BODY STUFF announces sophomore album Body Stuff 5; "Sacrifice" single streaming now
Stream the official music video for the album's first single, "Sacrifice," here: https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2026/06/16/video-premiere-body-stuff-sacrifice/
The solo project of NYC artist Curran Reynolds, Body Stuff summons a strange vision of cathartic rock music, bolstered with metallic power and cloaked in a dreamlike haze. At times, yearning, at times, euphoric, Body Stuff seems to encompass the extremes of NYC, from the sewer to the skyscraper. “Like a hardcore Bruce Springsteen,” read a review in The Wire Magazine in 2023. “Springsteen fully embracing his Suicide influence,” was Stereogum’s take on it. Reynolds opts to call it, simply, “hard rock.”
Sophomore album Body Stuff 5 brings the project to new depths and heights. Eight anthemic songs hum with longing and triumph. Big, slamming drum beats, seemingly echoing the boomboxes of NYC summers past, are peppered with storms of double-bass. Guitars, performed by Reynolds’ friend Andee Blacksugar (Blondie), ravage and glisten, transmitting from a place where hair metal and post-punk converge.
Recent live videos show Reynolds prowling the stage, headbanging, delivering his words with full-body conviction. His autobiographical lyrics explore the pain of existence, referencing haunting memories culled from more than a quarter-century of life in NYC – the isolation, the dangers of the street, the violent deaths of friends – but often land in a place of gratitude. The sincere and uplifting slant of Reynolds’ lyrics is one of the many factors separating Body Stuff from the pack. “Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice for love,” he pleads at the end of the album’s first single, “Sacrifice.”
Body Stuff is a project originating deep within the heart of its creator and occupying its own unique space. Yet, Reynolds’s hope is to unite, not divide: “My intention is to continue making the most authentic art I can. This is how we make the world a better place.” A writer, visual artist, and musician since childhood, he has been creating since the 1980s. “My first concert was Tina Turner,” he reminisces. “I was 10 years old. That was a crucial experience. The look, the sound, the performance.”
Reynolds left his small town Maine home for NYC at age 17. In his early days in the city, he chased cheap rents across the East Village, Lower East Side, and Williamsburg, and entrenched himself in music, art, and nightlife. With no money and no connections, he clawed his way up, getting his record reviews published in the nascent Vice Magazine and landing a dream job at Earache Records where he served as the publicist for death metal legends Morbid Angel and Deicide. He went on to assist on photo shoots with some of the world’s biggest fashion photographers, then worked in the sculpture studio of one of his favorite artists, Matthew Barney. He founded Precious Metal, a weekly series of live music that earned the title of “Best Metal Party” in The Village Voice. He joined one of his favorite bands, cult hero Steve Austin’s Today Is The Day, as a drummer and toured the world.
It was against this backdrop that Body Stuff first emerged. After more than a decade spent grinding away on various creative fronts in NYC, the idea to recreate himself as a solo artist took shape in Reynolds’s mind. The first Body Stuff EP, recorded between 2011 and 2012, is a thing of raw, awkward beauty. Minimalistic, metallic rock songs, propelled by a pounding drum machine, are crowned by ravishing hooks and ghostly interludes. “Making music that was entirely my own, for the very first time, it’s like I was reconnecting with the 10-year-old me and working from that pure, instinctual, ecstatic place,” he explains. “I was expressing myself in a way where I was completely vulnerable and I found power in that.”
The Body Stuff sound and vision grew steadily more elaborate from there, whilst holding true to the spirit of the early material. By the time the debut full-length, Body Stuff 4, dropped in 2023, Reynolds was able to get “I Think We’re Alone Now” pop star Tiffany to contribute guest vocals to one song and Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart to remix a track. He meanwhile developed Body Stuff into a full-fledged live act, appearing on bills around NYC with the likes of Martin Rev, Godflesh, and Uniform.
His greatest work to date, Body Stuff 5 was engineered and mixed by longtime collaborator Ryan Jones and mastered by the iconic Ted Jensen (Madonna, Metallica). The album will be released via The Chain, the multi-faceted company founded by Reynolds in 2016 with partners Justin Pearson (Three One G Records, The Locust, Deaf Club) and Brandon Gallagher (Trace Amount).
Tracklist:
1) Eternal Hurricane
2) Death Song
3) The World Is Yours
4) Hysteria
5) Ancient Rhythms
6) Seventeen
7) Cry
8) Sacrifice
Lineup:
Curran Reynolds - vocals, synth, drum programming
Andee Blacksugar - guitar
Ryan Jones - bass, guitar
Lauren King - vocals on “The World Is Yours”
Production:
Ryan Jones - engineering, mixing
Ted Jensen - mastering
Links:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bodystuffworldpeace
Apple Music - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/body-stuff/668201392
Bandcamp - https://bodystuff.bandcamp.com/
Cover art by Matt Kepler
Photo by Paul Roura
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