Welcome to the sixth edition of Discogs Cheapos, a column wherein I spotlight a handful of old, exceptional records that sell for single-digits on the Discogs website. It’s been three years since the last edition – I am a thoroughly infrequent man – and seeing as record prices really went ape over the last few years, stupidly so in fact, deals are getting harder and harder to spot. But they’re there! Today is my birthday, and rather than sit here re-gramming all the sweet birthday-shoutout Instagram stories that I’m sure are coming in… (yup, any minute now…), I thought I’d offer this gift to you, dear reader – here are six old records completely worth picking up, probably for under fifty bucks total if you set your mind to it.
Charm City Suicides Green Blood 7″ (Baths Of Power, 2000)
Charm City Suicides existed right around the turn of the century, which in retrospect was a pretty terrible time for being an outrageously snotty and primitive punk rock band. The collector-based Killed By Death craze hadn’t quite caught on with punks in their twenties, whereas the waning first-wave of screamo maintained significant message-board chatter alongside the burgeoning stadium-crust of Tragedy (whose debut was also released in 2000) as we celebrated the arrival of Makeoutclub (look it up) and hipster dance nights. Not a lot of room in the conversation for dirty local punk bands with poorly-photocopied record covers at the time, which is perhaps why I still haven’t seen Charm City Suicides get their due. Their self-titled full-length from the following year remains one of my absolute favorite punk records of the ’00s, a catchy, ridiculous, primal, memorable romp through the overgrown back-alleys of Baltimore’s suburbs (and unexpectedly released by Youth Attack on compact disc). While that album is a true pinnacle of don’t-care punk rock – check “Out At The Reservoir”, “I Wanna Get With You” and “Pit Of Sorrow” to confirm the group’s transcendent melding of Chain Gang, Flipper and Germs – their debut single Green Blood is right up there too, exceptionally high quality and completely out of time. “I’m In Love” is the only track up on YouTube, where you can sample its trash-can drums, wrong-note riffs and flustered squawk of vocalist Mike Apichella. If you’re like me and you love home-recorded, home-released punk EPs that the band themselves folded, stuffed and mailed, it’s a five out of five.
Jet Bronx & The Forbidden Ain’t Doin’ Nothin’ / I Can’t Stand It 7″ (Lightning, 1977)
1977 was a great year for punk because punk wasn’t remotely figured out yet. A band like Jet Bronx & The Forbidden, for example, were more punk than not, but they also sounded like the recent past rather than a hysterical refusal of it. “Ain’t Doin’ Nothin'” delivers the excellent punk attitude of slacking off and rolling one’s eyes at authority before returning one’s attention back to a shoplifted comic book, and while the music has enough edge to tip a tense pub scene into violence (and I love that they went with “doin’ nothin'” instead of “doing nothing”), it still kinda sounds like Dr. Hook as much as Richard Hell. “I Can’t Stand It” is even more pre-punk sounding, and nearly as killer, like a British Black Oak Arkansas shaking off the gratuitous bloat of ’70s rock like a wet dog for something streamlined, gruff and relatable. Bassist George Ford later went on to Hall & Oates and drummer Stuart Elliott later joined Cockney Rebel, which offers some further insight into Jet Bronx & The Forbidden’s brief moment of existence, this seven-inch single their sole release. It’s a timeless teenage drop-out ripper, and while I know international shipping costs are an absolute beast these days, copies are currently starting at sixty-three cents over on Discogs, astronomically less than many of Jet Bronx’s class-of-’77 cohort.
St. Joseph & The Abandoned Food St. Joseph & The Abandoned Food 7″ (The Aporia Label, 1999)
Pick of the litter right here, when rated on both quality and cost! St. Joseph & The Abandoned Food featured a young Noel Harmonson on guitar – you may recognize his name from his time spent with Comets On Fire and Heron Oblivion; I sure do – and if you ever doubted that he was always ahead of the curve and cool-as-hell for it, go and purchase this self-titled single for three bucks right this very moment. “Harlequin Knights” sounds like that first The Rapture EP on Gravity if the group was inspired by The Electric Eels and CBGBs weeknight no-wave gigs. Harmonson’s guitar is slippery as an eel as vocalist Joseph Mosconi hyperventilates his lyrics… how this isn’t a five hundred dollar obscurity reissued by Tom Lax is a mystery to me. “Grub Blastin'” reminds me of Los Cincos, also operating on the West Coast around roughly the same time, only ten times more demented, as if these guys tried to buy a Rolling Stones record but left the shop with US Maple’s Sang Phat Editor instead. It’s a stunning double-shot of over-the-top art-punk, and I truly cannot believe copies are just sitting around on the internet for less change than a rest-stop KitKat.
Toner High Cinderella And The Slipper Fit Perfectly LP (Sissysound / Panzerkreuz, 2011)
There’s some tough competition, but this might be the strangest record of this bunch. At the very least, it’s the most recent, but the sounds of Toner High Cinderella’s “2009 winter depression” record are untethered to conventional space and time. The presumably Dutch artist (could be just one guy, who knows?) struck gold with this loose concept album about, uh, the story of Cinderella, inexplicably rendered in cosmic stoner-psych 2D. Imagine, if you will, Josh Homme completely enamored with two records: Earth’s Pentastar and Tony Conrad & Faust’s Outside The Dream Syndicate. It’s like the best concept record Boris never wrote, and you don’t have to shell out a couple Benjamins to partake in the fun. Toner High Cinderella slips the minimalist glass slipper of droning sludge-rock into the delicate foot of kraut-rock space-vision, and, seeing as it was mostly promoted and distributed by seminal dance label Crème Organization, it never seemed to find its footing anywhere, no pun intended. (The LP is available on Crème’s Bandcamp page right now, but without a single corresponding streamable track – I love that move!) That’s fine, I suppose, as any gem that shines with the hypnotic, prismatic light of And The Slipper Fit Perfectly is bound for eventual discovery and celebration.
