CIGARETTE

Painfully slow and agonizingly airy sounds from the DC area, CIGARETTE take an hour to shuffle through a dozen songs. Breathy and deliberately adorable, their songs are like CODEINE on 'ludes, with guitars floating through an evening sky thick with memories of lost love and a shroud of whispered promises. If Nick Cave were a well adjusted suburban adolescent with none of his malice but all of his vision, these are the the songs he would write for his girlfriend...or maybe it's the music Wayne Coyne will make when he is 80 years old, and CIGARETTE are just ahead of their time.

BLUSH!

NO STATIK plays in Reno tonight. It's in a house, the one where the punks are. Look for it, it's close to the casino where I'm going to win a lot of money tonight. Seriously, a LOT.

THE HERE AND NOW

Sixteen different bands from all over the DIY spectrum, ranging from CÜLO, BUNNY SKULLS and POSITIVE NOISE to legendary one man noise punk VILENTLY ILL and recent Escape visitors BURNT OFFERINGS. The potential for hardcore monotony is high on a comp full of ragers, and The Here And Now avoids this with plenty of ambient noise, and acts like DEATH BUDDHA and AUDIBLE XXY clock in some of the finest moments on this comp. A slice of sound from the North Coast...

THE HERE AND NOW

**NO STATIK plays Portland tonight at The Know. It's Grant's birthday, and he will very likely be intoxicated.**

DOTS

Snotty and irreverent KBD styled punk courtesy of one of the only dudes I have ever kicked out of my kitchen. I mention this not to talk shit, but because I think that would make him proud. Sounds of DETENTION and ANGRY SAMOANS collide with SHOCK and RIP OFFS covers, bringing DOTS' vision into clear focus. The reproduction is a bit spotty, and I want to read the lyrics about as much as I want to make the singer breakfast again, but I'm quite happy to blast his new bands from time to time.

6 SONGS

DEAD DOGS

Not sure how they pulled it off, but these Winnipeg rockers managed to inject keyboard driven juvenile punk into blistering hardcore. There are no keyboards, and these folks are surely not juveniles, but somehow this feels like a group of hopeless teenage bedroom punks in front of a laptop making the most excellent hardcore record you've never heard. For those not yet versed in the language of my cryptic accolades, these are all compliments. Driving and vaguely off putting hardcore punk from the Canadian plains, DEAD DOGS didn't go to the prom, they spent that night making music instead. It was the right decision. Don't know anything about this band except for this demo, but this demo rules, so it's enough.

DEAD DOGS

SCREAM

Most casual punks know SCREAM as the band that the dude from NIRVANA played drums for in the '80s, but those of us who know the Dischord LP from start to finish know different. But SCREAM is a tale of two bands, and both tales are told inside today's zip file. The four song banger from 1981 features two tracks from the aforementioned LP and two others, all urgent and ferocious in their pubescent intensity - a truly great tuneful (melodic before it was a dirty word?) hardcore band harvested from the same fields that brought us so many mandatory pieces of the USHC puzzle. So, the question is: "What the fukk happened?" Also included in today's post are three separate two song demos from 1985/6, showcasing SCREAM at their most shitty. Cock rock would be a generous descriptor, but the heyday of that coke stained genre had long since passed, and even L.A. GUNS might have shied away from a song about dreaming of a damsel while pulling on your pud. Two versions of "Walking By Myself," a musical jaunt down the highway of terrible ideas that seems to be yearning for sellout status, but is so much more awful than even the commercial radio rock was at the time. Worth it for the '81 demo (obviously), and as for the other six tracks? Well after you have a laugh and shake your head, bewildered that such a downhill slide can occur in such a short period of time, on most western keyboards the Delete key is located in the top right quadrant.

SCREAM - 1981 // 1985 //1986 DEMOS

SKULLKRUSHER

Raw as fukk, years before studs and shoelaces were en vogue. The tape cover shows nine tracks, but alas there are only four jams on my copy. Just a little taste from 2001, to let you know that this black clad raw punk shit is not the flavor of the month for some people, it's the flavor of life.

THE BOMB RAID

PSYCHIC BLOOD

Noisy shoegazing adult punk sounds dredged though guitar alt rock (SST-era SONIC YOUTH/DINOSAUR JR., HOUSE OF LOVE) come your way from Western Massachusetts with great success. After a feedback laden title tracks swirls in and out of focus, PSYCHIC BLOOD launch into "Annihilator," which makes me pine for Daydream Nation like few things that have crossed my ears since I first heard that slab. The recording is distant and hollow, straining to reach the top shelf, though the band seems completely content (and confident), an absolute necessity when making music often labeled as pretentious. More mandatory with subsequent listens, PSYCHIC BLOOD have moved on to the vinyl format with even greater success. This one's a sleeper, but don't snooze. 

LEAVES