Rat Henry - Material Pop Vol. 1 LP

After a couple of self released cassettes and a stint as a full band live concern featuring some of the cream of NYC punk, Ray Zarnowitz's Rat Henry project has gestated and bloomed into its most complete form with Material Pop Vol. 1. This record weaves lessons well-learned from the modern American noise underground, the loamy heritage of UK DIY, and punk as lifestyle/vocation into a strikingly personal statement. The comparisons that will form in the mind of the astute listener - This Degenerate Little Town as a mail collaboration between Jim Shepard and Storm Bugs, Afterbathinginturpentine with cutting social critique in the place of dilaudid fog, a production of Bad Lieutenant held on the Street Level Studios soundstage with Pierpaolo Zoppo heading the AV crew - are rendered secondary in light of Ray's vision. Material Pop Vol. 1 wields genuinely idiosyncratic songcraft and rock and roll joie de vivre like corrosive agents, eating away at the tape loop sediment encasing its songs, and at the indignities of modern urban existence. - Daniel Dimaggio, Home Blitz

Material Pop Volume One feels concocted from staticky memory. On its face the record reads like John Cale or Mayo Thompson with Flying Nun production and sound design informed by the occult British Industrial scene. It follows the rhythm one finds internally, sitting in the dull warmth of the shade on a hot day, or standing in the inky black shadows cast by a bright lamp late at night. Disheveled and sincere, partly legible, partly lost. A tranquil baritone voice, the panned triptych of simple production, noisy but gentle. The four-track inner space on this album gives me chills, and I bow to the vision: the lonely seams of honest, self-made art. - Andy Boay, Tonstartssbandht

Deftly synthesizes post-punk and industrial influences into a compellingly murky and occasionally endearingly jaunty sound-broth that is able to pull off nuanced experimentation, melancholic pop and bleakly psychedelic vistas. - Macrae Semans, Starr Suites Gallery