Unwanted Christmas Presents Unwanted Christmas Presents LP (Electrocution, 1993)
I remember when Kevin of Pink Reason hyped up the Unwanted Christmas Presents LP online, maybe like a dozen years ago now, and I thought, well, that’s it: this guy has an audience, he has cred, and he’s going to send this cheap record into the collector’s marketplace tout de suite. That increased prominence and dollar value never took place, however – such is the enduring undesirability of this antagonizing, demoralizing album. Unwanted Christmas Presents were a duo, not unlike Ween in many respects, from their willingness to see any bad idea through to its conclusion and their delight in taking apart typical rock music and using it for spare parts while disregarding the essentials. “Keith” and “Jonathan” were from West Virginia, of all unfortunate places, and their noisy, unschooled avant-garde garage-punk is thrilling, full of dingy riffs and occasionally even rockin’ tunes, delivered with the chutzpah of the most nihilistic Subterranean Records groups, the Midwestern mix of vigor and torpor you might hear in V-3 (and yes, Pink Reason too) and the unsettling disturbances of Culturcide. It’s music sure to please troubled high-school bullies of the early ’90s as well as today’s WFMU-DJ weirdo musicologists, and somehow, there always seems to be a handful of cheap copies sitting around for sale on the internet. They probably sold a dozen copies or less when it first came out, and laughed about it, the group’s name clearly an intentionally self-fulfilling prophecy.
Will To Live Will To Live 12″ (Flesh, 1986)
If you lived in or near New Jersey in the ’90s, ’00s or even ’10s and enjoyed digging through the bargain bins tucked under the waist-level racks at record shops, chances are you came across records by Amor Fati, New Jersey’s answer to Throbbing Gristle (or at least its answer to Sleep Chamber). Amor Fati was the name used by Amaury Perez for his solo industrial music, and he released records on his own Flesh Records label, loosely taping or gluing pieces of paper to plain record jackets, sure to get ripped in the shuffle amongst kinder, gentler LPs. Those Amor Fati records are cool, certainly cool for their time, though probably inessential unless you’re a real art-aktion kinda freak (which I guess I am, since I have those records). The one you really wanna grab, however, is the self-titled EP from Will To Live, the group Amor Fati played guitar and sang for in the mid ’80s. They meld a lot of things that are overtly appreciated in the underground now: the staunch and brittle anger of Crass; the masochistic eroticism of Swans in both noise-rock and goth-industrial modes; the acerbic American post-punk of Spike In Vain; the “are we even musicians?” misery-based drone-punk of Campingsex. And they still sound like they probably opened for Rites Of Spring, SPK and Die Kreuzen when they rolled up to City Gardens in Trenton sometime in 1986, when flyers and word of mouth were the only hope a young alternative-type had in getting there. Will To Live existed far beyond mainstream society back then, and while it was arguably easier to avoid the all-seeing corporate eye in 1986 than right now, they’re still dope as hell for it, capped off with this aggressively brooding record that no one seems to know about.
The housebound audio detritus from Discreet Music’s Blod continues, this time teaming up with Canadian sonic abstractionist Shadow Pattern. It’s a worldwide phenomenon by now, the practice of molding spirals of dust, accidental sounds and extremely non-musical sources into roughshod forms of, if not music, audio that is meant for intentional listening. The key here is to somehow figure out what sounds are worthy of saving and sharing with others, a trick that Blod and his Discreet Music posse seem particularly adept at. Some HVAC systems hum with a rabid intensity worth capturing and some thrift-store keyboards are possessed by ghosts, and I appreciate Blod’s continued efforts to capture, sculpt and curate this stuff. With Shadow Pattern in the mix, the possibility of “too much going on” enters the chat, but the duo continues to pull back nicely, content to let extended unorthodox droning or found-sound samples linger without interruption. The nearly eight minutes of “Kärleken Som Fanns” is surely more than accidental, layering the reverberations of metal sheets over a closely-miked acoustic guitar and a Swedish lullaby if you let it get there. The sounds are varied, though the general sense of a material-world-based malaise lingers. I’m reminded of the book Get High Now by James Nestor, which offers “more than 175 ways to alter human perception – without drugs or alcohol”; Midnite Blues feels like Blod and Shadow Pattern’s attempt at number 176.
You’d think that it would be commonplace for experimental improv musicians to surprise and shock their audiences, yet it seems rarer than it should be. Enter Chris Corsano, master collaborator who pulls out the best of anyone he works with, or at least makes their material sound better than ever alongside his frantic, dizzying, stylish percussion. The last time I recall encountering a true solo album of his, it was nearly twenty years ago and full of extremely abstract sounds, so the rock songs he delivers on here are a fabulous revelation. Who knew he could play guitar, and in such a firm and capable post-punk style? “The Full-Measure Wash Down” falls somewhere between Lungfish, Shoes This High and Wire; same goes for “I Don’t Have Missions”, a track you could trick me into believing was post-punk Sonic Youth or proto-punk Captain Beefheart if the vocals of Thurston Moore or Don Van Vliet were applied to the instrumentals. It’s kind of wild to be referencing punk-anything with a Chris Corsano record, though knowing his DIY spirit it does make sense. There’s still plenty of abstraction to be found on The Key – “Collapsed In Four Parts” sounds like Bill Nace with an FMP contract, “Everything I Tried to Understand Wasn’t Understandable at All” recalls the outrageous joy of Han Bennik. It all comes together in this righteously entertaining snapshot of Corsano’s creative, freewheeling mind and spirit. 
