Lamictal - Doctor's Orders

Speak­ing of eggs… here's an­oth­er batch of short and sweet smash­ers in the realm of oc­ca­sion­al­ly hard­core-in­fused garage- and post punk that at one point or an­oth­er kin­da re­sem­bles a cu­ri­ous mix­ture of Big Bop­per, Feed/​Zhoop/​Djinn, S.B.F., Pat­ti and Landown­er.

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Prison Affair - Demo III

An­oth­er tape by Barcelona's best ad­dress for daz­zling­ly up­beat and catchy garage punk de­liv­ers yet an­oth­er ul­tra-com­pact pay­load of low-fi­deli­ty, high-eggi­ness tran­scen­dence, no amount of tape hiss be­ing able to drown out that con­stant bar­rage of ul­tra-po­tent and high­ly in­fec­tious pop hooks bear­ing some vague sim­i­lar­i­ty to acts like R.M.F.C., Nuts, Set-Top Box, Dee Bee Rich or Erik Ner­vous.

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The Blinds - Endless Fascination

This Mel­bourne group's 2017 de­but EP still res­onates with me as one of the most unique ex­pe­ri­ences in the garage-/post-/art punk spere of its time. Al­most five years hav­ing passed since then, it's no sur­prise their fol­low-up EP show­cas­es a some­what more stream­lined yet still am­bi­tious and sur­pris­ing grab-bag of songs which con­tin­ue to draw plen­ty of in­spi­ra­tion from both Chairs Miss­ing-era Wire and ear­ly, Syd Bar­rett-era Pink Floyd, this time lean­ing in heav­ier on the spaced-out post punk side of things, al­so sound­ing not quite un­like a more eleb­o­rate ver­sion of B-Boys or Go­tobeds. Then at their most melod­ic and straight­for­ward, Else­where is the kind of an­themic old­school in­die rock smash­er rarely en­coun­tered these days.

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Crisis Man - Asleep In America

An­oth­er pow­er­ful punch in the nuts from that Cal­i­for­nia su­per­group shar­ing mem­bers with the likes of Acrylics, Pub­lic Eye, Vi­o­lent Change and Cer­e­mo­ny. Here, they de­liv­er their most com­pact and vig­or­ous set of new tunes so far, hav­ing fine-tuned their for­mu­la of equal parts hard­core- and garage punk for max­i­mum im­pact, fus­ing the un­re­lent­ing force of Acrylics and Bad Breed­ing with the abra­sive garage qual­i­ties of, say… ear­ly Teenanger or Video.

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Klint - Dance

This dude from Schleswig, Ger­many al­ready made an ex­cel­lent first im­pres­sion a cou­ple weeks ago with his de­but 7" on Good­bye Boozy. The art­work sure sug­gests some dun­geon syn­th/-punk affin­i­ty, al­though sound-wise - lack­ing the lat­ter genre's ob­vi­ous black- and/​or old­school "heavy" met­al el­e­ments - i'd rather com­pare this shit to re­cent de­vel­op­ments on the in­ter­sec­tion of garage-, synth- and elec­tro punk and as­so­ci­at­ed acts of the Mononeg­a­tives, Pow!, Liq­uid Face, Ghoulies or Slimex va­ri­ety.

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The Vortex - Executive Dysfunction

This San­ta Ana group emits short and noisy KBD-soaked ar­ti­facts, equal parts old­school garage- and hard­core punk with the oc­ca­sion­al touch of Gun Club. The over­all im­pres­sion ain't too far off Neo Neos or any of mae­stro Voltaire's var­i­ous hard­core projects, ear­ly Erik Ner­vous and maybe some hint of Launch­er, meshed to­geth­er with some beau­ti­ful ac­ci­dent of the kind that might've just as well oc­cured on some ran­dom Deluxe Bias or Im­po­tent Fe­tus re­lease.

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Pressure Pin - Superficial Feature

The busy Mon­tre­al scene has yet an­oth­er head-scratch­er in store for the dis­cern­ing con­nois­seur of weird-ass garage-/post-/egg-/AD­HD-punk and oh boy, is that a de­light­ful and quirky, dis­joint­ed-as-fuck mess of an EP scav­eng­ing bits and pieces from all the right phe­nom­e­na of con­tem­po­rary punk ec­cen­tric­i­ty in­clud­ing acts such as Print Head, Re­al­i­ty Group, Pat­ty, Slimex, Big Bop­per or Skull Cult.

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Peace De Résistance - Bits and Pieces

When this New York dude's en­chant­i­ng and be­wil­der­ing 2020 de­but EP Hedge­mak­ers hit, i didn't have the slight­est clue who's the mas­ter­mind be­hind Peace De Ré­sis­tance. Turns out it's none oth­er than In­sti­tute vo­cal­ist Moses Brown - yeah, kin­da makes sense in ret­ro­spect, i guess. Dun­no how i missed that. His first long­play­er now un­folds a some­what more elab­o­rate, yet still pret­ty min­i­mal­ist sound­scape that once again feels out of place in all the best ways - a time cap­sule of hazy false mem­o­ries weav­ing ear­ly strains of pro­to-, art- and post punk in­to a vivid, se­mi-plau­si­ble case of the Man­dela ef­fect.

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Straw Man Army - SOS

The sec­ond long­play­er (ig­nor­ing last year's Her Majesty's Ship OST) by this Kalei­do­scope-ad­ja­cent New York duo sees their son­ics shift­ing in­to a com­par­a­tive­ly down­beat, dark­er and more cum­ber­some, yet equal­ly re­ward­ing di­rec­tion. There's sim­ply no oth­er group quite like them in the cur­rent post punk/-core land­scape and these chaps clear­ly main­tain their po­si­tion on the cut­ting edge of con­tem­po­rary (art-/post-)punk while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly be­ing per­fect­ly aware of its rich his­to­ry, cul­mi­nat­ing in what to me is the crown­ing achieve­ment of this al­bum - the slow-burn­ing, sprawl­ing Be­ware, which kin­da sounds like clas­sic land­mark records of the Chairs Miss­ing and The Ar­gu­ment cal­iber boiled down to their very essence.

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Red Gaze - Healing Games

An­oth­er ex­cel­lent EP by that band from Graz, Aus­tria with a sound more akin to some ran­dom Berlin group, mem­bers of whom are al­so play­ing in what­ev­er oth­er group you might al­so have heard of… i don't re­mem­ber ex­act­ly and can't be both­ered to look that shit up right now, okay? Post punk with an ever-so-slight death rock un­der­cur­rent. Yeah, Berlin-es­que as i al­ready men­tioned, think like… Diät, Pi­geon, Clock Of Time but al­so with some sim­i­lar­i­ty to pow­er­house US acts á la Rank Xe­rox or In­sti­tute.

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