The year has barely started, and yet, it’s already beginning with a highly promising refresh to the landscape of esoteric sounds from the underground. Los Angeles’ Expose are one of those reasons. As the brainchild of vocalist and drummer Trent Rivas, the experimental noise rock collective has since expanded exponentially in numbers since its embryonic stages as Rivas’ solo outlet, taking on guitarists Jeff Stephens and Duke Guisness, synthesizer James Novick, bassist Jake Getz, viola player Coleman Sawyer, and saxophonist Brian Bartus alongside contributions throughout from scene peer Ray Monde of the experimental psych-pop duo Monde UFO.

There are many limbs, creative minds, and ideas floating through their discordant swirl of genre-clashing noise on their just-released debut full-length, ETC. At times, the album brandishes gnarled teeth from the roots of hardcore on tracks like “Speed Dial” and “Description” only to implode from the universe’s own chaos by way of loud, calamitous cosmic jazz on “Road Railing” and “Self Terror”, only to regenerate into synthetic orbs and heavy plumes of post-punk smoke forming on “Reverse 3” and “Glue”. That barely cracks the surface in descriptor of an incomparable listening experience for those who prefer their albums far outside conventional lines.

+rcmndedlisten connected with Trent Rivas over electronic mail to talk about the album, the eccentric nature of LA’s DIY scene that allows such sounds to flourish, how their sound came together (while coming from very different angles,) and plans near and further out for the band.

+rl: Listening to ETC is very much an affirming experience for the weirder contours of noise and experimental music coming out of the Los Angeles “scene-not-scene” (as the album’s press release so astutely puts it.) Monde UFO — whose Ray Monde contributes sax throughout the LP — and Bondo are mentioned as kindreds. Off the top of my head, Dummy and anything Marbled Eye’s Chris Natividad does would figure into that broader equation of swirling, not-easy-to-define styles coming out of Cali’s DIY circles that make that “scene-not-scene” so alluring. What do you think it is about the geography that cultivates these genuinely stranger shapes?

Trent Rivas: We are all touching this style of music from different angles but meeting in the middle. There’s so much cool stuff coming out of this region and there always has been. It’s kinda like pick and choose your flavor and see what works. But I think with that, it’s so easy to get ahead of yourself and have this “super band” thing going on and things get lost. The gems begin to show themselves when you snip dead weight and work more contained. 

+rl: Noise rock’s rapture + the aggression of hardcore + the freeform of free jazz + smeared psychedelic post-punk + droning analog synths and electronic detours = ETC. How did the band arrive at collecting these varied and sometimes arbitrary sounds together onto the same plane? 

TR: Man, we are a mess haha. But it’s fun that way. We all come from different backgrounds musically/artistically and sometimes that is a horrible mix, but I think we lucked out with how this is going. We are all close friends, we all support each other, we all have ideas, and I guess we just figured out how to mesh it all. We ride on keeping it simple. Short and sweet. Two riffs max haha. It’s easier to communicate that way.

+rl: There’s words sprawled throughout the listen, but they almost come secondary to the push and pull between heavy-weighted shouts of noise and levitational zone-outs you’re immersed under from the minute the album starts, perhaps better defined by the titles of each track themselves. To me, it sounds like a compression and decompression of cosmic decay. Is it an intentional effort to let sound lead the narrative?

TR: Our sound is going in this direction where vocals aren’t so much of a focal point. Yes, they are there but we also say a lot with the music itself. Some tracks took a long time to get vocals down; no matter what I tried it was all kind of annoying and interfered with everything else. With what we are doing, I find it best to let the other sounds lead the way, and the vocals will do their thing when they are supposed to.

+rl: You’re heading out on tour soon after the album’s release, and I can’t imagine that the lineups of each show won’t be as eclectic. Any shout outs to any names in particular or anyone who you’re looking forward to seeing for yourselves? 

TR: Yeah, we are looking forward to doing a couple Bay Area shows in February. Chris from Blue Zero has been super generous with booking up there and we are definitely looking forward to seeing them live. We are also playing with long time friends Figure Eight; easily one of our favorite bands to come out of that scene. A couple more off the top are Jock and GMO (playing with them in LA before we leave town.) But like I said before, there’s so much cool music coming out of this place, we look forward to seeing what everyone’s up to. This will be a very brief little tour to follow the LP as we mostly just want to get out of town for a sec and see some friends, but we are looking to announce some dates for a bigger tour later this year.

Expose’s ETC is available now on Quindi Records.