With members of Vexx, Gen Pop and Sweeping Promises among them, who’d expect anything short of sheer awesomeness from this Seattle group? Sheer awesomeness is exactly what we get, of course. These eight songs are noise pop candy of the highest caliber, taking some cues out of the playbook of vaguely surf-, more or less JMC-influenced acts such as early Primitives, Joanna Gruesome, early Wavves, Male Bonding or, most recently, UV-TV, the underlying songs being strong enough to still work if you strip away the ubiquitous layer of fuzz, as they do in the gorgeous title track, a melancholy dream pop ballad.
A new tape by that mystery outfit (possibly) from Hicksville, NY on which they stay as unpredictable as ever, this time delivering a batch of infectious below-one-minute melodic garage smashers - high speed fuzzy power pop kinda like an alternate-reality garage incarnation of early Guided By Voices.
This dude from Watford, UK does a lot of things wrong here and i totally fucking love it. You know, like… squeezing 8 songs, 12 minutes of fuzzed out garage rock on a 7" and have that thing spin at 33 RPM for extra negative fidelity. Also, who needs sophistication and nuance in their music if we can simply have everything be very, very loud at all times? Why write a song using three chords if we can do it with just one? Yeah, don't expect anything too smart about this EP but the sheer shambolic intensity makes up for it perfectly. At some points this sounds like an MC5 worshipping incarnation of early The Men clashing with Destruction Unit while more recent groups like Hamer and Super-X aren't too far off either.
No wonder this shit feels familiar. The Wind-Ups is a new solo project of none other than Jake Sprecher of Terry Malts and Smokescreens fame. Much rawer and louder than any of his other groups have dared to sound recently (albeit not quite reaching early Terry Malts levels of speed and fuzzyness), this at times sounds like a fusion of Terry Malts' melodicity with slightly post punk-leaning garage groups like Tyvek or Parquet Courts, while in other moments you can sense a breeze of The Spits, Ricky Hell or anything Reatard(s)-related. Yet when he goes all-in on power pop, there are some undeniable british invasion vibes emanating from his arrangements and compositions.
This demo by a Cardiff group lures the listener in with an ultra-raw hardcore red herring, though it doesn't take long after that to realize there's a lot more to this burst of concentrated Lo-Fi energy as you blaze a trail through a thick layer of fuzz and distortion, which finally gives way to bright flashes of melody and an overall soundscape combining core ingredients of post punk and noise pop, coming across kinda like a beautifully deformed crossbreed between Sievehead and Piles.
For every purchase of this nice little cassette put out by our favorite incorporated purveyors of innovative discontinuity you also get a free fake origin story. 1982 my ass, this is of course still the same dude who did this other thing a while back. Though his newest output contains a bit less weird fuckery, it makes up for that with a lot more fuzz, more melodies and negative zero production values that sound just right to my ears.
Another fresh new batch of hissy, distorted, melodic and simply awesome garage punk, fuzz- & noise pop bangers by this one-man project from Ely, UK.
Impotent Fetus, the marvellous new-ish cassette sublabel of the equally fantastic Stucco empire, has already brought quite a bit of joy to the world recently with that Septic Yanks tape. In the meantime, they've already released two new puddles of noise to bathe in, made by two groups of unknown whereabouts, easily upholding the high quality standards. Fugitive Bubble create a delightful and inventive mess of fuzzed out hard-, noise- and weirdcore, at times reminding me of Das Drip, Warm Bodies, Vexx, the early output of NAG or Kaleidoscope. C-Krit, on the other hand, sound a lot like a disfigured crossbreed between Soupcans, No Trend and Lumpy & The Dumpers. Also, their fucked up rendition of the Screaming Sneakers evergreen Violent Days is pure gold.
Fun and tasteful no-frills melodic Fuzz Punk / Noise Pop from the UK, consisting mostly of crunchy noises, percussive noises and tape hiss. Regarding two of these Songs, On The House and Pedigree Chums… I've heard these before from a band/project called Crown Moulding so i assume some kind of connection here, genius pop music Sherlock that i am.
Some chicago dude's latest EP delivers four and a half short & sweet bursts of extra blown-out krauty spacerockin' psychedelic garage fuzz ecstasy. Destruction Unit-meet-Chrome, Draggs collide with Dr. Mix & The Remix. Turn on, tune in and… run to your stereo and hit play again 'cos the whole thing is only nine minutes long.
