{"id":807298,"date":"2026-10-19T06:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T06:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807298\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T06:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T06:20:09","slug":"they-are-gutting-a-body-of-water-kool-faith-loosies-ii-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807298\/","title":{"rendered":"They Are Gutting a Body of Water: KOOL FAITH \/ LOOSIES II Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doug Dulgarian founded Julia\u2019s War Recordings in 2021 to help his friends release cassettes of the cool music they were making. The Philadelphia musician and They Are Gutting a Body of Water<\/a> frontman has long demonstrated a fondness towards physical media formats: wearing out CDs in his tour van; dismantling VHS tapes for music videos<\/a>; and, as a kid, collecting unlicensed remix compilations of tracks by his favorite artists, absorbing an eclecticism that he\u2019d eventually reflect back in TAGABOW\u2019s output.<\/p>\n

Since 2017, Dulgarian has grown TAGABOW from its placid, solo origins into one of the decade\u2019s most influential and inventive shoegaze bands; the proof is in Lotto<\/a>, their bold and relentless breakout LP from last year. Meanwhile, Julia\u2019s War helped launch the careers of indie luminaries like Wednesday<\/a> and Feeble Little Horse,<\/a> and their rolodex currently boasts promising up-and-comers like Cashier<\/a> and MX Lonely<\/a>. In light of the success of both his band and his label, Dulgarian wanted to make his own foray into the mixtape shuffle\u2014to make, as he put it, \u201cmashups of all [his] favorite artists,\u201d like the CDs he listened to as a kid. The result is KOOL FAITH \/ LOOSIES II, where TAGABOW enlist over a dozen featured artists from the Julia\u2019s War roster and beyond for a wide-spanning compilation that proves the influx of press coverage and indie-rock stardom has yet to water down the band\u2019s prowess.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

The mixtape\u2019s 29 tracks feature guests spanning a range of genres and levels of visibility. Hotline TNT<\/a>\u2019s menacing riffs and sustained vocals take the lead on the muscly \u201crodman,\u201d and Spirit of the Beehive<\/a> bring a splash of warped psychedelia to the dizzying \u201cmy Happening.\u201d TAGABOW\u2019s music often synthesizes analog and digital elements, and the mixtape format allows them to push their versatility further: Dulgarian\u2019s affinity for jungly breakbeats, for example, goes full Chicago footwork with help from expert DJ Manny<\/a> on the stuttering \u201c5dime.\u201d The influence of hip-hop on TAGABOW\u2019s production comes full circle on \u201cyellow dolphins,\u201d where emo-tinged guitar loops soundtrack laid-back verses from RXKNephew and FearDorian, and \u201cstone driveway bypass,\u201d with an instrumental playful enough to make meme-rappers DupontPavilion and beat fella\u2019s absurdist bars feel like serious fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doug Dulgarian founded Julia\u2019s War Recordings in 2021 to help his friends release cassettes of the cool music…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[375,96,128,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-807298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}