Annie Achron Never Paradise LP (Siltbreeze)
Damn, there are now officially two-hundred-and-one Siltbreeze releases out there! Few labels can claim such a sustained track record of weird, groundbreaking and adventurous musical diversity; even the records no one liked are still pretty good. There is probably some semblance of a musical aesthetic one might associate with the label – noisy, confounding, uncompromising – but even so, there are numerous releases that sidestep those expectations (Mount Carmel much?), like Philadelphia’s Annie Achron. On her vinyl debut Never Paradise, lightweight drum-machines crackle and pop among unplaceable loops, raincloud synths and, about half the time, her own enchanting vocals. It’s electro-pop that keeps the listener at a distance, with melodies that, even at their most driving (see “Out Of The Myst”), suggest a hidden layer of meaning. One might expect to hear mystical techno-pop such as this just beyond the forest’s edge, gone by the time you get there. You could certainly clock some Chris & Cosey here, but with Achron’s vocals delivered in a calmly apparitional tone akin to Carla dal Forno, and a similar gloom/sunlight/isolation ratio as Jenny Hval’s synth-pop material and Fatima Yamaha’s excellent What’s A Girl To Do? EP, there’s no disparaging Never Paradise as typical pastiche. Perhaps that’s the defining Siltbreeze quality: artists who couldn’t be someone else if they tried.
The Berserk Where’s The Dictator? 12″ (no label)
I continue to fall out of my rocker on account of how great modern hardcore-punk is. You know what we would’ve done for a band as ripping as Philly’s The Berserk back in 2004?? Of course, it’s those awkward Profane Existence catalog stinkers that helped shape my tastes back in the ’90s, for which I am forever indebted, and “faithful accuracy” isn’t the most important quality for any given hardcore-punk record, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt, either. Like many of today’s great hardcore upstarts, The Berserk meld a few established strains of hardcore to create their own spiked n’ stained tapestry, and I’m a fan of what they’re doing. There’s the buzzsaw slop of Chaos UK, Poison Idea’s heavyweight power, the thuggish skulking of Mental Abuse, and what often feels like Negative Approach’s Tied Down as performed by Kriegshög: street-punk riffs delivered on the wave of a scalding-hot toxic spill. “Next Invasion” gets closest to d-beat, but The Berserk have enough of their own style to avoid rank-and-file categorization. (It doesn’t hurt that vocalist Shawn Petrini is frothier than a badly poured beer – I hope the singer of the band playing after The Berserk brings sanitary wipes.) The twelve-inch EP is quickly displacing the seven-inch in hardcore-punk and beyond, and while I would’ve liked to slip The Berserk between my Behead The Prophet NLSL and Beton Combo seven-inches, Where’s The Dictator? could’ve come in the universally-reviled form of a ten-inch and we’d still have no choice but to purchase a copy.
Blank Hellscape Hell 2 2xLP (12XU / Diseased Tapes)
Austin’s Blank Hellscape offer their definitive statement in Hell 2, a full two LPs of post-industrial noise. One could derisively call them “Wolf Eyes Jr.”, but if I were in Blank Hellscape I wouldn’t take that as a diss. As far as I’m concerned, I want to hear Wolf Eyes Jr., as well as Uncle Wolf Eyes, Great-Grandma Wolf Eyes… expressing our uniquely American dismay through glitching electronics, tortured drum-machines and effects-laden vocals should be far more commonplace than it is. Blank Hellscape had their own viral moment a little bit ago for that video where they put a harsh-noise-blasting PA speaker out on a local watering hole’s patio to the disgust and confusion of some Texan bros, and they bring that sort of deliberate animosity here, if tempered by the fact that the listener controls the volume knob. Andrew Nogay delivers his vocals like an aggrieved college professor who knows the class isn’t paying attention, and over brittle electronics that sound like the smell of burning toast, it hits the sweet spot. Across these two LPs, you have plenty of time to get accustomed – I think my favorite of the bunch might be the C-side opener “The River Is Dying”, with the slowest-possible drum programming and a deliberately-rising madness that feels like German Shepherds covering the Wolf Eyes classic “Burn Your House Down”. I’m kinda wishing there was a third LP, but then would that make it Hell 3?
Borez Borez 12″ (The Trilogy Tapes)
The newest Beau Wanzer collaborative release comes as Borez, our favorite Chicago dungeon-technician teaming up with London’s techno abstractionist duo Rezzett for five tracks on a twelve-inch. I love that the stink of Wanzer’s music is so pungent that it is immediately identifiable in any of his collabs, though he’s outnumbered two-to-one in Borez, and I think that makes the crucial difference here. The sonic touchstones of corroded pads, slime-dunked synths and overblown hardware are all visibly protruding, but Wanzer’s typical one-two plodding tempos are nowhere to be found. Rather, these tracks aspire rhythmically to a higher complexity of footwork and jungle patterns, propulsive and kinetic beats that seem unaware of the fact that they’re comprised of old bones and wet gristle. It’s a great combo, and I appreciate that Wanzer stepped outside of his typical confines to allow Borez plenty of room for whiplash loops, even if it still sounds like a haunted carousel ride (“Darnell Can’t Polish A Turd”). Rezzett, of course, are no strangers to bizarre sounds, so it’s impossible to say who brought the initial sample sounds used in “Xylene Xylophone”, though the results speak for themselves: a dangerous and dizzying sweep through the gory inners of an old xylophone.
