Ancient Plastix II LP (Maple Death)
Liverpool’s Paul Rafferty continues to gaze into an organized vortex of hardware synths with his second full-length outing as Ancient Plastix. These tracks are so deeply devoted to the instruments with which they were created that I can almost picture Rafferty poking his head out of his studio laboratory after weeks in isolation, sporting a head of hair made out of patch-cords. With so many ways to go when it comes to “synth music”, Ancient Plastix opts for a less-extreme path, one well-trodden but no less satisfying because of it. His tracks are melodic, slow and deliberate, very much in the Berlin School frame of synth-worship but not coming across as a retro homage so much as a skillful excavation of what these machines can be prompted to do. Rather than throw a 4/4 kick under anything, or supplement the tracks with singing or added instrumentation, II shines a floodlight on the gear itself, allowing arpeggios to shift, bass tones to reverberate and patterns to emerge with patience and reverence for the form. Synthesizers remain the most recent musical evolution any of us have experienced, and while the sounds of Ancient Plastix are by no means new, they can still captivate.
ASA Radial LP (Raster)
ASA’s debut Radial is the rare kind of avant-garde EBM that’s so overtly physical, you’ll want to stretch your muscles before blasting it, lest you walk away limping. Considering ASA’s personnel, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, seeing as it’s a trio featuring Arturo Lanz and Saverio Evangelista of Esplendor Geometrico alongside Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom™). These guys have been deploying visceral electronic music for decades, big towering rhythms that feel more akin to brutalist architecture than synth-pop, and Radial is particularly inspired, pairing thunderous grooves with jagged samples. Opener “We Need A Medic” is crushing right out of the gate, not unlike classic Esplendor but also similar to the most butt-whooping tracks by Jlin in the way that choppy, staccato vocal snippets and sound effects repeatedly shock and stun. “Modo II” is another standout, with violent bass murmurs and an incessant dental drill boring holes in every last molar. There really isn’t any filler here though, as these guys are truly masters of the genre and refuse to phone it in. Doing karate moves to hardcore-punk never made sense to me, especially when there’s music out there like this, each industrial groove sounding like a combination of body-blows, uppercuts and spin-kicks.
Adam Badí Donoval Sometimes Life Is Hard And So We Should Help Each Other LP (Maple Death)
Kind of a cringeworthy title, but seeing as Adam Badí Donoval is apparently sincere in his sentiments (and a native Slovakian far from my American pessimism), we can let him go with a warning rather than a citation this time around. Donoval operates in the increasingly crowded field of sound-collage, leaning heavily on crackly field-recordings, dreary live instrumentation outside of the traditional rock n’ roll spectrum and incidental blips and bleeps. Sometimes Life Is Hard traverses foggy basins, empty streets at dawn, the chopped-up cement at the end of an unfinished highway, and other morose destinations where human activity brushes up against the nature it’s tried so hard to conquer. Donoval is not afraid of noise or hiss, clearly finding satisfaction in tapes that disintegrate in real time, dying batteries and microphone interference… all the stuff that podcasters hate, Donoval digs right into. Perhaps I’m getting a little fatigued of this particular style (and that’s my fault, not yours or his), but while Sometimes Life is perfectly fine, there isn’t much here that really elevates it from the pack. Whereas this style may have once been a truly experimental form of sonic creation, it’s gotten awfully by-the-numbers these days, Donoval’s moves sounding somewhat interchangeable from the rest.
Bloodshot Bill Psyche O Billy LP (Goner)
This is the second Bloodshot Bill album to make it to these pages, and while I didn’t really connect with the first, his charm is starting to take effect. Am I a “Psyche O Billy” guy now?? There’s just something admirable about the extreme dedication to which Bloodshot Bill approaches his old-timey cosplay music, clearly going to great lengths to embody the vibe. Look at him on the cover and tell me he wasn’t born in 1922. Who can argue with this level of commitment? Looking at images of him, and listening to his songs, it’s absolutely wild to think that this music was written and recorded in the last couple years and not in 1952. His songs hearken to a pre-Beatles world of rock n’ roll, with rockabilly guitars made out of fishing twine and plywood, a cartoon bear playing stand-up bass, Three Stooges chase scenes, eating baked beans from a tin can with the serrated lid still attached over a fire in the train yard, Link Wray licks… he really goes there. Can you even write a song like “I’m A Ding Dong” without astrally projecting back to a high school glee club lounge in 1948? I suppose I’m more fascinated than captivated, though fascination is surely how all new obsessions begin. How long ’til my targeted ads start trying to sell me Brylcreem?
Cruelster Lost Inside My Mind In Another State Of Mind: The Singles Collection LP (Drunken Sailor)
Finally, those of us lightweight poseurs who haven’t kept up with all of Cruelster’s various tapes, demos and split tapes can enjoy this rambunctious Cleveland group’s output on one jam-packed vinyl LP. Whereas I own and appreciate my various Perverts Again records (who, it appears, is the exact same band as Cruelster, and even provide two uncredited tracks here), I hadn’t really spent much time with Cruelster, even as I am intimately familiar with their Instagram hijinks. Turns out their music rocks too, appealingly juvenile in presentation even if it’s obvious they’re no dummies (Citric or otherwise). Their sound can certainly be pinpointed to Cleveland, as it’s raucous and frantic, brushing up against violent absurdity in forty-five seconds or less. It’s kinda like a feisty hodgepodge of Wrangler Brutes and Bad Noids, if said hodgepodge were trying to figure out if it wanted to be a comedy troupe or a street-punk-influenced hardcore band. There are twins in Cruelster, and there’s a song (I think it’s “Crisis In Local Government Part 3”?) where the singer (not a twin) goes off about killing twins… no target is safe, not even themselves. The best part might even be the printed insert, a lengthy screed explaining(?) the collection, completely hilarious and engaging and difficult to read due to the tiny font size. An album worth straining your ears and your eyes over!
Alex Deforce & Charlotte Jacobs Kwart Voor Straks LP (Stroom)
Stroom is consistently a few steps ahead of everyone else, so if Kwart Voor Straks is any indication, Belgian poetry over fractured soundscapes is going to blow up like a year from now. Okay, maybe not, but we’re not worried about what other people think anyway, we just want to hear some fresh and progressively warped tunes, of which this record is chock full. Deforce and Jacobs share vocal duties, reciting their Flemish spoken-word over condensed synths, simple 4/4 kicks and processed vocals – there’s never too much happening at once. Seeing as I don’t understand a word they’re saying, my focus is on the texture and intonation of their voices, delivered mostly in calmly reassuring tones, occasionally edited with effects that range from jarring skips to gauzy reverb. Certain moments remind me of Lolina in the way that chill-wave aesthetics are crudely applied to richly experimental forms, the music lulling the listener into complacency even as it behaves increasingly wacked-out; it’s a nice effect. Deforce lended his words to a 2019 EP from Victor De Roo (which I highly recommend), though the music provided by Charlotte Jacobs and himself here is more abstract – my favorite cut might be the word-bursting “AEIOU”, eschewing lyrics entirely for a trippy saunter through sampled vowel sounds. Deforce and Jacobs are already way out there, yet it’s clear they intend to go much further.
Diztort Vengeance Is Mine LP (Advanced Perspective)
Some of my elder hardcore friends have commented about show attendance being at an all-time high, noting massive crowds for local showcases in and around the Northeast. It’s wild to me that chugga-chugga beatdown hardcore has such a thriving resurgence, for a lot of reasons, but naturally in any large sample size of niche hardcore there are some standout gems (yes, that even includes gore-grind). If you’re looking for some direction within this current hardcore phenomena, then, the debut full-length from Los Angeles’s Diztort is a perfectly satisfying place to head. Their form of hard-pitting ‘core has a medium-slow lilt, metallic grooves and a general ’90s NYHC sensibility, clearly indebted to Madball, Merauder and the like. There’s also a swagger I’d directly attribute to Cold World, and a dense, dark-cloud effect to their songs that recalls both Iron Age (on the more epic tip) and Neglect (in the sense of depressive lessons learned on the streets). I like that the vocalist sounds tired and mushmouthed, moaning as much as he’s screaming yet consistently intelligible throughout. For as unhurried as their songs are, they pack a lot in – the essential opener, “Diztorted World”, hits hard, jukes into an instrumental mosh and closes with a soaring guitar solo, all under three minutes. Sure, there’s been dis-core for years, but now there’s diz-core too.
