ML Buch Suntub Extras 10″ (15 Love)
In an effort to satiate the hordes of ML Buch fans desperate for a fresh bite, we are given… a ten-inch picture disc EP. Okay, why not! I wasn’t privy to the email that ML Buch sent to initial Suntub customers with the Suntub Extras zip attachment back in 2024, nor am I any sort of YouTube digger (even with artists I really love!), so this stop-gap vinyl EP of previously-attainable supplemental material is tiding me over… for now. Considering the exquisite clarity of her voice, I’m impressed by how infrequently Buch offers it to us – perhaps the scarcity makes it all the more tantalizing. This EP is entirely instrumental and centers her equally dazzling guitar playing. “Opener” scalds like she’s never scalded before, but it’s brief, leading into the familiar tonal palette of “Sway Walking” and “Suncrumb trail, Staging”, which indeed sound like cuttings gathered from Suntub‘s editing-room floor. “Moving light, Change” is the most fully realized of the bunch, a MIDI simulacrum of ’90s alt-goth bathed in the light of ambient jazz in the way that only Buch does it. “Halfdark, Slow blinking” offers ninety seconds of tranquil chemtrails in the dusky sky. Surely you have a little extra room in that cardboard box in the back of the closet where you keep your ten-inch picture discs…
Civilistjävel! Älvgång LP (Six Of Swords)
Civilistjävel! arrived with an air of appealing mystery back in 2018. If I remember correctly, the press info surrounding the debut album teased that it may have been a lost project from the ’90s, or at least tried to muddy the aesthetic waters with such tales. Eight years later, we understand it as the contemporary creation of a Swede named Tomas Bodén, whose very Swedish work ethic has led to no fewer than eleven albums, two EPs and a handful of compilations and extras in that time. I last checked in with the project through 2023’s Fyra Platser, a satisfying swirl of post-Andy Stott romantic industrial, and now as the autumn sun hangs low in the sky, it seems an appropriate time to commune with the newest full-length, Älvgång. Unfortunately, this one’s leaving me chilled (and not in a good way). While previous records have accentuated negative space, patience, and atmosphere, Älvgång feels half-finished in that regard. I don’t know if Bodén over-reduced these tracks, or if they were never sufficiently built up to begin with, but they loiter rather than allure. Slow, tone-based music that verges on silence can be made compelling (go see Nmperign live!), but the sounds here are conventional and weary; Älvgång‘s emptiness just feels empty, unlike prior records. Even the guest vocals of Soccer Committee and guest (what an appropriate guest vocalist name, “guest”) match Civilistjävel!’s barely-there approach, offering their distracted and wordless moans with fitting disinterest. Carrier provides some sense of life with the space pops and liquid-metal drips he contributed to “Strinne Fyra”, but it leaves me wanting to put on Carrier instead – now there’s a modern master of eerie, post-industrial tranquility!
The Comedians The Comedians LP (Minimum Table Stacks)
Minimum Table Stacks already has some wonderfully stanked-out albums under its belt – the label’s inaugural release came from a group called Smelly Feet, as it were – but the debut of Los Angeleno four-piece The Comedians is particularly piquant. This is no-wave as protest music, standing hard against good taste, melodic harmony, order, talent, entertainment… all those qualities that ninety-nine percent of the population foolishly prioritizes in music. While demonstrating in typical guitar-bass-drums-vocals rock formation, The Comedians roast their songs willfully, with tactics as drastic as Ketamine therapy and as passive-aggressive as the silent treatment. Bassist Jordan and drummer Evan usually sync up to create the semblance of song; they’re most likely the only band members to make eye contact. Vocalist Jools whines like a teenaged Eric Paul stuck in detention, and guitarist Julia mocks them all with her boldly indifferent performance. And like the crude magic tricks purchased from an ad in Mad magazine, it all actually works! You’ll be joining me in singing along to the “trays of cocaine” chorus in “Trays” before the song is over, I surely hope. Elements of ’90s Skin Graft, ’00s Load, and Mountain Cult’s brief psychic drain in the early ’10s are evident, and when The Comedians melt disco beats with a magnifying glass, I detect some girlSperm as well. Weasel Walter mastered this album, in case you needed an additional seal of authenticity. That man has spent the majority of his life protecting and exalting righteously incorrect music… he must love The Comedians.