Brown Angel Promisemaker LP (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia)
Twenty years and four full-lengths in, Pittsburgh’s Brown Angel refuse to lighten the mood. Their music has been reliably heavy, hideous and threatening, and nothing about Promisemaker strays from this pattern of behavior. That’s ultimately a good thing, as this trio are locked in as always here, delivering their down-tuned, unintuitive riffage with a solemn sense of duty. Deadguy have been in the news lately (ah that sweet reunion buzz, mmmm…), and I’m finding myself reminded of them on some of the more spastic material here, though the Brown Angel heart has always pumped with Melvins blood, where off-kilter rhythms chase away monotony, heaviness is inherent and all fresh-churned riffs violently curdle before being shared publicly. Kinda feels like Brown Angel should be more of a known entity than they are, but the same could be said for pretty much every great Pittsburgh band, and there’s nothing about Brown Angel in particular that lends itself to today’s fast-paced social-media climate, unless it someday becomes noteworthy that three middle-aged, brown-haired white guys with day jobs, one of whom who has glasses and long hair, decided to rock together and not really tour ever. It’s a pity that you’ll just have to appreciate them for their music.
CHO CO PA CO CHO CO QUIN QUIN Correspondances 7″ (Time Capsule)
Would you find the name of this group charming, and not annoying, if I told you they were an experimental indie-pop group from Japan, fresh from supporting the legendary Haruomi Hosono on some live dates? It worked on me – I checked out this new seven-inch EP based on those stats and now find myself bewitched by their blissful, casual-fit, quirk-laden indie music. “Adan no Umibe アダンの海辺” is a sleepy form of Tropicália, with an acoustic guitar sketching the outline of a beach cove resort as pleasant interferences mosey in and out of the shade. Flip it over for the title track, which comes to life through Tod Dockstader-esque electronic whirls before a piano chops out a rhythm under a leafy canopy. By the time the tender male vocals show up, it’s over, giving way to the more intricately-designed “Koe o Kikasete 声を聴かせて”, the fantasy folk of Tenniscoats butting up against the colorful cartoon creatures of an Animal Collective song. All three tracks avoid linearity, preferring to build and drift and fall apart like flower petals, often in a manner more abrupt than you’d normally find with music this tender and sweet. In certain ways, they’re like the anti-Gerogerigegege (with one additional syllable).
Chronophage Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship 7″ (Post Present Medium)
Paradoxically, Chronophage are an extremely punk band who play soft and tender music. It’s not an easy thing to pull off, nor is it something you can really “pull off” to begin with – either you’re punk or you ain’t! This new four-song EP is brimming with its big double-sided insert in true anarcho fashion, a whirlwind of ideas that Chronophage insist on scrawling, painting and sharing. They recorded these four tunes with Joe Nelson (of Kaleidoscope and Tower 7) at D4MT Studios, and while Chronophage are very much their own trip, these songs share a similar raw urgency as my favorite D4MT Labs Inc. releases. It’s a great fit for their heart-on-sleeve melodies, buoyed by keys and acoustic guitar in a manner that has me reimagining Christopher Cross as a Homestead Records recording artist touring with Squirrel Bait and Meat Puppets. Real heads understand that the concept of DIY is passé; community-minded projects are the only way to move forward in this era of corporate-pushed isolation. Vocalist/guitarist Donna Allen is completely at ease singing on these twisting, intricate tunes, probably more so than ever before, this band (which I think people thought broke up?) fully locked into a musical territory that is solely theirs. A courageous group among so many scaredy-cats.
Civic Chrome Dipped LP (ATO)
Chrome Dipped is the third full-length to Civic’s name, which, if I’m reading it correctly, is released on a label run in part by Dave Matthews (of the Dave Matthews Band?)? What a world! This group has always had a bit more polish and hardiness than much of their Melbourne garage-rock / post-punk milieu, so it’s not a surprise to see them veer that polish in a more restrained and lighter direction. Much of Chrome Dipped reminds me of Ceremony’s The L Shaped Man, in that both records were made by actual underground punks who looked beyond the confines of their peers’ more traditional (read: generic) bands, finding inspiration in the lesser-celebrated late-’80s records by groups like Magazine, The Scientists, Josef K and Echo & The Bunnymen (if I had to guess). Both groups feature frontmen who spent their youths with scream-based forehead veins protruding, now settling into more restrained territories as they seek to maintain the edge of their voices while bringing down the energy. “Starting All The Dogs Off” is the closest vocalist Jim McCullogh gets to losing his temper here, and it still finds plenty of time to brood in circles, as if that final Merchandise album bared sharp teeth. And while there’s plenty of room here to contemplate one’s disgruntled existence, “Poison” and “Fragrant Rice” deliver a one-two garage-punk punch later in the record, a reminder that they haven’t forsaken the urgent energy of punk rock entirely. The best part is, if you end up liking this album, you can add it to the list of things you have in common with Dave Matthews.
