Loose Touch
Loose Touch Credit: Courtesy

The Pacific Northwest has Bigfoot. Florida has the Skunk Ape. Locally, it’s Loose Touch, who’ve been the biggest, hairiest, most elusive contenders in Orlando music in years.

Upon arrival in 2023, the hard rockers quickly stoked insider buzz with their live fuzz-rock brilliance. But just when the spotlight was primed for them, they slipped back into the shadows. Ever since, anticipation and mystique have only grown. Now, Loose Touch have finally resurfaced with their long-gestating debut album. 

Their story actually goes back much further. Guitarist-vocalist Aaron Borowicz first started the project with drummer Tyson Bodiford in 2015. After years of sessioning in private, they finally began recording the album in 2019. Yes, this album. But life, pandemic and production stalled it. Until now.

For Borowicz, Loose Touch is momentous as both a departure and an emergence. “That was the idea: to make something outside my comfort zone,” he says. “I’ve been a background auxiliary player in most of the bands I’ve been in — playing keys, bass — or making experimental music, so I wanted to try something new. This is the first band where I’ve been the primary songwriter, idea generator, singer, etc. I wanted it to be primitive and simple, first-thought-best-thought principle. Not try to overthink ideas, riffs or lyrics.”

Once Borowicz and Bodiford added bassist Eric Bass and guitarist Mike Saffran to become a full band, the beast was born. Their brand-new self-titled album is an eight-song herd of mammoth rock that rides like a sweet stampede. Unlike their more metal peers, Loose Touch stay sensual by lacing the power with psych seduction. The rhythms are pounding and the guitars are rugged, but Borowicz’s vocals and melodies weave vaporous spells. 

Album highlights include “Burning Out,” a hesher anthem featuring a party chorus surfing atop hard-charging stoner licks. The unapologetically wicked “Stomp” cock-rocks like Wolfmother stripped down to garage basics. But “I’m Alive” and “No Sleep All Terror” are Loose Touch’s lustiest looks, with a sexy symmetry of cool swagger and smoldering libido.

Borowicz says, “The idea was really just stupid caveman riffs, nonsense words, as basic as possible.” What resulted is a perfect storm of electric fuzz muscle, doomy blues grooves and narcotic style that’s as evocative of the heavy 1970s as it is the Stone Age. It’s easily one of the hottest releases locally this year, and if your clothes are still on by the end of it then you just might be dead, baby.

Loose Touch now streams everywhere and is available on vinyl via Bandcamp. The release show next week features Loose Touch alongside Skeletizer and Gasoline Heart. (7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, Will’s Pub, 1042 N. Mills Ave., willspub.org, $10)

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This article appears in Nov. 11-17, 2026.

Music columnist.