Bastard Noise / Oldest split LP (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia)
As humanity continues to do the exact opposite of learn from its lessons, Bastard Noise continues to shriek in the endless night, a skeletal finger pointing towards the doomsday clock. Of all the hardcore archeology that has taken place over the last ten, twenty years, it’s killing me that an officially-sanctioned Man Is The Bastard book doesn’t yet exist, but until that eventuality, it’s great to check in with Eric Wood’s prolific Bastard Noise output, whose sounds and styles vary far greater than the name implies. “Intermittent Burial Grounds Of Retention” is their sole track here, and it’s Bastard Noise in post-dystopian wasteland drone mode, the sound of soot-filled winds whipping through the skeletal remains of CVS and Walmart. Here, Wood vocalizes in one of his more avian techniques, screaming his fearsome admonitions. A moment of wild improvised noise eventually disturbs the sinister tranquility before the track concludes with a comatose pulse and a chorus of dark angels. We’re in bad shape as a species, aren’t we? Flip it over for Oldest, the intriguing duo of Orthrelm guitar virtuoso Mick Barr and the leading hardcore-punk chef of our time, Brooks Headley, on drums. Barr’s been into the whole blackened/thrashened metal thing for a minute now, and that seems to be the basic aesthetic here, albeit with plenty of Barr’s trademarked discordant speed-picking on display. They even cover Man Is The Bastard’s “Combat Weed”, because one can never Serve The Skull enough, but not before having a little fun with a cooking-show-based voicemail on “The Rant”. Eric Wood-curated Superiority Burger menu when?

Michael Beach Big Black Plume LP (Goner)
Michael Beach has been in his feelings lately – haven’t we all – and he channels that contemplative energy by sitting up straight in front of his piano, his fingers expressing what his words cannot. It wasn’t so long ago that people would just commonly have these big things in their houses, sitting there ready to be played, and though Beach hasn’t forsaken his first love (the guitar), Big Black Plume is piano-centric in that vintage way, with a talented cast of players ready to help turn a small kernel of a musical idea into a grand swirling gesture. I’m talking Mick Turner on guitar, and both Utrillo Kushner and Joe Talia on drums, though not simultaneously – can you imagine how jealous Water Damage would be? Beach’s songs are timeless, beautifully scuffed-up diamonds, sounding like he should’ve brought his band out on Martin Scorcese’s The Last Waltz, though if Beach were even alive at the time, it’s unlikely that his boogers had quite as much cocaine as Neil Young’s. It’s wild that there are still so many commercial rock stations all across the United States, and even though they’ll play “Dream On” and “Stairway To Heaven” once an hour, the only modern stuff they play is Halestorm, The Struts and Seether, crap no one wants or needs. It’s downright criminal that more ears aren’t hearing these songs, considering how widely and thoroughly they could be enjoyed, but what isn’t criminal these days?

Moses Brown Stone Upon Stone LP (Post Present Medium)
Institute vocalist Moses Brown has been working overtime in these post-pandemic years, releasing not only Institute’s fourth album but two full-lengths under his glammy post-punk Peace De Résistance moniker and now this, his first release under the name on his driver’s license. Brown seems to value a lot of the same things I do in music – roughness, simplicity, erudition without pretense, humorous ideas presented seriously – and while Stone Upon Stone is certainly an outlier in his discography, that sensibility remains. Primarily a vocalist, Brown is letting his melodic arrangements do the talking on this ten-song instrumental suite, based around a mellotron and the classic EMS VCS3 synthesizer. It’s like DIY post-punk elevator music, layered compositions of retro-sounding keys played tastefully, melodies that commit a sense of longing, perhaps nostalgic for a time that wasn’t particularly happy. The press release compares Stone Upon Stone to Philip Glass, though that’d be like me comparing my defense in the paint to Dennis Rodman – the charm lies in Brown’s gusto, tackling minimalist composition with an ear for interesting sounds (all those exorbitant strings in “Taking Out The Trash”) and without formal conservatorial training. My favorite cut might actually be the sole bass and guitar tune, “Steel I-Beams”, reminiscent of G.B. Beckers’ Walkman with a similar sense of far-flung tranquility. It’s unclear if the point was to unclog Brown’s emotional pipelines or flex his compositional muscles, but it seems he managed to do both.

Brözerker Stay Rad! 12″ (Tor Johnson)
Tell me this doesn’t sound like a hallucinatory AI response to a prompt for a flipped-brim thrash-redux supergroup: “Municipal Waste + The Beach Boys + Suicidal Tendencies + Mötley Crüe = Brözerker, featuring members of: Stretch Arm Strong, Wretched and Guyana Punch Line”. That’s what the sticker says on the cover of Brözerker’s debut one-sided twelve-inch, and I still can’t believe any of it is serious or real. Reality is nothing if not unreal at this point, so let’s assume someone actually thinks Stay Rad! sounds like that aforementioned mix of bands, and that it somehow features someone from Italian hardcore legends Wretched in its ranks. Or not… wouldn’t be the first time I was duped by wacky thrash! Mercifully, Brözerker generally sticks to hardcore / punk / thrash influences, which ends up sounding like a godforsaken mash-up of Iron Reagan, NOFX, Attack Attack! and Deaf Club in their clutches. Unless the members of Stretch Arm Strong, Wretched and Guyana Punch Line recruited a teenager to write the lyrics, I’m amazed that their songs about surfing, drinking beer, drinking more beer and skating were written in earnest by middled-aged men – “I Just Wanna” is so developmentally stunted that it rival’s Blink 182’s prose. There’s probably some tiny town in Southern California or on the Virginia coastline still frozen in 2001, where skateboarding skeletons, keg parties, ironic heavy-metal appreciation and Jackass are fresh and exciting aesthetic concepts, and I’m issuing Brözerker instructions to take my corpse there and drop me into the half-pipe with an alien-face bong immediately upon my death.

Copiers Third LP (Future Heart Works)
I’ll give you one guess as to the number of full-lengths this brings Copiers up to! The Louisville-based group released their first album in the ill-fated year of 2020, and they have been coming together on infrequent occasions since. They play occasional shows locally, seemingly focused on writing their complex (but not prog-rock complex) instrumental rock songs in private, recording them in a studio setting, and moving on. In line with the way post-punky, neo-krauty rock music generally works, the bassist carries the melody in repetitive motifs, the drums find an interesting way to support it, and the guitars and synths play footsy alongside, both given freer range than their rhythmic counterparts. It’s art-rock in a decipherable way, math-rock at a college-prep level, post-hardcore that seems perfectly content to forget about hardcore entirely. Pleasant and interesting music to be sure, even if they never take any big swings, push any envelopes or freak out anyone but the most conservative of squares. It’s gotta be kind of a tough sell in today’s musical landscape, this band that doesn’t tour or push the needle forward or even bother with a singer that’s looking for a sliver of the already ruthlessly-pursued attention span of a prospective listener, so unless they have a sizable extended social network with plenty of disposable income, I can’t imagine many copies of Third are flying out the door. I suppose that just makes it all the more special for the determined few who choose to bring this album into their lives.

Dana Clean Living LP (no label)
Gonna hope that the basis for Dana self-releasing their newest album Clean Living was an intentional act and not simply due to a lack of other options. It’s getting hard out there – with the exception of like half a dozen full-time-doin’-it underground imprints, the playing field is sadly sparse in 2025, though the factors that conspire against the prolonged existence of non-reissue DIY punk record labels continue to increase in number and severity. I say all this because Dana is one cool-ass group outta Columbus, Ohio, and you’d think (or at least hope) that some fanatic with two grand in his/her/their pocket would want to throw it at a record like this one. Clean Living is fired-up and wiggly, taking inspiration from various eras of dance-punk but delivering the goods with an overt aggression that avoids tipping into modes of spastic freakout or cliché. Vocalist Madeline Jackson also plays the theremin, and while she’s undeniably kooky by typical office-worker standards, there’s a steely coolness to these songs that is lacking in much of the day-glo-colored neo-no-wave realm. You can think of Suburban Lawns and Devo with regard to Dana, but you should also think of The Stooges and Royal Trux and like, Jayne County & The Electric Chairs, for cryin’ out loud. They certainly could’ve opened for Pere Ubu at any time in Pere Ubu’s lengthy existence, and they wouldn’t have even had to drive very far! If there was a collaborative sub-label between Skin Graft and Goner, Dana would be a perfect fit, but until that comes to pass, I’m glad that they took it upon themselves to ensure the world has a chance to hear “R U Dead?” and “7 Years Bad Coke” regardless of outside benefactors. If Brian Turner doesn’t play one of those on his show I’m gonna send him a sternly-worded email.

Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band New Threats From The Soul 2xLP (Sophomore Lounge)
Known as Mr. Cool Lyrics around these parts, Ryan Davis and his trusty Roadhouse Band seem to have gotten the shine they so rightly deserve with New Threats From The Soul. When they released Dancing On The Edge back in 2023, I was one of only a couple folks chattering publicly about the tender skills of Davis and co., and now I’m probably 100th in line to sing the praises of New Threats From The Soul, thanks to a savvy opening slot on an MJ Lenderman tour and the falling-domino hive-mind of whatever counts as our contemporary music-crit sphere. If anything, it’s wild that it took the world this long to notice, as what Davis is doing (and has been doing) is incredibly easy to enjoy: melodic indie-Americana from a road-tested ensemble of players with a kindhearted singing voice and endless reams of memorable one-liners, outrageous metaphors and hilarious punchlines. (Unlike everywhere else, I won’t quote any here – if you choose to listen, you’ll quickly find your own personal favorites.) It hits the sweet spot of today’s Spotify-poisoned audiences who just want music to throw on and politely ignore as well as agoraphobic music nerds who thrive by closely listening to and dissecting every last strum and syllable. That’s a lot of context for this record, so I should mention that none of it is necessary to enjoy New Threats From The Soul. The songs are long, the sonic flourishes are inspired (string sections, acid synths, Clavinet, sticky-sweet pedal steel, Jim Marlowe!), and the heart is bursting from its hand-stitched confines, resolute and self-assured no matter if this music’s only heard by Davis’s closest friends or praised in the pages of The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal. Oh and most prestigiously, Yellow Green Red too.

