be a little too academic. NOWHERE2RUN are, and I mean this in a totally positive sense, dumber than that. This is music for moving bodies and sending shivers down spines. There're guest rappers all over What Did You Do? – including a really great Backxwash verse – but I like that it never drifts too far from the dance-centric premise. Turn down the lights, play it loud, and let it consume you.

For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Morgan about his favorite modern artists, the decade's best rap records, Nine Inch Nails, and more. Read the full interview below.

I know you listen to so much shit these days that's not hardcore or metal. Who in your opinion is the most inspiring artist who you've gotten into this year? What about them invigorates your love of music? 

Damn. Here's just new records I was jammin back half of the year. The Jane Remover record Revengeseekerz. Heymylan/Vamp Violence have a crazy new sound going on. Frost Children album got me into them heavy. Water From Your Eyes. The Clipse album.  Machine Girl's "Rabbit Season." The After EPs. Saphir Levi's "Follow Your Shadow"!!! The new Nine Inch single from Tron. Unreal. The 2hollis album I liked a lot. Sue me. 

Are there any specific electronic or rap producers who you're channeling with this NOWHERE2RUN EP? I know a lot of your inspo is from cinema, but what's the musical mood board for this project? 

Machines Of Loving Grace, Massive Attack, Gary Numan's Exile. The Carti Cardo songs last year that he was throwing on YouTube before the record came out. Shit's evil. Cardo is a genius of drum production and bounce. Recoil's Liquid. The Manhunter soundtrack. Designer Don insta vids. The Prodigy. The Batman score.