Fabiano do Nascimento & Sam Gendel The Room LP (Real World)
Putting every other recording musician to shame, Sam Gendel drops yet another collaborative album, this one with seven-string acoustic guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento. Whereas recent work from Gendel is investigative and downright experimental in nature, The Room is steeped in tradition, ECM-style Latin jazz as smooth as virgin silk. If I owned a restaurant, I’d play The Room over the house system and quickly modify my menu, removing “french fries: $5” and replacing it with “frites – sea salt, EVOO – $16”. It’s classy, studied and universally enjoyable, with do Nascimento’s flamenco-inspired, dazzling melodies and Gendel’s soprano sax keeping up with flair and aplomb, clearly savoring the chance to let his traditional smooth-jazz chops fly. For my (limited) money, I still prefer Gendel in exploratory mode, futzing with electronics and effects to create the newest lumpy hybrids of jazz, broken-beat electronica, hip hop and dub, but The Room is so spotless and fresh that I am enjoying it all the same. Definitely a record to keep handy the next time your parents come over and you want to appear respectable, as if you haven’t spent the last umpteen years of your life blasting Wolf Eyes and Angry Samoans.
Donato Dozzy Magda 2xLP (Spazio Disponibile)
One of the preeminent techno polymaths of our day, The Dozz’ doesn’t need to release new music at such a furious pace, but the Pope doesn’t need to keep blessing people to maintain his holiness yet I’m sure he’s constantly doing that too. Donato Dozzy has so many different modes, from aggressive acid-house to more ethereal delights (and lest we forget that one album based around the jawharp), and on new full-length Magda we find him in lush, sensual electro mode, a real sweet spot of cosmic techno comfort. An alleged emotional homage to “family and the Adriatic Sea”, these six tracks showcase his mastery of twinkling arpeggios, luxuriant synth pads and the ways in which they interlock and intermingle. He’s on some real Fibonacci-style grooves here, his sensual thrum and pulse evolving in real-time, always immaculate and flawlessly rendered. Fans of his work with Voices From The Lake will find a parallel satisfaction with Magda – there’s a similarly personal touch, as if these are protective ambient-techno spells Dozzy cast with your unique safety and comfort in mind. Honestly though, if you’re the rare type of person who doesn’t locate some blissful moment of calm while listening to this album, you’re reading the wrong blog entirely.
Mary Jane Dunphe Fix Me / Seasons 7″ (Sub Pop)
Been wearing out the grooves on my copy of Mary Jane Dunphe’s debut solo album Stage Of Love, so I slapped this new two-song single on my turntable fast as I could, eager for more. First thing’s first: “Fix Me” is not the Black Flag cover we need, but an original entry in the world of basement trip-hop. It’s less polished sounding than the album, with drums that sound like a cassette loop, yet it’s Dunphe’s most Alanis-esque track yet, like if Alanis was produced by Martin Hannett for K Records. B-side “Seasons” has a similar bounce, funky flanged-out bass shimmy-shaking and her unmistakeable vocals tearing at the seam that separates happiness and sadness. Both tracks remind me a bit of Olympia’s Daisies in their ’90s electro alterna-bop styles, or her work with CCFX on DFA, though as long as Dunphe is singing there’s no mistaking her for anyone else. As you may have noticed, this single is essentially only available as part of the Sub Pop Singles Club, but copies are already plentiful on the second-hand market, surely being offered up by bozos who hoped for a new Bob’s Burgers collectible instead of two new songs by one of the greatest American vocal performers alive today. Their loss can quickly become your gain.
Ecoegoe Ecoegoe LP (Cairecords)
This debut from Copenhagen-based future-jazz ensemble Ecoegoe is some true chicken-soup-for-the-soul type music for yours truly. Dig into these two side-long tracks and be nourished and renewed! I love those hefty (and pricey) Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society albums, and Ecoegoe could easily be mistaken for one, both in sonic properties and the tender qualities they imbue. The a-side is called “Kissing”, and with three percussionists, two sax players, a double bassist and someone on synth, they patiently unfurl their loose composition, mellow pastels lightly jostling into each other. It has that same Natural Information feel, in that the song is a perpetual warm-up, albeit extended so deeply that you realize the warm-up is the point entirely. It sounds like kittens waking from naps under a dust-speckled sunbeam, or a hundred different insects jamming together on a mossy forest floor. Real elemental, eternal stuff, coasting on a sophisticated internal logic to ensure it never feels pointless or too abstract. The b-side’s “Digital Brains” borrows the same bass melody as “Kissing”, though it feels hazier and looser, as if we’re slowly coasting in a hot air balloon up and away from the a-side piece. True weighted-blanket music right here.
The Exbats Song Machine LP (Goner)
Not a lot of father/daughter combo bands coming through these pages, but here’s Kenny and Inez McClain with their second album for Goner as The Exbats. As is often Goner’s prerogative, The Exbats are staunchly throw-back rock n’ roll, culling from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, usually with a spunky, garage-y attitude and plenty of sunshiney AM radio melodies. Lots of backing vocal chants, familiar pop harmonies and party-time guitar licks, but the songs are arranged with elegance, and the lyrics, while ploughing familiar rock n’ roll territory, are funny, charming and often put a different spin on the same ol’ subjects. I’m reminded of artists like The B-52’s, The Monkees, Tina & The Total Babes, The Barracudas and The Riptides… basically any poppy garage-rock that you’d want to bring to a beach party along with your umbrella, blanket and cooler full of beer. Can’t really say it’s totally my thing, but I also can’t deny that The Exbats nail their sound and push it ever so slightly in new directions. If The Lovin’ Spoonful ever wrote a song called “Cry About Me”, they probably wouldn’t have had a chorus that chanted “I’m overdue to fuck off out of here”, but The Exbats certainly did, right here in fact.
Gerycz Powers Rolin Activator LP (12XU)
Jayson Gerycz, Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin have been active in too many bands, projects and collaborations to list here, putting in work as a trio for the past few years as well. In this configuration, their sound is a distinctly contemporary form of guitar-centric improv, one that reinterprets folk and electric guitars for the sake of something more immediate, spontaneous and (hopefully) transcendent. Opener “Entrance” confirms that intent with two spindly guitars and Gerycz’s freefall percussion, at times sounding more like three drummers than one. “Sun Rays” goes in a more composed direction, with pre-planned melodic changes that still open up wide for spontaneous exploration. It’s improv in that Americana / Neil Young / Grateful Dead-obsession way that has become a hallmark of the guitar-improv underground as of late, clearly in similar spirit and sound to Steve Gunn’s varied improvisational projects, Bardo Pond, Kryssi Battalene and Steven R. Smith. It’s almost getting to the point where this particular strain of post-shoegaze rock improv is par for the course, but if it sounds as richly majestic as Activator, novelty is not a required trait.
Anne Gillis Vhoysee LP (Art Into Life)
Anne Gillis is timeless, so this new album of material that spans different decades makes perfect sense. She’s as mysterious as she is timeless, so the unknowable qualities of her music remain front and center here, too. Is “Mes Voix”, a recording ostensibly of sheet-metal slowly dragged across cement, from 1982 or 2022? And that photo of her on the cover (that’s her, right?) – that has to be from the early ’80s, unless her corporeal form is timeless, too? This combination of intrigue, weirdness and sonic prowess has made a massive fan out of me, and Vhoysee does not disappoint. Gillis has operated in various sonic formats since the early ’80s, from crude tape experiments to cold-wave pop to avant electronic noise, and this album, apparently consisting of reworked older material as well as newer recordings, covers mostly all of that ground. It’s an excellent entry-level sampler platter that’s equally substantive for us Gillis-heads who were already familiar with her oeuvre. If the industrial-synth chanson of “Brumes Renversées” is too melodic or dramatic for your anti-social tastes, perhaps the quiet rustling of a pilot light flickering through “Harpe À Poussière” is more your speed. Anne Gillis accommodates a variety of adventurous listeners and Vhoysee has something for all of them.
Group Material Intimations LP (Gilgongo)
Can’t walk five feet in any direction these days without bumping into a new ambient-guitar-with-field-recordings record – look, here’s one now! Group Material comes from Spokane artists Eric Sanchez and Avalon Kalin, perhaps notable to my readership as an ex-drummer of not only Glass Candy but ’90s emo-core paper-bag-screeners Christopher Robin. I’m guessing the Glass Candy relationship is where the Gilgongo connection comes in – this label never strays too far from Y2K neo-no-wave – although none of this really has any bearing in listening to Intimations. It’s a very soft and minimal album, with what sounds like home-recorded guitar loops (electric but undistorted) and only the softest crust of outsider electronic processing, as palpable and temporary as the frost on your car. It’s kind of empty music like that, so perhaps we can be forgiven for filling up some of that space with thoughts about its relation to Glass Candy. One track does indeed feature the infrequent sounds of bird-song (“Earth Poem”), though it’s the last of the four, “Nothings”, that I find most appealing, a lowlit amp-crackle lullaby with proggy fingerpicking sure to appeal to anyone who can name albums by William Basinski, Bill Nace and Daniel Bachman off the top of their head. Self-titleds don’t count!
