Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features indie-folk by Timothy Monger, genre-hopping by Isolation Sundaze, avant-garde torch songs by Olivia Cirisan, operatic shoegaze by Marty Gray, and screamo by Youth Novel.

Timothy Monger, Last Known Address
The Ann Arbor District Library's Archives team has produced a ton of content for the Ann Arbor 200 bicentennial. This new EP by Timothy Monger was commissioned by the Archives, with six miniature songs about life in A2. While he lives in Ypsi now and was raised in Brighton, Ann Arbor is where the singer-songwriter found his way as a young musician, and Last Known Address documents some personal landmarks around town. Rather than embed the EP on this page—that's a screengrab below—you should visit aadl.org/lastknownaddress to listen to the music as you read Monger's detailed stories that inspired these sonic snapshots.

Isolation Sundaze, Revenge of the Iso
This long-distance collective started putting out music in 2020 as a way to cope with the pandemic, and it continued to release oceans of good songs—from funk and jazz to electronica and experimental—through midway 2022 before going dormant. I don't know exactly who is in Isolation Sundaze at this point—the musicians were from Washtenaw County, Kentucky, and Washington—since most of the group's music is uncredited. Ann Arbor's David Minnix contributed at some point along with his partner in Mirror Monster, Michael Skib, who performs at least one cut on Revenge of the Iso: the EP closing "skibs R3VnG3." The genre-hopping continues across these four songs, with the only throughline being the immense talent and imagination of the musicians.

Olivia Cirisan, Middles
Olivia Cirisan is studying percussion at the University of Michigan, but this Frankenmuth native is as much a singer-songwriter and forward-looking sound sculptor as she is a drummer. After opening with the Eno-esque meditative instrumental "The Octopus," Cirisan's Middles shifts into a universe all its own. Over the next 16 minutes, you'll have your brain fried by the avant-R&B of "Moon Pancakes / RED 40," the avant-garde folk song "A List for You," the church-drone-jazz balladry of "Brain Zaps," and the outer space torch songs "Monochrome Envy" and "Twenty Hours into November," with the latter featuring David Minnix on modular synth.

Minnix also collaborated with Cirisan in another one of her many projects, VIRID, on a piece called "Slow Images." Part of the percussion-plus-electronics work debuted at Detroit's Moondog Cafe earlier this month, but you can watch the trio perform the entire hour-long work on November 19 at Canterbury House in Ann Arbor.

Read a recent interview with Cirisan in The Crazy Wisdom Monthly (page 22).

Marty Gray, Disassemble
Marty Gray's previous album, 2021's The Regular, had all the vibes of modern pop record: a little bit electronic, a little bit soul, a little bit indie rock. He has a lovely, breathy voice—he studied opera at the University of Michigan—and he writes catchy songs that would not be out of place on the radio. But the Ann Arbor singer-songwriter and producer's latest album, Disassemble, is a shoegazey, reverb-drenched guitar record. The 11 songs here are much darker than those on The Regular, and while Disassemble came out in June, it feels like an autumnal album. Even with all the hazy guitars and cavernous sound, Gray's stellar, passionate vocals are laser-sharp throughout, cutting through the fog like a high-powered headlight.

Youth Novel, "Lacquer"
The Ann Arbor emo-screamo band Youth Novel pressed a 10th-anniversary vinyl reissue of its Turned Around Abruptly EP, which includes this song as a bonus. 

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.