Nag & Astio - Split

A neat split re­lease via Berlin's order05records. The open­ing track by At­lanta post punk in­sti­tu­tion Nag sur­pris­es with some synth-equipped psy­che­del­ic vibes á la Mononeg­a­tives or some lat­er stuff by Use­less Eaters, while det­o­nat­ing an­oth­er charge of their rough and abra­sive sound we've come to know and love in the oth­er song. On the flip­side then, Italy's As­tio com­ple­ment the son­ic as­sault with a slight­ly more con­ven­tion­al but no less classy, ma­ture make of mod­er­ate­ly melod­ic old­school post punk en­er­gy, the kind we've heard be­fore from the likes of Crim­i­nal Code, Sieve­head or, more re­cent­ly, Pyrex, Body Main­te­nance or Sched­ule 1.

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Smirk - Smirk

Fol­low­ing their most am­bi­tious record so far in last year's Ma­te­r­i­al LP, which ex­pand­ed the son­ic pal­lette out in­to the weird­er fringes of some­what Des­per­ate Bi­cy­cles-lean­ing art punk and al­so fea­tured some of the most in­fec­tious pow­er pop song­writ­ing of that year, the newest 7" by Nick Vic­ario aka Smirk, who's al­so known as a mem­ber of Pub­lic Eye, Cri­sis Man und Ce­men­to among oth­ers, keeps things com­par­a­tive­ly sim­ple and straight­for­ward this time while his heav­i­ly sam­ple-backed songs and arrange­ments still un­err­ing­ly hit their mark every sin­gle time.

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Brick Head - Bricks For Brains

As i un­der­stand, Brick Head is the so­lo project of Sarah Hardi­man who's al­so play­ing in Deaf Wish, Moon Rit­u­als and a bunch of oth­er groups you might've heard of. Fol­low­ing a still some­what shaky de­but al­bum, the over­all vi­sion comes in­to much sharp­er fo­cus here as all the parts just click in­to place on this one, in­ter­weav­ing fa­mil­iar styles and flour­ish­es in­to an ul­ti­mate­ly quite unique ex­pe­ri­ence. Car­riy­ing the hall­marks of a num­ber of aus­tralian groups, the first things to come to mind are var­i­ous in­car­na­tions of Alien Nose­job, the straight­for­ward garage punk of Ed­dy Cur­rent Sup­pres­sion Ring, the min­i­mal­ism of The UV Race while over the course of the record, a kin­da hazy, melan­cholic melod­i­cism á la Kitchen's Floor in­creas­ing­ly takes cen­ter stage.

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Display Homes - What If You're Right And They're Wrong?

Sad­ly over­shad­owed by the death of their their gui­tar play­er Dar­rell, the Syd­ney group's first LP via Er­ste Theke sig­ni­fies a ma­jor leap in qual­i­ty af­ter their al­ready quite en­joy­able pre­vi­ous E.T.A. EP, show­cas­ing the band as a much tighter unit de­liv­er­ing their sim­ple but ef­fec­tive, al­ways catchy and dance­able blend of time­less post punk with im­pres­sive pre­ci­sion and con­fi­dence. As be­fore, there's plen­ty of Py­lon groove and en­er­gy con­tained in here while at dif­fer­ent points you might al­so find sim­i­lar­i­ties to con­tem­po­rary acts such as Lithics, Pinch Points, Rank/​Xerox, Slumb Par­ty or Nots, with oc­ca­sion­al flash­es of Pix­ies-es­que surf-ish gui­tar leads.

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Mononegatives - Crossing Visual Field

A whole bar­rage of dig­i­tal sin­gles in re­cent weeks al­ready ap­peared to fore­shad­ow a new record by the Lon­don, On­tario group and in­deed here it is, their sec­ond LP in all its glo­ry, car­ry­ing an ex­cel­lent new batch of their quite dis­tinct, catchy as hell, al­ways slight­ly off-kil­ter and quirky genre mix­ture con­tain­ing el­e­ments of garage-, post- and synth punk, space- and psy­che­del­ic rock. You might com­pare some bits and pieces here to such groups as Pow!, Use­less Eaters and of course the re­cent col­lab­o­ra­tion Telegenic Plea­sures which al­so fea­tures some of the band mem­bers at work here - at this point though, i'd say they're pret­ty much carved out their own, in­stant­ly rec­og­niz­able lit­tle niche.