No shortage of electro dream-pop these days, and yet I feel like the audience for this sound remains ravenous. I’ll include myself in there, and make mention of the debut from French-Canadian singer Gabrielle Desjean who releases music under the name of Croche. Songs Of The Red Dragon hits a nice mid-point between diaristic futzing and wide-screen pop aspirations, falling on neither side of that court but some middle spot where her music can breathe unencumbered. For a quick reference, I’d tell you to imagine Carla dal Forno as informed by Sade and Tirzah and scrubbed clean of gritty post-punk residues, though these seven tracks move in enough different directions to avoid any easy “like this with that” descriptions from sticking cleanly. There’s spicy electro-house, ethereal guitar/drone/vocal reflections, acapella singing along with the sound of water being rowed, and surprisingly not much of a Cocteau Twins vibe, considering how similar it seems on paper. Desjean’s voice sounds like a person you’d know, tuneful but never perfect, and Croche is more interesting because of it; I find myself wondering more about this person than if they had the sparkling, digitally-corrected perfection of our typical pop avatars. If there’s an empty spot between your Sundays and Antenna records, I won’t chide you for not properly alphabetizing your collection, I’ll simply suggest that Songs Of The Red Dragon might fill that space nicely.
I’m no art historian but right off the bat I recognized Portland’s Cut Piece as a reference to one of Yoko Ono’s most famous art performances. Good for me, I guess? It’s a nice first impression at least, especially considering your average Total Punk recording artist dropped out of school long before modern art history entered the curriculum. For certain, Cut Piece’s sound stands out from that pack. This quartet are closer to moody-yet-urgent peace-punk than anything else, reminiscent of Boston’s Dame and Chicago’s Canal Irreal, bands that don’t lose sight of hardcore-punk aggression in their gloomy, atmospheric aspirations. Cut Piece let a NWOBHM-ish riff slip out in “Chase The Night” for a few seconds before jumping back into speedy, frantic hardcore, and it works well, a subtle reminder that Grim Reaper albums lurk within even the punkest of record collections. Once all the noise-not-music hardcore crusters have blasted through their sets in the back of some Portland punk bar, I’m sure the music of Cut Piece hits like Debussy in melodic comparison, assuming he also wore black eyeliner on occasion.
Came across De Beren Gieren’s Dug Out Skyscrapers when it came out back in the innocent days of 2017, and it kind of set some sort of tone for where my listening habits would head over the next few years, delighted by and seeking out further forms of unorthodox jazz instrumentation. Somehow I hadn’t caught up with them again until now, and while I’ve gained a footing for this sort of sound, this Belgian trio of piano, bass and drums continues to shine bright. Whereas many of their peers have long since drifted off into the land of sedentary room-noise, modified tapes and field-recordings, De Beren Gieren are still traditional musicians, and highly talented ones at that. Thankfully, their musical skill doesn’t override their creativity or curiosity, as the material of What Eludes Us ripples with new ideas without ever questioning the fundamental attributes of their given instruments (though that can be very cool too). They might not prepare the piano with contact-mics and other physical modifications, but a track like “Very Important Vs. Nothing” works according to its own unique language, somewhere between Isotope 217 and Tara Clerkin Trio. If the next Nordic crime-thriller series starring a beleaguered female detective with skeletons in her closet doesn’t feature De Beren Gieren over the opening credits, they’re making a terrible mistake. 
The Drin maintain their rep as the dreariest, moodiest, strangest group currently operating on Feel It (and probably within the borders of their Cincinnati residence). Their Feel It debut offered a cool kind of forlorn, swampy twist to low-energy post-punk, and Elude The Torch moves further from the confines of post-punk into more unusual realms. These songs tend to slowly build and slowly burn out, somewhere on the dark-side of communal hippie and kraut-rock jamming. Guitars often take the helm as a semi-trustworthy guide, but they’re just as likely to fall out in favor of clanging percussion and groovy bass. “Comb The Wreckage” might accidentally constitute an obscure alt-rock hit in a different reality, sounding like One Foot In The Grave-era Beck on a La Düsseldorf kick. Told you they get weird! Throughout, The Drin seem to offer suggestions as to what kraut-rock all-timers like Neu! and Amon Düül II would sound like if they were raised in the toxic mud of American creekbeds, forced to eat gas station snacks in lieu of real meals and barely feel any sense of hope, let alone utopian visions. I’m making Elude The Torch sound gloomy, and it is, but cracks of light shine through, even if they just end up being the blue and red flashes on a cop car coming to break up the party. The Drin seem destined to persevere, but if not, at least they left us with a couple of great albums before departing.
I think about The Psychic Paramount all the time, mostly in a reaction to hearing other instrumental rock bands who are nowhere near as thrillingly sky-ripping as them, so you can imagine the adrenaline rush that came with learning about guitarist Drew St. Ivany’s new band, The Exorzist III. I won’t argue that it’s the best band name in the world, but St. Ivany could come up with a band name as juvenile and stupid as to reference bodily waste ruining an article of clothing and I’d still smash that Bandcamp order button with five fingers. Of course, it’s possible The Exorzist III doesn’t stack up to his previous work, but guess what? It absolutely does! This feels like a direct continuation of what The Psychic Paramount were up to, massive and extended rock jams that are loose in structure and path, and tight in performance and execution. Bassist Von Finger (now that’s a good name) and drummer Nick Ferrante are up to the mighty task, both of them locked-in and changing in subtle, nearly imperceptible ways, taking the music from a slow simmer to a violent boil without leaving any trail behind. Three huge tracks and one short one here – the first cut, “Jabber”, clocks in close to sixteen minutes – and while “Deuce Berry” is probably my personal fave, thanks to the magnificently chiming guitars and Finger’s intensely unwavering bass-riff, Gospel Jamming Vol. 1 is an absolute treasure from start to finish.
Boston’s righteous Firewalker get twisted up with the devil on their sophomore full-length, Hell Bent. There are multiple species of demons on the cover (from winged beasts to Bowser-esque ground-dwellers), song titles like “Devil’s Favorite Toy”, “Shackled” and the title track, and the riffs are more metallic than ever, borrowing from the sinister end of NYHC crossover (Crumbsuckers and Nuclear Assault come to mind). Of course, Firewalker are hardcore for the hardcore, so they take these twisted horns and wield them as powerful pit weapons without neglecting the importance of hooks – crucial if they want any chance of standing out in a sea of moshy beat-em-ups. I love that vocalist Sophie Hendry has an extremely distinctive guttural growl, yet every single lyric is somehow intelligible – I’m more likely to misinterpret Eddie Vedder’s words than Landry’s, which is impressive considering her old-school death-metal approach. Her voice is key to connecting with Firewalker as more than background mosh action. While overtly metallic, these nine tracks are brief and move fast, far removed from any of metal’s typical self-indulgences. The placement of “Scorcher II” towards the end is perfect, as it’s the shortest and fastest track here, the fast chop of the drums offering a brief and well-earned release from the protracted anguish that Firewalker are dead-set on delivering. 