Donato Dozzy & Sabla Morpho 12″ (Gang Of Ducks)
If I could forensically examine one techno producer’s brain, I’d probably choose Donato Dozzy’s. Dude has been basically ahead of the curve his entire career, from his thrilling jackhammer techno EPs to that one sex-jam album (K) to the downtempo ambient masterpiece from Voices From The Lake, that other wild jaw-harp techno album that no one else has attempted before or since (The Loud Silence)… I could go on! He just seems excited about sounds in a way that is both infectious and unusual, and it’s such a pleasure to check out any given new Donato Dozzy record (and there’s always a new one or two), unsure of what I’ll hear but fairly certain I’ll dig it. As much can be said for this new twelve-inch collaboration with Stefano Sabla – broadly speaking, a minimalist techno affair, with each track honing in on its specifics. Opener “Forma I” is my favorite, all because of a repetitive twitch that crackles like ASMR of the finest pedigree. It’s overtly simplistic but meticulously rendered in a Shed sort of way, mastered to tickle every tiny hair in my inner-ears (and a few of the unruly long ones growing on the outer ears, too). The other tracks are cool too, though a little more familiar with their intercom bleeps, ticky-tack percussive elements and sense of space. By the final track, “Forma IV”, we’re in deep orbit, a single hand drum, tambourine snap and repetitive ambient swell performing a sweet hands-free trepanation. On my head this time, not Dozzy’s.
Dwig Beyond Cry And Smile 12″ (Nextprophets)
German techno producer Dwig easily endeared himself to me on account of his gorgeous output in association with the Giegling label and his name’s similarity to my favorite member of Integrity. He started the Nextprophets label seemingly to release more of his own stuff, this four-track EP being its inaugural release, and considering how pricey Dwig records end up on the second-hand market, it’s buy or die, right? Right off the bat, “Happy Theories” is sweet and sumptuous, buoyed by some tender vocals that seem to come from a robotic man with a human heart under plastic pecs. Unhurried and decorated with squiggles of cotton-candy acid, it reminds me of Pulseprogramming’s proto emo-techno, back in the early ’00s when everyone was just calling it “IDM” and being done with it. The vocals appear again on the title track, even more forlorn and eerily robotic, like Tin Man trapped in a sugary confection with nary a dropped beat with which to crack its shell. The flip goes instrumental, offering “In Your Hands (Instrumental)”, comparatively the most upbeat track of the EP – its tasteful minimalism is ripe for a better voguer than I to put on a show. The EP concludes with an instrumental of “Happy Theories”, though I’ll stick with the vocal version, as I’m a sucker for lonely cyborgs singing over lonely cyborg beats. Par for Dwig’s course, which as it turns out is actually a fittingly pastoral acronym: Die Wiese Im Garten (the meadow in the garden).
Eddy Current Suppression Ring Shapes And Forms 7″ (Cool Death)
Hard to think of a more comprehensively-beloved garage-rock band of our current century than Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and rightfully so – these four charming gents have been spreading goodwill since their inception. Like any reasonable rock band, they slowed down a bit after their first three full-lengths, and as the pandemic put the kibosh on their international touring plans in support of 2019’s All In Good Time, things were mostly quiet from the Eddy Current camp until an evening in July when Cool Death announced the release of this new three-song EP (and a few hours later, announced that the vinyl had sold out). They’re a great album band, but this group always had a knack for catchy little singles too, of which these three songs fit right in. The title track quakes with garage-rock joy – it could’ve easily existed somewhere in Primary Colours – its memorable riff and chorus stacking up with their typically kindhearted approach and timeless sound. “Oh No!” (a Camper Van Beethoven cover) shimmies with some tasteful keys lurking in the mix, more smiley garage-pop satisfaction; “Despite It All” actually features vocalist Brandon Suppression’s most dazzling vocal performance, as it might be the first time he ever forced a single syllable into multiple notes, at least in my unverified memory. I’m privileged to say that I’ve witnessed him singing in a recording studio in person, and his lack of natural musicality is a true delight, as is his successful performance with “Despite It All”. Time to re-book that aborted US tour, eh boys?
Electric Chair / Physique split LP (Iron Lung)
Olympia’s finest team-up for what very well may be the Hardcore-Punk Split LP Event Of The Year. Electric Chair and Physique have shared band members, gear, tour dates, good-will and presumably bodily fluids through the past few years, so a split LP feels like a natural outcome of that relationship, one I’m sure Iron Lung was more than happy to facilitate. Electric Chair go a little less frantic on their five tracks here then prior outings, opting for a menacing, bouncy mid-tempo instead of relentless speed and fury. It could be a regional thing, but I swear I’m picking up some Dayglo Abortions here, a playful-yet-dangerous vibe permeating these songs that refuse to sit still. “Snake Eyes”, for example, cuts the guitar in and out and drops what’s more or less a chorus over an extended drum roll… these are the types of tricks hardcore bands get into when they want to develop their sound without compromising their core values (pun intended on “core”). Whereas Electric Chair continue to push outward, Physique pursue an opposite approach, aggressively self-reducing down to the most distilled elements of noise-core d-beat. Framtid is a clear spiritual predecessor, from the cheese-grater guitars to the copious tom rolls and bellowing hellhound vocals, and Physique make excellent use of their chosen style. The main riff of “Merciless” has been “written” by a thousand other punks throughout history, but in Physique’s hands, it reaches its full potential. Excellent record, right down to the cover art, which appears to be some sort of cast-iron tribute to both bands, ready to be mass-marketed as an add-on to the original Castle Grayskull play-set.
