Tag: egg punk

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 | Catastrophic Dance Ensemble – Panko

5/5 golden merles

The assignment understanders have arrived. What do the rest of you have to say for yourselves? Cincinnati-found Catastrophic Dance Ensemble make rapid, roaming, detailed eggpunk. Gently putrefied, as a measure of gauging its place within the world, and thriving in the rot all around us. Its welts and warp mirror many of my own less convincing accusations; a fiery and balanced form.

In recent surveys most people claim they know when it is appropriate to twist a melody like pulling someone by the lapels out of the window. But in reality hardly 7 in 10 could do it if pressed. Beyond the hypothetical, these Ohioans have done it here. The instrumental backend is even an excellent melodic tumble, all of it finding some much needed humor in the hemorrhage and goes some way toward explaining why we can’t have nice things.

In league with the good goings on of Leipzig, Berlin, Melbourne and Montreal, the Cincinnati punk rock scene is strong, it seems, from afar. If you’ve recently granted positive appraisals to egg and experiment kings like Mesh, FIVE BUCKS, and C.P.R. Doll, I suppose this would be an easy affixation. Name your price at the bandcamp.

TRACK | Belly Jelly – Half Fluorinated Man

5/5 golden merles

From the neonatal subsection of the Discontinuous Innovations Inc. archives, 2022‘s The Universal Language is a cohesive wreck of a record. Certified synth punk, it has leaky guts. It has a kind of belligerent whimsy that seems for all intents and purposes indefatigable. It’s probably best paired with eating gravel off an ill-advised grind to save face after some prior cataclysmic blunder; the botches compounding, proudly multiplying.

Make no mistake, it is a corpulent peach of a series, bleeding blood we don’t rightly recognize as such. You’ll break a nail picking some of the hooks back out of your brain. I haven’t technically been the same since, for better or for blurst.

“Half Fluorinated Man” is the pick of that litter for me, it opens with misdirection, some foaming at the mouth before a tall drink of water. Half a century of pop rock is recontextualized as having been a terrible mistake, and all in about 90 seconds. The digital album is $1 USD. The Audio Cassette Tape is $5. These are reasonable requests.

TRACK | The Gobs – Tuffer Than You

5/5 golden merles

Hard to pick a single track off this exceptional Split EP shared between The Gobs and Ex-White. But I’ve settled on the first track of this side, “Tuffer Than You.” It’s exquisite synth accented garage punk, composed of hardened snow scraped out from under the car and built into a brilliant effigy. The production decay is a correcting mechanism, it better represents the environment from which it was derived.

Notably, the reverence is low. The melodies are quality and effortlessly interlocking; it’s bound up nicely in this loaded frame. Free reign is given to some selected tones and the others are curtailed dutifully around the stomp and stagger; together they’re textured/paced to allow the happy suspending of doubt in the murk of it all.

Truly the 4-track split itself will likely end up on the year-end list. The 300 wax pieces have some yet to be disseminated from Germany, $20 to Turbo Discos with shipping is a steal if you have the cash to ship.

TRACK | Billiam – Jenny Destroys Records

5/5 golden merles

From a split with The Vovos, Billliam’s “Jenny Destroys Records” is synth punk that tells a simple tale of destruction well, with heart and animus. The Vocal-synth harmony is unforgiving in its pursuit: heavily hounding, never yielding. In the writing there is a keen understanding of when to rhyme and when to let it slide, suiting the compiling accusations as they grow in conviction.

It’s a great relief to find this frank wrath so built to scale; the track balances absolute parity of medium and message, the scope fitting the melody and method of execution; all of it craven and compelling. Artistry and insolence are the heart of punk rock, but also here add in a bit of humor and a laser-guided melody.

The remaining tracks will be emerging on the 16th of September, preorder now at $1 AUD. The 150 pressing of the vinyl by Under Heat Records will be gone shortly, those not already smashed or scratched by Jenny the cat. rip.

TRACK | Repulsion Switch – Optimista

5/5 golden merles

Repulsion Switch’s EP features variations on a theme via accelerated lo-fi Buenos Aires egg punk. Rapid, minimal and winged, the sort of scuttled remains of rock a low ranking demon might envision during a weekend away at a sensory deprivation tank. It breaks into being at four tracks in three minutes and forty two seconds. It is better than most formative fiction you have consumed.