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During - During

It took a good while for this group's de­but LP to fi­nal­ly ma­te­ri­al­ize af­ter the the la­bel Chun­klet In­dus­tries al­ready promised this long­play­er around the re­lease of the Birds Of Juneau 7" in the sum­mer of 2021… I sus­pect you can once again blame the chal­lenges of the cur­rent vinyl econ­o­my for that. It's an­oth­er strong record though, on which the group fea­tur­ing mem­bers of such pow­er­hous­es as Spray Paint, Wil­ful Boys, Brandy, Pam­pers and Pyrex ad­mirably man­ages to keep things ex­cit­ing with quite a bit of eclec­tic va­ri­ety. For ex­am­ple, we get a kind of Swell Maps-go-Syn­th­wave vibes in HoloLens, a strong dub feel in Mall­man, kin­da like a sped-up vari­ant of Ex­ek. That all said, you can't re­al­ly de­ny their sound ob­vi­ous­ly hav­ing in­her­it­ed the largest chunk of its DNA from Spray Paint, es­pe­cial­ly their lat­er work (al­though, speak­ing of DNA, a cer­tain no wave vibe is ever present on here aswell). Fur­ther i've al­so got a sus­pi­cion though that there'll be some quite fa­mil­iar sound­ing echoes of this record to be heard on the up­com­ing Pyrex LP on To­tal Punk!

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Die TV - Uno Affo

Com­ing off a se­ries of neat EPs last year, Marmo­ra, New Jer­sey garage group or, prob­a­bly, so­lo artist Die TV re­turns with a new al­bum pre­sent­ing their tunes in an even more stripped-down, low-key man­ner at first glance, yet un­der­neath the unas­sum­ing sur­face un­folds a spec­tac­u­lar fire­works of DIY cre­ativ­i­ty. While at some points you may still find the oc­ca­sion­al speck of Spits or Stal­ins of Sound in there, Die TV's strum­my, jan­g­ly blend of garage- and post punk with sprin­kles of psy­che­delia comes in­to even sharp­er fo­cus here, the min­i­mal­ist pro­duc­tion pro­vid­ing plen­ty of breath­ing room for the melan­choly, sparkling gui­tar arrange­ments with more than a lit­tle hint of Des­per­ate Bi­cy­cles in some places, Pow­er Plant or Freak Genes in oth­ers, even a touch of Dig­i­tal Leather in the mut­ed pop vibes of Goner. Don't let first im­pres­sions fool you, this is quite po­tent and awe­some shit from start to fin­ish!

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Pig Earth - Exit Wound

A son­ic ex­pe­ri­ence won­der­ful­ly out of touch with the zeit­geist, craft­ed by some Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton group. Prime in­flu­ence here seems to be a whole bat­tery of ear­ly-to-mid eight­ies, loose­ly SST and Touch & Go-con­nect­ed stuff - on the more strum­my, folk-in­fused side of things ad­mit­ted­ly, but nev­er afraid of spon­ta­neous­ly mor­ph­ing in­to short bursts of hard­core punk ei­ther. Most ob­vi­ous amoung those in­flu­ences would prob­a­bly be shit among the lines of Angst and Meat Pup­pets, ear­ly Di­nosaur Jr. and, sec­on­dar­i­ly, U-Men, Mud­honey and 80s Sci­en­tists, some very slight hints of Dicks and Wipers. Or al­ter­nate­ly, you might think of more re­cent Acts like ear­ly Milk Mu­sic, Dhar­ma Dogs, Chronophage and Damak.

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Waste Man - Waste Man

Ap­par­ent­ly, for­mer­ly New Or­leans-based group Waste Man have re­lo­cat­ed to New York City re­cent­ly. Sound-wise though, they stay true to them­selves on their newest EP, by which i mean they stay un­pre­dictable as ever and keep the lis­ten­ers on their toes every sec­ond in their very own mix­ture on the in­ter­sec­tion of Post Punk, Post­core and slight touch­es of Amer­i­cana (the lat­ter are less ob­vi­ous here though…). Es­pe­cial­ly no­table this time is the six-minute slow-burn track White Horse that plays out kin­da like a fu­sion of ear­ly Shel­lac, Slint, Jaw­box & Fugazi.

Affordable Repayments - Can't Win For Losing Some Days

This group from Por­tar­ling­ton, Aus­tralia cre­ates a dron­ing, sprawl­ing and nonethe­less ab­solute­ly rip­ping sound­scape that com­bines the traits of such time­less greats as Wipers, 80s Son­ic Youth, U-Men or Live Skull, just as much as a fuzzy clump of AUS and NZ groups like The Gor­dons, Fun­gus Brains, X and Feed­time.

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