Dragnet Dragnet 12″ (Total Punk)
Gary Wrong took a pause on the Gary Wrong Group somewhere in the tail end of the 2010s, and has returned nearly a decade later with Dragnet (not to be confused with Dead Alive recording artists Dragnet, whom I’m sure you think of frequently). Whereas Gary Wrong Group plunged the depths of the post-Brainbombs, post-Drunks With Guns dirge-rock underground, offering free reign to distortion and feedback throughout cyclic riffs, Dragnet is comparatively cleaned up. Accompanied by Matt Leary on bass guitar and programmed drums, things have taken a peppier turn… could it be that the sun is finally shining on Wrong and his cohort? These six songs are mid-tempo punk a la Buck Biloxi or Gino & The Goons, as comfortable as your favorite chair (the one that’s slowly conformed to the exact sloping shape of your ass after years of sitting). Even song titles like “Hooded Ghouls” and “Active Shooter” can’t dampen Dragnet’s nonchalant trip, though I sense that Wrong’s frustrated malice is still lurking in his head somewhere. These songs sound like they’d be among the earliest to be written by lifelong punks, such is their overt simplicity in design and delivery. Wrong is maturing only in age, not sophistication. Check the scraggly solos on “Wrong Way” if you want a fresh nip of some “Disco Junkies”-inspired scuzz. It’s one of two songs here that feature the word “wrong” in their titles – the man certainly knows his brand.
Ejaculators God Bless You 7″ (General Speech)
It was sitting there unused for so long, patiently waiting for the day that the right group of people might choose it as the name of their band: Ejaculators. Thankfully, the name is in the right hands, as this Chicago punk band is appropriately nasty, replete with GG-esque song titles like “I’m A Fool” and “World Is A Fuck”. The grotesque granny being flashed by a strap-on wielding skeleton is a nice touch, too! Ejaculators get tagged as “synth-punk” because, well, there’s a synth, but their overall sound eschews typical ‘wavey signifiers, preferring the room-clearing tussle of anti-social punk rock to asymmetrical haircuts and black eyeshadow. “I’m A Fool” is played at the speed of “(I’m The) Hillside Strangler”, but the melody itself feels akin to something Nine Shocks Terror would’ve written – Japanese hardcore drenched in Midwestern American sarcasm. And when drummer Joey Bologna goes to town on the cowbell in “Zen-Nihilism”, the similarities to Hank Wood reveal themselves like prison tattoos from under a pulled-up sleeve. If it turns out Ejaculators are beloved by their local scene instead of actively despised, I’ll be a little disappointed, because music this acne-riddled should only be celebrated by two types of people: those with even poorer decorum than the music’s creators, and those of us who can experience it from a safe distance (at least one time zone away).
Carlos Giffoni & Chris Corsano Eat The Rich LP (Gilgongo)
Chris Corsano always delivers; it’s a reassuring fact of life. I’d happily pick up a copy of a Chris Corsano / Dyson Cyclone V10 vacuum cleaner collaboration if it existed, but Carlos Giffoni is an interesting character in his own right as well, the one-time No Fun Fest kingpin turned comic book / video game magnate returned to his position behind his foreboding electronic switchboards. I can’t imagine you don’t get rich as a tech guy in the mainstream entertainment industries, but maybe he’s down to eat himself? Either way, it’s nice to hear Giffoni’s fluttering, humming electronics sparring with Corsano’s octopean drum kit strength. Corsano is too refined to simply batter away incessantly, though. As an improviser, the job calls on you to listen, so he cultivates plenty of available space for Giffoni to empty his dark brown frequencies into. When Giffoni raises the temp, however, like on “Roam” and “Society Is Noise” (isn’t that a Disclose song title?), Corsano gives us what we paid good money to see, white knuckling his kit with typical panache. The relatively limited sonic range of Giffoni’s electronics doesn’t prevent Corsano’s inventive mind from running wild – “Transposition Nation” is a a creeping dub texture akin to Ghost Dubs, and “Tubular Bells” (not a cover) is all metallic shimmer and shriek.
