Secret Boyfriend - (2013) This Is Always Where You've Lived LP

Secret Boyfriend is Ryan Martin, a singer, songwriter and noise artist from Carrboro, North Carolina (a scene that's also home to Profligate, Lazy Magnet and LACK). He already has a slew of cassettes and vinyl to his name, including titles on Ren Schofield's I Just Live Here and his own Hot Releases. Martin's music is a post-hypnagogic expression of the lo-fi rock tradition (as originally pioneered by the likes of Jim Shepard, Peter Jefferies, The Dead C, et al.). Much like those artists, he creates grainy home recordings that cut across a number of styles, in the process extinguishing the distinctions between song and sound collage, self-expression and sonic experimentation. Indeed, by the halfway mark of This Is Always Where You've Lived, listeners have already been exposed to guitar-driven slowcore ("Silvering The Wing"), harsh drone ("Flashback"), Giallo pastiche ("Summer Wheels"), and primitive synth-pop ("Beyond The Darkness").