O-D-EX - Breaker

Fol­low­ing their per­fect­ly ap­pe­tiz­ing (and as far as i can make out, com­plete­ly van­ished off the face of the in­ter­net by now) Black Box EP in 2022, we get this group's de­but full-length cour­te­sey of Dirt­nap Records and this time around, there's ac­tu­al­ly some tan­gi­ble back­ground in­fo avail­able. No won­der these folks sound­ed fa­mil­iar the first time around, since we're deal­ing with a duo con­sist­ing of US garage punk roy­al­ty Mark Ryan (most no­tably of Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Mind Spi­ders and Marked Men) and Mic­ah Why, whose pre­vi­ous bands i don't think i've ever come across. Their min­i­mal­ist synth punk cer­tain­ly has re­tained some of that Mind Spi­ders vibe al­though this shit is a lot dark­er, more stripped-down and abra­sive, hav­ing a cer­tain old­school vibe to it wich echoes of Min­i­mal Man, Ner­vous Gen­der, Scream­ers, Units or Vis­i­tors but you might just as well com­pare them to more re­cent phe­nom­e­na like Pow­er­plant, Pow!, Spy­roids or a some­what less spikey ver­sion of Lost Pack­ages cross­bred with the dig­i­tal in­san­i­ty of Nubot555, the more min­i­mal­ist mo­ments of Dig­i­tal Leather.

Al­bum-Stream →

Paulo Vicious - Paulo Vicious /​ Beer - Beer II

An­oth­er mys­te­ri­ous egg­punk bomb has dropped from… well, where in the world ac­tu­al­ly? Re­leased on a Tel Aviv la­bel, the song ti­tles, as google trans­late tells me, are ap­par­ent­ly por­tuguese. Then again, sound-wise, the clos­est ref­er­ence would prob­a­bly be the blown-out may­hem of Barcelona genre over­lords Prison Af­fair with fur­ther com­par­isons to be made to Cologne's Nuts, the ear­ly works of aus­tralian groups á la Set-Top Box, Eu­gh, Midgee, Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp and, to come full cir­cle even­tu­al­ly, Tel Aviv's own crude egg­punk sen­sa­tion Vic­tor would fit nice­ly in there too. So, long sto­ry short, this is some pre­mi­um grade glo­be­trot­ting shit, re­gard­less of where these folks might ac­tu­al­ly be lo­cat­ed.

Yet an­oth­er good ref­er­ence point, then again, would be Charleston, South Carolina's Beer and, speak­ing of the dev­il, the world's most beer­est beer band has just re­leased their sec­ond ex­tend­ed play to which most of what i've just said is gonna ap­ply ver­ba­tim so i'm not gonna re­peat my­self and in­stead just gonna crank up the good shit and ad­vise you to do the same 'cos i know your neigh­bors are just gonna love it!

Al­bum-Streams →

Metdog - Questions and Answers Regarding Computers and Screens

It's shap­ing up to be a pret­ty awe­some week for egg­punk al­ready, helped fur­ther along by an­oth­er genre fix­ture of the last cou­ple years, Melbourne's Met­dog, hav­ing just re­leased their full length de­but af­ter an im­pec­ca­ble string of EPs and sin­gles. They promised shit about com­put­ers and oh boy do we get shit about com­put­ers here, leav­ing more ques­tions than an­swers though, most of which be­gin with "What the fuck…?". Per­fect­ly un­der­scor­ing the sub­ject mat­ter we get to wit­ness the group at their most elec­tron­i­cal­ly in­clined so far, their over­all vibe here be­ing rem­i­nis­cent of a bizarre 8-bit mashup of vin­tage Aus­muteants with the dis­tinct added flour­ish of Win­dows 3.11 mi­di files.

Al­bum-Stream →

Klint - Stark EP & Should Be Honey /​ Sherbet (Golden Twenties) 7"

Al­ways an oc­ca­sion of pure, un­mit­i­gat­ed joy, new songs by Schleswig, Ger­many so­lo viking synth punk war­rior Klint. The self-re­leased new Stark EP de­liv­ers six-and-a-half ex­cel­lent new blows of the equal­ly rough and noisy, weird and catchy as fuck synth punk ac­tion we all know and love. His Should be Hon­ey /​ Sher­bet 7" re­leased si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly via ital­ian garage punk in­sti­tu­tion Good­bye Boozy then goes on a thrilling ex­per­i­men­tal side quest in­volv­ing heavy use of an­cient brass and vo­cal sam­ples pulled from 1920s swing records. This is some­thing… kin­da ran­dom, baf­fling and un­ex­pect­ed for sure. Sick shit!

