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Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Monday, February 12, 2018
20 17 was a bloodbath here's my year end list culled from the pages of MRR
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Layla Gibbon top 2017
records!
What’s the cliché,
writing about music is like dancing about art?! There were so many records I
flipped out over during this terrible desolate brutal year, I had a list of
twenty LPs to whittle down! And that was just the LPs! So many options! I am
gonna make a list in the future that includes non MRR reviewable sounds from 2017 too
but here are my rants and raves:
TOP RECORDS:
Late entry! Notified about this band’s existence by current
Australian correspondent Grace Ambrose and mind was immediately blown apart by
its true UKDIY meets mod perfection, I was psychically forced into mailordering
immediately upon first listen! Four women from Melbourne who visually seem to
have walked out of a teen girl mag circa 1965 making music that brings to mind
to most blissful shambolic C-86’d out mod sounds of the TELEVISION PERSONALITIES,
but also watching the movie Daisies.
Playful subversion that sounds at once wry, charming and acerbic, a garage pop
dream pie.
UKDIY directional shamble meets ice cool LA 1978 punk
dreams, Candice has the voice to communicate to all other worlds what punk is
and then there is that perfect guitar sound, like listening to "Ghost on
the Highway" on 45… I only like drums that sound either murderous or
collapsing and this is both at once. Oh the allure of PATSY,
what a dream, what a group. If you only want to listen to KLEENEX and RED CROSS
at this juncture of the end of the world, if you want to hear the sound of
sneering delight, of true joyous insurrection this 12” is the eloquent yet
snotty answer to all your problems. The way “Society Ape” switches to “Nazi’s
Are So Plain” is the stuff dreams are made of. An actual perfect 12” and an
easy contender for record of the year. Hardcore.
Someone I know was complaining about all the bands that are
current but simulating sounds of cool female directed art punk bands circa
1981, and as my eyes rolled to the back of my head I thought of the past 17
years watching historically accurate reenactment all dude HC bands play the
same idea night after night in show spaces across America… Finally! There is an
avalanche of genius wild nervous damage sound for all kindsa girls that have
ELECTRIC EELS and MALARIA! problems. This does sound like something from one of
those Subnormal Girls comps, but that
is what I want out of life. I want frantic / nervous energy, collapsing
keyboards and sputtering rhythms and cool female vocals over the end of the
world Ballardian creep sound. This LP is a breath of air, of ideas and charisma
and cool…
NOTS put out three 45s and a live LP in 2017… All were
killer of course, but something about this one really set it above the rest, it’s
a truly great 45. The A-side is so sick, chopped up antagonistic dada KBD
perfection, repetition of the words “Cruel Friend” making the sound even more
unrecognizable delirious and frantic! Then the fucking B-Side! With its strange
creepy crawly feeling, sort of Dario Argento No Wave art school girls out for
blood and fear… That keyboard sound, it’s for female protagonists that can
control insects with their minds, truly otherwordly! An image reverse xerox of
the times we are stuck in.
I have no idea how I even found this, it didn’t get sent
into MRR, but is so exactly my idea of a good time… Girls in the Garage dream snot, imagine the first BANGS 45 if they
made an album with Bomp! and avoided the whole major label hair ballad move… Conjure
up in your mind the sickest yet sweetest girl group sound through the thick
haze of bedroom psyche. Bubblegum
for modernists.
Like listening to DIE KREUZEN backwards, simultaneous no
wave buildings collapse hardcore that’s like getting pummeled by the ocean and
reading the S.CU.M. Manifesto all at
once, fave Bay Area ragers since PIG DNA. Girl geniuses hate cops…
I don’t really know what the deal is with this record, as
far as I can tell it was a tape from 2012 that got made into a record this year
and the band is from Poland… I am truly grateful a copy made it into the MRR compound, as it is wild and cool and
cantankerous and hard to get out of your brain once you’ve heard the strange shapes
it presents. It sort of reminds me of a Polish version of VENOM P STINGER?! But
it’s way less swaggering than that and more in the direction of a less
contained RONDOS or something between those two bands that I am unable to put
into words or make sense of?! It’s fucking wild art Eastern European punk and
it rules.
Truly great! Title track is a bashed out mix tape must have
that fans of music will
clutch to their very beings… Rest of this now classic 45
follows suite with Montana dissonant reality strike on MIKE REP bands, COUNTRY
TEASERS, certain eras of the EMBARRASSMENT, VU shambled guitars, direct
vocalizations, this is another milestone for your collection. How much art can
you take? Only this kind.
I couldn’t decide between this or PALBERTA or BENT or PIERRE
ET BASTIEN or GAUCHE but this one won out! Australian music dominates the
dreamscape. This sounds like a band that could have played with the MARINE
GIRLS featuring people from PARSNIP and AUSMUTEANTS I think?! The keyboards are
perfect YOUNG MARBLE GIANTS sound, the male/female vocals are dreamy and this
was one of those things where you hear the badcamp and immediately hunt out a
US distributor, truly timeless sounds for anorak wearing nostalgists of a
certain type…
Coolest Bay Area group with the power to convert an entire
disinterested room into wild believers. Watching them play is like riding a
time machine back to an era of ESSENTIAL LOGIC, MODETTES and DELTA 5 45s, when
punks got taken by the possibilities of dub and ska and funk, while retaining
the taut stripped down sensibilities of the DIY ideal… Amber is just a Warhol
superstar front person, if Ken Loach was the Warhol?! Cuz she’s real. Real
cool. Her voice will make you wanna start fifty nine bands. The way Elyse and
Amber interact as the rhythm section and band vocalists is just so fresh, off
beat but united in cool and snarl. Andy Human’s guitar has a “Guns of Brixton”
devastation affect that will make you wanna dance furiously, ths isn’t a
Hellcat records Clash tribute act I promise, it’s like the coolest otherworldly
take on things that I love with a millions ideas and references plus the tunes
to back it all up. Watch out for the Alexa and Stanley Sax attack…Music for post
punk girls and louche rakes that takes down the mediocre reality of the consume
or be consumed culture we are doomed to die inside, lofi scratched up punk
genius.
RUNNER UPS:
BENT – EP/ PALBERTA – LP / HEAVY METAL – 2 LP/ LEBENDEN
TOTEN – “Static!” 12” / GAUCHE – LP / THE COWBOY – LP / / TERRY – LP / PIERRE
ET BASTIEN – LP / PROM NITE – LP / ANDY HUMAN EP / SAYLAVEES EP/ POLICE CONTROL
EP / JANITOR SCUM LP / FLESH WORLD – LP / RANK/XEROX – 12” / SACRED PAWS – LP / / MR WRONG – 12”
/RAYS –LP / RAKTA EP
TOP TAPES/DEMOS:
BLANK STATEMENTS, LITHICS, AQUARIUM, TABLE SUGAR, NEON,
STIFF LOVE, WARM BODIES, JUDY AND THE JERKS, DOUBLEMINT GUN
Reissues
Y-PANTS LP /NON-BAND LP/ COMET GAIN LPs/ DENDÖ MARIONETTE-LP / NEON
– “Neon / Nazi Schatzi” 45/ WRETCHED LP /PIECE WAR 12” / LOOK BLUE GO PURPLE
2xLP / NURSE – LP/ TRUMMERFRAUEN LP/ MORBID OPERA LP
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