Brooklyn-based EXP releases debut album this Friday on Reptilian Records!

From the twisted family tree of Cop Shoot Cop, Lubricated Goat, Swans, Live Skull, and many others arrives EXP, a peculiar mutant hybrid, ring-tailed and sharp of tooth and claw. A new bloodline of nocturnal bug-eyed rock ‘n’ roll beasty for aficionados of the sick punk and psychedelic freak strain.

Collaborators J. Natz (bass guitar/vocals) and AE Csaky (guitars/synth) are the main protagonists of the Brooklyn-based multimedia project that is EXP. The first two songs recorded on EXP's eponymous debut album, “Plague” and “Hey Kid,” feature the rhythm section from Cop Shoot Cop—J. Natz and Phil Puleo—playing together for the first time in a dozen years. Puleo, called away by touring duties with his primary band Swans, left the door open for Mr. Bloody Rich Hutchins (Live Skull, Art Gray Noizz Quintet) to drum on the rest of the album, reconnecting Natz and Hutchins after they served as the rhythm section for Stu Spasm's Lubricated Goat.

 Between November 2024 and August 2025, twenty or more songs were written and recorded at Martin Bisi's BC Studios (Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, John Zorn, Alice Donut) and Hutchins' Studio H, which were honed down to the twelve tracks on EXP’s eponymous introductory album. Additional players making this first release possible were Stu Art Gray Spasm on guitar and Annabel Lee (Monkhammer, Amber Asylum) on violin, piano, and synthesizer. Elements of post-rock, noise rock, alternative, cinematic textures, experimentalism, and other elements meld into a noncompliant yet digestible set of songs on EXP, marking a stimulating introduction to this new band.

Natz writes, “When we had some money saved up, I suppose we could have taken ourselves on vacation – gone to Aruba or some such. Instead, AE and I decided to rent a couple of weeks at Martin's BC Studios to record some of what we were playing around the house. So, the overriding question that came to govern the making of this album was ‘Is this going to be fun?’

 “Part of that ‘What we were doing around the house’ involved Phil Puleo and I, who have maintained a friendship since our rhythm sectioning in Cop Shoot Cop days, boomeranging basslines and drumbeats back and forth, with him in Chicago and myself in Brooklyn. I suggested we next-level things and take it into Martin's. ‘Will this be fun?’ Most definitely, although highly impractical. We managed to get two tracks together in this highly time-consuming manner – ‘Plague’ and ‘Hey Kid.’ For the remaining tracks, I recruited Bloody Rich Hutchins, with whom I had rhythm sectioned for an incarnation of Lubricated Goat some years before. ‘Will this be fun?’ He not only knocked those out of the park, but it set into motion a dozen or more songs written and recorded at Rich's Studio H in Brooklyn.

 “Chris X being an old mucker since the last century and a man who knows a good time when he hears one made Reptilian a perfect fit.”

EXP will tour Europe in the Spring of 2027, preceded by targeted US live engagements. In the meantime, the band will work on visual content and additional recordings, so this album is just the tip of the spear.

EXP will be released on vinyl and digitally on September 4th. Find preorders at the Reptilian Records webshop HERE and Bandcamp where other tracks are playing HERE.

EXP:

J. Natz – bass guitar and vocals

A.E. Csaky – guitar, synth

Bloody Rich Hutchins – drums/percussion

Annabel Lee – violin, synth, piano

Stu Art Gray – additional guitar

Phil Puleo – additional drums

Thank you very much Earsplit PR

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Photo by © AE Csaky