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.

==================================
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

MARY ANN

 

This sounds like some dead ass '90s "melodic hardcore" aka "skate punk" formed from the solidified drippings of the Fat scene that oozed into every international crevice. It just took a little longer to get to some places, and thus Hit The Road didn't come out until 2004. If you toured in the '90s then you've heard this band, or at least the version of this band that you played with at a VFW in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Or Joplin, Missouri. I think you get my point.

HIT THE ROAD

THE WOODEN NICKEL JASS BAND

 

Sometimes you just need a little something to make you feel (a little) good, you know? Turns out that little something for me yesterday was Sacramento's THE WOODEN NICKEL JASS BAND, a tape I never saw coming until it was making me boogie. You see, sometimes I just start ripping things without listening to them - rip first and listen later - if it's good then it gets an earnest, "stop everything" listen but sometimes (admittedly) it gets a "listen while you edit" listen. But occasionally I get a "hey what's this?" feeling and I stop....and listen. That happened yesterday, and even though this is light years removed from a tape that I think I actually need, it's a tape that I apparently needed in the moment. That's worth far more than the $1 price tag. New Orleans jazz, show tunes, Western Swing....maybe a touch of high school jazz band for good measure? Tough to describe the sounds and justify the effect they had, but music is a motherfukkr man. Had several twinges of "Down Yonder" from Red Headed Stranger and it's almost the King's birthday so maybe that was a factor but......really this one just got plopped in the deck at just the right time. 

SHUFFLE OFF THE BUFFALO

HEKTIKS

I used to make a point of highlighting blown out guitars and bombastic distortion every Monday. Listening to HEKTIKS.....I kinda think I should get back into the habit. Can't really think of a better way to put this shit life into perspective than the complete destruction of your senses. 

OBLITERATION

LÁZ

 

This shit is so good. Makes me feel like the first time blasting GORILLA ANGREB or that time I went to see SOVIETTES by myself in Riverwest and didn't know anyone there except Andy and he was drunk as shit. Truly engaging guitar heavy punk - not "heavy" guitars though - more like the guitars are the thing....until you start listening to the vocals. You'll come back to the guitars though, because they're great. There's some other shit here - '90s emo mixed with PDX >> TX garage melodies like RED DONS and STORM THE TOWER but with '80s Rough Trade and some weird ass US college radio alt. Think about SQUIRREL BAIT, CRASS and fukkn WAX IDOLS...it doesn't make sense but it works. And that's all that matters.

LASSAN ÁTJÁRÓ ZAVAR

These words were stream of consciousness garbage. 

These sounds are brilliant.

PEACEMAKER

 

A few hours ago REALISTIC played our informal cassette release show at a weird and cool spot in Richmond, California. Our tape is short (less than ten minutes) and there was a discussion about whether or not duration should factor in when calculating sale price (because the production expenses for a cassette are essentially the same regardless of length). Craig wisely noted that if a record is good, then it didn't matter how many songs were on it or how long they were....you aren't complaining that the flawless 11 minute mini-LP isn't 17 minutes long....you're flipping that shit over and blasting it again. I agree, and these are my thoughts as I listen to PEACEMAKER's two song, four minute cassette for the one-hundredth time. Two songs....that's all we got, but maybe that's all we needed. 

SEE YOU DEAD // GREED

BARRIO MUSIC

 

This is probably the coolest Barrio Music volume I've delved into so far, which makes me excited to keep plowing my way through the twelve tape series. Anchored by undeniable classics by ELVIS PRESLEY ("Now Or Never"), ? AND THE MYSTERIANS ("96 Tears"). LITTLE RICHARD ("Good Golly Miss Molly") and JERRY LEE LEWIS ("Great Balls Of Fire"), you've also god JAMES BROWN's deadly ballad "Try Me" and "Doing It To Death" by FRED & THE NEW JB'S (a song I always thought was actually by The Godfather Of Soul). And then there't the other stuff....GENE & EUNICE, LARRY WILLIAMS, MANHATTANS, PEACHES & HERB, even PAUL fucking ANKA delivers a killer. A standard from THE PLATTERS and a smooth as fuck track from the suitably named DON & JUAN round out the roster and.....my people this is just a perfectly curated mix of perfectly wonderful music. Like, can you think of a better way to end your week?

BARRIO MUSIC vol.4

TIME ADDICT

 

Free form improvisational misanthropy, presented as experimental free jazz noise shit.
And some days all I ever want is cacophony. 
TIME ADDICT delivers (again). 

U.S. BLUES

CONTRASESSION

 

The early 2000s were fukkn magic - so were the early '90s of course, and I guess the adolescent twenty-tens didn't suck either. I focus on today on the aughts though, because posi-political-hyper-fastcore took over the fukkn world and holy shit it was fun. You could argue that 2005 was on the back end of the shit, but try telling that to these Indonesian motherfukkrs. "Awas Prosess"personifies a tape filled with twenty three sub-60 second rippers culminating in the brilliant "The Only Time I Think About Romance Is When I Wonder Why I Don't Think About It." So here's to the tape you didn't know you needed until now....I guess I drop a lot of shit like that in your lap, huh?

LIDAH BERBISA...

Notable: "Topeng" kinda starts off like "Deny Everything" from a different universe.

