Premiere: Pumice – “Mothers in Mantis”

New Zealand native Stefan Neville has been making a singular form of askew, low-technology pop music for pretty much an eternity, almost 25 years. He’s been involved in countless combos, but his work as Pumice has been essentially solo since Sugar Jon Arcus split the scene many moons ago. His songs are enigmatically catchy and intentionally damaged: guitar notes are shadowed by contrails of static, shambling rhythms that seem toe-tappingly familiar, and his often fuzzy vocals stay just shy of discernible. Of course, I’ve been enamored with his music since first laying ears on it when Raft came out on the Last Visible Dog label sometime last decade. Some time ago, Neville became aligned with the Minneapolis-based Soft Abuse imprint, which has been doling out slabs of molten Pumice material on a semi-regular basis. His new record, set to arrive in December, is called Puddles, and features –- for the first time in a long time -– the work of collaborators. Like-minded friends (his band-mates in The Coolies, long-time collaborators GFrenzy and Pat Kraus) and family members all augment the signature Pumice sound, with amazing results. While you wait for the release date, take a sneak peek at the video for “Mothers in Mantis,” a fuzzy, shambling number played out against bizarre visuals courtesy of GFrenzy. Marvel as creatures both humanoid and insectile writhe on top of shifting fields of processed video, while Neville and crew cover a jangly pop song with a blown-out blanket of distortion. It doesn’t get better than this, friends.