I appreciate that the list of words that rhyme with -ender is vast, yet the two this Texas noise-rock crew opted to use are either made-up or spelled incorrectly. Why not have a little playful fun with our language – it’s certainly a fitting mindset for encountering this group’s wooly, maximally-fried style. Like a lot of noise-rock, both from the more overtly-masculine ’90s AmRep style and the freaky day-glo costume approach of the early ’00s, the bass-guitar and drums do all the heavy lifting here, allowing the other members to go off on whatever it is they’re doing (which, in Flender’s case, isn’t always clear). The bass/drums are consistently dialed into spastic, funky signatures, very much in the vein of Ruins, while the guitars utilize any number of effects pedals, adding blurry, suspiciously-wet stains to the rhythmic core. There’s no shortage of vocals either, which arrive in both high-pitched-scream and psychotic freakout variants. There’s not a lot of separation in the mix outside of the bass and drums, and without any overt consideration of hooks or intelligibility, the mess quickly overrides the cohesion that is surely lurking somewhere in there. Seems like they’re having a blast, though as a listener far removed from their personal relationships and band headquarters, I don’t find much of it sticking to my ribs… maybe there’s simply too much other stuff on my ribs already. 
To Christchurch, NZ’s HÖG, the idea of “true romance” is a high-speed car chase that narrowly avoids capture from the authorities and a hero who calmly walks away from the ensuing explosions with their sweetheart, not even flinching from the blast. HÖG is a sextet, the sort of band that’s damn near impossible to squeeze into an economy-sized van with their gear, and they’re blaring some black-exhaust punk n’ roll with that level of wattage. These four cuts pace angrily, charging forward with requisite guitar leads, ominous classic-rock organ, the hint of tambourine and a vocalist who seems to be coughing up every last syllable. I have to wonder if vocalist Dan Richardson doesn’t realize he’s not in one of those Gag-, Gel- or Bib-sounding hardcore bands, the way he bursts capillaries in his temples with every strained grunt. It kinda works – or at least, he seems to be really feeling it – though the songs themselves rock in fairly predictable ways and kind of run into each other. “Confessions Part III” features the chorus line of “rock n’ roll won’t save my soul, might just save my life”, which feels impossible for anyone under the age of sixty to be singing in 2024, and yet here it is. I dunno, it’s a perfectly fine, motor-breathing record, and I’m not only saying that because I doubt I could take any one of these fine mates in a scrum, let alone all six. 
Seth Manchester is a constant, significant presence in the world of semi- or overtly-experimental heavy music for adults, responsible for producing and engineering records by The Body, Battles, Metz, Lingua Ignota, Model/Actriz… the list goes on. Makes sense then that Justin R. Cruz Gallego would work with him for his Sub Pop debut, a rich and textural album of post-punk psych that’s as groove-oriented as it is difficult to categorize. If there’s been another Sub Pop release to directly reference G.I.S.M. (piece together the title!), I want to hear that one too, but for now it’s been a pleasure diving deep into Grim Iconic…(Sadistic Mantra), a record begging to be listened to with full attention, multiple times over. The instrumentation and orientation varies from track to track, usually establishing some sort of softly chugging rhythmic backbone and coloring it in with wide varieties of guitars, synths, uneasily-sorted sounds and percussion. Gallego remains at the helm throughout, his voice a consistently calming, authoritative presence not unlike Noah Anthony’s last few Profligate albums, yet the tracks offer a communal (not “solo project”) feel, not trying to recreate the kraut-rock hippie collectives of the past so much as finding fresh ways to approach left-field rhythmic rock music with a variety of talented friends and collaborators in tow. 
Kenji Kariu’s Rain / Water is his second full-length for Bruit Direct Disques, a label that has more one-off artist releases than not. Nice to see the partnership continue here, as Kariu’s songs are now poppier and more robust, feeling as though they stepped out of the dimly-lit basement and onto the patio terrace for a cocktail. Sometimes it’s sunny out there and sometimes it’s as drippy-dreary as the album title, but it’s all sumptuous, soft-edged, lowercase-p pop music, borrowing techniques from bossa nova, Brazilian tropicália, Japanese city-pop and French chanson. I’ve seen references to Maher Shalal Hash Baz used in relation to Kenji Kariu’s music more than once, and while that same open-armed friendliness is proudly on display, Rain / Water feels a little too subtly sophisticated for such a comparison to hit the bullseye. Whereas his prior Bruit Direct outing showed signs of bedroom experimentalism, duct-taped seams occasionally on display, this album is silky, doe-eyed romance throughout, the sort of obscurity that Stereolab would’ve name-checked in a 1994 interview in Sassy had it come out decades ago. I know that the kids don’t slow-dance anymore, or even know what slow-dancing is, but you start pumping Rain / Water into some college dorm PA systems and it’ll naturally break out, just like karate kicks at a Hatebreed show.
Tim Koh will probably be the coolest guy to be mentioned in this month’s pages: dude is an absolutely exquisite bassist, he’s collaborated with noise-maestro John Wiese over the years, he maintains a fine NTS radio show and, in local lore, once knocked out some jerk with one punch before an Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti show – Koh played in that group back before Ariel Pink swam out to sea, never to be heard from again. Now he’s teaming with someone named Sun An for a dazzling and diverse set of home-ambient electro-swirl. Sure, everyone is making records like this these days, and even though I’m already a fan I’m not here to give Koh a pass for mediocre work, so believe me when I say it’s exceptional. Across seventeen tracks, these two dig into many forms of delicately-edited digital bliss, with snippets of things you recognize (guitars, piano, Nutribullet blenders, footsteps) commingling with far less obvious sounds. The heavily-processed guitars recall Fennesz, and the bittersweet found-sound poetry has me thinking of Félicia Atkinson, but Koh and An have developed their own language within this form, fully in focus yet hairy and unburdened, like a junkyard where every bent bicycle wheel and cracked flower-pot is rich in detail for those who want to look. A top year-end lister, no doubt.