Ferries Eye Flutter LP (Bergpolder)
It’s always a treat when a record shows up offering little obvious interpretation of its sound and style, even after repeated listens. Bergpolder is a Dutch label that likes to play with forms of pop and avant-garde, usually coming from some odd new angle, and that’s certainly the case with Ferries and their debut full-length, Eye Flutter. It’s ostensibly a pop record, though one that defies typical guidelines, instrumentation, tempos, song structures, approaches, sensibilities… it’s an odd duck, to be sure! We can start with the first song, “Numan’s New Year”, which chugs at a relaxed Neu! pace, with oddly dramatic vocals occasionally darting in and out, synths glazing over the mountain and bass-guitar committed to root notes. But what of “Eye Flutter I” two tracks later, which gets more elastic and hazy, offering a sensation similar to the slow automated ride through a carwash, all the various soaps and brushes pleasantly engulfing your vehicle? The cover art feels like it could be an animation cell from a particularly menacing episode of Spongebob, and the general demeanor of these songs feels congruent with the world of Dr. Seuss: big open landscapes of clashing colors with unusual creatures traveling in curving lines, and oddly soothing for it. Musically, I feel comfortable dropping the names of seminal no-wave weirdos impLOG and underrated prog-pop deviants Howard Hello in distant comparison, though Ferries are more unclassifiable than probably any other artist reviewed in this month’s pages.
Omid Geadizadeh Like The Sea Knows Blue 12″ (Wah Wah Wino)
Wah Wah Wino has been one of the most exciting labels in the world of left-field electronic/minimal/dub musics since its inception, but man, they’ve soured some of their goodwill with the last six months of new releases, seemingly designed to frustrate their audience with intentional scarcity. Ah, cool, a new Wah Wah Wino release announced only by a cryptic Instagram story, which links to a single record shop in South Korea that doesn’t ship internationally and has already sold out. Thanks guys! I managed to snag one of these new Omid Geadizadeh EPs by virtue of pre-ordering it like four months in advance (why this was available for pre-order and WINO-E was not remains a mystery), and thankfully it has the soft, ocean-breeze grooves necessary to drop my pulse back to its resting state. The three a-side tracks are somewhat interchangeable, featuring ambivalent bass-lines, Middle-Eastern strings and typical digi-dub accoutrement – it’s all extremely well-coiffed, right down to Davy Kehoe’s guest trumpet spot on opener “My Eyes Drank Water”. The b-side is reserved for a Morgan Buckley remix, which honors Geadizadeh’s style while casting those same gorgeous strings against breakbeats and plunging bass, various vocals chopped to confetti and exploded in the bustling market square. Highly replayable, particularly in the throes of these summer months where the heat seeps into your head no matter how many A/C units are blasting.
Gotobeds Masterclass LP (12XU)
Nice late-period heel-turn here from Pittsburgh’s Gotobeds, from the playful album title to “back where we belong” scrawled above the 12XU label logo. (What ingrates, don’t they realize they used to be on the same label as the Bob’s Burgers soundtrack!?) No band from Pittsburgh has ever really had anything to prove, but with three prior solid full-lengths under their belts and the inescapable irrelevance that comes knocking for every newly-middle-aged rocker (don’t I know it), Gotobeds are clearly only in it for the love of releasing albums to the best of their ability… the noblest pursuit. They didn’t phone it in, that’s for sure – I’m sure the Masterclass title is a joke, but they really rock hard here with all sorts of cool riffs, an organic energy that belies their age and class-status, and cool hooks that must’ve been fun to play (they’re certainly fun to hear). Mission Of Burma, Protomartyr, some sorta midway point between The Replacements and Oneida… those are the big names I’m picking up from the moment “Starz” kicks in (best track on the record?) through the conclusion of “Mirror Writing”‘s loose-swinging freak-out. So many Gen Z / young Millennial bands seem to lack self-confidence, preferring to focus-group their sound in hopes of fulfilling what they think their audience wants to hear (how much trip-hop shoegaze is the precise amount of trip-hop shoegaze we should add to our sound?), so instead here’s the slightly-older Gotobeds putting them to shame with these economical, fun, ripping rock songs, impervious to the prevailing micro-trends and lacking the pitiful thirst for popularity. Even if they’re only kidding around, you can tell that they know they’re really good!