Dragnet Dragnet Reigns LP (Spoilsport)
Much like the television show of the same name, Dragnet keep their tongue planted firmly in their cheek. Theirs is a fairly impenetrable layer of irony/sarcasm, but I chuckled at the large “autograph panel” on the front cover, and a good chuckle is what counts, right? Led by Jack Cherry (also of Vintage Crop), the group plays a caffeinated form of poppy post-punk, too polished to be egg-punk, too straight-laced to be Guerilla Toss and too sardonic to be Eddy Current but clearly in musical conversation with all three. Cherry’s vocal delivery is uncomfortably friendly, delivered with the tonal register of a game-show host, a sort of mutually-understood phoniness presumably to be received as commentary on this wacky world we live in. Those who like that sort of abrasively-deadpan style might love Dragnet, and those who don’t, well, there’s always Motörhead. There’s also the sense that Dragnet don’t mind if someone thinks a certain dance-move or guitar-lick of theirs is corny or uncool – they’re similar to Parquet Courts in that way, handling themselves with a sort of self-assured nerdiness that, in my experience, can sprout from attending ska shows as an impressionable teenager. It’s not all big plastic smiles, though: “Shadowboard” takes aim at some of Melbourne’s high-falootin’ wannabes by driving its beat-up hatchback directly into the club, the specificity of its lyrics knocking some deserving sucker down a few pegs with glee. Call me a busybody but it’s my favorite song here.

Easy Sevens Guitar Music LP (Listening House)
But what kinda guitar music?? A lot of different people have done a lot of different things with the guitar, but Will Boone takes it all the way country, to a fake-nostalgic land of proud men who work hard, get dirty, and fall asleep drunk, often all in the same unchanged pair of jeans. Boone seems to have some sort of personal relation with the wildly popular internet clothier Online Ceramics, and I can sniff out some of the same modern-hipster rinsing of classic Americana, in that both entities know how to focus on the aesthetic aspects that remain appealing while ditching those that aged poorly – case in point, there isn’t a single overtly racist or sexist song on Guitar Music, you’ll be pleased to know. Feels like Guitar Music would’ve been a great fit for the Sophomore Lounge label, the current leading arbiters of folksy, throwback, rough n’ ready, underground country music, as Easy Sevens hits similar highs, easy breezy songs about being down and out and loving it. Opener “Like A Dog” sounds like it was recorded in the shed out back and it hooks you in with a line about how he feels “like yesterday’s paper left out in the rain”. About as charming as a countrified white-boy can get in 2025, and unlike fellow sonic travelers Animal Piss It’s Everywhere, you can actually wear an Easy Sevens t-shirt in public, even to church on Sunday if you sit in the back.

Editrix The Big E LP (Joyful Noise)
Wendy Eisenberg ranks among today’s gifted guitarist elite, a versatile player comfortable with whatever style she calls upon. That could mean avant-garde Americana on her own, as part of Bill Orcutt’s Guitar Quartet, and as the leader of Editrix, a functional power-trio with Steve Cameron on bass and Josh Daniel on drums (four first names between the two of them!). They operate firmly within the confines of rock, but in the way that a child operates within the confines of an inflatable bounce-house, leaping from wall to floor to fall in unpredictable patterns. In that way, Editrix calls to mind Minutemen and Deerhoof, aggro-rock that has yet to switch over to prog-rock pronouns. I’m also reminded of one of my unsung turn-of-the-century favorites, The Party Of Helicopters, by the way in which spark-flying guitar-theatrics are unleashed over propulsive, off-kilter rhythms, all with a vocalist who melodically coasts over top, unwilling to tangle with the music’s craggy terrain. Traditional emo fans will probably be able to sink their teeth into The Big E as well, seeing as its a known fact that emo kids are generally good at math, and the album doesn’t hide its pop tendencies and emotional vulnerabilities. Algebraic formulas can’t break your heart, but “No” might – it somehow bridges the chasm between Mitski and Mastodon.

Giulio Erasmus & The End Of The Worm Hard Sell LP (Disques De La Spirale)
We’re always welcoming new transmissions from Giulio Erasmus, who probably isn’t dying to advertise to people that he’s the son of Alan Erasmus, seeing as we’re in a time of cultural distaste towards anyone lucky enough to inherit wealth, prestige or fame from their parents, but whatever, it’s cool, he’s safe here! I’d happily join the anti-nepo chorus and point some fingers in Giulio Erasmus’s direction if his music wasn’t up to snuff, but his take on fractured, dubby post-punk is tops regardless of genetic pedigree. Along with his group The End Of The Worm, he brews up a bunch of tracks here, sometimes coming across as vignettes, other times clearly to be taken as hook-based songs. When the electronic drums, chubby bass-lines and outré effects are loosely in place, I’m reminded of those earliest Anika records if she simply wandered into some uninhabitable terrain (desert, jungle, mountain range) and never came back – how else to explain “Far And Thin”, a neon web of cowbells, plucked strings and electronic moans that bears no resemblance to Earthly behavior. I’m also reminded that I need to spend more time with that crazy-that-it-happened collaboration between Sun Araw and The Congos from 2012, as much of Hard Sell shares that psychedelic-dub feel of time dripping, syrup-like, through your fingers onto the linoleum kitchen floor. You can’t even trust a song title like “Bombast”: in Erasmus’s hands, the concept is less explosive and more like being stuck in a sweltering elevator, its ASMR voices daring you to jump and see what happens.

Fleas Of Mercy The 8th Of May LP (Stucco)
Few keep Austin as weird as the Stucco label, bringing the non-conformist vibes of its Olympia, WA origins to the *venture-capitalist zombie voice* “Live Music Capital of the World”. Stucco like both styles of music, hardcore-punk and not hardcore-punk, of which Fleas Of Mercy falls into the latter. And this record absolutely rules! I’m hearing stumble-clatter DIY pop akin to XV’s On The Creekbeds On The Thrones if it was executively produced by Honey Bane and she threw out all the fast songs, or one of those worst-selling Flying Nun records that now commands the highest collector prices. Fleas Of Mercy is one Lynsey Robertson, but it sounds like a band to me, with a guitar strumming entry-level chords, a flimsy bass-guitar and a variety of unorthodox sounds used for percussive and dramatic effects. When the notes are slightly off, the music falls into a dark hole redolent of This Kind Of Punishment, which, for my enjoyment and yours, happens frequently. But it also still feels undeniably punk, perhaps mostly in spirit, but also in the fearlessness and ingenuity of songwriting, from the jarring, must-hear “Angels” to the brief, Death In June-esque segue of “Dirge”. Moody, beautiful, unrestrained music from start to finish, limited to one hundred vinyl copies with the weirdly-printed sleeve and inserts that such a work demands. In case I need to spell it out: strongly recommended!

Giglinger Shrapnel 7″ (no label)
Did you know that Giglinger has been out there in Finland putting out their own seven-inch records since 1997? Me neither! The world is full of surprises, many of which exist outside of the trending topics of the day… it’s nice to be reminded of the unknowable vastness of all the music that is happening on our planet, even if much of it isn’t necessarily interesting. I’d probably have to say as much for Giglinger’s Shrapnel EP, as the group plays a very fundamental form of grungy punk rock, probably more likely to be used as evidence of the “punk is dead” argument than its opposing viewpoint. “The Man With Shrapnel In His Head” repeats its one basic idea with radio-static vocals and a surfy guitar solo (which must be why they refer to it as Dead Kennedys-like in the promo sheet). “Born Dead Buried Alive” is basically the same thing with some slight riff modifications, equally as uninspired in both sound and structure. Strangely, the b-side features two short “edits” of those songs, in case you wanted to hear these two songs in shortened form for some reason? Most interesting to me is how digital the whole thing sounds, punk that was born and raised inside GarageBand, complete with extremely fake-sounding drums (though credited to a presumable human named Jimi). Is it possible that all of his cymbal hits are that precisely uniform in sound and resonance, or is “Jimi” as much of a masquerade as Snowy Shaw on King Diamond’s classic drum-programmed The Eye? Release the footage of Jimi playing the damn drums if you want us to believe.

God’s Hand Gift Of Flowers / Remodelled 7″ (Hard Art / Illuminati)
Manicured with a clear protective topcoat and sporting bristly white knuckle hair, here’s God’s Hand! This intriguing debut single comes from the alleged locale of Iowa City, but then how do you explain the rabid Cockney accent heard on “Gift Of Flowers”? It sounds like a PiL record played at 45 instead of 33, flailing in a pre-grunge noise-rock sorta way. Killing Joke, perhaps? However you wanna slice it, it’s lots of fun, and I love imagining a live rendition reverberating down an Iowa City alley, spooking the squares who are hustling past to catch the previews before the latest Marvel feature film. “Remodelled” is gloriously spelled wrong, which of course means it might actually be spelled correctly in the Queen’s English, and it opts for a more straightforwardly punk approach. The melody is barely more than two of the most popular music notes of all-time alternated back and forth, which of course is a fine way to be punk, and the vocalist, though more tuneful and restrained than on “Gift Of Flowers”, still shouts in an un-American accent. And what’s this – the seven-inch vinyl itself bears a copyright statement to confirm that it was manufactured in Great Britain? Why?? If there’s a secret underground tunnel linking Iowa City and Shoreditch, fold me into the next available pneumatic tube, please.

Golomb The Beat Goes On LP (No Quarter)
Golomb pulls off the impossible with their debut full-length – they present guitar-centric indie-rock as a vibrant, exciting, youthful affair in 2025! Our current era is dominated by ’90s dinosaurs politely running through their alt-rock hits for similarly greying audiences, so an album like The Beat Goes On is a necessary corrective, a reminder that there are plenty of good times to be had without the cushy reassurance of nostalgia. (In that way, it’s similar to Lifeguard, sans the emo/core influences.) This Columbus trio are immediately appealing – I first encountered them in person, unloading gear from their car into a club, and they even managed to be charming in this basic act of band drudgery (and later in the evening, thrilling on stage). Golomb’s style is very much indebted to the old-timers I’m throwing shade at, your Breeders, Superdrag, Lemonheads, Fountains Of friggin’ Wayne, etc., and their take on this Matador-cosigned form of quintessential indie-rock is inspired and super fun. Rather than settle into a formula, their songs vary in tempo, texture, style and delivery, which has me wondering if all three band members aren’t contributing to the songwriting or if one of them is truly this multifaceted. “Play Music” is pure “Range Life”-y Pavement; “Staring” bounces like The Apples In Stereo; “Real Power” is like the Velvet Underground wearing Kurt Vile’s crusty flannels. It’s easy to claim any one of these tracks as your favorite, but The Beat Goes On rolls on so happily and freely that there’s no reason to choose.