Guy Maddison and Martin Bland were in Lubricated Goat together, and now they’ve got a duo called La Paire D’or happening. As you might’ve assumed, anyone capable of surviving those naked, drug-fueled ’90s AmRep days has either withered into madness or come out the other end as mellowed-out, sophisticated adults, and I’m sure Maddison and Bland are pleased to fall in the latter category. Travelogue, then, isn’t a noisy collision of illicit substances and rock n’ roll mania, but rather a subdued and slick collection of extended synth/drums workouts aided by collaborative vocalists and auxiliary instrumentation. Take “Magic 8 Ball” for example, which shares Air’s subdued electro-coolness alongside trippy, communal percussion and spaced-aged keys. They’re keeping it pleasant and light, but it’s not all cottage-cheese and cantaloupe – the album ends with “Merde Du Chien Sur La Palouse”, a bad trip that meanders through poorly lit hallways as none other than Mark Arm (Maddison’s bandmate in Mudhoney) recites some lines in French. Being cornered by a French-speaking Mark Arm in a dimly-lit corridor is more dream than nightmare to me, of course, but La Paire D’or can’t resist scraping the edges of their album’s otherwise glistening surface, ending on a tastefully darker note. The easy-listening kraut-rock lounge vibe conjured here deserves a few good tweaks, and tweak it La Paire D’or shall.
Based on their track record, I’ve come to expect ripped, prickly margins from Celluloid Lunch, but Laughing’s Because It’s True is polished smooth all the way round. It’s their debut, but this doesn’t sound like the work of newbies, so refined and effortless is this collection of easy-going guitar-pop nuggets. It’s “indie” as in produced outside of corporate mechanisms, but not particularly “indie” in sound: I’m hearing more Lemonheads, Tom Petty and Gin Blossoms than Pavement, Guided By Voices and Liz Phair, veering towards the charming end of the ’90s radio-rock dial that mostly ignored all things grunge and alt. Laughing could probably cut a mean “Shady Lane”, but they’d scrub it ’til it shines before sharing it with us, and I appreciate that about them. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of feel-good, G-rated rock n’ roll these days, but even so I’m impressed by Laughing’s gently catchy tunes and easy-going spirit. Could it be that the members of Laughing actually enjoy each other’s company and have lots of fun playing in a band together? Kinda crazy, but it just might work.
There’s a lot of Mordecai records out there, many of which I’ve heard, most of which I’ve kinda forgotten, though if the live performance I saw of theirs a good number of years back is any indication (they were d-r-u-n-k drunk), they’ve probably forgotten much of it themselves, too. I guess that’s one way of saying I didn’t have any particular expectations or excitement for Seeds From The Furthest Vine, their sixth album, but who is ever really excited about any band’s sixth album, to be fair? Perhaps that was the perfect headspace for which to encounter this album, as for whatever it’s worth, I can’t stop playing it! I recall them being more “regular” sounding in the past, a rock band shuffling through their original material, but Seeds immediately snaps free from that chain and never returns. I feel like I could mention Psychedelic Horseshit and Kemialliset Ystävät as musical kin, but Mordecai are less smart-assed than the former and far more meat-eating-American than the latter – it almost feels like Flipper would’ve ended up sounding like this eventually, had they all survived but had to sell their amps and drums along the way. The percussion frequently seems to be dinner-bells ringing and cardboard slapping; songs fade into focus only long enough to assure you they’re songs before drifting back into Magic Eye patterns. There’s probably some Pavement and Royal Trux happening in here too, but again, Mordecai’s path seems entirely their own on this record, the basic concepts of “structure” and “rock n’ roll” acknowledged but just as easily ignored. Petty Bunco primed us for this moment, and now it’s gloriously here.
An institution unto themselves, Brooklyn’s Oneida march forward into uncharted territory, namely that of being a consistently exceptional rock band impervious to trends deep in their third decade of existence. If they were ever a band with something to prove, they haven’t had to prove it in many, many years, and really, what rock bands are this deep into their career without finding themselves looking more backwards than forwards? I don’t know if Oneida ever did one of those “playing this classic album in full” tours, or if they even really tour at all, but I for one hope they only ever keep gunning for the horizon. Expensive Air is their newest, and it reveals a band still at the top of their game, miraculously if you consider the odds. You get more or less one riff per song, but they take these mostly simple riffs and ride them with a non-stop fury that would exhaust bands half their age. A large chunk of their continued success can be attributed to top rock drummer Kid Millions, who I can only assume was offered the Foo Fighters’ chair and refused. His playing is fluid, colorful, powerful and smooth, tossing off thrilling fills and ingenious rolls as the rest of the band either joins his groove or coasts on top of it. There’s really no place for a band like this in our society, so tenured and unusual and disregarding of the things that bands have to do nowadays to maintain any semblance of visibility (all that social-media crap for starters), which makes it all the more thrilling that they’re still, somehow, among us and operating at full capacity. 
OSBO wedge a splinter under the nail of their Sydney underground scene, otherwise comprised of happily boneheaded egg-punk and a gang called Speed. They play a form of ugly hardcore-punk that came to prominence in the last couple decades, the sort of thing you’d find growing within the Iron Lung or Youth Attack caves: derived from first-wave USHC but with a working knowledge of screamo, black-metal, grind and noise-rock (even if none of those genres do anything but coat the edges of OSBO’s firmly hardcore-punk sound). Reminds me quite a bit of that fantastic Men’s Interest single from more years back now than it seems, maybe a touch of SQRM as well and most certainly that Veins record on Youth Attack, in no small part to vocalist Tim Collier’s inflamed squawk, which sounds a hell of a lot like Michael Berdan. It’s fast and physical and they even dare to have a song called “Say It To My Face” that isn’t an Underdog cover. Whereas the traditional manner is to put the long miserable dirge last on side B (pioneered by Infest?), “Time” opens the b-side and eventually speeds up all Gag-like before returning to its original sedated pace. “Pleb Puppet” then tumbles to the finish line, replete with a particularly inspired vocal gobbling. There are no photos of the band members to be found anywhere in the packaging, because when you’re covering the room in violent stains, why would you want to make it easier to get caught later?
