Some weird-ass shit, this archival release containing the complete recordings, made in or around 2016, of a short-lived Brisbane group… and of course it doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out this is yet another project revolving around eccentric avant-garde guitar torturer Glen Schenau of Kitchen's floor, plus two other dudes who played in Sydney 2000 and Piss Pain respectively. It might be their involvement rendering this stuff almost approachable for a Schenau-related artifact, although by approachable i mean: No more approachable than, say, early The Fall or Membranes records are approachable. If that sounds approachable to you, then this will too!
With this London dude's debut tape having been such an incredibly fun ride, its follow-up - a hot mess made up of reworked/remastered/re-heated older demos and a pair of new tracks - sure feels a bit unfocused in direct comparison, yet still manages to kick plenty of ass on its own. Another adorable batch of quirky DIY garage punk that, despite its british origin, has a predominantly australian feel to it with groups like Set-Top Box, R.M.F.C. and Satanic Togas coming to mind as well as the unavoidable Ausmuteants/Alien Nosejob, a touch of Useless Eaters.
A Cleveland, Ohio group presents a rough and dissonant mix of noise rock and post punk with a sharp garage edge on their first EP which, in the current music landscape, positions them roughly inbetween such Groups as The Cowboy, Spray Paint, Flat Worms and Plax, at times supplemented with a certain Flipper vibe.
I don't think i ever gave Berlin's mystery act Heavy Metal the full spotlight on here and in retrospect i can't really tell if that was because Heavy Metal weren't quite ready for me or 'cos i wasn't quite ready for Heavy Metal. All i can say is i've been monitoring their curious and prolific trajectory over the past few years and with every release their garage-/electro-/totalfuckingnuts-punk bastard concoctions resonated a bit better with my broken brain until finally they hit a prefect sweet spot with their fifth (duh…) longplayer on which they come off kinda like a more out-there version of a certain North Carolina group that's been rumored to not be punk enough for heavy metal or something… thrown in a blender with a healthy dose of Swell Maps or Métal Urbain/Dr. Mix & The Remix. Never before have they sounded this nebulous and just wrong in all the right ways, except maybe for the idea of fighting the devil… that simply doesn't strike me as the most heavy metal thing to do. It might please the christian rock crowd, though.
Modecenter Grease Meal Animator Big Bopper Math Show Rearranged Face History Of Things To Come The Freakees The Middle Los Blobs Asalto Lysol C-4 Foil Rat King Kretin Bay Of Fakes Μπριτζολιτσεσ Μη (Don't) Debt Cult Southport Sharpest Weapons D. Sablu So Sorry The Lipschitz Squabble Credit Bureau Double Wide Spielo Sparschwein Rakete Fehlstart Brüssel 2057 Monoburro Bienvenidxs a la Nueva Era Thee Hearses Space Invader Slimex Pressure C.H.I.M.P Slug
Side B
Tracklist:
Upper Wilds Love Song #5 Vacation VFTA Psychic Flowers Coming to Collect Dog Heaven Slip Away Cuello La Resi Tongues of Fire Numb Old Moon Past Lives DDR Limited Liability Choke Boy Old Block Retreaters Something Grows Here The Tubs Two Person Love
Once again stupid me was way too late noticing that a new record by Cincinnati, Ohio's pop wizards Vacation has hit the shelves via Salinas Records, repeatedly proving their knack for crafting refined jewels of melodic noise at the intersection of oldschool nineties-style indie rock, graceful power- and noise pop. This shit is catchy as fuck without ever getting too formulaic or predictable. A rare breed these days and even more rarely does it ever come across as powerful and flawlessly executed as here. An album of twelve hits and zero misses as for this group, "pretty good" simply doesn't cut it.
New shit from one of KBD-informed garage punk's prime makers in our time, L.A.'s Freakees. Having tried on quite diverse stylistic flourishes, bits and pieces on recent EPs including pure synth-/electro punk on their previous one, they have never sounded more focused than on their newest effort and this pays off admirably as the current, pretty synth-heavy iteration of their sound totally slaps and might be compared favorably to acts like early Launcher, Alien Nosejob, Research Reactor Corp., Liquid Assets and Satanic Togas.