John Grant Richard Sen Remixes 12″ (Darkness Is Your Candle)
John Grant deserves a better fan than me – I seem to keep forgetting that he exists, and whenever I stumble back upon his music, I’m always a little stunned to remember that he totally rules. The singer-songwriter has been belting out his hilariously dry pop songs for many years now, all with the big-medium-money backing of Bella Union, and yet this new EP of techno remixes by Richard Sen is what it took to remind me most recently of his lyrical and vocal potency. Grant’s voice is lush, well-trained and thrillingly grand, like if Anohni had a show-tune obsessed brother who shared her razor wit and flair for the dramatic. Grant delivers shocking insults and crude jokes with the purr of a handsome panther, and a couple of exceptional examples from 2015’s Grey Tickles, Black Pressure are given the techno remix treatment here. So captivating is his voice, in fact, that it took me a few spins before I noticed how inconsequential Richard Sen’s mixes are… the programming is simplistic and subdued, and while I understand the desire to showcase Grant’s powerhouse persona, it all feels a bit phoned-in. Kind of ironic that Sen chose to remix “Disappointing”, as that’s how I’d rate the instrumental version of that same track, included here… why bother pressing it when you’re negating the best part? Even so, I’m not mad at Richard Sen in the slightest – he clearly has good taste, and in celebrating the voice of John Grant he reminded me to try and have some good taste of my own, if at all possible.

Index For Working Musik Which Direction Goes The Beam LP (Tough Love)
London ensemble Index For Working Musik impressed me with their full-length debut back in 2023, an eclectic mix of exclusively-cool influences that arrived style-forward and fully-formed. I excitedly peeped Which Direction Goes The Beam in hopes of more tunes that might improve the tarnished rep of “post-punk indie”, and by Jove, they’ve done it again! Across twelve tracks, Index For Working Musik bridge all sorts of interesting gaps, like the ones between Xpressway and K and Neutral Records, or Duster and Nick Drake and This Heat. The group seems to favor studio experimentation and nonlinear songwriting (hope over to “Brain Pan Farmer” for proof) as much as the fine-tuned strum of an electric guitar and the vulnerability of an acoustic one (the eight-minute “Purple Born” that follows bursts with all of that and more). In a way, I’m reminded of those softer, brooding Total Control songs, and what might’ve happened if that band squeezed the lemon of morose indie-rock to make a full pitcher of something resembling lemonade. We all know Total Control are/were one of the coolest, and Index For Working Musik are well on their way to similar achievements.

It’s All Meat It’s All Meat 7″ (Palilalia)
Bill Orcutt’s body of work goes beyond the realm of a tidy retrospective at this point, and only continues to grow with inventive and wholly original records, churned out at a frantic pace. I love the man’s music, yet there are undoubtedly many gaps in his output I need to someday investigate. That day will come, but for now I picked up this archival seven-inch EP of his earliest band, It’s All Meat. That’s gotta be Orcutt on the cover with two other cute ’80s nerds in athletic short-shorts, right? At this point, I would extend Orcutt the grace of having played in a pointless/terrible group in his earliest musical days, but what do you know: It’s All Meat totally rules. These songs feature Orcutt’s familiar high-energy attack, playing riffs in a time signature unbeknownst to the rest of us, with lots of chattering vocals and literal pots n’ pans percussion. “My America” sounds like an early Home Blitz song hijacked by Muppet terrorists. The freedom of performance calls to mind other ’80s trailblazers like Teddy & The Frat Girls and Half Japanese, though I’m sure It’s All Meat was simply, and assuredly, doing their own thing. The lineage to Harry Pussy is clear in these songs, the uncontrived mania an undeniable precedent to what was later to come. Essential, perhaps no, but a dusted-off gem that’s a joy to behold.

Knowso Hypnotic Smack LP (Sorry State)
It’s been a banner year for Nathan Ward and his mirthful companions in Cruelster and Perverts Again, both with new LPs still cooling on the windowsill. Knowso is currently Ward’s duo with Jayson Gerycz (of Cloud Nothings), and generally more of an artful affair than his other projects (if only by small increments). You can comfortably file the group under punk, albeit a form of punk where the guitar generally defers to the bass without the looming specter of funk. As has been the Knowso style, the vocals are delivered in tandem with the 16th notes, a jarring staccato (not entirely unlike Eminem) that enhances the general sense of sonic claustrophobia, like you’re trying to click your way through some piece-of-crap website as it keeps loading cruel and unusual pop-up windows on your screen. Much like Cruelster and Perverts Again, Knowso songs are topical, demented character portraits that are demented because of their pinpoint accuracy. “Club Music Is The Soundtrack” is a standout, not only because of the wonderful title but because of the post-coke paranoia that reeks from its pores like Acqua Di Giò. As Knowso records go, Hypnotic Smack has the most pop sheen (relatively speaking), with the music occasionally taking on wave-y, chunky arrangements I’d associate with Gary Numan or Ric Ocasek. I doubt either of them have had the displeasure of having to reckon with the fact that we live in the same world as Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, though… that’s where Knowso comes in.

K. Kusafuka Re-Musik LP (Bitter Lake Recordings)
Bitter Lake Recordings is a New York-based label in service of reissuing the type of Japanese obscurities that would make even the most seasoned Japanophile collector swallow their gum in disbelief. In the same three-at-a-time style favored by Bitter Lake sister-label Hosianna Mantra (replete with similarly uniform black-and-white graphic design), three albums by K. Kusafuka are now on offer. Fans of the ’90s international noise scene might recall his K2 moniker from various collaborations, tapes, compilations and such, often squeezed between Merzbow and John Wiese on hand-crafted records by and for underground freaks. (Remember that ridiculous B-52’s tribute double CD of noise artists that Andy Ortmann released on his Nihilist label back in 2001? No? Well K2’s on there, because of course he is.) What I didn’t realize is how far back Kusafuka’s work went, and these LPs help clear up the story, reissuing his earliest cassette-only releases that date back to 1983, all released on the ungodly rare DD Records label (I think they were originally made-to-order out of a tiny shop). Of the three, Re-Musik is my favorite, though they’re all of a similar spirit, one based around adventurous drum programming and cold-wave synths, surprisingly not averse to pop. “Fragile Structure (Of Myself)” is sprawling and gorgeous, worthy of inclusion when people discuss the ’80s material from visionaries like Conrad Schnitzler and Manuel Göttsching. Far closer to The Human League than Incapacitants, this music is home-recorded yet sleek, calling to mind SPK in their early synth-pop era and the poppier gems of the Vanity Records label ala BGM and Normal Brain. Both Vanity and DD have received their own retrospective showcases in recent years, and now with the availability of these handsome K. Kusafuka LPs, you can casually name-drop him at parties, too.

Charmaine Lee Tulpa LP (Kǒu)
As one of the preeminent academic- and underground-respected noise artists of the post-Covid era, Charmaine Lee was overdue for a fresh solo album, so she took it upon herself (alongside producer/partner Randall Dunn) to form the Kŏu Records label and release it. Tulpa feels like a definitive statement of her practice, or at least her practice as it exists in 2025 – as her scattered digital, cassette and collaborative releases show, Lee’s artistry is dynamic and rapidly evolving, in defiance of stagnancy. To date, she’s focused on the wide range of sounds she can make with her mouth, and that’s what you get with this attractively-designed LP. Wheezes, giggles, gurgles, melodies, squelches, chattering, raspberries, honks, chortles… it’s all in there, crammed like clowns in a sweaty Volkswagen. The resulting range of her sound is near-limitless, as she processes, distorts, loops and chops her vocalizations in real-time, in a dizzying sharp-cut style I associate with a certain strain of ’90s harsh noise (and the first Prurient LP), though Lee doesn’t aim to obliterate so much as dazzle and bewilder. While I’m certain the pieces of Tulpa were mixed and produced, I know that her approach is a live one, where the unexpected nature of a cavernous drone, clicky tic, feedback shock or frothy gargle is immediate and direct, her on-the-spot decisions providing direction and movement. If there’s still an undiscovered mouth-sound residing in that oral cavity of hers after Tulpa, maybe it deserves to remain undisturbed.

The Obliques St. Petersburg / Cigarettes 7″ (HoZac)
Here’s a style of music that can only be claimed with authenticity for a finite amount of time: teenaged punk! The Obliques are high-school students in Durham, NC, or at least they were in the last twelve months when this debut single was recorded and pressed. I feel like more or less since the inception of Green Day, “teen punk” has generally come to mean “pop-punk” (The Snobs being one clear exception), so it’s surprising and cool to discover that The Obliques are punk in a messy, art-school, first-wave way, sounding almost as if the Ramones and Sex Pistols never happened, only Rocket From The Tombs and Alternative TV. “St. Petersburg” crawls and jangles in multiple directions at once, rife with that Columbus Discount Records sound and the vocals mixed louder than appropriate. These are the hallmarks of a true garage-band recording and appealingly out of step with today’s compressed digital style. “Cigarettes” isn’t a topic I condone for teenagers, though I suppose it beats vaping. It’s another dreary slow-burn, some shaky rope-bridge between O Level and Fuckin’ Flyin’ A-Heads if we want to dig into the Rare Punk Singles box for comparisons, though the rough and loose sound of The Obliques isn’t going to garner many comparisons to Warped Tour performers, no matter how many skinny black ties they wear. Enjoy yourselves, guys – it’s only downhill from here!

