These Istanbul eggpunk warriors' debut EP of last year has certainly been among my favorite releases of 2023 and their first long-playing cassette delivers more of the same kind of fun by which i mean: irresistably catchy and quirky garage-/synth punk-smashers in a similar headspace to such genre greats as Prison Affair, Set-Top Box, Beer and Ghoulies. Tell me, what's not to like about that?
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Another nice catch took the bait and triggered the hyper-vigilant sensors at Cincinnati, Ohio garage punk stronghold Feel It Records. This Minneapolis group shares members with Green/Blue, Citric Dummies and a whole bunch more and emits some rock-sold, ultra-catchy '77 vibes on their debut LP, sorta bridging the gap between the US and UK scenes, combining all the best traits of, say, Dickies, Dead Boys and Adverts or, if you need more recent references, also bears some similarities to the likes of Shop Talk, The Celebrities, Tommy and the Commies, Sick Thoughts, Bad Sports and Tropicana.
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Dunno if you already noticed, but the UK's most under-the-radar group of sheer awesomeness just recently released a compilation EP bringing together most of the previous singles plus three new tracks on french label SDZ Records, which is the perfect place to start if you haven't already fallen for this band hook like and sinker. Anyways, here is their newest in that endless string of two-track digital singles already and as anything the group has touched so far, this is yet another instant classic of endlessly charming Mekons-, Desperate Bicycles- and Television Personalities-informed oldschool british DIY punk goodness.
Don't let this fake NTSC>PAL fool you 'cos it's actually just Billiam dressed up in a NTSC>PAL suit. Also, nice try namedropping Screamers which... well,I'm sure you could make a plausible case for that but at the end of the day, aside from the mere technicality of "no guitars" on this cassette, Billiam can't really help sounding like anything other than himself, which is to say: pretty damn fucking awesome!
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Fantabulous new garage-/synth-/electro punk shit from Graz, Austria, using minimal means to actually bring some fresh and as-of-yet unheard impulses to the whole eggpunk clusterfuck as, at certain points, i can't help but dub that shit Big Bl...Egg! Then again, there's also no shortage of fluffy pop melodies on here. I'm not quite sure what to make of the closing track Freibad Fürstenwald though, which... fuck me, research that shit for yourself. Or maybe don't, just... don't.
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The newest of a, to be perfectly honest, fucking inpenetrable amount of releases which have accumulated on this Totowa, New Jersey group's bandcamp page over the past few years, delivers a pure spectacle of short and catchy little tunes with a maximum length of exactly one minute, firing off fourty tracks inbetween the coordinates of garage punk, power pop, oldschool indie rock and fuzz punk in well under half an hour. The whole thing makes me think of a couple of 1980s DIY punk and indie rock landmarks like the early works of Guided By Voices, Fastbacks and M.O.T.O. just as much as a couple more recent bands like Booji Boys, Print Head, Vaguess and Datenight.
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Five excellent new bursts of catchy, simple and mimimalist synth punk is what we get on the newest EP of this Dallas, Texas group. Though the title of the opening track Q:Where? A: On The Square! kind of evokes associations of Devo, i'd say actually this shit sounds a lot closer to some of the more underground acts of the '70s and '80s á la Minimal Man, Nervous Gender, Screamers, Units, Primitive Calculators or Visitors, while in the current scene you might also compare them to groups such as Victor, O-D-EX, Lost Packages and Freak Genes.
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The Sydney garage-/eggpunk powerhouse's newest record is actually more of a collection of scraps, demos, odds and ends left on the cutting room floor over the years but... damn! If this shit here represents Gee Tee's b-material, i'm gladly gonna eat up whatever c-list shit they've got lingering in the archives too. This is a brilliant record from start to finish and mandatory listening for any discerning connoisseur of catchy goodness in the realms of garage punk, fuzz- and power pop, all killer no filler!
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Cincinnati group Vacation remain a rare zeitgeist-defying gem, once again delivering a brilliant new batch of bangers equally catchy and propulsive, to be located in the rough ballpark of Power Pop, Garage Punk, Noise Pop and oldschool melodic Indie Rock, brimming with a pervasive sense of joy and euphoria in the face of rough times ahead while never missing the mark thanks to their remarkable skill in crafting simple but effective, perfectly balanced and to-the-point little tunes they then like to blow up to larger-than-life cinemascope proportions.
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This Detroit group made quite a bit of a splash already with a strong EP in 2022 and now they're throwing an even better LP at us, once again combining a bit of local (proto-) punk history with flavours of garage punk, hard- and postcore, calling to mind a bit of Nervosas in American Lies and Dollhouse in Kill Your Parents, while otherwise playing out a bit like a good cross-section of a bunch of garage/hardcore-hybrid groups like the somewhat more garage-leaning, KBD-influenced stylings of Launcher, Freakees, Liquid Assets and Mystic Inane as well as the more hardcore-heavy side with groups such as Imploders, Headcheese, Hood Rats, Alf and Cement Shoes.
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