Cartoon - Nyuck Nyuck Boing!

Now here's some bril­liant shit i've been to­tal­ly un­pre­pared for, cer­tain­ly hav­ing a mind of its own and be­ing de­light­ful­ly out of touch with the zeit­geist! Sure, the whole thing feels kin­da old. I'm kin­da old too, so i like that. Imag­ine the likes of Sac­cha­rine Trust, Min­ute­men, Swell Maps and The Pop Group par­tak­ing in an oc­cult rit­u­al to con­jure up an an­cient '60s acid rock de­mon, an un­holy cross­breed of psych- and math rock. This is quite ter­ri­bly self-in­dul­gent of course, but that as­pect kin­da comes with both of those gen­res, i guess. At this point i'm pret­ty sure you've al­ready made up your mind about it and know if you're gonna love or hate it. In my hum­ble opin­ion, what the Philadel­phia group hal­lu­ci­nates up here is pret­ty fuck­ing swell and to­tal­ly should be le­gal­ized!

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The Minneapolis Uranium Club Band - Infants Under The Bulb

Holy fuck, has it se­ri­ous­ly been a whop­ping five years al­ready since the last LP by one of the most in­flu­en­tial, defin­ing groups of the cur­rent era of quirky and in­tel­li­gent garage punk? It cer­tain­ly didn't seem that long to me and part of that might be down to their dis­tinct mix of play­ful, an­gu­lar and elab­o­rate garage- and art punk hav­ing been such an om­nipresent un­der­cur­rent of so many things that have hap­pened in the last few years, with groups such as Dumb, Vin­tage Crop, Pinch Points, Abort­ed Tor­toise, Re­al­i­ty Group, Yam­mer­er and Pat­ti be­ing on­ly the tip of the ice­berg con­cern­ing groups that ap­pear to have tak­en some in­spi­ra­tion from them at one point or an­oth­er. On their fourth LP so far, Ura­ni­um Club keep ex­pand­ing their styl­is­tic scope as well, show­cas­ing a ma­tured song­writ­ing abil­i­ty which pays off es­pe­cial­ly well in slow­er num­bers like the strum­my and folk-ish garage pop al­most-a-bal­lad Tokyo Paris L.A. Mi­lan, which unites some qual­i­ties of groups á la Wire­heads, Tyvek and The UV Race, or in The As­cent. with its pro­nounced Tele­vi­sion-es­que vibes. Like any of their pre­vi­ous al­bums, this is noth­ing short of an in­stant genre clas­sic!

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Balaclava - The 1/​4 Inch Almanac

A buck­et­load of un­healthy sug­ary joy, the sec­ond EP by this NY act de­liv­er­ing a quirky and catchy mix of synth- and garage-, art- and egg­punk that skill­ful­ly and pre­cise­ly hits kind of a sweet spot in­be­tween the son­ic worlds of, say, Met­dog, Smirk and Cher­ry Cheeks, more or less. Good shit!

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Pork Belly - I'm Okay, You're Okay, Everything is Okay

The sec­ond EP by this San Fran­cis­co group, com­ing to us by way of the weirdo suits at the head­quar­ters of Dis­con­tin­u­ous In­no­va­tion Inc., marks a quite im­pres­sive step up in en­er­gy, so­phis­ti­ca­tion, el­e­gance and styl­is­tic va­ri­ety af­ter their al­ready per­fect­ly en­joy­able de­but cass­in­gle in 2020. In the year 2024, their quirky and chaot­ic mix of post­core, post- and art punk with just a smidge of garage punk thrown in for good mea­sure is still gonna evoke uni­ver­sal­ly fa­vor­able com­par­isons to quirky noise­mak­ers in the vein of Rolex, Pat­ti, Re­al­i­ty Group, Big Bop­per, Warm Bod­ies, Ura­ni­um Club and Brandy.

Scud - Car

Songs about mo­tor ve­hi­cles aren't quite as ubiq­ui­tous as they once were and i'm just gonna say say de­served­ly so be­cause hon­est­ly, that an­cient, most waste­ful mode of per­son­al trans­porta­tion can't be phased out soon enough and the fu­ture clear­ly be­longs to all va­ri­eties of bikes and trains. But here we go, it's an un­like­ly new EP made up of noth­ing but carpunk tunes. Mu­si­cal­ly the thing slaps though, their weird and whim­si­cal mix of art- and garage punk be­ing of sim­i­lar char­ac­ter to house­hold names such as Vexx, Cel Ray, Warm Bod­ies, Warp or Fugi­tive Bub­ble.

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MKVulture - Terminal Freakout

A dense and noisy post punk spec­ta­cle un­folds on this Rich­mond, Vir­ginia group's de­but EP, its four elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed songs mak­ing a ful­ly ma­ture and con­fi­dent im­pres­sion al­ready. At times this has a cu­ri­ous vibe of, say, Straw Man Army plus a sub­tle trace of Poi­son Ruïn while in oth­er places this shit re­minds me a lot of some of the past decade's more melan­choly and song-ori­ent­ed post punk acts in the vein of ear­ly Es­tranged, Pub­lic Eye, Crim­i­nal Code, Bruised, VHS, Waste Man as well as At­lanta heavy­weights Wymyns Prysyn and Institute/Mothers's Milk.

