In the fall of 2025, more than 20 years after recording their avant-punk swan song Cough, Black Eyes returned to Dischord with Hostile Design. The album’s six all-new songs were written directly in the wake of their April 2023 reunion shows and see the quintet pushing deeper into the ominous dubscapes and feral punk that defined their first two LPs.
In 2022, after nearly two decades apart, the five members decided to begin rehearsals with the goal of celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut self-titled album in the spring of 2023. What started as a few lowkey practices quickly built up steam, and the reunion revealed their essential intensity has remained undiluted. Once they wrapped the first weekend of shows, Black Eyes convened a meeting and immediately agreed to continue pushing forward. No longer in reunion mode, they took their next steps as a fully operational band. This album is the first output of the new chapter.
Written over a period of fifteen months between August 2023-November 2024, Hostile Design’s lyrics explore the political, sexual and interpersonal with poetic fluidity. As with all their work, the band skips didactic platitudes and turns the lens into the shadows. How does it feel to live through times of terrifying violence? How does it shape us, and how do we shape each other?
Hostile Design was recorded at Tonal Park studios over three days, with Ian MacKaye resuming his role as producer and Don Godwin engineering. The instrumentation returns to Cough’s two drums, bass, guitar and sax lineup, but adds some fresh elements. Live multichannel dubbing, now a standard of their shows, has been integrated into the performances, as have electronic drum triggers and samples as well as the occasional bass clarinet passage. Taking the breathless density of Cough as their starting point, the arrangements unfurl into something more spacious and, in moments, haunting. Having workshopped these songs across previous dates in the winter of 2023-fall 2024, the new songs explode with the same cathartic fury that the group is known for.
In the years since their initial dissolution, each member has pursued their own creative paths, including drone rock, avant techno, ambient, sonic collage, visual art, video work and more. In coming back together, the breadth of their collective practices are all integrated into the music, but it will only take a second for listeners to hear the unmistakable sound of Black Eyes.
MORGAN GARRETT
Purity was created in response to finding a neighbor’s dead body. The experience eviscerated my sense of safety and my feeling of home. This record is an attempt at grappling with the stress of the situation and unfolding events, honoring and documenting its effects on my mind and life. Alex Nagle and I worked closely, weekly, to create Purity. The music is maximal and precise. The songs are spacious and free. The sound and production is unreal, I have no true reference for it.
IBAH BASKETTE & THE WANDERING TALISMAN ENSEMBLE
Introducing Ihba Baskette & The Wandering Talisman Ensemble.
Prepare for an immersion into Experimental Free-Form Music. This is an exploration of sound at its source—unscripted, borderless, and profoundly raw led by Ihba Baskette, leading conceptualist and Multi-instrumentalist (saxophone and percussions).
Featuring: the powerful percussion of Karen Smith, the textured saxophone and rhythmic ingenuity of Ryoko Ohara, Eric E+ Green on guitar, and the deep, anchoring resonance of Ryan Ficano on upright bass, the ensemble is redefining what it means to create sound in the moment.
The journey begins now. Shift your frequency.