Nervous Tick and the Zipper Lips - The Monochromatic Mind Of… /​ More Monochromatic

Af­ter a some­what mixed bag of a cas­sette four years ago and a string of col­lab­o­ra­tion EPs with the likes of Eyes And Flies, Sci­ence Man and Ricky Hell, the newest al­bum and ac­com­pa­ny­ing ex­tend­ed play cas­sette of Buf­fa­lo, NY group Ner­vous Tick and the Zip­per Lips sees them re­turn­ing at their most fo­cused to date, their mix of post-, garage- and synth punk with just a slight hint of in­dus­tri­al com­ing across like a de­cent mid­dle ground be­tween, say, Droids Blood, Beef and The Spits - far from rein­vent­ing the wheel here but al­ways en­er­getic, catchy and ef­fec­tive.

Al­bum-Stream →

iPad Baby - TradCath Terrorists

iPad Ba­by of Glass­boro, New Jer­sey first came to my at­ten­tion with a fun lit­tle de­but EP last fall but their newest EP/mi­ni-LP thingy is just a so much stronger, more con­sis­tent ef­fort in which they di­al the weird en­er­gy and cre­ativ­i­ty up to eleven, co­a­lesc­ing in­to a new lump of com­plete­ly off-the-rails in­san­i­ty sure to please dis­cern­ing fans of all kinds of oth­er un­med­icat­ed, beau­ti­ful train­wrecks in the realm of Egg-, Synth- and Garage Punk as done by the likes of Zoids, The Gobs, Ma­teo Man­ic, Prison Af­fair, Met­dog, Nuts or Nubot555, to name a few.

Al­bum-Stream →

Balaclava - The 1/​4 Inch Almanac

A buck­et­load of un­healthy sug­ary joy, the sec­ond EP by this NY act de­liv­er­ing a quirky and catchy mix of synth- and garage-, art- and egg­punk that skill­ful­ly and pre­cise­ly hits kind of a sweet spot in­be­tween the son­ic worlds of, say, Met­dog, Smirk and Cher­ry Cheeks, more or less. Good shit!

Al­bum-Stream →

Sex Mex - Cold, Not Cute

A new EP by the San An­to­nio, Texas group and as al­ways i'm hap­py to say that Sex Mex still sound very much like Sex Mex, their mix­ture of garage- and synth punk, noise- and pow­er pop trans­port­ing the aes­thet­ics of on­ly the most catchy and melod­ic ar­ti­facts out of the whole Reatard era. Re­li­able shit that doesn't try any­thing fun­ny and in­stead just de­liv­ers on the hooks!

The EP suf­fers from non-em­bed­d­a­ble band­camp dis­ease, but you can lis­ten to the whole thing over at their band­camp page.

The Gobs - The Gobs

New shit by these Olympia, Wash­ing­ton Lo-Fi punks and you kin­da know what's gonna hit you: More of that de­li­cious­ly blown out and catchy-as-fuck garage-/elec­tro/­fuzz punk de­men­tia for the mod­er­ate­ly de­sen­si­tized mind, hell­bent on dam­ag­ing your speak­ers, cor­rupt­ing your soul, spilling your booze and puk­ing on your car­pet. Very neg­a­tive in­flu­ence these kids, stay away!

Al­bum-Stream →

Spewed Brain - Spewed Brain

Fol­low­ing up on their much rougher, hard­core-lean­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Heart­throb EP of last year, Indiana's Spewed Brain take their sound in­to a catch­i­er, slight­ly egg-ish di­rec­tion on their new LP while stay­ing de­light­ful­ly fucked-up and un­pre­dictable, at dif­fer­ent times re­mind­ing me of groups as di­verse as, say, Trau­ma Har­ness, Print Head, Exwhite, The Gobs, Snoop­er, Rolex, Witch Piss or Slimex.

Al­bum-Stream →

O-D-EX - Breaker

Fol­low­ing their per­fect­ly ap­pe­tiz­ing (and as far as i can make out, com­plete­ly van­ished off the face of the in­ter­net by now) Black Box EP in 2022, we get this group's de­but full-length cour­te­sey of Dirt­nap Records and this time around, there's ac­tu­al­ly some tan­gi­ble back­ground in­fo avail­able. No won­der these folks sound­ed fa­mil­iar the first time around, since we're deal­ing with a duo con­sist­ing of US garage punk roy­al­ty Mark Ryan (most no­tably of Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Mind Spi­ders and Marked Men) and Mic­ah Why, whose pre­vi­ous bands i don't think i've ever come across. Their min­i­mal­ist synth punk cer­tain­ly has re­tained some of that Mind Spi­ders vibe al­though this shit is a lot dark­er, more stripped-down and abra­sive, hav­ing a cer­tain old­school vibe to it wich echoes of Min­i­mal Man, Ner­vous Gen­der, Scream­ers, Units or Vis­i­tors but you might just as well com­pare them to more re­cent phe­nom­e­na like Pow­er­plant, Pow!, Spy­roids or a some­what less spikey ver­sion of Lost Pack­ages cross­bred with the dig­i­tal in­san­i­ty of Nubot555, the more min­i­mal­ist mo­ments of Dig­i­tal Leather.

Al­bum-Stream →

Billiam - Jump To 3D

Al­righty, so here's a new Bil­liam record do­ing all the awe­some tricks a new Bil­liam record's sup­posed to do and by now i'm sure you've long since made up your mind about the dude and whether you love or hate his schtick - kin­da the mu­si­cal equiv­a­lent to a Wes An­der­son flick i guess. I'm firm­ly in the "love" camp con­cern­ing both Bil­liam and Wes An­der­son though and even if they'd both just con­tin­ue to re-make that ex­act same kind of film/​record for the rest of their lives, i can al­ways take one more of that!

Al­bum-Stream →

Metdog - Questions and Answers Regarding Computers and Screens

It's shap­ing up to be a pret­ty awe­some week for egg­punk al­ready, helped fur­ther along by an­oth­er genre fix­ture of the last cou­ple years, Melbourne's Met­dog, hav­ing just re­leased their full length de­but af­ter an im­pec­ca­ble string of EPs and sin­gles. They promised shit about com­put­ers and oh boy do we get shit about com­put­ers here, leav­ing more ques­tions than an­swers though, most of which be­gin with "What the fuck…?". Per­fect­ly un­der­scor­ing the sub­ject mat­ter we get to wit­ness the group at their most elec­tron­i­cal­ly in­clined so far, their over­all vibe here be­ing rem­i­nis­cent of a bizarre 8-bit mashup of vin­tage Aus­muteants with the dis­tinct added flour­ish of Win­dows 3.11 mi­di files.

Al­bum-Stream →

Rude Television - I Want To Believe

Hav­ing first come to my at­ten­tion via a split tape with AJ Cortes and The Bur­glars, this group from West Palm Beach, Flori­da has on­ly got­ten stronger with every new re­lease and this one is no ex­cep­tion, de­liv­er­ing a new round of catchy, com­pact blasts in the some­what eggy realms of pow­er pop, synth- and garage punk evok­ing thor­ough­ly fa­vor­able com­par­isons to the likes of Gee Tee, Erik Ner­vous, Vaguess and Sa­tan­ic To­gas.

Al­bum-Stream →