Petre Inspirescu Traces Of The Wind 2xLP (Ton Ton)
I keep watching Jeopardy! in hopes that the answer “best Romanian minimal-techno producer” pops up so I might finally get to scream “Who is Petre Inspirescu!!” at my TV screen. Since the late ’00s, the dude really doesn’t miss, his productions conjuring otherworldly atmospheres through meticulous construction and an open-ended list of instrumentation. His albums are so damn beautiful (and sadly, so damn expensive on the secondary market), and Traces Of The Wind, his first full-length in eight years (but who’s counting?) is another impressive entry. This time around, his fascination moves from the electronic textures of minimal, house and dub-techno to modern classical. “King Of Glory” features rhythms and beats of an obviously electro nature, but the other three side-long pieces have far more in common with Philip Glass and Terry Riley than Ricardo Villalobos and Melchior Productions (or at least they split the difference, Henrik Schwarz-style). The interlocking vibes of “Ever Moving” could’ve easily found a home amongst the vanguard of the Chatham Square Productions label, for example. It’s not an easy task, stepping to the complex orchestration demanded by the upper echelon of modern serialist composition, but Inspirescu makes it look like those kids who bust block-long wheelies on their bikes going two miles per hour. In each case, I am sitting there with my unobstructed senses as my witness, but I still can’t comprehend how they’re doing it. Strongly recommended!
Kissland Girls Mignon 7″ (625 Thrashcore)
I’ve been following the musical career of Mikey Young since stumbling upon the glory of Eddy Current Suppression Ring in the mid ’00s, and he’s kept surprising me ever since. Sure, Total Control are another obvious all-time great, but what about his weird synth solo record, those unexpected dance EPs from Lace Curtain, the goddamn Ooga Boogas and whatever The Green Child is, not to mention the fact that he has mastered or mixed 80% of all global punk/garage records that were released in the last twenty years. And now, at his most elderly, I spotted him playing bass for Kissland, released by none other than one of the truest hallmarks of fast-core authenticity, 625 Thrashcore. Few are capable of raging harder as they get older, but Young has always been in his own elite class, made even more fascinating/amazing by the fact that Girls Mignon absolutely smokes, in a manner that is gloriously out-of-touch with contemporary hardcore’s prevailing trends. Max Ward (of 625, and y’know, SPAZZ) writes that Girls Mignon sounds like Deep Wound and Jellyroll Rockheads, and while I’d love to one-up him by coming up with an even more pitch-perfect comparison (Total Fury covering Capitalist Casualties?), I have to be real: I’m hearing precisely what he’s hearing. The band goes full-throttle from start to finish, clearing every on-a-dime time-change with ease, a new time-trial best that’s as fun and wild as it is expertly constructed. There’s no shortage of things to inspire hopelessness right now, so I’m holding on to the fact that Kissland is making me stupidly happy.
Susana López Materia Vibrante LP (Elevator Bath)
Some real celestial birth-canal drones emanating forth from Spanish multidisciplinary artist Susan López, her fifth full-length (and third for Elevator Bath). With some forty (fifty? Sixty?) years of ambient drone albums, you’ve surely heard something like Materia Vibrante before, a fairly traditional exploration of elegant, synth-swelling ambient drones, like any given Pop Ambient compilation plucked free from thumping rhythm or even slight percussive elements. It’s like a wind tunnel where visions of all the people you’ve ever smiled at in your entire life come cascading past, Star Wars light-speed style. Okay, maybe it’s not that emotionally overwhelming – López works with some familiar sounds, from widescreen washes of synthesizer to tastefully-manipulated field-recordings (including one of the most successful field-recording elements of all time: water), though there’s honestly a comfort in the familiarity and lack of Zoomer-friendly mic-drop / jarring change-ups that you might find on a West Mineral Ltd. or 3XL release. The cover art is cool too, a weird liquified splash of earth that suits the music well, though if I find out it’s AI I will hurl this record out my window into traffic. I don’t think Susana would do us like that though… this is music made by someone who cares too much, not too little.
MD / Lowtec Workshop 33 10″ (Workshop)
You know the summer doldrums are kicking in when I’m out here buying split ten-inch EPs, but honestly, stay out of my business! You don’t even know me! Workshop is an esteemed German house label, full of fantastic Kassem Mosse and Willow records, and MD (aka Marvin Dash) and Lowtec too. Sometimes you just wanna beat the heat with a low-slung house groove, and both Dash and Lowtec deliver the goods, Doordash-fresh, on this hand-stamped ten-inch. The two MD tunes lock into tight grooves that stick like barnacles, the foot-stomping rhythms of yore repurposed for distinguished dance club patrons (and guys that like to wash the evening dishes with house music blaring, such as myself). The second MD track is particularly ace, a hypnotic disco beat with what sounds like a bluesman’s wordless intonation locked into infinity. Lowtec (who owns and operates Workshop) follows MD’s cue with a vocal-laced opening cut, coos and murmurs layered like a cake that DJ Qu would throw into the crowd (if he were to ever lower himself to such despicable shenanigans). Lowtec dances across the pads on his second cut, refined, minimal and quietly eccentric in a reliably Workshop style. (Old-man cigar-smoker whiskey-drinker voice:) smooth!
