Soft Shoulder - Smile Building's Exit

Tempe, Ari­zona group Soft Shoul­der have been at it for way over a decade now and still seem as live­ly and pro­duc­tive as ever, hav­ing churned out a steady stream of sin­gles and EPs re­leased dig­i­tal­ly and as lim­it­ed lathe cuts the past year. Their newest LP presents them as fo­cused as they haven't been in a long while though, their quirky-as-fuck mix­ture of post punk and noise rock burst­ing with en­er­gy as catchy grooves some­what rem­i­nis­cent of The Fall from the late eight­ies on­ward col­lides with a de­cid­ed­ly no-wave school of noise and dis­so­nance.

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Vision 3D - Hypnose

Pret­ty fuck­ing amaz­ing shit, the sec­ond long play­er of this group from Tour­nai, Bel­gium. Right out of the gate i'm re­mind­ed of so much good stuff both an­cient and con­tem­po­rary on the in­ter­sec­tion of art-, post- and garage punk, round­ed out by a dis­tinct­ly dis­so­nant no wave-ish, noise rock-y edge. Some­times they sound a bit like as if the amer­i­cana-in­fused post punk of Angst were to col­lide with the sim­plis­tic beat of Man Sized Ac­tion and a good mea­sure of ear­ly The Fall strum­mi­ness. Oth­er mo­ments, i imag­ine to hear echos of Mem­branes, Gor­dons or Swell Maps, while you might just as well draw com­par­isons to more re­cent acts such as Hon­ey Radar, Toe Ring, Lithics, Germ House, Shark Toys and Sub­tle Turn­hips.

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Rider/​Horse - Select Trials

Not too long af­ter the re­cent Dur­ing 7" on Chun­klet In­dus­tries (a full length of that group should be ex­pect­ed drop soon) we al­ready get to hear an­oth­er group fea­tur­ing Spray Paint vo­cal­ist and gui­tar play­er Cory Plump. As Rider/​Horse he's team­ing up with a dude named Chris who has in some un­spec­i­fied ca­pac­i­ty worked with the likes of Les Savy Fav and Trans Am. To­geth­er they're cre­at­ing a sound that's tak­ing the more elec­tri­cal­ly dri­ven vibe of the most re­cent Spray Paint re­leas­es in­to a dark and hazy, heav­i­ly in­dus­tri­al-lean­ing psy­che­del­ic night­mare kind of realm some­what rem­i­nis­cent of Ex­haus­tion, Haunt­ed Hors­es or Danyl Je­su, as well as the dub-in­fused sound­scapes of Ex­ek, with whom they al­so share that cer­tain taste of Swell Maps.

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Deck In The Pit - In A Lane

Some weird-ass shit, this archival re­lease con­tain­ing the com­plete record­ings, made in or around 2016, of a short-lived Bris­bane group… and of course it doesn't take a fuck­ing ge­nius to fig­ure out this is yet an­oth­er project re­volv­ing around ec­cen­tric avant-garde gui­tar tor­tur­er Glen Schenau of Kitchen's floor, plus two oth­er dudes who played in Syd­ney 2000 and Piss Pain re­spec­tive­ly. It might be their in­volve­ment ren­der­ing this stuff al­most ap­proach­able for a Schenau-re­lat­ed ar­ti­fact, al­though by ap­proach­able i mean: No more ap­proach­able than, say, ear­ly The Fall or Mem­branes records are ap­proach­able. If that sounds ap­proach­able to you, then this will too!

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Collate - Medicine /​ Genesis Fatigue

It took the Port­land, Ore­gon trio a few re­leas­es to get there, but their newest 7" is push­ing all the right but­tons for me with its no wave-in­fused as well as Gang Of Four-in­spired dance­able post punk, which in this par­tic­u­lar case re­minds me es­pe­cial­ly of Brighton group Aus­ter­i­ty.

Print Head - Happyhappy

Whoa, what a beau­ti­ful­ly crude piece of DIY lo-fi fuck­ery in the twi­light zones of slight­ly no-wave-ish post punk and garage rock, this dig­i­tal re­lease by some un­known Hicksville, NY en­ti­ty. Kin­da like an in­cred­i­bly weird in­car­na­tion of The Woolen Men in­ter­min­gling with Half Japan­ese and The UV Race. This is just gor­geous!

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Donors - Donors

Now this one's a cu­ri­ous beast. Nashville group Donors al­ready won my at­ten­tion two years ago with their first EP and a some­what more con­ven­tion­al mix of garage- and post punk, but this is a dif­fer­ent lev­el of weird­ness al­to­geth­er, as they in­fuse their sound with in­creas­ing amounts of dis­so­nant no wave hav­oc and pro­to noise rock á la Flip­per, No Trend. What in the world could i com­pare this stuff to? Tyvek or Con­stant Mon­grel reimag­ined as a no wave act? Spray Paint as a garage band? I'm not en­tire­ly sure what they ac­tu­al­ly set out to do but there's no doubt they're suc­ceed­ing with fly­ing col­ors. Just when you thought you made sense of the whole thing, the clos­ing track Fine Print man­ages to sur­prise once again by adding some Haunt­ed Hors­es-style in­dus­tri­al fla­vor to the mix.

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B.E.E.F. 39X - Man-Simulator 5

At first lis­ten, i can't help but think of the tex­an (neo) no wave/​chaotic noise rock con­nec­tion around bands like Flesh Narc, Gay Cum Dad­dies and a few oth­er projects shar­ing much of the same per­son­nel. How­ev­er, this band is from Philadel­phia, mak­ing any as­so­ci­a­tion with those rather un­like­ly. Al­so, on clos­er in­spec­tion, their sound and songs come across a lot more struc­tured, com­pared with the kin­da se­mi-im­pro­vised feel of the Den­ton scene's out­put. Sound­wise, this is some­what less in the no wave camp, lean­ing more in­to the noise rock side of things and now that i'm think­ing of it… I al­so see quite some sim­i­lar­i­ties to their ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly much clos­er New York con­tem­po­raries Spray Paint and Big Neck Po­lice, as well as a hint of cana­di­an noise punks Sop­cans.

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