KILLRATIÖ

 

Remember last week when I said I got a coupla tasty morsels from Zepol and I was excited to pump the new KILLRATIÖ tape? Well...I may have been excited, but I definitely was not prepared. Salmo Katorse is an absolutely flawless example of the pounding desperate crust tinged hardcore that dominated the 2000s, but KILLRATIÖ seem to have marinated in the desperation and the result is devastating. Listen to the last thirty seconds of "B.N.P." and know that these punks have figured it out...this is how you fukkn do it. I would love to see this band again. 

SALMO KATORSE

SICK LLAMA

 

It's been a while since SICK LLAMA stopped by an blew out our ear holes, so please enjoy Shadow's Tower at maximum volume on this lovely August Saturday, and know that if you are reading these words then there are approximately five billion humans on earth who are probably worse off than you are. Maybe not - I'm just playing the odds here. 

SHADOW'S TOWER

CANTOS OSCUROS

 

A stunning collection of obscure tracks put together by the folks at Little Axe in Portland, Cantos Oscuros is an hour long journey into a series of other worlds that left me reeling. MARTHA JEAN-CLAUDE, THOMAS MAPFUMO, ARLETA, FALLING STONES, HILDA MURILLO, NORA HERMOSA.....and a few artists the even the creators couldn't identify. Choice cuts for me are the devastatingly mournful cut from OH JHANG-SAN and a subdued screamer from Tacoma, Washington rock 'n rollers THE WAILERS. Sprinkling a few North American rockers (KEN DAVIS, THE JENSEN SISTERS, CARLA OLSON, THE WAILERS) into a mix filled with artists from Indonesia, Suriname, Cambodia, Jamaica, Greece, Japan, Sweden and Zimbabwe helps to contextualize all of the included music instead of presenting any of the songs as exotic anomalies. But really....? It's a fucking beautiful collection of sound, and that's what I'm here for. 

CANTOS OSCUROS

SHOTWELL

 

What can you say about SHOTWELL? Jimmy is as ubiquitous to San Francisco's Mission scene as the scene is to San Francisco - starting with X-TAL and STRAWMAN before starting SHOTWELL with Bay Area royalty in 1994. With a cast of former members longer than anyone (save Jimmy) can accurately count, SHOTWELL have popped in and out in various incarnations for longer than I've lived here. I've seen them perform accidentally brilliant sets and I've seen them perform so poorly that I couldn't believe they could even look at each other (much less the audience), but they (read: Jimmy) always do it with complete honestly. These twenty-one songs are perhaps the best collection of material I have ever heard from SHOTWELL. A lifetime on the fringes living life through stumbles, tyrades and genius seems to have manifested with the arguably perfect self titled Shotwell, released nearly three decades after the band was born.

SHOTWELL

FURIA FATAL

 

Repeated listens and I'm still not quite sure what to say about Shonen Punk. A relic from the last decade snagged from the Power Glove Dub punks a few weeks ago, this Fresno, California outfit lay waste to your idea of synth punk (and punk in general) with five hopelessly danceable doses of the real freak shit. Driving primitive lo-fi beats and dated synths fronted by a vicious hardcore snarl, FURIA FATAL sound like...nothing. Which means I want more. 

SHONEN PUNK

SINGH KAUR • KIM ROBERTSON

 

Endless energies have been wasted turning up noses at the things I classified (rightly or wrongly) as "new age," but I am doing my best to right those wrongs in old(er) age. It's a weight lifted to explore a field of sound not based on scenes and/or reputation, but simply by consuming what crosses your path when (or if) you so desire...which is how Mool Mantra landed moved from a second hand shop in the American Southwest to a shelf in my temporary apartment. And when I listened? It wasn't my nose that was upturned...it was my ears.

MOOL MANTRA

GIBRALTAR

 

Got a little care package from Philippines last week and....woof. I'm pumped as hell to blast the new KILLRATIO (of course), but holy shit this slab stopped be dead in my tracks. GIBRALTAR are an absolute powerhouse, the kind of doom tinged crust that North American DIY seems to have steered away from over the last decade or so. Talking ZEROID, KILARA caliber tonnage retooled for a new world filled with the same fukkn shit...this is a fucking monster, kids. Strap yourself in. 

GIBRALTAR