This record came pretty much out of the blue, to me at least, when it was announced in January, though it appears these tunes and the group behind them - featuring members of Total Control, Den and R.M.F.C. among others - have been brewing for a couple of years already, with some this shit apparently originating from a previous group named KX Aminal which, to my best knowledge, has never made it out of Australia or released any music so i guess i can be forgiven for not being in the loop. Anyway, expectations were high on this one and i'm glad to say it turned out every bit as good a record as anyone could have hoped for, their sound incorporating elements recognisable from all three of these better known bands, yet succeeding in taking that aesthetic to some fairly unexpected places in how they weave familiar post punk flavors with a great deal of new age ethereal spaciousness, kraut-y motorik repetition, further hints of '70s art rock and even a slight folk-ish bent reminiscent to NZ Post Punkers Trust Punks or their Belin-based successors Dead Finks into an epic, deeply atmospheric, sprawling and otherwordly hallucinogenic trip that is clearly meant to be ingested in one go - yeah, this is a prime example of an increasingly rare thing these days - an honest to dog capital-a album rather than just ten songs pressed on an record and no doubt this will be among the classiest punk things you get to hear this year.
Holyoke, Massachusetts group Landowner, one of the most unique voices in contemporary post punk, now has their fifth long-playing record out via Exploding In Sound Records and a good ten years in, they still show no signs of wear in their mimimalist and abstract approach on post punk and postcore that, despite their influence on younger bands becoming increasingly obvious in recent years, is still unmistakably very much their own. If anything, both their compositions and lyrics only have gotten sharper and a good bit darker over time with anything resembling a sense of ironic detachment coming off as nothing more than a psychic self-defense measure, necessary to keep your own sanity when confronting these tunes' existential subject matter while we all know that - in contrast to the way Linear Age frames human history as a succesion of unlocked and at times questionable achievements like in some bizarre sort of strategic simulation game - the actual universe won't grant us a second shot at existence and we're absolutely shitting the bed at every conceivable level right now.
On their newest 7", one of the most highly regarded contemporary post punk institut...ions at times backs away somewhat from the airy art punk/-rock vibes that permeated their previous LP - 2023's brilliant Ragdoll Dance - rather feeling more aligned with the still slightly rawer sonics of their 2019 album Readjusting The Locks while nonetheless profiting off the matured songwriting capabilities and elaborate arrangements of that last record. Best of both worlds really!
Excellent and quirky shit sitting inbetween the worlds of oldschool british DIY punk, post punk, hard- and postcore on this Watford, UK dude's third EP, of which the first couple tunes in particular remind me of a version of Landowner-style clean-ish guitar hardcore mixed with some distinctly Mission Of Burma-esque guitar work and even a hint of Television Personalities and Mekons which gets further expanded on over the course of the remaining songs, but also a touch of early Minutemen is tucked in there somewhere and echoes of a bunch of more recent bands like Zhoop (or whatever alias that dude is operating under right now), post punkers á la Big Bopper, Lamictal, Patti and further some of that contemporary breed of strummy part time punks as exemplified by the likes of Silicone Values, Famous Logs In History and the early works of Neutrals.
Once again a real knockout tape brought to us by the reliable New York purveyor of varyingly punk-related eccentricities, Fuzzy Warbles Cassettes. The opening track No Kill Means immediatelty radiates kind of an art punk vibe á la Television-meet-Ruts or more recently, Peace de Résistance or later Institute. Soft Change then takes a way more abstract, minimalist post punk route, quite cold and rigid but kinda funky at the same time. Cave One is a relatively straightforward, but by no means dumb, scrap of catchy garage punk and so is All Skill Levels with its equally post- and proto punk-ish vibes and an additional layer of dissonant noise. Great Pastures compresses some of these same traits into an unexpectedly catchy and compact little package of tangentially Sonic Youth-esque buzz. Anticev then surprises with a lot of a surf rock feel. And so it goes on... this is an eclectic grab bag of a record that pulls a new surprise out of its hat at every corner and quite woundrously doesn't drop the ball even once but rather feels weirdly coherent and methodical in its shapeshifting approach.
This London group recorded their debut LP in a single day at Abbey Road. Does that actually matter all that much? I don't think so but anyway, this thing sounds kinda neat, unexpectedly raw and unpolished. Right out of the gate, Defenestration greets us with a melodic and slightly folk-ish post punk vibe somewhere inbetween the worlds of Mission Of Burma, Sebadoh, Volcano Suns, Angst, Polvo or Medications, followed by a somewhat Wire-esque post punk exercise with hints of mid-2000s Indie Rock in Sinnes, the latter of which places this among my least favorite things on here along with the somewhat sleepy and undercooked Cruel Tutelage. Thankfully, Liar then picks up speed again in a mix of oldschool garage punk and a Mudhoney-esque Fuzz Punk-/Neo-Grunge vibe, some of which also resonates through the straightforward punk smasher Bumble Been before Red Fuzz leads into the overall much stronger secod half of the album with its catchiest pop tune so far. Pink Liquor then is a compact no-frills burst of noisy garage punk excellence and Automated Response sounds like yet another early Wire tribute right out of the Pink Flag Playbook, a much more well-balanced one this time though. Cavern Killer adds a bit of a rather contemporary sounding post punk and noise rock vibe to the mix before I Love You ends the record with a flawless oldschool oddity of the heavily '77 and KBD-influenced variety.
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.
