New Coke - Blind Taste Test

An im­pec­ca­ble run of catchy-as-fuck melod­ic garage- and synth punk tunes on this neat cas­sette by a group of un­known ori­gin. This has more than just a lit­tle of a Lost Sounds vibe to it with fur­ther bits and pieces evok­ing such good­ness as Stal­ins Of Sounds, Tele­drome, Kid Chrome, Sex Mex, Jean Mignon and Sil­i­cone Val­ues.

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Longings - Dreams In Red

A strong batch of new tunes by this Amherst, Mass­a­chu­setts group hav­ing noth­ing to prove at this point… and it on­ly took them as lit­tle as eight years to fol­low up their 2015 de­but EP! Sound-wise, this is still most­ly the same time­less brand of con­cise, song-based, quite dark and moody post punk, sure to get the ap­proval of friends of shit á la Crim­i­nal Code, VHS, Sieve­head, Video, Sched­ule 1, Sieve­head, Pyrex or Clock Of Time.

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Midgee - Mixtape

Our week­ly taste of catchy & funky, egg-re­lat­ed Lo-Fi garage-/synth punk weird­ness comes cour­tesy of some Mel­bourne dude or group and might be com­pared in on­ly the most fovor­able fash­ion to the likes of Prison Af­fair, Nuts, Set-Top Box and Beer. Love it!

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Peel - The Spectacle Of Perpetual Motion

Hy­per­ac­tive, quirky and chaot­ic yet equal­ly smart and elab­o­rate, slight­ly no wave-ish post punk from Ban­dung, In­done­sia! This is es­sen­tial new fod­der for fans of shit in the vein of, say, Pat­ti, Re­al­i­ty Group, Big Bop­per and Ex­it Group.

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Night Punch - Where Sins Bloom So Does Death

On their kick­ass de­but LP, Ham­burg group Night Punch present a tight-as-fuck melange of slight­ly goth-lean­ing, hor­ror-themed garage-, synth- and post punk that some­times cranks its tem­po up in­to hard­core spheres, oth­er times be­ing rem­i­nis­cent of a ba­sic Spits for­mu­la spiked with plen­ty of sur­pris­es and un­ex­pect­ed flour­ish­es for an over­all equal­ly quirky and dark aes­thet­ic which is sure to please dark punk-, death rock- and dun­geon afic­i­na­dos all the same. Fur­ther pos­si­ble ref­er­ences would be a num­ber of garage- and synth punk acts like The Gobs, Liq­uid Face, Shrinkwrap Killers, Bro­ken Prayer, Droids Blood, Iso­tope Soap, the un­fil­tered thrust of Exwhite, maybe even a hint of Acrylics in the rougher patch­es.

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Lost Packages - Model Distortion Business Casual

Though large­ly re­flect­ing on cur­rent themes of our so­ci­ety be­ing over­whelmed with the tribu­la­tions and chal­lenges our ever chang­ing hi-tech world keeps throw­ing at us, the sounds on this NYC artist's most re­cent cas­sette feels more like a flash­back to the abra­sive, con­fronta­tion­al ear­ly days of late '70s /​ ear­ly '80s synth- and elec­tro punk, noise and pow­er elec­tron­ics ex­per­i­men­ta­tion in the vein of shit á la Prim­i­tive Cal­cu­la­tors, Ner­vous Gen­der, Scream­ers, Units or Min­i­mal Man - a noisy bas­tard more con­cerned with over­whelm­ing the sens­es than with nu­ance or fi­nesse while still com­ing across sur­pris­ing­ly catchy and hyp­not­ic most of the time.

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Warp - Automatic Gratuity

I'd al­most for­got­ten about this San Fran­cis­co group yet here they are fol­low­ing up their im­pres­sive 2019 de­but al­bum with a new EP show­cas­ing their quirky and in­ven­tive sound on the fringes of noise rock, hard- and post­core in a shape both rougher and more re­fined at the same time, echo­ing some of the great­est noise-/weird­core re­leas­es of re­cent years in­clud­ing those by the likes of Warm Bod­ies, Snif­fany & The Nits, Vexx, Dots, Judy & The Jerks or Mys­tic Inane.

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Slogutis - Slogutis

An in­cred­i­bly self-as­sured de­but tape by a group from Vic­to­ria, Cana­da burst­ing on­to the scene ful­ly formed and ma­ture, bring­ing to life in­ven­tive, haunt­ing and elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed epics com­pact­ed in­to short, dense hard­core tracks in which they let on­ly the murki­est ten­den­cies of noisy hard-/post­core groups á la Acrylics, Vidro, ear­ly Bad Breed­ing col­lide with an over­all aes­thet­ic branch­ing out deep in­to the sup­pressed sub­con­scious, un­can­ny realms of death rock-/dun­geon re­lat­ed or oth­er­wise "black­ened" or met­al in­fused noise.

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Busted Head Racket - Junk Food

A strong pack­age of catchy weirdo synth punk tunes by that group from New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia who made a great im­pres­sion al­ready with their songs on a split EP with Cologne's Teo Wise. Its two songs are fea­tured here aswell, in sig­nif­i­cant­ly more crunchy record­ings - a de­light­ful mid-fi aes­thet­ic some­what rem­i­nis­cent of, say, ear­ly Nots, Slimex, Toe Ring, Daugh­ter Bat and the Lip Stings.

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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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