Hacker Psy-Wi-Fi 7″ (Beach Impediment / Helta Skelta)
It’s not really fair that L.O.T.I.O.N. are the exclusive licensee of contemporary cyber-techno-horror industrial-punk, but I can’t help but look at the cover of this new EP from Melbourne’s Hacker and immediately chalk them up as obvious fans of L.O.T.I.O.N. This will probably be the case anytime a punk band’s design features sinister ’80s computer graphics with monsters and digital skulls and axes, but in Hacker’s case, the similarities end with the artwork. There are no programmed drum machines or synthetic effects in their music – Hacker are a grisly, semi-metallic d-beat affair, indebted to hardcore heavy-hitters from Sweden and Japan, though by no means a tribute. “Deliverator”, for example, has the grotesque heaviness of Framtid, but the riffing is closer to the groove-metal of Cold As Life. Nice trick! I also appreciate that the Australian accent of the vocalist is instantly clockable, which helps carve out their own particular sound in a world saturated with aggro hardcore. If it wasn’t for the AOL sign-off at the end of the EP, I would have forgotten their whole digital-nightmare aesthetic – when you write a song like “Deliverator”, no additional gimmicks are needed.
Henwee Blue Raspberry LP (Toxic State)
Incredible cry-for-help of an album from Hank Wood aka Henwee. Toxic State’s original core group of punks have found a variety of unusual and creative ways to express themselves beyond traditional genre confines, and Blue Raspberry is startling even in that occasionally outrageous company. Wood sounds like he’s in rough shape here, struggling to maintain relationships, losing his grip and maintaining a love affair with cocaine (most prominently discussed here on the track “I Love Cocaine”). He sings in an unhinged warble over baby’s-first-keyboards and the accompaniment of lightweight drum machines (no guitars). I’m consistently reminded of how much it sounds like The Wesley Willis Fiasco, these pawn-shop keyboard instrumentals given over to some disarmingly vulnerable singing and emotional turmoil; if you laughed out of discomfort, I’d understand. If I thought Hank Wood was interested in sarcasm and satire, I might question the intentions here, but he has always seemed to be an incredibly direct and sincere character, and Blue Raspberry also appears to be dead serious. Listen to his panicked moans at the end of “Running My Mouth”, where he practically swallows his own tongue… can someone go check on him? I worry that if anything truly tragic happens to Wood, we can no longer say that we didn’t see it coming.
Inner Cop Avoidance Inner Cop Avoidance LP (Sensorisk Verden / Iriai Verlag / TRii Musik / Spost World / KP Entertainment)
Fabulous debut album from the fabulously named Inner Cop Avoidance. You’d think avoiding one’s inner cop would be a primarily American pursuit, but they’re a German quartet who conjure up some charming and improvised un-rock methods for doing so. Three reasonably long pieces here, all pulsing with a trap-kit played rhythmically (but outside of a rock context) and guitars that keep similar pace through strange methods of performance. I’m having thoughts of Hans Reichel’s improvised tornados of prepared guitar given a communal, Sunburned Hand Of The Man-type setting, Vibracathedral Orchestra as viewed through glasses with the wrong prescription, or Avarus at a level of steely determination they never seemed interested in finding. “ICA 2” delves into a wooly, FMP-inspired improv state (with English spoken-word by member Max Stocklosa), a stilted calm that separates the tweaked-out forward motion of the first and last tracks. There’s probably a krautrock record from 1973 that sounds exactly like this and will blow my mind when I eventually hear it, but for now I’m merrily stupified by Inner Cop Avoidance’s self-titled full-length. Strongly recommended!
Knowso Pulsating Gore LP (Sorry State)
It can often feel like we unfairly reward punk that follows the rulebook – why, that’s a perfect assemblage of pre-approved influences, well done! – and leave the true outsider freaks to fend for themselves. Not on my watch! It’s not much of an anti-social social club if we’re all wearing the same stupid hoodie, which is why it’s nice that Knowso continue to exist, tempting the mostly trad-favoring Sorry State label into releasing their newest and greatest album, Pulsating Gore. They’re a Cleveland group, and while they don’t not sound like they’re from Cleveland, they have cultivated their own distinctive style even when compared to the likeminded bands they share stages (and band members) with. The basic template is Flipper as egg-punk / Nomeansno as math-core, with vocalist/artist Nathan Ward matching every mute-picked note with a lyric, ensuring every inch of space is filled with his sprawling screeds, targeting a variety of highly targetable aspects of our American existence, laughable if it weren’t so sad. “Drink From The Lake”, for example, fires at our incompetent leaders with precision, delivered with a deadpan that Chat Pile couldn’t muster even after studying a thousand hours of Norm Macdonald. Eleven tracks, and even though they’re densely packed, the album still flies by like it’s a hundred pounds lighter. So go listen to it again!
Mammal Deserted LP (Impermanence)
Gary Beauvais has been recording music as Mammal since the early ’00s, though his sound has shifted dramatically through the years. Starting off as a blown-out drum-machine psych-noise party, Mammal’s sound has only gotten darker and drearier – just when I thought he hit rock bottom, he finds a way to penetrate the murky sediment below and plunge even farther downward. Deserted, his first vinyl full-length in almost nine years, takes the sentiment from 2006’s Let Me Die and 2007’s Lonesome Drifter and extrapolates even further, sounding so far gone as to be peacefully resigned to his fate of perpetual depressed solitude. Over distorted, simplistic guitars and sparse electronics, Beauvais sings mournfully, as if he were the last man on the last planet in the universe and coming to grips with his fate. The recording style is direct and disarming – rather than coat his music in a shroud of reverb or effects, Deserted faces the listener directly, and it can be a bit much to bear. Imagine Dylan Carlson covering Jandek with additional production by German Shepherds to get a basic feel for the sort of solemn darkness that Mammal conjures here, a zen-like comfort within his total absence of happiness or fun.
Midnight Mines Since My Baby Left Me LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
Minimum Table Stacks has quickly established itself as one of the finest purveyors of unclassifiable underground rock, and this new vinyl disc from London’s Midnight Mines is a particularly scalding entry. Useful, fact-based information about the group (a duo?) is scant, but I heard somewhere that there is a member of Black Time involved, which makes sense in that Midnight Mines feels like the most violent and abstract iteration of Black Time’s delinquent garage-punk style, close in spirit and sound to the first Hospitals album. The guitars here are unhinged, free-form and explosive, with the semblance of song-form owed mostly to the vocals and/or drums. It’s as if they stared at pictures of Lou Reed and wanted to be that guy, but only heard Metal Machine Music, or if one of those noise-punk acts like Swankys or Lebenden Toten had never discovered hardcore, only third-hand live recordings of The Cramps for inspiration. For such a primitive and antagonistic sound, Midnight Mines manage to put some varied spins on it throughout, from levitational garage-scuzz to noise-rock dirges and back. There’s no shortage of creativity or hot acid-burning post-post-post-punk happening here… it’s a smart precaution to handle all Minimum Table Stacks releases with protective gloves but you’ll probably want goggles for Since My Baby Left Me, or at least a heavy-duty smock.
Minisnap Bounce Around LP (Tall Texan)
Another indie gem from the Tall Texan label that I surely would’ve never heard had it not been for the Tall Texan label. I’m still rocking that Sharp Pins album all the time, but this first-time-on-vinyl reissue of Minisnap’s sole full-length from longtime Bats member Kaye Woodward is the bee’s knees. It’s firmly rooted in an upliftingly humble New Zealand indie-rock sensibility, which is already appealing, but these songs are so damn hummable, soft and cool, the sort of record you instinctively throw on over and over because it’s such a consistently good time. Woodward has a great voice, and while I’m reminded of the first Girl Ray album, The Shop Assistants, and, y’know, The Bats, Minisnap isn’t mere pastiche. These songs are rollicking and full of little tricks, whether it’s subbing in auxiliary percussion for a standard trap-kit or layering some aimless guitar soloing over a hearty strum. New Zealanders were never keen on coloring within the lines when it comes to homespun indie-rock, and Bounce Around is not only full of absorbing song-craft, it’s as delectable and kindhearted as anything I’ve heard from that charming little island country.
