Hoods Up! – A Collection of Recordings

This one’s a blast from Black With Sap’s collective past. Hoods Up! is one of the many musical endeavors that spawned from our group of friends that never reached its full potential. Yeah, it’s a shameless plug for some friends, but in my defense, this band hasn’t existed for years and everyone else should love this shit as much as I do.

Anyway, Hoods Up! was the moniker that Brett Hawkins recorded under for a short time. At its inception, the band was a shouty two-piece with Ryan De La Rosa (of Fern and Moss and Delores) on guitar, but Brett continued to write acoustic songs before moving on to other projects. These songs are undeniably catchy, charming, funny, and endearing as all hell. They were basically an emo two-piece that didn’t take themselves seriously and wrote music that was fun to play. What’s not to like about that? Brett and Ryan both have tons of recorded music, but I wanted to put together some songs they wrote together (plus a few extras). Download it, listen to it, dig it. Never fucking grow up.

Download.

Dolores – To die no more

Normally for such a post, I would offer some sort of bias disclaimer. Something like, “This album is incredible, but my opinion may be slightly swayed by the fact that it was made by one of my best friends.” No such disclaimer is needed for this. Dolores’ album To die no more is a perfectionist finding perfection in music he loves the most. Ryan De La Rosa has been working on this project for countless months and now, after what has seemed like an eternity for those of us that know how much thought and creativity Ryan pours into his art, Ryan has unleashed the fruit of his labor. What lies a mere click or two away from you now is not a black metal fan’s take on drone and ambience. It is not an appreciator of noise’s attempt to meld genres into a cacophony of sound. Instead, what you’ll find is a true disbeliever of beauty’s attempt to convince himself that beauty truly does exist. I can only hope that as he listens to what he has made here, despite what anguish peeks its head out from the recesses and corners of these songs, he finds it. I certainly do, even after forgetting its existence.

Download.

Ryan is also offering physical copies of this album on CD and cassette in hand-made packaging for the simple cost of shipping them to you. Get in contact with him through his bandcamp and be sure to let him know what you think of this album.