Mermaid Dubmaid LP (Beer &)
It’s always fun when an artist highlights the playful properties inherent in reggae dub, and Tokyo’s Mermaid bats the genre around like a cat with a feather on a string. Opener “Chopin Dub” establishes that mission statement within its first few seconds, a sine-wave digi-dub that takes its cues from Chopin as much as the original Mario Paint studio setup. For dub music, Dubmaid is defiantly dry, its tones gated and marched out in a slow procession. With “Love”, Mermaid more or less covers Brenda Russell’s “A Little Bit Of Love” (as sampled in the Big Pun classic “Still Not A Player”), clearly having so much fun with his home setup and re-interpreting the melody as if he was taking a vintage Miata for a spin around the block. The tracks are daringly sluggish, reminiscent in that way of Hey Ø Hansen’s Sno Dub (another glorious example of outsider dub co-opting); the compact software programming recalls the Jahtari crew, and the homage to vintage R&B and classical music calls back to the wide-ranging influences and silly mischief of early Yellow Magic Orchestra. If you haven’t cracked a smile by the time you reach “Bodies” in the middle of the second side, the unexpected vocal toasting is sure to resolve any lingering grumpiness. The label is called Beer & Records, after all… this is music for friends to throw on together, preferably in a tiny, immaculate Shibuya café, wasting away hours in the best of ways.
The Native Cats Aces Low / Lose Count 7″ (Rough Skies)
Hot damn, Hobart’s finest duo are offering a new seven-inch single on bassist Julian Teakle’s Rough Skies label. They’ve been reliably churning out their half-digital / half-analog sounds since 2008 – yours truly even released their first vinyl EP back in good ol’ 2010 – and whereas most groups would’ve simply run out of new things to say and new music to write at this juncture, The Native Cats show no signs of creative fatigue. “Aces Low” is a different style for them – its descending bass-line and puffy keys call to mind a Young Marble Giants-esque elevator music, as vocalist Chloe Alison Escott pirouettes around the melody with her usually eloquent wordplay (always worth reading at least twice). She even plays some lap steel guitar to wrap it, because why not? Any instrument with its own distinctive personality will eventually find its way into a Native Cats song, it would seem. “Lose Count” immediately pumps up the energy with Teakle aggressively shoving two notes on the bass-guitar, and Escott is riled up, Mark E. Smith-like, with a new couplet I’ll add to my personal Best Of Chloe Escott list: “I bet my body of work against the devil in chalk / I arrived as a singer, they said I was all talk”. By some metrics, it’s barely a song – bass-line, kick-snare drum programming, Space Echo noise – but that’s how The Native Cats operate, thrillingly barebones and refusing to crack, even under the single bright bulb of an interrogation room.
O$VMV$M Shroud Of Fear 2 LP (O$VMV$M)
O$VMV$M were ahead of the curve on the whole rain-dappled ambient, dusty-groove, downtempo instrumental-loop collage thing, which of course means they get none of the glory. That’s fine – this Bristol duo has never seemed interested in critical recognition, instead satisfied to entertain themselves and their friends with humble patchwork edits that jostle between sleepy and alert, as if the weed and the espresso are battling in their systems to see who’s stronger. I hold O$VMV$M’s two full-lengths from 2016 in high regard, and was pleased to see that Shroud Of Fear 2 is now among us, a continuation of a 2021 mixtape that brought a variety of vocal collaborators into the mix. It’s a new realm for O$VMV$M, as their instrumentals successfully brought out plenty of rich pathos, longing and confusion without verbal narratives, but I can see how the move to enlist a handful of spoken-word / cloud-rapper styles is a natural progression. With lyrics delivered in Spanish, Italian, Arabic and English, Shroud Of Fear 2 offers an international community of stylish wordsmiths, generally delivered with loose regard of the instrumental patterns they’re spitting on. The guests’ general tenor is somewhere between extremely nonplussed and mostly asleep, which fits O$VMV$M’s established aesthetic of heavy-liddedness, though part of me wishes they skipped the collabs and let the instrumentals simmer on their own. Birthmark sounds like he was barely able to open his mouth while speaking over his guest spots… it’s entertaining, and a completely natural response to the music of O$VMV$M.
Painshelf Painshelf LP (Organs)
Slicing Grandpa’s John Laux tends to make music for a limited audience, but the soaring loneliness of Painshelf, his trio alongside multi-instrumentalists Artur Blodvin-Hjärta and Charlotte Blodvin-Hjärta, is even less likely to garner mass appeal. Before I looked the band up online, the record had a real “unknown music for unknown people” vibe, and having formal names attached to it doesn’t really change things. A simplistic electronic drum pattern coasts over finicky synths and thrift-store guitars, instrumental tunes to soundtrack a sleazy horror movie that no one has ever watched, not even the people who made it. The first song is titled “Cheek’s Buttoff”, a brainrotted play on Meek’s Cutoff to rival Sockeye’s brilliance, but the music is passive and transient, a faint hologram of sludge-industrial. I get the feeling that similar sonic travelers might be content to issue such semi-coherent musical ramblings on a digital, Bandcamp-only basis – it’s both free and easy – but I applaud Laux and company’s consistent dedication to physical media, even if the majority of copies might end up crammed in a closet or musty storage locker. There’s a kind of morbid beauty in that – one day you die, and you get to dazzle your loved ones with hidden stacks of your unsold crap. Surprise! It’s your turn to deal with it!
