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 →

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.

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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 →

Gee Tee - Goodnight Neanderthal

New stuff from Gee Tee or Vee or what­ev­er, this dude's shit is all good! On this LP, he's hold­ing a nice bal­ance be­tween the pow­er pop ten­den­cies of his re­cent Tee Vee Re­pair­man records and the some­what more garage-lean­ing projects of his á la Sa­tan­ic To­gas, Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp. and Set-Top Box, mak­ing for an­oth­er fine batch of fuzzed-out garage pop tunes, among them some of his most in­fec­tious ones so far, that's for sure.

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People's Temple /​ Hood Rats /​ Hickey

Three hard­core re­leas­es es­pe­cial­ly stuck out this week, all of 'em more or less tread­ing off the genre's beat­en paths. The most con­ven­tion­al­ly sound­ing - rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing of course - is the EP by People's Tem­ple on NY la­bel Roach­Leg Records, giv­ing us an ex­treme­ly tune­ful vari­a­tion on 80s hard­core, at times com­ing across like a blend of Cir­cle Jerks with ear­ly-to-mid­dle-era Naked Ray­gun and with oc­ca­sion­al flour­ish­es of Hüsker Dü to boot. Of more re­cend Bands, Fried E/​m might al­so fit the bill.
Hickey's tape on Arch­fiend records then in­fus­es con­tem­po­rary strands of garage-, synth- and egg­punk weird­ness with plen­ty of old­school hard­core en­er­gy, along the way al­so evok­ing the some vibes of Flip­per, Spike in Vain, Bro­ken Tal­ent… With this re­lease, we might just be en­ter­ing the eggcore era!
Montreal's Hood Rats op­er­ate in a vague­ly sim­i­lar ter­ri­to­ry, al­so hav­ing a sound ground­ed in garage punk brim­ming with lo-fi egg­punk quirky­ness just as much as with an un­kempt KBD en­er­gy and the tunes to make it stick.

Al­bum-Streams →

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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Power Pants - Power Pants

Here's your oblig­a­tory week­ly fix of melod­ic garage-/egg-/synth punk shit, this time com­ing from a Win­ches­ter, Vir­ginia out­fit whose quirky nois­es will sure­ly sat­is­fy the needs of af­fic­i­na­dos pri­mar­i­ly of the austal­ian scene in­clud­ing acts such as Aus­muteants, Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp., R.M.F.C., Set-Top Box, Tee Vee Re­pair­man, Eu­gh, Daugh­ter Bat & The Lip Stings… as well as some US acts á la Er­ic Ner­vous, Sex Mex and Liq­uids.

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Klint - Guilty

More great fod­der by synth-/elec­tro viking punk mae­stro Klint on this nice com­pi­la­tion avail­able ei­ther dig­i­tal­ly or dubbed on­to pre-loved cas­sette stock, if you're so in­clined - i do cer­tain­ly ap­prove of that, giv­ing old cas­settes a new home! So what we got here is a mix of old shit you might have heard al­ready, old shit you prob­a­bly haven't heard yet and new shit you def­i­nite­ly haven't. Oh and then ap­par­ent­ly there's al­so the mat­ter a of a cou­ple of re­cent­ly un­earthed an­cient wax cylin­ders, glo­ri­ous­ly rough around the edges and un­played since ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1904-1912. Neat!

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Witch Piss - Tape 1

A quick and pain­less at­tack of garage- and synth punk equal­ly catchy and noisy by some group or per­son from Si­mi Val­ley, Cal­i­for­nia. This is more than a lit­tle rem­i­nis­cent to con­tem­po­rary genre pow­er­hous­es such as S.B.F., The Gobs, Slimex, Ghoulies, Quit­ter or C.H.I.M.P., among many oth­ers and every bit as good.

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Die TV - Side D

Side num­ber four by Marmo­ra, New Jer­sey garage trou­ba­dor Die TV is yet an­oth­er su­per-sol­id batch of garage-/synth-/elec­tro punk minia­ture good­ness. Not much more to add to that oth­er than what i al­ready said about his pre­vi­ous re­leas­es: Friends of weird­ness in the same or­bit as, say, Pow­er­plant, Stal­ins of Sound, Erik Ner­vous, The Spits, Set-Top Box, Dig­i­tal Leather… re­joice!

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