C.H.I.M.P. - Demo

…and here's yet an­oth­er ex­quis­ite load of quirky, fun & catchy DIY garage- and synth punk by some aus­tralian dude that fits right in be­tween, say, the last Alien Nose­job full-length and the even more col­or­ful mi­cro­cosm of Warttman-af­fil­i­at­ed groups.

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Monoburro - Discografia

Every­one keep an eye on the chilean la­bel In­stant Par­ty. Hav­ing al­ready caught my ears re­cent­ly with the Piz­za Boys tape, these folks have just un­earthed an­oth­er gem by a mex­i­can group i prob­a­bly wouldn't have heard of oth­er­wise and they fuck­ing rule! This tape com­piles all four EPs they've re­leased so far. Elec­tri­fied garage- and synth punk kin­da like S.B.F.-meets-The Spits, but the lat­ter with way more ro­bots, more cy­ber­punk but maybe al­so… mum­ble punk?

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Credit Bureau - Credit Bureau

Re­al­ly quite a lot of eggy goodness/​insanity goin' on this week. In an ef­fort not to re­peat my­self i'll keep it short: Here's the lat­est Cas­sette from the al­ways ex­cel­lent Deluxe Bias im­print, a record­ing that fit­ting­ly sounds a bit over-bi­ased. Ask your par­ents what that means.

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Μπριτζολιτσεσ - Αισχοσ Ντροπη

So the egg-plague has now ar­rived in Greece. Was about time, i'd say. Μπριτζολιτσεσ are a duo from Athens cook­ing up a mix­ture of garage- and synth punk that even yours tru­ly has to clas­si­fy as to­tal­ly and de­li­cious­ly nuts. A lev­el of nut­ty­ness that's rough­ly in the ball­park of lu­natics like Skull Cult or the whole Warttman-in­fest­ed Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp./Set-Top Box clus­ter­fuck. What­ev­er un­de­ci­pher­able mess google trans­late makes of the lyrics gives me a hunch that un­der­stand­ing the lan­guage won't make the whole thing any san­er.

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Spielo - Demo

So this group from Reno, Nev… aw, fuck off! My best guess­es are ei­ther Leipzig or Berlin with 95% con­fi­dence. Prob­a­bly not wear­ing cow­boy hats ei­ther. The mu­sic rips though. Ul­tra-com­pe­tent garage punk with that cer­tain Use­less Eaters, Sauna Youth or Flat Worms fla­vor and oc­ca­sion­al hard­core flour­ish­es.

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Choke Boy - Chalk

This group from Dort­mund, Ger­many plays a dis­tinct­ly old-fash­ioned style of rather straight­for­ward, melody-dri­ven post punk, the kind that was in fash­ion for a short pe­ri­od in the late 2000s/​early 2010s, prob­a­bly em­bod­ied in its purest form by The Es­tranged, slight­ly less so by Crim­i­nal Code and as­pects of which have been picked up more re­cent­ly by groups such as Anx­ious Liv­ing, VR Sex and Ufos­ek­te. Sure, this EP is still pret­ty ba­sic and, as far as this par­tic­u­lar sub­genre goes, not the epit­o­me of orig­i­nal­i­ty, but then again all the ba­sic el­e­ments fall in­to place just right to form a rock-sol­id foun­da­tion that will hope­ful­ly en­able the band to ex­pand, ex­plore and elab­o­rate fur­ther.

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Meal - Jimmy

NJ/​NY La­bel State Cham­pi­on Records has yet an­oth­er quite awe­some tape for us and this time it's by a group from Helsin­ki, Fin­land who de­liv­er a ful­ly re­al­ized sound tak­ing cues from so much of what's good in re­cent years, i don't re­al­ly know where to start… The EP starts out with propul­sive post punk that feels like a fu­sion of dark­er sound­ing groups in the Rank/​Xerox or Pi­geon vein with art­sy post- and garage punk groups like Pat­ti, Lithics, Re­al­i­ty Group, Vin­tage Crop or Yam­mer­er. The mid­dle two songs then in­tro­duce a more re­laxed, slight­ly in­die rock lean­ing vibe á la Go­tobeds, Sleepies, Tape/​Off or B-Boys, with the clos­ing track Plas­tic Ma­rine feel­ing like the per­fect sym­bio­sis of both ten­den­cies.

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Optic Nerve - In A Fast Car Waving Goodbye

The Syd­ney group's lat­est EP seam­less­ly builds up­on the awe­some­ness of their 2019 de­but, set­ting off a per­fect storm of post punk/-core that ap­pears to draw just as much in­spi­ra­tion from the more odd cor­ners of the 80's scene like Sac­cha­rine Trust, Re­al­ly Red or Man Sized Ac­tion as it does from the folk- and cow­punk of Angst, with some un­de­ni­able Hot Snakes mo­men­tum on top.

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The Wind-Ups - Try Not To Think

No won­der this shit feels fa­mil­iar. The Wind-Ups is a new so­lo project of none oth­er than Jake Sprech­er of Ter­ry Malts and Smoke­screens fame. Much raw­er and loud­er than any of his oth­er groups have dared to sound re­cent­ly (al­beit not quite reach­ing ear­ly Ter­ry Malts lev­els of speed and fuzzy­ness), this at times sounds like a fu­sion of Ter­ry Malts' melod­ic­i­ty with slight­ly post punk-lean­ing garage groups like Tyvek or Par­quet Courts, while in oth­er mo­ments you can sense a breeze of The Spits, Ricky Hell or any­thing Reatard(s)-related. Yet when he goes all-in on pow­er pop, there are some un­de­ni­able british in­va­sion vibes em­a­nat­ing from his arrange­ments and com­po­si­tions.

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Big Bopper - Introducing Big Bopper

Phew… this thing must've been mixed/​mastered by a deaf per­son. I'm pret­ty much used to all kinds of son­ic ex­tremes by now but this must be the first time ever that i can't bear lis­ten­ing to a thing with­out at least ap­ply­ing some heavy EQ. Maybe the ac­tu­al cas­sette re­lease is less painful to lis­ten to though…

Oth­er­wise this thing kicks butt with un­err­ing pre­ci­sion. Don't know how i man­aged to over­look this so far but some­how stu­pid me need­ed an­oth­er re­minder in the form of a (dig­i­tal on­ly?) reis­sue on Good­bye Boozy to fi­nal­ly no­tice its qual­i­ties. These tex­ans play some pret­ty wild and un­pre­dictable amal­ga­ma­tion of post- and garage punk, noise rock and post­core which you might, at dif­fer­ent points, com­pare to groups like Pat­ti, Cutie, Rolex, Mys­tic Inane or Brandy.

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