Miles J Paralysis Turf Step EP 12″ (Crying Outcast)
I possess neither the cred nor the authenticity to co-opt the Hard Wax record shop’s iconic banger designation of “TIP!”, yet as this new EP from Yorkshire’s Miles J Paralysis spins, the word is screaming deep inside me. Turf Step is the Yorkshire newcomer’s second EP, following the wretchedly-named Folktronic EP (which is actually decent in spite of its title). The four Turf Step cuts are bold, memorable twists on the ’90s house / electro / dub sound without the unimaginative obsession of retro-throwback specifics. “Until The End” kicks it off with an upbeat tempo and subdued, ever-shifting dub effects, a forlorn male vocal helping to recall Tom Of England’s Sex Monk Blues, or an Orbital remix of The Pop Group that exists only in my imagination. “Where Do We Come From?” is even sicker, its vocal-sample hook triumphing over a steely electro melody, resulting in an endlessly replayable jam ready to leave Paranoid London (or even Gene Hunt) green with jealousy. “Cursed Moor” is a devilish dub that merely infers the violence of tracks by Aardvarck or The Bug, the bass tuned stupid low, with “Snicket Rhythm” continuing the digi-dub vibes (there’s even a reggae guitar upstroke) with a cheerily lopsided approach that has me thinking Wah Wah Wino. Strong tracks standing-by for the coolest DJ night in your city, though I suggest holding off on “Where Do We Come From?” unless you can live with the results – that one’s a damn dance-floor IED.

Quite Ridiculous Nonsense A Failure… 7″ (Celluloid Lunch / Sweet Rot)
Always nice when anything off Johan Kugelberg’s “Top 100 DIY Records” list is newly accessible, be it a fresh reissue, thoughtful retrospective collection or even an active MP3 WeTransfer link. My research team hasn’t been able to authoritatively confirm by publication deadline, but I’m fairly certain that Quite Ridiculous Nonsense is the only Canadian artist on Kugelberg’s list, a distinction they should carry with pride. (Sorry Rent Boys Inc., your Pictish / No Grat single must’ve just missed the cut.) These four songs are pretty tops for when it comes to prankish synth-based post-punk, slightly late to the game in 1984 but no less satisfying than better-known contemporaries like Cabaret Voltaire, Fad Gadget and Primitive Calculators. I’d liken the outer-limits vibes on display here to proud outcasts like German Shepherds, Gerry & The Holograms, Nervous Gender and Robert Rental, though I’d be surprised if Quite Ridiculous Nonsense had any inkling of those fellow sonic miscreants in this formative period – he (they?) was probably just listening to Dr. Demento and The Residents alongside the professed Cabaret Voltaire and PiL in the informative insert, feeling frustrated with the futility of modern life and also just bored as hell. It all resulted in this excellent experimental post-punk EP, its nonsense still resoundingly quite ridiculous after all these years.

R.M.F.C. Ecstatic Strife 7″ (Anti Fade)
What, you’re gonna go by the name of Buz Avenue and not write great riffs?? Across the various regional egg-punk / nu-garage scenes, there’s a dearth of killer riffs, so when they’re discovered, we cling to them like life-rafts. Buz Avenue (neé Clatworthy) has already delivered a handful of stellar tunes with his R.M.F.C. band / project (“Access” is an all-time spine-tingler). It’s one of the few bands whose new records are mandatory peeping even if you’re a fair-weather garage-turkey, this new seven-inch single most certainly included. “Ecstatic Strife” is mighty sharp, with more of a twee-ish / Mod-ish demeanor than before and the cool trick of way too many notes stuffed in the recurring melodic motif. It practically takes eight bars to complete, at which point you’re already tapping your foot to the crispy-damp drums and skittish bass. The deadpan chorus feels indebted to Total Control, but what good rock music doesn’t these days? “Golden Trick” has a little fun with the old drum machine, the electric-guitar turned down low enough that I hear the pick against the strings more than the amp itself, an unexpected campfire vibe that acts more as a thoroughfare than a destination. As it turns out, Avenue is doing a new band with DX Stewart from Total Control called Station Model Violence, and if that feels too good to be true, there’s no denying the existence of Ecstatic Strife.

Robber Bad Eggs LP (Profitcorp)
Cover Art Of The Month goes to Robber’s Bad Eggs on a unanimous vote. Sure, lots of hardcore bands are good at implying or fronting their unsavoriness, but it’s impossible to stare at this cover for longer than thirty seconds without breaking out in hives or running out to the store for some Galaxy Gas, so intricate and skeevy are the details of this troubling modern tableau. Robber hail from Sydney, Australia, and all the black mold lurking behind their drywall has clearly gone to their heads, the sort of band that if at least one of their members doesn’t pass away under mysterious circumstances in the next ten years, they’ll have fooled me. It’s straightforward, rudimentary hardcore with a black-metal inflection, the sort of utilitarian Bone Awl / Iron Cross riffs played repeatedly with basic one-two kick-snare pogo beats that drop to half-time (as to ensure someone is pushing in the pit) and flare up to double-time in moments of fast-core aggression. Lots of hardcore bands have tried to express their scariness to their audiences, and I often have trouble buying it from the bands with clearly talented musicians in their ranks – like, come on, you must’ve practiced that Converge- or Disembowelment-styled technical guitar part for months with your fancy pedal setup, you weren’t out in the club alleyway stealing handbags or spending hours methed-up on your computer hacking your grandparents’ bank accounts. Robber’s songs are typical and their performance is unflashy in a way that confirms their negative nature, so if you let them crash at your place, maybe lock up the liquor cabinet before you go to work?

Safe Mind Cutting The Stone LP (Nude Club)
Gotta say, it was a refreshing throwback of a feeling to actually get to anticipate a debut album. Nowadays all new music is thrust in our faces, for free, in an immediate contextless pile, but in the case of Safe Mind, I got to enjoy their instant-hit debut single “6′ Pole” for months last year, their only available recording as I anticipated the release of something, anything more. The fresh pairing of Gus Muller (Boy Harsher) and DIY freak-popper Cooper B. Handy (aka Lucy) showed up with a bonafide smash on their hands, now released here with nine other tunes. None of the other tracks hit the same highs as “6′ Pole” (but how could they?); instead, we get a tasteful mix of wave-y synth-pop and late ’80s hip-house, a firm handshake between the group’s two distinct personalities. It’s an appealing axis of retro pop signifiers – let’s say New Order, Taylor Dayne and Cybotron – and Muller is nothing if not up to the task, a low-key prodigy in his chosen field of synthetic beats and melodies. “Standing On Air” is a perfect candidate for the soul-stirring prom scene in the Stranger Things finale (I don’t watch that show, I’m just assuming said episode exists); “Life In A Jar” mingles like Duran Duran at brunch. I’d be lying if I said that my hopes of another song matching “6′ Pole”‘s undeniable pop greatness weren’t dashed, but I’d also be lying if I said that my initial disappointment didn’t dissipate after spending a lot of time with Cutting The Stone, its songs slowly but steadily gaining traction in my easily-distracted subconscious. Therefore, I will say neither, and continue to spin Cutting The Stone until I accidentally know it by heart.

Short Leash Short Leash 7″ (Chronic Death)
New hardcore from some old dogs – Short Leash boasts members of Violent Minds, Shark Attack, Concealed Blade and Kill Your Idols, to list but four bands on their collected hardcore resumé. As you might expect, the sound-quality is slick, the musical performance is tight, and the limbs are more tattooed than ever before. What’s cool is that rather than retreat into a more comfortable, easy-listening form of hardcore (I’ll just come out and say it – I’m talking about the ever-pervasive strains of melodic oi-core and grunge-gaze), Short Leash choose to rip hard and fast, music that you can go wild to but doesn’t solely behave in service of today’s mosh styles. These guys came up in the scene when chugga-chugga metal-core was understood to be lame, and I appreciate that their tastes haven’t changed with the prevailing trends. Vocalist Adam Thomas delivers his throaty proclamations in a similar tonal range as Paul Bearer and Ban Reilly, ensuring that when he sings a song called “Pure Scum”, he’s not just calling out his enemies but claiming the title for himself as well. After threatening to beat Nazis into the ground on “Wet Work”, the outro loosens up the pit, a honey-trap for all those kids desperate to try out their silly mosh-jitsu moves. Will Short Leash pound them into the ground while chanting their own band name? One can only hope.

TVO All Aboard Choo Choo Fuck You LP (Future Shock)
There’s train-punk in the sense of rail-hopping crusties and then there’s TVO’s big stone capital letters poised to derail a commuter train. While I doubt they are advocating for passenger-rail carnage, TVO’s big bawdy punk rock at least feels worthy of soundtracking the next Rampage movie, ripe for a scene where George and Lizzie scarf humans from the quiet car like Tic Tacs. This Philly group is all ripped sleeves and sweat-stains, raucous, shaking down and spreading out their sound on this full-length debut. There are brief moments of tenderness, or at least an occasional melodic sensibility to recall the ever-influential Exploding Hearts (see “Parking Lot”), along with plenty of Tight Bros’ fall-on-the-floor shakedown style and a sound similar to that great Circulators LP that came and went on Total Punk a few months ago. If there’s a hit, it’s probably “Crashing (In The Same Car)”, which kicks out like Radio Birdman on the verge of mental collapse, fist-pumping chorus still intact. Years ago, you’d see Turbonegro t-shirts in the pit for this kinda thing, which today’s denim-rocker youths have replaced with throat tattoo / cropped mullet combos. I’m thankful that the music of TVO is so punchy and enduring that I can get away with sporting neither!

Xanny Stars Adaptor 7″ (Just Because)
You don’t decide to call your band “Xanny Stars” if your aim is to be respected by serious people, which is great because who needs ’em! This Cleveland-based trio seems to be having fun with their grunge- and indie-inflected pop-punk, very much in a way that tugs at my ’90s teenage heartstrings. The drumming is competent and the riffs are easy for beginners to learn, resulting in songs that work thanks to, not in spite of, their professional deficiencies. I’m reminded of all the local suburban-American punk scenes with bands inspired by Lookout! Records (and in my case, labels like Creep, FOE and Motherbox), an AOL-era punk rock that was still made and enjoyed by outcasts, if only on a small-stakes middle-class scale. “Mega Convenient” sounds like The Courtneys covering one of Green Day’s earliest songs; it’s certainly an appropriate soundtrack for a drive to Gilman to deliver a mixtape to your crush before Plaid Retina hit the stage. It’s PG-rated, nostalgic fun, which must also appeal to people decades younger than myself who are lucky enough to still undergo formative experiences on a daily basis. As for me, I’ll be tying a flannel around my waist and nerd-moshing to “Here We Go Again”, singing along like tomorrow is a parent-teacher conference half-day… in my mind.

