A new release on Deluxe Bias, the global leader in gloriously shit-sounding cassettes of usually negligible running time. And here we have yet another perfect example of three maximally blown-out fuzz-laden hardcore punk tracks recorded with just about the minimum amount of fidelity to make the assessment that this shit fuckin' rips. Plus, i think that shit couldn't sound any more perfect than this!
Following a couple of exceptionally enjoyable EPs, this Los Angeles group stays a delightfully quirky enigma on their first full length record, whose often minimalist yet always playful and elaborately constructed bursts of chaos consistently find new ways of wiggling their way out of established genre tropes and conventions and as such, remind me of a whole bunch of different things at different points. What i can say though is that this shit certainly shares a common spirit and tons of that same unshackled creativity with other hyperactive agents of distraction like Reality Group, Patti, Skull Cult, R.M.F.C., Big Bopper, early Uranium Club, Print Head, Subtle Turnhips, Shark Toys, Pressure Pin and Meal.
Louiseville, Kentucky group Shrudd has been around for a couple years already but only really started to strike creative gold with last year's Bizarro and Microbiome EP's, the former dealing with more hardcore-adjacent sounds while the latter dabbled in a kinda familiar garage-/synth punk territory, an aesthetic that also dominates their newest EP on which they considerably elevate the weirdness factor, veering into more of a pronounced eggpunk direction evoking the likes of Prison Affair, Victor, Set-Top Box or Paulo Vicious in equal measure to contemporary synth-/electro punk acts á la Isotope Soap, Freak Genes, Spyroids and Powerplant.
I had a bit of a hard time warming up to more recent entries in that increasinly scrappy and loose sounding line of tapes of this Portland group fronted by Matt Radosevich of Honey Bucket fame. Now on their first acutal LP though, they mean business it appears and indeed they come across as focused as they haven't sounded for quite some time. Less is more seems to be the maxim here with what basically amounts to five prolonged, equally monotonous and playful one-chord wonders (well, almost), in which texture and rhythm do most of the heavy lifting instead. Really, this is the kind of minimalism that makes early The Fall sound like progressive rock in comparison. Paradoxically, for a record making so few concession to preconceived notions of what a "song" goes like, the whole thing is radiating infectiously upbeat vibes throughout in what is probably gonna be the most joyous piece of abstract art punk you'll hear this summer.
A fucking dream team of the current eggpunk wave joins forces on this new split EP in the form of two very unique and distinct groups, which have both already left quite a mark on the scene in just a couple years. Heck, you actually and reasonably might consider both groups' sounds as having kickstarted their own little egg-subgenres. Altogether, this is a killer collection of hits, as you already might have suspected!
Here's yet another quality artifact of a smartypants garage-/post punk hybrid that does nothing too new or groundbreaking yet delights with plenty of well-constructed odditiy, just the right amount of randomness coupled with an abundance of super-catchy hooks. All of that puts them roughly in the neighborhood of, say, a slowed-down Uranium Club, Vintage Crop, Dumb, Aborted Tortoise, Lithics or Pinch Points.