Holy Tongue Basilikum LP (AD 93)
One doesn’t necessarily equate darkly psychedelic rhythmic improvisation with “fun”, but how else can you explain what Holy Tongue are having on their newest full-length? Valentina Magaletti, Susumu Mukai, and Al Wootton are intrepid explorers of unorthodox rhythms in their own rights, but Holy Tongue acts as a communal, celebratory summit, each member arriving at the drafting table with exciting and disparate offerings. You could rightfully designate Magaletti’s drumming as the star of the show, but it’s clear the contributions of Wootton and Mukai push her to delve further into the dark heart of dub, freak the freakiest post-punk clatter, and subvert any boundaries that might separate ancestral rhythms, improvised noise, spiritual jazz and industrial techno from each other. Guest vocalist Dali De Saint Paul is given free reign on a couple tracks, calling to mind the motley party music mutations of Golden Teacher, but all eight tracks operate as independent, eternal sound-worlds into which we desirously glimpse. “Vuoto 25”, for example, is like Ike Yard with the brakes cut, and “Single-Eyed” is like live-action Muslimgauze taking place in a Moroccan speak-easy. Holy Tongue’s creativity appears to be boundless, its myriad configurations leaving all possibilities open. Why did they wrap up Basilikum at eight tracks… who made that decision? As a society, we need to prioritize Holy Tongue’s music and enable its constant creation.
Kontexte Hello World LP (Chrüsimüsu / Dot Dash Sounds)
You’ll want to throw on your insulated parka if you decide to engage with the music of Kontexte. Like many European post-punk groups, they’re as chilly as an open barn door in winter, but there’s a dampness to Kontexte as well, the sort of frosty humidity that seeps into your bones and stays there. I can’t tell if Kontexte are shivering as they play these songs or if I’m projecting my own physical reaction! The Western French quartet of Clara, Liza, Laure, and Laura drag their primitive and emaciated post-punk songs across this modern tundra, with plodding drums, prickly single-note guitar leads and deep, sighing vocals. I don’t think they’re trying to sound gloomy, so much as it’s a natural consequence of their performance, which frequently reminds me of the greatest depressive French post-punk group of all time: Trop Tard. Trop Tard never quite clawed their way out of their funeral shrouds, though – they’d certainly never write the devious sing-along romp “Drunk Driving” (ala The Slits not sleeping at a sleepover) or “Glasshole” (like The Xx transmitted across faulty lines from a castle prison cell). That’s Kontexte’s trick: stripping the materials of post-punk down to their intimates and flash-freezing them for posterity.
LS Plus If You Call My Name 12″ (Bar Part Time)
Fill up the heart-shaped hot tub, babe, and throw some LS Plus on the hi-fi! This new group features some familiar faces in the American downtempo club / dance / dub scenes, namely Izaak Schlossman (he’s the Topdown Dialectic / False Aralia guy), his partner Anya Prisk, Phil Cho of PULI, and Diego Herrera (AKA Suzanne Kraft) on electric guitar and a stand-alone remix. They’re going full Balearic here, bear-skin rug sprinkled with fresh rose petals. The title track is frisky American Italo R&B pop, Prisk’s strong lead vocal making magic over a sumptuous groove. Herrera dubs it out with a Future Times house sensibility, and then we’re headed to the flip side, where “S.O.S.” offers another silky smooth original, like Kylie Minogue day-napping in the chill-out tent. “H-Rhythm” cracks open the club with its Donkey Kong Country sound palette – watch as we step and slide, bodies close to keep warm from the midnight ocean breeze. If you don’t already own a velvet-upholstered box with gold latches where you keep records like If You Call My Name, I’ve got two words of advice for you: grow up.