Miradasvacas Of No Fixed Abode LP (12th Isle)
There’s no shortage of decrepit ambient music these days, the kind that sounds like old wallpaper flaking off into a pile of dust, and you can add Madrid’s duo of Pablo Mirón and Juan Vacas to that Jenga-esque stack. I go back and forth on it – do I need another record of creaky floorboards, four-hundred year-old piano sketches and the scrape of metal on metal? I suppose I let my heart be my guide, as Of No Fixed Abode offers a familiar perspective on this aesthetic, yet I find it enamoring all the same. I think it works for me because they do a nice job balancing musicality, be it bowed strings, melodic keys or humming chords, with discordant grey-noise, tape disintegration and roughly prepared loops. It’s engaging even at its most unapproachable – check the seasick warble of “V” (the tracks are numerated in a Roman fashion), which will lull you in as if it was the third head of a hydra otherwise comprised of Aaron Dilloway and Leyland Kirby. It might take a minute to acclimate yourself with the stained drift of Miradasvacas, but even as the shapes remain blurry and vague, their significance is clear.
Peace Talks Progress LP (Peterwalkee)
…but who’s listening? Peace Talks are a fairly new Pittsburgh hardcore ensemble, and they step right up with this fine full-length debut, Progress. It’s kind of an all-purpose raging hardcore record, succeeding not in uniqueness or distinctive character so much as delivering the goods as we already understand them with vigor, tightness and speed. There’s some Greg Ginn in the guitar leads, a few well-timed mosh breakdowns, and plenty of frantic fast-core. Reminds me of oldies like Poison Idea, Rattus and Flag Of Democracy, and more modern acts like Planet On A Chain, Chemical Fix and Electric Chair, which of course is fine company to keep. While Peace Talks may not have carved out their own one-of-a-kind identity just yet, there’s still some cool ideas that stick out from the pack, like the mid-paced album closer “Stranger In The House” with its incessant one-note piano accompaniment (there isn’t a single aspect of “I Wanna Be Your Dog” that isn’t worth ripping off), or the blasting title track, which reaches Lack Of Interest speeds in its opening and closing moments. There’s a ton of fun to be had playing and writing hardcore songs, mixing ripped-off parts with original ideas and raging all the while, a sentiment that I don’t have to explain to Peace Talks.
Shed The 030 Files 2×12″ (The Final Experiment)
Eventually, I hope to obtain access to all of Shed’s files, but for now, this no-nonsense double-twelve featuring cuts from his 030 Files is hitting the spot. I know he’s getting to be one of the Berghain elders at this point, but don’t mistake seasoned experience for mellowing out – each of these tracks go on the offensive immediately, big shots of alarm-system techno with disorienting loops, manic squeals and aggressive kicks/claps. Shed has such a significant body of work at this point, and these productions certainly bear his signature, though the unceasing intensity has me thinking of Sleeparchive or Planetary Assault Systems at times. Even with such power, Shed has always had a knack for dynamics, knowing how to layer his frequencies, sandwich-like, for maximum effect… a cut like “Zone”, for example, isn’t the hardest hitter, but it conjures the elusive headspace where zen calm and buzzing chaos crossfade. Shed tracks can get a little M.C. Escher without being too obvious about it, or they can ground you into paste (wear a helmet if you plan on blasting “Cut”). The 030 Files offers plenty of both.
Astrid Sonne Great Doubt LP (Escho)
I’m constantly fascinated by how certain albums get buzz in these fractured social-media times… why is it, I wonder, that Astrid Sonne’s newest album Great Doubt, released on the staunchly independent (in the punkest sense) label Escho, has reached a Militarie Gun-level of ubiquity in my various online pathways? Seems unlikely that Sonne’s music will be featured in the next Taco Bell commercial, though anything’s possible. Anyway, none of this is a knock on Astrid Sonne or her hyped-up new album, which deserves any praise it’s receiving. Sonne is listed as a composer and a viola player, and while I’m sure she composed these songs, electronic beats, pianos, synths and electronics tend to take the forefront – the viola that is here has no problem operating in the shadows. Her voice appears frequently throughout as well, and the results are refreshingly modern and strange. It almost feels like her compositional tactic is to sample snippets of different songs and splice them together into some brand new configuration, though I acknowledge that she isn’t doing that. It’s kinda similar to what James Blake was doing when he first started singing on his productions, with a little less R&B and a little more chill-wave in the mix. Check “Do You Wanna”, clearly the hit, in the way that drums, bass, piano, viola and vocals seem to exist in their own separate worlds, overlaid on each other to reveal something else entirely, like Portishead remixed by Moin, only less British sounding.
The Sporrs Big Joke 7″ (Die Slaughterhaus)
We’re far away enough from the arrival of The Strokes that the wave of bands trying to sound like them has died down considerably, so when I do hear a new band that gives me early Strokes vibes, it’s honestly pretty nice! Atlanta’s The Sporrs are not any sort of rip-off, but they have that same sense of taking what The Ramones and The Heartbreakers were serving and giving it a modern indie-rock sheen while preserving the glorious youthful lack of giving an F attitude that makes it so entrancing. “Big Joke” is the Strokes-iest, but I don’t think The Strokes ever got this energetic – I can’t picture any of them really jumping around on stage, but “Big Joke” is full of hop-in-the-air, fall-on-the-floor energy. Same goes for “Can’t Complain”, with almost the precisely same tempo and attitude, although the sole b-side cut “Lashed Out” opens on a brooding note before getting back into something rowdy, kind of a Pixies-ish trick. I’m picking up a similar wave-length to the sharp post-garage of Waste Man too, though The Sporrs are probably a bit more traditional at heart, much to the delight of small corner stages in the backs of bars that still mostly sell cheap domestic beer. As of right now, Google keeps telling me I’m actually searching for “The Sports” when I look for further info on The Sporrs, but this enjoyable seven-inch should hopefully change that soon.
Trash Knife Weird Daze LP (Big Neck)
Trash Knife are an appealingly dirt-baggy punk band, following a number of singles, EPs and splits with Weird Daze, their full-length debut. If they seemed low-stakes and amateurish before, little has really changed, which of course is a good part of the appeal. Do you want your punk rock played by careerists with business marketing degrees, or do you want it from those kids (or used-to-be-kids) who hang out at highway-underpass skate ramps, lighting off fireworks and spray-painting inside-jokes to each other well into the morning hours? Trash Knife do not appear to be making a bid for validation; playing mid-paced, thrashy punk that probably aspires to the Germs and Dwarves but doesn’t overtly sound like either is simply part of their natural lifestyle. They’ve probably played some clubs in their day, but it’s the generator-powered bridge show, backyard BBQ or all-day basement blow-out that is best suited for music as unpolished and proletarian as this. Maybe, in such a moment, it will eventually become clear to me if this Philly group references a blade comprised of trash, or if it’s a knife specifically designed for cutting through trash. Or both.
Wednesday Week Fan Club EP #1 7″ (Spacecase)
Spacecase continues their fruitful relationship with Kristi Callan, this time reissuing a “fan club” seven-inch originally released in 1987. Wednesday Week was Callan’s band after Narrow Adventure (whose Spacecase LP comes highly recommended), and they sound appropriately more mid / late ’80s than their predecessors. Though their formative musical years were borne of punk rock, Wednesday Week are tuneful college-rock replete with a booming snare sound and a willingness to delve into funk (“Businessman’s Wife”), new wave-abilly (“Also Clear”) and yearning 4AD-ish balladry (“The Leopard”). It’s the sportscoat power-pop of “No Such Thing” that I find most alluring though, probably because its tight hooks and energetic performance are closest to the scrappy punk-pop of Narrow Adventure. It’s all driven by Callan’s confident, trustworthy vocal, and apparently just one entry in a decent stash of Wednesday Week material, one studio album and a bunch of singles. Do I wait for Spacecase to keep reissuing this stuff or should I take a little initiative and find a clean copy of the LP?
It’s gotta be intimidating to start a new hardcore band in Pittsburgh these days… the bar has been set at such a high level over the past few years that you have to have some elevated level of confidence, chops or both to enter the fray. Alamoans are a post-Covid group featuring folks from Eel and Speed Plans, two of Pittsburgh’s gnarliest if not most technically precise, and in this configuration, they lower the tempo and reduce the general sense of violence that came with those other two groups. Sometimes you just wanna groove, even if it’s still in a basement-dwelling hardcore sense, and Alamoans find a solid mid-tempo lane for much of their five songs here. These songs are still prepared to weather substantial moshing – “We’re Laughing” is primed for sideways pitting – but there’s an underlying sense of outsiderness, the sort of thing that made Condominium and Slices stand out from the crowd. Reminds me of SQRM too, hardcore that frays the line between anguish and awkwardness in a way that I find appealing. The sound on this EP might be murkier than I’m used to hearing from Pittsburgh hardcore (is the Braddock Hit Factory no more?), but Alamoans seem to thrive on their lack of clarity – the lyric sheet, amusingly, is completely redacted.
