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.
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.
…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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