Painted Flies Suffer. Feed. Repeat 7″ flexi (Record Beach)
What better way to introduce your ugly hardcore band to the world than an ugly, one-sided, plastic flexi disc? I don’t understand why more bands don’t take advantage of this format: it’s relatively cheap to produce; it’s easily filed away with the rest of one’s singles; the sound quality is perfectly fine (so long as you don’t pack too much time into the grooves); and if it’s good enough for Typhus and Tranquilizer, why wouldn’t you want to be in their company? Painted Flies hail from Olympia, feature personnel from Iron Lung recording artists Nasti, and offer a creative spin on trusty noise-rock idioms through four minutes of “Suffer. Feed. Repeat.”. The track opens with an atypical, stammering rhythm, which they use to beat up a repetitive Brainbombs-esque riff. That quickly cuts out for an extended segment of a woman speaking in what seems like some sort of procedural manner (police evidence? legal deposition?), then drops back into the band hammering away at what is now a more straightforward hardcore-as-noise-rock slam. Total Abuse meets Condominium in the Slint section? They open with a couple farty synth bleeps and end on flickering howls of feedback, offering a much needed fresh perspective on noise-punk. The morning breath of Painted Flies absolutely reeks, but it has me wondering: exactly what did they eat last night?
Protomartyr Hotel Usona LP (Domino)
If I told you to write an essay on the topic of “why America is bad”, where would you even begin? The size and scope of this country’s wretchedness is expanding faster than the boundaries of the known universe, and blatant enough that even our most checked-out fools are starting to look around with suspicion for the very first time. Meanwhile, over in the rusted-out center of the country lies Protomartyr, taking it all in with fresh bags under their eyes and a crisp stack of damning allegations in hand. Hatched from sharp-edged post-punk, the group has refused to tow the party line, visualizing beyond the standard practices of American post-punk and repeatedly conjuring strange new realities, album after album. Hotel Usona is their densest yet, and perhaps most satisfying as such. It’s also completely at odds with the way the world wants you to listen to music now. Sound-byte unfriendly, pop-hook avoidant, lyrically sprawling, and unsettlingly atmospheric, there’s no shortcut to enjoying Hotel Usona. Vocalist Joe Casey gave it his all here, conceptualizing the USA as a dilapidated hotel and immersing himself in the idea – I hope he made it out in one piece. At times, the album flows more like a well-produced episodic podcast, the sort of thing you want to experience privately while relaxing on your favorite spot on the couch, drink in hand. No longer “rock music” so much as an elaborate, evocative sonic setting, they pack in all sorts of instruments (a pallet of horns, a duffel bag of strings), coloring every corner with the appropriate moods for a dying empire. I don’t think I’ve ever heard music be sad in the way that Hotel Usona is sad – you can’t help but feel it too.
Real Shocks It Could End Today 7″ (Stupid Bag)
Never mind the fake shocks! Philly is having a hardcore renaissance of sorts, which I guess is what happens when you’re one of the cheaper major American cities with plentiful basement spaces and tolerable levels of black mold growth. Real Shocks are a new act, and while I’m still bleeding from the eyes from spinning Early Grave’s Violent Winter on the daily, It Could End Today is tops in its own right. Real Shocks play a speed-driven, snot-soaked form of hardcore-punk: not threatening so much as hyperactive. They sound like they drink a ton of soda, refilling their 32 oz plastic cups with all sorts of sacrilegious Coca-Cola Freestyle combinations – this is some cherry vanilla Mr. Pibb peach Barq’s punk rock. I’m reminded of Neos, Government Issue, and Beaver, and if I may throw out a couple deep cuts, the exceptional early aughts punk seven-inches from Germany’s The Brats and Pennsylvania’s Slogan Boy, though Real Shocks pull off the difficult feat of establishing their own sound right off the bat. Maybe we could envision an egg-punk that stayed true to punk’s aggressive, non-jokey side. If there’s a tangible midpoint between Coneheads and Brainwash Victims, Real Shocks might carry that flag? I don’t want to get too caught up in finding a way to classify this exciting group, though – instead, I’ll just thank them for delivering this thrilling eight-song seven-inch EP.
