Cold Comfort - Maximum Effort

A neat and ex­plo­sive lit­tle pack­age, this EP by some Nor­wich, UK dude com­ing across like a healthy mid­dle ground be­tween garage groups rough­ly ad­her­ing to the Sauna Youth, Ex-Cult, Tyvek or Sweet Reaper for­mu­la and the fuzz punk sytylings of ear­ly 2010s groups á la Wavves or Male Bond­ing.

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Clamm - Care

Clamm's fol­low-up to their al­ready strong 2020 de­but Be­seech Me is a mas­sive leap for­ward for the mel­bourne group and a stun­ning­ly con­fi­dent achieve­ment. Their garage punk dri­ven for­ward with un­re­lent­ing force is some­what rem­i­nis­cent of last-decade acts like Ex Cult and Sauna Youth or of more re­cent stuff in the vein of Flat Worms, The Cow­boy or their lo­cal con­tem­po­raries Hideous Sun De­mon. Apart from that, their songs of­ten have a slight psy­che­del­ic nudge to them not un­like De­struc­tion Unit or Hamer while, in oth­er places, there is some dark post punk un­der­cur­rent present re­mind­ing me of Con­stant Mon­grel or ear­ly Low Life.

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Ra!d - Ra!d

As co­in­ci­dence would have it, here's yet an­oth­er group of some­what fuzzy where­abouts al­though the avail­able ev­i­dence gen­er­al­ly points to­ward Penn­syl­va­nia this time. On their most re­cent full-length ef­fort, a war­bly blown-out lo-fi acoustic in­tro gives way to a knock­out punch of a post punk blast that sounds a bit as if the hal­lu­cino­genic haze of groups á la Piles or Die! Die! Die! en­tered the pitch black worlds of Nag. Oth­er times we get some­what more con­ven­tion­al yet nonethe­less ass-kick­ing flash­es of old­school doom- and sludge-lean­ing Am­Rep-style noise rock col­lid­ing with the spaced out acid punk ex­cess of, say, De­struc­tion Unit, Hamer or Su­per-X.

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Phaselicker - Phaselicker

From some un­cer­tain place in Bavaria, Ger­many comes this beau­ty of an EP med­dling in a fit­ting­ly neb­u­lous, fuzz-laden genre spec­trum be­tween garage- and acid punk, psych- and space rock. A re­quired lis­ten for, among oth­ers, con­nois­seurs of noise in the vein of De­struc­tion Unit, Os­ees, Su­per-X, Hamer, Ounce, Faux Fe­ro­cious or Drag­gs.

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Star Party - Meadow Flower

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.

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Print Head - Change

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.

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The Mute Servants - The Mute Servants

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.

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The Wind-Ups - Try Not To Think

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.

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Can Kicker - Demo

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.

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T.L.B.M. & The Joy Toys - T.L.B.M. & The Joy Toys

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.

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