UNIVERSAL BEAT

 

Classic sounding Bay Area garage / power pop that comes from the modern era. Dripping with '90s Mission energy, it's easy to imagine myself losing my shit watching UNIVERSAL BEAT ignite a sweaty warehouse in a deserted corner of the Dogpatch, sharing the room with folks from MENSCLUB and HICKEY and FANTASY on an otherwise unremarkable Friday night. An unremarkable night in the moment that evolves into a thing of legend as the years pass - the kind of band that makes people's eyes get wide when you say you saw them more times than you can remember not because you are (were) cool but because you just happened to be there. Listen to "Mission 9" and know that this is that kind of band, you just happen to be living through a different and otherwise unremarkable time.

GREATEST HITS

ZULU HITS

 

The titles and cover accurately indicate contents here - a glorious collection of late '80s South African music from a few artists you may know (LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO, UMOJA) and a slew of new-to-you bangers from ZIA (perfect '80s freestyle), LUCKY DUBE, INKUNZI EMDAKA, SPLASH (perhaps my favorite track on the tape), NGANE KHAMBA and heaps more. This music makes me happy in the right way - it's happy and upbeat music but it's far from empty. These sounds are full of hope, full of life, full of power. You can hear it, and you can feel it while you're hearing it.  

ZULU HITS: BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN MUSIC

BOLO

 

Twelve minutes of putrid, bombastic fastcore / pv from St. Petersburg. You know the feeling when you think you know what's coming and you're waiting with outstretched earholes because you know you want what's coming and then....it's better than you wanted it to be? Well, that's BOLO. Imagine LACK OF INTEREST listening to '90s Florida death metal and then colliding with PARLAMENTARISK SODOMI in a damp (dank) alley on a Thursday morning before sunrise. Oh wait....today is Thursday isn'y it? Interesting.

FRUSTRATION

GRADIENT FADE

 

The first time I put this on I listened with intent for a few minutes and then more or less went about my afternoon with the early bars of the second track "Frost Heave" lingering in the background. I don't know when I realized that Sensory Drift was affecting my thoughts and movements, but somewhere in the middle of "Mount Analog" I had to adjust the volume (up, naturally), sit down and focus. I was focusing on the sounds to be sure, but really I was thinking about how the sounds made me feel....because the sounds made me feel. In brief moments, this recording sounds like an indie rock synth freak is trying to play funeral doom and there are other moments where it feels like a lost North Bay ambient new age relic. But in all of those moments (and all of the others), GRADIENT FADE sinks into you in a way that's hard to articulate - even the most calm and casual sounds are made with care and intent...the same way we should be treating ourselves. And maybe that's the thing, it feels like it's supposed to make you feel.

SENSORY DRIFT

ABYSM

 

No one is going to come to me for in depth and knowledgable discussions about death metal, but damn I know what I like when I like it. And that's what it's really about....and I like ABYSM. Relentlessly putrid and pummeling blackened death metal from the UK; just three tracks capped with a GRAVE cover that I would never have recognized were it not for some other chap opining on the internet about this 2012 recording. Primal, howling devastation that owes equal debts to '90s  Florida and POSSESSED...I think. But who am I anyway?

UNLEASH THE FALLEN

ZABØGART

 

You're standing at the intersection of Crust & Grind just minding your own business, and then a dumptruck drops a healthy load of Fastcore right on top of the pavement and a steamroller with a flipped up hat starts crushing it all. And then, just six minutes later, you have ZABØGART. Fourteen doses of relentless distorted fury, and it's done before you even know what happened. URBAN WASTE and CHARLES BRONSON covers to keep them honest, but ten years from now some kids on the other side of the world are going to record their version of "Polotik Identitas" and I hope I'm hear for it. 

FUCKSCENE

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BIG JAR OF MAYO

 

It was the turn of the decade and depending on where we were (geographically and/or spiritually) most of us were at some stage of managing a pandemic reality. Especially in retrospect, that period changed so many things about how we re/act and interact, how we exist, how we develop, how we create. It crushed some people (and some peoples) socially, but there were little rays of light that kept poking holes in the shrouds so many were living under. And it's in that spirit that I present the second cassingle from BIG JAR OF MAYO - this mysterious bunch of punks from (or probably not from) Nowhere, Wyoming started a ton of bands and a label called Deluxe Bias and started dropping outside freak punk tapes out of the sky and we ate them like candy. The energy that made NWI so appealing to so many seasoned '00s punks had been reborn in the Great North American Void while so many of us just wondered what was going to happen tomorrow instead of making something happen today. "Shit City" b/w "Another Ripoff" from 2021. Three minutes that were part of a larger (and greater) catalog that reminded us to live. 

SHIT CITY b/w ANOTHER RIPOFF