Punchlove – Channels LP Kanine Records

For the five members of Punchlove — multi-instrumentalists Jillian Olesen, Ethan Williams, Joey Machina, Ian Lange-McPherson, and visual artist Viz Wel–moving into a maze of a house in Brooklyn together was the transition that created the album they had been writing their whole lives. Quietly evolving from a bedroom project to a headlining live phenom, Punchlove has geared up a densely layered bed of emotionally serrated pain-pop songs that coalesce around a digitally-stimulated, emotional brand of modern neo-shoegaze. Channels, out March 1st on Kanine Records, is an album of deeply prepared sounds, sharply honed instrumentals, and a band performing them that knows each other all the way through.

Channels is a title inspired by the synthesis of the group’s many individual experiences with both the natural and unprecedented changes that come with life after college, channeling many changing facets of their lives and relationships into one project with each song offering its own individual vignette into this greater shared experience. Many of the album’s unique and immersive textures can be attributed to the band’s sound experiments with algorithmic audio programming and psychoacoustic phenomena, uniquely interwoven into the album’s greater framework of pop songwriting. Having met studying music technology in college, multiple members of Punchlove work mixing live bands at prominent NYC venues and in the studio. Using that expertise, the in-house production, mixing, and recording is a palpable highlight; mastered by 2000s shoegaze stalwart Kurt Feldman (The Depreciation Guild), the record melds DIY recording and experimental sonic visions with studio quality.