Christians is an improv project that appears in various configurations led by Vancouver guitarist Jeremy Stewart. Their new album, S/Z (titled after Roland Barthes’ structural analysis of narrative codes) was recorded at Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie)’s dilapidated church studio in Anacortes, WA. This allowed Christians to take on the guise of a classic Pacific Northwest power trio, with Stewart joined by Stanley Jason Zappa on bass and drummer Nick Skrowaczewski (both of whom appeared on last year’s Golia / Shiroishi / Sikora / Skrowaczewski / Wedman / Zappa tape HelMel). It was featured on the Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp for May 2024.

On S/Z, the trio translates the sonic vocabulary of metal, blues, and punk into the musical language of free improvisation. Two monolithic feedback solos stand in the middle of the session as a depressive core to the psychedelic mania that surrounds them, while the trio obsessively returns to a theme from The Rite of Spring. Exhilarating sounds recommended for fans of Fushitsusha, Caspar Brötzmann Massaker, Last Exit etc.