Category: post-punk

TRACK | MIINT – Farmacopea

5/5 golden merles

Mérida, Mexico-based psych punk, with a great acuity of influence, blending many genre elements of surf, garage, shoegaze and some field-recording experimentation toward the latter stages of the album. Opening salvo “Farmacopea” stretches to what would seem a breaking point. But before you know it it’s wrapped back around, the ouroboros insatiable, the spine of bass holding steady.

In light of all that, the production is equal parts bone crunching and soaring. Change is constant and the track is always moving forward, chimeric, feinting and lacerating. These whims come naturally and compound in the cloth of the thing, all of the delirious addendums arriving to seize and gratify. Much is made from the synthesis, its hybrid and contorted form a myriad of chaoses I find to be compelling.

Proceeding to the bandcamp, the digital ghost of the record can be captured for $26 MXN ($1.29 USD).

TRACK | Flop Machine – U.R.A.4.

5/5 golden merles

Machine Beat Rock And Roll is a fleshed out record from the collected set of singles by Flop Machine (Norway), out now on the grotesquely strong roster of reels at Dial Club (Japan). “U.R.A.4.” is synth fueled eggpunk, some craven melodies purged of pretense. Warm plateaus of waveform riding the digidrum rails, a motet raging and decrying, “work your fingers to the bone / paying off your student loan.”

Its production has a great grip, nascent pliers on the nerve. The compressors range has a full punch packaged, breaking the thumb for good measure. The soft tear at vocal peak, looping back and disseminating like fog into the anthemic instrumental accompaniment, is a thing to be admired. It’s a bouquet of firecrackers and wet cement, everything wrapped up in a nice little package.

The tape is ¥800 JPY (that’s $5.62 USD, plus $5.27 shipping for United States), or single use tracks for NOK 7 (0.67 cents). Everything apparently done in the name of love and at a loss.

TRACK | Padkarosda – Bujk​á​l Benned Valami

5/5 golden merles

Hardcore post-punk from Budapest, Hungary, “Bujk​á​l Benned Valami” (something is hiding inside of you) has a kind of clinical precision, extracting the still beating heart for display. The melodic vocals, tones and textures are nailed on to the eternal side of things, pulsing and phasing with great craft between the well refined passages and instrumental chambers. The rate of rising is consummate with the range of depths fallen, the whole album holds together in this sense of wondrous breadth.

The fury and panic of the feeling is offset by the gorgeous construction. There is the instantly recognizable and heartily apportioned alienation that holds constant. While the lyrics are missing from this set on the bandcamp, they are present on the earlier records, and you can directly feel that steady/familiar estrangement enveloping, it’s omnipresence and the comprehensive and many-angled approaches to addressing it. It feels like a thorough account of groping at the dungeons walls in the dark.

The record was found today through the great TegosluchamPL. Black vinyl limited to 300 worldwide, look to World Gone Mad Records for the shipping over the seas. Or digital album for $8.

TRACK | Klint – Selected Welcome

5/5 golden merles

German synth/egg punk, “Selected Welcome” is tinged and tainted with a lot of good grit and a prodigal pounce. The chorus is a simple phrase that contains the seeds of an adventure, the trek at time of reception, sometime before the hubbub gets hashed out. It has tones that seep in and the pulse of something fretful and not long for this world; it provides a good example of how to proceed if you are looking to leave a mark.

For at least several minutes the lord is baptized in his own blood and there is much singing in the ensuing confusion. I thought for one second I’d written about Klint before but it was Kieff, and through my idiotic error I was greatly rewarded. The whole set clanks and saunters in its own fluids for right around one half of one hour. It’s a soundtrack in two parts, both of them uncannily accurate approximations of being strangled by a stethoscope.

It will be €4 for the digital set split into two halves. Or it’s about $6 for the tape cut up into digestible chunks from Japan’s superb Dial Club.

TRACK | Total Luck – Ramble

5/5 golden merles

“Ramble” is rampant Birmingham-based (UK) post-punk offering a coming to terms with degrading conditions and offering some expression of our common terror. Through its intricate phases we receive a fair extrapolation of the nascent era, our present spent staggering out from a stupor in search of a few reliable harbingers.

The track is appropriately naming names, resilient in conviction, a good preface to our collectively entering another period of overdue righteous fury. There is a good sense of how things will progress, whose mistakes are forgiven and which ones are kept on the mantle as a centerpiece or conversation starter. Much pointed instrumentation and detailing throughout accompanies the excellent vocal phrasing, bleeding the blisters where appropriate.

As the regressives mourn their genocidal aristocrats and strip rights from half the population with respect to their own bodily autonomy, there is significance in creating ideologically sound tracks with that sort of anthemic prestige. Many individual’s hearts are in the right place, but they lack the aesthetic. Many others still get lost in theory and form, while either lacking courage or capacity for a clarity of language. It’s nice when there’s a balance to this weighting and each quality is strong in both respects. It can be obtained for the cost of naming your own price on bandcamp.