Al­bum-Stream →

Dr​ý​sildj​ö​full - Verri en vondur

Just weeks af­ter their re­cent tape on Iron Lung Records here's a new one al­ready by this, pre­sum­ably, ice­landic group, this time again com­ing to us cour­tesy of dun­geon-/black­ened-/ex­per­i­men­tal spe­cial­ist la­bel Grime Stone Records and it's their strongest, most ful­ly re­al­ized one so far if you ask me. Take the rough specs and traits of black met­al, noisy synth-, hard­core- and elec­tro punk, com­ple­ment that un­re­lent­ing force with a slight­ly egg­punk-y aes­thet­ic that just seems a lit­tle too cute and quirky in face of all that grim­ness and you just might end up with some­thing sim­i­lar to what these folks are go­ing for.

Al­bum-Stream →

Nasty World - Demo /​ Lohn der Angst - Lohn Der Angst

If noth­ing else, it's at least been a great few days for friends of old­school synth punk ac­tion in­clud­ing not on­ly a cou­ple of es­sen­tial The Steves reis­sues via Iron Lung records but al­so these two beau­ties from Oak­land and Berlin re­spec­tive­ly. Nasty World kin­da go about their stuff like it's 1981 or some­thing, con­jur­ing up a vibe kin­da like a wild mix­ture be­tween Scream­ers, De­vo, Units, Vis­i­tors, Ner­vous Gen­der or Min­i­mal Man but al­so not quite dis­sim­i­lar to more re­cent shit of the Iso­tope Soap, Pow­er­plant, Lost Pack­ages or Freak Genes va­ri­ety. All of that could equal­ly fit the de­scrip­tion of that Lohn der Angst record but in their case, i'd add a good deal of Prim­i­tive Cal­cu­la­tors on top as well as a cou­ple of ger­man in­flu­ences rang­ing from an­cient DAF to more re­cent acts like Puff! and Pisse, as well as some dis­tinct kraut-/mo­torik vibes in tracks such as Warteschleife and Grelles Gesicht.

Al­bum-Stream →

Lost Packages - Model Distortion Business Casual

Though large­ly re­flect­ing on cur­rent themes of our so­ci­ety be­ing over­whelmed with the tribu­la­tions and chal­lenges our ever chang­ing hi-tech world keeps throw­ing at us, the sounds on this NYC artist's most re­cent cas­sette feels more like a flash­back to the abra­sive, con­fronta­tion­al ear­ly days of late '70s /​ ear­ly '80s synth- and elec­tro punk, noise and pow­er elec­tron­ics ex­per­i­men­ta­tion in the vein of shit á la Prim­i­tive Cal­cu­la­tors, Ner­vous Gen­der, Scream­ers, Units or Min­i­mal Man - a noisy bas­tard more con­cerned with over­whelm­ing the sens­es than with nu­ance or fi­nesse while still com­ing across sur­pris­ing­ly catchy and hyp­not­ic most of the time.

Al­bum-Stream →

Klint - Adrenaline

Late­ly it ap­pears as if bare­ly ever a cou­ple of weeks go by with­out a new re­lease by synth punk sen­sa­tion Klint from Schleswig, Ger­many. No in­tro­duc­tions nec­es­sary at this point i guess! Fol­low­ing the pret­ty rough split EP with Re­pul­sion Switch, here we get an­oth­er strong batch of tunes pre­dom­i­nant­ly on the rather catchy, of­ten vi­cious­ly dance­able end of the spec­trum.

Al­bum-Stream →

Repulsion Switch & Klint - Split

An­oth­er beau­ty from ital­ian pow­er­house la­bel Good­bye Boozy Records. You might re­mem­ber Buenos Aires group re­pul­sion switch from their 2019 de­mo and a bunch of EPs they put out since then. Here, we've got eas­i­ly their strongest batch of tracks so far of their re­fresh­ing­ly sim­ple yet equal­ly ex­plo­sive, garage-fla­vored old­school hard­core sound. An­oth­er known quan­ti­ty here at 12XU head­quar­ters is synth punk gu­ru Klint from Schleswig, Ger­many who takes charge of side b here with his usu­al work­man­like pre­ci­sion, cu­ri­ous ex­pe­r­i­man­ta­tion and a new cou­ple of tunes most­ly on the rougher edge of the spec­trum, per­fect­ly com­ple­ment­ing the RS tracks.

Al­bum-Stream →

Channel 83 - Artificial Unintelligence

Fun­ny what a few years of egg­punk-re­lat­ed in­san­i­ty do to your brain. When Chan­nel 83's pre­vi­ous EP dropped in 2019, i con­sid­ered this shit to be pret­ty far out there and to­tal­ly bonkers while in '23, i can't help but think they fit right in with the cur­rent wave of quirky syn­th­punk acts. I don't con­sid­er that a bad thing at all though. These new songs rip!