Continuals - Continuals

A new Dischord Records co-re­lease and as is usu­al­ly the case with these, we're once again deal­ing with a group whose mem­bers had their hands in a whole shit­load of im­por­tant bands span­ning sev­er­al decades of Wash­ing­ton, D.C. punk his­to­ry, the most ob­vi­ous of these prob­a­bly be­ing the likes of Kerosene 454, Chan­nels, Beau­ty Pill, Soc­cer Team, Of­fice of Fu­ture Plans, Alarms And Con­trols and to make this name­drop­ping-cir­cle­jerk com­plete, the whole thing has been record­ed by Jawbox's J. Rob­bins. But here's the thing with many of these more re­cent Dischord re­leas­es: They rarely ever sound like a tired re­hash or blood­less nos­tal­gia-dri­ven cash-in. It's a unique qual­i­ty of many ac­tors in this par­tic­u­lar scene, the abil­i­ty of stay­ing true to their own mu­si­cal her­itage while still sound­ing every bit as vi­tal and pas­sion­ate as back in the day, will­ing to do the work nec­es­sary for mak­ing this by now very old­school thing sound as fresh as ever, helped by an ap­par­ent in­abil­i­ty to half-ass any of it.

Al­bum-Stream →

Leaves - Leaves

Leaves are an eng­lish Trio bold­ly de­fy­ing any re­cent trends of their do­mes­tic scene, in­stead dab­bling in a sound in­be­tween the pa­ra­me­ters of post­core, noise- and math rock, all of which smells more of Chica­go, the wider Touch and Go uni­verse and re­lat­ed ar­ti­facts of the '90s US Un­der­ground, do­ing a thor­ough­ly con­vinc­ing job at re­vi­tal­iz­ing an aes­thet­ic that's be­come a bit rare these days. Slint are the most ob­vi­ous com­par­i­son to be made here but you might just as well pin­point some flour­ish­es of Tar, Un­wound, ear­ly Shel­lac and late Bitch Mag­net, a hint of Chavez or Pol­vo and even traces of '90s Dischord propul­sion can be found in Do Some­thing. Of more re­cent groups, ear­li­er in­car­na­tions of Pile and, even more so, Lug­gage sug­gest them­selves as close­ly re­lat­ed ex­am­ples.

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Cartoon - Nyuck Nyuck Boing!

Now here's some bril­liant shit i've been to­tal­ly un­pre­pared for, cer­tain­ly hav­ing a mind of its own and be­ing de­light­ful­ly out of touch with the zeit­geist! Sure, the whole thing feels kin­da old. I'm kin­da old too, so i like that. Imag­ine the likes of Sac­cha­rine Trust, Min­ute­men, Swell Maps and The Pop Group par­tak­ing in an oc­cult rit­u­al to con­jure up an an­cient '60s acid rock de­mon, an un­holy cross­breed of psych- and math rock. This is quite ter­ri­bly self-in­dul­gent of course, but that as­pect kin­da comes with both of those gen­res, i guess. At this point i'm pret­ty sure you've al­ready made up your mind about it and know if you're gonna love or hate it. In my hum­ble opin­ion, what the Philadel­phia group hal­lu­ci­nates up here is pret­ty fuck­ing swell and to­tal­ly should be le­gal­ized!

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Knowso - Pulsating Gore

Cleveland's Know­so for sure have been among the most idio­syn­crat­ic and mem­o­rable groups of the past cou­ple years. Their newest full length shows them at the height of their strength once again, their amal­ga­ma­tion of post punk, noise- and math rock still com­ing across just as quirky and whim­si­cal as it is tight, rigid and an­gu­lar all the same, com­bin­ing a seem­ing­ly pro­ce­dur­al and ef­fi­cient, math­e­mat­i­cal ap­proach with an amount of fun and catchy­ness you wouldn't re­al­ly ex­pect in­side these rough pa­ra­me­ters. At this point, their sound is pret­ty much their own thing but if you ab­soiute­ly must com­pare them to oth­er groups, you might find some sim­i­lar­i­ties to stuff such as Brandy, Landown­er, Big Bop­per or maybe Nag in their more ap­proach­able mo­ments.

