Featured Release Roundup: September 26, 2019

The Mind: Edge of the Planet 12” (Drunken Sailor) Debut record from this project band featuring members of heaps of bands, some of the most relevant of them being Homostupids, Dry Rot, Pleasure Leftists, and Cosmic Sand Dollars. The members’ resumes are relevant not so much because the Mind sounds like any of those projects, but rather because it sets the bar of quality high and raises our expectations that this will combine cerebral experimentation and punk-derived visceral power similarly to the above projects. The Mind is one of those bands you can’t pin a genre on; they occasionally (but not always) use danceable drum machine rhythms, catchy post-punk bass lines, dissonant guitar freakouts, breathy vocals, and electronic bleeps and bloops. The songs are catchy and often melodic, but I wouldn’t call them pop songs. Instead, I’m reminded more of groups like Portishead and Exploded View that bring the trappings of pop music into a krautrock / Velvet Underground-inspired / experimental format. However, those are analogies and not one to one correspondences. The Mind is its own thing, and Edge of the Planet is a gripping balance of experimental dissonance, sonic texture, and melodic sophistication.


Mick Trouble: It’s the Mick Trouble EP 7” (Emotional Response) Man, untangling the web of deceit around this record gave me a headache. The back of the record’s sleeve says it was recorded in 1983 and features Jowe Head of Swell Maps / Television Personalities on bass. The record sounds vintage (not fake vintage, but real vintage), but 1. these songs are so good that it’s hard to believe no one released them already, and 2. it’s such a blatant homage to the first Television Personalities album that it must be a product of the past-obsessed twenty oughts. Eventually I found this article that explains it all (TL;DR version: it was recorded in 2015), but I have to admit that I went down the Discogs rabbit hole looking for any mentions of one Mick Trouble in relation to Television Personalities, Swell Maps, and the associated universe of bands. So yeah, if you love early Television Personalities (and god knows I do!) this is about as perfect an homage / recreation as you will ever find. Some of it teeters into “rip-off” territory (the first track, “Second Offense,” for instance, incorporates a bit of the TVP’s “The Angry Silence”), but my attitude has always been that originality is of little to no concern when enjoying a pop song. It’s all about the hooks, those transcendental moments of pop bliss, and these four tracks are lousy with them. Yeah, it’s an imitation, but hardly a pale one.


Haircut: Sensation 7” (Beach Impediment) Latest EP from this Richmond, Virginia band who has moved to the hardcore big leagues and secured a spot on the great Beach Impediment Records. While Sensation is very much of a piece with their previous EP Shutting Down, there’s more 80s-style grit in the production and tighter, more powerful playing that can stand toe to toe with anything on their new label. Haircut’s not so secret weapon remains their vocalist Juliana, whose distinctive style gives these tracks a sense of liveliness that they might lack with a more typical hardcore barker.


Nosferatu: A Field of Hope 12” (Neck Chop) A Field of Hope is a “The First Two Years” compilation from these Koro-worshipping Texans, bringing together their debut EP on Lumpy with the very limited demo and rehearsal recording releases that they’ve put out over that time. There are several recording sessions compiled here so the sound can change from track to track, but it’s uniformly raw with the focus on the catchy guitars and frantic drums, with the vocals and bass always fighting for your attention. Even with such primitive-sounding recordings, Nosferatu sound explosive. Like Koro, they pack so much drama into their short songs, each one its own maze of dramatic punches, stops and starts, tempo changes, clipped leads, and off-balance lunges. With so much material crammed onto the record it blends together into a monumental, punishing whole, but you can drop the needle anywhere and find nothing but raw, face-shredding hardcore. Dabblers might want to opt for their proper debut LP (for which the US press is, frustratingly, still on the way), but if you follow fast, 80s-inspired hardcore in the year 2019 this record should be in your collection.


Ascending: Earthlings 12” (Detriti) 4-song 12” EP of killer, dance floor-ready instrumental darkwave. Detriti is a mysterious label (most famous for the YouTube sensation Molchat Doma) that presents little info for most of their releases, but this record from Ascending is enigmatic even by their standards. What I can tell you is that this is a quick blast with the emphasis on the pounding boom-bap rhythms, mastered loud enough that you can picture it rattling speakers in Eastern European squats. Like the Normal’s “Warm Leatherette” or Total Control’s “Paranoid Video,” the production is stark with not a lot of layers, the musical equivalent of a high-contrast photocopied collage rather than a detailed illustration. It’s simple and brutal, grabbing you by the hips and forcing you to dance.


Larma: S/T 12” (Beach Impediment) When this self-titled 12” from Sweden’s Larma dropped on the internet earlier this year it turned the head of pretty much anyone interested in classic-sounding Swedish hardcore of the Totalitär ilk. With the music composed by the mastermind behind Herätys and the vocalist from the almighty Skitkids the members’ pedigree is impeccable, but no one here is resting on their laurels. While the music is modeled on the classic Totalitär sound, it takes that sound even further with more complex, inventive riffing, masterful songwriting and arrangement, and a production style that strikes the perfect balance between gritty, raw, heavy, and clear. I’m tempted to say that this 12” is even better than any of Totalitär’s actual LPs. It seems to take every one of that band’s key ideas and take it to its logical endpoint. It’s like a beautifully shot slasher flick; the aim is brutality, but it’s brutality executed with elegance and attention to detail. One of the year’s best hardcore records for sure.


Trampoline Team: Kill You 7” (Neck Chop) Latest 7” from this prolific New Orleans band. If you haven’t heard Trampoline Team yet, they play lightning-fast punk that’s seems a little too catchy and Ramones-informed to qualify as pure hardcore, but with a velocity that would put all but a handful of hardcore bands to shame. Stripped-down, catchy punk songs delivered at seizure-inducing tempos… what’s not to love, right? You get four tracks here and they’re all burners. There are only a handful of lyrics to each song, so it’ll be easy to shout along with them the next time this hard-touring band hits your town. And make it a point to see them, because their shows are exactly the adrenaline rush you’d hope they would be.



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