Like ten years after their inception, Boston’s Ancient Filth finally release their first vinyl full-length, true to their unwavering cause of injury-prone hardcore-punk. They’ve got an energetic, unhinged sound without ever playing overtly fast… it’s a proud strain of American hardcore, and Ancient Filth are popping the buttons off their shirts as they perform it. Most specifically, I’m reminded of Northeast suburban thrash-core (The Rites, Tear It Up) from twenty years ago, with a touch of Infest’s incessant 90- and 180-degree riff-shifts and one mosh breakdown every six or seven songs (they’re from Boston, after all). The singer appears to be in constant physical battle with himself – are those pieces of paper stapled to his body on the back center sticker? – the sort of guy whose violence is self-directed but it’s still kind of scary. Even with this belligerent presentation, Ancient Filth are saying real things, complete with an attractive poster insert that includes not only lyrics but explanations of those lyrics, in case you were to somehow take “Legalize Suicide” and “Father Knows Best” the wrong way. 
Here’s a fun one you may have missed, perhaps the first band to have released music on both hardcore-punk authority La Vida Es Un Mus and avant-prankster seal of anti-quality Ultra Eczema. Brorlab are an Antwerp group venturing into Casio-punk territory, even if no actual Casios are necessarily represented. It’s bass, guitar, high-pitched shouting and one extremely overworked and obviously fake-sounding drum machine, and if you find pleasure in sounds that annoy the vast majority of other people, Working Out In Heaven is for you! It’s like if Atari Teenage Riot were on Crass Records, or if Good Throb got Agoraphobic Nosebleed to write and record their next record. Wacked-out on purpose, with songs that constantly check your patience – go on, give “Anyway The Wind Blows” a listen and see if you can pass Brorlab’s entry endurance test. As for me, I love it, though even making it through the full album in a single go feels more depleting than if I sat down with stacks of Journey albums or ’90s emo double-LP compilations. It’s music meant to wear you out, which is a very punk thing to do. I have to wonder though, are Brorlab immune to their own sonic weaponry, or are they also exhausted by the end? They have to be hearing it too, even if they’re the ones making it… some punk rock freaks are just built different, so who knows.
The desert is a funny place to be a power-pop band… just imagine how sweaty it gets in those tweed sport-coats and skinny ties! Of course, Tuscon’s Class aren’t playing it by the stereotypical rules, which is a significant reason as to why their second Feel It full-length, If You’ve Got Nothing, is so good. They’ve got vibrant, rocky guitar chords deployed in classic punk configurations, a lively performance and catchy vocal harmonies, and they deliver it all without sounding hokey, generic or insincere. I suppose the most sincere way to sound these days is “depressed and miserable”, given the general state of affairs, but I appreciate that Class seem frustrated and angry without an overwhelming sense of resignation or hopelessness – I wouldn’t call what they’re dealing here “hope”, but it feels willing to at least face the world rather than aggressively hide from it. There’s a touch of Exploding Hearts in If You’ve Got Nothing, but also a strong Cleveland vibe, working-class proto-punk I’d associate with guys like Peter Laughner or Ron House. Rootsy American rock in a completely non-corny way, which gets close to some eternal truth or at least a couple kernels of it. 
Coeval won’t be the most notorious English post-punk group to have a trauma bonding song (that honor goes to High Vis), yet I find their distant and morose style more intriguing, starting with opener “Trauma Bonding” through the self-titled album’s close. They’ve got that dead-serious attitude along with a heavy shot of melodramatic flair and a looming professionalism, not unlike Savages or Fontaines D.C., that sorta money-backed, stylized goth-adjacent rock vibe that refuses to ever fall out of style. Only in the case of Coeval, they’re not on some big label with professional photoshoots and toiling publicists on hand, they’re scraping it together more or less themselves with similar wide-screen results. Some of these songs, when churning their own dark emotions deeply, remind me of Iceage if they were trained musicians who did not have the lived teenaged experience of a scrappy hardcore scene to raise them. There’s probably some Joy Division, Cold Cave and even The Xx in there too, but Coeval truly does a fine job of sounding separate from the pack, or at least not so beholden to the exact same synth presets and familiar melodic progressions. A song like “Liminal”, for example, seeps like black coffee through a paper towel, all of its parts creeping and seemingly out-of-time yet all the more interesting because of it. Unlike the other artists I mention here, sometimes it can be hard to tell if Coeval are making it up on the spot, a difficult yet successful approach to depressive post-punk mood music.
Sometimes I think of all the drone-ambient fans out there, and how lucky they were to be alive in this very moment, this bountiful period of drone-ambient in human history! Imagine being born merely a couple centuries ago – a micro-blip in the history of this planet – and well, if you want to hear drone-ambient, you’re going to have to go work at the steam-engine assembly-line or something, and even then, it’s mostly the same set over and over. Anyway, Manifest Exodus is another new drone-ambient album, but it comes from the very not-new Hessel Veldman alongside his younger (but still older than me) counterpart Martijn Comes. Veldman is one of my favorite Dutch post-punk experimentalists, whose inventive work has stretched out from 1981 or so into the very present, and while that sort of pedigree isn’t mandatory for making engaging drone-ambient, it sure doesn’t hurt. On this LP we’ve got four thick, lengthy tracks, all of which seem to relate the stretching out of distant galaxies but in a soothing manner, as if we have nothing to fear – we’re all just stardust anyway. There’s shimmering, animated distortion and a heavy low-end providing gravitational pull, but these tracks always maintain a peaceful melodic resonance, like light shining through the crusty cracks of some ancient cavern, or prehistoric gears slowly locking into place. Perfect for the next time you need sit and think (or attempt to avoid having any thoughts entirely). 
On Dridge’s 2021 vinyl full-length, there was an undercurrent of pop-melodicism to their heavy grunge riffs, but not even the skeletons of such endeavors remain here on the follow-up, Dying Out. See, this is pure epic doom-metal – released in one of my favorite epic doom-metal formats, three songs on three sides of twelve-inch vinyl – that harbors no hooks, no verse/chorus comfort, nothing besides the dreariest, heaviest sludge. Solid move! Even with twelve-minute-long songs, there’s something about Dridge that feels punk, or at least punk-indebted… it’s doom-metal, sure, but performed with such spite and disgust that it feels like metal can’t fully claim it as its own. Kinda like how St. Vitus looked/sounded on those Black Flag tours, authentically metal yet authentically punk at the same time, if more spiritually than sonically. The strings here are downtuned almost past the point of being able to functionally reverberate, the drums keep painfully-slow time with some inspired patterns and fills (that’s gotta be tricky at these speeds), and the vocals sound like a five-hundred-pound monster awoken in his cave. Fans of Eternal Rot won’t be disappointed! It’s a big shift from what they sounded like only two years ago, but their evolution (or tragic mutation, as it were) is ace.
Extremely precious debut here from Indiana’s Forestlike, an indie-folk duo who might blow away if they get caught up in a light breeze. They’re apparently old friends who reconnected with each other and their nylon-stringed guitars, aging out of scrappy indie bands to this tender, emotion-centric affair. There is nary a sharp edge to be found within this self-titled debut, full of airy melodies, vocal harmonies, acoustic guitars and an overwhelming softness, the songs crafted with considerate care and attention to detail. Feels like Conor Oberst at his most subdued, Will Oldham on his deathbed, Ben Gibbard covering Pearls Before Swine, or Simon and Garfunkel if they toned down the aggression a bit… it’s not children’s music, by any means, but if Forestlike switched out their lyrics for lines about caterpillars who hug rainbows, it might be the perfect cozy come-down to usher in nap-time without protest. Forestlike are all-in on this vibe, and I appreciate their commitment to such kindhearted music, even if it might be a little too hushed and sentimental for my personal predilection. How much tenderness can you take??
An EP titled Responsible Dog Walker, as performed by a group called The Gents… are you also feeling a little suspicious? There’s no way this self-described group of “three elementary school teachers” are actually as polite as it might seem upon first glance! Turns out my suspicions were well-founded, as they blast through five flailing tunes as though they’re trying to start a riot in third period lunch. These songs are poppy by heart but performed with abandon and recorded red-hot, sounding like H-100s trying their hands at Screeching Weasel-y pop-punk, or some playground dustup between Slobber and Assfactor 4’s cover of “Attempted Control”. It’s dirty music in a very American way, which is why I was surprised to discover that The Gents are actually from Hamburg, Germany. (I’d be relieved in my assumptions if it turned out to be a typo and they were actually from Hamburg, Indiana or something.) Probably a little too poppy and fun for the usual wild n’ lo-fi garage-heads (and vice versa), but for someone like me who isn’t caught up with staunch genre separations, it’s a treat. 