TRACK | M.A.Z.E. – Spread the Germicide

5/5 golden merles

II is a vital and frenzied Japanese punk/post-punk rock with enough energy and inventive instrumentation to make its own wave outside the new/no paradigms. Phrenetic and more fun than falling out through the bottom of your own confetti-stuffed coffin.

It is always acting, moving, while we’re all left cleaving to causation, digging about for clues from which actions can be derived, meanwhile M.A.Z.E. have become motion itself. It reminds me of another maelstrom of an album I admire, Black Bug’s 2010 s/t. Each track deviating, but also revolving around its own star and in its own solar system of songs.

It’s a little bit of a revelation that makes me slightly sick to my stomach, a solution that evades this sort of pretense; just lean into it and never stop enduring. Like any good media worth it’s weight in physical space, it creates a world of consistent rules and value and adheres to them. It can be got on black vinyl from Lumpy Records for $17 / $6 for digital folder in perpetuity.

TRACK | Ismatic Guru – I Didn’t Like It

5/5 golden merles

To my great and enduring shame, I didn’t catch it when it slithered out from the egg last month. II is garage punk with punch and experiment, all tracks wrapping promptly in an Irish exit, spun tight with purposes and unraveling in a spectacle. I think you’ll like it, it has a lot of good heart chunks floating in a flavorful lo-fi, protein rich gruel base.

There are 5 tracks in 6 minutes then a “so long, suckers,” and it’s off into the sunset. Replete with textured indulgence and with good causes, all the veins are soundly setup and pointed in the right direction. Lots of rhythmic harping and heaving, to my dismay outpacing even The Bouldermobile at times. It’s a sick set and worth your passive and active income.

This has no brainer written all over it, but, in a cruel twist of fate, without a brain I tragically could not decipher the language. Until now! Name your price. Or the physical is set at 100 Tapes with pins and transmogrifying art, from Swimming Faith Records.

TRACK | DADAR – Desperate

5/5 golden merles

“Desperate” is the immediately engaging opening track on DADAR’s new Italian eggpunk repeater Iron Cage. Gleaming lo-fi synth punk, the track concerns a particularly heavy son stealing away from daylight, pinning himself private in his chamber, shutting up his windows, locking fair daylight out and making himself an artificial night. It is effectively nailing the froth and fever of confinement, self-imposed or otherwise.

The guitars have the proper amount of jangle and bluster, the production consistently owning the excess, everything is gilded in synths. At times it approaches hardcore and anthemic in the vocal ranges, the accompaniment always elevating to meet it in these new plateaus and vistas. A nice fire to gather around, offering commiseration in mutinous hymns.

I am slightly belatedly joining the chorus in bleeding the needle up another notch. I was excited to see it pop up on Tremendo Garaje, KOOP Stronger Than Dirt, and other reliable buyers overnight. When a set of consistent nodes crop up like that it is a very good sign. And the remaining 300 LP discs cannot last long from Goodbye Boozy/Teramo.

TRACK | Smirk – Minuscule Amounts

5/5 golden merles

Some of the finest lo-fi punk you can gather in your basket, recently brought back to my attention by the Tr0tsky’s mixcloud show, “Pretend You Like It.” Criminally, I didn’t write on it yet, only mentioning one from the prior pile. Smirk’s 2021 EP has cornered the market on collapsible hooks, retracting into the deep fried tones, only to be strategically released upon closer inspection. It bites back.

An analgesic itself, the staggered overlap of the chorus and the tones & textures on these guitars make most other production look like a pile of puke. I shudder for those who can’t hear the nuance in the noise, this one is calibrated. Some field/sample elaborations round out this alternate dimension in which everything can be found in its right place.

Supporting music video is gorgeous and crafted with a commensurate amount of care to parallel the track itself. Digital for the cost of naming your own price. Or the vinyl is on a second pressing through Portland’s Total Punk Records.

TRACK | SOOKS – U.D.

5/5 golden merles

I’d advise you to at least consider any track that contains the line: I will find my enemies / and crush them in a warm embrace. Or at least this one, who knows what the future brings. “U.D.” is punk rock from Perth, Australia. With righteous anger the track laments the impotence of citizens within modern nation states, navigating the hoops and decoy levers of power, while true power is held through legalized corruption and representatives beholden to special interests.

But far from defeated, the chorus beseeches real organizing and the active deconstruction of unjust hierarchies. All generations seem to eventually sour and amalgamate in the hospice or the home, but hopefully we can productively stagger a few more feet further afield than is traditionally within one eras capacity.

The other good news is that in addition to the smiting and fury it’s a lot of fun and sharply constructed rampage. Seek out the whole set. Physical pulp from Richter Scale Tapes who also put out the superb Rude Television – Distractions, Demo 22 is five lbs for the Cassette while supplies last. These are both listed as free downloads, you ghoulish ingrates. Found through Amber Rambo yt curation.