Annie Achron Never Paradise LP (Siltbreeze)
Damn, there are now officially two-hundred-and-one Siltbreeze releases out there! Few labels can claim such a sustained track record of weird, groundbreaking and adventurous musical diversity; even the records no one liked are still pretty good. There is probably some semblance of a musical aesthetic one might associate with the label – noisy, confounding, uncompromising – but even so, there are numerous releases that sidestep those expectations (Mount Carmel much?), like Philadelphia’s Annie Achron. On her vinyl debut Never Paradise, lightweight drum-machines crackle and pop among unplaceable loops, raincloud synths and, about half the time, her own enchanting vocals. It’s electro-pop that keeps the listener at a distance, with melodies that, even at their most driving (see “Out Of The Myst”), suggest a hidden layer of meaning. One might expect to hear mystical techno-pop such as this just beyond the forest’s edge, gone by the time you get there. You could certainly clock some Chris & Cosey here, but with Achron’s vocals delivered in a calmly apparitional tone akin to Carla dal Forno, and a similar gloom/sunlight/isolation ratio as Jenny Hval’s synth-pop material and Fatima Yamaha’s excellent What’s A Girl To Do? EP, there’s no disparaging Never Paradise as typical pastiche. Perhaps that’s the defining Siltbreeze quality: artists who couldn’t be someone else if they tried.

The Berserk Where’s The Dictator? 12″ (no label)
I continue to fall out of my rocker on account of how great modern hardcore-punk is. You know what we would’ve done for a band as ripping as Philly’s The Berserk back in 2004?? Of course, it’s those awkward Profane Existence catalog stinkers that helped shape my tastes back in the ’90s, for which I am forever indebted, and “faithful accuracy” isn’t the most important quality for any given hardcore-punk record, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt, either. Like many of today’s great hardcore upstarts, The Berserk meld a few established strains of hardcore to create their own spiked n’ stained tapestry, and I’m a fan of what they’re doing. There’s the buzzsaw slop of Chaos UK, Poison Idea’s heavyweight power, the thuggish skulking of Mental Abuse, and what often feels like Negative Approach’s Tied Down as performed by Kriegshög: street-punk riffs delivered on the wave of a scalding-hot toxic spill. “Next Invasion” gets closest to d-beat, but The Berserk have enough of their own style to avoid rank-and-file categorization. (It doesn’t hurt that vocalist Shawn Petrini is frothier than a badly poured beer – I hope the singer of the band playing after The Berserk brings sanitary wipes.) The twelve-inch EP is quickly displacing the seven-inch in hardcore-punk and beyond, and while I would’ve liked to slip The Berserk between my Behead The Prophet NLSL and Beton Combo seven-inches, Where’s The Dictator? could’ve come in the universally-reviled form of a ten-inch and we’d still have no choice but to purchase a copy.

Blank Hellscape Hell 2 2xLP (12XU / Diseased Tapes)
Austin’s Blank Hellscape offer their definitive statement in Hell 2, a full two LPs of post-industrial noise. One could derisively call them “Wolf Eyes Jr.”, but if I were in Blank Hellscape I wouldn’t take that as a diss. As far as I’m concerned, I want to hear Wolf Eyes Jr., as well as Uncle Wolf Eyes, Great-Grandma Wolf Eyes… expressing our uniquely American dismay through glitching electronics, tortured drum-machines and effects-laden vocals should be far more commonplace than it is. Blank Hellscape had their own viral moment a little bit ago for that video where they put a harsh-noise-blasting PA speaker out on a local watering hole’s patio to the disgust and confusion of some Texan bros, and they bring that sort of deliberate animosity here, if tempered by the fact that the listener controls the volume knob. Andrew Nogay delivers his vocals like an aggrieved college professor who knows the class isn’t paying attention, and over brittle electronics that sound like the smell of burning toast, it hits the sweet spot. Across these two LPs, you have plenty of time to get accustomed – I think my favorite of the bunch might be the C-side opener “The River Is Dying”, with the slowest-possible drum programming and a deliberately-rising madness that feels like German Shepherds covering the Wolf Eyes classic “Burn Your House Down”. I’m kinda wishing there was a third LP, but then would that make it Hell 3?

Borez Borez 12″ (The Trilogy Tapes)
The newest Beau Wanzer collaborative release comes as Borez, our favorite Chicago dungeon-technician teaming up with London’s techno abstractionist duo Rezzett for five tracks on a twelve-inch. I love that the stink of Wanzer’s music is so pungent that it is immediately identifiable in any of his collabs, though he’s outnumbered two-to-one in Borez, and I think that makes the crucial difference here. The sonic touchstones of corroded pads, slime-dunked synths and overblown hardware are all visibly protruding, but Wanzer’s typical one-two plodding tempos are nowhere to be found. Rather, these tracks aspire rhythmically to a higher complexity of footwork and jungle patterns, propulsive and kinetic beats that seem unaware of the fact that they’re comprised of old bones and wet gristle. It’s a great combo, and I appreciate that Wanzer stepped outside of his typical confines to allow Borez plenty of room for whiplash loops, even if it still sounds like a haunted carousel ride (“Darnell Can’t Polish A Turd”). Rezzett, of course, are no strangers to bizarre sounds, so it’s impossible to say who brought the initial sample sounds used in “Xylene Xylophone”, though the results speak for themselves: a dangerous and dizzying sweep through the gory inners of an old xylophone.

Brown Angel Promisemaker LP (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia)
Twenty years and four full-lengths in, Pittsburgh’s Brown Angel refuse to lighten the mood. Their music has been reliably heavy, hideous and threatening, and nothing about Promisemaker strays from this pattern of behavior. That’s ultimately a good thing, as this trio are locked in as always here, delivering their down-tuned, unintuitive riffage with a solemn sense of duty. Deadguy have been in the news lately (ah that sweet reunion buzz, mmmm…), and I’m finding myself reminded of them on some of the more spastic material here, though the Brown Angel heart has always pumped with Melvins blood, where off-kilter rhythms chase away monotony, heaviness is inherent and all fresh-churned riffs violently curdle before being shared publicly. Kinda feels like Brown Angel should be more of a known entity than they are, but the same could be said for pretty much every great Pittsburgh band, and there’s nothing about Brown Angel in particular that lends itself to today’s fast-paced social-media climate, unless it someday becomes noteworthy that three middle-aged, brown-haired white guys with day jobs, one of whom who has glasses and long hair, decided to rock together and not really tour ever. It’s a pity that you’ll just have to appreciate them for their music.

CHO CO PA CO CHO CO QUIN QUIN Correspondances 7″ (Time Capsule)
Would you find the name of this group charming, and not annoying, if I told you they were an experimental indie-pop group from Japan, fresh from supporting the legendary Haruomi Hosono on some live dates? It worked on me – I checked out this new seven-inch EP based on those stats and now find myself bewitched by their blissful, casual-fit, quirk-laden indie music. “Adan no Umibe アダンの海辺” is a sleepy form of Tropicália, with an acoustic guitar sketching the outline of a beach cove resort as pleasant interferences mosey in and out of the shade. Flip it over for the title track, which comes to life through Tod Dockstader-esque electronic whirls before a piano chops out a rhythm under a leafy canopy. By the time the tender male vocals show up, it’s over, giving way to the more intricately-designed “Koe o Kikasete 声を聴かせて”, the fantasy folk of Tenniscoats butting up against the colorful cartoon creatures of an Animal Collective song. All three tracks avoid linearity, preferring to build and drift and fall apart like flower petals, often in a manner more abrupt than you’d normally find with music this tender and sweet. In certain ways, they’re like the anti-Gerogerigegege (with one additional syllable).

Chronophage Musical Attack: Communist + Anarchist Friendship 7″ (Post Present Medium)
Paradoxically, Chronophage are an extremely punk band who play soft and tender music. It’s not an easy thing to pull off, nor is it something you can really “pull off” to begin with – either you’re punk or you ain’t! This new four-song EP is brimming with its big double-sided insert in true anarcho fashion, a whirlwind of ideas that Chronophage insist on scrawling, painting and sharing. They recorded these four tunes with Joe Nelson (of Kaleidoscope and Tower 7) at D4MT Studios, and while Chronophage are very much their own trip, these songs share a similar raw urgency as my favorite D4MT Labs Inc. releases. It’s a great fit for their heart-on-sleeve melodies, buoyed by keys and acoustic guitar in a manner that has me reimagining Christopher Cross as a Homestead Records recording artist touring with Squirrel Bait and Meat Puppets. Real heads understand that the concept of DIY is passé; community-minded projects are the only way to move forward in this era of corporate-pushed isolation. Vocalist/guitarist Donna Allen is completely at ease singing on these twisting, intricate tunes, probably more so than ever before, this band (which I think people thought broke up?) fully locked into a musical territory that is solely theirs. A courageous group among so many scaredy-cats.

Civic Chrome Dipped LP (ATO)
Chrome Dipped is the third full-length to Civic’s name, which, if I’m reading it correctly, is released on a label run in part by Dave Matthews (of the Dave Matthews Band?)? What a world! This group has always had a bit more polish and hardiness than much of their Melbourne garage-rock / post-punk milieu, so it’s not a surprise to see them veer that polish in a more restrained and lighter direction. Much of Chrome Dipped reminds me of Ceremony’s The L Shaped Man, in that both records were made by actual underground punks who looked beyond the confines of their peers’ more traditional (read: generic) bands, finding inspiration in the lesser-celebrated late-’80s records by groups like Magazine, The Scientists, Josef K and Echo & The Bunnymen (if I had to guess). Both groups feature frontmen who spent their youths with scream-based forehead veins protruding, now settling into more restrained territories as they seek to maintain the edge of their voices while bringing down the energy. “Starting All The Dogs Off” is the closest vocalist Jim McCullogh gets to losing his temper here, and it still finds plenty of time to brood in circles, as if that final Merchandise album bared sharp teeth. And while there’s plenty of room here to contemplate one’s disgruntled existence, “Poison” and “Fragrant Rice” deliver a one-two garage-punk punch later in the record, a reminder that they haven’t forsaken the urgent energy of punk rock entirely. The best part is, if you end up liking this album, you can add it to the list of things you have in common with Dave Matthews.

