STUPID MENTAL ITCH

Three tracks each from three of California's most extreme noise parties. STUPID LIFE torture a WANKYS style pogo. FUNDAMENTAL are rawer here than ever, ramshackle drums shoving the whole thing forward while the buzzsaw guitar defies the listener to even find the riffs. Fresno's MUTANT ITCH are the most serious sounding band of the bunch, demented 1-2-1-2 noise punk with overbearing layers of treated vocal insanity. Look at the cover...you know exactly what you're gonna get - and that's exactly what you're gonna get. 

STUPID MENTAL ITCH

HEX ON THE BEACH

This band is a bit of a mystery (understatement), with just a few isolated tracks floating around the internet [OK - you can use the google machine and go to their bandcamp place and find a lot of those isolated tracks, but my point is that there are few (to none) actual releases to devour] and just this one physical collection of untitled tracks. Distant, harsh, witchy sounds...vaguely reminiscent of the mood that RAGANA sets. Improvisational monotony with ritual chants, offered in questionable fidelity. As much as I want HEX ON THE BEACH to sound full and cavernous, I suspect that the current presentation only adds to their mystique. 

HEX ON THE BEACH

BRAINSMASHER

Knuckledragging slack jawed garage Oi!, the way that only punks taking the piss can deliver. Raw and feisty punk, with CARBONAS caliber hooks and OIL! level irreverence. Only four tracks here, but the opening of "What A Brilliant Future" pretty much gets the point across in a few seconds. The rest is gravy....until you get to the MotörCruiser "Nothin' For The USA" and you realize that you never knew how delicious gravy could be. 

BRAINSMASHER

PEEL SESSIONS: ALTERNATIVE TV, THE RUTS, CORTINAS, PENETRATION

The whole idea of posting mix tapes and compilations on Fridays centered around sharing constructed personal mixes or curated compilations. While today's post is really neither, it is a collection of tracks that were recorded onto one cassette, so it still lives under the same roof, even if the motivation is slightly different. BBC's John Peel and his Sessions don't really need any kind of an introduction, but it bears mentioning that during a pre-internet age (and honestly before a tape trading network) lifelines like this were invaluable. As evidence, here's four batches of tracks presumably recorded off of the radio with little snips of Peel's voice popping in and out here and there, sometimes awkwardly cut off (hopefully by a teenage hand hurriedly fumbling for the pause button in the dark).
ALTERNATIVE TV - Four songs, recorded December 1977
This session was released on a compilation LP in the 1990s, albeit in a different order. "Action Time Vision" is one of the top UK77 tracks, period. Side note - I keep meaning to check out that ALTERNATIVE TV w/GENESIS P-ORRIDGE recording, because that just seems weird.
PENETRATION - Three songs, July 1978
BBC's site indicates that "Movement" was also recorded in this session, but it wasn't included on this tape. I feel like PENETRATION are like a life line between X-RAY SPEX and BLONDIE and I celebrate their entire catalog...so hearing this was a treat, especially this version of "Future Daze."
THE CORTINAS - Three songs, July 1977
Again, there's one track missing here (and full disclosure: the tape gets kinda warbly during "Further Education"), but Bristol's Finest (John Peel's term, not mine) are on fire in this session - check the drum roll in the chorus of "Defiant Pose" and fukkn weep.
THE RUTS - Five songs, January 1979
"Savage Circle" starts this session, and you could be about to launch into a ruthless hardcore assault until...well, until you aren't. The funk is slightly disconcerting, but not as hard to comprehend as how shit hot THE RUTS are on this recording. I feel like SUBHUMANS must have ripped "Dope For Guns" at some point, "Babylon's Burning" is another essential top track (even though it gets whacked before the two minute mark), and this session has the full John Peel intro.

PEEL SESSIONS

The tape with these sessions also included a 1977 live set from 999, posted on Escape Is Terminal. All gratitude always to the people who made these recordings, who compiled this tape and thousands more, and who mailed them to strangers and fiends around the world for decades. 

UDÜSIC

I really wanna see Chicago's UDÜSIC sweating like motherfukkrs in a smelly basement. While the kids get dressed up, '77 cosplay shielding actual intent and purpose, the old heads remove the pretense when they take off their leather jackets and nothing is left but raw energy. 2014's self titled demo was a killer, the EP that followed was even more fierce, which makes dropping this four cover song banger an even sweeter move. The recording is red lined as fukk (note the difference between contrived distortion - which I still love! - and an exceptionally hot recording), and they move seamlessly from NO THANKS' "Fuck Everything" to a steaming "Precious And Grace" cover...and a hardcore band who can make '70s ZZ TOP tunes feel natural is a hardcore band I want to swing with. POISON IDEA and BLACK RANDY's "Sperm Bank Baby" get the treatment also, just to make it crystal clear that these folks know what's up. Then again, maybe these folks ARE what's up. See first sentence: I really wanna see UDÜSIC live. 

LONG IN THE TOOTH

Should go without saying, but this J-Card "gatefold" earns extremely high marks in my book. 

HOOR-PAAR-KRAAT

There are times when experimental and/or noise/music enters that extremely murky canyon that separates brilliance from moronic and/or self indulged pretension. OK, maybe there are a LOT of those times, and maybe there's more output that sinks in that canyon than lands squarely on either side of it, BUT my point is that often I am not sure if I enjoy something because it's actually and objectively good (or even just interesting), or because I've been duped. I'm not the sharpest knife, and I'm pretty easy to get over on (especially when you're talking about something so completely outside of my typical wheelhouse), so maybe you throw a bunch of reverb on some ticking clocks and crumple paper next to a contact microphone and call it music and maybe I believe you. Or at least this is what I was thinking a few minutes into "Lacking A Cast Shadow," the opening track of 2008's Graduating From Clocks To Watches. There's no rhyme rhythm or real reason, it's just a collection of sounds, and there's no art to that, right? There's no skill to that....right? But, I thought, what if I like it anyway? What if the innocent monotony of "The Broken Windows Of A Fertile World" actually seems kinda gorgeous, even if there's really nothing to it, and what if that is actually the point? What if that first song really was just ticking clocks and tearing paper and what if that was the message? I mean, surely this release falls into that aforementioned canyon somewhere, and maybe it never even makes its way out of the abyss, but listening to the chaotic crescendo that closes 13+ minutes of "The Self Is An Onion-Self" to end this release I once again decide that I don't care. And that I will listen again and not make judgements. That I will just absorb, and the result becomes the meaning itself. 

GRADUATING FROM CLOCKS TO WATCHES: EUREKA TAPES vol.II

EXECUTIONER

in the midst of the massive wave/s of crucial hardcore and punk coming out of the Los Angeles area in the early/mid '00s, a casual observer could be forgiven for missing a band or two here and there. The TUBERCULOSIS demo moved nearly 1K units (on cassette, dawg....deserved, but still), BLAZING EYE are darlings of Fest Culture, and GENERACÍON SUICIDA need no introduction, so it's cool if you missed ELECTROCUTIONER. Until today. If you are reading this, then you no longer have an excuse. Sorry (not really - not at all). If you are reading this, then ELECTROCUTIONER's 2016 Wretch In Order demo is a mere click away, and this two piece (initially a one piece, now a full band...if they exist at all?) does more to kick in the ass than anyone I can think of - six minutes of full force, anti-pig, in your face hardcore punk. Seriously.....they are SO GOOD. Everything is right, and I kinda don't know what to say beyond that. I listen to ELECTROCUTIONER and everything is right. And that should be enough....right? Fukk pigs. 

WRETCH IN ORDER