Affordable Repayments - Can't Win For Losing Some Days

This group from Por­tar­ling­ton, Aus­tralia cre­ates a dron­ing, sprawl­ing and nonethe­less ab­solute­ly rip­ping sound­scape that com­bines the traits of such time­less greats as Wipers, 80s Son­ic Youth, U-Men or Live Skull, just as much as a fuzzy clump of AUS and NZ groups like The Gor­dons, Fun­gus Brains, X and Feed­time.

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Pringue - Random Punk Content Generator

More quirky garage punk in­san­i­ty from that Barcelona group who al­ready made an ex­cel­lent im­pres­sion with pre­vi­ous EP two years ago. Some­what more fo­cused and con­fi­dent sound­ing on this one, this is an­oth­er de­light­ful blast of high-per­cent­age egg-ness in a sim­i­lar vein to, say, R.M.F.C., Set-Top Box, Nuts or Spain's own won­ders of the Prison Af­fair, Fi­nale and Be­ta Max­i­mo va­ri­ety.

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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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Scam Likely - Scam Likely

A duo made up of Ki­mi Recor and Vin­ny "Vaguess" Ear­ley, you can't re­al­ly over­look the sim­i­lar­i­ties to the lat­ter dude's record­ed out­put but there's al­so more go­ing on here. Start­ing off from a fa­mil­iar mix of garage- and post punk there's some clear Lithics kind of en­er­gy in some places or Welt Star, an­oth­er Ear­ley-re­lat­ed project comes to mind while songs like Star­ing at the Sun and Please 3 sound like for­got­ten Woolen Men tunes that fell through the cracks some­where and Chameleon has the vibe of a Dig­i­tal Leather deep cut from an al­ter­nate cold-wave re­al­i­ty.

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Teksti-TV 666 - Vapauden Tasavalta

A new LP by that finnish group with way to many gui­tar play­ers… dun­no, i think 666 was the num­ber last time i count­ed. Here, the band is shift­ing their sound in­creas­ing­ly in­to a psych rock di­rec­tion. Es­pe­cial­ly in TJ they're div­ing head­first in­to Space Rock ter­ri­to­ry and the ef­fort pays of ad­mirably. In oth­er places, they stay true to their brand of melod­ic in­die rock, fuzz punk and noise pop with echoes of No Age, Wavves, Cal­i­for­nia X, Hap­py Div­ing and some ear­ly The Men, which they then in­fuse with sprawl­ing gui­tar drones rem­i­nis­cent of Glenn Bran­ca and 80s Son­ic Youth.

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Catalogue - Modern Delusion

It took me a while to no­tice but the newest LP by Mar­seille group Cat­a­logue turns out to be their strongest ef­fort to date. Where their sound could still be a lit­tle tir­ing on their pre­vi­ous LP, they show a lot more va­ri­ety on their newest one keep­ing things in­ter­est­ing through­out. Their noisy post punk, as usu­al be­ing dri­ven for­ward by eight­ies-style drum ma­chine beats, may owe a lit­tle to Big Black in some parts, Live Skull in oth­ers or some no-wave dis­so­nance gets loaded up with catchy hooks. In House­plants we even get to hear some al­most synth-/new wave stylings.

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Cel Ray - Cellular Raymond

Much stronger than i fig­ured at first glance, the de­but tape by Chica­go group Cel Ray. This shit is car­ry­ing sim­i­lar vibes to some of the great fe­male-front­ed punk groups of our time like Vexx, Neg­a­tive Scan­ner, Judy & The Jerks, Amyl and the Snif­fers, All Hits, The Neu­ros, BB and the Blips… while al­so ap­par­ent­ly tak­ing cues from a larg­er clus­ter of groups on the in­ter­sec­tion of post- and garage punk á la Pat­ti, Re­al­i­ty Group, Ura­ni­um Club, Ex-Cult or Mys­tic Inane.

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Klint & Orrendo Subotnik - Split

Synth punk mae­stro Klint doesn't need an in­tro­duc­tion here at this point, i guess. His half of this awe­some split cas­sette gives us an­oth­er three ar­ti­facts skimmed off the top of that bot­tom­less pit of pure cre­ativ­i­ty that dude seems to mag­i­cal­ly con­jure up as soon as some­one al­lows him to plug a ca­ble in­to any­thing.
Or­ren­do Sub­ot­nik from Pisa, Italy then craft a very dif­fer­ent, yet no less ex­cit­ing sound­scape. Hav­ing sent some shock­waves al­ready with their ul­tra-rough sec­ond tape last year, their sound comes in­to much sharp­er fo­cus here. A weird mix­ture that is, charg­ing up the noise pop and fuzz punk of acts like ear­ly No Age, Male Bond­ing or Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, noisy and dark­ly melod­ic post punk á la Die! Die! Die!, Piles or Times Beach, with a de­cid­ed­ly hard-/post­core kind of en­er­gy and a sense of widescreen dra­ma you might ex­pect of Low­er or ear­ly Iceage… among tons of oth­er stuff i've yet to un­pack.

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Italia 90 - Living Human Treasure

A new LP by Italia 90, best kept se­cret of con­tem­po­rary british post punk, who so far have man­aged to com­plete­ly avoid as well as out­live the hype cy­cle some of their peers have been rid­ing hard over the past few years. Hard to be­lieve at this point that this is ac­tu­al­ly their first full length re­lease. Over­all, they're stay­ing true to them­selves here with­out mak­ing things too easy ei­ther for them­selves or the au­di­ence, strik­ing a del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween catchy tunes á la New Fac­to­ry, Tales From Be­yond and more cum­ber­some son­ic as­saults like Mag­da­lene and Gol­gatha. Oth­er­wise, a slight­ly Wire-es­que open­ing track gives way to a more fa­mil­iar sound­scape ow­ing a lot to the clas­sics of, among oth­ers, Swell Maps and Mem­branes, the oc­ca­sion­al hint of Crass. Or al­ter­nate­ly, you might al­so draw some com­par­isons to more re­cent acts like Ex­ek, ear­ly Pro­tomar­tyr.

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Kudzu - Kudzu

This Greenville, South Car­oli­na group kicks up an ex­cel­lent rack­et lo­cat­ed somwhere in­be­tween the gears of garage punk, post punk and post­core bear­ing some sim­i­lar­i­tiy to more re­cent stuff á la Big Bop­per, Mys­tic Inane, Doll­house, Cutie, Wymyns Prysyn, Cri­sis Man… just as much as to clas­sic pieces by the likes of Dri­ve Like Je­hu, Hot Snakes, Na­tion Of Ulysses, Rites of Spring or Gray Mat­ter.

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