GERINC

 

In this shit world, can we please celebrate Hungary for a moment? No one is ever going to accuse Magyar of being righteous, but damn that was a glorious rejection, right? Anyway, GERINC take snappy '00s USDIY and make it sound....theirs. Talking RED DONS and MARKED MEN and NEON PISS and shit, but a little nastier. Maybe like NEON PISS if they had existed in this modern reality. Every hook will stick with you, even though "Constrangimentos" kinda stands out as the song of the century (kinda) . So yeah, let's talk about Hungary for a moment, but maybe fuk the politics and let's talk about punk bands. I'll start: GERINC. Your turn.

REKLAMÁCIÓ

PSYWARFARE // BBVGC

 Not to be confused with the recent P.S.Y.W.A.R. post, this is Dwid's PSYWARFARE sharing destruction duties with Japan's BBVGC. The latter takes the BLOODY MINDED hardcore-as-noise-as-hardcore approach and makes it spooky and theatrical while the former....well, I can't speak on the world of Dwid but I recognize that it's a world. And I respect that he has been doing the shit for three decades (plus). And "Evisceration" is a perfect mind-melt of erratic power electronics, harsh noise and deliberate constructions of desperate sound. If you're looking for something to fukk up your day, then look no further. 

DEMONS MOURN FOR BLOODSHED

12 APRIL 1986

 

Welcome to the first ninety minutes of forty years ago today as broadcast on KALX in Berkeley. 
========

Proto-industrial heavy broadcast with some old 'MATS, some oldies, BIG BOYS, STURM GROUP and a shitload more sounds that you need. 

KALX - 12 APRIL 1986

مارتیک // ضیاء

 

It was probably a decade ago when I talked to Golnar about writing a thing about this tape because I thought it was cool (like...really cool) but didn't know shit about it and she was a music nerd and a Persian scholar and she already knew all about it so why would you want to read my words when I could solicit hers? Exactly. Fast forward to now and we've fallen out of contact but I'll be damned if these sounds don't (still) slap like some Ethiopian jazz meshing with those sounds that you don't understand except to know that you want to understand more than you do. Freak funk with dense horns and Mid-eastern trad funk and I am literally crying thinking about the multitude of realities that this music represents. I'm pretty sure that Ziya (exiled after the 1979 revolution) was in Los Angeles when this was released in 1987, a collaboration (maybe...? paging Golnar) with fellow ex-pat Martik Khanian who was apparently in Los Angeles when this recording was conceived. 

This current reality is light years beyond heavy, and imagining a rich culture and fascinating country ripped apart twice in the span of a half-century brings on more feelings than "طلوع ا زمغر" ...and that shit is ten minutes of pure sonic gold. Submitted with apologies, because I wish I could sa the right things.

کفریم / دیوونه / هلل یوس

P.S.Y.W.A.R.

 

The midwestern united states is a special place, sonically speaking. N.O.T.A. could not have come from California. DEAD SILENCE and ANIMAL FARM were influenced by the "cool" scenes on the coast/s but they were so obviously products of their respective environments. You get an Outhouse in Kansas but never in D.C. or Boston. Enter P.S.Y.W.A.R., who straddle/d Denver and/or Kansas City, two of the largest and most influential enclaves in the middle of this country's middle section. Proximity (or lack thereof) breeds isolation and that makes for special sounds....like these sounds. We're talking early '10s USDIY squirms and reverb-laden spiked boots guttural hardcore with dark '80s Japanese influence...kinda. Because really this shit is the product of all of the influences with none of the meddlings, and that's what makes the good shit hit even harder. 

P.S.Y.W.A.R.

80HD

 

When 80HD dropped a few years ago, the hype was all about their energetic live shows and aerial explosions. People rushed to get to the internet to show the rest of the world how high they jumped, overfiltered grainy black and white photos with mullets and humans flying across phone screens. You never heard people talking about the music except that they were fast....but the shows were lit. Two mini LPs and five years after the demo and that first West Coast tour though, might I suggest revisiting the almost unparalleled sonic detonation that is 80HD's Demo 2021? The hype was real, and this blur of j/o riffs (hi Max) propelled by a hailstorm of galloping thumps doesn't merely stand on its own without the stench of sweat and beer interrupting the surge of Gen Z punks scrambling to get the perfect photo - the context breathes new life into the special kind of hardcore this band was creating. Perhaps 80HD is best listened to alone at 5:30am before the coffee is finished brewing - without context and without filters and without peer promotion. That's when you can hear 80HD and feel their fury unencumbered by the noise. Seven crucial, life affirming minutes on this cassette, re-experienced (by me) the way punk was not meant to be experienced; in the dark and in the flesh accompanied by nothing but a soft snore in the background and the waft of impending caffeine from the next room. Not gonna lie though, thee jumps did look sick.

80HD

BURNING FLAG

 

The title tells you what you need to know - Grind IS Protest and BURNING FLAG are standing tall in the face of authority and sonic competence on this 2014 release. No bass (at least not in the mix), raw dual high/low vocals punctuating political DIY grind - you don't need to know BURNING FLAG to know their sound. Tracks like "Revolusi" and "Fuck The System Government" would have been right at home in 1990s Connecticut (if you know, then you know) while "Dinoe Kasetno Indro" is a more primal, metallic lo-fi crust grind assault. Melodic hooks keep creeping out of the manic DBeat guitar riffs; never enough to actually develop...just enough to raise an eyebrow before tracks like "Ludahi Para Pendusta" rip your face off. Let Grind Is Protest serve as a reminder....I'm not sure of what exactly, just consider yourself reminded. 

GRIND IS PROTEST