Poizon Culture Scam Likely LP (no label)
Nice: a quick scan of the band photo on the cover confirms that we’ve got a Steve-O, two Marc Marons and a John Mulaney in Poizon Culture. With the help of AI, I’ll probably be able to create such a band with a few keyboard clicks (and a hundred thousand gallons of water) within the year, but until then I’ll have fun imagining that those sassy male celebs actually comprise this Houston punk band. I’m just playing – Poizon Culture boasts ex-members of Fatal Flying Guillotines, Secret Prostitutes and Sugar Shack, their garage-punk bonafides older than most of the musicians playing Sound & Fury Fest, yet their songs are energetic and self-assured. The rambunctious delivery and screw-loose melodies remind me of Skull Kontrol, but they temper that with tracks like “Damn Lady”, which is pure Superfuzz Bigmuff-styled garage, teetering on the edge of blacking-out. It’s a swell combination, spastic punk and proto-grunge, probably contentedly local yet ready and willing to upstage some of their reunion-industrial-circuit peers when they roll through town. On one hand, I’m sure it’s gotta be nice to write an iconic album when you’re twenty-five and be doomed to repeat it for the rest of your life, but Poizon Culture’s approach – writing new music and being excited about it without widespread fame and fortune – is a blessing in disguise.
Self Improvement Syndrome LP (Feel It)
Artificial Go have really set the bar for exquisite post-punk vocalizing on the Feel It label, but Long Beach, CA’s Self Improvement aren’t far behind. They’ve presumably found similar inspiration in Wire, Suburban Lawns, Gang Of Four and The Fall, the more singularly-minded first-wave post-punks who fit in with each other by fitting in with absolutely no one. Bassist Pat Moonie finds joyous, jumpy and dynamic melodies, guitarist Jonny Reza sends out his little alien-radar riffs with a constantly-toggling reverb switch and drummer Reuben Kaiban applies Coco Chanel’s classic advice of “before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” to his drum patterns. And then there’s vocalist Jett Witchalls
– that British accent you’re hearing is because she’s actually British! – whose superpower would be spitting icicles if she were an X-Men. Her disaffected coo is as quintessentially post-punk as a horizontal-striped shirt under a tattered army trench, and it elevates these pensive, curious and moderately-gloomy tunes to contemporary post-punk’s starting lineup. Those still mourning the loss of 2015’s greatest punk band (CCTV) should be sure to check out “Crashing”; it’s the most compelling progeny I’ve heard since, and we know plenty have tried.
Shatter Carved EP 8″ (no label)
Beatdown metallic hardcore is an unusual style of music for a lathe-cut record, if only because the typically thin sound of a plastic lathe record is more appropriate for washed-out guitar noise from New Zealand than, you know, Urban Discipline. I suppose the vast majority of listeners these days opt for a soul-sucking digital experience, and since there are only forty copies of Carved in existence, Shatter’s rep will not be sullied by whatever frequencies are lost in the mastering of this one-sided eight-inch. In any case, it’s cool that this NYC quartet are making their own moves – someone was willing to slice the band’s name into their arm after all (or maybe were just looking for an excuse to do so), and if they want to be the first beatdown band with a lathe-cut EP, I respect it. The three tracks on Carved are very much in that street-wise, crowd-killing mosh sound that has beefed up the lineup of so many destination hardcore fests like HGH in a pro-wrestler’s bicep. Shatter like to thrash within that sonic realm as well, the guitar leading the charge for plenty of riotous galloping, though when it breaks in “Scav Rat” and the singer growls the acronym “K.I.A.”, you might want to make sure you have your life insurance squared away if you decide to stay in the pit. It only took until the first chorus in the first song for Shatter to remind us that “life is pain”, as if the world wasn’t consistently offering up new examples at a frightening rate.
The Slugs A Song For Every Feeling LP (Related)
“Full album plays on both sides of the record, so it’s kind of like getting two records for the price of one.” That’s how Related Records advertises The Slugs’ debut LP on their website, a deadpan humor that fits this London/Newcastle duo snugly. Their sound is satisfyingly simple, even by DIY indie standards: drums, clean electric-guitar and vocals from both members, usually in tandem. It’s unpolished guitar-pop that shines regardless, as if Television Personalities joined the Elephant Six collective and quietly made fun of everyone else behind their backs, or at least didn’t ever take things too seriously. What’s not to like about “Maybe”, bursting with charm and the repeated line “I could look after myself but I don’t want to”? It leads into “Phone Voice”, as basic as a Ramones song and equally as feel-good, complete with a staged phone call. You can only sound the way The Slugs do by being best friends, as I’m certain that Phoebe and Lib are. If it matters to you that the guitar doesn’t always hit all the right notes, the door is over there, you’re free to leave at any time! The Slugs are perfect just the way they are.
