Die TV - Side D

Side num­ber four by Marmo­ra, New Jer­sey garage trou­ba­dor Die TV is yet an­oth­er su­per-sol­id batch of garage-/synth-/elec­tro punk minia­ture good­ness. Not much more to add to that oth­er than what i al­ready said about his pre­vi­ous re­leas­es: Friends of weird­ness in the same or­bit as, say, Pow­er­plant, Stal­ins of Sound, Erik Ner­vous, The Spits, Set-Top Box, Dig­i­tal Leather… re­joice!

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Gaffer - Dead End Beat

A su­per ef­fec­tive bunch of straight­for­ward punk smash­ers by a Perth grounp - sim­ple at first glance yet al­ways care­ful­ly con­struct­ed for max­i­mum im­pact. Plau­si­ble com­par­isons from re­cent years would in­clude bands such as Xe­tas, Cool Jerks, Flow­ers of Evil or Dead Years while from long be­fore that, you might see flash­es of Naked Ray­gun, Laugh­ing Hye­nas, Hot Snakes, Man Sized Ac­tion and the like…

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Kitchen's Floor - None Of That

Wow, i didn't re­al­ly ex­pect this to hap­pen. A good sev­en years af­ter the group's sor­ta clas­sic LP The Bat­tle Of Bris­bane we fi­nal­ly get an­oth­er al­bum by what at this point ap­pears to ex­ist as more of a so­lo ven­ture by vo­cal­ist Matt Kennedy. His sin­gu­lar sound and vi­sion in the realm of post punk, noise rock and that un­like­ly folk-y un­der­cur­rent comes ac­cross as sharp and un­com­pro­mis­ing as ever though, ap­pear­ing beau­ti­ful­ly out of step with the zeit­geist.

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Smirk - Material

New shit from Nick Vic­ario aka Smirk, al­so known as part of such po­tent punk pow­er­hous­es as Pub­lic Eye, Cri­sis Man und Ce­men­to. His sec­ond LP car­ries more of his eclec­tic post- and garage punk ex­trav­a­gan­za sourced out of a gen­er­ous grab bag of punk sam­ples, bear­ing fleet­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to such di­verse acts as ISS, In­sti­tute, Alien Nose­job, Cher­ry Cheeks, Ura­ni­um Club, Re­al­i­ty Group or Mar­bled Eye.

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Spiral Rash - Demo

Damn, un­for­giv­able how i could over­look this kick­ass tape al­ready re­leased this sum­mer, con­tain­ing deli­cilous­ly ex­cen­tric Lo-Fi post punk shit giv­ing off a heavy smell of Des­per­ate Bi­cy­cles, Swell Maps, ear­ly Mekons plus any ran­dom ar­ti­fact of 80s cas­sette cul­ture as well as some New Or­der-ish vibes in the clos­ing track Dog Hav­ing Its Day.

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Rider/​Horse - Feed 'Em Salt

The sec­ond LP by that Duo fea­tur­ing none oth­er than Spray Paint's Cory Plump as well as some mys­te­ri­ous Chris, who has in some ca­pac­i­ty worked with Les Savy Fav, Trans Am and Scene Cream­ers in the past, de­liv­ers more of their ad­dic­tive melange of post punk and noise rock with that cer­tain in­dus­tri­al feel, as ex­per­i­men­tal as it's hyp­not­ic and catchy all the same. Maybe it's just due to the mix and mas­ter­ing, but the son­ic spec­trum ap­pears some­what de­clut­tered here com­pared to the pre­de­ces­sor with an at times less claus­tro­pho­bic, more nat­ur­al feel and plen­ty of room to breathe. Still tons of Swell Maps or, al­ter­nate­ly, Ex­ek vibes to go around though and there's even a hint of Pro­tomar­tyr in Rot­ting Prof­its, some echoes of Wire in Flori­da Gaso­line.

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Snooper - Town Topic

Three fifths of this EP have al­ready trick­led out very slow­ly in the form of demos and dig­i­tal sin­gles. Fi­nal­ly, we can wit­ness the thing in full now. I'd say the Nashville out­fit have found their own unique lit­tle niche in­side a crowd­ed pool of egg-re­lat­ed weird­ness, their jan­g­ly garage punk det­o­na­tions shrunk­en to mi­cro­scop­ic scale… a bit like a su­per-mut­ed in­car­na­tion of R.M.F.C. with ad­di­tion­al hints of Print Head, Neo Neos or ear­ly Erik Ner­vous.

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Hævner - Kaldet Fra Tomrummet

Awe­some post punk from Copen­hagen that ap­pears to in­her­it quite a bit of the city's pre­vi­ous mu­si­cal DNA, es­pe­cial­ly from the ear­ly 2010s era when acts like Low­er and ear­ly Iceage reigned supreme and more groups like Melt­ing Walk­men, Echo Peo­ple or Spines cropped up in their wake. Haevner's de­but LP in­fus­es that cer­tain for­mu­la with a strong melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty and some goth and (oh-so-fash­ion­able, as of late) death rock vibes while in­ter­na­tion­al acts such as Crim­i­nal Code, Sieve­head, The Es­tranged, Holo­grams or Pret­ty Hurts don't seem too far off ei­ther at some points.

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Damak - Crisis Of Faith

it took them a while but fi­nal­ly this Austin, Texas group's de­but al­bum has reached our shores and oh boy, is this a rare spec­ta­cle wild­ly sur­pass­ing any ex­pacta­tions i might've had for this one. Their sound is clear­ly and heav­i­ly in­spired by cer­tain parts of the SST Records era, prime among these be­ing the folk-/amer­i­cana-in­fused punk rock of Angst, ear­ly Meat Pup­pets and Min­ute­men while at the same time you might find bits and pieces of Sac­cha­rine Trust, ear­ly Di­nosaur Jr. or Mis­sion Of Bur­ma in there and in more re­cent years, cer­tain as­pects of this lin­eage have been kept alive by a di­verse clus­ter acts such as Milk Mu­sic, Chronophage, Dead Finks, Dhar­ma Dogs and The Molds. Or Woolen Men, just maybe, if you stretch your imag­i­na­tion a bit.

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Cherry Cheeks - Cherry Radio

You can't ever go wrong with an­oth­er EP by Orlando's melod­ic synth-, garage- and post punk pow­er­house Cher­ry Cheeks who achieved some kind of punk rock qua­si-night­hood last year as sig­ni­fied by their first LP be­ing re­leased on To­tal Punk. The newest self-re­leased bunch of tracks de­liv­ers more of the same catchy good­ness with slight sim­i­lar­i­ties to groups like Freak Genes, Pow­er­plant, Trash­dog, Warm Ex­it, Alien Nose­job and Set-Top Box.

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