Chimers - Turn On The Lights /​ Closure

Still hav­ing com­pared their last dig­i­tal sin­gle main­ly to the es­tab­lished Mis­sion of Bur­ma for­mu­la, i'll ex­pand that as­sess­ment to a more neb­u­lous tri­an­gle of Bur­ma, Wipers and Son­ic Youth in face of the newest tracks by the Wol­lon­gong, Aus­tralia group - an aes­thet­ic hov­er­ing in­be­tween the worlds of post punk, noise rock and fuzz punk which you might as well com­pare to more con­tem­po­rary groups like ear­ly No Age or re­cent ital­ian sen­sa­tion Or­ren­do Sub­ot­nik.

Die TV - Uno Affo

Com­ing off a se­ries of neat EPs last year, Marmo­ra, New Jer­sey garage group or, prob­a­bly, so­lo artist Die TV re­turns with a new al­bum pre­sent­ing their tunes in an even more stripped-down, low-key man­ner at first glance, yet un­der­neath the unas­sum­ing sur­face un­folds a spec­tac­u­lar fire­works of DIY cre­ativ­i­ty. While at some points you may still find the oc­ca­sion­al speck of Spits or Stal­ins of Sound in there, Die TV's strum­my, jan­g­ly blend of garage- and post punk with sprin­kles of psy­che­delia comes in­to even sharp­er fo­cus here, the min­i­mal­ist pro­duc­tion pro­vid­ing plen­ty of breath­ing room for the melan­choly, sparkling gui­tar arrange­ments with more than a lit­tle hint of Des­per­ate Bi­cy­cles in some places, Pow­er Plant or Freak Genes in oth­ers, even a touch of Dig­i­tal Leather in the mut­ed pop vibes of Goner. Don't let first im­pres­sions fool you, this is quite po­tent and awe­some shit from start to fin­ish!

Al­bum-Stream →

Pig Earth - Exit Wound

A son­ic ex­pe­ri­ence won­der­ful­ly out of touch with the zeit­geist, craft­ed by some Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton group. Prime in­flu­ence here seems to be a whole bat­tery of ear­ly-to-mid eight­ies, loose­ly SST and Touch & Go-con­nect­ed stuff - on the more strum­my, folk-in­fused side of things ad­mit­ted­ly, but nev­er afraid of spon­ta­neous­ly mor­ph­ing in­to short bursts of hard­core punk ei­ther. Most ob­vi­ous amoung those in­flu­ences would prob­a­bly be shit among the lines of Angst and Meat Pup­pets, ear­ly Di­nosaur Jr. and, sec­on­dar­i­ly, U-Men, Mud­honey and 80s Sci­en­tists, some very slight hints of Dicks and Wipers. Or al­ter­nate­ly, you might think of more re­cent Acts like ear­ly Milk Mu­sic, Dhar­ma Dogs, Chronophage and Damak.

Al­bum-Stream →

Gurk - First

Our week­ly dose of egg­punk in­san­i­ty comes cour­te­sey of some mys­te­ri­ous Stock­holm act, way too short but po­tent and catchy as fuck nonethe­less. Friends of shit á la Nubot555, Egg Id­iot, Prison Af­fair, Set-Top Box, Nuts and Pringue, among oth­ers, will sure­ly ap­prove of this.

Telegenic Pleasure - Concentric Grave

What kind of twist­ed punk stu­dent ex­change pro­gram would lead to an al­bum be­ing record­ed both in Lon­don, On­tario and Lon­don, Eng­land? The band com­mit­ting the deed ap­pears to have connnec­tions to some London's Gag­gers and Mis­cal­cu­la­tions as well as some oth­er London's Iso­la­tion Par­ty and Mononeg­a­tives - the lat­ter be­ing the most ob­vi­ous com­par­i­son though, as their very own brand of spaced-out synth- and garage punk reigns supreme on this record too, along with flour­ish­es of Pow!, Use­less Eaters, Freak Genes, Iso­tope Soap, Mind Spi­ders, Pow­er­plant and Dig­i­tal Leather. Fuck­ing awe­some shit, in oth­er words.