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Knowso - Pulsating Gore

Cleveland's Know­so for sure have been among the most idio­syn­crat­ic and mem­o­rable groups of the past cou­ple years. Their newest full length shows them at the height of their strength once again, their amal­ga­ma­tion of post punk, noise- and math rock still com­ing across just as quirky and whim­si­cal as it is tight, rigid and an­gu­lar all the same, com­bin­ing a seem­ing­ly pro­ce­dur­al and ef­fi­cient, math­e­mat­i­cal ap­proach with an amount of fun and catchy­ness you wouldn't re­al­ly ex­pect in­side these rough pa­ra­me­ters. At this point, their sound is pret­ty much their own thing but if you ab­soiute­ly must com­pare them to oth­er groups, you might find some sim­i­lar­i­ties to stuff such as Brandy, Landown­er, Big Bop­per or maybe Nag in their more ap­proach­able mo­ments.

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Sklitakling - Sklitakling

Fol­low­ing a thor­ough­ly en­tic­ing de­but EP last year, Bergen, Nor­way group Skl­i­tak­ling present an even stronger first LP, re­tain­ing the strum­my, quirky charm of the de­but while ex­pand­ing and branch­ing out styl­is­ti­cal­ly. Their song­writ­ing has won a lot of con­tour since then, their idio­syn­crat­ic arrange­ments com­ing across much crisper now. De­spite their nor­we­gian ori­gin, i can't help but feel re­mind­ed of the dan­ish scene of the past decade - the Copen­hagen ap­proach to post punk you might say - with the likes of Iceage, Melt­ing Walk­men, Spines and, just re­cent­ly, Pleas­er com­ing to mind at var­i­ous points as hav­ing a sim­i­lar sense of melan­choly and melody. In ad­di­tion, there's a dis­tinct cow­punk vibe at play here, kin­da like an LSD-soaked ear­ly Angst, Gun Club and, es­pe­cial­ly, the more re­cent hal­lu­cino­genic ex­is­ten­tial night­mare of Mur­der­er.

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The Abdo Men - Ulcer Anthology: Laff Your Way To Total Destruction

What­ev­er there is to be found out about this Cincin­nati, Ohio group is cloaked in a veil of un­cer­tain­ty, not helped in the least by that kin­da stereo­typ­i­cal "los­er band" his­to­ry giv­en on this cassette's band­camp page. So, prob­a­bly, there are folks known from groups like The Serfs, The Drin, Crime of Pass­ing and Mo­tor­bike at work here and at least some of the songs on this can be traced back to the year 2019, when they first ap­peared on the Pedes­tri­an Sen­ti­ments EP. Oth­er­wise i'm re­al­ly not too sure if any of the de­tails giv­en are to be be­lieved. You can't ar­gue with the mu­sic though, which kicks ass from start to fin­ish, in some way evok­ing the aes­thet­ics, vary­ing fi­deli­ty and styl­is­tic va­ri­ety of gold­en era Guid­ed By Voic­es, oth­er­wise rough­ly os­cil­lat­ing be­tween jan­g­ly pow­er pop in the vein of, say, Bed Wet­tin' Bad Boys or Bad Sports in tracks like Cow­ard Of The State, Wannabe (A Star) and Sil­ver Queen; grimy psy­che­del­ic garage rock (Didn't Win The Lot­tery, Ob­nox­ious And A Neu) as well as a cou­ple of catchy melod­ic garage punk smash­ers car­ry­ing the sig­na­ture of groups á la Boo­ji Boys, Tyvek and Par­quet Courts. It's Been A Bad Week kin­da re­sem­bles the garage-drenched noise aes­thet­ics of A Place To Bury Strangers, Peyton's Kids has sort of a Woolen Men feel to it and through­out, the folk-in­fused post punk of ear­li­er Chronophage comes to mind more than once.

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Cel Ray - Piss Park

Yet an­oth­er kick­ass EP by Chicago's Cel Ray, pick­ing right up where they left off on their Cel­lu­lar Ray­mond EP ear­li­er this year. I might be re­peat­ing my­self here but once again their in­ven­tive and play­ful sound kin­da strikes me as a com­bi­na­tion of some of the past decade's great­est fe­male front­ed groups á la Vexx, BB and the Blips, Neg­a­tive Scan­ner, Gen Pop or Amyl and the Snif­fers on one hand, while al­so be­ing some­what rem­i­nis­cent of that cur­rent breed of squig­gly garage-meets-post punk groups like Ura­ni­um Club, Re­al­i­ty Group, Pat­ti, Dumb or R.M.F.C..

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