Sli Town Crier Auditions LP (Wah Wah Wino)
Wah Wah Wino’s impeccable 2026 run continues with Sli Town Crier, another mysterious, maybe-not-real person, larger than life yet hidden from view. Sli Town Crier’s sole other appearance was on Wino’s perplexing KWALK compilation a couple years back, and I have to wonder why he’s been keeping the contents of his hard drive private until now, though escaping logic is a key element in Wah Wah Wino’s equation. Drop the needle anywhere on Auditions and you’ll encounter something fresh and strange – no two tracks behave the same way or share the same sonic template. In clumsy hands, such an approach could crumble under its lack of cohesion, but all of Sli Town Crier’s ideas here are imaginative and engaging; it’s like that rare and elusive really great conversation you have with a cokehead at a party. Breakbeats and IDM techniques poke out with consistency, but then there’s also time-dancing electronic experimentation, dazzling post-dubstep rhythms, a drizzle of Irish folk, footwork patterns with mad vocal dissections, remorseful melodies with aggressive percussion, Augustus Pablo dressed as Steve Reich with Autechre turning off the lights on ’em… nary a dull moment, to be sure. I’d point you to some of my particular favorite tracks, but there’s no song listing to be found anywhere on the record’s packaging, or anywhere else for that matter. I’m going to offer up to the internet a new and exclusive bit of useful Auditions information: there are twenty-four separate tracks, which I counted myself, and if it pleases Sli Town Crier, I’d be happy to name them – please get in touch, rest assured my rates are reasonable.
Unmarry Me Lions In Autumn 12″ (Bruit Direct Disques)
The phrase “ex-Huggy Bear” just makes you feel safe, doesn’t it? Unmarry Me features Jon Slade and Christopher Rowley from the seminal UK post-punk group, and their friend Leesey Frances is the right angle to complete Unmarry Me’s triangle. Even if I didn’t love Rowley’s Adulkt Life like some of my peers did, I maintain full trust in anyone within Huggy Bear’s orbit to remain cool for life, and I think Unmarry Me might be their coolest project since. Like Huggy Bear, Unmarry Me approach pop conventions with curiosity and suspicion, though unlike Huggy Bear, Unmarry Me are wildly quiet… these songs are whispered, not screamed. Their music is skeletal, dubby and melodic, but in a weirdly post-modern way. It’s closer to what you might expect to hear from a twenty-something hyper-pop producer if you invited them to make a chill-out dub record, not scene patriarchs with decades of rock bands under their belts. The primary instrumentation is what feels particularly contemporary – weird synth swirls, digital effects, sparse rhythms and a sense of playfulness about it all – but the way all three members volley their voices back and forth feels Crass- or Poison Girls-inspired, as do their lyrics (like “you’re name’s on a list somewhere” and “we drink each other’s blood for something to do”), the sense that they’re creating vibrant protest music from the means currently available to them, and the accompanying booklet full of cut-and-paste art and rantings. It’s rule-breaking and free, funny and quietly furious, and comes recommended from me to you.
Winners And Sinners Winners And Sinners 12″ (Red And Brown Dog)
Last year, Miller High Life released a promotional, beer-filled vinyl album called Dive Bar Sounds. You can buy a copy on Discogs for a hundred and fifty bucks like a true chump (and amazingly, you wouldn’t be the first!), or you can direct your attention toward this human manifestation of a case of room-temp High Life on a dead lawn: Winners And Sinners. I’m giving this drunk-uncle joke-rock band five out of five grey goatees, so honest and goofy and non-pejoratively terrible is this home-recorded project from Missoula residents Bob and Travis Yost. Picture El Duce convincing Kyuss to open a backyard wrestling league, Bam Margera’s colonoscopy results, Rowlf the Dog’s sex tape, a sentient monster truck entering the Sharknado cinematic universe… if there’s any part of the American experiment that deserves to be preserved after its much-needed demise, I nominate a copy of this Winners And Sinners EP as a valuable document. Real corn-fed American slop, not AI slop! “Masturbators” and “Mayhem On Mescaline” have less than a hundred YouTube views total to date, yet I can’t imagine spinning “Masturbators” and not wanting to run it back on a loop for the incredible rock-dude ad-libs and shout-along chorus of, that’s right, “masturbators!!!”. Have they managed to sell any copies of this self-funded record, and if so, who are the true patriots buying them? Some people will want to snidely scorn our descent into Idiocracy, but Winners And Sinners is a cannonball right into Idiocracy‘s pee-filled kiddie pool. With no health insurance available for miles, I’d love to see that ambulance company try and collect!
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