Though Feel It has relocated from Richmond to Cincinnati, that hasn’t prevented them from releasing dispatches from the freakier end of Richmond’s punk underground, like Hard Copy’s curious debut for instance. 12 Shots From Nature shows a band that, even in its infancy, is yearning for something beyond the typical post-punk confines. Their songs can feel like one-act plays as much as danceable grooves, often at odds with each other, which is part of the fun. There will be a two-note bass-guitar rhythm that stinks of early Viagra Boys, some strange percussive experiments the likes of which call PiL to my mind, a belligerent/intelligent vocal prowess that might reverberate with the chutzpah of Mark E. Smith, and chards of raw dance-punk that feel like a beer-soaked match to labelmates Sweeping Promises, to give you a general idea of Hard Copy’s range of musical approaches. And rather than write songs in a typical verse-chorus structure, these tunes remain unpredictable throughout – examine the way that a brief vocal appearance gives way to an extended krauty dance groove in “Torpedo”. It’s like the art-school sophistication of Patois Counselors butting head-on with the anti-virtuoso punk attitude of Buck Biloxi, with results that sound decidedly like neither. I can picture the average Feel It fan passing this one by, it being very much a square-peg record in a round-hole world, and I can also picture more adventurous listeners discovering it years from now, wondering what the hell was up with this delightfully strange band.
The international accord between America’s Total Punk and Australia’s Anti Fade could only yield positive results, like this debut LP from Melbourne’s The Judges. If I had to guess, the cover photo reveals one of the Judges undergoing a guitar transaction inside of a liquor store with some guy they met on Australian Facebook, a welcome bit of snark on an album that otherwise is no laughing matter. Judgement Day sounds like it came from a band whose favorite Stooges are Ashetons, inner-city bad-kid rock n’ roll from the last continent to really take that sort of thing seriously. The Judges take the holy template of dual-guitar power-punk and run with it, with gasoline/nicotine-scented riffs, appealingly bad attitudes and no filler. It’s a style that can’t ever truly suck, but it certainly can be boring… lucky for us, The Judges sound like they’re playing for their lives, leaving every last drop of blood on the floor. Definitely sounds like the kind of garage band that gathers as many friends as enemies, but that could just be the sound they’ve produced. Perhaps they’re sweethearts, even if their songs sound like they were written and performed by the thieves who stole your bike and never got caught.
Jared Leibowich carved out his own soft and unobtrusive spot in the indie underground through a bunch of records with his group The Zoltars (and one album with an entirely different group of people as The Infinitives), and now he’s stepping out under the Leibowich family name for his first “solo” affair, Secret Spells. I put solo in quotes because this certainly sounds like a band, complete with tumbling, cymbal-deficient drumming, chiming guitar notes and Leibowich’s easily recognizable voice. His voice always sounds like a nerd you should take seriously, barely raising it above speaking volume while maintaining a melodic pitch… it’s one of the signatures of his music, and much as I’ve enjoyed it previously, I’m enjoying it here. And while his style has generally remained the same, one of cozy slow-core indie-rock ala The American Analog Set and Bedhead at their most traceable back to the Velvet Underground, these songs feel slightly more bombastic, more inclined to throb with tension and energy. There’s some nice low-end here, a warm bass sound and some auxiliary keys that fill up the space like the decor of a well-designed room. As perhaps his most textured and pulsating work yet, Leibowich is in good company with Bruit Direct’s stable of misfits. 
Whimsical Swiss indie-psych is the name of the game with Leopardo, operating as both a live ensemble and, back when society actually recognized the ongoing pandemic, a solo recording project. It’s the work of bandleader Romain Savary on this collection, coming across like the egg-punk Tiny Tim or something. Soft, swirling, silly songs are on offer here, mostly utilizing a standard guitar/vocal arrangement and mucking it up with some sort of synth, woodwind or homemade approximation thereof. I suppose if you squint hard enough, you can pick up on the melancholy isolation with which this music was written and recorded, but Leopardo have always delivered a sort of offbeat childlike cheerfulness, and I’m sensing that here too, even though a track like “Bündnerfleisch” feels like This Kind Of Punishment covering “She’s Lost Control”. My favorite cut is the opener, “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With Nobody”, which sounds unlike any of the rest. It’s a silly post-punk streetwalk with outrageously warbled vocals, sounding like you’re cornered by a chainsmoking Frenchman at an ’80s roller-disco new-wave party. Even in isolation, Leopardo refuses to succumb to the dark side. 
Radio-friendly pop-punk is one of those things I have a superhuman tolerance for – the band could be pro-fracking pyramid-scheme loan-frauds who foreclosed on my parents’ house, but if their songs do the same basic things as All American Rejects, Blink 182 and Yellowcard’s “Ocean Avenue”, well, fine by me! Now, I can’t claim to know how the members of Liquid Mike make their money outside of the band, but they’ve got that same bouncy, anthemic, Totally ’90s pop-punk sound on this, their first vinyl record. “God Bless The World” has an overtly Tony Molina-esque vocal melody (and Molina’s trademark abrupt ending style), but I’m also hearing The Promise Ring at their most uproarious, the Adventures Of Pete & Pete theme song, the first Charly Bliss album, the aforementioned major-label pop-punk and, I dunno, probably hundreds of other bands who more or less sound like this. There are also millions of Snickers bars out there right now, and you know what, their ubiquity doesn’t make them any less sweet and tasty! Liquid Mike are from Marquette, MI, and if the house-parties in neighboring towns aren’t at least a little envious, it’s probably because they haven’t heard about Liquid Mike just yet. 
It seems like Peder Mannerfelt is never not having fun. Even on some of his more ominous, serious-sounding works, there’s always that sense that he’s enjoying himself a little too much. On this new EP, however, the fun is front and center, ebullient rave mayhem that squeaks and squeals. On this punchy four-track EP he takes the neon eye-glare of PC Music and thrusts it into muscular techno patterns reminiscent of Errorsmith, with plenty of room for his wild bicycle-horn synths to grab all the attention. “Vankelmotor” feels like Blawan through a funhouse mirror, the synths given a full-on taffy-pull, whereas “Eurotrashed” finds a lone goblin wandering through a k-hole. “Liquid Rattan Mainframe” ends on a high note, a fast-shuffling beat alongside what is easily the most cartoonishly flatulent synth-leads on an EP full of silly sounds. It’s precisely the sort of ridiculousness that I’d associate with Mannerfelt: forward-thinking, fast-paced and side-splitting. 
I was prepared to chuckle at the fact that French power-punk trio Meat Shirt recorded their Army Of Dolphins EP in the French town of Brest, but it’s an absolutely gorgeous little port city, the type of place I certainly wish to retire to someday. Apologies to all Brest residents for my immaturity! Anyway, French hardcore is always weird and a little awkward, even when it doesn’t want to be, but Meat Shirt (hailing from Saint Brieuc, not Brest) are actually pretty well-adjusted. They operate on the poppier end of the post-hardcore noise-rock spectrum, where the guitars self-destruct rarely and tastefully and the rhythm section continuously propels things forward. The thuggish tempos occasionally carry the sensation of Viagra Boys, whereas some of the guitar work has me thinking of East Bay Ray’s demented-surf stylings. Suitable for a band called Meat Shirt, to be sure! It’s their debut, and you can kind of hear the band sorting themselves out in their fledgling state, playing fast, searching out grooves and even trying out a funky gang-vocal “whoop whoop” breakdown on the title track, a moment far closer to modern-day Red Hot Chili Peppers than, say, Metz or Drive Like Jehu. Maybe “Meat Shirt” is just another way to say you’re going shirtless, Chi Peps style?
Has the genre “playlist-rock” been invented yet? Ahora, the third album from Spanish group Melenas certainly fits that feel in a non-derogatory way, one of subdued, chilled-out indie-rock moves with a reliance on soft synths, chugging motorik rhythms and mellow vocals. It’s one of those records that will offend absolutely nobody, and I don’t mean that as a diss – Melenas have cultivated a smooth, tender indie-krautrock style aligned with Broadcast, Neu! and to a lesser extent Domenique Dumont and Electrelane. There are no dangerous edges here – you could leave a toddler unattended inside Ahora and rest assured that they won’t somehow injure themselves. B-side opener “Bang” is pop fun, big cozy synths guiding the tune on a course that would satisfy an iPhone commercial where young attractive people dance by themselves in their bedrooms as well as a birthday party for one of those aforementioned toddlers. The more I listen, the more some of these understated hooks cling to my brain, a subtle trick for a record that is otherwise trick-free.
