post punk – Plainly & Painfully

TRACK | O.R.F. – wie schön

What can be learned from this? Its direct and graceful descent. Its puncture and pulse. The relaxed raving of the narrations, the chosen selection of attributes as illustrative pastiche. The contents holding enough detail to endear as a sort of half stripped down, functional ruin. And the adequate melodic curvature to facilitate an ease of entry into the canal. Why does it work within the genre when so much else seems to flail about helplessly or sicken or combust when exposed to oxygen?

Probably for some to succeed others have to fail, and en mass; some sad blighted aspect of human perception and consumption: if too many find a balance they become unremarkable and we sharpen the point at which the balancing is possible. And whatever gets caught on that spear is called progress or best of the year, the reward of which is to be impaled and left atrophying in the sun. Also, it’s a nice pop tune and fun!

The track responds to a feeling, irreverence and care balanced out in one coherent, self-contained, 83 seconds of media. It tolerates enough elements of the antithesis to overcome intellectual opposition through instinct. Or maybe it curtails instinct sufficiently in order to compose a pleasing and compatible story. It is the same game as always. But this is a good attempt. According to me, a man who can just about afford to pay for webhosting.

Either you’ve heard this song 20,000 times before or you’ve never heard it. The limits are in place: lung capacity, coincident rhyming forms of language, melodic coherence processing tolerance, range of audible tone and transmittable frequency, mass production, and a hundred other great filters of pop music. Eventually the plaque of nostalgia will harden entirely around your heart. You can use this as a test to see if the barricade is complete or if some gaps remain for admission. $0 on the bandcamp.

TRACK | The Uptights – Jasper

Oslo’s The Uptights have created in “Jasper” a multifaceted fuck-you of a tune, some real fun experimental lo-fi post-punk. Early hooks are hung on a static howling, doused in reverb and abandoned in sequence. From this admirable mire three distinct subsections are carved and then collapsed at the emergence of each newly favored form. It is resolute in relation to what it is not, competently corrupted. The contrasting components of this set provide by their shared presence a murky but welcome depth of field, one that is surprisingly vast and inviting.

Within this arrangement the track seems to feed off of itself in a complex and closed system. It is pleasant to witness. By populating the relative void of the medium in this way we are able to see and define something more clearly than if it were otherwise an isolated instance or series of tracks. Instead of fostering some post-punk hack medley, the negative space envelops the substances, rematerializing them afterward in new forms, glowing, growing and exhibiting signs of life. The movement and misdirection creates a admirable gap in which other imagined aspects are allowed to flourish.

If you’re a fan of Flegel you will be familiar with the feeling derived from expert arrangements. It’s the same in any medium, but this is a good example.

By the allotment of elements you’ve been intentionally given something to recognize in relation to one another: a sense of scale and speed, relative motion in focus instead of a blur, a foundational frame of reference that allows for orientation. That is something music can but often does not offer: a signpost in a sea of dark, a diminishing of alienation for the observer. Maybe a couple of metaphors need to be tacked together to get at the scope of it, but that’s the general idea.

I don’t think most writers even know to want it. This type of articulation is often discounted or crudely overelaborated to the point of the grandiose and the monstrous and it all collapses, some limitation of consciousness or patience usually inhibits their ideal manner of consumption. The texture and tone has to be right to be of a compelling type to even tolerate the transference. Counted off and casually scuttled, as here, you don’t need some minutia fixated vulgarity, at just under three minutes the graceful brevity achieves a similar end and doesn’t rot out under your gaze in the process.

I was dreaming arrives October 27th. The cost is 99 NOK for the cassette or 30 for the digital (~$3).

TRACK | Mantarochen – Porzellan

“Porzellan” is formidable synth wave/post-punk from the overflowing chalice of Leipzig. This is all about the multifaceted arrangement of melodic layers, interwoven and unfolding in a organic and fundamentally convincing manner. The immediate complexity doesn’t overwhelm the feeling of the thing while in pursuit of its own novelty. That’s a kind of magic trick, both rare and good to behold.

I’ve been in a rut with respect to consumption; everything I hear sounds captive to its influences instead of supported or branching out from them, mostly exhausted, redundant. But Mantarochen’s track here is a stark contrast, taking the general genre cues and with an outright devotion to melody breaking out of that pattern by some novel means.

With a handful of elements, symbolically rendered (Digi-drums braced between synths octaves and the bass beneath, the poised utterances), you too can recreate the world. Or at least an amusing and convincing representation of it.

Beast or man, I studied German at High Schools and Universities in the United States. This means I have acquired the vocabulary of a pigeon after filling out various pulp-smelling workbooks at ungodly hours of the morning. But what I can comprehend sounds agreeable and fits the mood established in the murk of its movements.

The price is whatever you want it to be on the bandcamp. It was found on side B of 12xu’s Verspannungskassette cassette #58.

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

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.

TRACK | Woolen Men – Why Do Parties Have to End?

New materials from Portland’s Woolen Men is always a welcome sight, having previously written incoherently about “On Cowardice” and “Head on the Ground.” After the two year hiatus, they remain one of my favorite presently living outfits, with much reliable hook and clamber in these lo-fi rock pop tones and phrases, some sweetness and perennial dread.