Slutavverkning Skräp 7″ (Feral Cuts)
Feral Cuts advertises this new EP as “for fans of Flipper, Sonic Youth, The Birthday Party”, but you’ll have to take that more in a spiritual kinship than as overt sonic resemblance. Maybe the common thread is that all three have surely cleared rooms in their early days, as the anti-melodic, two-dimensional noise-rock thudding of Swedish quintet Slutavverkning has surely caused audiences to locate the nearest exit. They lurch forward like Billy Bao with a bee in his bonnet, and supplement the blown-out riffing with the squealing clarinet and saxophone of newest member Isak Hedtjärn. Perhaps his parents raised him on a diet of Borbetomagus, but his lively screeching is an integral part of the Slutavverkning experience. On the stoner-y “Kaos, Kris Och Helvete”, I’m reminded of Noxagt’s demolition services, though the closing title track hearkens to two of Slutavverkning’s most hallowed forefathers: Brainbombs and The Leather Nun.
The Stalin Kubi Dake Atsureki = 首だけアツレキ 7″ (General Speech)
Four unreleased tracks from The Stalin, recorded in 1983 and shelved until recently? That counts as erotic fan-fiction for Japanese punk obsessives, but it’s actually real, issued back in 2023 by Japanese label Inundow to coincide with the 40th anniversary of 虫 and now given the American green-light care of the hyper-vigilant General Speech label. With this sort of thing, you might expect a throw-away, completists-only situation, but the four tracks of Kubi Dake Atsureki are really on par with the best of what you’d expect from The Stalin’s post-Trash material. There’s some wild swinging guitar on “黄昏” that reminds me of The Victims’ “Disco Junkies”, and the pounding uproar of “あそこうらんでョ(ニセ解剖)” is in league with The Damned; all four tracks deliver a hearty punch that was somehow dormant on a shelf for dozens of years, a rabid punk rock sound always teetering on the edge of violence. I hope General Speech was able to license this without having to sell their grandparents’ house and send them to a nursing home, though if that’s what happened, I’m sure they’d understand the importance.
Wesley & The Boys Rock & Roll Ruined My Life LP (Sweet Time)
Wesley Berryhill is bringing out his damn Boys for some good-time / bad-time Tennessee garage punk n’ roll. Whether a crafted personification or a non-fictional portrait, Wesley stumbles sideways into the pool table, cigarette in hand, like so many unsavory-yet-sympathetic rock characters that came before him. It’s hard not to scan the songs and pick up a kind of Vice magazine vibe circa 2010 from his exploits, with titles like “Full-Time Asshole”, “Ruin My Life”, “Be My Babe”, “Fight On The Internet” and “Jail, Again” painting the portrait of a pesky leather-jacket rocker that the culture has more or less gotten sick of at this point. I believe his intentions are good, however, and it doesn’t hurt that Rock & Roll Ruined My Life sounds pretty alright, melding the closed-fist first-wave of punk ala Raw Records with a touch of Jay Reatard’s unassailable swagger and a striking sonic resemblance to the gone-too-soon Video, whose Leather Leather album feels like a strong precedent here (and a record that I feel like I’m mentioning once a month at this point – what a prescient ripper!). It’s in the snot-robot vocals, tasteful egg-punk flourishes and willingness to occasionally stomp it out, glam-style, even if none of their fans would ever dare to wear eyeliner in public. Feels like this can only go two ways: the next Wesley & The Boys album is on Third Man and the group takes off, or Wesley is forced to leave town, never heard from again.
Weird Scene compilation LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
Minimum Table Stacks is out here doing the Lord’s work – a new regional, underground and vital compilation LP! This one is centered around Brooklyn, whose moment in the sun really came and went following the indie boom through the early 2010s, which of course makes what is currently happening there ripe for discovery and evaluation. The artists of Weird Scene were corralled by Jeremy Willis, whose Willis Willis project is featured here alongside Adam Green (of The Moldy Peaches) and Kyp Malone (of TV On The Radio). Released from the shackles of an intense critical spotlight, these Meet Me In The Bathroom players are free to continue making music at their leisure and with whatever sense of style they deem appropriate. Overall, the mood is pretty upbeat and sunshiney here, with plenty of funky licks, major-chord acoustic guitars and fantastical lyrics at play. Adam Green’s “Hot Air Balloon” is a song about precisely that, delivered with a post-Devendra sort of wonderment; Tommy Volume’s “Dance With The Hippo” is ready to be used as the theme-song to a public-access children’s show of the same name. What’s great about Weird Scene is knowing that everyone involved is part of the same IRL musical community, their various beams of creativity bouncing off each other, no matter if it’s the Ramones-y punk of Toni Lynn or “Devil’s Paid”, the debut release from Rossomando, a softhearted/tortured slice of acoustic pop from Lady Gaga collaborator Anthony Rossomundo. New York has always been that way – unknown weirdos bumping up against famous millionaires, generous visionaries, psychotic jerks and cultural trailblazers – and Weird Scene is a fresh and joyous snapshot of its contemporary pop underground.
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