This Philadelphia group’s 2024 Nyuck Nyuck Boing LP was among of the most unlikely stunners released that year, a weirdly anachronistic-feeling, unwieldy behemoth of a record that seemed equally heavily inspired by US post punk/-core acts like Saccharine Trust and Minutemen as by british art punk of the Swell Maps and The Pop Group strain, with further echoes of mototik kraut-y grooves, no wave atonality and ’60 acid rock excesses. So here we have the successor now, on which many of these things still hold true while the band also manages to package their ecclectic influences into a somewhat more coherent-feeling and tangible package by mainly leaning into the psychedelic side of things here with a slow burn tension building throughout the first half, doing away almost completely with the previous LP’s funky post punk grooves, although those do make a brief comeback too in The Big Hit, which kicks off a comparatively lighthearted and, at times, leaned-back second half – the yin and yang of a group that still won’t give half a fuck about neat genre categories and our own conceptions thereof.
Now this is what i call a bulky, filthy clump of abrasive noise that greets us on this Vienna based group’s second Tape and their first full length effort at that. At first glance, this shit appears to primarily channel the likes of Flipper, No Trend and a touch of early Swans, plus a decent chunk of old No Wave-ish excess. But listen a bit closer and you can also sense distinct echoes of eighties japanese psych-noise groups like The Rabbits or the the US art punk classics of Chrome and MX-80. Tunes like Entropy, then again, have a bit more of an early 2010s Copenhagen vibe á la Lower and Iceage to them and while i’m already namedropping shit from that era, there might aswell be a bit of Soupcans in there. Anyway, this is fourty excellent minutes of weapons-grade sonic assault to overwhelm your senses, blow your mental fuses, bypass all inhibitions and when it’s done with you, you just feel gross and wanna take a fucking shower ASAP so yeah, this record accomplishes everything it set out to do.
Two years after their super fun debut EP, Philadelphia’s cleanest finally present us with their first LP which doubles down on the chaotic energy of their disjointed art punk that sits comfortably between the chairs of dissonant, oldschool no wave-ish noise, artcore elements akin to early Minutemen and also plenty of more recent phenomena from artsy post punk groups like Patti, Reality Group and Brandy to more postcore-leaning acts like Big Bopper, Cutie, Mystic Inane and Rolex. And i gotta say, their math-y convoluted sound does a pretty decent job of approximating the mental overload and challenge the task of cleaning up the cave presents to my ADHD-cluttered, probably mildly autistic brain… but they sure make it sound like the most fun activity in the world.
That Evinspragg record has garnered the most publicity of the newest Inscrutable Records batch for several reasons, some of them justifiable, others more annoyingly drama-related. But to be perfectly honest, that one is a bit too ambitious for its own good in my humble opinion and a bit of a mixed bag which starts out incredibly strong, then kinda fizzles out towards the end and i actually feel much more drawn towards the label’s other two releases among which is this full-length debut by Johnny Skin. On it, they create a dreamy, melancholy and super-catchy melange blending the yearning vibe of ’50s-’60s bubblegum pop ballads with rudimetary, minimalist lo-fi vintage electronic drum beats and synths in a fashion that’s gonna draw inevitable comparisons to Suicide and Métal Urbain, interspersed with a bunch of more noisy and dissonant no wave-ish tunes more in the vein of noisy synth punk pioneers á la Primitive Calculators or Nervous Gender and the experimental, psychedelic sounds of Theoretical Girls, Chrome or MX-80.
A thorougly mesmerizing load of monotonously pulsing psychedelic post punk bliss with echoes of the proto- and early art punk eras, this new cassette of Paris group Jazz V.O.S.T. comes across a bit like an unholy alliance of Métal Urbain, MX-80 and Chrome, maybe a bit of Swell Maps for good measure… or possibly even a couple of old japanese psychedelic and post punk acts like The Rabbits and early High Rise. All of this gets transferred into some vague semblance of a cold wave context while thankfully eschewing the overly mechanical, formulaic uniformity of what i might consider one of the least creative genres in recent years. No, the pulses, twitches and rumbles on this record aren’t caused by the cold rotations of some interchangeable machine but rather the joy of free expression and humanity of defiant spirits refusing to let themselves get crushed by harsh realities.
Quality shit as usual from the ever-reliable spanish post punk stronghold Flexidiscos. On their debut LP, this Valencia group conjures up quite the storm of smart and angular, yet never tiresome noise that comes across like an amalagamation of the No Wave-ish noise rock / post punk abstractions of Spray Paint with a number of similarly genre-fluid crossover acts like the contorted, interlocking garage punk grooves of Uranium Club, Reality Group and Vintage Crop on one hand, the eccentric post punk constructions of acts á la Rolex, Knowso, Meal, Exit Group, early Marbled Eye and Patti on the other. All of it feels way less grating and catchier than you’d expect, propelled ahead with unrestrained drive and concentrated, punctually applied energy.
Like a rougher companion piece to the Demo Rally LP i’m gonna be postin’ about in just a minute, the debut LP of this Leeds group from late summer – now given a cassette release by french label Discos Peroquébien – delivers more of that excellent noisy and no wave-ish post punk eccentricity, the possible influences of which alternating between such agents of dissonant chaos as Spray Paint, Brandy, Rolex, Lumpy and the Dumpers, Cutie and Soupcans, while comparatively slow and disciplined tracks like Bog Witch even exude a bit of a classic ’90s Chicago-style math-/postcore energy.
Wow, now that’s is one marvellous debut EP by this Philadelphia group dealing in a kind of earthy, dissonant and eccentric, yet equally graceful blend of art- and post punk. The monotonous no wave-ish strumming of the opening track The Shield calls to mind the minimalism of Shop Regulars or Honey Bucket while Green Man has more of an early eighties The Fall vibe with further commonalities to, say, fellow philadelphians Toe Ring and B.E.E.F. 39X. The vicious grooves of Gangstalker, holding a delicate balance of dissonance and catchyness, are then approximately channeling some more spiky version of Lithics coupled with some dissonant Glenn Branca- and eighties Sonic Youth guitar work, a bit like we’ve more recently heard from Self Improvement, for example.
Even in the face of pretty much anything that loose collective of musicians gathered around the New York label Decoherence Records has done so far, Gay Cum Daddies still stuck out as one of its most baffling agents of chaos and mischief. In a way, their newest LP is almost what you’d expect of this group at this point, an unwieldy bastard made of atonal and chaotic, no-wave-ish noise that, despite all the clutter and cacophony, never seems random. More than ever before, i get a sense of this group being totally in control of their craft at all times, their nerve-racking jams never leaving a trace of doubt that these dudes do indeed have a master plan. A weird, convoluted and disjointed one for sure, but a plan nonetheless. Once you’ve re-wired your brain to almost make sense of it, it feels like the most transgressive and shocking thing ever when Ribboning Boulder Hands Over Data actually has a discernible 4/4 beat playing for, like, a whole 30 seconds.
Following a strong debut EP that still presented this Antwerp group from a more garage-leaning angle, the follow-up has them going all-in on a post punk vibe which on one hand takes plenty of cues from the James Chance-informed, funky end of the No Wave spectrum while also bearing a slight resemblance to the current Berlin scene and groups like Pigeon and Liiek in particular. I assume then it’s more than just a lucky coincidence this thing got released on Berlin post punk label Mangel Records.