The text originally by Napalm Beach and concerns the temporal, with particular respect to the indivisible nature of time and perception; that linear curse. We’re left behind or simultaneously continuing onward at differing trajectories from the absent/dead — however you want to look at it. The single’s a tribute to some departed friends. Parties and lives collapse of their own accord in the semi-planned obsolescence of existence, all perception seemingly tied to one orb spinning around another at particular, reliable orbits. The pacing of which, having always operated under these auspices, seems very important to us, and the rut of this rotation rules our lives.

Woolen Men always stretch beyond the generic spoils of melody and interpersonal indistinction, building tiny pocket universes. There’s wallowing, sure, but it’s articulated, idiosyncratic, worthy of peering at or visiting often. We are lucky to remain within the same timeline. It’s $1 for the digital track, the hope of more tracks to come is included at no cost.

TRACK | Egg Idiot – Meltdown

Leipzig eggpunk with the uncanny ability to channel estrangement into melodic rupture. Egg Idiot’s Help ! is hyperactive malaise as an exaltation, serving with distinction in the line of trash punk, and both a degradation of that which is superfluous in rock and a refinement of its redeeming qualities. Composed of composting tones and rotting with true relish, it’s an exquisite set.

It’s a very good achievement, one I’m going to have to sit and absorb and hope its contaminant remains in my blood as influence. Each track is moving swiftly upward, a distinct sample from the mantle of the core. It’s inviably pounding and cracking with more conviction and force than you expect from any one man band, feeding/rallying off its own fury. And maintaining that emphasis within the its intricate layering, burning melodies and segments at a venerable rate. Any track seems like a good entry point, with its extreme consistency.

For more look to the new/magnificent “Feel Like a Dog” video, something significant and full of detail and invention. Or look back also at the beautiful “Barf Life” video and the prior feature . Support your local egg-based cretin by naming your own price or purchasing a cassette for €7 EUR or more.

TRACK | MENU – Sorcery

“Sorcery” is the first single off the upcoming album from MENU, Pushpin, out October 31st. It follows in the vein of April’s superb/experimental art rock PROOFS (OF THE TRICKS WE PLAYED). It heads off expectations, narrowly avoiding them, in pacing and then pivoting, grappling with guts of the track and turning them back into functional systems of consequence. In playing with tradition through a kind of invention it is achieving a type of escape velocity.

It has some semblance to the works of Flegel/Women/Cindy Lee in the emergence of delicately over elaborated melodies that turn out to be entirely and immediately structurally sound; that selfsame feeling of walking out into the dark and finding sure footing. The presence of the drums is compelling and propulsive, more so than supportive and undergirding. There is some energy in its construct, as if to say: What if traces of math rock could be enjoyed by humans? A proposition I hadn’t seriously considered. But there are tinges and tints to this of that, humanely and held all together.

Look for the album at the end of the spooky month. For now the single is a sole dollar on the bandcamp for the digital experience, which directly supports the artist. Or you could wait and listen to it on Spotify approximately 277 times and the royalties will also accrue to roughly one dollar (not including the fees of distribution).

TRACK | OUZO! – State of Affairs

Australian Garage punk that has become sentient and aware of the existential threats which are damning us to an arbitrary and relatively abrupt end. A dangerous prospect, hopefully. The track contains a litany of discontents, each censure delivered with savor. Racing through the excess offenses of the era, OUZO! continues smashing and grabbing back at the daily gauntlet of inadequate empathy.

And, of course, rightfully so. God damn the status quo, the complacency which empowers it, and the fervor with which its defenders somehow manage to live with themselves. In the fine form the critique holds up and is elevated. Tradition is presently the cancer of culture, by and large, we just hope for the benign kinds cluttering up our chest cavities.

But, also, contradictorily, ritual can reinforce behavior, and maybe with nice, catchy, scathing, fun, fiery tracks like these that tradition can be reinvented, with some small part played as a salving commiseration, consensus building catalyst, or soundtrack for direct action. I don’t know. Adam Curtis would politely laugh in my face for discussing tracks in these terms. But he provides no practical alternative and is himself caught in the indefinite arts feedback loop.

The 7″ is sold out from Weather Vane Records (AU), Polaks Records (EU) but some remain for €7 on the French Wine Records (EU) bandcamp. Or $3 AUD for the digital remains straight from the horses’ mouth.

TRACK | Pigeon – Permanent Quest

Berlin post-punk from Pigeon, “Permanent Quest” offers a cascading lead riff and the ominous, conspiratorial raving that just so happens to ring exclusively true. The subject is our collective dystopian inhabitancy, with talk of a perpetual tasking and the surveillance required by our benefactors to monitor compliance. Thundering and scraping at the lid, I like this grim approximation and its framing of the morgue as monument.

The performance is to be found somewhere between the land of post and present punk; the distinction doesn’t matter, but the frothing is slightly tempered after having had some time to reflect before conveyance. Still, the production affords us drums like a punctured lung, a sampling from the initial pop. And everything maintains that heat amidst dry powder. I’m very much looking forward to the full length.

“Name your own price” in ones and zeroes Or vinyl for €6 from the formidable Mangel Records.

TRACK | Klint – Selected Welcome

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.

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