MINUS TREE

 

This kind of (scr)e(a)mo has always intrigued me. Like, I get it - I absolutely understand the appeal even though it never actually clicked with me. I don't know that MINUTE is the band that's gonna turn me, the band that will make me stop listening to DBeat and commit to feelings manifested as minor key guitar leads and desperately shrieked vocals.....but I'll be damned if "A Journey" doesn't make me think, and "The Throne" is fukkn transcendent so maybe (just maybe) it's time.  

CHANGE

OUR SPIRIT

 

Had a couple of drinks tonight with an old friend (one of my oldest) and for the first time in a long time we didn't talk about nostalgia. We talked about our bodies failing us and our friends failing us and us failing ourselves and we talked about love and we talked about loss and grief and we talked about death and we talked about punk bands and EDM DJs....we talked about his bands and my bands, but we didn't talk about our bands. Sometimes it's good to connect with someone you love and actually connect instead of rehashing as a means of small talk. Anyway....this band from Depok City hits like LIFES HALT and OUTLAST. Eight minutes of determined, positive 'core that makes me feel....well, nostalgic. It's hard to say the before times were better because we (I) didn't know what we didn't know....but fukk that innocence felt good, especially in retrospect. Enjoy and crank "Can't Get Ahead" while you get ahead today. 

OUR SPIRIT

 

PEASANT YERMO

 

Q: Is there a place for vaguely funky outsider hippie cult oldies music?

A: Yes. Here.

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I don't know how to describe PEASANT YERMO, and typically when that is my conundrum I tend to blather on nonsensically. I'll try to avoid that today and simply suggest that you listen for yourself and draw your on conclusions and comparisons. I hear East Side Story comps, Krautrock, GONG, 4-track bedroom improvisations....and a San Francisco band from the '90s whose name I cannot conjure and thus I will spend days and (hopefully not) weeks trying to remember. I saw them at Kommotion and gave the guitarist free bagels often and they had a lot of amps. Anyway, this is really damn peaceful music and I love it and please focus on "Bullwinkle Sutra." You're welcome. 

HOMESPUN DANCE

KONTRASOSIAL

 

Ferocious ScanDBeat from the subgenre's heyday in the mid-2000s. You can imagine KONTRASOSIAL added to a Pointless Fest basement gig or Chaos In Tejas after show easily; shit would have been the perfect recipe for joyous chaos...and if you know what I meant then you know precisely what I'm talking about. Fist banging kång and lightning fast mid-tempo moshes, it's like THE TOTAL END and DISMACHINE linked arms and doused the entire warehouse with beer. Relentless, in your face and dedicated to the craft - this is the DBeat band I was dreaming of when I dreamed up KS MUTATION with Jon and Anton fifteen years ago....that one four-song set wasb't enough, but we have KONTRASOSIAL.  

KONTRASOSIAL

MUSCLEGOOSE

 

You know how sometimes you have more questions when you're finished than you did when you started? Enter: MUSCLEGOOSE. First off, they're called MUSCLEGOOSE. Secondly, they're from Arkansas. Now for the rest.....they exude genre-less '90s USDIY punk sometimes, but sometimes sound like some new century Northwest Indiana shit. Shades of squirmy shit punk and I swear a couplke of times I wondered if they were gonna remind me of SHELLAC (they never did...but it was close). There's a song called "Stand By Your Mandwich" that gave me UOA energy but those punks would have never written a song about a sandwich. Also there's a song called "Sgt. Pepperoni's Provoloney Hearts Club Sandwich" and obviously that's gonna raise an eyebrow (and yes I'm serious about the song title). It doesn't sound like anything I know and I'm still asking questions after three consecutive listens and still I feel like these sounds are already in me....in different forms. But what do you expect from a band whose follow-up release was titled Yah Mo B There, God? It's Me, Michael McDonald?

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD BUFFET

HEDGEFUND

 

A dozen years after HEDGEFUND initially appeared on these pages comes their post script. I posted their self-titled debut in 2012 and Apreiron was snail mailed to me with the companion OHR // P.A.Y. shortly thereafter. I sat on both of them for the average lifespan of a trash panda before I unleashed the former on you a few years ago but still I waited for this one.....just because. "OHR" is a brutal sonic exercise, painful noise and deliberately manipulated sound while "P.A.Y." is an even rawer version of the band who hurt us with their two previous releases - howling, desperate. You're going to recognize the sounds here....but you'll never hear them the same again after you listen to them like this. This band was relatively short lived and I fear the waves they made were rather small, but damn this shit was good. 

OHR // P.A.Y.

COVID SS

 

I don't want to start talking about isolation and it would be disingenuous if I tried to talk about Covid-era isolation, but suffice to say that 2020 was a weird time. Some people shut down, and others felt the spark of opportunity (or desperation?). The result of that reality was....some killer recordings. This is one of those recordings. Punk rules, ok?

COVID SS