After learning that preeminent electronic music writer Philip Sherburne had a record label called Balmat, I checked out this new one from Panoram (aka Raffaele Martirani), with fun cover art that begs you to pull it from a stuffed record bin and give it a whirl. Wasn’t sure what to expect besides “electronic music”, and while Great Times certainly fits within that massively broad designation, it’s not so easily pigeonholed. It often feels like a private tour of some reclusive synth collector’s archives, racing through dozens of prototypes, rarities and imported hardware synths. “Have you ever heard this preset?”, Panoram seems to ask with each new track, taking us on a trip through a wide variety of novel sonic motifs. There’s fuzzy sound poetry, intricate rhythmic patterns, clear-as-day piano, vocals run through the processing ringer… Panoram is clearly not short on ideas, working with a logical sensibility that may only be clear to himself. There’s really nothing to do with this music besides listen – it’s too active to fade into the background, and dancing is more or less out of the question unless you’re a professional. It’s a whirlwind of fantastical, audacious ideas, some more accessible than others, and if you have an opening in your schedule (and a nice set of speakers) to let Panoram take you away, by all means you should.
The debut full-length from Austin’s Peace Decay offers comforting reassurance that the world in which we live is healthy, just and equitable. Sike! Continuing their fruitful relationship with Beach Impediment Records, Peace Decay’s full-length is a ripping screed, ensuring that if war and human-rooted destruction doesn’t get you, a gnarly fire-breathing dragon will burn you to a crisp. The members of Peace Decay put time in a long list of backpatch-worthy hardcore and crust bands, names like Vaaska and Severed Head Of State and Deskonocidos (and even Masskontroll!), and if anything, their hardcore resolve has strengthened like molten steel cooling to its solid state. These songs pull from metal here and there (ripping guitar leads, fiery galloping beats, fist-pumping choruses), though the presentation, attitude and mindset are firmly hardcore-punk. When the music breaks for a split second and the vocalist growls “let their fucking heads roll”, I can’t help but know I’m in firm agreement with the unnamed heads he refers to on “Security By Sacrifice”. It’s like a fist-pumping Aus Rotten anthem reengineered for today’s power-crust standards, and if you’re not stepping on someone’s feet with your big black boots in the pit as the guitar solos take the song home, it might be your feet that are getting stepped on. 
Pittsburgh’s Peace Talks had a couple tracks left over from the sessions that led to their 2023 album Progress, so they contributed them to the Adult Swim Liquid Death Wild Summer Fiesta promotional YouTube channel. Wait, I have a correction: turns out they’re real punks, so they pressed them onto a one-sided flexi-disc instead, care of their friends at Cruel Noise and Chaos & Chill. These two songs clock in at around five minutes total, which is pushing it for hardcore-punk, but they never drag, much to their credit. The energy level remains high throughout, fast hardcore akin to Raw Power, Tear It Up, Look Back And Laugh and Sickoids, to name but four out of surely hundreds of like-minded units. If you need to grab some Peace Talks, Progress is probably the best bang for your buck, but flexi-discs remain a perfect vessel for aggro hardcore-punk, no matter if you’re Systematic Death, Citizens Arrest or this modern-day Pittsburgh outfit, even if the technology used to cut them from squares into circles seems to have been lost somewhere along the way. 
Like all of Eric Paul’s post-Arab On Radar projects, Psychic Graveyard exists in its shadow, but the ‘Graveyard fellas seem to be having a hell of a lot of fun in that shadow, cutting their own unique neo-no-wave path. Wilted is the group’s fourth full-length in five years, and while I enjoyed the other ones I’ve heard, they somehow seem to keep getting better every time. Opting for a guitar-decentralized setup with bass, drums and synths, Psychic Graveyard pound their sticky, unsanitary sounds into appealingly rhythmic grooves, some of which you might even find worthy of dancing. Once again their sound reminds of the muscular synth-work of Six Finger Satellite and Men’s Recovery Project in electro-pop format, but there’s something about the riff repetition and snappy post-punk rhythms that have me thinking of Viagra Boys more than anything else with Wilting. (Album opener “Your Smile Is A Hoax” in particular hits a peppy groove in Viagra Boys fashion, though lyrically it avoids any obvious cheap-shots and doesn’t seem to try too hard.) I’m not gonna say that Viagra Boys are stupid, but Psychic Graveyard seem a whole lot smarter than the rest of the pack in general; Paul’s lyrics offer a consistent highlight reel of funny phrases and linguistic twists that capture the details of our normalized wretched existence through his wizened yet perpetually perverse mind. Aided by charmingly robotic rhythms and an inspired array of synth sounds, Wilting delivers a wide array of reasons for all of us to feel foolish about ourselves, whether we wanna listen or not.
Pyrex continue to say ‘screw it’ and release seven-inch singles that few will hear and even fewer will purchase. This isn’t music for everybody, it’s only gonna connect with fans of the dirtiest garage-y noise-punk, so if you’re one of those types and you still engage in the ancient practice of buying and listening to brand-new seven-inch vinyl singles, it’s your time to shine! For what it’s worth, this is my favorite Pyrex release yet, as they continue to express themselves more uniquely each go-around. “Bozo” is the poppiest of the bunch, a deep-fried garage riff not unlike early Intelligence / Oh Sees; “Viper” pairs a dumb buzzsaw riff with a majestically floppy drum-beat; “Muscles” clears the pit of any self-respect, Drunks With Guns style. There’s a distinct Mayyors-ish quality to all three tracks, which is nice, as is the way in which they jump between tempos without sacrificing coherence. The distorted-beyond-recognition vocals are a constant here, though I can understand when the singer is yelling “muscles” and “viper” in their respective tracks – a move I respect. If Pyrex can manage to continue this streak of anti-social creativity, might I suggest they extend that to their vinyl choices? See if you can force us to buy a six-inch or an eight-inch record, simply due to the undeniable quality of your ear-bleeding punk rock music!
