Some Los Angeles group consisting of a truly all-star garage lineup delivers a pleasantly quirky mix of garage-, post- and synth punk, sometimes coming across like a crossbreed of Nots and Pow!, or like Primitive Calculators-meet-Useless Eaters in other moments.
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Another release courtesy of Satan. Thanx a lot Satan, we're all big fans of your work over here at 12XU. The newest longplayer on Sydney's exquisite Warttman Label along with italian powerhouse Goodbye Boozy amazes with another fun, fast-paced twenty minutes of oddball garage- and synth punk that has quite a lot in common with other Warttman acts á la Research Reactor Corp., Dot.com, Set-Top Box. Other than that, comparisons to early Useless Eaters or Ausmuteants don't seem too far fetched either.
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Well... i like to discourage folks from mailing me physical copies of stuff for good reason, since in most cases all this amounts to is a tremendous waste of money and natural resources while digital files are way easier to dispose of. However, these seven inches of black PVC arriving at my doorstep from a duo based not that far away from... said doorstep, has quite a bit of unexpected class - propulsive synth punk in a manner you might currently associate with the likes of Le Prince Harry, Clarko, Powerplant or R. Clown, while those english lyrics straight from the Klaus Meine bargain bin just add to its kinda cute & campy DIY charme.
I tried hard to dismiss this Orlando, Florida project as just another cookie cutter DIY synth punk/-garage artifact of our times... with the first EP that was. The second one was able to sow some mistrust in my own judgement. Number three finally served as a reminder on how full of runny shit my dysfunctional lump of grey matter can be sometimes - so bad i wish someone would transplant an anus onto my head. Evolution, you're such a terrible disappointment... These twelve songs are an incredibly fun synth punk ride overall, the kinda pop oriented variety, just getting progressively better with each new EP. Take a juicy bite if you can stand stuff like Trashdog, Warm Exit, Dot.com, Set Top Box, Power Plant, T.L.B.M., Spyroids.
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Melbourne group Moth already had a decent demo out not too long ago, but this new set of tunes is so much stronger. This is your typical contemporary garage-/synth punk stuff, plain and simple… but also quite competently done, packing some serious punch and adding a slight psychedelic touch to the mix - otherwise roughly adhering to the Useless Eaters, Pow!, Flat Worms and Ex-Cult core formulas. You can't go wrong with these.
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While we're at it, speaking of Kitchen People and Warttman Inc., here's another blast of synth punk insanity by some Kitchen People-affiliated solo project, bearing obvious similarities to Warttman acts like Set-Top Box and Research Reactor Corp., with maybe a bit of Digital Leather or Trashdog sprinkled in from time to time.
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The mighty Warttman gang's newest recruits are Kitchen People who have already done a few releases before, although - let's be honest here - none of those has been quite as ripping as their newest EP of appropriately weird, quirky muteant garage-/synth punk. These dudes should fit in comfortably with the rest of Warttman's fucked up bunch.
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So far, the synth-/garage punk project Isotope Soap a.k.a. swedisch punk veteran Peter Swedenhamar has released nothing but top quality stuff in the form of three EPs, all of them were reissued last year on a compilation album via Emotional Response. His first longplayer doesn't dissappoint either. On it, Swedenhamar considerably expands his eclectic raid of obscure punk history, resulting in his most varied and playful release yet, incorporating among other things moments of trippy space punk, pure synth pop, dreamy krautscapes. And of course also a lot of his more straightforward signature Devo-meet-Ausmuteasnts style that made up the bulk of his EPs.
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What a beautifully deranged kind of mess, the second Album by Trashdog a.k.a. Andrew Jackson, the dude also responsible for Austin, Texas label Digital Hotdogs. I didn't expect a lot of normalcy here to begin with, but nonetheless i'm kind of astonished by the massive amount of top notch goodness scattered wildly across this record, especially after i found Trashdog's first effort to be of somewhat inconsistent quality. Roughly one third here consists of dumb jokes and various shades of fucking around. Another third turns out to be brilliantly weird and inventive songcraft in a spectrum of garage punk, power pop, synth-/electro punk and a tiny hint of glam. And as for the remaining third, i'm somewhat undecided in which of the first two categories i should file that stuff. The whole of it makes for an awesome, if at times overwhelming, disorienting roller coaster ride. Some kind of white album on stupid pills.
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On their demo, Brussels outfit Warm Exit come up with a flawless little dose of synth-enhanced garage punk, alternately reminding me of contemporary genre powerhouses like Ausmuteants, Dumb, Erik Nervous or Powerplant.
