Tag: art punk

TRACK | Cosme – ♀/♂

5/5 golden merles

More Groschi flagged digi drum gruel,
Cosme’s “♀/♂” has the right balance of grime and pop. Mexico-based egg and post-punk with track titles designed to stymie the algorithm. It features sharp synths. It is agreeably weird and pulpy. If you polish this it would die, the act breaking the barrier needed for breathing the muck it is coated in.

When the primary melody finally releases its jaws the newly minted guitar & synth hook cushions the transition into another form. That sequence kindly allows for a brief recuperation before proceeding into another mauling.

There’s a really fine assemblage of instrumental and vocal hooks then a bit of late-stage discordance on vocoder production that merges them into one. Additional digi-drum variant fills keep it all nice and novel in the detailing, fleshing out the piece. If one were so inclined you could surely dance to it with minimal hardship.

Demo No. 3 is currently $2.70 for the .wav files or $8.50 on the remaining cassettes. Maybe you can in the sequence of your life pair it with Priit Pärn’s “…And Plays Tricks.”

TRACK | BLOUS3 – Goo Goo

5/5 golden merles

“Goo Goo” is Sacramento-based noise punk with cutting phrasing and instrumental hooks concerning the crimes of Johnson & Johnson. How can a culture appropriately reply to grievous wrongdoing committed that effectively goes unpunished? In spitting their own legalese and cowardice back at the bastards, BLOUS3 gives it a worthy attempt.

Conveying your contempt is a valuable and worthy endeavor in art as well as in life, especially in a land dominated by bribery and payoffs that are supposed to wondrously settle all grievance.

Instead of suggesting through abstraction, the naming of names is also important. The organizations and corporations that transgressed could have been alluded to here, and/or, possibly, spoken of in interviews that some fraction of the audience might have seen, having guilt implied or indirectly assigned.

But, mercifully/vengefully, it isn’t in this case. There’s a real great balance struck between the emotional crux and the testimonial. It’s neither sterile documentation nor an overwhelming howl. The excoriating is finely allotted, richly painted in tone, gracefully moving between contextual parallaxes and recrimination. It makes the wrath fun, compelling stuff.

Of course proper retribution is impossible. The dead are gone. The payout from the case is only a minor gesture, admission of fault (de facto, de jure is another matter), and some sad simulacra of compensation. If we are incapable of acquiring justice, at least let the villains be shamed and the martyrs be staunchly defended and honored. This is on both aesthetic and moral grounds a good and worthy effort.

Mixed into a really agreeable punk slurry by Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden. Arriving shortly on San Fran’s Cherub Dream Records. The track is $1 and the album is $7 on the bandcamp, fully releasing October 4th.