By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring zayALLCAPS’ modern madcap pop spectacle ART POP * POP ART and bloodsports’ thrillingly aggressive ANYTHING CAN BE A HAMMER!
zayALLCAPS – ART POP * POP ART
Genre: Alternative R&B, Cloud Rap
Favorite Tracks: “Friendz U Can Kiss,” “MTV’s Pimp My Ride,” “Love in U”
I’ve yet to hear an album that feels more 2025 than zayALLCAPS’ ART POP * POP ART, the most colorful, satisfyingly ADD-riddled 25 minute collection of music you’ll hear all year. A blend of cloud rap, alternative R&B, and outsider art pop, in one swift motion he will shift from deep fried Usher projections to grainy, soaring SoundCloud beats. Writing this on the heels of the first time there has been no hip-hop in the Hot 100’s Top 40 in 35 years, the album sounds refreshing.
ART POP * POP ART’s first two tracks are as good an opening one-two punch as any record has had all year, from the wind-up flow of the Pitchfork tipped “MTV’s Pimp My Ride” to the pulsating alternate reality generational anthem “Friendz U Can Kiss”—both unique calling cards for zayALLCAPS’ madcap speed. The rest of the album is like scrolling through a bizzaro timeline of modern hip-hop and R&B, oscillating between sparse, twitchy ballads (“Ode 2 Ivory”), looping, psychedelic Frank Ocean worship (“Love in U”), and dizzying experimental trap cuts (“Tasty (Bad Gurl)”). The whole thing is at once a swiped through vision of the past and a percussive, eccentric vision of the present. It’s alien and comforting—one of 2025’s best kept secrets. Give it a listen over on Bandcamp.
bloodsports – ANYTHING CAN BE A HAMMER
Genre: Post-Hardcore, Noise Rock
Favorite Tracks: “Calvin,” “Rot,” “Come, Dog”
The opening riff on “Trio 1” is jarring to the point of grating—as immediately visceral a start as you could hope for with an album titled ANYTHING CAN BE A HAMMER. One of two dissonant instrumental pieces dividing both halves of bloodsports’ debut album, it separates the wheat from the chaff before violently recombining them. It builds up atonal, post-hardcore rhythms into something that, by the end of the 90 seconds, morphs into beauty.
This is often the way with ANYTHING CAN BE A HAMMER, where beauty—even catharsis—is earned through a sea of raging noise rock. You come out the other side of the slowly thrashing standout “Come, Dog” to “Themes,” a track that begins with a stirring, quiet intensity before giving in and returning us to the noise. “Rot” finds vocalist Sam Murphy attempting to distance himself from bouts of vulnerability and emotional support, the music sparsely pulsing up and down with dramatic fervor before ending with cries amongst the hellfire, questioning “How can you smile / when God is my audience.” The closing title track, a six minute summation of bloodsports sonic ambitions, is a dark spectacle, coming in hot with crashing cymbals and lashing guitars—cinematic in its grinding fury even if a degree of empathy folds in amongst the instrumental uproar. The song knows how to play with this drama, and as the lyrics slowly paint a picture of how much we yearn for something consequential or remarkable amongst the slowly deteriorating normalities of life, the music tempers on.
bloodsports want to deliver a high wire act, and ANYTHING CAN BE A HAMMER is a dizzying spectacle. In their most palatable moments, they’re channeling the beauty that exists in Pile’s often tense but approachable post-hardcore explosiveness. Those moments, especially, make them one of the more immediately exciting guitar acts to come out of Brooklyn in some time. Surf and channel the rage over on Bandcamp.
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