Goth has gotten way too fashionable over the last decade or so, let’s be real. It used to be scary and disgusting, the subsect of punk that creeped out regular punks, and while I’ve grown accustomed to it as more of an Instagrammable aesthetic choice (which I guess could be said about a lot of things), it’s cool that Warsaw’s Nameless Creations are dedicated to keeping it gross. I mean, they kind of tastelessly called this new album Plague Party, and instead of hiding behind crystalline waves of reverb, they’re screeching and drooling through songs with titles like “Dirge For A Lunatic” and “Poison Island”. It would make Christian Death and Bauhaus proud, I’m sure. These songs are ramshackle and spooky, at some points sounding like Nick Cave if he hailed from a Southern California suburb in 1983, or some unstable melange of Subtonix, TV Ghost and Trop Tard. I love that the singer is named Dorian Wiseblood, and that the bassist is Harry Throat – shouldn’t someone named “Harry Throat” be the singer? Nameless Creations are unabashed weirdos, stirring up a sinister mess of aggro post-punk that fashion-goths will struggle to understand. 
Now that egg-punk has been officially SPIN-articled and continues to age out of novelty/obscurity, new directions are welcomed for the reluctant genre. Erik Nervous has been at it for a while now, catching the formative aesthetic as a youngster and impressing his own brand of nerdy/garage-y speed-punk upon the Midwest underground and outwards. Even in the halcyon days of 2015, his musicianship stood out, and on this new full-length, Immaturity, Nervous’s skills remain at the forefront of his work. Of course, punk rock has always been at odds with formal talent, but Nervous really makes it work, writing dazzling, hyperactive guitar lines and inventive drum patterns and presenting them with a comfortingly familiar level of basement grit. His alien-geek-robot vocals are appealingly monotone, a necessary foil for the haywire melodies and technically-astute riffage that he apparently performs and records entirely by himself. It can sound like Whatever Brains on their sixth can of Monster, or Jay Reatard if he never moved out of his mom’s attic (both good things), but I’m most enamored by the glimpses of out-there instrumental work – “Pretentious Instrumental Break” tries to self-deprecate with the title, but it recalls the lunacy of Systematics or even the portrayal of Philip Glass as egg-punk liege. Be proud of your formidable skills, Mr. Nervous!
Best Giegling single to hit my desk in a minute! Maayan Nidam is new to me, but “Eisbär” is a techno-not-techno track I won’t soon forget. It behaves so strangely… like, yes there is a beat, but it’s also kind of motionless, with this warm and warbly synth squiggle that gets flipped on and off like a light-switch. There is no groove whatsoever, and that’s what makes it so compelling. It’s headphone/meditation/dishwashing electro of a refined caliber, a listening zone I strongly endorse. The rest of the a-side wanders with a similarly uninhibited presence, drums offering only the most rudimentary of patterns, bass-lines restlessly burbling, perhaps a simple melodic line or a sprinkling of low-level dub interference. The flip offers no easy answers either, only more patient and sparse techno maneuvers in the hazy clap n’ throb of “In Reverence”. It’s like there are the sanctioned styles of electronic dance music, and then there’s Maayan Nidam, blissfully negating the things a techno producer is supposed to do. Habe Ich Gewonnen? reminds me of Kassem Mosse, Margaret Dygas and labelmate DJ Metatron in that way, a playful thumbing of the rules and reorganization of techno groundwork… yet another friendly reminder to keep an eye on Giegling at all times. 
Now firmly a band (as opposed to its previous solo-project existence), Richmond’s Northeast Regional follow their debut LP with this three-song seven-inch (and promotional Northeast Regional-branded water bottles, too – a nice touch, though a Stanley collab would really put them on the map). These three songs are both leaner and meaner, moving ever so slightly from the screamy pop-punk / melodic hardcore vibe to one of aggressively downward post-grunge chug. The two a-side tracks tumble forward like the most aggressive Hot Snakes material, or KARP with a Jade Tree contract. If you play these songs without enough energy or a capable drummer, everything can fall apart, but everyone in Northeast Regional is holding up their various ends of the bargain here. I can’t help but think that if Fucked Up stayed a normal band back in 2008 and never strayed the course, their results may be similar to these songs as well. The b-side is nice too, opting for a Nirvana-goes-hardcore riff with the sense that it’s played by guys with Rocket From The Crypt-looking button-up shirts. Probably hard to stand out playing music this un-zeitgeisty in 2024, even if you’re really good, but I want to remind you once more that Northeast Regional made promotional water bottles for this release, which is a nice start. Maybe every band should start giving out free household items? It’s surely the next step in our ultra devalued industry.
Sloth Mate continues to sharpen its savvy aesthetic with Now’s vinyl debut, another sophisticated-DIY indie-pop act out of San Francisco (a city that seems to have a never-ending supply of this sorta thing). They have some recognizable sounds and musical approaches here, all of which come together in a fairly novel arrangement. Some tracks (like opener “Wind Was”) sound like Cocteau Twins’ guitars as utilized by Homosexuals, whereas others split the difference between mopey twee like Brighter and upbeat private-press power-pop. That seems to be the axis on which Now spin, one where buttoned-up power-pop moves, C86 jangle, lite shoegaze psychedelia and a jittery, nervous form of glam-rock mix and mingle. Can’t help but picture skinny ties stuffed into big cable-knit sweaters as And Blue Space Is Burning Noon spins onward. I feel like some of the San Fran DIY-indie scene rests its laurels on aesthetic signifiers and Moe Tucker drumming, a presumed cool to kind of gloss over the lack of fresh songwriting, but Now are innocent of any such charge, clearly a group where sharply-written songs and unique style are crucial elements. 
German producer Philipp Otterbach dropped two new full-lengths in the tail-end of 2023, one on the well-regarded Music From Memory label and also this one, whose inscrutable title drew me in. I loved his Knekelhuis EP from a few years back, ushering in a weird-nouveau strain of electro noir, and Correct Me spreads its legs in a similar fashion. I guess one could consider this a collection of vignettes, “audio postcards” documenting particular moments in Otterbach’s intriguing life – all the song titles are different dates, though as some date back to the early ’90s, I don’t believe they directly correlate to when they were recorded. Nope, Otterbach likes to tease and gesture from behind a darkened veil, making it clear there’s some sort of narrative story happening in his music but ensuring we’ll never know what any of that is. Thankfully, his music is creative and evocative, curiosity being key. He might get into the low-lit strum of “Okt 01, 21” like some sort of Coil / Current 93 collab, or the cinematic desolation of “Apr 23, 11”, playing out like one of Burial’s street-view ambient pieces… anything alluring, coincidental, spooky or seductive is grist for Otterbach’s mill. The bass and drums of “Mar 27, 16” recall a lightweight MIDI Swans circa Children Of God, though I can’t imagine he had anything close to them in mind when crafting it. Correct Me is a series of unusual connections like that, constantly wandering off the page entirely and all the better for it. 
Following their Total Punk full-length, Pyrex loosen up a bit with this slippery two-song single. The album was perfectly fine, but I like them better here, feeling less clenched and more comfortable in their own skin, even if this is still frustrated, manic music by any evaluation. “Struck Down” pushes the disco hi-hats to their limits over a furious strum, sounding like Cheater Slicks covering Interpol at twice the recommended speed. Ugly music by its very nature, rather than any sense of artifice or, even worse, “trying too hard”. And speaking of trying, I’m not sure what Pyrex are trying to do by covering “Staying Alive” (yes, that “Staying Alive”) on the b-side, but I’ll be damned if they don’t make it their own thing entirely. It sounds like Mayyors arguing amongst themselves as a live YouTube of Nirvana’s “Endless, Nameless” is blaring nearby, but if you squint hard enough, Magic Eye-style, the meat and bones of The Bee Gees original can be discerned. Reminds me of that fantastic album by The 012 that is filled with mangled pop covers, far transcending the original material. Crazy ideas are always best – sometimes they just might work!