The balance is admirable. Venturing out into abstraction despite the commitment to form, it is consistently corroded and it’s playing with how many pieces can be removed before collapse. It has cracked the code and is now faithful to the formula.

As it evaporates upon entry, we may as well start it on the first track, “Optimista,” but I prefer the third best, “Flavors,” as the most choice from the set. Anyway, If it makes it down the track list, there is not much of an impact crater visible after. But it is a spectacle worthy of consumption in either case. I’m glad to know it. Etch it into your hard drive and heart for a mere $1 USD (or more).

TRACK | THE CLUE – Starting

5/5 golden merles

More lo-fi punk marinated in the Deluxe Bias morgue, a very fine and irrevocable 21st amendment to their rising catalog. It does not overstay its welcome with 5 tracks running to a little over 7 minutes in length, hitting the ideal demo structure, and ending with a nice homage to Tiny Tim to wrap things up.

Frantic and favoring the form, it hurtles about in the orbit of the egg punk. Never reaching, it’s all fully realized in tone, consistent in its clamor throughout. A goodly sort, well beyond the proof of concept.

Head to TegosluchamPL for the track list divided, otherwise you’re in for the long haul, which is to say 5 short hauls combining for a medium haul. The tapes have sold out, promptly & irrevocably, unless later reprinted. Otherwise you can have it for naming any number smaller than the one in your bank account.

TRACK | BRIAN DISEASE – no regret

5/5 golden merles

UK lo-fi punk that “hate(s) music… and will make you also hate music.” The work is offering similar sentiments to Csehak singing, “I don’t want to kill The Killers anymore / … now I know that music itself is wrong.” BRIAN DISEASE are found here raiding a zeitgeist which frankly deserves whatever pillaging and plundering comes its way.

If somewhere in the region of 99% of a medium seems to offer no value to you, to be wallowing in tradition, without invention, built of tropes and cloyingly posturing, what else would the proper response be? “The good” is well within the margin of error, the exception to the rule.

Still, on BRIAN DISEASE, there is provided an example that there remains a bridge out of the thing, the structure is largely intact, approachable and traversable. Here we’re shown that there’s much to be salvaged from the culture, even in profound disillusionment.

In the coursing and the clatter, there’s a resplendent, breathtaking bile here and proof of what can still be extracted from the old genres. There are nourishing guts in it but loose in a slurry, the kind of stuff you reluctantly feed your cat, for now. It can be reconfigured compellingly together and we can subsist upon it. Casettes out on Just Step Sideways Records.

TRACK | FIVE BUCKS – dunno

5/5 golden merles

Egg punk / devocore excellence in its nascent form from Italy, “dunno” leads off a ravenous set of bedroom demos. They are refined well beyond the point of standard demo production, perfectly patina’d in the phaser and verb. Fangs lifted from the nightstand and affixed, it’s come early this year: a very happy underwater Halloween to all who celebrate.

A top tier example of this beaming, radiant golden era of home recordings, producing much in the way of admirable reinterpretations of what constitutes wonder through the prism of shared influence. Things are getting weirder and better, as far as I know. And all while honing the human heart and core of the thing.

A great set and it has received the seal of approval from two global champs in the cause of promoting the intricate and warped: tapes from Painters Tapes (Detroit/US) and Syf Records (Poland) for the EU buyers.

TRACK | DADGAD – Control

5/5 golden merles

“Control” is pulsing and moderately remorseless post-egg-punk from Rome. There’s great calibration to the balanced assemblage of digi drums, weighted to within an inch of collapse, and that guitar/synth melody cloaking the percussive tremor.

There’s lots of good and uncanny foreboding to it despite the relaxed pacing and inflection. The vocals are crisp, burnt up nice, presiding from postern, behind the delicate horde amassed up front. The EP carries on like this, considered and detailed throughout, and it’s all a great relief, frankly.

There is a run of 47 tapes out from Detroit’s stellar Painters Tapes for $5 USD. You can still get it at the time of posting.