Al­bum-Stream →

Romance - Seven Inches of Romance

A neat lit­tle yet-to-be-pressed 7" by a Syd­ney group sound­ing a lit­tle as if a more spiky ver­sion of Lithics col­lid­ed with the likes of noisy post punkers Brandy, the re­cent noisec­ore of Shove, a very slight hint of Wipers and the an­cient record­ings of noise rock­ers World Dom­i­na­tion En­ter­pris­es.

Al­bum-Stream →

Deletions - STETS

It took the Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia group a few years to tie up the loose ends and fin­ish the pro­duc­tion of this LP but here it fi­nal­ly is, giv­ing us more of their synth-, garage- and post punk that will once again elic­it com­par­isons to Dig­i­tal Leather - es­pe­cial­ly the sim­i­lar­i­ty of the singer's voice to DL's Shawn Foree al­ways strikes me as un­can­ny - al­though Dele­tions at this point sound more like a crud­er, yet si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly pret­ty straight­for­ward and catchy-as-fuck ver­sion of that. In the sec­ond half things lean heav­ier to­wards the post punk, slight­ly goth end of things, bear­ing some sim­i­lar­i­ty to, say, Pow­er­plant, Iso­tope Soap, Why Both­er? or ear­ly The Faint as well as some flour­ish­es of De­vo and Desparate Bi­cy­cles… even a touch of Mor­ri­cone in Dif­fuse and Con­fuse. Not every sin­gle ef­fort on here pays off equal­ly well but when they hit the spot, they do it with brava­do.

Al­bum-Stream →

Electric Prawns 2 - Prawn Static For Porn Addicts

…now that's kind of an in­sane move, dump­ing four to six LPs worth of ma­te­r­i­al in a sin­gle al­bum on band­camp. Didn't see that com­ing at all, good thing we like in­sane shit here at 12XU HQ. With this al­bum the group from Mof­fat Beach, Aus­tralia se­ri­ous­ly earned the ti­tle "The Guid­ed by Voic­es of space egg punk". Amaz­ing­ly, most of this stuff is pret­ty freakin' awe­some too, al­though a fair bit of fat and re­dun­dan­cy sure could've been trimmed off this 2-hour re­lease for an even stronger 80-minute al­bum to emerge in the process. Their high egg-fac­tor mix­ture of Psy­che­del­ic-/Space Rock, Post- and Garage Punk might draw com­par­isons to the likes of Mononeg­a­tives, Neo Neos, Liq­uids, The Gobs, Set-Top Box, Print Head or Use­less Eaters in its more high-en­er­gy mo­ments while in the more re­laxed and/​or down­beat songs, groups like Die TV, Cool Sor­cery, Snoop­er might come to mind or even an ex­tra Lo-Fi ver­sion of the Woolen Men!

Al­bum-Stream →

Dregs - Enemy Not Me

Fol­low­ing up on their al­ready quite awe­some 2019 de­mo, Austin group Dregs shift their sound a good bit away from a more garage- and fuzz punk lean­ing sound, fur­ther to­wards a hard­er to pin-down mix of in­flu­ences on the fringes of 80s-to-mid-90s hard- and post­core, among oth­ers sug­gest­ing the likes of X (US), Dicks or Flip­per at some points, post­core groups like Gray Mat­ter or Dri­ve Like Je­hu at oth­ers while more re­cent bands like Vexx, Cel Ray, Gen Pop or Lit­tle Ug­ly Girls wouldn't sound too far off ei­ther.

Al­bum-Stream →

Waste Man - Waste Man

Ap­par­ent­ly, for­mer­ly New Or­leans-based group Waste Man have re­lo­cat­ed to New York City re­cent­ly. Sound-wise though, they stay true to them­selves on their newest EP, by which i mean they stay un­pre­dictable as ever and keep the lis­ten­ers on their toes every sec­ond in their very own mix­ture on the in­ter­sec­tion of Post Punk, Post­core and slight touch­es of Amer­i­cana (the lat­ter are less ob­vi­ous here though…). Es­pe­cial­ly no­table this time is the six-minute slow-burn track White Horse that plays out kin­da like a fu­sion of ear­ly Shel­lac, Slint, Jaw­box & Fugazi.