Donato Dozzy & Sabla Morpho 12″ (Gang Of Ducks)
If I could forensically examine one techno producer’s brain, I’d probably choose Donato Dozzy’s. Dude has been basically ahead of the curve his entire career, from his thrilling jackhammer techno EPs to that one sex-jam album (K) to the downtempo ambient masterpiece from Voices From The Lake, that other wild jaw-harp techno album that no one else has attempted before or since (The Loud Silence)… I could go on! He just seems excited about sounds in a way that is both infectious and unusual, and it’s such a pleasure to check out any given new Donato Dozzy record (and there’s always a new one or two), unsure of what I’ll hear but fairly certain I’ll dig it. As much can be said for this new twelve-inch collaboration with Stefano Sabla – broadly speaking, a minimalist techno affair, with each track honing in on its specifics. Opener “Forma I” is my favorite, all because of a repetitive twitch that crackles like ASMR of the finest pedigree. It’s overtly simplistic but meticulously rendered in a Shed sort of way, mastered to tickle every tiny hair in my inner-ears (and a few of the unruly long ones growing on the outer ears, too). The other tracks are cool too, though a little more familiar with their intercom bleeps, ticky-tack percussive elements and sense of space. By the final track, “Forma IV”, we’re in deep orbit, a single hand drum, tambourine snap and repetitive ambient swell performing a sweet hands-free trepanation. On my head this time, not Dozzy’s.

Dwig Beyond Cry And Smile 12″ (Nextprophets)
German techno producer Dwig easily endeared himself to me on account of his gorgeous output in association with the Giegling label and his name’s similarity to my favorite member of Integrity. He started the Nextprophets label seemingly to release more of his own stuff, this four-track EP being its inaugural release, and considering how pricey Dwig records end up on the second-hand market, it’s buy or die, right? Right off the bat, “Happy Theories” is sweet and sumptuous, buoyed by some tender vocals that seem to come from a robotic man with a human heart under plastic pecs. Unhurried and decorated with squiggles of cotton-candy acid, it reminds me of Pulseprogramming’s proto emo-techno, back in the early ’00s when everyone was just calling it “IDM” and being done with it. The vocals appear again on the title track, even more forlorn and eerily robotic, like Tin Man trapped in a sugary confection with nary a dropped beat with which to crack its shell. The flip goes instrumental, offering “In Your Hands (Instrumental)”, comparatively the most upbeat track of the EP – its tasteful minimalism is ripe for a better voguer than I to put on a show. The EP concludes with an instrumental of “Happy Theories”, though I’ll stick with the vocal version, as I’m a sucker for lonely cyborgs singing over lonely cyborg beats. Par for Dwig’s course, which as it turns out is actually a fittingly pastoral acronym: Die Wiese Im Garten (the meadow in the garden).

Eddy Current Suppression Ring Shapes And Forms 7″ (Cool Death)
Hard to think of a more comprehensively-beloved garage-rock band of our current century than Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and rightfully so – these four charming gents have been spreading goodwill since their inception. Like any reasonable rock band, they slowed down a bit after their first three full-lengths, and as the pandemic put the kibosh on their international touring plans in support of 2019’s All In Good Time, things were mostly quiet from the Eddy Current camp until an evening in July when Cool Death announced the release of this new three-song EP (and a few hours later, announced that the vinyl had sold out). They’re a great album band, but this group always had a knack for catchy little singles too, of which these three songs fit right in. The title track quakes with garage-rock joy – it could’ve easily existed somewhere in Primary Colours – its memorable riff and chorus stacking up with their typically kindhearted approach and timeless sound. “Oh No!” (a Camper Van Beethoven cover) shimmies with some tasteful keys lurking in the mix, more smiley garage-pop satisfaction; “Despite It All” actually features vocalist Brandon Suppression’s most dazzling vocal performance, as it might be the first time he ever forced a single syllable into multiple notes, at least in my unverified memory. I’m privileged to say that I’ve witnessed him singing in a recording studio in person, and his lack of natural musicality is a true delight, as is his successful performance with “Despite It All”. Time to re-book that aborted US tour, eh boys?

Electric Chair / Physique split LP (Iron Lung)
Olympia’s finest team-up for what very well may be the Hardcore-Punk Split LP Event Of The Year. Electric Chair and Physique have shared band members, gear, tour dates, good-will and presumably bodily fluids through the past few years, so a split LP feels like a natural outcome of that relationship, one I’m sure Iron Lung was more than happy to facilitate. Electric Chair go a little less frantic on their five tracks here then prior outings, opting for a menacing, bouncy mid-tempo instead of relentless speed and fury. It could be a regional thing, but I swear I’m picking up some Dayglo Abortions here, a playful-yet-dangerous vibe permeating these songs that refuse to sit still. “Snake Eyes”, for example, cuts the guitar in and out and drops what’s more or less a chorus over an extended drum roll… these are the types of tricks hardcore bands get into when they want to develop their sound without compromising their core values (pun intended on “core”). Whereas Electric Chair continue to push outward, Physique pursue an opposite approach, aggressively self-reducing down to the most distilled elements of noise-core d-beat. Framtid is a clear spiritual predecessor, from the cheese-grater guitars to the copious tom rolls and bellowing hellhound vocals, and Physique make excellent use of their chosen style. The main riff of “Merciless” has been “written” by a thousand other punks throughout history, but in Physique’s hands, it reaches its full potential. Excellent record, right down to the cover art, which appears to be some sort of cast-iron tribute to both bands, ready to be mass-marketed as an add-on to the original Castle Grayskull play-set.

Ferries Eye Flutter LP (Bergpolder)
It’s always a treat when a record shows up offering little obvious interpretation of its sound and style, even after repeated listens. Bergpolder is a Dutch label that likes to play with forms of pop and avant-garde, usually coming from some odd new angle, and that’s certainly the case with Ferries and their debut full-length, Eye Flutter. It’s ostensibly a pop record, though one that defies typical guidelines, instrumentation, tempos, song structures, approaches, sensibilities… it’s an odd duck, to be sure! We can start with the first song, “Numan’s New Year”, which chugs at a relaxed Neu! pace, with oddly dramatic vocals occasionally darting in and out, synths glazing over the mountain and bass-guitar committed to root notes. But what of “Eye Flutter I” two tracks later, which gets more elastic and hazy, offering a sensation similar to the slow automated ride through a carwash, all the various soaps and brushes pleasantly engulfing your vehicle? The cover art feels like it could be an animation cell from a particularly menacing episode of Spongebob, and the general demeanor of these songs feels congruent with the world of Dr. Seuss: big open landscapes of clashing colors with unusual creatures traveling in curving lines, and oddly soothing for it. Musically, I feel comfortable dropping the names of seminal no-wave weirdos impLOG and underrated prog-pop deviants Howard Hello in distant comparison, though Ferries are more unclassifiable than probably any other artist reviewed in this month’s pages.

Omid Geadizadeh Like The Sea Knows Blue 12″ (Wah Wah Wino)
Wah Wah Wino has been one of the most exciting labels in the world of left-field electronic/minimal/dub musics since its inception, but man, they’ve soured some of their goodwill with the last six months of new releases, seemingly designed to frustrate their audience with intentional scarcity. Ah, cool, a new Wah Wah Wino release announced only by a cryptic Instagram story, which links to a single record shop in South Korea that doesn’t ship internationally and has already sold out. Thanks guys! I managed to snag one of these new Omid Geadizadeh EPs by virtue of pre-ordering it like four months in advance (why this was available for pre-order and WINO-E was not remains a mystery), and thankfully it has the soft, ocean-breeze grooves necessary to drop my pulse back to its resting state. The three a-side tracks are somewhat interchangeable, featuring ambivalent bass-lines, Middle-Eastern strings and typical digi-dub accoutrement – it’s all extremely well-coiffed, right down to Davy Kehoe’s guest trumpet spot on opener “My Eyes Drank Water”. The b-side is reserved for a Morgan Buckley remix, which honors Geadizadeh’s style while casting those same gorgeous strings against breakbeats and plunging bass, various vocals chopped to confetti and exploded in the bustling market square. Highly replayable, particularly in the throes of these summer months where the heat seeps into your head no matter how many A/C units are blasting.

Gotobeds Masterclass LP (12XU)
Nice late-period heel-turn here from Pittsburgh’s Gotobeds, from the playful album title to “back where we belong” scrawled above the 12XU label logo. (What ingrates, don’t they realize they used to be on the same label as the Bob’s Burgers soundtrack!?) No band from Pittsburgh has ever really had anything to prove, but with three prior solid full-lengths under their belts and the inescapable irrelevance that comes knocking for every newly-middle-aged rocker (don’t I know it), Gotobeds are clearly only in it for the love of releasing albums to the best of their ability… the noblest pursuit. They didn’t phone it in, that’s for sure – I’m sure the Masterclass title is a joke, but they really rock hard here with all sorts of cool riffs, an organic energy that belies their age and class-status, and cool hooks that must’ve been fun to play (they’re certainly fun to hear). Mission Of Burma, Protomartyr, some sorta midway point between The Replacements and Oneida… those are the big names I’m picking up from the moment “Starz” kicks in (best track on the record?) through the conclusion of “Mirror Writing”‘s loose-swinging freak-out. So many Gen Z / young Millennial bands seem to lack self-confidence, preferring to focus-group their sound in hopes of fulfilling what they think their audience wants to hear (how much trip-hop shoegaze is the precise amount of trip-hop shoegaze we should add to our sound?), so instead here’s the slightly-older Gotobeds putting them to shame with these economical, fun, ripping rock songs, impervious to the prevailing micro-trends and lacking the pitiful thirst for popularity. Even if they’re only kidding around, you can tell that they know they’re really good!

