Minimum Table Stacks
RAT HENRY - Material Pop Volume One LP
Limited edition of 300 copies.
Highly recommended.
The debut full-length by this NYC-based solo artist Rat Henry (aka painter and visual artist Ray Zarnowitz). “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.
"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