COVID-19 concerns, venue closings, and a near-total wipeout of legitimate live music has forced most bands to adjust their plans and change their approach in 2020. But even before the music world was thrown into disarray, Davenport's Giallows were already changing, arranging, and adjusting, seemingly at random but ultimately by design.

Rock Island’s resident drone/ambient scientist Terry Skaggs seems to drop a new release under his dead lizard grin moniker at the crazy clip of one per month, further populating his bottomless Bandcamp page which now sits at 77 releases (!!!) with exercises in drifting electronic sculpture, neo-classical orchestral textures, and the occasional hushed electronic beat pattern.

Radio host, podcaster, and DIY history buff Kristian Day has become a patron saint and detailed archivist of the criss-crossing underground music circuits of Iowa. His podcast Iowa Basement Tapes has logged over 100 shows to date, all of which focus on bands that have essentially been forgotten by time, mostly after years of inaction.

Davenport-based hyper-prog-metal instrumental shredders Doppelganger have been rolling out tracks from their forthcoming self-titled album since the first single “Plumbus” landed in March of last year. (Yes, we see the Rick & Morty reference here, guys.) The long build-up to the proper album drop on September 25 makes sense in the context of their beyond-detailed omni-metal songwriting, because each four-minute-or-so chunk of this material proves so dense and constantly shifting that it contains its own standalone narrative worth poring over.