Here's yet another new nicho for you that's so top fucking secret you can find it on bandcamp! On the successor to last year's Dining Nothing / Sin Agenda Para La Muerte single, the group from Rosario, Argentinia delivers more of that same greatness drenched in the murky waters of eighties post-, garage- and art punk with an additional layer of fuzzy psychedelia on top that makes this record a neat companion piece to that recent Zulo EP which, coincidentally, has been released just a couple weeks prior on the very same local boutique label, Fake Sex Tape.
New noises from a dude who's not only been playing in a whole shit-ton of highly regarded Berlin-based groups like Benzin, Pigeon, Liiek, Molde and Deltoids over the years but has also been cooking up his own very own little musical treats as a solo act under the Dee Bee Rich or DBR moniker for many years now. Two years after his previous self-titled tape already marked a huge step ahead from the more scrappy and quirky DIY Lo-Fi aesthetics of earlier releases towards a more coherent and fleshed-out musical vision, his newest LP shows further refinement and an expanded breadth of stylistic flourishes and influences. While the opener Smirched could well pass for an (excellent) outtake from that last Liiek album, Unacceptable already surprises us in spicing up the familiar post punk formula with some kinda '77-ish guitar leads. Pool then adds a melodic sensibility to it of a kind you'd rather expect from more recent Institute releases for example, followed by Hold Me Tight on which this record finally reaches full catchy pop equilibrium, no doubt the most impressive demonstration of a matured songwriting craft that oozes out of every pore here and elevates every second of this killer record.
This Baltimore group features members of Nag and Quitter, which already raises expectations and it appears that on their first EP, they're pulling every lever to subvert rather than fulfill those. This record certainly has a split personality of some kind with every tune sounding like it originates from a different Group entirely and i'm gonna say it fucking rips! Carte Blance is four minutes of math-y noise rock, the kind you'd expect from such groups like John (timestwo), Luggage, the earlier works of Tunic or Help. Vertices then feels a tiny bit closer to the bleak and monotonous post punk vibes you'd have expected at first but there's also a dusty americana vibe goin' on kinda like what we've heart on that recent The III tape. Cranberry is a dissonant and noisy burst of hardcore, followed by three minutes of experimental drone/noise in The Gate. Then at last in Kept Bread, a doom-/drone-ish beginning leads into what probably bears the most resemblence here to the aforementioned Nag, if maybe Played at two-thirds the speed. A puzzling release that is and i can't wait to find out where they're gonna end up going with all this!
This Philadelphia group's 2024 Nyuck Nyuck Boing LP was among of the most unlikely stunners released that year, a weirdly anachronistic-feeling, unwieldy behemoth of a record that seemed equally heavily inspired by US post punk/-core acts like Saccharine Trust and Minutemen as by british art punk of the Swell Maps and The Pop Group strain, with further echoes of mototik kraut-y grooves, no wave atonality and '60 acid rock excesses. So here we have the successor now, on which many of these things still hold true while the band also manages to package their ecclectic influences into a somewhat more coherent-feeling and tangible package by mainly leaning into the psychedelic side of things here with a slow burn tension building throughout the first half, doing away almost completely with the previous LP's funky post punk grooves, although those do make a brief comeback too in The Big Hit, which kicks off a comparatively lighthearted and, at times, leaned-back second half - the yin and yang of a group that still won't give half a fuck about neat genre categories and our own conceptions thereof.
These folks based in Biel, Switzerland have created a true slow burn-type of a record here via the local imprint Chrüsimüsi Records that frequently takes its sweet time to get to the point but pays off handsomely when you stick with it. The sluggish crawl of an opening tune Different Times immediately reminds me of the dusty, desert-flavored americana rock of Weak Signal, which then gets transformed into very much of a post punk context in the following tune Bubbles while songs like Peace Of Mind have some obvious Velvet Underground energy flowing through them and a undercurrent of oldschool art- and glam rock that's also ever-present in The Candidate. At other times, i'm frequently reminded of Berlin's folk-ish Post Punkers Dead Finks, the earlier work of London's Witching Waves, a decelerated variant of The Cowboy or Flatworms, the earthy garage rock of Honey Radar or the spiky art punk of Far Corners and Germ House... even the first Peace de Résistance LP may at times resonate with this.