Kingston, NY’s Rider/Horse debuted as a duo with Select Trials, added a third member for Feed ‘Em Salt and are now a quartet with Matted. Might I suggest that they maintain this momentum perpetually into the future, adding an additional band member for each new record? Think how sick and wild they’ll be by the time they’re on their eighth or ninth! I’ve enjoyed their first two regardless, and Matted makes a solid claim that when it comes to Rider/Horse, the more members, the better. Maybe I just love a full-blown band when it comes to mechanical post-punk grooves that brood and stalk, and Rider/Horse make good work of their available tools, from the consistently bulging bass/drums grooves ala Karp and the strange atonalities of full-time member Zoots Houston’s pedal steel. At its most enthusiastic, Matted fits in with my favorite Skin Graft and Load bands, the ones that knew how to grind out ugly, primitive noise while maintaining their own strange notions of artistry, though Rider/Horse feel less prone to paint-splattered Casios, homemade masks and intentional obnoxiousness. This band doesn’t seem to be interested in provoking reactions, they just want to settle into their Kingston studio and check names off their “band members to be added” list. 
No sooner does K. Freund release a new full-length than close conspirator and Ohio jazz-improv cohort G.S. Schray gets a new one out in the world as well. It’s like their cycles are lining up! Schray’s Whispered Something Good is a nice contrast to K. Freund’s excellent Trash Can Lamb, Schray’s music dressed up for a formal celebration while Freund’s sounds smoke cigarettes and skateboard around out back. I feel like most modern, underground-informed jazz players like to scuff their sounds up a bit one way or another, be it glitchy digital processing, sound collage, or anything that adds some curves to an otherwise straight line, but Whispered Something Good is about as untainted as you’ll get from a diaphanous jazz-guitar record in 2024. Schray pairs his tender, luxuriously soft guitar with horns, bass and the occasional synth, closer to Sam Gendel’s melodic world than anything else, but without any of Gendel’s processed effects or experimental/beat-maker touches. This music is free from sin, his guitars plucking stars from the skyline with one hand and French-pressing the perfect cup of coffee with the other. Album closer “Gone In Amber” is a highlight, Schray backed by a full band and sounding like Sam Wilkes on a late ’90s Thrill Jockey tip, gloriously in tune with the music and each other. Love the cover art, too – these Last Resort releases always look different from each other, yet they’re recognizably coming from the same crew, records you want to leave laying around because they look great and sound even better. 
Skee Mask is a reliable and consistent electronic music resource: techno, breakbeat, ambient, drum n’ bass, chances are he’s got all your requests covered in his substantial and growing back catalog. I enjoy checking in from time to time, so this new double twelve-inch with an uncharacteristically gnarly skull on the cover seemed like a good time to see what he’s been up to. I wasn’t expecting any surprises, and Resort doesn’t offer any, which is fine by me. What we do get is plenty of middle-weight ambient throughout, not atmospheric drift so much as gooey, gloss-coated melodies sprinkled with cosmopolitan glitch and digital interference. Once you’re settled in, beats emerge, but without any sense of aggression or priority. This is a particularly introverted set from Skee Mask, who is more than capable of administering a jackhammering banger if he feels like it. “7AM At The Rodeo” might be my favorite of the bunch, which pairs a dusty shuffle and busy, Aphex-like synth squiggling, though the entirety of Resort is understated mastery on par with a short list of other German lifers like Shed, Ben Klock and Traumprinz.
Some ten years after Smooth Brain recorded the five songs that comprise Demoted, it’s finally released into the wild. I’m not sure if Smooth Brain is an ongoing concern, seeing as most of its members morphed into one of the most crucial punk posses of modern times (the Cruelster / Perverts Again / Knowso power-axis), but these songs are worthy of vinyl commemoration even if the band is merely a wistful memory. They were certainly playing things a little straighter a decade ago, with poppy, speedy down-picking in a manner that recalls their Citric Dummies pals as well as Clorox Girls and other Red Cross-inspired punk, all traceable back to The Ramones on the many-limbed tree of punk rock influence. Even though the music is less idiosyncratic than its members’ more prominent acts, their dire-yet-hilarious worldview is evident here through songs like “Part Of Me Is Dead” and “Pissed Off Forever”, the latter being my favorite cut of the bunch, sounding close to The Spits in terms of goony punk rock hooks. This sorta punk will never go out of style, so even if Smooth Brain recently recorded a new EP set for release in 2034, it’ll sound just as good then too, assuming the power-grid hasn’t fallen apart and we can still listen to it. 
A little surprised that we’re still getting fresh “recorded during the first Covid lockdown” albums, an angle that I’m more or less neutral on. If you were able to make music then, that’s great, and if not, I totally understand! Solpara is new to me, but I take Nicolar Jaar’s role as an arbiter of cool seriously, knowing that if I check out something on his Other People label I will at the very least respect it if not love it. After a few runs with Melancholy Sabotage, Solpara’s first vinyl full-length, I’m enjoying it plenty. He integrates a few elements not commonly found together – post-punk bass and guitars, techno/trap/electro drum programming, woozy trip-hop atmospheres – into something his own. The combination of styles is so evenly spread that any single genre doesn’t feel overly represented. “Breaking Points” has kind of a Boards Of Canada swirl to it, but the guitars of “We Don’t Owe” call to mind Moin’s electronic post-hardcore minimalism, and “This Time Last Year” sounds like Jim O’Rourke playing guitar over some low-lit ambient murk; Solpara treats his influences with equal reverence and curiosity. I’ve seen a few songs that use the title “We Keep Us Safe” lately, but Solpara’s is easily the most tender, a downtempo sway of 4AD-sounding strings and lo-fi beats that works as both elegy and tranquilizer. Appropriate for the times back then, but appropriate right now too.