Al­bum-Stream →

Luggage - Hand Is Bad

Chica­go trio Lug­gage have, over the course of the past eight years, proven to be a true bul­wark in the sec­tor of un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly ex­cen­tric, dis­so­nant and un­wieldy noise rock, post­core and math rock which they usu­al­ly hap­pen to throt­tle down to a slug­gish crawl. If any­thing, they've just grown ever more un­com­pro­mis­ing over the years, cul­mi­nat­ing in their newest de­formed lump of an LP, yet an­oth­er chal­leng­ing out­burst of noise heav­i­ly in­debt­ed to the likes of Slint, Tar, Shel­lac and if i had to name some­thing more con­tem­po­rary, i'd say the first two Be­hav­ior al­bums (es­pe­cial­ly the spec­tac­u­lar sec­ond one Bit­ter Bit­ter) make a close enough com­par­i­son as well.

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Tricks - Body, Doctrine, Enjoyment

Garage punk meets math rock meets psy­che­delia meets post­core on this breath­less new tape by Min­neapo­lis group Tricks, at dif­fer­ent times bear­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to re­cent groups as di­verse as Re­al­i­ty Group, Ura­ni­um Club, Yam­mer­er, Big Bop­per, Pat­ti, Ex-Cult, Rolex, Shark Toys, Sauna Youth… at times you might even per­cieve a slight 90s Dischord vibe á la Jaw­box, Fara­quet and Med­ica­tions.

Al­bum-Stream →

Atol Atol Atol - Koniec sosu tysi​ą​ca wysp

This thing isn't ex­act­ly new at this point, hav­ing been self-re­leased last fall on their band­camp page. It took a cas­sette edi­tion via Leipzig la­bel U-Bac for me to ac­tu­al­ly re­al­ize its qual­i­ties though, which are re­al­ly no sur­prise with hind­sight as there are folks from pol­ish post-/art-/math punk pow­er­hous­es Ukryte Za­le­ty Sys­te­mu and Kur­ws at work here. This promis­es some smart and beau­ti­ful­ly struc­tured chaos and on this record, it comes in droves, call­ing to mind, along with the afore­men­tioned groups, the oc­ca­sion­al flash of Spray Paint or Lithics and even some Fara­quet and Swell Maps to boot!

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Objections - BSA Day /​ Better Luck Next Time

A beau­ti­ful­ly out-of-fash­ion 7" by a Leeds group cre­at­ing a sound lo­cat­ed amidst the rough co­or­di­nates of math rock, post­core and noise rock, ob­vi­ous­ly pay­ing trubute pri­mar­i­ly to the 90s-to-2000s era of Dischord Records and in par­tic­u­lar to groups of the Jaw­box, Au­to­clave, Hoover, Lung­fish, Q and not U va­ri­ety.

Big Bopper - New Mutations

Doesn't look like these tex­ans are gonna run out of tunes any­time soon, hav­ing just cranked out their sec­ond al­bum over the course of just a few months. Thank­ful­ly the mix is a bit less tin­ni­tus-in­duc­ing this time while the new songs seam­less­ly con­tin­ue the won­der­ful chaos Big Bop­per es­tab­lished eari­er this year, made up of post- and garage punk, noise- and math rock el­e­ments rough­ly in the vein of Pat­ti, Rolex, Cutie, Mys­tic Inane or Brandy, plus some traces of ear­ly Min­ute­men.

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LLRR - < = >

This EP by Ky­oto group LLRR is a re­al treat! Post punk that's si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly catchy and abra­sive, of­ten dance­able, some­times lean­ing to­wards math rock struc­tures and old­school no-wave-funky in oth­er places. A rock-sol­id rhythm sec­tion cre­ates the ide­al space for gui­tarist Yuzu­ru Sano's un­ruly yet of­ten quite melod­ic erup­tions of noise to un­fold as well as the hyp­not­ic chants by vo­cal­ist Mi­na­mi Yoko­ta, the lat­ter be­ing in­ter­wo­ven in­to the rhyth­mic foun­da­tion to a de­gree sel­dem heard from con­tem­po­rary groups.

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