TRACK | Busted Head Racket – Poor no more

5/5 golden merles

Garage Synth / Egg Punk. Newcastle, Australia. I will never in my life make something that sounds this good. Yet the merciless and merciful aspects of our brains are broken in similar if not effectively identical ways with respect to consumption ideals. What can be salvaged from a poisoned music culture and made good again?

We can’t let the bastards entirely have melody. We can’t allow them to curse and butcher the synth that sings, or only allow play for profit. I can’t make what the band has made. I like to hear it. Busted Head Racket are thriving in the new fresh hell.

As far as simulacra that mimic the moment go, it is a course correction. It’s a good interpretation. There’s an adequate amount of noise and degradation applied that substitutes for where it is otherwise extracted in daily, unavoidable consumption. The filth is placed back on the scale, countering the kitsch that sits like a lead balloon upon the other side.

The discordance is like a filter that allows you to see what lingers around you and at all times but is otherwise invisible; They Live sunglasses or Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe quietly mapping all the background radiation. It is encouraging to see. It helps us navigate the world.

What niche allows for such a thing to emerge and inhabit a space and not be smothered or obliterated? I don’t know, there’s not enough, you should probably support it if you are able. Name your price on the band’s bandcamp. Buy the Vinyl on Erste Theke Tontraeger.

TRACK | Busted Head Racket – Wouldn’t you like 2 Know

5/5 golden merles

Bedroom lo-fi synth pop from Australia, the release from Idiotape Records (Paris) contains two ounces worth of delightful and difficult to kill earworms. The refinement is pronounced and very much appreciated: layers phasing and melodies shifting in precise sequence, the variance in lyric keeping us sated in the recurrent loops.

There’s great detailing in the margins, like the delicate death rattle production on the vocal lanes or the tinny-washed out drums that splash late on in the dying embers. It has great density to it but the appearance of pure candy and handles like a cartoon mallet: swiftly, against the odds, pleasantly gruesome.

The track features the dogged honing of hooks as previously manifested by so many of our senescent idols, by that I mean maybe it has some golden era le tigre feelings about it, maybe a touch of Metric, or of times new viking; things I like and you likely liked too.

The cost is €2 on the bandcamp for the files or €5 for the tape before shipping. See what you can do.