Just yesterday I put on WFMU while driving out of New York and enjoyed a killer selection of left-field / lo-fi punk, eventually discovering that it was Tom Dash’s show, he being a notable NYC garage-punk busybody. How nice to hear Screaming Urge segue into The Stimulators on the way home from the indoor-surfing mall! Turns out Dash’s also got his own label going, Dot Dash Sounds, inaugurated with the debut LP from Holyoke, MA’s Red Herrings. Their Western MA affiliation had me thinking of the spacier avant-garde side of electric guitar music, and Dash’s radio show had me expecting some obscurist DIY post-punk, but Red Herrings play it close to the vest, hammering out a noisy-psych form of aggressive garage-punk, not a frill in sight. Certain songs sound like Hot Snakes venturing into outer space, whereas others take more of a Comets On Fire-meets-Purling Hiss approach, multiple layers of guitar rippling like fudge. It never gets too fast or too stoner-y, though, as Red Herrings prefer to stick and move with traditional Nuggets-y rhythms, their pugnacity calling to mind the harder end of Estrus’s back-catalog of 45 RPM singles. In the live photo insert, a pack of Marlboro reds is clearly visible through vocalist Zach Tisdell’s chest pocket, and if somebody’s gotta smoke ’em, I’m glad it’s him and not me. 
Confusion, or at least some low level of blatant incorrectness has always been at the heart of Lynton Denovan’s music, both in his fantastic group Satanic Rockers (no one has since topped their album art in sheer stupid shock value) and solo as Sacred Product. Right off the bat, this EP has the b-side song’s name on the cover – who does that? More than ever it feels like everyone is trying extra hard to please everyone, so it’s refreshing when a new Sacred Product single arrives, clearly uninterested in pleasing anyone. “Angry Red Planet” has a Flipper-ish monoto-bounce, vocals coming in and out without ever seeming entirely aware of the music they’re singing over, then letting it play out instrumentally for the last minute or two. “Return Souvenir” rides a different acid-bent pop progression, again in a mode indebted to Flipper but without any of their underlying nihilism. Almost sounds like a warped Madchester tune, depending how far you’re willing to stick your face into the speaker. Again, I want to stress how appealingly oblivious these songs sound, staring off into the middle distance with a sleepy grin on Sacred Product’s face. It’s a contagious form of stupified bliss, or at least that’s my excuse.
Screaming Urge’s Homework is one of the greatest Killed By Death tunes – please run to YouTube and watch their 1980 cable-access performance of it if you haven’t seen it already (or even if you have) – and while that single was reissued back in 2012, the good archivists at HoZac offer both of those tunes alongside their debut full-length in another tidy package. That single is so damn killer that the more subdued, lower-energy LP tracks bring the mood down a bit, though once you get over the cheap thrills of “Homework” and “Runaway”, the LP is still a fun listen. While Screaming Urge were happy to wear their wacky, grandma’s-raided-closet punk outfits, their music is already a bit more refined on the LP, or if not refined, omnivorous – you can hear them trying out blues, reggae, power-pop, rockabilly and new-wave maneuvers in fractional if not complete form. I like ’em best when they bop like idiots, of course, the frantic buzz of “We Are Mono” hitting the spot in particular from the LP session. Even though I’ve heard “Homework” at least a hundred times, its mix of Television-esque guitars and extremely teenaged lyrics gets me every time. Screw you, mom and dad!
It takes Norwegian garage-punk group Sklitakling four songs before we reach a part that isn’t a one-two drum beat with double-timed guitar strum, but even before “Luftgevær” is over they revert to said technique. If you’ve figured out what kinda music you wanna play, why do anything else? The majority of their self-titled debut is moody punk that finds common ground between hardcore-punk and garage, not unlike The Vicious (or The Wipers if you want to go further down the evolutionary chain). Vocals are shouted by what seems like more than one member, Sklitakling clearly approaching matters as a unified gang rather than a band of individuals each vying for the spotlight. It’s solid stuff overall, if perhaps not entirely unique, but I stand by my thought that every town everywhere needs at least one cool punk band to call their own, even if their songs might not overshadow a lineup of their peers. It’s cool that their lyrics are all in Norwegian, although the lone instrumental track, entitled “Stonerboner”, has me wondering if it actually means something in Norwegian or if I’d get in trouble shouting it while wandering the streets of Oslo at night. Their culture is not my costume!
Another late-in-the-year stunner from the Few Crackles camp, one that if you aren’t immediately hipped-to will require ponying up some inflated scratch (which has an extra sting to it in our era where standard vinyl prices are already exorbitant). It sucks paying thirty bucks for something you only kinda like, but Ssabæ’s second vinyl album is really stunning, even richer and more refined than last year’s Azurescens. Like its cover image of some unusual foliage rendered in and out of focus, Le Roi Est L’Oiseau feels psychedelic in an organic sort of way. Dominated by resonant keyboards, untethered saxophones, guitar on half the tracks and a smattering of headier gear (the title track is credited with not only duduk and harmonium but also “waterphone” and “oiseau-robot”, both of which are real things I am glad I looked up), the album feels dark yet pleasant, as if you finally met the poltergeist that’s been haunting you and it turns out he’s actually a decent guy. It shares the feel of early Demdike Stare when they were deep into occult territory, though there’s no techno to be found here, but something closer to the freakiest, least rock-centric Black Forest activity ever rendered by Faust or Brainticket, or Brannten Schnüre after the thaw of spring, complete with arresting French vocals (again, only some of the time – sonic elements continually shift from track to track). “7arche”, for example, stirs my soul like a cauldron of witches’ brew – horns squealing and purring over a persistent underlying duduk melody – before the funereal chanson of “Le Premier Soir Du Monde” drifts us solemnly out to sea. 
Long after the lo-fi punk trend of the ’00s came and went, Detroit’s Tyvek remain punk as hell, seeking the approval of absolutely nobody. Not sure what album number Overground counts as, considering the number of grey-area twelve-inches, CD-rs, cassettes and such – there’s even a Live At Third Man album in there! – but I can verify that they’ve been a band (if not a full-time endeavor) for way longer than most of their peers, yet this new album displays no transitional path to “maturity”, wankery or pop aspiration. They sound like the DIY post-punk clown car they always sounded like, with more vitality and compacted hooks than ever. The group has gone through myriad personnel, always circling around singer-guitarist Kevin Boyer, and this time the saxophone of Emily Roll punches through, a new and welcome addition to the Tyvek sound. It’s incredible that any established band could write a song like “M-39” this late in their existence, sounding like X_X meeting early Parquet Courts in a schoolyard tussle, but the whole record is basically like that, high energy, garage-y DIY punk that shakes you by the shoulders. Amazingly, it might be favorite album of theirs I’ve heard! It can sometimes feel like being in a band has never been less fun than it is in our modern-future time, but here’s goddamn Tyvek, galloping around like they’re teenagers at their first basement party gig and someone else brought the beer.
Eighth release here from Baltimore noise-core unit Variation, who do the right thing and fill this seven-inch with fourteen insubordinate blasts. They manage to recall two vectors of underground hardcore with their sound and presentation: rare and noise-soaked Japanese hardcore flexis of the early ’80s and power-violence-bordering American fast-core of the mid ’90s. Nope, I wasn’t recently looking at old photos of my family, the tears in my eyes are from the sweet sounds of Variation! The guitar is a constant TV-screen fuzz, leaving the bass and drums (any/all cymbal sounds swallowed up by the guitar) to hurl these songs forward. Their previous EP had Stapled Shut vibes (and I’m picking up those here too), but this time around I want to mention Rupture, the first flexis by Gudon and Confuse and any given Vilently Ill compilation tracks. Not sure if there is an actual Japanese connection to this group or if they are simply obsessive fans, as certain songs (and both center stickers) are written in kanji, but seeing as the record itself offers essentially zero information beyond one- or two-word song titles and the first names of Variation’s members (“Dumpy” is on the drums), it seems that Variation want to focus on the wretched, crusty hardcore they perform rather than their own personal selves. Their meekness is a lesson for all of us.
Absolutely exquisite new album from XIII aka Italian producer Alessio Capovilla. I believe previous XIII works were more of the left-field experimental sound-design offshoot of avant techno, but Permanent Rain is a stunning step forward (or sideways, depending on your perspective). This album mines the increasingly-familiar arena of new-age ambient dub with non-Western percussion, but goes far beyond surface-level signifiers. I don’t think there are any winding rainforest rivers over there in Italy, but boy does he conjure that sense of ominous natural wonder on tracks like “Where Are You Now” and “Hardtmuth” (featuring the cool conversational vocals of Hans Harsen). Other cuts take on the pensive, post-coke binge contemplation you might expect to hear in a late ’80s no-budget action flick: check the nylon stringed guitars of “Rientro In Alona”, ripe for a Miami Vice scene where they sneak into the bad guys’ lair to search for clues, no doubt. “The Distance” even ends on a post-rock stomp! As a whole, it can be reminiscent of Nicolas Jaar, John T Gast, Nuel and the Mandalorian soundtrack, though XIII favors organic melodies over abstraction and studio trickery. What makes Permanent Rain special is how all these elements come together in a polished and consequential way, substantial yet light to the touch. 
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