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

This edition features the many guises of rock from Mother Night, Younger Dryas, and Cracked & Hooked, drum 'n' bass by Aikanã, and emo-indie chiptunes from the Battle of the Bits forum.

Mother Night, Hungry Ghosts
Mother Night appears to spring forth from the mind of Ypsi's JT Garfield, who was in the early-to-mid 2010s band Truman along with guitarist/bassist Zach Harris, who's also in this group. Also included are Washtenaw County music MVPs Mary Fraser (Child Sleep) and Elly Daftuar (Tanager) along with Dan Shafer. Mother Night goes back at least until 2015, saying it makes "music for falling leaves and a chilly breeze," according to its bio.

If you're of a certain vintage like myself, you also might think of the slowcore band Codeine when you hear "Open Water," the album opener for Hungry Ghosts. The band's guitar-based music is clean and open, the vocals are spoken-ish, and the tempos rarely race. My brain generated another slowcore reference: The "Hard As a Mountain" verses evoke the Red House Painters' melancholy. There's also some twang on Hungry Ghosts: "Day by Day" has a little country-shuffle giddyup,  and "I Forgot" has some sweet slide guitar.

The whole album is accomplished and smart, and I'm surprised I've missed Mother Night up 'til now, but maybe they've been hibernating (or I have been). (I'm assuming the band name came from the Kurt Vonnegut novel and the album title from the Buddhist concept of never feeling content because hungry ghosts always want to be fed.)

Younger Dryas, Younger Dryas EP
Matias Sturla is from Buenos Aires, Argentina, but now calls Ann Arbor home. His debut EP under the Younger Dryas moniker is a strong introduction. "It Goes Around" and "You and I" sound like a 1990s alt-rock-radio track mixed with some Radiohead moodiness. "Waste of Time" has a South American tinge in the verses with its nylon-string guitar and shakers-fueled rhythm, and "Magic" is a brooding folk tune with a rich arrangement featuring bowed string instruments that add to the tension. 

Cracked & Hooked, Here for the Ride
Cracked & Hooked play rock 'n' roll, straight up. Here for the Ride sounds inspired by glam and punk from the '70s with a twinge of bluesy Rolling Stones-like twang save for the acoustic "Tank Top," where singer-songwriter David Freund goes it alone. The songs' simplicity allows bassists Andrew Peck and Alistair Dickinson a lot of room to roam, so many rich countermelodies and grooves are ebbing and flowing under Freund's meat-and-potatoes chords and the crunchy leads from Grove Studios' Rick Coughlin. Brad Perkins is behind the kit. (The basic tracks were laid down at Ypsi Alehouse.)

Aikanã, Breathe EP
Aikanã is a prolific drum 'n' bass artist from the U.K. who might also be the main creative behind the Third Foundation label. This person is also the latest import by Ypsi's AGN7 label, which describes the Breathe EP as sounding like "a tale of survival, in a modern dystopian setting." At 170 bpm, the music is aggressive and tribal—it's relentless on "Aggression" and "Breathe," and only slightly toned down for "Lockjaw," evoking a middle ground between industrial and jungle. 

Various artists, Battle of the Bands (of Battle of the Bits)
The Ypsi-based chiptune forum Battle of the Bits has been around for a while, but its compilation albums from 2023 just started popping up on my Bandcamp radar this year. Like all of the forum's comps, Battle of the Bands had specific requirements for the artists to be included: start a supergroup with other members on the website and at least one person has to play live. That means there's some guitar on the comp, and even some indie-emo tunes, which is different from BoB's usual manic-synth energy.

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