Petre Inspirescu Traces Of The Wind 2xLP (Ton Ton)
I keep watching Jeopardy! in hopes that the answer “best Romanian minimal-techno producer” pops up so I might finally get to scream “Who is Petre Inspirescu!!” at my TV screen. Since the late ’00s, the dude really doesn’t miss, his productions conjuring otherworldly atmospheres through meticulous construction and an open-ended list of instrumentation. His albums are so damn beautiful (and sadly, so damn expensive on the secondary market), and Traces Of The Wind, his first full-length in eight years (but who’s counting?) is another impressive entry. This time around, his fascination moves from the electronic textures of minimal, house and dub-techno to modern classical. “King Of Glory” features rhythms and beats of an obviously electro nature, but the other three side-long pieces have far more in common with Philip Glass and Terry Riley than Ricardo Villalobos and Melchior Productions (or at least they split the difference, Henrik Schwarz-style). The interlocking vibes of “Ever Moving” could’ve easily found a home amongst the vanguard of the Chatham Square Productions label, for example. It’s not an easy task, stepping to the complex orchestration demanded by the upper echelon of modern serialist composition, but Inspirescu makes it look like those kids who bust block-long wheelies on their bikes going two miles per hour. In each case, I am sitting there with my unobstructed senses as my witness, but I still can’t comprehend how they’re doing it. Strongly recommended!

Kissland Girls Mignon 7″ (625 Thrashcore)
I’ve been following the musical career of Mikey Young since stumbling upon the glory of Eddy Current Suppression Ring in the mid ’00s, and he’s kept surprising me ever since. Sure, Total Control are another obvious all-time great, but what about his weird synth solo record, those unexpected dance EPs from Lace Curtain, the goddamn Ooga Boogas and whatever The Green Child is, not to mention the fact that he has mastered or mixed 80% of all global punk/garage records that were released in the last twenty years. And now, at his most elderly, I spotted him playing bass for Kissland, released by none other than one of the truest hallmarks of fast-core authenticity, 625 Thrashcore. Few are capable of raging harder as they get older, but Young has always been in his own elite class, made even more fascinating/amazing by the fact that Girls Mignon absolutely smokes, in a manner that is gloriously out-of-touch with contemporary hardcore’s prevailing trends. Max Ward (of 625, and y’know, SPAZZ) writes that Girls Mignon sounds like Deep Wound and Jellyroll Rockheads, and while I’d love to one-up him by coming up with an even more pitch-perfect comparison (Total Fury covering Capitalist Casualties?), I have to be real: I’m hearing precisely what he’s hearing. The band goes full-throttle from start to finish, clearing every on-a-dime time-change with ease, a new time-trial best that’s as fun and wild as it is expertly constructed. There’s no shortage of things to inspire hopelessness right now, so I’m holding on to the fact that Kissland is making me stupidly happy.

Susana López Materia Vibrante LP (Elevator Bath)
Some real celestial birth-canal drones emanating forth from Spanish multidisciplinary artist Susan López, her fifth full-length (and third for Elevator Bath). With some forty (fifty? Sixty?) years of ambient drone albums, you’ve surely heard something like Materia Vibrante before, a fairly traditional exploration of elegant, synth-swelling ambient drones, like any given Pop Ambient compilation plucked free from thumping rhythm or even slight percussive elements. It’s like a wind tunnel where visions of all the people you’ve ever smiled at in your entire life come cascading past, Star Wars light-speed style. Okay, maybe it’s not that emotionally overwhelming – López works with some familiar sounds, from widescreen washes of synthesizer to tastefully-manipulated field-recordings (including one of the most successful field-recording elements of all time: water), though there’s honestly a comfort in the familiarity and lack of Zoomer-friendly mic-drop / jarring change-ups that you might find on a West Mineral Ltd. or 3XL release. The cover art is cool too, a weird liquified splash of earth that suits the music well, though if I find out it’s AI I will hurl this record out my window into traffic. I don’t think Susana would do us like that though… this is music made by someone who cares too much, not too little.

MD / Lowtec Workshop 33 10″ (Workshop)
You know the summer doldrums are kicking in when I’m out here buying split ten-inch EPs, but honestly, stay out of my business! You don’t even know me! Workshop is an esteemed German house label, full of fantastic Kassem Mosse and Willow records, and MD (aka Marvin Dash) and Lowtec too. Sometimes you just wanna beat the heat with a low-slung house groove, and both Dash and Lowtec deliver the goods, Doordash-fresh, on this hand-stamped ten-inch. The two MD tunes lock into tight grooves that stick like barnacles, the foot-stomping rhythms of yore repurposed for distinguished dance club patrons (and guys that like to wash the evening dishes with house music blaring, such as myself). The second MD track is particularly ace, a hypnotic disco beat with what sounds like a bluesman’s wordless intonation locked into infinity. Lowtec (who owns and operates Workshop) follows MD’s cue with a vocal-laced opening cut, coos and murmurs layered like a cake that DJ Qu would throw into the crowd (if he were to ever lower himself to such despicable shenanigans). Lowtec dances across the pads on his second cut, refined, minimal and quietly eccentric in a reliably Workshop style. (Old-man cigar-smoker whiskey-drinker voice:) smooth!

Mermaid Dubmaid LP (Beer &)
It’s always fun when an artist highlights the playful properties inherent in reggae dub, and Tokyo’s Mermaid bats the genre around like a cat with a feather on a string. Opener “Chopin Dub” establishes that mission statement within its first few seconds, a sine-wave digi-dub that takes its cues from Chopin as much as the original Mario Paint studio setup. For dub music, Dubmaid is defiantly dry, its tones gated and marched out in a slow procession. With “Love”, Mermaid more or less covers Brenda Russell’s “A Little Bit Of Love” (as sampled in the Big Pun classic “Still Not A Player”), clearly having so much fun with his home setup and re-interpreting the melody as if he was taking a vintage Miata for a spin around the block. The tracks are daringly sluggish, reminiscent in that way of Hey Ø Hansen’s Sno Dub (another glorious example of outsider dub co-opting); the compact software programming recalls the Jahtari crew, and the homage to vintage R&B and classical music calls back to the wide-ranging influences and silly mischief of early Yellow Magic Orchestra. If you haven’t cracked a smile by the time you reach “Bodies” in the middle of the second side, the unexpected vocal toasting is sure to resolve any lingering grumpiness. The label is called Beer & Records, after all… this is music for friends to throw on together, preferably in a tiny, immaculate Shibuya café, wasting away hours in the best of ways.

The Native Cats Aces Low / Lose Count 7″ (Rough Skies)
Hot damn, Hobart’s finest duo are offering a new seven-inch single on bassist Julian Teakle’s Rough Skies label. They’ve been reliably churning out their half-digital / half-analog sounds since 2008 – yours truly even released their first vinyl EP back in good ol’ 2010 – and whereas most groups would’ve simply run out of new things to say and new music to write at this juncture, The Native Cats show no signs of creative fatigue. “Aces Low” is a different style for them – its descending bass-line and puffy keys call to mind a Young Marble Giants-esque elevator music, as vocalist Chloe Alison Escott pirouettes around the melody with her usually eloquent wordplay (always worth reading at least twice). She even plays some lap steel guitar to wrap it, because why not? Any instrument with its own distinctive personality will eventually find its way into a Native Cats song, it would seem. “Lose Count” immediately pumps up the energy with Teakle aggressively shoving two notes on the bass-guitar, and Escott is riled up, Mark E. Smith-like, with a new couplet I’ll add to my personal Best Of Chloe Escott list: “I bet my body of work against the devil in chalk / I arrived as a singer, they said I was all talk”. By some metrics, it’s barely a song – bass-line, kick-snare drum programming, Space Echo noise – but that’s how The Native Cats operate, thrillingly barebones and refusing to crack, even under the single bright bulb of an interrogation room.

O$VMV$M Shroud Of Fear 2 LP (O$VMV$M)
O$VMV$M were ahead of the curve on the whole rain-dappled ambient, dusty-groove, downtempo instrumental-loop collage thing, which of course means they get none of the glory. That’s fine – this Bristol duo has never seemed interested in critical recognition, instead satisfied to entertain themselves and their friends with humble patchwork edits that jostle between sleepy and alert, as if the weed and the espresso are battling in their systems to see who’s stronger. I hold O$VMV$M’s two full-lengths from 2016 in high regard, and was pleased to see that Shroud Of Fear 2 is now among us, a continuation of a 2021 mixtape that brought a variety of vocal collaborators into the mix. It’s a new realm for O$VMV$M, as their instrumentals successfully brought out plenty of rich pathos, longing and confusion without verbal narratives, but I can see how the move to enlist a handful of spoken-word / cloud-rapper styles is a natural progression. With lyrics delivered in Spanish, Italian, Arabic and English, Shroud Of Fear 2 offers an international community of stylish wordsmiths, generally delivered with loose regard of the instrumental patterns they’re spitting on. The guests’ general tenor is somewhere between extremely nonplussed and mostly asleep, which fits O$VMV$M’s established aesthetic of heavy-liddedness, though part of me wishes they skipped the collabs and let the instrumentals simmer on their own. Birthmark sounds like he was barely able to open his mouth while speaking over his guest spots… it’s entertaining, and a completely natural response to the music of O$VMV$M.

Painshelf Painshelf LP (Organs)
Slicing Grandpa’s John Laux tends to make music for a limited audience, but the soaring loneliness of Painshelf, his trio alongside multi-instrumentalists Artur Blodvin-Hjärta and Charlotte Blodvin-Hjärta, is even less likely to garner mass appeal. Before I looked the band up online, the record had a real “unknown music for unknown people” vibe, and having formal names attached to it doesn’t really change things. A simplistic electronic drum pattern coasts over finicky synths and thrift-store guitars, instrumental tunes to soundtrack a sleazy horror movie that no one has ever watched, not even the people who made it. The first song is titled “Cheek’s Buttoff”, a brainrotted play on Meek’s Cutoff to rival Sockeye’s brilliance, but the music is passive and transient, a faint hologram of sludge-industrial. I get the feeling that similar sonic travelers might be content to issue such semi-coherent musical ramblings on a digital, Bandcamp-only basis – it’s both free and easy – but I applaud Laux and company’s consistent dedication to physical media, even if the majority of copies might end up crammed in a closet or musty storage locker. There’s a kind of morbid beauty in that – one day you die, and you get to dazzle your loved ones with hidden stacks of your unsold crap. Surprise! It’s your turn to deal with it!