You know, now that Sooks have mentioned it, there has been some moral decay lately, hasn’t there! This hardcore-punk quartet hails from Perth – the Halifax of Australia, I’m calling it – and I can’t imagine the kids are standing still with their arms crossed when Sooks hit the stage. Their form of hardcore is direct and uncluttered, relying on vocal presence and lyrical matter to make their presence felt. No noisy feedback, no contemporary pogo parts, no reliance on style over substance. I’m certainly not opposed to some style, of course, but it’s also nice to see Sooks utilize hardcore-punk as a means to deliberately express specific frustrations and rage, with energized, cleanly-recorded tunes. I can understand a reluctance to write songs about extremely specific topics like “drag queen story hour” (“Library”), TikTok (“Content Machine”) and crypto bros (“NFT”) – you don’t want to seem dated six months after the record comes out – but I personally enjoy songs that are based in their particular realities, and Sooks aren’t afraid to get into the details. It’s a uniquely awful time, but that’s all the more reason that punks should be documenting the specifics in their art and music. Don’t worry, all you hardcore purists who require the comfort of familiarity: there’s the comfort of a big skull on the cover to help you feel right at home with Moral Decay.
German techno/house producer Stefan Wust speaks to the kids on this newest, lengthy outing for Kalahari Oyster Cult, his second full-length for the impeccable Belgian future-trance imprint. Not only does SW. offer a variety of upbeat, body-moving montages here, pulling from well-worn territory like classic house and techno as well as the flightier realms of glitch, trance and IDM, he gives them all text-speak titles like “shaCAT’selecTRON70’s” and “silverLIGHTrePHLEXTION”. Why not, right? These tracks are the perfect soundtrack to that last pill before it all goes downhill, as well as those first fresh steps out of tomorrow’s healing spa, breathing those sweet puffs of purified air with the taste of reverse-osmosis-purified water still on your lips. There’s some undeniable Drexciya love happening here – and who doesn’t love Drexciya – but SW. stays nimble and dextrous no matter what techno territory he’s flipping through here. A very nice mood throughout, and if forced to pick, opener “SKYnetOPENwindow” is probably my favorite of the pack, a fresh and energized take on the early Rephlex sound.
Seems ages ago since Al Wootton was producing upbeat, poppy bass music under his Deadboy alias, as he’s firmly settled into this current musical phase under his own name and as a member of Holy Tongue. The focus has congealed around sparse, heavy, percussion-forward tracks that frequently lean on the properties of dub to conjure atmospheres both foreboding and enchanting. That’s certainly what’s happening on these four cuts, all of which are ripe for being blasted at gut-busting levels of volume on a true proper soundsystem. I’ve never been an audiophile type of guy, but I know enough about Wootton’s productions that the forward thrust and errant wind-chimes of “Midnight Paseo” are begging to be blasted through speakers that you physically feel as well as hear. You could certainly trace this sort of vibrant, acoustic-sounding percussion over creeping/pounding beats to Shackleton, and while the similarities are undeniable, Wootton always seems to approach his tracks from a more clinical perspective, locking things onto the grid while perfecting his combination of frequencies for maximum performance. He’s got a lot of these EPs floating around out there now, mostly all on the same sonic mission, and if you don’t have at least one in your possession, packing yourself an Albacete Knife isn’t a bad idea. 
Been hearing about this band for a little while now, and I always found it slightly off-putting in that I have personally worked in the realm of workers’ comp for something incredibly stupid, like twenty years now? Perhaps this is how waitresses felt when they first heard about a band called The Waitresses. In spite of my reservations, who can you trust if not Brooklyn’s Ever/Never, so I was up for checking out this self-titled full-length, collecting previously-released tapes, a vinyl single and an unreleased track. They’re a traditional rock trio, and they offer the basic garage-y necessities one might associate with local-level do-it-yourselfers who never even dreamed of formal record contracts. The Velvets’ “Run Run Run” is kind of the bedrock for a lot of what Workers Comp are up to here, spiced up with the twangy chutzpah of Television Personalities and a dash of Jonathan Richman’s startling self-confidence. Kinda typical, but “typical” isn’t an automatic disqualification in this realm of down-home, unpolished rock n’ roll. I wonder if any of the band members noticed or cared when someone came up with the music for “Gilt Rigs”, its “All Along The Watchtower” riff repurposed for Workers Comp’s scruffy power-pop. When it comes to this sorta stuff, I guess every riff or progression is borrowed from someone else, dumpster-dove from the annals of rock history for another wobbly joyride around the parking lot.
Neubau is one of those labels I’m unabashedly simping for. It’s a sick omission that I’d rather see a newly unveiled Neubau center label than spend a weekend with my cousins, but it’s a true one, so you can imagine my excitement upon discovering this new EP from none other than Philly’s own Zillas On Acid, multiple plane rides away from Neubau’s home of Vienna but just down the street from me. As is the case with all Neubau material, though, Mars Hum fits the label’s MO to a tee: zonked-out, devilish electro-funk slowed down ’til it nearly hits dungeon-synth frequencies. “Journey To The Server Room” is mysterious and carefully paced, the perfect background track for one of those Tom Cruise Mission: Impossibles, were they directed by John Carpenter in 1983. The title track is even freakier, too tense for the dance-floor and punctuated with acid-drips sure to have your neck muscles relaxing until you’re staring at the ceiling. “Should Must” has big noxious fart-cloud bass, the sort of thing Kool Keith likes to rap over, before the EP wraps with “The Magic Of The State”, a no-prescription-necessary trip featuring the disembodied vocal chants of one Matt O’Hare. I had no idea Zillas On Acid went this deep – I thought they were feel-good party guys, but now I know that they’re extremely cool feel-good party guys, at the very least. When any innocent dance crew is introduced to the mesmerizing world of Neubau, I suppose this outcome is inevitable.
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