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Record Reviews TYLER DIGITAL Exit 8 There’s a bit of kismet involved with the fact that Exit 8, a long-gestating visual album from Tyler Digital (electronic artist Tyler Matthews, formerly known as Academia_) and Post Echo, arrived concurrently with the extreme hype surrounding the Netflix original series Stranger Things. There’s a distinctly 80s cinematic feel to both, although Exit 8 is a bit more noir-ish and claustrophobic in its presentation, and a fresh sense of revitalization and wonder to this certain palette of synths that both soundtracks use that feels warm and enveloping. Fans of the series looking to quench their thirst for those nostalgic sounds will definitely find something to love here. That being said, as an album without the accompanying narrative film, Exit 8 features a few genuinely great songs while also including a handful of moodier sketches more appropriate to scoring than engaging listen-
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ers directly. Lead single and lead-off track “Straight to the Head,” which makes fabulous use of guest vocals from Stefanie Santana, is a clear highlight, with its bubbling synth riff and Santana’s Sylvan Esso-esque lullaby delivery getting twisted to grand heights as Matthews uses a kaleidoscopic set of tricks to stretch the track from Italo disco horror to New Order pop perfection. “Night Talks” picks up where “Head” left off, with a driving, twitchy beat that feels like the perfect soundtrack to an 80s Halloween-horror dance party. From there things get a little more ambient, with more use of orchestral effects and organic sounds (like the crisp string strum on “Kids,” for instance) than you might expect. Tracks comfortably drift from languid synthesizer-driven digressions to kinetic explosions of abrasive dissonance or synthpop euphoria. The balance and tension between those competing impulses very much defines Exit 8, an offering as enigmatic as it is entrancing. –KP
BOO HAG Boo Hag Any two-man rock ensemble that deploys slytherine riffs and oozes ‘tude is going to garner a few comparisons to the Black Keys, so I’ll get those out of the way. It’s true, singer/ guitarist Saul G. Seibert shares some lineage with Dan Auerbach—his vocal delivery’s effortless cool, his predilection for blues-influenced guitar lines without betraying any staunch genre purism. Likewise, drummer Scott E. Tempo takes a big cue from Patrick
Carney in his studied simplicity and knack for syncopation. From there, the similarities tend to taper off. Boo Hag, and, by extension, the debut album that shares its name, is undoubtedly its own kind of monster. Boo Hag, from its pagan cover art created by native South Carolinian Tommy Bishop to its creature-feature lyrical themes to Seibert’s inclination to emit an inhuman howl whenever the spirit moves him, is a decidedly macabre document. But unlike other horror-rock acts—like, say, the Misfits, whose aesthetic was complicated by one of the most self-serious frontmen in rock history; or Marilyn Manson, whose unabashed desire to be the Willy Wonka of parental nightmares has turned him into little more than a human monument to cartoon grotesquerie—Boo Hag relies neither on camp nor empty shock value to draw listeners into its rock and roll mausoleum. The tunes range from ampedup garage rock (“Crypt Keeper”) to moody, extended psychedelic jams (“Buffalo”), but the whole album is united by the sense that it