Strange beast, the debut EP of this group with members scattered across Australia and the USA (Sydney, Portland and Melbourne, more specifically), on which everything just feels a bit off... in a good way! Right frome the Intro there's an unmistakable Mission Of Burma- and Moving Targets vibe goin' on and echoes of further '80s oddities of the Really Red, Angst and Saccharine Trust variety. Also, there's some undercurrent of Sonic Youth-esque guitar harmonies and '90s Postcore elements á la Unwound, Drive Like Jehu or later Gray Matter work in unison with their more melodic counterparts like Chavez and Polvo, two Bands whose work also echoes heavily through the even stronger second half of this Record from Closer oneward, where their whole sound veers a lot closer towards melodic Seam- and Superchunk-infused Indie Rock with some additional traces of No Age and Swervedriver maybe? Anyway, this is some thorougly enjoyable shit.
This Philadelphia group's debut tape is kind of a rarity in this day and age as a post punk-adjacent record that stubbornly resists classification into any specific preexisting sub-niche, but you all know i'm gonna try anyway, right? The folk-ish americana feel of the opening track Full Speed Ahead (ironically one of the slower tunes here) evokes the widescreen drama of a Dead Finks record while the following three tunes retain much of that quality but also exhibit plenty of markedly different vibes not entirely dissimilar to the work of such present-day post punk staples like Tube Alloys, Corker, earlier Pyrex, Marbled Eye and, most of all, VR Sex, whose somber and dark energy may be the closest match of the bunch overall, but where that group's output was always marked by a layer of artificiality and clinical detachment, these tunes feel a lot more rustic, grounded and thoroughly lived-in.
This Vancouver group creates a delightful and eccentric blend of fuzzed-out, garage-infused oldschool indie rock, post- and art punk on their debut EP with the opening tune Running and Running having much of an early Woolen Men or Shark Toys vibe, while Dud reminds me a lot of Volcano Suns. In Roundabout, some '80s Nomeansno appears to collide with a classic cowpunk vibe. The closing track Anyone Anywhere has certain Scratch Acid-meets-Jawbox feel goin' on and there's no denying the whole EP also has some faint Mission Of Burma background radiation detectable.
Their brilliant demo in 2023 and an equally rippin' digital 2-track single in 2024 already had me hyped up good for this group revolving around two Brazilians in New York with further participation of, among others, Margaret Chardiet of Dollhouse and Pharmakon. So finally here's their first longplayer out on UK powerhouse label Drunken Sailor Records and who would've guessed... it's yet another freakin' great record! I've previously compared their sound to Straw Man Army and partly that still holds true here but there's also plenty of evidence of the group expanding their musical horizon way beyond that and most noticeably, leaning in on their more melodic tendencies and some kinda ethereal, meditative, almost psychedelic undercurrents most notably in tunes like Lugares Mais Altos. The bandcamp blurb also mentions both old UK anarcho punk and Wire as influences, a pair of shoes that i'm gonna say also fits them quite perfectly and concerning Wire in particular, y'all know i'm always gonna approve of that!
Now this is what i call a bulky, filthy clump of abrasive noise that greets us on this Vienna based group's second Tape and their first full length effort at that. At first glance, this shit appears to primarily channel the likes of Flipper, No Trend and a touch of early Swans, plus a decent chunk of old No Wave-ish excess. But listen a bit closer and you can also sense distinct echoes of eighties japanese psych-noise groups like The Rabbits or the the US art punk classics of Chrome and MX-80. Tunes like Entropy, then again, have a bit more of an early 2010s Copenhagen vibe á la Lower and Iceage to them and while i'm already namedropping shit from that era, there might aswell be a bit of Soupcans in there. Anyway, this is fourty excellent minutes of weapons-grade sonic assault to overwhelm your senses, blow your mental fuses, bypass all inhibitions and when it's done with you, you just feel gross and wanna take a fucking shower ASAP so yeah, this record accomplishes everything it set out to do.