Poizon Culture Scam Likely LP (no label)
Nice: a quick scan of the band photo on the cover confirms that we’ve got a Steve-O, two Marc Marons and a John Mulaney in Poizon Culture. With the help of AI, I’ll probably be able to create such a band with a few keyboard clicks (and a hundred thousand gallons of water) within the year, but until then I’ll have fun imagining that those sassy male celebs actually comprise this Houston punk band. I’m just playing – Poizon Culture boasts ex-members of Fatal Flying Guillotines, Secret Prostitutes and Sugar Shack, their garage-punk bonafides older than most of the musicians playing Sound & Fury Fest, yet their songs are energetic and self-assured. The rambunctious delivery and screw-loose melodies remind me of Skull Kontrol, but they temper that with tracks like “Damn Lady”, which is pure Superfuzz Bigmuff-styled garage, teetering on the edge of blacking-out. It’s a swell combination, spastic punk and proto-grunge, probably contentedly local yet ready and willing to upstage some of their reunion-industrial-circuit peers when they roll through town. On one hand, I’m sure it’s gotta be nice to write an iconic album when you’re twenty-five and be doomed to repeat it for the rest of your life, but Poizon Culture’s approach – writing new music and being excited about it without widespread fame and fortune – is a blessing in disguise.

Self Improvement Syndrome LP (Feel It)
Artificial Go have really set the bar for exquisite post-punk vocalizing on the Feel It label, but Long Beach, CA’s Self Improvement aren’t far behind. They’ve presumably found similar inspiration in Wire, Suburban Lawns, Gang Of Four and The Fall, the more singularly-minded first-wave post-punks who fit in with each other by fitting in with absolutely no one. Bassist Pat Moonie finds joyous, jumpy and dynamic melodies, guitarist Jonny Reza sends out his little alien-radar riffs with a constantly-toggling reverb switch and drummer Reuben Kaiban applies Coco Chanel’s classic advice of “before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” to his drum patterns. And then there’s vocalist Jett Witchalls
– that British accent you’re hearing is because she’s actually British! – whose superpower would be spitting icicles if she were an X-Men. Her disaffected coo is as quintessentially post-punk as a horizontal-striped shirt under a tattered army trench, and it elevates these pensive, curious and moderately-gloomy tunes to contemporary post-punk’s starting lineup. Those still mourning the loss of 2015’s greatest punk band (CCTV) should be sure to check out “Crashing”; it’s the most compelling progeny I’ve heard since, and we know plenty have tried.

Shatter Carved EP 8″ (no label)
Beatdown metallic hardcore is an unusual style of music for a lathe-cut record, if only because the typically thin sound of a plastic lathe record is more appropriate for washed-out guitar noise from New Zealand than, you know, Urban Discipline. I suppose the vast majority of listeners these days opt for a soul-sucking digital experience, and since there are only forty copies of Carved in existence, Shatter’s rep will not be sullied by whatever frequencies are lost in the mastering of this one-sided eight-inch. In any case, it’s cool that this NYC quartet are making their own moves – someone was willing to slice the band’s name into their arm after all (or maybe were just looking for an excuse to do so), and if they want to be the first beatdown band with a lathe-cut EP, I respect it. The three tracks on Carved are very much in that street-wise, crowd-killing mosh sound that has beefed up the lineup of so many destination hardcore fests like HGH in a pro-wrestler’s bicep. Shatter like to thrash within that sonic realm as well, the guitar leading the charge for plenty of riotous galloping, though when it breaks in “Scav Rat” and the singer growls the acronym “K.I.A.”, you might want to make sure you have your life insurance squared away if you decide to stay in the pit. It only took until the first chorus in the first song for Shatter to remind us that “life is pain”, as if the world wasn’t consistently offering up new examples at a frightening rate.

The Slugs A Song For Every Feeling LP (Related)
“Full album plays on both sides of the record, so it’s kind of like getting two records for the price of one.” That’s how Related Records advertises The Slugs’ debut LP on their website, a deadpan humor that fits this London/Newcastle duo snugly. Their sound is satisfyingly simple, even by DIY indie standards: drums, clean electric-guitar and vocals from both members, usually in tandem. It’s unpolished guitar-pop that shines regardless, as if Television Personalities joined the Elephant Six collective and quietly made fun of everyone else behind their backs, or at least didn’t ever take things too seriously. What’s not to like about “Maybe”, bursting with charm and the repeated line “I could look after myself but I don’t want to”? It leads into “Phone Voice”, as basic as a Ramones song and equally as feel-good, complete with a staged phone call. You can only sound the way The Slugs do by being best friends, as I’m certain that Phoebe and Lib are. If it matters to you that the guitar doesn’t always hit all the right notes, the door is over there, you’re free to leave at any time! The Slugs are perfect just the way they are.

Slutavverkning Skräp 7″ (Feral Cuts)
Feral Cuts advertises this new EP as “for fans of Flipper, Sonic Youth, The Birthday Party”, but you’ll have to take that more in a spiritual kinship than as overt sonic resemblance. Maybe the common thread is that all three have surely cleared rooms in their early days, as the anti-melodic, two-dimensional noise-rock thudding of Swedish quintet Slutavverkning has surely caused audiences to locate the nearest exit. They lurch forward like Billy Bao with a bee in his bonnet, and supplement the blown-out riffing with the squealing clarinet and saxophone of newest member Isak Hedtjärn. Perhaps his parents raised him on a diet of Borbetomagus, but his lively screeching is an integral part of the Slutavverkning experience. On the stoner-y “Kaos, Kris Och Helvete”, I’m reminded of Noxagt’s demolition services, though the closing title track hearkens to two of Slutavverkning’s most hallowed forefathers: Brainbombs and The Leather Nun.

The Stalin Kubi Dake Atsureki = 首だけアツレキ 7″ (General Speech)
Four unreleased tracks from The Stalin, recorded in 1983 and shelved until recently? That counts as erotic fan-fiction for Japanese punk obsessives, but it’s actually real, issued back in 2023 by Japanese label Inundow to coincide with the 40th anniversary of 虫 and now given the American green-light care of the hyper-vigilant General Speech label. With this sort of thing, you might expect a throw-away, completists-only situation, but the four tracks of Kubi Dake Atsureki are really on par with the best of what you’d expect from The Stalin’s post-Trash material. There’s some wild swinging guitar on “黄昏” that reminds me of The Victims’ “Disco Junkies”, and the pounding uproar of “あそこうらんでョ(ニセ解剖)” is in league with The Damned; all four tracks deliver a hearty punch that was somehow dormant on a shelf for dozens of years, a rabid punk rock sound always teetering on the edge of violence. I hope General Speech was able to license this without having to sell their grandparents’ house and send them to a nursing home, though if that’s what happened, I’m sure they’d understand the importance.

Wesley & The Boys Rock & Roll Ruined My Life LP (Sweet Time)
Wesley Berryhill is bringing out his damn Boys for some good-time / bad-time Tennessee garage punk n’ roll. Whether a crafted personification or a non-fictional portrait, Wesley stumbles sideways into the pool table, cigarette in hand, like so many unsavory-yet-sympathetic rock characters that came before him. It’s hard not to scan the songs and pick up a kind of Vice magazine vibe circa 2010 from his exploits, with titles like “Full-Time Asshole”, “Ruin My Life”, “Be My Babe”, “Fight On The Internet” and “Jail, Again” painting the portrait of a pesky leather-jacket rocker that the culture has more or less gotten sick of at this point. I believe his intentions are good, however, and it doesn’t hurt that Rock & Roll Ruined My Life sounds pretty alright, melding the closed-fist first-wave of punk ala Raw Records with a touch of Jay Reatard’s unassailable swagger and a striking sonic resemblance to the gone-too-soon Video, whose Leather Leather album feels like a strong precedent here (and a record that I feel like I’m mentioning once a month at this point – what a prescient ripper!). It’s in the snot-robot vocals, tasteful egg-punk flourishes and willingness to occasionally stomp it out, glam-style, even if none of their fans would ever dare to wear eyeliner in public. Feels like this can only go two ways: the next Wesley & The Boys album is on Third Man and the group takes off, or Wesley is forced to leave town, never heard from again.

Weird Scene compilation LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
Minimum Table Stacks is out here doing the Lord’s work – a new regional, underground and vital compilation LP! This one is centered around Brooklyn, whose moment in the sun really came and went following the indie boom through the early 2010s, which of course makes what is currently happening there ripe for discovery and evaluation. The artists of Weird Scene were corralled by Jeremy Willis, whose Willis Willis project is featured here alongside Adam Green (of The Moldy Peaches) and Kyp Malone (of TV On The Radio). Released from the shackles of an intense critical spotlight, these Meet Me In The Bathroom players are free to continue making music at their leisure and with whatever sense of style they deem appropriate. Overall, the mood is pretty upbeat and sunshiney here, with plenty of funky licks, major-chord acoustic guitars and fantastical lyrics at play. Adam Green’s “Hot Air Balloon” is a song about precisely that, delivered with a post-Devendra sort of wonderment; Tommy Volume’s “Dance With The Hippo” is ready to be used as the theme-song to a public-access children’s show of the same name. What’s great about Weird Scene is knowing that everyone involved is part of the same IRL musical community, their various beams of creativity bouncing off each other, no matter if it’s the Ramones-y punk of Toni Lynn or “Devil’s Paid”, the debut release from Rossomando, a softhearted/tortured slice of acoustic pop from Lady Gaga collaborator Anthony Rossomundo. New York has always been that way – unknown weirdos bumping up against famous millionaires, generous visionaries, psychotic jerks and cultural trailblazers – and Weird Scene is a fresh and joyous snapshot of its contemporary pop underground.